I like people more than places

I was applying for a job the other day, and the application form asked me the question ‘What inspires you?’.  And after I thought about it for a while, this is what I wrote.

People inspire me.

I’ve done quite a bit of travelling in my life, and although I like to go to new places and see new things, I’m usually interested not so much in where I’m going, as in who I’m going with.

When I was 15 I went to Neuschwannstein, the fairy tale castle from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but I can’t remember the first thing about it and I don’t have any pictures of it either.  What I do have pictures of are the people I went with (especially the girls), stood outside the castle, as I was generally more interested in them than I was in a building.

I also got to hang around Munich and the English Garden quite a bit on that trip, but I haven’t got any pictures of that either.  I do have some more pictures of girls though (I was 15, who wouldn‘t?, I tastefully decided not to photograph all the topless women I saw or the naked man who kept trying to get us to play badminton with him though, so I did operate with some semblance of decorum).

Similarly, when I went to India in January this year, although I went there partly to see the Taj Mahal (which included a 12 hour trip in a taxi there and back where someone tried to get me to pay money to look at a monkey and another man with a sword opened a car door for me at the services, and we had to fire our tour guide because we just wanted to enjoy it without words), I went there mainly to hang out with Dean (and briefly with Elsa), and while I was there I was more inspired by the people I met than the places I went to.

If I’d met Shah Jahan himself, and he’d told me all about his wife and what he loved about her, I probably would have understood the Taj Mahal more, but in the end for me, it was just a building, and not even an easy one to get to at that (and I had my polos confiscated by the Army).

On reflection that day I went to the Taj Mahal I probably should have stayed in the Hotel Ajanta all day.  I could have spent those 15 hours having a leisurely breakfast, lunch and dinner in the hotel, striving and failing to get the things I’d ordered but being brought other stuff instead, in that marvellously random way they used to feed me over there in Upsidedownland.

Sometimes I felt more like a friend or a member of the family than a paying customer at the Ajanta.  And not always in a good way. Sometimes I got the distinct impression that I was getting on their nerves asking them stuff all the time, and they wished I’d go away, and conversely I sometimes found their behaviour completely incomprehensible and sometimes I didn’t have a bloody clue what was going on.  Like I said, it was just like a family.

Also better than the Taj Mahal was the goofy waiter in the orange hoodie from the Hotel Godawari who brought me my Paneer Butter Massala, He was running around delivering dishes of food while a man was hammering a door frame and the restaurant seemed to be still being built around us.  It was so the opposite of corporate, and I really liked that about it.

I liked it more because it was such a contrast from the faux corporateness of the Big Bite in Meerut the day before, which was like Fawlty Towers, only with a much more rude man in charge.  I’m sure I’ll always remember the face of the waiter at the Big Bite who was so disinterested and surly, until we gave him a big tip that is (we were being ironic) and he suddenly turned into Mr Smiley Shakey Hands Man.

And I’ll certainly always remember the quizzical looks I saw on the faces of the local residents as Dean and I got ourselves funnelled by Google maps down the ever narrower back alleys of Delhi until we were virtually riding through people’s back gardens.

It was only when we got trapped with our fully laden bikes between a man pushing a cart full of bricks and an old lady in a chair that we realised we had our map set to walking directions rather than road directions.  Thankfully the old lady, politely and without any fuss, lifted her chair over her head to let us through, or we’d still be there now.

And that bloody rickshaw driver who tried to take us down the Spice Marrrket, and who told us ’You happy, I’m happy’ but then managed to disprove this by leaving everyone unhappy.  And the little leathery tuk tuk driver with the bad teeth who followed us round  for fucking hours near India Gate (it was like being tracked by Tommy Lee Jones US Marshall character in the Fugitive) until he got moved on by the Army.  And the other much nicer tuktuk driver who told us to catch the number 11 bus, and made sure we didn‘t forget the number by tapping us on both knees and saying one and one equals eleven (I thought it equalled two, but this is India)..

I do sometimes feel awed by buildings and other things made out of bricks and other construction materials, and although I was pretty knocked out by seeing the Berlin Wall in 1985 the reality of that divide came home to me much more powerfully two years later when I met a retired lady from Leipzig on a train who was going to meet her sister in the West.

She hadn’t seen her sister for 22 years because they were living on opposite sides of the wall when Germany was turned from one country into two.  The matter of fact way she told her story made the Wall more real to me than seeing watchtowers and guards and the Wall itself.

And I went to Venice once, but the thing I remember most isn’t the Bridge of Sighs or St Mark’s Square but running around with water pistols shooting at my friends and being shot at, and if ever there was a city suited to the use of water pistols, Venice is it.  And the lady who ran the ice cream parlour in Padua that was the first place I’d ever been that had 30 flavours of ice cream, and hanging out in the café over the road from the hotel with my friends, playing King of Boxer, where I kept getting knocked out by a little computer man called Brown Pants.  The people and the emotions I still remember, but the buildings I don’t.

The fact that people mean more to me than places is the very reason I can do a 100 mile bike ride and remember no scenery whatsoever but I can remember the cantankerous woman in the Ford Fiesta van who was driving round on a beautiful summer’s day in a car full of urinal cubes and toilet rolls, and who not only beeped at me, but stopped to make lots of negative comments about cyclists.

And I remember less about the views I saw on Saturday climbing Hartside than I do about the incredulous cyclist who was doing his best to smash up his carbon fibre bike at the café at the top by repeatedly dropping it on the floor.

And it’s probably why I like cycle touring with Ruth, rather than on my own, because it’s not what I’ve seen that counts, but who I saw it with.  Without someone to say ‘Do you remember that time that we….?’ to, I don’t think I’d want to go.

Yes, buildings are all very nice, and they’re quite useful for keeping the rain off, but in the end they’re just buildings.  And they don’t really inspire me.  But people do….

Anyway, that’s what I wrote, so that’s probably another employer I won’t hear back from……

Calling India - Can we have your votes please?

Before I went to India, I described myself as feeling like a contestant on a gameshow.  And things just got more unreal after I arrived there.  It was part gameshow, part videogame, part role play, Candid Camera, Trigger Happy TV, Beadle's About, and the Truman Show all rolled into one.

Anyway, I felt so often that there were little guys hiding in the kitchens, and the hotel receptions, and airports marking my every move, that I decided to award myself marks for my performance while I was there.

In the spirit of a videogame, I've split the game into levels.  Apart from Level One which took me days to complete, each of the other levels took me about 24 hours to get through, give or take.

Level One.  Spending 7 hours filling the online visa form in, going to Birmingham to hand it in, borrowing a bike bag, having some jabs, packing and getting to the airport.  I lost marks for pratting about for days being indecisive about which bike to take.  Other than that I did pretty well.  6 out of 10

Level Two.  Catching the plane to Delhi.  This was pretty easy.  Apart from getting on the plane, this level consisted mostly of necking as much complementary British Airways food and drink as possible, and the only difficulty was not having a pen to fill in the immigration form, but I managed to borrow one off an Indian.  9 out of 10.  .

Level Three -  Found my guide Guruvinder at the airport, found my bike in the mysteriouus OG2 section of the airport.  Changed some currency, got a taxi to the hotel, filled about 4 forms in to check in, went for a walk, and managed to fend off the attentions of an overzealous tuktuk driver who wanted me to believe I wasn't in a safe area.  Found Dean and Elsa.  Had beer on the roof, got a really good meal at the Legend of Connaught and had some cocktails.  9 out of 10.

Level Four - Fended off a Bangladeshi woman trying to get money for orphans who followed me calling me a bastard.  Stood around for an hour while Dean bought an Indian Sim Card.  Managed to hire a very pleasant tuktuk driver who let us take photos with him.  Cried at the Gandhi Museum.   Almost chilled out on the steps of the Jami Masjid mosque but then lost my bottle after we got refused entry by a small boy for refusing to pay an entrance fee.  I got totally freaked out at the prospect of having to kneel in a urinal, and then got taken for a ride (in more ways than one) by an Oscar winning rickshaw driver.  The saving grace of the last part was that despite his mantra of 'You happy, I'm happy' we managed in the spirit of the word compromise to leave everyone disappointed and to leave him looking totally deflated after we refused to stump up what he was asking for.  On the whole, I did pretty well on this level, but had a devastating loss of form after the toilet kneeling down and rickshaw incidents.  Took some quiet time in the hotel for me to bounce back.  6 out of 10.

Level Five - Managed to fend off two students allegedly trying to practise their English but who were selling weed amongst God knows what else.  Also, managed to ignore a small girl begging for food and holding my hand.  This was all good practice for a day spent bouncing tuktuk drivers off us as if it was Gladiators.  Thankfully the really persistent guy eventually got moved on by the army.  Had some tea at a roadside stall, caused an Indian family from Calcutta to descend into utter confusion by offering to take their picture.  Took back a modicum of control toward the end of the day by hiring a Sikh tuktuk driver who was having a nap and looking the other way, much to the dismay of two of his rivals.  Needed a lie down and a cup of coffee made by Dean back in the hotel to help me come round after feeling battered from all the people I'd had to say no to.   6 out of 10.

