On the road, and neatly tucked into our bus seats, we were also well placed for scamming. A guy came up to Wendy and handed her a phone. She took it and the voice on the other end claimed to be from the “hotel” we just left. Apparently, she had departed without paying the final bill. The voice said that she should give the missing amount to the “agent” on the bus (the man with the phone).

All lies.

I had been there when all accounts were settled and I know that our friend had not “failed to pay”. She got very angry and the guy got insistent. This was his mistake, because our friend was a British GP (a doctor) and in my experience doctors don’t take shit from anyone. She shouted at him for a few moments and he shrugged and took his leave.

Worse was to come when we arrived into the desert.

The sun was very hot and of course the desert was as exposed as countryside can get. Over the endless heat waves we espied the fortified city of Jaisalmer. Cesca described it as,

“A giant sandcastle”

And indeed it looked the part, being raised high above the desert, and presumably dust winds, by what must be a huge pile of sand. It looked like it was sitting onto a dune. The only thing I have seen that comes close for the view was Uluru in Australia. It was striking in the extreme and exciting.

The bus entered the vicinity of this old city and stopped by the side of the road next to a swarm of touts. Immediately these started opening the bus storage doors and taking out our bags. I was up, out of my seat and off the bus in seconds. I pushed my way through the throng and grabbed my bag off the tout trying to make away with it.

“Put my bag down!” I screamed.

He did so. I was much bigger than him. I quickly took it and collected the girls’ bags too.

Another tout tried a different tact, producing a “licence” he claimed to be from the tourist board here to take us to our hotel. I put on my sunglasses and ignored him. I guarded the bags and they stood slightly back. That was until the girls got off.

Clearly white women getting off busses here make a “Ca’Ching” sound. Cesca and Wendy were instantly swamped with touts all pushing against each other to get the business. Pushing the girls too, who had their Lonely Planets out and were thumbing a map of the city. Upon seeing this, the touts as one craned their necks to see the page and “assist”. Arms were thrust onto the page and attempts to take the books to “show madam” aplenty.

As soon as I had seen all this start, I started counting to ten in my head. I reckoned that, what with the bus con fresh in their minds, the girls would explode after ten seconds.

9, 10…

Boom!

“Look!” shouted Wendy, “all of you just BACK OFF, RIGHT NOW!”

It was like kryptonite on these guys. Wendy was bigger than most of them to start with and she really shouted at the top of her not inconsiderate lungs.

This prompted a policeman to come over. He had a sub machine gun at his hip and it was loaded. The touts backed away and he very casually suggested that the tout that had spoken to me was actually “official”. Of course, this may be a clever bit of the play we were in, but it worked. I heaved all the bags into his tuk tuk and he sped us through the outskirts of the old city, just at the base of the sand mound it sits on, towards a hotel he swore blind was excellent.

When we got there, I defended the bags again and the girls went in. Immediately they came back out with the hotel owner, a 30 something Indian man with a professional manner. He handed the tuk tuk driver a note and he left. He then welcomed me to his hotel.

As it happens it was a brilliant hotel.

We got a quite expensive room (by our standards of the time, I probably spend more on coffee now) and met up on the roof top bar. All the hotels around this area had similar bar restaurants and we ordered some very nice food and drank out the night. Soon we had met others on their holidays and formed a little pride of travellers. There was an Asian lady from Canada on a life changing trip, a couple of very attractive Sweeds as well as a British couple who were good fun. We all decided to go on a Camel safari together.

The next morning, we set off early for the desert proper in jeeps. After a couple of hours of riding into the desert, putting us not too far from the border with Pakistan by my reckoning, we came to a small dusty village and met our camels.

I never thought I would like camels, they are shaggy with rough fur that catches dust and sand, their farts endlessly serenade the desert and their spitting is legendary in its ruthless laid back efficiency. However, one look at the smiling face of my mount for the next two days and I was in love. She was lovely.

Clambering aboard I immediately noticed that we were not riding in high Berber style on a mound of cushions – clearly the organisers were worried about us falling off (camels are very tall) – so instead we had to use horse style saddles only without stirrups.

About 5 or 6 seconds of the jerking, jolting, off-timed and frankly horrendous bouncing was enough for all of our crew to realise that is was not going to be pleasant experience. My inner thighs complained almost immediately.

We bounded off; each led by our camel tied to the one in front and headed into the desert. Soon the dunes swallowed the village behind us and the amazing spirit of emptiness started to pervade. The desert here is very quiet, only occasional tracks, desert roads and some power lines crossed our path which was otherwise endless scrub bushes and sand.

We plodded for about 10 miles or so, taking most of the day, and then our hosts announced we were stopping to make camp. Camp sat upon two very clean looking sand dunes that were empty apart from hundreds of 4 inch long dung beetles. I like beetles and these little scurriers skittered all around us as we setup the mats and the guides started a campfire.

They then taught us how to make chapatti, which we all had great fun doing before feasting upon the tiffin pots of food the guides had brought.

As we ate, talked and laughed together I sat back and wondered at the guides, for whom this was probably their primary business. By this point in our adventures Cesca and I had been on 20 or so “local tours” and I could recognise the signs of a well organised trip very quickly. This one, I decided, was definitely above average for, while we were missing a few home comforts out here, the guides were good and trying hard to please, the food was the pleasant Indian fare I had come to appreciate and the group atmosphere was friendly.

Then it rained.

In the desert.

Huge sheets of rain suddenly thundered down on us and we were all wet through. I couldn’t quite believe that so much water was available to fall in the desert, and neither could the guides. Gone was the chance to sleep outside and they scurried to the back of a camels for some small tents they had brought. Unfortunately there were not enough tents to go around and we would have to share, I quickly claimed a tent for Cesca and me and since we were the only married couple on the trip no one argued to join us. We all helped put up the tents and dived in. Listening to the rain, we huggled down and slept.

The next morning the rain had passed on and to look at the desert you would not know it had rained at all. To look at the group however… Several of the tents had flooded and eventually the poor junior guide had slept under a camel. Many people were seriously wet.

I stretched and walked up the dune to see the sunrise. There is definitely something primal and wonderful about the morning here. Soon Cesca joined with her camera and then the entire group rushed up to capture the moment on film. We all ate a hearty breakfast and then it was back on the camels.

Our route back took us via a couple of small villages, and had cleverly been designed to be shorter as the guides must have worked out that long camel rides play havoc with western soft legs. Soon, the vast majority of our group had abandoned camel and were walking alongside.

We arrived in our final village stop way after lunch and the camels all went for a drink. All around us the villagers came out and greeted our visit. An hour later I said goodbye to my mount as the jeeps arrived and we jumped on board for the trip back to the city.

On the way back we all discussed the rain we had experienced, surely a rare event in the desert? I should have realised that it was a portent of what was to come, but my thighs were burning too much to care.

On our arrival back we headed to the roof bar and drank our success in surviving the trip. I don’t remember going back to the room to sleep, but what happened next will always be in my mind.

I was awoken from a dream by a unique sound. I have thought long and hard about how to describe it, and I have settled on the following:

It was the sound of the entire Golden Horde, all 60 thousand horses; men and carts, galloping towards us over the desert.

The sound was loud at first, but soon it was huge and all around us. The walls shook, the paintings shook with them, the bed moved with the vibration. I heard screams outside and then the sound was with us in total and the entire world shook. Cesca and I jumped up in the bed,

“Earthquake!” I shouted.

“Oh my god! The city!” Cesca said, and we shared a vision of the city sand flowing down towards us burying us in a landslide of ancient walls, camels and palaces.

“Quick!” I shouted to her, “Get under the door frame!” I pointed to the entrance to the bathroom and we rushed under it and held each other.

Ten seconds later it passed on, but the screams outside continued. These were joined by the sounds of feet on the nearby stairs as screaming, jabbering tourists fled the building.

Seconds passed and no further roaring approached. The building remained standing. Clearly the city wasn’t going to engulf us in a landslide today.

“That was an earthquake!” Cesca exclaimed.

“Either that or war with Pakistan has started and we just got nuked!” I replied. “I’m going back to bed” I said.

“What!?” Cesca said, “Shouldn’t we go outside?”

“Out to panic? No thanks.” I jumped back in the bed and pulled up the covers.

Cesca made no move to follow me, “I’m heading outside”

“Baby” I called from the bed, “if it is Pakistan, try not to get any on you…”

She stuck out her tongue and went off.

Sure enough it had been a quake, measuring nearly 6 on the scale. The local area had suffered some damage, but we had been lucky. Quakes are on a logarithmic scale, so while a 6 is high, it’s not in the same league as a 7 and not even the same sport as an 8. All the same, it was one hell of a thing to be woken up by.

For the rest of the day the only chat was of the quake and I eventually logged onto the UN Quake watch web site to record my eye witness account in their database. No further incidents happened and the next day it was forgotten.

We use our final day in Jaisalmer to visit the old city. It was very beautiful.

The ancient buildings all have facia carved from stone and thin alleys wind all around the centre. The hotel owner took us on a tour to the tumble down palace and we spent a good few hours talking to the man whose job it is to rebuild it.

He was part of a family who had worked for the Rajput for generations and it had fallen to his generation to try and get the palace back in order. It was very old and open to the elements, and I remember thinking that he had one hell of a job on his hands.

As we shopped I considered buying a camel skin leather bag, which all looked wonderful (I am a sucker for bags) but didn’t. I regretted that for days until I read on the web that they are often not properly treated and consequently rot with a smell that is impossible to mask and will definitely get picked up when going through an airport.

That evening we all checked out together as one group. We took a bus to the nearest train station and had berths near each other. That night we all chatted and enjoyed each other’s company for one last time before Cesca and I left the train in the early morning and wended our way to our final stop in Rajasthan; Jaipur.

Kind regards,

Basho

The city is blue, blue of the Brahmin caste we were told, but I can’t help wondering if there is another reason for its popular -nay ubiquitous-shade. I heard one rumour that it was due to the blue paint putting off the mosquitos. However, I am more inclined to believe it is to challenge the other brightly-coloured-city it is most often confused with (Jaipur, which is bright pink!) I leaned back on the bed and spied out of the window at the huge cliff-wall behind the hotel, and then up, up and eventually to the turrets of the Mehrangarh Fort high above.

It towered over the entire city of a million people, ever watching like a sleeping dragon turned to stone by some mighty magic, frozen with one eye open and brooding over its faded dominance.

