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Mumbai to Kathmandu

Our Iran Air Airbus landed in Mumbai (used to be called Bombay) airport mid-morning. After the cold, wind and rain of Tehran, the hot tropical sunshine of Mumbai was wonderful. But before we could get outside into the tropical sunshine, we had to get through customs and immigration. If there's one thing that the Indians know it's bureaucracy. After a false start (hadn't filled out an entry form, because I hadn't been given one on the flight - they ran out before getting to me) I managed to get through quickly, which was more than some of the others in the group did (they had bought carpets in Esfahan and thought they had to take them through Indian customs - they didn't).

After much to-ing and fro-ing we were all passed the bureaucrats and out of the airport. A taxi (non-airconditioned ) ride took us into the city. It was such a major difference from the country we'd just left. I sat, happily sweating in the taxi, watching India go by. It was just so colourful, so lively, so noisy, such great fun. Even though I had quite liked Iran, compared with India it was so dingy and drab. I realised, in that taxi ride, that I was going to like India.

Our hotel in Mumbai was a short walk from Taj Mahal palace hotel and the Gateway to India, both left over from the heyday of the British Raj. Once ensconced in our rooms (Kerryn, Richard and I shared one airconditioned room, while Ray, Phil and, to her disgust, Helena shared another. Mia, got an un-airconditioned room to herself) we got one of the hotel staff to get some beer, our first in 16 days. We toasted Ash (still in Iran arranging for the truck to be shipped across to India) and Mia for getting us safely to India.

Our time in Mumbai was our own. We went to the local sites, went shopping, eating, drinking, and, I'm afraid to say, watching TV.

Gin and Tonic

As a special treat one night, we went to the Taj Mahal palace hotel to have a drink. It being India, it had to be a gin (Bombay Sapphire gin of course) and tonic . The barman serving our drinks, asked how many ice cubes we'd like, and cubes they were. Someone must have taken a set square to their sides to make them perfectly flat and square. The drinks were great, and the surroundings splendid ( I must admit to feeling a bit out of place amidst all of the hotel's 5 star grandeur). Of course all this came at a price: US $10 a drink (compared to the US ¢80 price for a beer in one of the local bars).

After our expensive drinks we left the hotel, bumping into an Indian wedding. The street outside was full of wedding guests. Loud music played as the groom arrived, resplendent in gold embroidered silk, riding (rather unsteadily) a white horse.

As well as seeing all the tourist sites that Mumbai had to offer, we all went, one night, to the Voodoo nightclub, which was just down the road from the hotel. This was great fun, apart from being a pickup joint for rich middle aged Indian men picking up pretty Indian boys. But we didn't let this spoil our dancing and drinking (its amazing the thirst for beer you can get after 16 days of abstinence).

New truck

The length of our stay in Mumbai was determined by the time it took Dragoman to get a replacement truck out to us - ours being stuck in Iran. The truck in question was being brought in from Kathmandu, driven, non-stop, by our replacement co-driver, Bret. He turned up after we'd been in Mumbai for three days, in an ex-Encounters Overland Ford truck with attached trailer (known, not too affectionately, as a pig). This truck was no way near as nice as the standard Dragoman truck. It had a canvas covered passenger area, a separate driver's cab with no direct communication with the crew and most of the storage was in the lockable trailer. The trailer was to cause us, and especially our drivers, a lot of trouble. It made backing up very difficult, this meant that if we ended up in a culdesac there was nothing for it but to unhitch it, manhandle the trailer out of the way, while the truck was being reversed.

Before we could leave Mumbai Bret desperately needed sleep. He'd been on the road for 4 days, and had been pushing himself hard to get from Kathmandu to Mumbai as quickly as possible. So, after a good night's sleep, we were introduced to him. In his early 30s, Bret, or Sarge as he likes to be known, hailed from Australia. He wore baggy Indian/Pakistani style trousers, a tee-shirt and teva sandals. Introductions complete, we loaded our gear into the trailer and headed out of Mumbai.

* Our route took us north towards Delhi and the rest of our trip. Our first food shopping stop was in a small village. Late in the afternoon we turned off the main road and stopped at the first place that had any food to sell. The village market had a few vegetables, eggs, a butchers, and some scrawny fish (we were told, by Mia, to make sure that there was some protein in our meals, so the cook group bought the fish). While I was sat in the truck waiting for our cook group to get back with the food, I watched the local butcher at work. His shop was next to where we had parked up, so I got a close up view. The front of the shop was open, and hanging from hooks were fly covered bits of goat. As I watched, he chopped a goat's head into a coarse sort of mince, complete with skin, bones, and teeth. After that spectacle I didn't eat any meat in India.