Level Six - Passed bike building task.  Managed to check out of hotel although I had to do it in instalments.  Managed to negotiate storage of bike bag for 10 days.  Passed cycling in Delhi challenge.  Rode to Pahar Ganj, met Dean, and cycled to Meerut after a few hair raising lane changing incidents on the main highway.  Only downside was failing to notice that the initially inviting Big Bite Food Resort at Meerut was actually a massive pile of shite, expensive and with waiter service that makes Fawlty Towers look like the height of sophistication.  Retained some dignity by giving the less rude of the two waiters a tip, and getting a smile out of the sucker.  Ate something which may or may not have been chicken.  Spoke to Ruth and Stephen back at home, and hopefully managed to convince them that I was capable of leaving the hotel.  8 out of 10.

Level Seven  - Ordered a coffee which took ages, met Sunny the racing cyclist from Meerut, but managed to avoid going back to his house.  We'd a long way to go.  71 miles in the day.  Found a pretty good hotel for half the price of the day before.  Seemed to really please the locals by appreciating the Paneer Butter Massala.  I liked the goofy waiter and his boss who spoke English, and also the guy who was hammering the doorframe while we were ordering.  Gave them a sizeable tip, and started to relax into the bonkersness.  9 out of 10.  

Level Eight - After 40 miles of single carriageway craziness, including going through the elephant corridor, found our way to Rishikesh.  Managed to be quite rude to someone who wanted to clean our ears out on the riverbank.  After an hour of going round in circles we found English Lorna, and 20 minutes of talking to her helped the stress melt away.  After two days of just booking into the first place we could find, our decision to persevere in finding Bhandari Swiss Cottages really paid off.  Cheap rooms, relaxing views, birdsong and monkeys stealing your garbage.  Had a good laugh at India Guy over his Chicken Sizzler meltdown.  9 out of 10.

Level Nine - More fending off tuktuk drivers.  Found an ATM and then went for a late breakfast.  The jedi waiter was at pains to convince us that the breakfasts we were trying to order were not the breakfasts we were looking for.  No porridge.  Buttered toast yes.  Laughing was definitely the right response.  Gave the man a tip.  Tried to go to yoga but were turned back by a Tibetan boy with some Lego.  Ordered the sizzler to see what India Guy was moaning about.  It was good.  8 out of 10.

Level Ten - Instead of following the tourist trail and booking a bungee jump or a day's white water rafting we took our bikes up into the Shivalek mountains and made our own amusement by having bikes and talking about movies.  In the evening met the Greek Stereotype Spiros, Irish Ashley, Australian Audrey, Phoebe Ponsington-Smythe from somewhere posh in England and Mr India, the most nervous, ill at ease Indian I've ever met, sat around the not very warm fire, and generally felt like the two most interesting people there.  After a couple of hours we realised nothing interesting was about to happen, so we went back to our room and laughed a lot.  Well done us.  9 out of 10.

Level Eleven -  Once again, didn't plump for one of the ready made tourist experiences, but went and found a waterfalll that was off the beaten track, and managed to find some of the peace that people spend so much time looking for round here,  Spent some time in the afternoon listening to 'Ready, Steady, Goa' and other Half Man Half Biscuit favourites whilst feeling incongruous and laughing to myself as I watched the miserable purple couple down below drinking orange tea, wearing clothes cut from curtains and never smiling.  Had a slightly better time round the bonfire this night, thanks mostly to Tim from Australia and Teddy from Chicago, who were at least interesting, unlike Spiros the Greek whose idea of a party was to try and charge people for sharing his drink with him.  By the time we went to bed, the infantile looking dreadlocked German, the Tibetan looking dudes and the giant Portuguese Chewbacca lookalike were passing round joints and the ones who'd joined in on Spiros whip-round party were getting merrily hammered on beer and whisky, totally missing the point that it's supposed to be an alcohol free zone.  Nothing screams foreigner quite so much as the blatant disregard of local rules and customs.  Didn't miss much I think.  8 out of 10.

Level Twelve.  Found the bus station, which wasn't easy.  Got our bikes on board the bus, which wasn't easy either.  Barely survived 7 hours of Bollywood Blockbusters, mobile waiters flogging 'Wally wally Wallay', managed to fend off the Fantasy Island waiters in maroon waistcoats at the service station that had nothing but signs, and was supposed to be a respite from the bus.  It was almost worse.  On the approach to Delhi I totally failed to get my point across to the bus driver about where we wanted to be dropped, and ended up 10 miles from the hotel.  Got our own back on him though, by leaving him a bag of sick hanging on the back of the chair in front.  Thanks to Dean's sense of direction, and owing nothing whatsoever to me, who had no clue where we were, we rode through back alleys, under washing lines, nearly ran some children over, nearly got spiked on some metal rods, got wedged in an alley as wide as my head against a man dragging bricks on a trailer coming the other way, but ended with a grand welcome at the Ajanta, as if we were conquering heroes, and finished my cycling in India by soaking up the joyous feeling of being back on Arakashan Road again, which felt like coming home, only 11 days after first arriving there when it felt anything but.  8 out of 10.

Level Thirteen - The Taj Mahal.  Survived 10 hours in a car, fired our tour guide, fended off an overzealous toilet attendant, resisted the pleadings of a guy with the most miserable looking monkey in the universe, avoided buying snowglobes off some street urchins, got my polos confiscated by the army, got to have a look at the Taj Mahal in between being whistled at by some frustrated PE teacher types, and did very well on the whole not to go absolutely berzerk.  It's probably why they don't let you take anything dangerous in, just being in Agra could sent you into the kind of mental spiral that results in going postal.  We did well to survive.  7 out of 10.

Level Fourteen - A totally confusing breakfast experience, the inverse buffet.  Were brought loads of things we didn't want, and nothing we did.  Dean started operating the coffee machine himself, to the dismay of the waiters, who seemed to want to take 20 minutes over each cup, whereas Dean could get his own in 10 seconds.  Despite being full up, we were both brought curry, and nan bread.  After the breakfast challenge, we had to negotiate with three separate Indians not to be thrown out of our room that we'd booked 10 days previously.  I think in the end we did the requisite amount of pleading, and they let us stay.  If being in the hotel was testing, going out wasn't much easier.  Went to Connaught place, and doing some basic tasks like buying stamps and postcards, and topping up on talktime turned into the work of an entire day.  Dean managed to confuse an ear cleaning man, by telling him he was from India.  Even using the toilet in the coffee bar was a challenge.  The first time I went they let me have the light on, the second time I had to make to with a tiny amount of natural light coming from a vent.  Needless to say when I found the toilet I adopted a sitting position to wee, otherwise it could have gone everywhere.  Went to Rajghat, which was a different side of India.  Full of well dressed schoolchildren, and teenagers in Western type clothing.  Seemed a long way from the rags and poverty on show in other part of Delhi.  For once we wanted to hire a tuktuk, but we had trouble hiring one.  At one point we got refused outright.  But I started to feel like I belonged.  I had a vacant stare and I had dusty clothes.  Even Bangladeshi woman didn't try too hard.  7 out of 10.

Level Fifteen - After yesterday's circus we had breakfast in the room.  Got my bike bag back, dismantled the bike, checked out, paid the minibar.  Went for another walk to Connaught Place.  Got refused entry to an ATM, which made me laugh.  Spent most of the afternoon and evening sitting on the roof terrace drinking beer, using the internet and eating curry.  An easy day to finish, or maybe I was just getting the hang of it.  8 out of 10.

Level Sixteen -  As on the way in, the same on the way out.  A pointless customs form to fill in, confirming I'm not carrying ornamental fish or ICBMs, or millions in bullion.  Same as the way in, I had to borrow a pen off an Indian.  I then had to queue up for hours in a funnel with some Germans and Chinese to eventually face a staring man who could make time stand still.  The Germans were freaking out.  They couldn't handle the seeming getting nowhereness of it all. I'd been there two weeks.  It wasn't a big deal.  Eventually after having my boarding pass stamped to pieces I managed to get on board the British Airways flight.  The flight crew weren't as attentive this time, so I didn't get as many drinks as on the way over, and the breakfast wasn't as good, and then we bloody ended up in Glasgow, and not London.  I had some trouble persuading the Spanish guy next to me on the plane, who was dressed in orange robes and seemed to be having an ecstatic religious experience, that he was in fact in Scotland.  Emboldened by the ease of getting through passport control at the Scottish end, and having had a bath in my Holiday Inn room that I decided I didn't need, I took advantage of knowing how things work in the UK, dragged my bike around Glasgow for a bit, and then got the train home.  I took control.  It was a good way to finish.  It reminded me I can do stuff, and having had a brush with India, it made Glasgow seem like a long lost friend.  10 out of 10.

So that was it for me.  Game Over.  Dean carried on.  My credit was all used up.  I only completed the first 16 levels of India the Game.  I'm led to believe that there are infinite number of levels, so I didn't even reach the End of the Beginning.  Anyway, my score.  126 out of a possible 160.  That's 78%.  That's a pass in anyone's language.  In most exams that's enough to get an A.  I'd settle for a B though, and I probably should since I marked my own paper.  Also, that way it leaves room for improvement for when I go back.......