The city’s name? Where else but Jodhpur: the blue city of India set amongst the stark landscape of the Thar Desert.

Actually, as nice as post cuddle snoozes are, I could have murdered a beer and so I dressed and headed out to sit with her. I found her sitting on the roof with the owner and a clearly English woman of about our age. They greeted me and I joined them. The owner waved me up a beer from a passing staff member and continued telling us about the city.

“The city is known as the “Sun City” because of the fine weather,” he said, “It was the capital of the Marwar Kingdom founded by Rao Jodha. The wall goes all the way around.”

I remembered our arrival a few hours before, Jodhpur is indeed a walled city with a tight maze of very narrow streets full of wandering cows and tiny stores of all descriptions.

Travelling through it in a tuk tuk, one cannot help but feel that westerners stand out a little too much amongst the backdrop of a city whose sheer cramped size and ancient structure is hugely resistant to modernisation. Not that this is stopping the tuk tuk driver attempting to break the speed of light.

I turned to Cesca, the wind buffeting her hair, “If we travel any faster, we will go back in time!”

She grinned a response.

Eventually we made it to the large haveli or converted palace that you will find all over Rajasthan. It had enormous doors in a giant wall upon which we knocked mightily and were greeted by a staff member who directed us to the young owner. He was the same man holding court with us now and part of the family that had converted the old edifice of residence into the magnificent guesthouse before us.

Suddenly I realised that the reason he was paying us all such attention was that he fancied the English girl speaking with Cesca. At least I hoped it was she and not my baby as this was a very high roof from which to be flung…

Anyway, we espied the city and he told us of the sights to be had in its investigation. He then offered us himself as a guide. We agreed and he took us through the streets and temples showing us the sights. It was all quite excellent really.

That night we stayed up quite late, eating the great food prepared at a moment’s notice by our host, and chatting to the English girl. She was a Doctor by trade, on her travels and heading further into Rajasthan until reaching the desert city of Jaisilmere. We very quickly hit it off and decided we should all go together. Indeed, like all the incredible people we met, it was my darling wife they immediately took too – she just has a very impressive skill of putting people at their ease, which is formed of her intense innocence and classy way.

The next day we walked up to the castle-like Mehrangarh Fort and took a long look around.

Like the palace in Udaipur this was very impressively preserved and indeed still in use by the ruling family. We enjoyed another exquisite audio tour and visits to armouries, ballrooms and private antechamber of the Princes found in this part of India.

It never failed to impress. Outside I filmed the city and animals living on the walls and Cesca, dressed in her traditional and bright orange Indian clothing (bought way back in Mumbai), made friends with locals who were soon chatting to her in excited and animated conversation.

Later we realised that we wanted to stay a few more days here and so we made to find a cash machine. This required a long walk through the city until coming across only two working international choices. The first was out of money, which worried us mightily. Rushing to the other, we found that it was not working properly and took 20 minutes to count our money, but it eventually spat out enough funds to cover our adventures for the next few days.

Now we could go shopping!

The Handicrafts industry has in recent years eclipsed all other industries in the city. By some estimates, the furniture export segment is a $200 million industry, directly or indirectly employing as many as 200,000 people. Other items manufactured include textiles, metal utensils, bicycles, ink and sporting goods. A flourishing cottage industry exists for the manufacture of such items as glass bangles, cutlery, carpets and marble products.

WIKIPEDIA

We asked around for where to buy fine silks in the city (something that it is famous for) and were directed to a slightly tattered looking shop with enormous piles of silks of every conceivable type. There we spent the best part of half a day ordering up bed coverings as presents for our families.

This was an experience that was at one moment highly pleasurable; full of “ohh’s and ahh’s as they laid out the wares for us and claimed everyone from London boutiques to Richard Gere himself bought from this store; and the next moment was sheer pain; as we were pressured to make decisions (something Cesca hates doing) and agree a price. Eventually we bargained down to a fair price, but as always you know that you are being fleeced somewhere and somehow. Still the silks are lovely.

“How can I decide which goes to which person?” Cesca asked me.

“You can’t really baby, people will always like a different one than the one you picked out for them. Just let them do the fighting.”

Therefore, I paid the (massive) bill and the company posted the entire lot home. I remember at the time wondering if it would actually arrive back in the UK, but it did and quickly.

Then we went tea hunting. Jodhpur is also justly famous for its spices and high quality teas. We had a fantastic couple of hours trying all sorts of brews and listening to the happy proprietor explain their many health benefits.

We bought some spices (which I only got half way through after a year) and teas (which Cesca has never opened!).

This bounty, plus a few other gifts we posted back to the UK through the torturous Indian postal system, which requires you to wrap all you items in cloth and seal them with wax. Or rather it requires someone to do this, just not you. No, in another gouge, you must have someone trained in the required technique do it or your package will go missing.

It’s not the cost that prickles, but the time wasted trying to find a suitable merchant to do this for you.

After another fun night talking to Wendy, we decided to move onto the next town together. We found a suitable bus and headed out into the long road into the desert and the sand mountain that is Jaislemere.

Regards,

Basho

Those are the known unknown things that you decide to do only when faced with the opportunity. You know you might do them, but you perhaps only have the haziest plan about them. What this story highlights are the complete unknowns; those strange twists of fate and chance that dog everyone’s lives from one end to the other. Perhaps that is being unfair to them as they are the same class of occurrence that led to me meeting my wife, my friends and finding my job.

But, they can also lead to what is to follow…

My tale begins just before we travelled to the (now closing) park of Bandhavgar in India and starts with us trying to go the train station in Varanasi.

Leaving Varanasi is not something I am soon to forget.

Just getting to the station that night was one hell of challenge. I have written before about how Cesca and I played good cop, bad cop with the local Tuk-Tuk drivers to make sure that we were not gouged by excessive charges, facilitated by the driver and friends taking us for a “marks” or as we in the UK call them “mugs”. Our double act, of Cesca walking away in huff followed by myself after sharing an exasperated look with the offending driver, had wowed and convinced all over the east. Indeed, I remember thinking that it was so effective that it must be a simple part of the “play” or “act” of hiring a taxi, Tuk-Tuk or Songthaew anywhere else in the world apart from the bit I came from. I also remember remarking that it would always work…

Cesca and I stopped, our backs to the small group of Tuk-Tuk drivers, and we leaned into each other conspiratorially.

“How many steps have we gone?” I asked, and we both computed the answer in our heads.

“6” we agreed.

“Bugger,” said Cesca, “they’re not going to go for it are they?”

I sneaked a look around at the drivers, coolly watching us walk away. They looked uncaring and if it was acting, it was good acting.

“Thing is darling,” I said, “We don’t have long until our train… Is this time for humble pie?”

Ceca’s eyes met mine and I saw fire in them.

“Never!” She spun to face the group and strode towards them raising an indignant finger.

The trouble was simple. The Tuk-Tuk to the hotel from the train station had been one hell of a journey, but at least it had been a fixed fare set by the government rates system. However, trying to get back to the train station from the hotel was to pick a Tuk-Tuk off the street nearby and this was ungoverned… and five times the price. When the man had first suggested the fare we simply knew it had to be a haggler’s bluff. But, I was now forming the notion that the Tuk-Tuk drivers here are in some sort of price-fixing union or cartel (or mafia!) and won’t haggle at all- they want the foreign visitor to pay a high price!

Cesca took to arguing with the men. I don’t know how good their English was beyond how to simply perform their job, but I could tell that Cesca’s body language was translating perfectly; she was pissed off. I hung back. A big guy standing over her shoulder could illicit the wrong reaction.

After only a few minutes another man, leaning against a wall, detached himself and walked over and offered to take Cesca for the original price on the condition that she stopped shouting and also that he happened to live near the station anyway.

She grinned in triumph all the way to the station forecourt. What a girl!

As we were dropped off I took a look at the station forecourt in the darkness. Surrounding it were tall lampposts throwing out a dirty orangey light that illuminated the dusty ground in pools of colour crossed endlessly with the flashing of insects mistaking the bulbs for the moon.

We put on our backpacks and made our way towards the entrance. Walking under the lamps there was a buzzing of activity and I noticed from the corner of my eye a large moth break formation with the group and dive down to take a closer look. It was a wild winged creature of significant size and my first instinct upon seeing it, heading straight down at my face from the corner of my eye, was to flinch aside Bruce Lee’like.

Unfortunately, the moth also changed direction and I remember hearing its wings buzzing loudly like a dive-bombing Stuka.

Then nothing.

I looked around, but couldn’t see it and I thought to myself “where did that go?”

Then I realised the horrifying truth. In a million to one shot the massive Indian flying creature had managed to wedge itself right into my ear canal. I slapped my hand to my ear in shock and the moth responded by buzzing its wings, which inside my ear canal sounded like a recording of 400 cymbals falling down a flight of stairs played through a speaker turned up to 11.

I screamed in pain. Cesca flashed around and for a good few moments couldn’t work out what was wrong.

“Darling?” she asked.

“There’s a bloody great moth in my ear!” I cried. “Help!”

She ran over to help and took a look in my ear, to which the moth responded with the ending of The William Tell overture as heard from 2 inches away from the explosions.

I screamed some more.

“Get it out!”

Now it was at this moment, had this been a film, that the Benny Hill music would have started and everything would have been slightly sped up. We tore off our backpacks and flung everything out on the floor in increasingly desperate attempts to remove said insect from my ear. Each attempt, ear buds; wipes; sticks, was met with desperate struggles from the moth and more screaming from myself. It was wedged in there good and proper and (Cesca told me later) took up the entire ear.

By this time we had drawn the attention of a couple of policemen, who spoke no English and merely stood bemused at Cesca attempts to explain, so I decided that we should get on the train and deal with it there. Cesca told me later that this was the point at which she would have headed to an A&E.

In aural-agony I walked to the train, my hearing on both sides shot to bits and my heart racing as I tried to think of something that would get this bastard out of my ear.

On the train, we took up our little bed area and pulled the curtains across. Cesca then set about thinking hard. The increasingly desperate moth had been seriously battered by my attempts to dig it out with earbuds and my ear canal was now very sore, as was my eardrum against which the moth had been push and squashed. I realised, just as the train pulled out, that this was much worse than we thought.

Cesca hit upon an idea. Ear wax remover.

“Ear wax remover!?” I exclaimed, “You have carried ear wax remover all this way around the world?”