That night we camped in the garden of a disused hotel, that we came across at the top of a hill, right next to the main road. One good thing about the new truck was that it came with camp beds (much nicer than foam mats) and mosquito nets (even though I had my own, these were bigger). Bret showed us how to set these up and how to use spare camp bed side rods to make a tripod to hold up the mossie net. I would have enjoyed a good night's sleep, but for the constant noise from the Indian trucks labouring up the grade on the nearby road. They didn't stop all night.

There was an immediate change in the group dynamic with Bret on board. Gone was the back biting and anachronistic feminism (most of the subjects were simply rehashes of stuff that I thought had been settled, in the West, back in the 80s). It was if a large weight had been lifted from my shoulders. No longer was I wishing for the end of the trip, now I enjoyed every day.

We made our way north on some of the worse roads that I've ever come across, even worse than roads in West Africa. The explanation that I heard, was that the Indian state (Gujarat) that we were travelling through, was one of the poorest in India and so they had no money for road repairs.

The road surface consisted of a central tarmaced bit, about 3 meters wide, bounded on either side by un-tarmaced dirt. The technique used by our drivers (Mia and Bret took turns) was to stay on the central part of the road (the tarmaced bit) for as long as possible and only move off if forced by on-coming traffic. A sort of game of 'truck chicken'. But, as the Indian system of right-of-way consisted of 'the bigger you are, the more rights you have', we only gave way to other trucks and buses. Smaller vehicles got out of our way. The other tool used by our drivers to maintain speed was the horn. The truck was fitted with a very loud horn, which was used to claim right of way, to force our claim to right of way, to scare off mangy dogs, and get people and cows (more about these later) out of the way. In some places it was sounding non-stop.

Water pistol

Unlike major roads in most Western countries, these Indian roads did not bypass towns and cities, they went straight through the middle of them. This meant that often we would have to crawl through streets packed with people, carts, and cows. This would be made worse when the locals realised that we were Westerners - free entertainment to them - when we would be mobbed. At these places out would come the supersoaker water pistol. Nobody was exempt a squirt from this toy. It was also the only safe way of getting the scrawny cows out of the way.

Sacred Cows

The cows in India are not sacred, you simply are not allowed to kill or harm them. This Hindu tradition came about many millennia ago because of famine. In famines the people would be forced, by hunger, to kill and eat their cattle. Once the cause of the famine was over (war, pestilence, drought...) this would mean that they had no livestock to re-start their herds. This made the effects of the famine worse. So the rulers made it illegal to kill cows. This law was, of course, ignored at the next famine, when starving people killed the cattle to feed their families. So the rulers made it illegal and a sin to kill or harm cattle. Making it a sin worked, and cattle are not killed or harmed to this day. Of course nothing was said about actually looking after the cows, so most cattle we saw in India were badly kept scrawny beasts, mooching around looking for something to eat (often just plastic bags).

Mandu

Rather than just blat straight north to Amritsar, and back to the planned route, we took in some sights along the way.

After a truly dreadful road (across the Deccan flats), where we were made aware of how much worse the suspension in a Ford truck was compared to a Mercedes truck that Dragoman normally use, we arrived at Mandu. This had been a pleasure palace for the poet-prince Baz Bahadur for his beautiful consort, Rani Roopmati, but was now more like a set for the "Jungle Book", or "Passage to India". It was my first introduction to the beauties of Indian carving. The palaces had been built next to small lakes, and the entire site was in the hills, so it kept cool in the summer.

It was at Mandu that I knew I'd be coming back to India some day.

Lagaan

We stayed, that night, in an hotel next to the site. As well as cold beer, Indian head massage was laid on. It was while chatting with the hotel's owner that I became aware of a recent Indian film called "Laagan", which is the Hindi word for taxes. The film is set in the days of the Raj and surrounds a game of cricket, played to decide the level of taxes (Laagan) to be paid. The two sides in the match are the dastardly British and a local villagers, who have never played cricket before in their lives. If the villagers win, they pay no taxes to the British that year, if the British (English) win, then it's triple Laagan! The bounder of an Englishman who hatched this dastardly plan was played by a tall white actor with large handlebar moustache. This was how I looked at the time, and explained why I was being greeted with shouts of "No Laagan"! I won't tell you how the film ends, I suspect that you can guess, but there are some wonderful scenes, songs, and moustache twirling caddishness. Well worth the watch, on DVD or the TV.