Life is what happens to you while you're filling in a customer satisfaction survey

On reflection I left India about two days after I started to get the hang of it.  I'd learned to laugh at the frustration and the disappointment, and I'd learned to lower my expectations until I was pretty much satisfied with whatever I could get.

By the time I got my ass rubber stamped out of Indira Gandhi I was ready for home, but I hadn't bargained on how being back in England would feel.  I'd expected a culture shock going on the outward journey, but I hadn't anticipated getting another one on the return home. 

For example, even as I was sat in Glasgow Central Station eating a pasty last Sunday, and feeling glad to be back in the UK, there were rumblings of discontent.  There's a big screen in the train station with rolling news on it.  Rolling news from Sky no less.  If there's one thing that could make you throw acid in your own eyes, Sky News is it.  The latest John Terry losing the England captaincy bollocks was on a loop, and apparently Joey Barton, a footballer so stupid and with an even more questionable history than John Terry, had sent some tweets on Twitter, and it was oh so controversial.  And this is what passes for news!  Two contemptible and thoroughly stupid idiots who've only escaped a life in the gutter by being able to kick a pig's bladder around, are doing and saying stuff, and it's being reported as if it's Moses coming down the mountain with the ten commandments.  Bloody hell.

Then I spent the day on Tuesday jumping through hoops for the YHA before being told Thanks but No Thanks.  On Wednesday my brain was still mashed but I tried to do some bike maintenance.  I was so out of it I could barely recollect my own name by this point, and to make things worse the other two guys at Sustrans had one of those terrible radio phone ins on.  People debating whether they should have to sell their homes to go into care, and then someone on advising people how to save money by boiling up potato peelings to make a nutritious gloop, and telling us not to go shopping when we're hungry and that kind of wisdom from on high.  I could barely stand it.

I went to Tesco on Thursday to buy some rice.  I couldn't believe the vast array of goods on display, and what was worse I couldn't take listening to people trying to decide between the various brands on offer.  Then a man at the checkout was discussing the ridiculousness of pricing 240 tea bags at less than the packs of 180.  I started to feel like I was going mental.

All this stuff about choice and degrees of satisfaction seems superfluous to me now.  India reduced my expectations, until I was happy to get something.  Every day I got a meal and a place to stay, and that was enough.  It was hard to find shops, but the joy that can be felt from finding a big jar of porridge or some chocolate milk is beyond description.  Seeing Dean running out into the road after three days in the wilderness and gleefully showing me butter and cheese and Snickers bars, and pointing excitedly to sliced bread in the window.  The average Tesco shopper does not understand such feelings.

On Friday I got a letter from Simon Bailes Peugeot asking me what I thought of the MOT service I got a month ago.  How satisfied was I with about 20 separate aspects of the service I got.  I found this bewildering.  I wanted an MOT, I got an MOT.  Job done.  I was satisfied.  With time in India in the bank, this sort of feedback seemed nuts.  I didn't get a letter from the Hotel Godawari in Roorkee asking me how satisfied I was with the service there.  The young man in the orange hoodie who brought me my dinner and the older guy who spoke English and who talked to us a bit, we had a transaction in that particular time and space, and then we moved on.  I smiled and gave them a tip.  They seemed happy.  It was in the moment.  If I'm honest I found it slightly confusing that I couldn't tell who the staff were because they had no names badges or other corporate wear on, and the sound of a guy hitting a doorframe with a hammer while I was ordering might have normally been a bit off-putting, but this was India.  I took things at face value, and I got a meal and a bed for the night, and that was good enough. And the next morning I moved on. 

The same thing happened with Orange on Friday aswell.  I rang them up to ask them a question about how much it costs to send texts to India.  They answered my question, but then they wanted me to fill a survey in on how they'd answered my question.  What do you mean?  I said.  I asked a question, you answered it.  I didn't know the answer, now I do.  That was the entirety of it.  I don't want to make a sitcom out of it. 

Since I got home, I haven't had the telly on for 5 days, then on Saturday I broke my duck by putting the Six Nations Rugby on.  When I first switched the telly on, I accidentally turned a programme on where some yuppies were wanting to take that fantastic house they've got in the city, and trade it in for an even more fantastic house in the country.  The smug bastards.  Perhaps next week, instead of Escape to the Country we'll see them starring in an episode of Escape to the Underpass, where they get to swap their quarter of a million pad in Central London for a night sleeping under a rickshaw by the underpass at New Delhi railway station, next to a pile of dogs?  What's their budget?  Nil?

The cold weather hasn't helped.  I feel like I'm living in a fridge, which is harder to take, because my sunburn has started to peel.  And every time I fall asleep I dream of Delhi and the road to Rishikesh.  I had a nightmare about having to build a wheel somewhere on NH58 a few nights ago.  The good news is I keep waking up next to Ruth, and I feel like we're laughing more than before I left.  Some of this is because I was so stressed with the packing before I left, and getting myself in a tangle choosing what to take, she told me today if I'd missed my flight she would have sent me in a taxi.  Apparently I was lucky not to have one of the many bikes I was considering taking wrapped round my head I was being so infuriatingly indecisive. 

In case all of this sounds really negative, it's not all bad.  I am loving being back in the beautiful English countryside, I feel lucky to live where I live, to have the people in my life that I have, and to have a nice home.  It's an adjustment that's all.

Then today I put the telly on for the second time, and before I watched the latest Six Nations instalment (another thing which makes me proud to be British) I watched Harry Hill's TV Burp.  And I laughed, and laughed.  And I remembered another reason why it's great to be British.  It's because we're good at laughing at ourselves.  We're good at pointing at our own pomposity and seriousness, and ridiculing the absurdity of it all.

And I realised that's the greatest gift I got from my India trip.  I remembered to laugh at myself.  Because taking myself seriously doesn't work.  All that happens is that I get myself tied up in knots.  And a lot of the things I worry about are laughable, and so I laughed at those things, and at myself.  And this afternoon I wore a buff around my forehead and danced around with Ruth to a song by the Specials called Do Nothing.  We had a laugh and a sing along with the words

'Nothing ever changes, oh no, I'm just living in a life without meaning'. 

And even if that were true, that my life is without meaning, and that nothing ever changes, I'm still grateful for it.  I'm thankful for all the chances I've had, to do things, and to go places, that some can only dream of.  When I think back to being an oddity on the road to Rishikesh, being stared at by people who maybe live their entire lives within a tiny geographical area, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see my own country and others, both from inside and out. 

And when I reflect on last year, I think I was a lot like India Guy from Rishikesh, having a tantrum because I'd got a Chicken Sizzler when I'd ordered something else.  Being disappointed.  I was like that in Scotland, and in Wales, and on my York to Durham ride, and on some other bikes rides I went on.  I spent so long moaning that I didn't get what I wanted, that I forgot to be grateful for what I got.  

I spent so long reviewing my experiences, as if they were a customer survey, and worrying about degrees of satisfaction, that I forgot to say thank you.  Thank you for my life and everything in it.  For everything I've got, and everything I've had.

And so if I learned nothing else from India, except to remember to laugh at myself and say thank you for things, it was still worth going.

Dealing with rejection - Indian style

I got turned down for a job yesterday.  After spending 5 hours doing role plays and presentations and stuff.  It was in York.  A recruitment day for the YHA.  There were about 25 people there and about 12 jobs, so by pure statistics alone there was a 50/50 chance of being offered a job.

I was pretty disappointed to not be offered anything.  In some ways it would have been easier if they'd said 'We think you're crap, piss off', but instead they said, that I was good enough, but there weren't enough jobs.  This may have been a polite way of saying 'Piss off, you're crap', but they seemed pretty genuine.  What it did mean though, was that there were some people there, who were considered more suitable than me.

Under normal circumstances, I would probably have spent ages agonising over everything I did and said during the course of the day, trying to second guess the interviewers etc.  But I've been to India now.  I don't need a reason for things.  I'm used to not understanding why things happen.  And it wasn't just the Indians I learned this from.  Dean adopts a similar approach.  He described himself as being fatalistic and he was willing to accept things that happened and he didn't waste time and effort reflecting on them too much afterwards, to see whether the outcome could have been different.  Maybe that's why he's got the stamina for the trip he's on, because he's always looking forwards and not back.

One thing I've noticed since I got back is how much time English people spend a) choosing things and b) thinking about things to do with status, ego and self-esteem.  Maybe Indians do too, but I couldn't understand what any of them were saying.  Now I'm back I feel like that little kid in the Sixth Sense, I can hear voices all the time.

My first full day at home was Monday.  I took Ruth out for lunch and for a walk up Clay Bank.  It was cold, foggy, icy and very English.  I wasn't especially paying attention to the women on the next table but once or twice I overheard them, and they spent the entire course of their meal talking about dogs.  One of them was really excited about getting a new miniature Schnauzer.  They spent ages talking about why this is a desirable type of dog, and how affectionate they are etc.  I couldn't help but laugh.

