Jamnagar, The Gujarat

Just moved a bit further down the line and this town is even quieter than the last, with the obvious exception of the traffic which is the same volume wherever you go.  It’s got some nice old buildings like a place in the middle of a lake and huge town gates with big spikes sticking out of them apparently to stop the enemy sending drunken elephants to smash them in.  That must have taken a few pints, though you do get pissed quicker drinking though a straw.

I spent most of my time strolling aimlessly about looking for things to do, which were few and far between.  Met lots of friendly people, seems the less there is to do the more friendly people are.  People would just pull up next to me on their motorbikes and give me a high speed tour of the city sights. One guy even took me to see his mum at work in the council office, not sure why, she didn’t speak english.   There was a really nice vegetable market hidden behind high circular walls so I went and passed a few hours with the grocers.  A friendly bunch, they bought me never ending cups of tea and fed me lots of strange looking vegetables, which can be amusing in any language.

That evening I turned on the TV and the headline news was that my street was flooded, despite me having walked down it in the dry just an hour ago.  Move fast these newsmen, weren’t wrong though.  Luckily it had all drained off by morning so I could escape to somewhere a bit more happening.

Thats all for now kids,

Monsoon Morley

Malaysian Lazin’ and Thai Train Japes

From Mumbai we took a 5-hr flight to Malaysia. After the dirty, crowded chaos of five months in India, it felt like we had flown straight into the future. Without any hassling, coercing or being ripped off, we got a bus to the train station, train to the centre and found a perfect guest house all in the space of an hour. The biggest culture clash was at the spotless, silent and completely empty train station. After the mini cities that take over Indian train stations for 24hrs a day, this felt like a space base.

We proceeded to spend the next 48hrs gorging on as much delicious and stomach settling food as possible, making full use of our location near Chinatown’s countless all night eateries. Then after interneting, stocking up on flip flops, shorts, bikinis, rum and peanuts we retreated to the paradise white sand beach islands of the Perenthians.

10 days of lying on beaches, swimming in the sea, drinking rum, listening to Bob Marley, eating freshly caught fish and scuba diving ensued. Highlights include: canoeing to an empty and completely unspoilt beach, (where I cracked open and drank a fresh coconut), running into six foot long monitor lizards that creep around the jungle interior of the island, scuba diving with turtles, sharks and thousands of brightly covered fish, and meeting a load of friendly scuba diving eggs in the process. After a five day course and five dives of various depths down to 20m, I gained a PADI open water diving qualification whoopawhoop!

After the Perenthians we took a coach across the country to make another quick stop in Penang (more Malaysian seafood eating fun). before starting an epic 3-day train journey up the length of Thailand to Laos. Unlike my sleeper-class train circumnavigation of India, this was easy peasy. Second class sleeper Thai trains are sheer luxury – much larger bunks, (four people in the same space eight people would be sleeping in India), bedding provided, with a man coming down the isles folding down and making all the beds with lightning-quick precision. Best of all there were dining carriages which served beers and three course Thai feasts. On the down side, the Thai version of my Indian train extravaganza documentary would have been awfully dull and smooth-running.
The highlight of our jaunt through Thailand’s rails was a bizarre night sleeping in a Catholic Boys’ School in Hat Yai. Wait No! I’ll explain…

The train from Penang over the Southern Thai border had broken down, so instead of waiting another day we jumped onto the next coach into Thailand from where we could hopefully catch another train. However the coach was caught in traffic and arrived in the Thai city of Hat Yai too late to catch a train to Bangkok. We stumbled around for about 20 mins, dazed and confused by the bright lights and sheer pinkness of Thailand when a young boy dressed in sports wear asked us if we had anywhere to stay. We said “no and thank you”, thinking he was a tout who will no doubt lead us to a over-priced commission-charging hotel, but after he kept saying “don’t worry I’m a priest” we thought we should go along with it. After walking with him for a while it became apparent that he was indeed a grown man, and that children all around kept stopping and bowing down to him with hands together. We turned a corner and entered a huge Catholic Boys’ School (2000 pupils). He announced, quite humbly “this is my school, I am the principal here. You are welcome to stay in our guest rooms.” We were dumbfounded and the room turned out to be a palace compared to the usual budget digs (complete with A/C, free bottled water, toothpaste, shampoo, etc), and of course there was no charge! We didn’t want to out stay our very kind welcome, so got up earlyish the next morning with the school assembly bell (and playing of the Thai National Anthem), then thanked him profusely and took a train to Bangkok. We couldn’t believe he was the same ‘young boy’ from the previous night, all dressed in white priests’ robes. He also took us to show some children playing basketball and said we are welcome to come back anytime if we’d like to teach English!

