Intrepid Journeys - India

Sup all!

Have done all the goodbyes in the village and are currently in Colaba, the tourist district of Bomaby (officially 'Mumbai' now) and having a wicked time. Caught the train here from Navsari and have worked out how the whole 'class' system works. We'd been travelling second class - still comfy enought with your own seats, air conditioning and no1 standing up. But thought we'd go the whole hog on our last train ride in India and go First Class.

Still under $50 pp for the 400kay trip and it's well worth the dosh! You have your own private cabin complete with AC controls, reading lights, carpet, towels, lunch and cushions even get provided early in the trip. The windows are tinted and the ride's so comfy it lulled us both to sleep! Damn trains and their gentle rocking to and fro....

Anyway, after getting off the train and enduring a good hour of steaming-hot taxi ride, during which our driver asked no less than 10 people for directions to the Ascot Hotel, we were at our destination. So lost that he even tried to ditch us twice by saying he'd drop us off as it was "just round the corner". I dont think so buddy!

Hardly any of the hotels had vacancies but we managed to get a nice room in Ascot (complete with cable TV and hot water) for a steal! We accidently got caught in an impromptu shopping spree and ended up home with a bag full of stuff after Indian McDonalds for dinner (come on, it HAD to be done).

Managed to roll through three of the Lonely Planets recommended bars that night, which was pretty cool. Best place of all was "Indigos", VERY posh and packed with the poncy Bollywood Crowd. Walk out and theres a Porche parked at the door plus four chicks getting dropped off in nice black Ashton Martin.

Felt the toll the next morning as we werent even out of the hotel by 11. Had a AVERAGE lunch of waffles/bananan/maple syrup as this cafe before cathing a ferry to Elephanta Island. The boat could only be described as a floating coffin, but we thought what the heck it's got to be done.

Turned out 9kays in the boat takes at least 40min and we were well over the heat by the time we arrived. Saw some cool Naval stuff, and a couple of superyachts in the harbour on the way though! Elephanta Island's attractions are these stone caves with massive Hindu sculptures of Gods and stuff built into them. Not much is known about their origins but the good ol' LP (Loney Planet) says they were probably constructed between 100-400AD and were named the Elephanta Cave/Islands by the Portugese when they rocked up at the shores and first noticed this big stone statue of an elephant. Makes sense I guess.... There were also lots of sweet monkeys at the caves, pretty cheeky too - a girl next to us had an apple clean stolen out of her hand and I had one swinging from the end of my coke!

Pretty cool stuff to check out and as usual there were loads of street-side vedors selling everything from sandwiches to xylophones on the walk from the wharf to the caves. Ferried back and checked out the Gateway To India, a massive monument that was built for King George V's first arrival back in the day. On that note, theres plenty of old colonial architecture around..almost looks like London sometimes.

Walked no less than 10kay (honest!) trying to find this restraunt that we saw on our taxi ride into the city, as dined at one with the same name in Bangalore and it was excellent. Turned out the name was all that the two branches had in common though. Quite funny, we found it and though there was a huge crowd of people waiting to get in as it was SO busy. Turned out they were just gawking through the full-glass wall to get a glimpse of the tv inside and see how India was doing in the one-dayer against Pakistan. The restaunt was dead-empty inside! Lesson of the day was dont go to a half-arsed restraunt and order food when the crickets on in India, as the staff are on the same wavelength as the people crowded against the window. After more than half an hour's wait for food we busted a move... dont think they even realised we were gone.

Got a taxi to a well-known place called 'Leopolds' that's been pumping every time we'd walked past it to date. The tandoori chicken and fish masala was well worth the taxi ride...and was out in less than ten minutes!

Just off a horse-and-cart ride of Colaba at night. Looks awesome fully lit-up and our cart even had neon lights on the back - talk about pimped out! The gameplan is to see what Indigo and some other bars are doing tonight before a day of sightseeing / last minute shopping and a 21:30 check in for Singapore Airlines to Singapore tomorow. Coupla days there and we're back in NZ late Thu night!

Oh, the day before we left the village Mum, Maya and I did a train-ride mission to Surat, a big neighbouring city to see what it was all about. Turned out to be a BIG day, had a VERY nice lunch at this Lords Hotel place and checked out some shops. There was this place called "Bombay Market" which was indoors, very tidy and seriously, there must've been MILLIONS of saris there. Quite funny, they have mattresses (weird, I know) all over the floor of their shop. So you go in, they sit you down and then proceed to empty about half the their shelves showing you all they've got. Doesnt matter what you say... it just keeps coming and coming till you buy something or walk out!