I was laughing because I was thinking about the dog situation in India.  Basically there seem to be a lot of medium sized mongrels.  They don't have really big dogs or really small dogs.  They certainly don't seem to have breeds.  The dogs there are just hang about on the streets, sleeping mostly, occasionally looking for some food.  They don't have to try too hard, because the gutters are full of discarded food containers.  On two occasions I saw someone doing something which approximated walking a dog, although I wasn't sure on either one, whether the dog was just following them.

If India has any places that you can get a dog from, which I doubt, I imagine, the conversation would go something like this.

'Hello, I'd like a dog'. 
'There's one, have that one!'
'Don't you have any miniature Schnauzers?'
'Any what?'
'Miniature Schnauzers'
'I'm sorry, I don't understand the question'.
'Well, what type of dogs do you have?'
'Stray ones'
'Are they good companions?  Are they affectionate?'  Do they like children?'
'They're dogs.  They just do dog stuff, they're not service providers'
'I think I'll leave it'.

Choosing stuff, expressing preferences, it's all a bit of a luxury over there.

Before I went, some people told me India would be a life-changing experience.  I'm not sure it was for me, because when I used to lie awake shivering at Bhandari Swiss Cottages at 4 in the morning (I liked the daytime, because it was always sunny, but the nights were when I thought about home) I thought about the life I have, and I realised that it was already good, and I didn't need to change it.

At home I've got Ruth, and I've got friends and family.  They love me, they accept me, they understand me, and even when I talk absolute rubbish, they still listen to me and love me some more. 

I read in some guide book or other, that Westerners often feel guilty in third world countries.  Guilty for all the stuff they've got.  It didn't affect me that way.  I just felt lucky.  It's an accident of birth that I was born in the UK.  I'm not actively going out and stealing material things away from Indians and Africans.  I was just born that way.

One thing I did notice while I was away was that the few thiings I had with me, my bike, my camera, my phone, and all the other stuff I took, became more important to me, not less.  Whether they were just a mobile part of home I don't know, but I didn't want to give them up.

Even in Rishikesh, where people were off seeking enlightenment and trying to find themselves, I didn't want to let go of my life back home.  I didn't need to find myself, because I knew where I was.

Some of the Westerners I met in Rishikesh seemed to have missed the point somewhat.  It was an area where alcohol is banned, and eating meat is frowned upon, and even eating eggs is normally done in private (I'm not joking).  And what did they spend their time doing?  Buying illicit beer, getting pissed and eating chicken.  They could have done that back home.

Some of my favourite Indians I met were the ones at Rishikesh.  They were always smiling and at times they were definitely laughing in the faces of us Westerners, but not in a negative way, just in the way that you might watch chimps or seals performing at the zoo.  I used to wonder if they went back to their rooms on a night and said things to each other like 'You'll never guess what that English girl asked me for today!' or 'Look at that guy wearing the tea cosy on his head, is that how he thinks Indians dress?' or 'You'll never guess how much that Greek guy is willing to pay for a can of beer!'.

A lot of the emotional knots that I tie myself up in, wondering whether I could have done things differently, or whether I've come across badly in a social situation, or whether this activity or that is making me feel good about myself, are luxuries that only a Westerner needs to worry about.  Dealing with Indians is lot like Luke Skywalker's encounter with Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back.  Over there, thinking doesn't get you anywhere.  It's all about what you do, or don't do.  There is no try. 

Glasgow - A little piece of heaven here on earth

If I thought the 7 hour bus ride from Rishikesh to Delhi and the 10 hour car ride from Delhi to the Taj Mahal were shite, that was only because I've never tried to get out of Indira Gandhi International Airport before.

I shouldn't have been surprised it was such a tortuous procedure.  I mean, I have witnessed the purchasing of a sim card in Delhi, so I should have been ready for the airport experience.

Dean went back to his hotel at 10.30 on Saturday night, and even though that left me 5 hours to get my flight, I thought, this is India, I'll go now.  I went down to the hotel reception to book a taxi.  Unsurprisingly, the price of the taxi had gone up from 600 to 650 rupees since I last asked.  Something to do with it being late at night.  I didn't bother pointing out that I'd told the person who gave me the price what time I'd be leaving.  I've already struggled on this trip with trying to get Indians to understand the concepts of past, present and future.  I think they only understand the present, which may be why they have such trouble with advance bookings.

The guy on reception was the same one who hadn't wanted me to stay another night two days earlier, and now he was offering a place to lie down for a couple of hours, before my flight.  He seemed to think it would only take 3 hours or less to get through the airport.  I wasn't inclined to take his word for it.

Anyway, before long a scrum of people arrived to help me round the corner with my bags.  When we got to the taxi a heated argument developed as someone had decided to sit in it while it was parked there, presumably in the hope of getting a taxi.  They were soon ejected.

Eventually, we got going, and soon I was speeding past the roadside rubble on my way out of Delhi.  After we'd been going about 5 minutes the driver pulled up at the roadside, and turned the lights off.  He said to me 'I am toilet minute', which clearly meant he was going for a pee, but I thought it would have been funny if it was his name.  I didn't bother asking him why he didn't go before we left the hotel.

About half an hour later we arrived at the airport.  He asked me something I didn't understand, I gave him a tip I didn't understand, and off he went.

I had to show my passport to some army guy to even get through the bloody front door of the airport.  I found the British Airways bag drop desk.  It was pretty busy around there as the organisers of the world standing around championships seemed to have had some double booking snafu with the airlines.  I lost count of the number of people stood around in uniforms doing f all.

The bag drop was pretty straightforward, although I did have to go to a completely different part of the airport with a young Indian lad to drop the bike bag off.  Unsurprisingly, there's an immigration form to fill in to leave India, like there is to come in, but as usual they don't give you a pen, so I had to borrow one off this young lad, which after I'd filled it in led to a protracted game of finding him again to give him his pen back.  I daren't try and leave India with it, in case I violated some cross border pen transport treaty.

Easy part over, I then had to join the back of one of the massive queues waiting to get through the 40 or so immigration departure desks.  I probably went down the wrong funnel, but it's much harder than at Tesco, as you can't see what's going on at any of the queue fronts.

The next bit reminded me of Ghostbusters, namely 'not to cross the streams'.  All the queues were moving at a snail's pace, but the one I was in seemed to be especially slow.  And it was full of Germans.  If there is one nation which is confounded by Indian admin above all others, it is the Germans.  I don't know exactly how many people were in the queue ahead of me, but it must have been more than 50.  Each time it was someone's turn to face the inscrutable customs guys, it was like watching a qualifying heat at the world staring championships.  Whatever documents were handed over, it took an absolute age for them to be examined and stamped.

Some people in the queue were getting really restless as they were worried about missing flights.  I was pretty worried and I wasn't flying for 4 hours.  Then the Germans started kicking off at one of the queue masters, and saying things like 'I've been here an hour and the queue is hardly moving, this cannot go on'.  I think you'll find it can, I didn't say.  Eventually the pleading of the Germans led to our funnel getting an extra booth to go to, but no sooner had this extra booth been opened up to us, that one of the guys who was previously looking after our funnel went off for his tea break, so we still only had two inscrutables.

 After about another hour and a half of moving at glacial pace, I was second in the queue.  The girl in front of me, who looked Indian then had to spend about 10 minutes facing Mr Inscrutable.  She had given him about 10 separate documents to start with, but then she had to empty her rucksack out, presumably to find her bronze swimming certificate, or a note from her dentist or something, before she could get through.

When it was my turn I had three things.  My passport, my boarding pass and my immigration form.  Pretty straightforward you would think.  I wanted to say 'Look, I'm a foreigner, I don't belong here, I've got a valid passport and visa, I'm booked on a flight out of here, and I've filled in your immigration form to confirm that I'm not smuggling live chickens or rocket launchers, please let me go'.  It took an absolute eternity for him to stamp my passport and boarding pass, I was thinking of those people in England who think it's ridiculous when it takes longer than 5 minutes queuing to pay for stuff at Wilkos.  Let them give India a try, I thought.

After that guy let me go, I was into the security queue.  Another half an hour to get to the front of that.  By this point, the people who were likely to miss their flights because they'd been snarled up in the queuing system were starting to get fished out by the various airline staff.  It was like a cross between those fishing stalls at the funfair and the end of Titanic seeing people in uniforms desperately trying to pull people out of the snarl up to get them onto their planes.

I had to put my metal items in a box, for which I was given one of a pair of table tennis paddles with a number on and then I had to get patted down by an army guy, while I stood in a doorframe.  I haven't had much direct physical contact with anyone while in India, and I found it ironic that the most touched I've been by anyone has been by beggars or security personnel.  I got an even more thorough all over pat down by this guy than I did at the Taj Mahal.  Thankfully, this time I wasn't carrying any polos.   

For some reason women don't get patted down in the same way.  They have to go off into a double sided changing room, where presumably they have to take their bras off or something.  I'm not really sure.

And then it was over, I'd been in the airport 3 and a half hours, but I was into the departure lounge.  Or so I thought.  Bearing in mind what I'd been through already, I then had another guy check all my documents and search me before I could even get into the departure gate.  He probably wanted to check I hadn't bought any more polos since the last checkpoint.