“Yes, for clearing my ears before diving” she said pulling out a small bag from which she took out the tiny dropper-topped bottle. We lay me on my side and she put in a couple of drops.

It smelt very menthol.

The moth, I am ashamed to say, drowned in this stuff and after a few exhausted buzzes that sounded like nuclear explosions passed away from its life. We turned me up the other way and the fluid drained onto a tissue.

But the moth, dead as it was, was still in my ear.

Cesca took a closer look with a torch and gasped slightly.

“What?” I asked, “Is it huge? Can you grab it?”

“Erm, no it’s not huge” she said.

She was clearly lying, the moth was enormous, and it must be to fill my ears. I always had to use the large rubber ear grommets on headphones, I am a big guy, and I have large ear canals. This beast invading my body, probably covered in all sorts of Indian crap, dust, mites, and shit, was the size of a bloody bus! I suddenly thought that I might get an infection if we weren’t careful and that made my skin go into a cold sweat and my brain beat with blood and worry.

Cesca tried to think of something. Then…

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I have tweezers somewhere, we should pull it out!”

“Tweezers too? What type?”

“They are tick ones, for pulling out ticks” she replied

“Aren’t they sharp at the ends?” I enquired

“A little, yes”

I motioned to the train carriage which was bouncing around us – Indian trains are anything but a smooth ride.

“Forget it!”

“Well what then?” she asked.

I racked my brain,

“Call your sister”.

I don’t know why calling a vet back in England was supposed to help, she would probably be more concerned for the moth than I, but I wanted to do something and get someone else thinking as well. Arabella tried her best over the line, but her only advice was to sleep on that side of my body and the moth would “pop out”.

“Oh yes,” she said to Cesca down the mobile line from the UK, “Sebastian had a moth in his ear, slipped over-night no problem…”

Cesca latched onto the good news and smiled to me but she wasn’t fooling me for a second. I knew from her face that there was no way this thing was simply going to “pop out” without the application of high explosive.

So I had no choice, I slept the 8 hour journey on my right-side awaiting the moth to extricate itself from my ear canal. I didn’t sleep a moment of that 8 hour journey, not one second.

Eventually we arrived at our stop in the middle of nowhere and then I really did start to worry. What if there were no doctors out here? We were visiting the deep wilds of India; perhaps they wouldn’t have the equipment needed for sorting out ears. You know that bendy thing like a clothes hanger with a camera on the end that doctors jam into children’s ears?

We got off the train and were met by a driver, booked to take us to the safari park we were staying at for the next four days.

“How long is the journey?” I asked.

“Oh quick sir,” he said smilingly, “only 2 hours or so”

I didn’t say anything, but my expression said simply, “!”

I went into that strange mode that people go into when they know their mission. A sort of calm and almost detached view of the world that speaks only in a gentile but swift voice answering all questions exactly and quickly with no elaboration whatsoever.

“I have a moth in my ear” I said to myself, “for at least two more hours,” I continued, “and then we shall remove it”.

Zen monks couldn’t have put it calmer.

We finally arrived at the park as the sun rose over the trees. It was beautiful in the extreme, but I wasn’t really watching it. We quickly checked in and got to our room. Bags were flung into the bed and I grabbed our extensive medical bag and strode purposely into the bathroom.

“Cesca,” I said smartly, handing her the bag, “in there is a syringe.” I bent over the sink. “Please use that with some water to flush this obstacle from my ear”.

Cesca tried, but it didn’t work. The moth was crushed against the ear and the water couldn’t get under it to lift it.

It was time for desperate measures.

“Ok,” I said, “go for the tweezers”

Cesca lifted the large chisel ended tweezers out of the medical kit and approached my ear. She reached out and in.

“Slower!” I said.

“I am going slowly” she protested.

“Then go slower, go glacially”.

The tweezers entering my ear disturbed the moth’s corpse and set off more endless cymbals in my head. I felt her grab hold of the end of the moth and that really hurt. She later told me that her greatest fear at this point was that the moth would come apart and have to be removed in bits.

“I have it,” she said, “ready?”

“Go,” I said.

She pulled and for a moment I too thought the moth wasn’t moving, then suddenly its entire bulk shifted and my hearing returned. It was off the ear drum! The pain stopped and then with the most satisfying, crashing, screaming, noise-filled moment of my life there was an audible, slimy pop and the moth came out.

Intact.

Cesca immediately flung it into the basin. I stood up and then we did that thing that always happens in the movies, we learned in to take a closer look and both, in unison, cried “urrrg!”

It was huge and slimy and crushed and all legs and wings and, well, “urrrg!”

We looked at each other and then I gave Cesca the biggest hug of her life, lifting her clean off her feet and against the wall.

“THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!” I exclaimed over and over again, tears coming to my eyes.

The nightmare of the last 10 hours was over, my ear was sore but safe, and Cesca- she was as ever my hero.

So, there you have it. We went on in the next few days to see 9 tigers in their wild habitat and this certainly helped redress that painful journey. My ear did hurt all that time, but I didn’t care since we were having such a great time.
It’s often said that it is the bullet with your name on it that you don’t hear. Well, I went through a long journey to reach the moth with my name on it and I heard it all right. That was got me to flinch. It’s natural to do so, to protect the eyes, but very few people consider their ears!

I sure do now!

Since then I have come to realise that this story highlights perfectly the difference between Courage and Bravery. I had the moth in my ear; there was nothing I could do to get it out. Staying calm was brave. Cesca was in charge of a very sharp set of medical implements which she needed to put into my deepest ear canals. Staying steady at such moments takes courage.

Something she has in spades.

Regards,

Basho

But then they are probably not trying to, instead they are after a unique chance of visiting the worlds greatest monument to romantic love ever constructed. For that is what this strange tomb is; one man’s attempt to express his love and loss. Seen in that sense, flying half way across the world just to see the sun rise here is perhaps not so crazy after all.

Cesca and I arrived a different way, a much more down to earth way; by train. Agra was one of the few places that we had phoned ahead and booked. This is because Agra has quite a different reputation amongst backpackers; a deadly reputation.

Surrounding the great tomb is, what some might call, a shanty town. In the past it probably was, just a place for the Mountebanks, snake charmers and con artists to live when they weren’t begging outside the tomb proper. Then came the era of international tourism and the arrival of backpackers. I can hardly imagine what courage it took to backpack India in those first days. I get some of the stories from fifteen years ago when my sister-in-law was in the north of India. Back then, the population was tiny compared to now and everyone much poorer. Staying in the area around the Taj, called the Ganj, was probably taking your life in your hands even just from the point of view of the water quality (drawn directly from the great river flowing behind the Taj and very polluted). You may consider this an exaggeration, but even in our more modern times there has been deaths here. The story I was told was that there was a con being played, which went like this:

Tourists would stay at a hostel and naturally enough ask at the desk for a food recommendation, the helpful staff would call up tuk tuk and direct them to a “quality” restaurant. At the end of the meal the tourists would start to feel ill and eventually collapse in pain. The tuk tuk would then take them to a doctors clinic who would check them in and claim that they had a well-known local infection that he could treat no problem. He would then give them medicine once they had called their insurance company. Over the next few days to weeks they would remain ill and eventually “respond” to the treatment. Thanking the doctor they would probably fly home none-the-wiser to what really happened to them. You see, the hotel, the tuk tuk driver, the restaurant and the “doctor” were all in on a nastily little scam. That the restaurant poisoned the tourists is obvious, but worse so did the doctor’s “treatments”. Why? Because western people are insured up the wassoo and all this money flowed directly into the doctors clinic where he would pay off the others. It worked pretty well for – I hear – a couple of years until two German tourists died from the treatment. After that the Indian government went though the Ganj area and forced out all the scammers. Or so we should hope.

Cesca and I were hearing this tale from a guy on our tiger safari whose face was covered with hundreds of painful looking bedbug bites – the result of a visit to a bad hostel in Agra. We were only slightly more concerned about the story than the painful looking bites, surely going to scar.

We later read up and found that the tale was true.

“What shall we do?” Cesca asked me, knowing that I was the more security conscious (read: paranoid) of the two of us.

I thought for a moment before the answer hit me, “we will stay with Muslims,” I announced. My hope was that the famous Muslim hospitality would prevent them from any such behaviour as it would be against one of the Pillars of Islam. So, we called ahead and booked into a hotel in the heart of the Ganj area owned and run by a Muslim family. It was very close to the Taj itself and the view out the back of the room was over the houses leading up to the great Tomb.

The view from our room / a local women takes in the street view.

We were just deciding to take a walk around the area when we met one of the most memorable people of all our travels. I stood outside in the dusty street out front of the hostel and perused my Lonely Planet. I was considering where we might find something to eat. Then suddenly, amongst the endless sounds of India; chatting in Hindu, Indian music, etc, came a vocal accent it was wonderful to hear; Scottish.

“Hey pal, may I borrow that from ye?”

I looked up to find a thin late thirties bald man standing over the frame of a road bike and indicating my Lonely Planet. He was dressed in cycling shorts and a sport top and his bike was ladened down with large specialist bags over each wheel. Clearly this was all his gear.

“Sure,” I said handing him the book, which he took without hesitation, “it’s nice to hear an accent from home.”

“Aye,” he said reading the book and not really listening. Cesca and I shared a smile. It really was nice to hear the Scottish brogue, it’s a reminder of my little island and my people who I often missed. It has occurred to me since that we spent a lot of time travelling in the company of Scottish and Irish people, I wonder if their voices had anything to do with it, or that the legendary gregariousness of these nations commutes to friendship all over the world? The man flicked through the book for a few more moments and then looked Cesca and I up and down, “Do you know where I may get a beer?” he asked.

“Not off the top of my head I’m afraid, we are new to the area, but there will be one in there I am sure,” I said.

He seemed to come to a conclusion, “Would you two like to come for a beer?”

“Why yes, we would”.

“Grand, I know a good place over there,” he gestured at a building 100 yards away.

“Basho,” I said holding out my hand to shake, “and this is my wife Cesca”.

He smiled a broad grin, “I’m Eric”.

And so we went to have a drink. We were fascinated to learn more about this strange fellow on his bike. The fact that it was early didn’t bother us at all; it was still very hot, ‘tis true, but more than that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth when meeting people. Some of the greatest people are met in the most unlikely ways; sometimes thrown together by fate like Lenin and Bobbits in Laos, sometimes met through hardship like Gwenny in Kerala and sometimes unavoidable like Connor and Marie-Lou who we gratefully met over and over and over. Sometimes it’s just meeting someone who you just know you will enjoy the company of, like Eric.