Having done a fair bit of travelling in trucks, I have to say that the orange ex-Encounter Overland Ford truck that we had to use for the last three or so weeks of this trip, was by far the most uncomfortable truck I have ever been in. The suspension didn't seem to have any shock absorbers, which made for a very bumpy bouncy ride. The wheel base was such that we were tossed around in the back - at one point I was jarred so badly that I took a large chip out of one of my front teeth, at another I was tossed about so badly that I hurt both shoulders (something that took months to heal). The roads were so dusty that we ended up with the canvas sides rolled down most of the time trying to keep it out, which meant that we missed a lot of the sites along the way. I still ended up with a hacking cough thanks to the amount of dust I breathed in.

Before Bret had taken possession of it in Nepal, where it had been languishing after the collapse of the Encounter Overland company, someone had dropped the truck off the side of the road, bending part of the steering. This meant that the front tyres weren't properly aligned and were being eaten away at an alarming rate, they would not make it to Kathmandu.

There, I think that's me done whinging about the truck, called "Dusty" by Mia, and "a hunk of junk" by me. Give me a good Mercedes Dragoman truck any day.

Jodpur

After Mandu we headed for Jodpur, the blue city. So called because it gets so hot and bright in the summer (we, thankfully were there in the cool autumn) that the occupants paint the outside of their houses blue, rather than white, so as not to be so blinding.

The palace/fort at Jodpur was built atop of the only high spot for miles around, thankfully they had installed an elevator so we didn't have to climb to many stairs. Arriving late at the palace, we had to rush around to see the beautifully kept rooms. I could imagine Maharajas being entertained by their hareems in these plush surroundings. Outside, on the walls, huge vultures landed on outcrops and ornamentation, to roost for the night.

That night we stayed in a local hotel, run by a charming, if somewhat camp, 18 year old man. The hotel had a central courtyard with rooms surrounding it. Our host managed to arrange an evening meal for us, by getting most of his extended family to help. And in the morning he took us for a sightseeing tour of his town, including a trip to a holy man siting atop of a 100 foot high pillar of rock (I chickened out of the precipitous climb to the top, as my vertigo was back with a vengeance). And before we left, he gave us each a flower garland.

We continued north via the city of Udaipur. This has white palaces in the middle of lakes and more on top of the surrounding hills. They were used in the James Bond film "Octopussie".

Mia and Brett chose to stop here, even though we would be coming back this way after Delhi, because they had contacts here who could help with getting on top of the problems with the truck.

We stayed in the grounds of a hotel (not in the rooms, just in the grounds) with its own bar, restaurant and swimming pool. After doing some e-mailing in a local Internet cafe I decided not to bother going into town to look at the sites, but just to laze around the pool. I would, after all, be back in a week or so, and I'd sight see then.

The weather here was no hotter than a pleasant summer day in England. The pool was open to the air and unheated. I managed one breath taking (literally) width before getting out and reading by the pool for the rest of the afternoon. Helena decided to brave 10 lengths of the freezing torture before getting out. While sitting there, a couple of ex-pat women from the town came to the pool to swim, drink and relax. One called out to her friend, using her first name - Helena - pronouncing it with a short second "e". "Our" Helena came within a split second of correcting her on mispronouncing the name.

Amritsar

As we moved on from Udaipur the roads started getting better, and so our speeds increased. Next stop was Amritsar and the Golden Temple. We arrived late at our hotel, a wonderful old complex of buildings that had once been part of the Embassy block. It had its own grounds, with a chest freezer full of beer in an outhouse and a warren of rooms. Such a wonderfully peaceful place to stay.

The next morning we made our way to the Sikh Golden Temple by peddle powered rickshaws. I felt a little guilty about having two of us large Westerners being pedalled along by this slightly built local (we had to get out and walk to go over the bridge over the railway tracks), but we did pay him far more than the locals, so he was happy.

The Golden Temple is a beautiful place, that is surrounded by some really slummy buildings. It is to the Sikh religion what the Vatican is to the Roman Catholics. Before going in, I left my rafters (sandals) at the door and walked barefoot. Inside everything is beautiful white marble and in the middle of the lake is the temple itself. I joined the pilgrims (if that's the right word) walking around the lake and then went out into the temple itself, where religious music was being played as we slowly shuffled past.