By the time I handed my boarding pass over, it was virtually unreadable from all the stamps it had on it.  I understood now why although they don't have milk shops at Connaught Place, they have roadside stalls selling rubber stamps.  Stamping shit is a national pastime.

I was really glad I never took that guy's offer of a bed for a couple of hours in the hotel.  I'd never have made the flight.  I was feeling pretty pissed off about the whole trying to get out of India experience, but then I thought about my time spent with Dean, and I thought what would we have done if we were still in it together, and I'm pretty sure we would have both laughed about it, so I decided to laugh too.

After the Kafkaesque check in experience, the flight was pretty uneventful for the most part. Although it was long, tedious and claustrophobic, I hadn't expected anything different.  Then 8 hours into it, when we got near Heathrow, the captain announced that we were going to be delayed landing in London because of snow and fog.  A half an hour delay, not too bad I thought.  Not too bad, until he came back on the air to tell us Heathrow was now completely closed, so we're off to Glasgow to refuel.

It may have been the pressure differences, but as we approached Glasgow I couldn't hear anything.  I couldn't hear anyone talking, but much worse than that, I couldn't hear any engines.  After years of watching Air Crash Investigation, I convinced myself that we were running on vapour and gliding to our deaths a few miles short of Glasgow airport.  I was more scared by this, than anything that had happened to me anywhere in India. 

We did eventually land, and thankfully not in the sea, or in central Glasgow, but on some tarmac, and I felt glad to be alive.  I really wanted to see Ruth and my friends again.  I haven't even worn my 'I can do India me' T-shirt yet.  I didn't want to wear it in the airport in case I got detained for sarcasm.

We spent about two hours on the tarmac in Glasgow, before the captain let us know that we would have to stay over in hotels in Glasgow on Sunday night.  Even if Heathrow had been open, the flight crew weren't allowed to work any longer so we were stuck.

I've only been to Glasgow twice before.  Both times at the start of cycling holidays.  Both times I've felt pretty nervous and intimidated there.  I'm not a fan of starting cycling trips in cities, and mostly Glasgow has been a place I've been very eager to leave.

Being able to get off a plane from Delhi after 12 hours with someone's seatback virtually pressed against my forehead, I felt an enormous sense of relief just to be walking around again.

And then one of the greatest feelings ever.  After two weeks of swimming in the quicksand of Indian bureaucracy, I got to walk past the massive queue of Indian passport holders waiting to enter Britain, and looking for pens to fill their immigration forms in, I showed my Golden Ticket British Passport to a smiley Scottish lady and 10 seconds later I was in.  No admin, no staring, just a wave and a smile and I was home.

Maybe it was the unfathomable two weeks spent pleading with Indians for the tiniest of concessions, maybe it was the thoughts of imminent death I'd had on the plane, but Glasgow airport and its environs felt like heaven on earth.  I got my baggage back, got directed to a hotel, checked into a hotel, asked about taxis and where to get money out, and my every request was met by a cheery smiling Scottish person who I could fully understand, and who could fully understand me.

After two weeks in the sun, I walked out into the grey Scottish day, took my first lungfulls of icy cold air, and even though I wasn't home yet, I felt at home again.

I checked into the Holiday Inn, well ahead of all the Indians on the flight who were still battling through immigration, I had a wonderful bath (my first one in two weeks), drank some tap water, made myself some coffee, charged my phone without having to lean on the plug like I had at Bhandari Swiss Cottages and generally marvelled at the facilities.

At first a night in the Holiday Inn had seemed very welcome.  I hadn't slept on the plane so I thought I would probably just get a meal and sleep off the jet lag.  But after my bath I didn't feel sleepy anymore, so I went back to the airport for a walk and to check out the wonder emporium of available goods at the Tesco Extra.  I bought some Dairy Milk and Coca Cola and sat down for a bit, and enjoyed not being stared at.

It was still only around 2 in the afternoon.  Although I'd been travelling for what seemed like days, I'd gained 5 and a half hours due to the time difference, so it was still pretty early.  And then it dawned on me.  I'm in Scotland now, I know how stuff works.  I got some internet, checked out the train times and realised I could still get home tonight.  The massive snaking queue of British Airways passengers in the airport, the near death experience I'd had on the flight to Glasgow, and the confidence I'd gained from two weeks doing crazy shit in the most bonkers place I've ever been all contributed to a feeling of wanting to take my life back from the airline.  I'm not one of those poor Indians trying to get connecting flights, I'm British, I'm less than 300 miles from home, and I know how this shit works.

So I bought £3 worth of coin operated internet time, I bought myself a ticket on trainline.com, I wrote down the booking reference, I left my very pleasant Holiday Inn room behind, I walked past the still massive snaking British Airways queue, I got the shuttle bus to the train station, I lugged my bike, suitcase and rucksack through the streets of Glasgow for a bit, I collected my tickets, I got on my train to Darlington, I got Ruth to pick me up and I came home.  Ruth made me a pizza, I drank tea from my own cups and I slept in my own bed.

I woke up this morning in my own bed, Ruth was there, she made me some coffee while I looked out of the window at the snow, and I said to her.

'I had the most amazing dream.  I dreamt I went to India to meet Dean and I took my bike with me.  It was the strangest place I'd ever been, it was sunny every day, everyone spoke English but no-one understood it, there was rubble everywhere, no-one ever brought me anything I asked for, I had to fend off beggars, touts and tuktuk drivers in the street, I went to the Taj Mahal and got my polos confiscated, I saw people and dogs sleeping in the street, I couldn't tell what anything was, or what anyone was doing, I got sunburnt in January in Rishikesh, which was full of unsmiling national stereotypes wearing clothes made from old curtains and with tea cosies on their heads, I nearly died in a plane crash and then I went to Glasgow, which was full of magical helpful Scottish people, who helped me find the way home'. 

And then she told me something that completely took me by surprise.

She told me it wasn't a dream. 

The Taj Mahal - Worth seeing but not worth going to see

For reasons too dull to go into, the only way to get to the Taj Mahal before I left for home was to hire a taxi leaving at 7 am this morning to get there.

It's about 150 miles each way, so I thought maybe 3 hours each way.  In the event it took about 10 hours in total.

We passed a few toll booths, and tourist tax booths on the way.  At one someone tried to get me to have my photo taken with a monkey on a stick.  He also had a noose round his neck.  Yeah, sure I didn't shout, I'll pay you to have my photo taken with the saddest looking monkey in the world, right before I blow my own head off.  What I did shout to him through the window was two things.  One.  I've already had my photo taken with loads of monkeys up at Rishikesh, so what you're peddling is hardly original, and Two, why don't you let the monkey go, he looks miserable.

Halfway to Agra we stopped at a service station that was in many ways similar to one of our own.  Totally overpriced food, a load of shite for sale in the doorway, and some overzealous toilet cleaning going on.  Where it differed from our own brand of service station was in the monkey on a string wearing lipstick outside the main entrance.

Indian roads have lost their ability to shock me now.  Nothing I see out the window comes as a surprise.  Overturned lorries, lorries run aground, a man carrying a doorframe on the back of a motorbike, it all just blends into one.

After 5 hours in a car and a visit to a shit service station, meeting our tour guide didn't improve our mood much.  He got into the car on the outskirts of Agra, and he annoyed me from the start by telling me I wasn't allowed to take guidebooks or food into the Taj.  Then he went on to say, as if we were in the middle of a war zone, not to talk to anyone but him once we were out of the car.  Bloody hell, I thought, it's the Taj Mahal, we're not trying to do a bank job.

The area round the Taj Mahal looked just about the least scary place I've been in India.  It was mostly foreign tourists and a few kids selling crap.  Didn't he realise that at six o'clock yesterday I was trapped down an alley about as wide as my head in Delhi between a man towing a trailer full of bricks, a woman doing her washing, a pack of dogs and some kids playing badminton?

For some reason we had to stand around waiting while he went off to buy our tickets, and then he gave us a bottle of water each, and gestured for us to sit on an oversized golf cart.  How far is it? Dean said.  1 kilometre, he said.  Can't we just walk it?  No, it's included in the price.  So we waited about 10 minutes for the golf trolley to take us 400 metres and then we had to walk the other 600 metres anyway.  In the golf trolley was a poster with about 40 things on you're not allowed to do or bring into the Taj Mahal.  Am I allowed to photograph the sign I asked the guide?  He didn't find this funny.

Then we got frisked head to foot by some Indian soldier guys.  I had to empty out every pocket.  Camera, phone, eyedrops okay.  Two thirds of a pack of polo mints not okay.  Dean got six sugar lumps confiscated too.  Bloody hell, did he think we were going to bomb the crap out of the Taj Mahal with a mixture of sugar and sugar free mints?

Then about 100 yards from the entrance we encountered a man selling photos of the Taj Mahal.  Of all the places in India to stand, why did he pick here?  I said to him, I don't need a picture, it's over there, and I also thought about saying 'Haven't you got any with me in?' but I didn't.

The 5 hour car journey, being told to be afraid by the guide, the 400 metre golf trolley ride, the having my polos nicked and then someone trying to sell me photos of something I could see was all putting me in a bad mood.