We went to the rooftop bar/café and the owner greeted Eric like an old friend, we sat overlooking the Ganj and the Taj poking over the rooftops; all the pretence of needing a guide book was gone.

The Ganj viewed from the café.

Eric ordered us all beer from a little boy waiter,

“He has to go buy it,” he explained, “it’s illegal to serve beer, but he likes me so the lad goes and gets it. We must drink it under the table in cups, OK?”

“Sure,” said Cesca, “so tell us, what’s with the bike?”

He told us.

I’ve met quite a few courageous people in my life and Eric is right up there with the best of them. A postman in Scotland, Eric was struck down with ME; the strange and not understood exhaustion disease/syndrome that usually puts people into homes for the rest of their life.

“I recovered,” he said, “and I said to myself I wanted to do something different, so I became a Yoga instructor”.

“Of course, why not?” I said.

“Aye I did that for a while to earn enough money to leave on this journey.”

“Where did you get the bike?” I asked.

“No that’s what I mean, I left Scotland on the bike, I’m cycling across the world from Aberdeen to Adelaide in Australia.”

There was a silence as we took in the enormity of this challenge. Then my talent for saying stupid things at the wrong time came to my rescue,

“Adelaide is lovely,” I told him. You’ll love it there.”

He smiled, “I hope so”.

“You must be about half way through,” said Cesca.

“Aye, but I’m stopping here for a few days as I’m bloody exhausted from Pakistan.”

And he told us about his experiences cycling through Pakistan. They had not been very pleasant to say the least. The Pakistani government had given him a police escort through the country because they were worried that he might be murdered. This escort stopped traffic as he came to roundabouts and junctions and he felt very isolated from the people. They forced him to sleep in police stations at night and, as he tried to sleep, his “guards” ordered up prostitutes for themselves and eyed his gear.

“It was horrible,” he said, “eventually I decided to just power through it and so here I am trying to recover from the effort.”

“How long will you stay in this area?” Cesca asked.

“Oh, maybe just a few days,” he said.

Sometimes a husband and wife think as one. Perhaps it is a form of mental connection beyond cues, something psychic. Whatever it was we both knew right there and then that this guy wanted company, that he needed some help to right his mind and that this was exactly what we were going to give him.

We sat and ate and drank with Eric all that day. He talked a lot, like a man who had missed the sound of his own language. We listened and talked to and it seemed to me that we had a lot in common.

The next day we did the same. This time we met up with some other travellers (including a graffiti artist and his partner from my home city of London) and long, semi drunken conversations lilted off into the day and night on all sorts of subjects. Life, the Universe, travelling to name three of the topics. We all benefitted from the company and I guess we all needed it, but Eric most of all. Slowly I could tell he was coming right again.

In the distance the Taj still sat. Waiting. I watched it out of the window of our hotel, poking high above the buildings. It wasn’t going anywhere and I wanted to wait until we were ready.

So the next day, we agreed to meet up with Eric at dinner and went off to the Red Fort.

The fort is very large and impressive, if a little barren.

This being the part of India that fought against the British, the fort had long been looted, but still it was an incredible day with the sun high in the sky making the red bricks glow in the light. The fort had been the prison for the Khan who built the Taj for his beloved wife. Almost bankrupting the nation, his son usurped his rule and placed him here for the rest of his life. To add insult to injury the son built a special optical illusion from the prison cell that makes the distant Taj appear to grow closer as your eyes focus. I imagine the old king crying, to be so close to his love and yet unable to touch her, lost in memories.

You cant capture the optical illusion with a 2D camera, but it’s very eerie.

That night we dined with Eric and a nice American couple on the “tour” of India where you fly in and out in a few days. I don’t meet many people quite this rich in such circumstances and certainly not with the same outlook on life, and so it was interesting to spend some time in their company. However, their story of that day’s visit to the Taj was the last straw and Cesca and I determined to visit it the next day. As darkness fell the local people of Ganj had a festival and we went down into the crowd to see the procession. It was very colourful and bright, but I am not sure what it represented beyond the obvious gods.

The next morning we made for the Taj. There are a number of entrances, but only some are open early.

The early queue, with me right at the back…

I remember that tourists are charged a vastly inflated price in comparison to locals, but then; their disposable income is far less in relation. Once into the gateway, and through the very thorough search protocols, you are greeted with an outer courtyard of prodigious size which leads all the paths to the main entrance in to the famous park. Even though we were very early, the place was busy and I could tell that once the bus tours arrived it would get seriously packed in and not too much fun.

The main inner entrance.

Through the giant main entrance (where you have to leave your camcorder for some reason) you arrive in the garden proper. From here the building itself is breath-taking. Again using the optical effects seen in the Fort this is the best moment of the visit as you cannot fail but to be impressed.

In front of you is the spot that Lady Diana made famous and this is the start of the trouble because everyone wants the same shot.

It becomes an inelegant scrum very quickly. In this garden, supposed to be a private place, there is now unnumbered people climbing all over the top of each other and since these are the sorts of people up at this time in the morning they are the sort of people with “photographic agendas”.

I started to feel the magic of that first view drain away, so we approached the tomb. As you get closer you quickly realise that it is a lot smaller than it looks. The design is following some secret principle of making things look bigger, but only from particular angles. From others it shrinks.

Through the hundred meters of garden you arrive at steps and up up to the platform on which the tomb sits. As we drew closer we could see that the entire buildings façade is slight in need of repair with the fine inlaid stone being endlessly chipped off and stolen.

We walked around and spied the river running behind the structure. It is large and very dirty. We then entered inside the tomb, which was quite bare and amongst the throng of people there really wasn’t much to see. Soon we left the building and, avoiding the oncoming hordes, we went into the garden areas to the right. In these there were lots of plants and squirrels and we had some fun feeding the little blighters before deciding to leave the Taj.

Maybe the Taj can be seen in the way it was intended, maybe it is just me, but the large crowds meant that I got very little romance from the occasion and less from the ambience (which is one of busy frustration). If people visited the Taj with the quiet solemnity that one visits, say, Stone Henge then it would remain a magical experience. However, for me the Taj gave very little. What did surprise me was how nice the people of the Ganj area were and how good the food was! Surely this place has changed since the stories we had heard about.

That night we said our goodbyes to Eric. He was moving on to further adventures on his epic journey across the world. I later learned (from his blog) that he not only made it across the deserts of Australia to the wonderful city of Adelaide two months ahead of schedule, but decided to cycle back the other way! Returning to his native Scotland via New Zealand, America and Ireland. He is truly a lesson to us all, and one that was not lost on me.

Cesca and I held hands all the way to the station watching the Ganj area, and the wider roads of Agra, fly past our tuk tuk. Perhaps the Taj had some magical effect after all?

We boarded the train and took up our beds, still holding hands. Ahead was Rajasthan and the great lake city of Udaipur, with its pure quiet romance, huge forest fires and hordes of dancing virgins with giant puppets on their heads…truly.

Regards,

Basho.

Cecsa and I have sat down and recorded a podcast of our time in Anegundi in India. This is a total-first for us and so please strap yourself in as we try and capture our feelings about the amazing Hampi area without really knowing what the hell we are doing. I haven’t edited it much, nor put on any intro and outro – this is raw stuff. If you like it, then let us know and I will make sure to up the professionalism about 1000% for next week.

Oh and warning for a few swearwords!

I have uploaded a collection of photos for you to browse as we speak as we refer to them as we go along. Hopefully, this will keep us on track and give you something nice to look at while we blather on. Here is a slideshow of the images, click to open in Flickr and you can go through them as I refer to them in the audio.

(Direct link:Flickr Set)

CLICK to play:

If you are on an iPhone (with no flash) try either the direct link: This Is India 1 or try subscribing through iTunes to www.outsidecontext.com/feed

If you are interested in the village featured in the podcast, then you can find more information here: http://thekishkindatrust.org/

Regards,

Basho and Cesca

Shame I don’t live there then!

Cesca and I have written many articles on the subject of New Zealand and also made a “love letter” of a short-film celebrating the country (found under “films” in the navigation bar). However, I have always wanted to do more to speak of our time driving around these islands.

Well, our wish has come true.

About a two weeks ago I was approached by a company working for Air New Zealand. They wanted to license all our content on New Zealand for use in the official Air New Zealand iPhone app!

On the go and in the air, Air New Zealand’s free Spot-On Travel Guide App Series help you make the most of your visit – even offline.

Browse hand-picked activities, events and destinations by region, then save them for quick retrieval upon arrival. Handy travel tools and social network integration make finding and sharing amazing spots a cinch.

Be a tourist without looking like one.

It’s the Kiwi in us – Air New Zealand.

We jumped at the chance of being involved because we loved our time in New Zealand and the idea of that being celebrated “officially” made us very happy. It gives us another way to share our experiences and give something back. Hopefully, this will have a positive effect on the places we experienced and make sure that people visiting the country for the first time don’t miss out.

I cut down the articles to 150 word long chunks with one picture per chunk. I then uploaded them to a custom CMS provided by my contact. A few days ago they were approved and went live on the app!

We uploaded articles on the following topics:

• See the splendour of Pahia and the Bay Of Islands
• Walk endless sands of 90 Mile Beach
• Be blown away on the cliffs of Cape Reinga
• Walk to the falls of Waitonga
• Cycle up Mount John.
• Walk the Hooker Valley for a view of Mount Cook
• Visit the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre
• See the wild waters of Hokianga harbour.
• Wonder at the Giant Kauri Trees
• Brave the unpaved roads to Waikawau Bay
• Get washed up in Cathedral Cove
• Bath in Mud at Hell’s Gate
• Dip in the Polynesian Spa at Lake Rotorua.
• Wander around the history of Rotorua museum.
• Early morning at Lake Rerewhakaaitu
• See the wondrous colour palette of Wai-O-Tapu
• See the huge Lake Taupo
• Walk the Queen Charlotte track
• Visit and stay at Furneaux Lodge
• Dig your own spa at Hot Water Beach
• Wonder at the strange Moeraki Boulders
• Get wet at Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks
• See whales by helicopter in Kaikoura

I have created a special “landing page” for use in the iPhone in-built browser. This can be found here: www.outsidecontext.com/new-zealand

If you are thinking of, or planning, a visit to the best country on the far-side of the world, then get this app and read up on some of the above. We did so much in New Zealand. In two months we travelled one end to the other taking in mountains, beaches, volcanoes, islands, cities and vineyards. We walked on its glaciers, jumped off its bridges, worked on its farms and skydived over its mountains. We didn’t want to leave.