The surrounding buildings housed an art gallery and history of the Sikh religion. Some of the paintings showing what became of some of the early adherents were truly gory (one martyr was executed by being sawn in half, lengthways. He was shown tied standing upright between two sets of wooden planks, while the executioners set about him with a two handed saw from the top of his head downwards. The painting showed the scene as the saw was starting down through his chest area, both sides of his head and neck flopping down sideways.).

Indira Gandhi, the ex-Indian president had in recent years sent tanks into the Golden Temple, in an attempt to flush out some Sikh separatist rebels. It wasn't that surprising when, a little while later, a Sikh bodyguard killed her.

In a shop next to the temple I bought myself a Sikh arm bangle. These are simple steel circles that are worn on the right wrist by all Sikh men. Overlanders put them to a different use, they're good bottle openers.

Leaving the temple complex I got lost in the warren of surrounding streets, and tried asking for directions to the site of the British massacre in 1919 at the Jallianwallah Bagh. Even though I had a map of the area, none of the locals I asked knew how to read one. By pure luck I stumbled on the site, which is now a park.

Massacre

On Sunday 13th April 1919 a protest meeting attended by some 10,000 unarmed civilians was put down by the local British military commander, Gen. R.E.H. Dyer. He had his men open fire on the protesters, who were unable to flee the scene because of surrounding walls and buildings. After firing 1650 rounds (both rifle and machine-gun) into the terrified crowd, Dyer left 400 dead and 1200 wounded. Some had tried to escape the onslaught by jumping down a large well, where many drown. He was removed from his command as a result of this actions, but he returned to England as a hero to many British admirers, who presented him with a collected purse of thousands of pounds and a jewelled sword inscribed "Saviour of the Punjab". Some year later in England, Dyer was shot dead by what the papers at the time called a Hindu extremist. They made no mention of the shameful events of 13Th April 1919.

I got back to our hotel by another pedal rickshaw. The driver of this one had little if any English, so he took me to the railway station (I can only assume that he had taken westerners to the station in the past and assumed that that was what we all wanted). Fortunately there were people at the station who understood English and told my driver where I wanted to go. He didn't seem to be too pleased, lugging this big westerner so far out of town and his normal trade. But was was happy with the tip that I gave him, which I suspect was equal to three or four of his normal fares.

Silly Walks

A few miles from Amritsar is the border with Pakistan (31 36 16.40 N, 73 34 24.08 E). This was where we should have arrived into India, but thanks to the volatile nature of the Pakistani society at the time (after 911 and the bombing of Afghanistan), we had had to overfly their country. To make things worse, the uneasy peace between the Indians and Pakistanis had broken down (over an area called Kashmir), and we had seen troops and tanks being moved towards the border. This, however, didn't stop the pantomime performance that was the closing of the border gates each evening.

Hundreds of people turn up every evening to watch their soldiers shut the border gates. Grandstands have been made on both sides of the border to accommodate them. All of the soldiers who preform the daily ceremony were picked for their height, not one was below 6 feet tall. All of the Indian soldiers sported huge moustaches, so I felt right at home. As the ceremony progressed, the crowds on either side of the border chanted and cheered on their side. Chants of Pakistan were returned with chants of Hindustan (India). There seemed to be a competition going on between the troops as to who could raise their foot highest before stamping it down while doing drill steps. This meant that standard military drill movements (British drill movements, as both sides had been taught by the British) were turned into a Pythonesque silly walk. And from a personal standpoint, I felt that neither side did their drill particularly well, and that the RAF (I used to be a member) could out march them (remember, the RAF is, by its own admission, the worst at drill of all of the British armed forces).

From Amritsar we turned eastwards, and along excellent roads, made our way to New Delhi and the end of this leg of the Dragoman trip.

New Delhi

Our hotel in the centre of New Delhi was a 1960s concrete tower block, that, from the outside, looked quite good. From my (I should say our, as I was sharing with Phil) seventh floor bedroom window I watched huge (two metre wingspan) vultures soar majestically past. Before "losing" the one member of the group - Phil, who had already done the next leg of the trip and was flying back to his home in Ireland with dreams of motorbike touring - we had some city sites to see. For me the best was a night out in a New Delhi restaurant where the waiters (Indians) dressed up as cowboys! The food was good, the booze plentiful, the service good, and my mood high.

I made up for the lack of any real shops and restaurants in India at large while I was in New Delhi, by stocking up on books and magazines, and frequenting TGI Fridays (yes, I know, when you travel you're meant to experience what the local culture is like, but every now and then I've just got to do Western things, eat Western food and have a burger!)