Beauty, hope Aoteroa's treating everyone well!
Nick

Back to routine here in the village. A few adventures but nothing too extraordinary. Getting into some chilling out. Getting into some reading. Another aunt arrived from NZ. Another local wedding. Have also resorted to playing cricket with the local schoolchildren to fill in my afternoon (question - how long can are you ethically allowed to bat for when playing against a bunch of ten year olds?)

Spent some more time at Vajifa, as it makes an easy escape from sitting ‘round. Pretty fun too, got to watch the rice terraces being irrigated, worked flat by bullock & cart, then rice planted row by row by the workers. Got cooked a traditional Indian BBQ, rode the bullocks (hota) and took HEAPS of photos. Quick trip to the Bombay Markets (in Navsari, nonetheless) proved not worth the effort. Same shit, different store….yet again. That and a whole lot of bric-a-brac.

A REAL LIVE indian wedding

Plans for further abroad didn’t work out due to our inability to negotiate India’s rail reservation system. In the jumble, I thought that buying “Trains at a Glance” for a mere 35 rupees may further our cause. Only after I paid did it’s tremendous girth become known to me. No less than 267-pages and you need nothing less than a PhD to decipher it. Not so much glancing to be had I’d say…though at least you’re getting your ruppees worth of paper! By the time we’d got back from the train station the three of us were dehydrated as…not to mention bored shitless and sick of little beggar children poking us. Turns out it’s actually a six hour journey and there were no first class tickets left on the trains we wanted. Perhaps a day trip to Surat will have to do…

Haven’t seen any good snakes yet, a few small dead ones on the road but don’t think they qualify! A couple of cheeky squirrels around and the usual gaggle of dogs. Actually one cute little puppy’s adopted our household. He hangs out in the yard and if he’s not there he’s “guarding” (sleeping by) the front door. The local peacocks seem pretty intelligent too, seems as though we’ve got one on a bit of a timetable to appear at our back door so we can feed it and stuff in the morning. Pretty cool – it’ll eat right from your hand and it’s a big male one too. These things are so massive tho, can’t see how it’s physically possible for them to fly!

Great to have some more Marmite from NZ and I never thought I’d appreciate the Weekend Herald as much as I do here. Real articles! Real English! Such a relief… every article’s like poetry when you’ve been on a solid course of The Indian Times for three weeks.

Have also just blown the limit of photo uploads per month so scroll back and check some out! Cheers, Nick

Look theres Mum!

After the fun times aboard, village life is rapidly wearing thin. Boredom flood has arrived. Figure I’m also drowning in a sea of oestrogen at the moment. All up there are now 5 females (with another on the way from NZ) and only my grandfather and me. There’s even talk of an impending Shopping Trip north to the centres of Ahmedevad and Surat…“thrilling”. In an attempt to keep my head above water I embarked on a solo walk and hangout at Vajifa this morning.

More sickness in the camp at HQ. J was physically ill yesterday and I’m avoiding food at the moment, no prizes for guessing why. The tummy’s feeling all good but lets just say there are issues in other departments. The EVIL Giardia strikes again perhaps? We’ve switched back to drinking only bottled water instead of tap water (which is sourced from a well) coz of what it may contain.

As for further trips, I’m way keen to train it to Ahmedavad, spend a night or two, fly to Delhi, check it out and possibly get a car down to Jaipur, Agra (Taj Mahal) and Pushkar. If there were constant trains and planes it’d be sweet, but a number of factors are working against me. Granddad’s book-launch is now officially scheduled for Feb16th at Dandee Beach, we’re off to Bombay and NZ after that and even going to the travel agent and finding out about fares/timings is at least a half-day mission! Not to mention courting the support of the shopping-brigade... If planes/trains line up, I’d possibly do the trip solo. But even finding that is gonna tine…. Where’s the internet when you need it?!

Had to do some very rapid RVDR (Routine Visiting of Distant Relations) in the arvo in a neighbouring village, the one where Dad’s originally from. There was an absolute plethora of olds ladies we had to call upon! I was kept amused though, as Indian people are soooo funny. I’ve also sussed that old ladies are the same wherever you go… all about the talking, tea and gossip. I’m pretty sure we got through at least 7 households in two hours, every single one of them ULTRA hospitable, consistently ignoring our requests not to serve us tea / pepsi / etc! Left with no less than 4 invitations to stay for dinner too. As I said, the oldies were funny as, all of them marvelling over how much I’d grown since last here age 3 and insisting I let them find me a good wife as they knew lots of nice girls. Baha!

The girls (now 3 of them) rickshawed to Dandee beach and managed to score some camel rides…nice for some!