More or less as soon as we were in the Taj Mahal, and not even in the white bit of it, that everybody knows, just the red outer part, the tour guide started rattling off a load of facts in an incoherent accent.  Then he asked us how many domes were on the top of the entrance?  Dean kept looking the other way, and I was thinking 'What the fuck is this, a quiz?'  As it happened there were loads of domes and I thought, there's no way I'm counting them.  He got quite agitated and asked us again, how many domes?.  Dean said something about just wanting to have a look at the thing, and I said I didn't know there was going to be a quiz.

Seemingly thinking he'd frightened us with his 'Trust no one' speech, he then said words to the effect of 'Look, do you want a tour guide or not?'.  No, not really, we said.  He seemed a bit deflated by this, and we agreed to meet up with him in a couple of hours.  We wouldn't have the benefit of our guide books as we weren't allowed to bring them in, nor would we have the benefit of his incoherent ramblings, so we'd just have to make do with looking at stuff, and remembering stuff we'd read before we were allowed in.  It was a bit like taking an exam in school. 

The white bit of the Taj Mahal was pretty good, but the mood was continually being ruined by some guys with whistles who seemed like hyperactive referees blowing up for any perceived violation of the million and one rules.

We took loads of pictures, and we got as close as we could to the Diana chair but there was a massive scrum of people trying to get near it, so we just got as close as we could and took a picture that wasn't exactly what we wanted, but it was a picture.  That's India for you.

We met the deflated tour guide at 2 pm, his earlier concern for our welfare seemed to have evaporated.  He walked us back to our taxi through a gauntlet of tat selling children.  He probably thought this would worry me, but after a couple of weeks in Delhi this was nothing.

On the way back we stopped again at another bonkers service station.  This time a man with a sword opened the door for us, and this time he had a performing girl instead of a monkey.  I bottled going to the toilet because the attendant was so keen I couldn't even go near him, or the toilets.  There are things in India I can't handle, but picking up my own soap and hand towels is one of the skills I've pretty much mastered without the aid of someone handing them to me for money.

The car journey back to Delhi went on for ages, we laughed about the day, and the driver backed up our decision to go all in the one day by saying that although Agra has nice buildings, it's otherwise a heap of crap that's best to get in and out of as soon as possible.

I felt really grateful today that this two weeks has gone the way it has.  I think if you're a tourist here and you don't cycle, you just go from aeroplane to taxi to hotel to car to bonkers service station to tourist attraction and back, and you're in a cocoon and you don't get to see the bits in between.

Trying to buy cheese and coffee from a tennis ball and tampon shop on the road to Meerut, and cycling through people's back gardens are not on the well trodden tourist trail, but they give you a real sense of real Indians doing real things, and they're not just little snapshots seen from a car window.

Dean quoted Samuel Johnson today, and he said about the Taj Mahal.  Worth seeing but not worth going to see.  I have to agree.  If I'd known what the day was going to be like, I probably wouldn't have gone through with it.  Having said that, I'm glad we've been.  I've got some pictures with me and the Taj Mahal in, and that was pretty much all I wanted from the day.

Fawlty Towers - Part Two - Manuel's Revenge

Another day of not having a clue what's going on.  Seen some monkeys and had a dip in the Ganges, but didn't feel any different afterwards.  Not sure I was doing it right though.  A couple of Indian guys were getting well stuck in, one had brought his own pot to pour it all over himself.  I was happy with just up to the ankles thank you.

After getting sick of riding yesterday, I was soon sick of walking again today.  Tried to walk into Rishikesh but was stopped every couple of minutes by autorickshaw drivers wanting us to hire them.  We walked over a nice bridge onto the other quieter bank of the Ganges, and tried to sit down and get a bit of peace, but some map selling guy wanted to offer us about 50 different things.  Each time we said no, he offered us something else.  He didn't realise we didn't want anything at all.  In the end, we had to go into the Ganges to shake him off.  We had a quick dip but didn't feel any miraculous transformation.  We were watching some Indians do it, and wondered what they were getting out of it.

After getting out of the Ganges a child showed us some drawings and we weren't sure if he was selling them or just showing off.  I sat down next to some monkeys fighting, took a few photos of them and felt slightly apprehensive about only having 1 out of 3 rabies shots.  Dean took some pictures of me next to the bridge and on reflection I look like one of the Men in Black.  A lot of the Westerners we've seen round here are dressed up in Indian style clothing.  I'm not sure for what purpose, but if I try to do that I'd look like a right idiot, so I'm happy to stick out like a sore thumb.  I don't even know what a kaftan is.

Dean needed to get some money out and we eventually found an ATM set back a little from the noisy street and next door there was a restaurant so we went in there for a late breakfast (it was about 1 pm).  We'd already had porridge and coffee but partly it was just to get behind some glass for a while.

It was another Fawlty Towers job.  Dean asked for a continental breakfast including coffee and I asked for porridge and coffee.  Dean wanted some jam, and he asked what flavours they did, and all they could tell us was that it had fruit in.  After a pause the waiter came back and told me there was no porridge.  He seemed really keen for both of us to have buttered toast and it may be that most of the menu was unavailable.  Dean was brought cornflakes with hot milk and buttered toast and no coffee and I got the buttered toast the guy really wanted me to have.  When I had started eating the toast he came back to ask me how the porridge was, which made both of us laugh, and helped me relax a bit into the day.  It reminded me of the bit of Dinnerladies where a shirty customer wants Tuna and they only have Tuna and Sweetcorn and Victoria Wood tells her customer.  'Look, you've ordered a meal, we've given you a meal, it's not a perfect meal, but it's not a perfect world, so just go sit down and deal with it'.

So we laughed a bit and gave the young lad a 30 rupee tip on a 170 rupee bill, which was still less than 3 quid and we went away feeling grateful for having had a meal, and for getting out of the noise for a bit.  We walked back up the hill partway and I felt less claustrophobic than on the way down, and we caught a rickshaw part of the way, in the company of a man who had a big barrel with him, which we joked might have been depleted Uranium, and we laughed at this place we're in which is supposed to be so full of peace and relaxation, but is actually so full of noise and tat.

Dean said he thinks that peace is where you find it, and often it's found in quiet and solitude and we might go for a ride up into the hills tomorrow, to see if we can find some there, because it's difficult finding any here.  There seems to be a 5 minute rule in India which says that after you've sat minding your own business for 5 minutes somebody has to come up to you and try and convert you or sell you some shit.

We've even seen guys in orange robes losing their rag today.  A monk on a moped gave us an angry stare for not getting out of his way and a guy with a topknot punched a cow for trying to steal his lunch.  They didn't look like they were being one with everything.  To be honest I don't want to be one with everything out here either.  Some of it is just plain nuts.

The most one with everything I've felt on this trip is for periods on the bike, where I felt like an organic part of the traffic and the roads and I was in the moment and in tune with everything around me.  Being a pedestrian has been a lot harder as it's often been a case of saying no to people or ignoring them altogether.  The maps this guy were offering us earlier looked like total crap anyway.

Anyway, we're off to do some yoga in about half an hour.  We'll probably be like the naughty kids at the back of the class at school who just laugh and don't know what's going on, but we thought we should give something a try since we've come to this supposed spiritual centre.

I'll let you know how it goes.


PS.  In true Indian fashion, the scheduled 5 pm yoga class had been cancelled.  We followed the direction signs for the yoga hall but a small Indian boy playing with some lego told us that it's only on in the mornings, and so to come back tomorrow.

Roorkee to Rishikesh - Aversion Therapy

This morning I started to worry about cycling in India.  When I'd observed the traffic here out of a car, a tuk tuk or a rickshaw, it just looked bonkers and dangerous.

After two days actual riding, I'd become completely desensitised to danger.  Things that at home would be classed as a near miss, and would leave me feeling alarmed happen to me every minute over here.  A truck missing me by a couple of inches seems good enough.

Too much driving and riding at home becomes automatic, and you can easily switch off but here no.  You have to pay attention the whole time, and if something nuts happens, or if you see something nuts, there's no point in trying to tell Dean, because while you're telling him, something even more nuts will happen.

Yesterday I overtook a crane on the inside in a scene reminiscent of Terminator 3, and I felt fine.  At one point I tried to follow Dean in between two trucks and the gap between them starting disappearing from a small V into nothing so I just calmly backed out of there.

This morning we had 42 miles to go to Rishikesh and it turned out to be all on single carriageway, and as far as Haridwar it was the same as yesterday.  Totally flat, with no signs, lots of crisps on sale, but no proper shops, unless you want to buy lumps of metal, sticks or bricks.

When we reached Haridwar we finally saw the Ganges and some of the heavy traffic tailed off into the town.

As we got closer to Rishikesh it started to look a lot more touristy, there were hotels, and the Indians we could see were dressed very much like Westerners, and there was a lot of kite flying going on.  And we started to see shops with things in them that you could buy, and we started to pass some internet cafes and then we went down a hill into Rishikesh itself, and it was manic and there was some sort of parade going on.