With Phil safely off to the airport, we got a fresh load of people for the next part of the trip. These were a German brother and sister team (Christoph and Sabine) in their early twenties, an American married couple (Niko and Cassandra) in their mid thirties, and an Austrian (Wolf) in his mid to late thirties. As seems to be the norm with Dragoman, the joining hotel for these new people wasn't the same as the one we were staying in, in fact it was no longer even open. And Niko and Cassandra had been staying in our hotel, had checked out to go to the Dragoman arrivals hotel, only to find that they had to move back!

Once Mia and Bret completed all of the end of trip and beginning of trip admin, we headed out of New Delhi, past maniacal (even for India) traffic, blowing their horns at the slightest provocation. Our first destination was the city of Jaipur. I was very sleepy, as I had shared my hotel room with Wolf, a nice guy who snored like a chainsaw. This meant that I had a very short fuse that day, as Kerryn found out to her cost, when she began teasing me.

Jaipur

Our guide around Jaipur was a gentle old soul, who had put aside for his retirement, only to see the fund collapse, which had forced him back into work. He arranged for some lunch for us, which was served on plates made from leaves pressed into the shape of plates and bowls, before taking us around the sites.

The palace at Jaipur was built over a huge site, with fortifications spreading out over surrounding hills. The architecture and carvings were truly beautiful. We also visited the amazing astronomical observatory, which had no telescopes, only huge curved sun dials.

We stayed that night at our guides house/compound some way out of town. His wife and family did the cooking, which was a pleasant change. The evening meal was washed down with cold beer from the trucks cold boxes (unlike normal Dragoman trucks, the orange hunk of junk did not have a refrigerator on board, only two eskis (insulated cold boxes) which had to be periodically replenished with ice).

Leaving there the next morning we had some back roads driving to get to Pushkar, our next stop. Along the way we came across trucks on their sides on the side of the road. What I had thought was simply bad driving, was in fact mechanical breakdowns. The truck drivers would pay for a chitty (official permit) that officially allow him to overload the truck! This was okay until something in the suspension or back axle broke, then the sheer weight of the trucks cargo would tip it over on its side. The sight of a truck over on its side was quite common in India.

Pushkar is famous for its spiritual side, and is a magnet for hippies (new age as well as original) from all over the world. One of the delicacies available to the visitor was the bhang lahssie (yogurt drink flavoured with bhang - marijuana). None of our group tried one. Well, not that I noticed, but I spent my day lounging next to the hotel's swimming pool.

Next stop was back to Udaipur. Towards the end of the drive there, my guts started to tell me that I needed a toilet, needed it bad and needed it now. From the fidgeting and look on his face, Christoph was in the same predicament. No sooner had the truck stopped in the, by now familiar to me, hotel car park, than I and Christoph shuffled our way to the toilets. I say "shuffle" because if we'd run we would no longer have needed the toilet.

The next two days were a real "opening the sluices at both ends". I was either laying in my camp bed or on the toilet. The bug that I was slowly starving out of my body went around the rest of the group, and even Helena (who reckoned she had such a robust system that she could drink from the drains with no harmfully effects) was brought low. So, in two visits to Udaipur, I have never seen the lakes and palaces.

Our departure from Udaipur was delayed by a day, both to allow us to recover enough to travel and for the truck to be fixed and new front tyres fitted.

Bed Bugs

As we moved on the weather stayed fine but cool, with mists at night. We stayed, normally , in cheap hotels or in the grounds of hotels, but the truck started to play up and this left us stranded at an Indian road house one evening. We were going to bed down in the rooms provided, until we saw the state of the beds, which came with bed bugs included. I must admit that this is the only time that I have ever seen beds with their own insect livestock. So most of us stayed outdoors in the garden, in the mist (Niko and Cassie took their camp beds into the room with them and stayed in the comparative comfort of the road-house).

That day was mine and Sabine's cook group, which meant that we had to buy the food. Food in Indian markets was not easy to come by (although magically Niko never had any problems), although staples such as onions and tomatoes were plentiful, protein was hard to find. I, with Sabine in tow, had searched through, what turned out to be an "L" shaped market, for chickens, but to no avail. Exiting the market by what I thought had been our entrance point, there was no truck. "Where's the truck," I asked nobody in particular. The look of horror that passed over Sabine's face made the trip for me. She had felt safe with me, the experienced traveller, and I had seemingly failed. I know it sounds cruel (me finding her plight funny), but at no point was I worried that either the truck had left without us or that we were totally lost. Back into the market and out through the correct exit (entrance) and lo and behold there was the truck.

