First, a last few pics of Thailand (can’t resist it) that we took since the last blog.
We had a Sunday ride with a few friends. Left to right Dave, American, travelling around the world and seems to be stuck in Thailand. John, travelling rtw with Jane, the photographer. Us with borrowed cat, Jeff, American, owner of the wonderful TukTuk bar and Keith, English, lives in ChiangMai.
As an aside, we’d been here a couple of weeks before and Anita had kindly given the cat some chicken. We then watched in horror as it choked on a bone - luckily recovering after five very long minutes.
Once we’d crated up the bike we were in limbo so hired a couple of knackered old 400 Hondas and took a ride to the very highest point of Thailand. Unfortunately it was very cold 2500-odd metres up and Anita was unimpressed. There wasn’t even a view.
One last pic of a ladyboy.
A pic of Tui (on the right) who runs the Blues Bar on Moon Muang Road in Chiang Mai. Thanks for the great music!
And just for a laugh - a dogbaby.
Oh, and this bizarre scuplture was featured in the Bangkok airport. It represents part of the Bhuddist beliefs where warriors in a sort of tug-of-war pull a naga (snake dragon) too and fro that’s coiled around a mountain that rests on a tortoise that turns the sea to….. Well, you get the picture. And it’s all true!
No more Thailand pictures, I promise.
India.
I can’t remember who, but I remember someone writing about ‘My beautiful India’. Well we’ve seen very little that could be described as beautiful so far. Calcutta/Kolkata is a hole. We were only there a short time and saw little, but these are a few impressions that we’ve taken away with us -
This was 5 floors up - more like a circus than a building site.
West Bengal is very dry at this time of year, so everything is covered in a layer of dust. Residents are constantly battling with it. The poverty here is to be expected but along with everything else still came as a shock to us. Just in the street (Chowringhee Lane, just off Sudder street) that we stayed for 4 days, we became aware of two people who were laying around waiting to die, lacking any medical care. ‘Human rickshaws’ were outlawed in India some years ago along with child labour, but both are to be found in Kolkata, unchallenged. Rickshaw pullers mostly live a hard life sleeping on the pavement and die young. Inequality is high with beggars grateful of a few rupees and expensive 4x4’s sharing the same streets. Housing is mostly poor and very cramped, and working hours seem to be very long indeed. Corruption seems to be the norm. When we collected the bike from the airport, it not only took a whole day, but the 2 ‘men’ who shook my hand and wished us all the best for our travels in their country later sent messages that they’d only release the bike if we paid them a 10,000 rupee bribe. We negotiated it down to 4,500 (about £65) and cursed the ground that they crawl on.
Parcels have to be wrapped, sewn and wax sealed here to avoid theft. It seemed a bit strange to be doing this out on the pavement but the guys were cheerful and friendly. The counter clerk was less so and having stamped the parcel, looked me in the eye and threw it over his shoulder onto the floor. He’s got a king size chip on his shoulder about something. A minute later he did the same thing with a german’s parcel sending the guy ballistic. Maybe we're just used to the GPO and wrap things accordingly....
So, enough pommiewhingeing. We left Kolkata as soon as we’d got the bike and headed towards Kharagpur with heavy hearts; if this was typical of our experience of India, we’d probably cut the trip short.
The traffic wasn’t as bad as bad as we'd been led to believe. It’s pretty lawless and frantic, and you have to really keep your wits about you. The one thing really did shock us was disregard for the basic principles of roundabouts and dual carriageways. Traffic direction seems totally flexible. It makes life interesting on dual carrageways when going round a corner to find two lanes of trucks coming towards us on the wrong carriageway.
Chay and biscuits? That'll be 4 rupees sir (5p).