We went down to the banks of the Ganges, and it seemed altogether more tranquil, but we really wanted to stay at Bandari Swiss Cottages, and we had a lot of disorientation and we had a lot of trouble finding it.  After about an hour we took about our tenth wrong turn, and we passed a lady clearing rubbish from the roadside, who shouted 'Oh, Well Done!' at us.  She was obviously English and so I went back to talk to her and ask her for directions.  And she was lovely, she was called Lorna and she spends our winters in India and our summers running a youth hostel on the Isle of Islay in Scotland.  And she told us that it's quite normal to feel overwhelmed after only a few days in India and she seemed pretty impressed with what we'd done so far in only a week.

She told us to get ourselves down and have a dip in the Ganges and all our stresses will melt away.  And she also told us to relax into our stress, and we'd soon start to enjoy ourselves.  It was good news, and it was lovely to talk to another English person after being a stranger in a strange land for so long.

We found our accommodation shortly after, and it's cheap and on a beautiful hillside, and surprise, surprise it has a double bed.  And it has monkeys swinging through the trees outside the balcony, and birds I've never seen before.  And internet access.  So I'm catching up with my blog, and it feels good to be able to unload after such a bonkers three days.  But I made it from Delhi to Rishikesh, on a bike.  153 miles of craziness like you wouldn't believe but I'm here, and now it's time to relax.

Meerut to Roorkee - Welcome to the Twilight Zone

We didn't hang about in the hotel in Meerut on Friday morning.  We had a long way to go, and we didn't want to get more abuse by trying to get breakfast, so we cleared off.

Cycling-wise the first 30 miles after Meerut went pretty smoothly.  Not long after we set off we met a couple of cyclists on road bikes, one of them who races for a professional team in India.  He invited us back to his house for a bit, but we decided we'd better press on, as we had a long way to go.

It was dual carriageway all the way, and at one point I said that I preferred it to cycling in England.  The roads were wide with not much on, and apart from the odd cow or motorbike coming the wrong way down the road at you, the cycling was pretty relaxed.  At one point we joined a toll road, and this really seemed to thin the traffic out for a while.

However, the world outside the road was another matter.  One of the main problems I'm having with India is that I don't know what anything is, and I don't understand what anyone is doing.  We rode past mile after mile of rubble, dust and people but I couldn't tell if we were looking at houses, shops, restaurants, garages or what.  Lots of places sell pop and crisps, which are hanging outside, but there are no signs to tell you where you can buy anything else.

Unlike in Delhi where I was constantly being pestered by people wanting me to go with them, in the more rural areas outside the city we just got stared at a lot.  Some people waved and said hello, and a lot of motorcyclists pulled up alongside and stopped to chat and shake our hands.  One guy was really impressed that I was wearing short sleeves, but I told him this is as hot as it ever gets in England.  Dean said all the staring was good practice for having one of those type of job interviews where they try and provoke and unsettle you.

We did stop after the first couple of hours and buy some pop and crisps, and it seemed ironic to me that junk food that we try not to feed our children, is the only stuff you can buy at times over here.

Dean had wanted to stock up early on more coffee, porridge and some other essentials but I thought we'd pass somewhere on the way, so I wasn't too worried.  The road from Meerut turned out to be like one really big service station.  Millions of eating places with hot food in tubs, and lots of places selling crisps, but nowhere to buy stuff to cook yourself.  Or if there was, we couldn't tell.  There was lots of advertisiing on buildings, but it wasn't advertising things that were in that building.  We did stop at one place that looked like a shop, but it only seemed to sell tennis balls, and really small cardboard boxes, which could have had anything in.  We asked them where we could buy coffee and they told us to go 8 kilometres back where we'd come from.  They didn't seem to understand we didn't want a coffee, we wanted to buy some.

During the day we passed an overturned truck in a bag, a man blocking all four lanes carrying about 20 metres of pipes on a cycle rickshaw, as well as a million others things too mental to have even have absorbed.  We went past a metal bashing shop, a tree bashing shop, saw a boy eating a tree while he was listening to music on his phone.  There was too much to take in.

But the inability to buy anything was really starting to wear us down.  Then mental became mental squared as the toll road ran out and we were suddenly on single carriageway road.  Instead of just having to worry about cows and motorbikes coming the wrong way down the inside, we now starting having to dodge trucks and buses which were on our side of the road trying to overtake other slow vehicles coming the other way.  The hard shoulder was all mud and rubble but at times we had to swerve onto it to get out of the way of bigger things.

Eventually we found a building that looked like a supermarket, and went in.  It was like a supermarket inside as well except for the fact that the shelves were mostly bare.  There were about 7 shelving units, and 3 of them were full of crips and snacks.  After getting a taste for Indian crisps earlier in the day I picked up a few more bags of these but the shopkeeper pointed to a sign telling me that they were all out of date.  I tried to ask him where the non out of date crisps were, but he didn't seem to have any.  I was impressed to see that they had a computerised till but it didn't work, and every price had to be worked out manually.  Dean got some coffee although only a couple of small packets and we got some biscuits.  We also bought something that vaguely resembled pasta, but we couldn't find any porridge.

Although it meant doing 71 miles in a day to get to Roorkee, it was totally flat, so we kept up a good average speed, and on the outskirts of Roorkee we started to see adverts for hotels.  After 40 miles of only seeing shacks and rubble, and not really seeing anywhere unpopulated enough to camp, it was quite a relief to see a hotel.

We pulled in to the Hotel Godiwari and went to see the receptionist.  He was very friendly and spoke quite good English.  Again we asked for single beds, only to be shown a room with a double again.  It was up about 4 flights of stairs and again we couldn't be bothered going out looking for something else, so Dean once again got us a discount, this time down from 1200 to 1000 rupees.  Then a whole team of people surrounded us, at first I thought they were passers by, but eventually I realised they worked there, and they helped us inside with our bikes and bags.  Two of them hung around for ages in the room making conversation, I gave one of them a tip and after a while they cleared off. Again the receptionist had asked for our passport, but this time he did return it as promised, and he also gave us bottled water and some milk to make some coffee.  Half the price of Fawlty Towers and already a better experience.

We went for a meal in the restaurant and it was cheap and delicious (Paneer Butter Massala) with some Butter Nan and the service was good, and the staff genuinely seemed interested and wanting to make sure that we enjoyed our stay.  I left them a 110 rupee tip, partly because there were so many of them I thought it wouldn't work out at much each.  Then we went for a beer in the bar upstairs, which did actually exist, unlike the bar in Meerut, which was a figment of someone's imaginiation.

A bizarre day, but a good one.

Delhi to Meerut - 42 miles - My first attempt at cycling in India

After 3 days in Delhi I was more afraid of Delhi than I was of putting my bike together and getting the hell out of there.  I'd started to think that the constant 'Good Morning Sirs' of the hotel staff were actually 'Oh No, Not You Agains'.  I built my bike on Thursday morning, and then I attempted to check out.

This turned into an admin tangle of epic proportions.  I had to pay my room bill on one bill, I had to pay to store my bike bag on another and settle the minibar bill on a third one.

For 3 days there had been someone outside my room every time I left it asking me if I was checking out.  The day I actually did want to check out there was no one around so I lugged my own bike and three panniers down the stairs to reception.  The hotel staff then crowded round my bike saying things like 'Wow, gears', and generally being astounded by its technological advancement.

As soon as I left the hotel I felt better.  Being on a bike was actually easier than being a pedestrian.  For a start no-one could offer me postcards or to sell me weed, and also I already had a form of transport so I didn't need to hire one, which kept the tuktuk drivers at bay.

I realised straightaway that the best thing to do in the city was pick someone and follow them, and the streets are so crowded there's always someone going your way.  When they peel off, you just follow someone else.

I picked up Dean and we headed out of Delhi.  We had a few wrong turns, one of which involved cycling across twelve lanes of traffic, but I soon realised, if there isn't a gap, you have to make one.  The movement of traffic is very fluid, and most people if they see you, will let you go.

We had a nice chat with some Indian soldiers and they confirmed that we were going the right way.  The army seem to operate in threes over here.  There's a talkative one with a name badge who's the boss, a younger one who chips in the odd words and then a silent stary one with a machine gun over his shoulder who just looks menacing.  They shook our hands and wished us well, except for the mad starey one who just stared.

The cycling was actually good fun at this point.  There were so many categories of vehicle and we were in the top half speed wise.  We were faster than pedestrians, rickshaws, other cyclists, horse drawn vehicles, cow drawn vehicles, some of the tuktuks and some of the mopeds.  There was no such thing as riding in a straight line, it's all weaving, but you have to live in the moment, and despite the odd vehicle or cow coming towards you on the wrong side of the road, it's quite fluid and it works.

Mostly there's a hierarchy, and mostly people ride or drive on the left, but nothing is certain.  The horn isn't used to sound alarm, it's used to say "I'm here!', and the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the horn.  Most of the cars don't have wing mirrors, but there's generally no need to look behind you, because you can tell the size of the approaching thing by the horn sound.  The buses and trucks have the biggest horns and if one of those goes off next to you, it's like an atom bomb going off next to your head.  

I'd expected it to get quite rural once we got out of Delhi, but it was people all the way to Meerut.  We hardly saw a field, it was just wall to wall people.