Yet again, I made my usual error of not buying sufficient food for the truck, so yet again that night's repast was something of a disaster (partially rescued by Niko's fine cooking ability).

Tigers

Bill Clinton had, a year or two before my visit, seen tigers in the Ranthambore national park. Well, all I can say is that he was either very lucky or that they were really men dressed in tiger suits. Our drive around part of the park started before first light. Niko and Cassie were dressed for the cold, while the rest of us weren't. Quite how they knew it was going to be really cold I don't know, perhaps they did something sneaky, like ask! The open topped truck we were driven around in was way more comfortable to be in than our "hunk of junk". And although we didn't see any tigers, we did see their tracks where they had walk across the dirt roads. We did see loads of birds and deers though, so the trip was enjoyable, if somewhat cold.

The hotel we stayed in at Ranthambore had an old fuzzy colour TV, on which we saw the attack on the Indian parliament buildings. The tension between India and Pakistan ratcheted up another few notches.

After hunting (for a sight of) tigers out in India, we headed for the Bharatpur bird sanctuary, where, to be honest, I didn't bother going in. Instead I waited with the truck, ate flash fried snacks from a roadside vendor (no ill effects) and learnt the euchre card game (which I then totally failed to master, much to Mia's disgust).

Fatehpur Sikri

Fatehpur Sikri was a beautiful mogul city. In its palaces were raised dais where the ruler would sit and receive his supplicants by means of raised walk ways. All beautifully carved and preserved.

In the car-park outside of the palace complex, Bret had the truck washed by a a group of boys. Their leader was known to Bret, and had asked (on a previous visit) for a real cricket bat the next time Bret passed through the area. He was delighted to be presented with a bat and proper ball that Bret had bought, back in New Delhi.

The truck's engine was causing some concern. It was okay to run for an hour or two,but would then start overheating and spray steam over the back of the cab. This meant that we had to frequently stop and top up the radiator.

Agra - Taj Mahal

At Agra we did the obvious two main tourist sites. First the Red fort, from where the builder of the Taj Mahal watched its building from across the river. Unfortunately this can no longer be done, as there is so much pollution in the air (thanks to the exhaust fumes from the ubiquitous two stroke tuk-tuks). The tour of this palace/fort was well worth it, we even saw the spot where the British just failed to kill the ruling prince, who had been sitting outside on a large marble throne. The canon ball had ricocheted off the throne and careened across the court. Not a bad shot when you consider the distances involved :-) .

Our tuk-tuk drivers had dropped us off at the fort and gone to their religious observances, so we had to wait for their return, which was a pity as entrance to the Taj Mahal was free for the first hour of that particular day.

We were dropped of in the middle of a slum area (best description I can come up with) just around the corner from the Taj Mahal entrance (our drivers were not allowed any closer). After paying our, exorbitant, entrance fee we went from the usual chaos of the Indian street to the calm and serenity of the Taj Mahal's grounds.

Yes, I took the standard photo of the main mausoleum, well, you've got to haven't you. And sat on the Princess Dianne seat (hey, I'm allowed to be a tourist every now and then!). What I hadn't realised before was how many other buildings were also on the site. These buildings were just as beautiful as the main , white, mausoleum.

I took off my shoes, as requested, before climbing the steps up to the main building. The white marble was warm under my bare feet, and I did a circuit of the central tomb. To be honest, the inside of the tomb was, by contrast, somewhat of a let down, but to outside was magnificent.

Afterwards, we went and had a pizza in Pizza hut. Well, I wouldn't want you to think that all I ever did was go to cultural sites :-).

Free Entertainment

Orchha was the sort of place I love. We drove through town and out the other side, behind some abandoned temples. Here we setup camp before walking back into town. We had arrived on the day of a Hindu festival, in which certain stories are acted out under bright electric lights and over wonderfully distorted loud speakers. I must admit to having to leave the festival early, as I began to feel somewhat claustrophobic amongst the jostling crowds.

We were never alone at our campsite. Local children came to "help". They asked for our rubbish, which we gave them, thinking that they were taking it to a local dump. Wrong, they had uses for just about everything that we threw away. They also wanted our used bottles (which they could get money for), so, to get rid of them we told them to come back in the morning and they'd get the bottles then. This was a mistake, as they arrived back at 5 am!

Even though we were "hidden away" behind the abandoned temples (roosting spot for the local vultures) this did not stop us from being stared at. The Hindus, who had come to Orchha for the festival, used the field we were in as a short cut, and so there was a constant stream of ogling people. And unlike Westerners, these Hindus could not be embarrassed away by us staring back at them (a technique we had successfully used in Italy). To them we were free entertainment, as was the case all over India.