‘Enjoying’ some more of the same back in the village with the Fam after a phenomenal journey from Goa to Mumbai and then Navsari. Air Deccan struggles at best compared to Kingfisher Airlines, my opinion not helped by the delay we were subjected to for our Goa-Mumbai trip. This wrecked havoc with our Mumbai-Navsari journey. The result being Maya and myself, travelling on a train that we didn’t have tickets for, despite having tickets for the one before AND the one after! Air Deccan did win quote-of-the-day though, with “Passengers are requested to please settle down” as got on the plane.

Landing in Mumbai at 7pm instead of 6, combined with the discovery that our taxi driver had no clue whatsoever how to get to Bhanderi station meant our 7.30 train to Navsari had long gone by the time we arrived for it. Deciding to take things into our owns hands, we joined the throngs of people mashed against the ticket counters in an attempt to a) find out when the next train to Navsari was, b) get tickets and c) get the heck aboard!

Simple right? Think again. There’s no actual timetable on the wall or anywhere (have previously tried the net but it’s an absolute maze) and there were, strangely enough, TWO sets of 8-or-so counters no less than 30m apart, each differently labelled in Hindi with what you were meant to do where. In the chaos, whilst everyone spared a second or two to answer our questions in english, very few made any sense. Imagine you’re asking directions but half the people say left and the other half point right. Then add some darkness, a few hundred people, yelling, screaming, beggars, pickpockets, 25kg of backpack and you’re close to Bhandari Terminus 8pm on the 8th of Feb.

Splitting up to try penetrate the masses, we ended up with cattle-class tickets on a 22:30 train that stopped in Navsari. Lost out due to some weird process you’ve gotta go though to get first class, despite me telling the guy at the counter it’s what I wanted. You WANT to be in first or second class in Indian trains. The locals travel anything below: think no seats, think no doors, think filth. Having somehow gleamed that there was also one departing at 21:00, Maya insisted we try to get on it. I was happy to go along as the above cattle class seriously didn’t appeal. Pacing along the 30 or so carriages in the hope of finding the conductor we found ourselves up against a smartly dressed gentleman in black pinstripes. He was our man! And for a mere 430 ruppees each he said we could upgrade to second class. After being absolutely certain that this ‘express’ train actually stopped in Navsari, we boarded and hoped for the best.

Four hours, one of them standing and no less than three seat-changes later we were at our destination. We almost made the whole 300km trip on NZ$4 too! But the conductor remembered the little ‘deal’ we had. Quite an enjoyable trip once you know you’re gonna get dropped at your stop and you’re a (vaguely) legitimate passenger. There were about 3 or 4 bridal parties doing the 15hour ride to Rajestan, all adorned with lots of colourful, shiny stuff and looking nothing short of amazing. Even managed to get blessed by some bloody scary transvestites! Officially called ‘Eunuchs’ or ‘hijras’, the Lonely Planet says some of them were “unlucky enough to be kidnapped and castrated”…not such a comforting though to have echoing in my head when they came and started talking to us! They travel around begging, performing as unwanted entertainers and as hookers. Apparently there’s something real superstitious about them and they can lay either a blessing or curse on you. Either way, they asked for cash and Maya insisted on asking what for / where were they going etc. Cowering in the corner I was mentally urging her open up that wallet and throw them some rupee!! Luckily enough we gave 50rupees covered the both of us and she we scored a blessing for us and our village. Phew, close shave! (chop?)

Made another hectic venture into Navsari and had a few revelations by the end of it. Love the animals in India; just everywhere, doing their own thing. They epitomise the people here… stop, stare at you, have a think, see if they can possbily scam you, stare again and then go about their day. They don’t give a damn. The wild ones aren’t scared of you, nor do they want to harm you. Just nose around, see what they can get off of you and then move onto their next prey. End of the day they don’t give a f#*k!

Saw a wicked sight in the vegetable ‘bazaar’. There was this cow just cruising around amongst the masses (nothing too unusual). But this bovine beast had an agenda. While the Fam were looking at veggies for dinner, he snuck in beside Maya and got his gob around some nice fresh carrots – straight from the vendor’s stall! Finding himself promptly whacked with the vendor’s stick, he backed off and carried on his way. Within a few paces he was at it again; ended up strolling down the bazaar sneaking whatever he could from the stalls and getting whacked with sticks or hands. Small price to pay I guess!

Our car driver is a bit of a funny-guy, he keeps hassling me about there being plenty of eligible young girls out there for me. Reckons all I have to do is give him 51 rupees and he can get the marriage all sorted! Personally I think he just likes my hair…keeps asking me if I’ll leave him my wax before I leave. What a clown!!!

Currently at Goa airport, waiting to board our flight to Bombay before Navsari. Photos will be up over the next few days, as there are HEAPS from the last week or so.

All is good
Nick