Life after Puri?

We left Puri and said goodbye to the coast for a while - probably quite a long while. We’d left it though with happy memories of friendly faces and strange happenings. One such happening was while we were walking around the Sun Temple in Konark. My hair is longer now than I’ve had it since I was a kid, and being fairly tall and very blonde (and grey), I stick out like a sore thumb. So we were walking around enjoying the sun, and a TV film crew pounced on us and within about 30 seconds, had me wired up to a radio mike and were filming ,interviewing as to why we were there, what our impressions were and so on. I managed to praise India in general and the temple in particular, and they went away happy, leaving onlookers wondering who these strange froeigners were. As I’ve said before, life can get slightly surreal when you travel.

The road from Puri to Agra, our next main destination, is around 2200Km, is across some fairly bleak landscape, and will mean using busy main roads. Using minor roads isn’t really an option as we have to skip between large towns to make sure that we can find somewhere to stay. To be stranded in the dark a hundred miles from a hotel or guest house is our worst nightmare as riding here in the dark is too dangerous to contemplate.








Our fist leg to Sambalpur was uneventful apart from the usual odd sights, being stopped by some curious police and dozens of drivers trying hard to wipe us out.


The only remotely interesting thing in Sambalpur were the very active bees nests next door to the hotel


Early morning washing in rivers is a very common sight.


I’d love to know what this is, but it seems to be the forerunner of the tuktuk, with a diesel single engine started with a crank. The owner was very proud to have a photo taken of it.


And stopping for a drink and nibble always draws a bit of a crowd. Anita manages to entertain them while I sit and recover from the concentration of riding in this traffic.

We see some odd sights when travelling, and if we're on the road, it's often not possible to get a photo. We were both shocked to see pretty young women in the midday sun wearing beautiful sarees working on the roadside lifting 12" rocks with their bare hands to hurl them down an embankment. Men were doing the same, scrabbling up dirt with their bare hands.


Vehicles are pushed beyond their sensible limits here, the same as other Asian countries that we’ve passed through. We saw this truck a few hours later with a big rip down the side of his load and stuff spilling out.


These two blokes had somehow loaded 3 full size goats onto their bike. Talking of goats, we hit one the other day - a fair sized goat decided to run across to see his mum and we were in the way. It didn't go under the wheel but clonked on our right boots, the crashbar and the pannier, and was sent spinning. I was surprised to see it get up and hobble away. Kids eh?


The scenery was grim, and the towns much worse. These are stalls selling tea, snacks and tyre-fixing for the trucks.


We stopped in Raipur then Nagpur, and made the decision to look in a saree shop - and ended up buying 2, with the petticoats and blouses made that aftrenoon. It was lucky that we did, but more of that later. They were both for Anita by the way.


The hotel in Nagpur was on a really busy junction, and it was fascinating to watch how it all worked without any traffic signals. This was with everything from huge trucks down to rickshaws, pedestrians, cows, donkeys and dogs going in every direction, and at night only about half the vehicles had lights on. We sat in the downstairs restaurant of the hotel and thought nothing of it being a bit rough, and were told immediately that there is a family restaurant upstairs. It was a horrible bleak room with no windows so we sat back downstairs only to be asked by a couple more waiters whether 'we were comfortable?' We had the same thing when we stepped into a really grotty bar down the road for a pint. 'Are you comfortable?' and wouldn't we like to try the family restaurant in our hotel? No thanks. It seems that women in areas where people drink is something socially 'uncomfortable'. Looks like we're going to be uncomfortable for a while then.


This beautiful horse was a bit of a mystery to us until someone explained that it was hired out for weddings and so-on. We were to see another horse like this the next day, but more of that later.




As well as this odd van with the bloke in it, we saw our first Tata Nano. They’re priced at 60,000 Rp here - about 845 quid.






One of the best parts of these few days travel has been when we stopped at a chay stall and gathered the usual crowd. These were different though, and were mostly young lads, and all really full of fun. We entertained tham as best we could, and there was a lot of cheering and clapping, with everyone waving us off. It was lovely. They wanted nothing but to be entertained for a while.


So, we made it to Jabalpur on perhaps the most scenic part of India that we’d yet seen, travelling through hills and flat plains of rice paddys.


Looking out from our hotel window, we could see preparations for the wedding that reception had warned us about. Not wanting to miss the spectacle, we thought we’d hang around in reception to see people arriving, then watch it from our room. No no no, that was not to be. When the whole thing kicked off, several people got us to join in the dancing in the carpark, and later invited us to come in to watch the wedding and tuck in to the food. It was all a fascinating spectacle.












It started with a local, very talented brass and drum band turning up. They tuned up and the next bit arrived - have you ever seen inside a large music box? They have a cylinder dotted with spikes that ping tangs on a plate to make the sound. Imagine putting something similar onto a generator on wheels, but this cylinder has dozens of electrical contacts on it. This whole thing then has two cables coming from it, with a 30 foot long chain of light boxes on it that are balanced on the heads of local tribesmen and women. The lights were all flashing in time with each other, giving a great effect.

There was also a tuktuk with huge megaphones on it to amplify the band. This was also wired up to the generator and a microphone that was poked at the instruments in turn.

So then the main guests turn up - about 70 of them - with the groom and a young lad (?) on a white horse, and the wole lot - horse, generator, brass band, lights, guests and tuktuk - start a hugely noisy, slightly confused and very slow journey around the carpark, with the gusets dancing for all they’re worth to the music, which sounds like a very energetic blend of up-tempo New Orleans and Cuban jazz. At the same time someone’s letting off some pretty serious fireworks in the main entrance to the carpark, just feet away from revellers - and us, all with mopeds still coming in and out.

After maybe an hour, they reach the entrance again, and the groom and guests head in - with us following on after loads of invites from the family.

With background live music, everyone tucks in to the great selection of food, leaving the groom on stage, presumably getting peckish. The bride is ushered slowly in later with relatives holding a covering above her to signify their approval, and the fairly short ceremony begins. Not many people seem to take much notice, and carry on walking round the food counters. I got the impression that the actual vows were seen as a foregone conclusion, so not worth paying attention to. The party seemed to be much more important. It was all very different to any wedding that we’d seen before, and was very lighthearted and great fun. Also, the women’s costumes were fantastic, and mainly silk with hand-sewn bling.

Come 12.30 it all quietened down and returned to normal.

We're in Sagar now, a university town full of students in Madyar Pradesh. Tomorrow we head north for Jhansi as a base to see the temples and fort at Orchha and Datia. It's quite a bit colder up here, partly because it's a high plain, but we're also heading north the whole time. We even had a spit of rain last night!

Take care everyone, and we're thinking of you all often.