It was all dual carriageway or wider for the whole first day's ride, to Meerut.  We hadn't set off till lunchtime, so when it got to about 5 o'clock we thought we should probably stop.  We hadn't really understood the scale of the map so we were thinking Meerut would be a small town.  It is compared to Delhi, but it's actually probably about the same size as the whole of Leeds, so riding into it to look for somewhere to stay could have taken hours.  We passed a place at the roadside, the largest place we'd seen so far.  It was called The Big Bite Food Resort, and there was a very colourful Indian party going on there. 

We went in and enquired about a room.  About half an hour later and after having to walk about a mile around the complex, they showed us a room.  It wasn't bad, but it was the same price as the one in Delhi and it seemed to have nothing actually working in it, including the TV and the wifi.  Also, it had a double bed rather than the twin beds we'd asked for.  Dean managed to get 10% off the price for this, and the bed looked pretty wide, in fact wide enough for three, so I was confident there wouldn't be any accidental crossovers.  We couldn't be bothered to spend another half an hour backing out of the place, so we took the room.  The rate was 2300 rupees which is about 30 quid, and on reflection it was crap value for money. The receptionist insisted on payment up front, and he also insisted on taking our passports for photocopying.  On reflection the Big Bite part of the name probably refers to the big bite the place takes out of your wallet.  It should probably be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act, if they have one in India, because it barely qualifies as a resort either.  A more accurate name for the place might have been the Small Bite Shithole. 

The hotel turned out to have been modelled on Fawlty Towers, except without the politeness. We went for a meal in the food court.  A young man tried to take out order, but as soon as he had started to write it down, another much ruder man came over and demanded to know what we wanted. When I said we needed more time to decide, he claimed not to understand what I was saying although his English was otherwise pretty good.  Under pressure I tried to order a something massala but he told me that was no good because it was gravy, so I ordered chicken curry and rice.  When it came, I'm not certain it was chicken because the joints that were in the sauce didn't look like joints I've ever seen on a chicken, but I ate it anyway, the sauce wasn't bad.

I gave the younger first waiter quite a big tip with the bill, partly to annoy the second waiter and off we went.  

A nice surprise when we got back to the room was a phone call from Ruth and Stephen, although Ruth took some persuading to believe that I was actually doing stuff over here, and not just hiding in the room.

The truth is, I've hardly stopped doing stuff since I got here.  And even before I set off from England I felt like I hadn't stopped doing stuff for about 10 days before that.  With the visa, and the travel arrangements, and the putting the bike together arrangements, then the flight over here, the hanging round in the airport looking for stuff, the crazy ride to the hotel, meeting Dean and Elsa, a day in Old Delhi, a day in New Delhi, and then putting the bike together and riding my bike here for a day, and all this without sleeping more than about 4 hours a night and not understanding from one minute to the next what the hell is going on, I feel like I've never stopped doing stuff.  As Dean said, there was more stuff I could have done, but it was mostly going on in the evenings, by which time I'd been overloaded to oblivion with so much sensory input during the day that I felt like my head was going to blow off anyway.  So I'm trying to break India down into manageable bite size chunks.  Not really succeeding, but trying.  

Delhi - Part 4

After the rickshaw incident last night, I'd retreated back into my comfort zone.  Dean went back to his own hotel last night so I woke up at 9.30 this morning by myself and thought 'Oh Shit, I'm in India'.

I went downstairs and saw the smiley girl on reception and managed to extend my hotel stay another night, and that helped ease the panic a bit.  Then I went and got some breakfast.  Yesterday I tried to control what I got for breakfast, but today I just let them bring me what they thought I needed, which was an omelette and four coffees.

Looking out the window over breakfast, it was back to being a scary movie out there.  All my confidence seemed to have disappeared.  I texted Dean and then tried to ring him but his phone wasn't receiving.  By about 11 I'd changed some more money, and I looked out the window some more, and I thought 'If I don't go out of the hotel soon, I'll have to stay here forever'.

I knew the way to Connaught Place where the cafe and the mobile phone shop were, and I set off walking.  As soon as the doorman opened the door for me, I was out in the noise.  I was really apprehensive being on my own but I thought if I walked quickly and like I knew where I was going, no-one would bother me.

A young well dressed man approached me, and started walking alongside me, telling me he didn't want any money, he was a student and he just wanted to practice his English and he asked me loads of questions and tried to give me directions which I eventually ignored as I did actually know where I was going.

Pretty much as soon as he'd left me another well dressed young man approached me, and it was the same story.  A student, didn't want any money, practising his English.  He did guide me to the mobile phone shop, and then asked me if I wanted to buy any weed.  I said no thanks and he went on his way.

By the time I reached the coffee shop I felt like someone in a slasher movie who'd been running away from people for ages, and I was pleased to be back behind some glass.  I ordered a coffee and shortly after Dean phoned me and thankfully he was just next door in the mobile phone shop so I ordered him a coffee and then I felt a bit more secure.  Safety in numbers etc.

I'd decided after yesterday's claustrophobic end to the day, that I wanted to go somewhere with big open spaces so I persuaded Dean to go with me to New Delhi where the parliament buildings are.  We agreed a 100 rupee fare with a tuktuk driver and we asked him to drop us at India Gate.  He spent the whole bloody trip then telling us we didn't really want to go there because it was all shut and trying to get us to go on a magical mystery tour with him.  We got out near India gate and it was shut for Republic Day tomorrow and there were roadblocks everywhere and armed soldiers and police patrolling all the entrances, so we started to walk round the outside.

Tut tuk drivers kept pulling up and trying to persuade us to go with them, and one guy in particular stopped us about half a dozen times, and kept telling us there was no point in walking because everything was shut.  In the end I stopped telling people where we were going, and if they asked I just said 'Nowhere, we're staying right here'.  I was feeling stressed a) by the tuk tuk drivers and b) because this was my idea and it was turning out to be shit.  Anyway, after some more walking we arrived at India Gate and it was pretty spectacular and it stopped being shit and instead of having to tell tuk tuk drivers to piss off ourselves, the army kept moving them on, which made us think we weren't the only ones they were annoying.

We decided to head for a big Anglican cathedral, I think it's called Church of the Redemption but every road we went down to get to it was blocked off.  With the mosque yesterday a boy at the entrance had refused us entry, with the Christian church it was the whole army who were stopping us getting there.

As we got nearer the Parliament buildings the roads got quieter, we stopped at a roadside tea stall and had some delicious tea for 10 rupees each and then we started to feel the benefit of the closed roads as the incessant pestering by tuk tuk drivers got a lot less frequent.  We were followed for a while by a girl about the same size as Harriet or Rosie who tried to sell us a biro and kept telling us she had no food, and at one point she held my hand but I just kept walking.  Normally at home I'd get concerned if I saw a stray dog wandering around loose, but here I'm brushing off children as if they're not there.  To be honest she looked reasonably well clothed and fed, and besides I don't want a biro.

We then started to see the advantage of all the roadblocks as we got to some big impressive buildings and the roads were closed off so we got to wander around in the road.  It was a bit like being in the area around Buckingham palace but with no traffic around.  We messed about taking some photos and I started to feel better now I was getting some space.  I saw a couple from Calcutta and I offered to take a photograph of both of them together and this descended into 10 minutes of farce, where we discussed various group shot scenarios and no-one had a clue what was going on, but we did eventually take some pictures together.

Then we started walking back towards Connaught Place and stopped at a Sikh Temple (Bangla Sahid Temple).  We went in the tourists entrance, took our shoes and socks off and put a headscarf on which went the wind caught it made me look like a Smurf and went in.  It was very serene and we sat around for a bit, before a Sikh man came up and started talking to us.  At first he was purely informative but then he started to sound a bit political and like he was trying to convert us to Sikhism.  I was glad when he went away, as I was just starting to relax and I didn't feel like talking.

I asked Dean to take loads of photos of me inside the Temple, and I was joking with him that my photo album of this trip is going to be 'Jonathan looking terrified and uneasy at various locations in India'.

As we left the Temple two more tuktuk drivers came up and tried to get us to go with them, so out of sheer pig headedness I went and found one who was looking the other way having a break, and asked him to take us back.  They said something to him, which was probably along the lines of 'What have you got that we haven't?' but I felt like I was taking a tiny bit of control back by picking my own ride.  I'd had strangers accosting me all day telling me they know what's best for me, and where I should go, and for once I wanted to make my own decision.

We got back to the hotel at 5. I'd only been out 6 hours, but to be honest it felt like weeks.  For someone who can be a wallflower in social situations I'd felt assailed on all sides all day, and I was glad to get back in the hotel.  Dean made me a cup of tea in the room, using the kettle I'd never noticed was in there, and I laid on the bed for a bit, and felt pretty much wiped out from the day.

We went up to the rooftop terrace and had a drink, and I felt safe again and secure.  I feel like I can only take India in small doses and I was glad to have the hotel as a refuge from the craziness.  I can't stay here forever though, but I'm still adjusting to the sensory overload and the attention that comes with so obviously being a foreigner here.  I still don't feel like unpacking a bike, but I'd like to get to Rishikesh somehow, as it looks like it would be a lot more relaxed place to be than here.