So, get this app and then you too can fall in love with New Zealand.

Just like me.

Download from here

Basho.

PS. If you do get the app, and you like it, then please leave us a comment here to let us know – it would mean a lot to us to hear of your visits to NZ.

Sandals.

I hadn’t worn shoes for 2 months. A new adult first, meaning that my feet were always dusty; the ever present Indian dirt and sand sticked to my toes. Every night I showered and a torrent of black washed off my feet. I turned onto my side and spied Cesca on the next sun lounger, she was taking in the sun by laying on her front, her bikini open at the back to allow a tan, but – since I had rubbed in some cream for her – no white line or burning. I reached to the table between us and took down my beer and my book. It was called The Master of Go, by Nobel Prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata.

Then my phone rang. It was my best friend Mark.

I thumbed the screen and the call connected, “Mark!” I exclaimed, genuinely please to hear from him, “It’s great to hear your voice. Where are you?” From over the connection I could hear what sounded like traffic and men talking; the sounds of London. The sounds of home.

“Heyya, I thought I would give you a call,” his voice was raised like he could not really hear me and was compensating by shouting; he must be at work on a building site, “I’m in a man hole at the moment sorting out foundations for a new tube station.”

“Wow,” I said, interested.

“Yeah, it’s for the Olympics and all that. Anyway, it’s cold, wet and horrible and I am down this smelly hole and I thought I could do with cheering up. Where are you?”

I could well imagine England in February and being stuck out in the legendary English wet winter could not be much fun. I looked at the majestic view around me. The beach stretched off to the right and ran into a high line of cliffs with chalets atop the jagged rocks. This had a path running down that ran right behind us giving access to the twenty or so beachfront guest houses. A sort of motley collection of flop houses that serviced the lower order of traveller and would only be reviewed in backpacker bibles such as the Lonely Planet. These ran past us to the left and on down the endless beach, which was also home to a couple of dozen bars of all levels of coolness, before rounding the headland in the hazy distance. The beach itself was dotted with people playing in the surf, lounging on beds like ours, doing yoga and drinking. Everyone looked like they were on a sort of the-morning-after-we-are-the-cool-kids vibe that only a night spent drinking, going to parties and getting laid can get you.

Sure enough, for a certain type of person Goa was a seductive paradise.

“Oh,” I said to Mark, who in my mind was struggling in the cold and wet down a big hole; traffic running all around, “I’m in Goa, India…”

“I see.”

“On the beach…”

“A-ha.”

“Drinking cool beer in the sunshine.

“Is it beautiful?”

“Most definitely. Wish you were mate,” I said honestly, “you would love it.”

“Thanks-“ he then shouted something to someone off the phone that ended in swearing, then he was back on, “Look. I have to go.”

“Sure. Hope the kids are well.”

“We are all looking forwards to you coming back. The lads too, we will all share a beer with you at Ground Zero.”

“Deal, can’t wait.”

“OK, bye!”

And then he was gone.

“Bye, buddy.” I suddenly realised that I was really missing him and the rest of my friends.

I looked at the sea again.

Like I said, a certain type of person would love Goa. Just not me.

A week previous we had left Ellora and headed back towards Mumbai, before jumping off at a junction in the middle of the night and catching the connecting train down into Goa.

Goa is split up into different parts. The area around Colva in the south is all family places. No drugs, no happy pizzas or topless girls and not much yoga. Then there is Manadrem, roughly in the middle, which is chock full of middle-class Indians. Then there is the wilder northern town of Arambol, which has been given over the travellers. Arambol is famous. Moon parties, drink, drugs and lots and lots of pizzas; happy and otherwise. We had started in the southern end as it was closer to the station and after buying a very expensive taxi ride had ended up in a family resort/guesthouse with beachfront  views. The idea was to chill out down here and then work our way back up to the north before heading inland towards Hampi and Mysore. It was good plan.

This guesthouse was fun, in a sensible sort of way, and the food was really nice. We chilled, read some books, had some fun and then made plans to find a good hotel for Valentine’s day.

Valentine’s day is big news in India, but not normally for the right reasons. The Indians have many customs that on the one hand might feel quite liberated and on the other are not. Public Displays of Affection (PDA’s), for example, are fine between men. That is between pals; what the British now call bro-mances. But, PDA’s are not fine between men and women. The highly sexed western valentine’s day, rubs Indians up the wrong way something chronic. Which is to say that it causes all sorts of tension and in India where there is tension, passion and public sexuality then there is violence. Goa is the worst flashpoint for this.

And it is all the westerners fault.

I am going to sound like a “granddad” now, so before I do let me say some things in my defence. I am a modern Londoner. I am confident sexually, comfortable with women and in every way a liberal minded person. This liberality has been the driving force that enabled me to find my religion of Daoism – that and my philosophy degree – and as such I am cool with people cutting loose. I can cut loose too and I like Mary J as much as the next Philosophy Graduate.

Right, so, as I said this is all the westerners fault.

There is a certain type of person looking for something in particular when they go travelling. Goa attracts these people like flies. Serious Ergophobics or, as Douglas Adams called them, “Fart Arounds”. They moved in around the late 70’s and never left. This influx has given rise to an entire enclosed culture that exists in the north of Goa. A culture that doesn’t exist anywhere else in India (that I saw). India is still a very closeted country when it comes to sex. White smooth-limbed western girls with their boobs out are a massive cocktease that the average gently-repressed Indian male finds hard to deal with. Goa is chock full of people that think two things. Firstly, that they can do what the hell they like and to hell with anyone else. Secondly, that India is the same as Thailand.

Believe me, it is not.

The only reason that the Indian government doesn’t roll out the riot police and throw the lot out, is that the tourists bring in a lot of money to a poor country. And that is the big thing for me. When I see westerners mistreating a culture and exploiting it through the power of their money I get angry in a little place inside. And if I feel it, the Indians definitely do. Those not too turned on to think straight.

While in Mumbai I read in a national newspaper about the “worry” regarding Valentine’s day in places such as Goa. That the licentiousness would cause flashes of violence.

It has done in the past.

It was reported that in 2007 a couple of European girls and their boyfriends had been beaten up outside a local bar where they had been drinking all day. The inference of the article was that the lady in question had been underdressed, was drunk and very abusive to the locals’ feelings. In India, you have to watch the public mood carefully. This event had shocked the west and been played down as local trouble, easily sorted, but I can almost guarantee that what happened was instigated by a locals reaction to their attire, their attitude, their rudeness, their drunkenness and probably all of the above.

We wanted none of that.

I never forgot that almost all the police in India have a sub-machine gun.

So we attempted to book a great hotel in the middle of Goa, used by the Indians themselves, so that we might avoid any unpleasantness. We did avoid it, but unfortunately we booked an absolute dive of a hotel that was extravagantly expensive and we hated every moment there that was not spent in our room. Take my advice, unless you want to spend your days eating bad food covered in flies with terrible service, high costs and a small beach then stay away from Mandrem.

After Valentine’s day we bit the bullet, caught a Taxi to the North, and got stuck in. The town of Arambol is basically three long roads leading down to the beach. Each road is absolutely lined with guest houses, bars and tourist shops all selling authentic crap to westerners and catering for the traveller crowd. Mile after mile of this leads finally to the beach and more bars and beach clubs before another spate of guesthouses. It was to one of these we made our way by trudging through the searing heat toward a large blue converted house inches away from another identical copy.

Our room was tiled like a bathroom and had whitewashed walls. Quite romantic in a down to earth kind of way. We unpacked our mosquito nets and made a bed tent to protect ourselves overnight.

We then went shopping and looking for beer and food.

As anyone who reads this blog must surely know, I am somewhat of a culture-vulture when on the road and, since Cesca does not partake of the magical herbs, this left me somewhat at a loss for something to do, until I managed to pull up some WIFI in a great cafe and get on with some writing, followed by browsing an excellent and well stocked second hand book store. Cesca was not in love with this idea. Indeed we only finally reached agreement when I put the laptop away and laid on the beach.

And melted.

On the flip side, the sea was great fun and we found a fantastic Italian restaurant just off the beach. It was near here that I saw my first Ahsram-Girl.

An ashram is a religious hermitage. Additionally, today the term ashram often denotes a locus of Indian cultural activity such as yoga, music study or religious instruction, the moral equivalent of a studio or dojo. WIKI

Ashram-Girl is a term I invented for the very white and thin western girls you occasionally see wandering around places in India. They are easy to spot as firstly, they are very thin after weeks/month/years spent in Ashrams. Secondly, they have that genuine beneficial smile of the believer in whatever it is the ashram teaches. Finally, they only wear Sari’s. I saw a number when I was in Goa and they all have something else about them too, they take your breath away. They are beautiful – In the way that only the content and happy can be. Radiant I guess you would call it. The first one I saw literally parted the crowd drawing bows, smiles, nudges and “wow” statements from all the male Indian shop keepers. She smiled like a painting of the Madonna and willowed her way to wherever she was going.

Whatever they are doing in those Ashrams, and some of them are all about sex to the point that you get a HIV test when you arrive, I don’t suppose they need to advertise. There are all sorts of legends regarding them, and all sorts of terrible tales as well. Abuse, rape, enforced drug taking, starvation and even death. There exists an entire trade in kidnapping these people back to their families and many Hollywood films on the subject too. I had known a true believer when I was in school (in her case a Christian) and while she wasn’t naturally beautiful, she was radiant in the same way that these girls were and I admit that it is a little scary. They look a little lost in another world. That they wear this one lightly. I could picture Cesca in such robes, lost to herself, her family, living a strange life in India, living some true spiritual life of yoga and I didn’t like the idea one bit, but I won’t deny that the part of her that would embrace that life is one of the many parts of her that I am attracted to.

Over the next few nights we partied, ate, drank, shopped and sat in the sun. I went through book after book from the shop until I came across one that would change my life.