So, we get to Kharagpur, 150Km south, and find no hotels, and the places looks pretty grim, so push on to Mindapur (5km away) and luck out with a decent clean and quiet room for £10. We’d decided to stay a few days to recuperate, and found out that it was Seeraswita Puja (Sp?) religious festival in a couple of days. The town ended up being a real delight to stay in, and people were very friendly. The Puja was for the godess of learning, and we noticed that in the internet shop, people were doing spreadsheets and essays, not computer games. Also when the 2nd hand bookshop opened, there was always a queue waiting for their mainly reference books.
This was the main puja celebration area with bank after bank of speakers all playing different music at ear-bleeding levels.
These guys seemed to enjoy the music - and this was 4 hours before the party started.
Upstairs at the bank.
Businesses, streets, private houses and clubs had dressed shrines and were playing loud music, and when we were asked in to see the bank’s shrine, they very kindly invited us to their lunch party upstairs. It was good fun, and we got to meet the bank manager’s son who speaks good English and love bikes. He walked with us to the ‘College Square’ where the action was going to be in the evening. The long row of shrines were all laced with political and sporting messages, and the racket was unbearable, with stacks of speakers for each shrine.
While Anita was having a cha I read in the paper about two wild elephants that had gone on a rampage in Kharagpur, on the very same day that we‘d not been able to find a hotel there, killing people and knocking down houses. That’s 2 elephants we were happy not to meet. Click on the picture to zoom in.
A few doors up from the guest house there were 4 kids who at first were too shy to speak to us, giggling and hiding. On the day of the puja we bought them some little presents and they ended up happy to pose for photographs in their best clothes and mendhi (herbal tatoo) that they’d put on for the Puja. They were really sweet and their parents and grandparents looked on fondly. Pretty much everyone was friendly and at times it was hard to move for people around us wanting to talk, asking us mainly where we were from and how we liked India. Saying that Mandipur was lovely and that Kolkata people were not as friendly went down well.
We didn't stop here by the way...
That's one less bus that'll be trying to run us off the road.
They should use the crossing - it's up to 5 times safer!
This seemed to be an impromptu market on a dual carriageway.
This area is a floodplain for rivers entering the sea including the Ganges and leaves behind sand which these guys were shovelling into lorries.
Now where's that field gone?
We’ve left Mendipore (the spelling seems flexible) and after a stop in Bhadrak we’re now in Puri, with a bit of a story behind us coming here, apart from the lovely beach.
Some of you may know that my elder sister Hazel travelled around India and Nepal a fair bit, and while I was looking through some letters that she’d sent to Mum, I’d jotted down some of the place names and hotels, not really thinking that we’d ever get there. I’d forgotten that I’d written it, but the sheet of paper turned up (neither of us know where it was) just as we were planning where to go next - and the last on the list - Puri - was a short ride away. After some asking around, we even found the ‘Bayview Hotel’ where she stayed. The years have taken their toll, but it’s a lovely old traditional building, and it was lovely to walk around chatting to the owner’s son knowing that if there is such a thing as an afterlife, Hazel would be smiling at us.
We'd brought something small of Hazel's with us, and left it on the beach, watching as the tide took it away. Bizzarely, watching a film later that evening, there was a track played by a relatively unknown US band, Sister Hazel.
We took a walk to Puri centre and the huge Jaggarnath temple. The temple is closed to non-Hindus but the crowds were fascinating.
These are the Jaggarnath Gods in the Chakra Turthi temple behind our hotel. Make of the characters what you will. We found out that our hotel serves as an Ashram and is mainly filled with devotees. They're interesting people but the 6am bells, drums and chanting is a bit much.
We also took a ride out in a taxi (to give me a rest from riding in he traffic) out to Konark, where one of India's most visited temples is. It's known as the sun Temple, and was until relatively recently buried under sand.
Near the temple were gurus offering puja to visitors.
That's it for the moment. We're headed west tomorrow, but the place that was our destination is deemed to be quite dangerous because of Maoists in the forests. We'll give that a wide berth, but our main destination will eventually be Agra - the home of the Taj Mahal.
Great stuff. Almost makes me wish I was there! Keep up the good work and don't rush back - it's grim here.. that's why I'm off again. See you on the road somewhere...
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