From here it was a drive to the erotic temples of Khajuraho. The carvings (showing much of the Karma Sutra) on and in the temples were beautiful (yes, I know I keep saying that, but it's true). We were shown around by our guide, who pointed out some of the more exotic carvings. Later we were left alone to explore this well manicured site on our own. Then, to finish off this busy day, we went Christmas shopping (we had all drawn a name from a hat to see who we should buy for).

Varanasi

Phil, who was no longer on the trip (having flown home from New Delhi), had already been to our next stop, the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, and had called it "very nasty" and with good cause. To my western eyes the place was very nasty. We took a tour of the city starting with breakfast at a local road-side cafe (surprisingly none of us felt any ill effects), then traipsed through turd filled back streets to the water front, where we boarded a row-boat for a trip on the holy river Ganges.

In the early morning mists we were shown the ghats (parts of the river bank). The dhobi ghat was where the clothes were washed, and even though the water is filthy, the laundry always came out beautifully white and clean. Other ghats had stone steps down into the frigid water, where the devoted washed themselves and even brushed there teeth (even though the water contains many times the W.H.O. safe limit of certain bacteria). Then there were the cremation ghats. Here piles of wood were bought (from the untouchable caste) by grieving mourners to cremate their loved ones. We saw the beginnings of the ceremony, where a body, covered in white sheets, was placed in the water, to give it its last bath (and make sure it was really dead), before being placed on its funeral pyre. Our boatman explained that there were certain exceptions to this form of cremation - children under the age of 6 years, holy men, snake bite victims, and lepers - these bodies were put into the river without cremating them. We later saw one such white bloated corpse stuck between moored boats. I at first had mistaken it for a tree trunk, before realising what it truly was.

On one of the laundry ghats, white tiles had been laid out making a simple picture of an airliner flying into two tall skyscrapers. The locals had made this picture of the 911 attack overlooking their most holy river, in a statement of sympathy for what had happened.

Later we bought candles in leaf bowls, which we ceremonially caste upon the waters, where they gently floated downstream, with our best wishes to the dead.

From Varanasi we headed north to Nepal. At the border I was struck down with yet another case of the runs (I was only well for a few days in all of my stay in India), but instead of using my usual "starve it out" method, I decided to go the drugs route and took a combination of immodium (to stop it up) and norfloxacin (which kills the bugs inside of you) a drug that Cassie introduced me to (thanks).

The border was the usual round of government offices that you had to visit, to get stamped out (of India) and then stamped in (Nepal). We noticed on one of the log books that we had to enter our names, amount of currency being carried (as usual I lied), and the date, that Ash had been through the border the day before us. So we knew that he had managed to get safely out of Iran (he flew) and collect the truck (it came by boat), which was now at our next stop.

Nepal

The first thing I noticed about the Nepalese people was that they gave you room (a respectful distance, Mia called it). They were curious about us, but didn't come and stand a few yards away and stare, as the Indians had. This was a nice change.

Christmas this year was going to be held, for us, in Chitwan national park, which is in the foothills of the Himalayas. We drove into the grounds of our hotel to be greeted by Ash and our original Dragoman truck. This called for an ice cold beer. Actually it called for several.

I spent Christmas morning having a shave at a local barbers. This was perhaps the scariest thing that I have ever done. I just couldn't look at myself, in the mirror, being shaved with a cut throat razor, so I did my best to watch the elephants going past outside, through the open shop front.

Meanwhile the rest of the group went off for an elephant ride (including getting soaked in the river while washing it) and rhino safari. I would have gone with them, but I was feeling tired after my last case of the runs.

Mia's family had come out to see her and were staying at the hotel. Her mother had brought out, at Mia's request, a present for me. A sprout. I had a sprout with my Christmas dinner! I was in seventh heaven!

There was much drinking, eating, and dropping of trousers for photographs to be taken that Christmas.

The last leg of our journey turned out to be harder than we thought. What with road blocks (police checks brought about by the Maoist guerrilla campaign) and rock falls, we didn't get to the edge of Kathmandu til dark. We stopped in a queue of traffic, trying to get into the city (which was closed after dark). After waiting for a while, I walked (paced out) to the front of the traffic queue (some two kilometres) to find that armed police were not allowing locals in, but were allowing in foreigners (tourists). I returned to our trucks (both our Dragoman truck and the hunk of junk were making for the city), reporting back my findings, and off we drove. Travelling, on the wrong side of the road, past the stationary traffic, both of our trucks made their way to the front of the queue, where we talked our way into the city.Then there followed a tense mad dash across town, being stopped by armed policemen thinking we were Nepalese trucks, to our hostel in Tamale (the tourist area of Kathmandu). It was one of those times that we stopped calling the vehicles "trucks" and called them (to the armed police) buses.