The Tao of Pooh and Te of Piglet (Wisdom of Pooh) is not a real Daoism book. It is not exactly well thought of in terms of intellectual Daoist studies, nor is it in line for any sort of prize for accuracy, understanding or factualness. Nevertheless as a starting point for a long mental journey it was perfect. The book is about the Chinese Religious Philosophy of Daoism. Or more accurately, it is about the Westernised version of the Chinese Religious Philosophy of Daoism. The writers claim that Winnie the Pooh is Daoist. It is a such a strong idea that millions of people have read and instantly understood – or thought they have – Daoism without reading anything else about the religion. For most that is the first time they receive “knowledge outside the scriptures” and as such most come away with a self satisfied sense of having “got it”. They then get back on with their own lives and that’s that.

Daosim. Sorted.

For a few others this leads down a rabbit hole and after a very long journey, into wonderland. I will have much more to say on this subject in a later Philosophy post, but suffice to say, that while I have listened and read Alan Watts for many years by this point, only the talk of Zen had really interested me. His common reference to Daoism had not, at that point, stirred me. This book, about a fictional bear with very little brain and his identification with an ancient Chinese Philosophy was the first time I really considered it.

Eventually Cesca and I booked a train ticket from the nearby town of Panjim and caught a taxi out of Amabol. I was finally feeling relaxed, and little sun burned. The atmosphere of the place made it impossible not to chill out. We arrived in Panjim and booked into a guest house called Park Lane Lodge.

The owner was very eccentric, and the guesthouse was basically a room in his large house. It was the only place I stayed that had a curfew and the room was not particular well cooled, so we walked around and found an ATM.

Panjim has a very nice feel of colonial architecture and a Portuguese vibe to it.

It was a nice place to wander around before tucking into a meal of grilled fish at the towns top hotel.

Then we walked back to the guesthouse and I started to feel thirsty. Like I really needed a cup of tea. We got back and tucked into bed.

Then a hole opened up and I fell into hell.

The first thing that happened is that I need to use the facilities about half an hour after turning in. As I sat on the seat I suddenly felt wrong and threw up. Then both ends of me threw up for about 5 minutes. I had Indian food poisoning. Bad. Feeling that the worst was over I showered and managed to make it back to bed.

But, only for ten minutes.

My body was then wracked with pain in the stomach and I had a terrible thirst. I tried to sleep but every ten minutes I was forced to drag myself to the loo in agony. I drank and drank our reserves of water to no avail. I eventually had to wake Cesca to go and get some more water from the guest house owner, who thankfully was very helpful and kind. After a very long night I was feeling even worse. I couldn’t get up in the morning, I couldn’t really see anything, nor keep anything down. I was drifting in and out of a nightmare dream that I remember well, it was of a vampire/devil character biting me and smiling a toothed grin. The super strong sun was now on the room’s roof and heat started to radiate into it.

It is fair to say that I suffered that day. I had drunk 8 litres of water through the night and I was starting to worry.

Cesca went out and bought me all the cold drinks she could, electrolyte powder and cokes. These kept my sugars up and replaced all the minerals I was losing rapidly.

I then decided to pop an antibiotic. We had brought with us a small collection of Ciprofloxacin, which is a strong antibiotic used for serious gut infections.

Ciprofloxacin (INN) is a synthetic chemotherapeutic antibiotic of the fluoroquinolone drug class.It is a second generation fluoroquinolone antibacterial. It kills bacteria by interfering with the enzymes that cause DNA to rewind after being copied, which stops DNA and protein synthesis.  WIKI

I couldn’t read the instructions but I knew what was the dose as I had taken them in Cambodia. It was 500mg for gut infection and 700mg for tuberculosis!

Though that day I was delirious and didn’t know myself or Cesca. I can remember being locked in a short repeating dream that was coming and going like a wave and constantly repeating itself.

The next day I felt a little better, but I was as weak as a day old lamb. Cesca took me to the famous Panjim church and we tried to climb the steps, but I couldn’t.

I was so weak. After a hour climbing steps that should take less than a minute we went back to the guest house and I tried to eat something.

I couldn’t. My appetite was ruined.

I made a promise then and there. Next time someone gets that ill, we are booking into a top hotel and getting air-conditioning and room service. It sucks to be ill in an Indian Guest House. It is the worst possible location short of the middle of the Indian jungle. It wasn’t until the next day that I felt well enough to travel. We waved goodbye to the guesthouse owner and passed out of Panjim towards the train station.

We clambered aboard a train and I considered our time in Goa. Beach holidays and laying in the sun was not the reason I left home. However, having said that, I think Goa has almost everything that a beach holiday could offer. Goa has a massive massive range of accommodation and beach styles and you are sure to find something that suits you, just keep moving if it doesn’t. As for Panjim, well I had been purged by Panjim, it was a very nice looking place, but I can never forgive it for trying to kill me.

Now we were heading to the one of the most memorable parts of our trip to India, indeed the world. We were going to the countryside for a rest cure in a UNESCO village on the banks of the river Ganges.

The train stopped, we had arrived in Hampi.

Regards,

Basho

Note: This is the third part of a complete three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. This entry continues our adventures in Halong Bay and the wonder that is Tet in Hanoi.

The next day we were taken to a large island and dropped off. There we were given a bike each. These were frankly terrible bikes and I got the distinct impression that that staff did not expect us to ride them. They expected us to pay for a moped instead. An older couple from our group did so, but Cesca and I insisted on riding and so set off. The chain fell off immediately, so Cesca changed her bike and we set off. The wheels locked immediately, so Cesca changed her bike again and we set off. The seat fell off immediately, so Cesca took my bike, I got another one, and we set off.

The trip was through the mountains and I rode up to the guide,“What’s with these bikes?”

“They are the best we have.”

“Well, perhaps a little maintenance is in order.”

“Listen,” he said, “These people don’t have much.”

I thought this was a bit rich since it was his company’s responsibility to provision local services. Since he had so much of our money (about $2000 paid by the entire boat), one would think one of the locals could be trained as a bike mechanic. I suppose he was trying to make me feel guilty, but unfortunately for him I had already been to Laos. Those people had nothing. These people were relatively rich.

We rode through the mountain pass and down into the next valley. This was your absolute picture perfect Vietnamese countryside. Rice paddies, buffalo and villages set against the majestic mountains. Eagles soared overhead. The problems with the bikes were quickly forgotten.

We rode through the village and smiled a hello to all we met. This was much more like it. After about 5 miles or so, we stopped at a little cafe and bought some drinks, and then the guide led us to the walk.

It was clear to me that most of the time people do not actually fancy the walk, as it was straight up the mountain on a dirt track.

However, this time he had not only Cesca and I, but also a guy from the Italian mountains. He walked up the thing, back down, met us half way and back up again all without breaking breath. By the time we reached the peak (about an hour later), the three of us (plus guide) were the only ones who had bothered to make it.

At the top was an old base left over from the war, which afforded incredible views of the valley on either side and the water all around with the peaks of islands in the distance. It was one hell of a view.

We walked down again and stopped for refreshment. There I met another English couple who were about to go home. They too had got to wondering what their trip was all about and bemoaning the fact that they felt exactly the same as before they left. Don’t worry, I told them, it will come to you at home. Epiphanies are not always of the order of magnitude you expect. Not everyone can have the flashing burst of the infinite that struck Jesus or Buddha, some get lots of little ones, some get none. Perhaps they are something you must not look for.

Perhaps they are why we climb mountains and travel countries.

Personally, I get a little one every single time I cuddle up to Cesca in bed. That is good enough for me. Anyway, I had a big one about 12 years ago in Israel. Still, we jumped back on the bikes and rode out the way we came in.

Back on the boat, we were taken for one last jaunt, to Monkey Island. As we arrived, our group, which was by now getting on well, passed around some whisky and I read the Lonely Planet description about Monkey Island. I read it again aloud and everyone voted to give it a miss. Monkey Island is unsurprisingly full of monkeys that, also unsurprisingly, have developed a hatred for humans, not that I can say that I blame them. Subsequently they often attack them, and some have rabies.

Instead, the boat took us to a local floating village comprised of a couple of shacks, some barrels and a lot of nets. There we met with a clam farmer who uses an amazingly clever way of farming clams using buckets of mud suspended under water.

This was the most genuine experience of the entire venture and the one that we all enjoyed. The farmer was friendly and we joined him for a toast of the local firewater outside his shack.

The inside the shack sat his children and they obviously all live in this strange place. I think, it is quite possible the strangest lifestyle I have ever come across. At once so remote and harsh, and yet he gets tourists popping in all the time.

After half an hour of nodding and smiling, but no actual conversation, we got back on the boat and made for the final island.

Cat Ba Island is much larger than the rest and has a lot of building going on it. I suppose the idea is to turn it into a holiday resort, but now it is a bit of a concrete jungle amid a building site. We jumped into transports and were whisked to a hotel. This was purporting to be the Vietnamese idea of a high quality hotel, but I spied that it was really another type of tourist trap. That night we all met up for a set meal and some very expensive drinks. The food was ok, nothing special, but I really enjoyed the company as by this time we were all getting on in that peculiar British way of connecting when stuck with each other.

We slept comfortably that night. The next day, after a breakfast, we headed back towards the city. About half way, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. This also had something strange about it, as although it was nice and the food ok, I could not escape the feeling that only tourist busses come here. For people like Cesca and I, used to the genuine experience, such sugar coated tourism felt wrong and unnatural, but still the view from the window was great.

We bid the others goodbye when we arrived back in Hanoi and re-entered our original hotel. The staff was not pleased to see us at all. In fact, they told us that we could not stay. After I pointed out that we had already paid to stay, they got a little agitated. Eventually, they went over the road and organised for us to move hotels.

This turned out to be a great idea as the staff at this second hotel, the service, the room and the food, was the best I had in the whole of South East Asia. Friendly, quick, polite and happy these people made us feel right at home.

In the room, Cesca was still steaming about the other hotel. I personally think that the staff had made plans to close the place during the coming New Year, and we were totally buggering them up. Still, rudeness, the most unforgivable trait in a hotel concierge, was painful.

That night was the first day of Tet and effectively the Vietnamese New Year. Our hotel manager explained what that meant. Tet is the celebration of many things all rolled into one. The traditional Tet is the New Year, which means, like in the UK, that the year ticks over by one. However, unlike in the western world, it is also everyone’s official birthday. Therefore, someone 29 today would be 30 tomorrow. Someone born today would be one tomorrow. Crazy as that sounds, it gives rise to the third phenomenon: Tet is also Xmas. Of course, the Vietnamese are not a Christian nation, rather they are Buddhist, but Tet affords all the practical actions over a British Christmas.

Firstly, everyone takes as much of the week off as they can, they also go to visit their families for that time. They have a special social practice around this, where on the first day of Tet, only the direct family are invited, then on the second day wider family, the third day, neighbours, and so on. It is very easy for foreigner to cause offense in such an environment and if you are invited on a certain day, you must never appear beforehand. You are seriously warned about this.

Secondly, everyone buys each other presents.

Thirdly, they all surround themselves with a special tree. Rather than the Norwegian fir tree used in the west, they use a peach or orange tree. The entire city was decked out in beautiful fruit trees all around. It was rather magical.

Looking at it from his viewpoint it is not hard to comment that Vietnamese Tet has everything in common with the average UK Christmas; religion enters into it in only small and controlled amounts, while superstition is rife.

Also worth remembering is that Tet is the anniversary of the Tet offensive against the Yanks. The Vietnamese feel very strongly that the thousands slaughtered in the ensuing battles died as heroes, every single one. Amazing and even now the strength of feeling still moves me.

The final thing that happens is that the City empties in the run up to Tet and then everyone comes out for the fireworks party. Cesca and I spent the day exploring the area set aside for the party and planning our night’s activities. We had a lot of fun playing in the strangely silent roads, possibly for the only time in the year that they are empty. For a country such as Vietnam, where everyone – absolutely everyone – has a moped, this was a surreal experience.

As the night came down, the city stirred and we went in search of food. On the way we bumped into a few people we knew and shared a hearty “Chuc mung nam moi!” which is the cry of Tet. We eventually found a very special place to hold up awaiting the action coming later, this was a great bar above a street and one of the few place still open. Most were either eating in roadside food cafe’s, a sort of selection of crates used as chairs and planks of wood as tables – fear not as the food is amazing at these places, or they were ensconced in the higher end bars that charged Western high prices.

We managed to find something in between and had a very romantic time.

As the hour approached, we made our way down to the lake, which by now was stacked with people. Our worry about being unwelcome at such event vanished as the Vietnamese seemed to adopt all the foreigners that night, everyone was happy and smiling, all had brought their families out to enjoy the event, it was a wonderful feeling to be so welcomed at such an event and lots of smiling shouts of, “Chuck Mung Nam Moi!” reached our ears from all directions.

The crowd closed in and the numbers welled to thousands. Now everyone was standing. Cesca and I could see over the sea of heads that they were awaiting something. We worried for a moment that the trees lining the lakes edge would block the view of the festivities, but then the fireworks started and banished those fears.

I have seen fireworks all over the world, In Disneyland Florida, in the seaside coastal town of Brixham, in Australia, in Cambodia, in Brazil and even in Israel, but the fireworks I saw that night were as good if not better than any of them. The Vietnamese welcomed in the New Year, their new ages and honoured their dead with one hell of a bang.

After almost an hour, the last explosion lit up the sky and the crowd started to move in one direction. It seemed that some sort of temple ceremony was now happening and the idea was to visit the temples in a certain order. Cesca and I joined in and were carried along amongst the happy fellows.

Many hours later, we managed to arrive back to the hotel. There we found that the manager was having her family event right there in the lobby. With great joy she bid us to join, and greatly honoured, we did. I hope it brought her luck. We ate the traditional cakes and drank a little before thanking her and heading to a well-deserved bed.

A day later, we were leaving Hanoi and Vietnam in general and I took stock of what he had experienced. The people of Vietnam are a pragmatic and hard working bunch. Their economy is trying to copy the successes of the western while avoiding the problems, at least for now. Their cities are rich and impressive and they have a very positive attitude. They love visitors, but do not love tourists and in that I agree wholeheartedly with them. They cater to tourism out of the fundamental need to enrich themselves. Their cooking is divine, their beer is fine and their women are very good looking. We had seen the most sugar coated sights and yet had also managed to peek a little into the truth under these illusions. There was so much more to explore here that I felt that we could be back one day and see the rest.

I loved Vietnam. The country that, more than any other, I got “wrong” in my preconceptions. It has to be seen and felt with the heart itself as, like the brochures for Halong Bay, pictures alone cannot do it justice.

Regards,

Basho

Coming next: Coming in the next article is the mighty city of Bangkok, an incredible meet-up with some old friends and the horror of the Bridge On River Kwai, where Basho comes face to fangs with an eight inch spider.

The trip cost us $85, and we were lucky, others on our boat later told us what they had paid anything from $80 to $160 each for exactly the same experience.

The bus arrived at the dock’s edge (having visited the ubiquitous tourist-shucking-shop on the way) and we joined the scrum waiting for their boats. It was there that I started to come up with a theory:

What appears to happen, to my sceptical mind, is that the tour guide from the hotel is actually an agent from one of these travel cafes. He arrives with busload of suckers, all who have been sold “luxury” cruises and generally up-sold as much as possible, and then goes into the dock office and passes you off into that system for a commission.

Then he buggers off.

Now you are in another system, which has bought you all at the same price. This is why paying more makes no difference to the client. To the agent, paying more goes straight into his pocket. So now, you are randomly’ishly assigned a boat by block and shuffled aboard. The boat crew have paid the office a small amount for membership of the boat club and they then earn all their money, beyond a cut of the price, in the reselling of extras. This explains why a beer is £4 and they hate you bringing your own water.

However, that is just a theory and frankly like most we simply went along with it like sheep. After ten minutes our boat was ready. It didn’t look too bad; a little fake in that extra effort had been made to make it look oriental, with wood panels and dragonheads, etc. Really, it was just a big square-bottomed cruiser.

We said hello to our fellow passengers and settled into our room. This was in the second deck above the main kitchen, which itself was above the engine. The quality of the room was not too bad for two days at sea and I am sure that in the summer a lot of fun is to be had in sunbathing on the decks. This was not summer, but then we are British and are more than used to that. Cesca showed concern about the noise, but I figured that we would be stopped during the night.

Of course, the boat and the rooms had only passing resemblance to the pictures in the brochures.

The boat made its way out of the bay, jostling with the absolute armada of other semi-identical boats all setting off at the same time. We piled onto the top deck and considered the scrum; a veritable traffic jam of boats hitting each other and men shouting while wielding barge poles.

All the boats had people on the top deck (effectively the roof) by now and everyone was a little sheepishly staring at each other’s transport to see who’s was the best. I think that ours was average.

I was filming this amazing sight on my camcorder when it suddenly went pop and broke. Yep, I went off-line with my filming from this moment. This was the start of a big hassle and I did not get a working video camera up and running until half way through India, two months away!

Anyway, we chugged across to the famous limestone karsts peaks of Halong. They were large, strange, and popping out of the water to great heights. Over all there are more than 775 dotted around only 334km.

These amazing ancient structures have featured in many novels and films and it is not hard to see why, as they are unique. At least that is what they tell you on the trip. They remind me of fjords that have half collapsed into the sea. We passed by umpteen small structures as the sea mist swirled around them. The consensus on board was that they were well worth seeing

What I personally enjoyed more, strange old me, was the communities that live on the water, literally on the water, at the bases of the islands. Floating little villages and boats ferrying locals to a fro were very interesting. What would living in such a place be like? I wondered to myself. How would you get to work or to school?

The boat made its way further amongst the islands, roughly in a line with all the others. Then we came to the first stop; the Sung Sot Caves, or in English, “The Caves of Surprises!” I have been in caves all over the world, from Asia, to America to Australasia and of course, in the UK, but here was a cave system of magnificent proportions.

The Vietnamese know this and have designed a walk through the cave system that would be in Disney World if it were not so real. Well lit and stunning in proportion we went down to the caves in groups. The group leader tried valiantly to tell us about what we were seeing, albeit an official version, but I could not understand a word of what he was talking about so I started listening to the next group. Then I noticed my American chums from Sothern Vietnam.

After exchanging hellos and a quick update on our journey through the county, Cesca and I joined in with them and we all walked around together. The girl, and I honestly cannot remember her name – sorry, was about to finish her 6 month trip and head back home.

This was the first time that I had come across a now very familiar syndrome. When people start travelling they expect something to happen. They expect to change, get religion, or become one with nature. To find themselves changed inside, with the flashing of epiphany and momentous re-understandings of spacetime. It is not their fault; this is how travelling is sold to people; its image. Watching films like, The Beach or The Motorcycle Diaries, suggests that you can lose yourself and find yourself on your travels. Perhaps even become a famous revolutionary leader!

The truth is not so seductive.

This is 2009 and it is quite possible, even on a budget, to travel for months and never be out of your comfort zone, to never be reached inside, even by yourself. This is partially due to what is called, “The backpackers bubble”. It is really hard to honestly break out of this bubble. This leads to a quite strong feeling of frustration with having missed something. People tend to become uncharacteristically philosophical at these times, they tend to want to talk about, “what they have learned and what it all means.”

She talked and I listened.

Since then, I have come across this mind-set many times and I have talked many people through it, lent an ear and spoken a little on the subject. In fact, I have been thinking about it deeply and I am going to write a lot more than is appropriate here. Suffice to say, this girl was ever so slightly disappointed with her trip and needed to talk about it.

I am glad that she chose me for that brief moment for I was able to tell her this: “When you get home, when you find your old life envelope you like a warm bath, you will feel a tinge of guilt. Guilt that you did not become Che Guevara or a Zen Buddhist Master. You may also feel shame. Shame that there is not a book going to be written about your experiences. You want your life to have a meaning; you are told that it is special. Of course, life itself is special, but the meaning of an individual’s life is not found at the end of journeys. Meaning is found by living and breathing. Life is not a pilgrimage with a reward at the end. Life is a dance, and one that you only get to dance once. Cherish what you have done, not what you missed. Don’t look back, don’t look forwards. Concentrate on now. Live in the now and let the past rest and future be. Then your life will not lack for meaning.

Anyway, out of the caves, we returned to the boat and it took us to a floating village. This village had some very dodgy canoes, which we all jumped in and rowed ourselves around and through a cave system. This was pretty cool, but let down by the very poor equipment and the short time given to this part of the journey. I got the sense of boxes being ticked by the tour guides.

Then we were dropped off at an island to walk to the top of a karst mountain. It was great fun, if a little steep. At the top, we watched the nightfall and the lights come on all around.

That night we came down for dinner and sat with a nice English couple we had been chatting to and getting on well with.