Kathmandu

The next morning we visited a local restaurant which serves "proper" breakfasts. With eggs and bacon and hash browns and coffee and toast and marmalade served before a roaring log fire. Oh, and did I mention the bacon? It's amazing how you can really hanker for something on a trip like this, and bacon was what I hankered for. A wonderful place to start the day. I spent every morning I was in Kathmandu having my breakfast there. After so many weeks of eating whatever happened to be available, it was a real treat to be able to eat what I actually wanted.

Our hostel (The Holy Lodge in Thamel) was a wonderful jumble of rooms on separate floors is several unconnected parts. Between each section of the hostel was a single courtyard. The room that I and Richard shared had no heating, but did have an intermittently hot shower, which was great for warming back up (we later moved to a room that had heating and a TV). And from the balcony we should have been able to see the Himalayas, but this view was blocked by the ever present smog.

In the central courtyard an English biker (another Richard) parked his aged Honda Dominator motorcycle. He had ridden it out from the UK, and his next country to tour was going to be Thailand. He was definitely never going back to India, as the driving there had been hellish.

The streets in Kathmandu were full of traffic, mostly motorbikes. These small 2 stroke machines (the cause of much of the ever present smog) often had an entire family (Mum, Dad and two or three kids) on board. The riders had, very obviously, never received any training, as they would pull away from the kerb without bothering to look. It was very much in the hands of the gods if they got hit or not.

The nightlife was great, even with the 9pm curfew. Enormous steaks (Buffalo I think) could be had at the Everest Steak House, although it wasn't a good idea to have any of the sauces (they reminded me of the gravy you got with school dinners). We patronised a drinking hole ,run by an Austrian lady, called Sam's bar, which was just around the corner from the hostel. Beers were cold, company good and plentiful, and they'd happily stay open after the curfew, as long as we didn't make too much noise. The cold of the night was held at bay, in the open veranda, with wood fires.

After a night's drinking, staggering back to our hostel was sometimes "interesting", as there were armed troops patrolling the streets, riding in armed pickup trucks (a machine gun mounted on the rear). Coming back from our New Year's night reveries (we'd spent it in Sam's Bar, which was full of western travellers welcoming in the new year. As well as these foreigners there was a number of Nepalese, one of whom started, in a drunken "friendly" way, to grope Helena. Quite why I stepped in and stopped him I have no idea, considering how I felt towards the woman, but he was very unhappy about it and made all sorts of threats to me (none of which he carried out). Bret, on his was back, managed to get involved in an argument with one of the armed patrols just outside our hostel. And, even though he himself was unarmed, wasn't about to "back down" to the ,armed, troops. All the while, the poor guy from our hostel was trying to get Bret off the street and into the safety of the foyer.

The Group splits up

As the days rolled by the group split up and went their separate ways. All but one I was sad to see leave. Richard flew back to the UK and later went on a trip across Russia, Mongolia and China (blagging his way into a Quentin Tarantino party in Beijing), before settling down to his studies back in England. Christoph and his sister Sabine flew back to Germany and the ends of their University studies (I had the pleasure of meeting with Sabine during my later bike ride). Cassie and Niko went onto Thailand and continued their round the world trip. Ray flew onto Hong Kong to see his family. Kerryn continued travelling through Nepal, before flying to Thailand and then home. Wolf had a trip in Africa to run. Ash had his first trip (across India) to lead. Bret (truly a force of nature whom I'm glad I met) had a trip across India to lead. Mia (who I grew very fond of and who I'm glad to say that I managed to redeem myself from my earlier faux pas) had her own next trip to run. And I flew onto Thailand.

Tourist!

My flight with Royal Nepal Airline left Kathmandu early in the morning, so I had to be up well before dawn. The hostel arranged for a taxi (it was its un-silenced exhaust that woke me) to get me to the airport. We were stopped half a dozen times by armed police, as we drove through the dark streets of Kathmandu. Each time I had to press my, white western, face to the window, brandish my passport, and shout tourist to get us past each stop. Quite how the driver got back home I don't know. The airport was much as I'd expected, a cross between modern and third world.

As my plane climbed away from the airport I caught slight of the Himalayas, visible in the dawn sun.