Then the staff came up and directed us to move to sit with a different group.

“Why?” I asked

“You have different meal.”

“But we don’t mind, neither do our friends here,” cue agreement from our new comrades, “we want to sit here.”

“Move that table now,” he said pointing to the table next to us.

“Does it really matter?”

“Now!”

This conversation was then repeated with the next table and so on until the entire boat was being rearranged because no-one was seated “where they should be”  Everyone had to get up, move a few feet and back sit down. People were all a little miffed to say the least and some loud protests fell on deaf ears.

After all that, the only difference in the meal was the starter: crab.

The Vietnamese insistence in this regard, and their total bemusement regarding our reticence, was the first time I had come across a peculiar Asian phenomenon. It does not happen very often, but mores and social norms are naturally different over here. Not that they are in any way wrong, just different and when Western and Eastern feelings clash it often results in a complete lack of understanding. Our hosts simply stood bemused at everyone’s problem with moving, shocked (probably) at the (apparent) rudeness. For the Westerners, on the other hand, who had all been brought up that the “customer is always right”, rules in restaurants are really only guidelines; often broken as a way of making one feel special. To us the staff were being amazingly fussy and rude.

Who hasn’t been asked to follow a rule by a server of some type and then had them make an exception, “just for you sir”? We all have, it is common in the west. A Western server would not have insisted on a shuffle, they would have simply served where we were. It really was not important that we got the “right” meal, but it was important that we sat with who we wanted to.

None of this exists in Asia and I had similar things happen in countries all over this continent. Especially Japan, where the normally super-polite Japanese can turn into being, what can only be described as, “bloody insistent.” I suspect the core of it is the language barrier, as English has all sorts of nuances and “ways of putting things” when speaking to soften an order into a request. To those coming to English from another language, having been taught direct speaking, they can appear rude as all hell. Once we had all had about six beers in us, the staff started the hard-sell on things like pearls. They did not get very far, but Cesca did buy some postcards.

I suspect that the staff on these boats hate the rich westerners with their drinking, loud aggressiveness (to us: assertiveness) and incredible rudeness (what the westerners call ‘being direct’ or ‘plain spoken’). On the other hand, westerners probably just want an authentic experience without being asked to dip into their pockets every five seconds or the feeling that they are being fleeced. I think that trips like these made Cesca and I want to drop off the tourist routes as much as possible. To break out of that bubble and into a little freedom and honesty, where “tourists” were only normal “customers” and “servers” became “locals”. Such wants started to pull at us and our future plans for India started to take shape.

Anyway, after enough drinking, Cesca and I left the others to it and turned in. The boat was anchored in a peaceful lagoon along with many others and it slowly drifted around the anchor. Cesca and I opened the windows to watch the lights of the other boats playing against the deep darkness. The sky was clear and in the distance loomed the shapes of the giant karsts.

It was quite beautiful.

The next part is coming soon…

Regards,

Basho

Note: This is the first part of a final three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. The next part will be auto posted in 4 days and the third part 4 days after that.

This was the last stop on our tour of Vietnam and almost the last stop in the whole of South East Asia. It had been a long winding road up this thin and sunny country. A long winding road inside us too; as the further we travelled around SEA the more we felt changed by our time here. We wanted it to be an ending to remember. Luckily, the Vietnamese were only too willing to provide one hell of a party to see us off.

This was because in a few days it was Tet. To the Vietnamese this is Xmas, New Year’s Eve and everyone’s birthday all on the same day.

We arrived in Hanoi by, the now commonality, of a “Crush Bus” and were dumped unceremoniously on the outskirts of the city by the corner of a set of turnpikes. Traffic ran seemingly in all directions around us as we negotiated our bags off the bus.

Sitting on the sidewalk for a few moments, we almost fell prey to the taxi drivers who descended on the arriving tourists like fisherman who have just spotted a large shoal of fish. Cesca and I watched as the newer tourists were netted, gutted for cash, placed in small packed tins and driven off into the city. Clearly the bus company had dropped us here as a way of supporting outrageous taxi fees, probably for some sort of kick back. I looked around; the Hotel was probably only 30 meters away as the crow flies, but from here, well most would pay anything to get away from all this traffic. Cesca waved away all prowling taxi drivers and we sat on our bags and waited. After a while, we were the only tourists left and indeed the bus moved on as well. Only a few unlucky taxi drivers remained.

Good. We were ready.

We approached one and offered a price, a fair price.

He demanded a ridiculous price.

We all laughed and the game begun.

I remember thinking that seen from a distance through the eyes of, say, an observer from another planet, what was happening here would look like some sort of strange and ancient ritual dance. The Taxi driver and we moved around each other twisting and swaying, we were all pointing at maps and towards distant objects. We were haggling with big arm gestures and subtle head nods or shakes. At moments, we would turn away with a wave of a hand dismissively, and then strangely come back almost as if we had forgotten something whereupon it would all begin anew. The taxi driver would throw up his arms and cry out deploringly, and then hold his hands apart in an unmistakable gesture of reasonableness. There was lots of counting on fingers.

The observer from another planet might say to himself that, “Surely all this cannot just be for a taxi ride?” and when his fellows asked him later, he would probably theorise that we were conjuring up some sort of God.

Eventually all the moves were made and the strange waltz ended with my saying, “Look mate, do you see anyone else here except us? Don’t you want to get paid?”

The taxi driver sighed and considered the truth in this fact. “Ok,” he said. He conspired to look wounded.

It was at that point that I realised that we had in fact lost this exchange; as although a $30 taxi had cost us $10, it was actually only worth $5. No matter, he had been a worthy opponent and I respected that.

The bus company we used to move around Vietnam is called Sinh Cafe. As mentioned in previous posts all Vietnamese cafes are in fact tourist offices. The Sinh Cafe office was the location we now departed in the taxi. However, I was surprised to spy another office with the Sinh Cafe logo on the drive in, “Look baby,” I said pointing out the window, “another Sinh Cafe, it’s probably a little closer for when we leave.”

“And there,” she said point in a different direction.

“Oh and another there,” I said. “Hang on…”

“They’re all over the place!”

Indeed, on the journey into the heart of the city, we came across no less than 18 Sinh Cafe’s, all with the correct logo, all with the correct adverts, but all fake.

Some were laughably so; containing nothing more than a single bedraggled looking person sitting on what looked to me like an upside-down bucket. Others had taken the deception so seriously that they looked more professional than the real thing; investing in moulded plastic counter tops and sporting large hi resolution posters. We counted them off as the Taxi pulled into the narrow streets that make up the old quarter. The traffic, mostly an endless train of mopeds, was everywhere. A few more turns and the streets narrowed again. Now the shops took on a strange and more “touristic” look. I started to see western style bars, street food vendors, and endless travel agents amongst which were dotted infinite fake Sinh Cafes. We were in the tourist quarter now; a place as much removed from the city’s true life as it was possible to get.

The Taxi dropped us off, spat out our bags and was instantly gone into the throng of bikes. We walked down a narrow alley to our hotel. There is no shortage of hotels in Hanoi, of course, but trying to find one with good reviews, had space and was open over this period was difficult. The staff was unusually brusque considering I had cash in my hand, and I came to the initial conclusion that we had annoyed their sensibilities merely by being born. At the time, this manner seemed strange, but now I can see that this was a New-year for them and they would rather be with their families.

In fact, this attitude was to be found almost everywhere on that day. They say not to travel at Tet, and yet we had no choice, I remember wondering how well this was going to work out.

We went out for a walk around the city and tried to get out of the tourist bubble. As these things go, there is lots to see here. There is the park area around the lake, which functions as a sort of meeting point and place of celebration,

…the street market with its fresh fish and a million smells,

…and the church area with high-end coffee shops and moneyed wealth. Then there is the amazing way that the city planners have laid out the shops; all are collected together according to type. So, one street has only spice shops full of strange things in jars that smell incredible,

…while another has fake money sellers who sell stacks of fake $ notes used in funerals.

One street we walked down was full of nothing but people noisily hammering out tin buckets.

Cesca and I really enjoyed our walk that day.  When we arrived back we looked into a 3 day trip to the legendary Halong Bay, and be back for Tet proper.

Something you have to come to terms with when picking a trip to Halong Bay is that you cannot make a correct choice. That is one that doesn’t, somehow, try very hard to rip you off. It is a kind of like a shell game, in that the entire edifices of the travel agents, brochures, glossy posters, special money-off deals and so-called impartial advice is setup to convince you that what you are sold is somehow relevant or bares any relation whatsoever to what waits for you when you get there.

It does not.

So, in order to assist readers considering the options, remember that there are really only three price brackets:

Under $50: For which you are probably kidnapped and buried alive at midnight. At least that is the impression that the woman in the hotel conspired to give us when we enquired about the “cheaper deal.” It is impossible to buy this deal or more likely it probably does not exists at all.

$80 – $140: If you do not look rich, then you are pushed firmly towards this bracket. While the price range here appears large, do not let that fool you into thinking that one boat is actually going to be better than another. Whatever your hotel or travel agent tells you, WHATEVER, the boats are effectively randomised. This is the range in which to bargain hard.

$140+: You can pay up to $1000 without trying in this bracket. The boats promise to be truly splendid for this much, but remember that they are all going to the same places and taking the same trips off the boat. However, I am sure that if you pay enough, you will get an amazing experience.

Cesca and I were offered two options in the second bracket and she pointed to the one she liked. The women pointed to the other.

“What about this one?” the very short, female hotel manager asked.

“No that one please,” said Cesca smiling and pointing again at the brochure on the left.

“Ok then,” she replied with a nod to the one on the right, “I book you this one.”

“No, I said that one,” Cesca said pointing, “I like the look of this boat more than that one.”

The women picked up the brochure and considered the picture of the boat carefully. “You go better on other one.”

“Why?”

“Boat better.”

Cesca was getting annoyed but her voice remained very calm (only I – as her husband – could pick up the anger), “I… want… that… one.”

The women looked at Cesca as though questioning the innocence of someone choosing a tour based on the picture on the brochure, which clearly, she knew, was nothing to do with anything. Cesca was looking very determined and I could see the lady weighing up her options. She broke first, and waved a hand smiling, “Ok ok ok. This one.”

“Thank you.”

Of course, the next day, we got on the bus and found that we were on the other boat tour…

The next part is coming in four days…

Regards,

Basho