So, after another two trains and one night stopping over in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, we took a wooden boat taxi over the Mekhong River. We were transported back in time to the sleepy land of Laos. The adventure will continue sometime in the near future…………………………..

JONT OUT.

A farewell to Delhi, Caves of Wonder & MOOMBAI

Ahoy there mateys!

Jonny here. Yes, after a rather long and lazy abscence I have decided to continue with  the old blogalog-job. I’m currently sitting in an internet cafe in deepest, darkest Laos but before I tell you about the present I shall take you back to late July and the last week in our Delhi lodgings. After my triumphant return from circumnavigating India’s railways (The Overland Chapati Express), we (Kat and I)  spent a few days sorting things out in Delhi before setting off again. This included an exquisite afternoon tea sesh at the Imperial hotel, as well as roof-top drinking japes with the Hauz Khas crew:

After emotional farewells we made our way south towards Mumbai, but first stopping off for a couple of days to visit the mysterious Ajanta and Elora caves. These are a collection of ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples, painstakingly carved into the rock-face. Many of them remained undiscovered for hundreds of years, until a British hunting party chanced upon them during the Raj. In the above photo, Katherine reconstructs the facial reaction of those noble explorers after laying eyes upon centuries-forgotten wonders.

After the caves we jollied on down to Mumbai for a few days. We spent a lot of time stuffing ourselves with some of the nicest food we’ve had in all of India, but also managed to visit the carnivalesque food fest of Chowpatty beach. More like Chow-PARTY! I also did a walking tour of Mumbai’s largest slum, as featured in Slumdog Millionaire, which was surprisingly rather uplifting – 1 million people living in an area the size of Hyde Park, but they seemed to be merry, enterprising and getting along just swell.
We stayed in one of the surrealest guest houses yet experienced – as well as the usual collection of men living in Indian hotel receptions, this one included a man seated in the reception wearing dark glasses said “good morning sir” at all times of day every time anyone approached. On the way to and from our room we had to step over an elderly woman, crouching down chopping vegetables and attending to a small burner (she appeared to have nothing to do with the hotel). After about 10pm our room was locked off from the rest of the hotel by a gate with a small padlock, which we had to unlock if we needed the toilet.

Finally, four people warned us to keep our door locked at night as ‘men will sleep in the hall outside, and sometimes try to come in your room’ – luckily this never happened. It was in this guest house, in between monsoon downpours, that we wallowed in (fingers crossed) our last major bouts of Delhi-belly before leaving India… Wahaay! From Mumbai we jetted off to Kuala Lumpur to continue the adventure. Details of the South East Asian extravaganza tour to follow shortly…

Ahmedabad

Hey hey, ‘t’as been a while but thought another blogging effort was called for.  I’ve made up my mind to hit New Zealand after leaving these shores next month, so I decided to forsake my mountain refuge and head into the heart of the incoming monsoon as I’ll have plenty of mountains to play with later.

When I was heading to Ahmadabad, my first stop in the Gujarat, it still hadn’t rained yet so was not looking forward to the sweltering humid conditions on offer but luckily the monsoon arrived with me.  I’ve never seen people so happy to see rain, they were dancing in the street in one of the heaviest downpours I have ever witnessed, it was like someone had turned on the proverbial taps.  From then on I got a drenching every day which cooled things down to a more pleasant level.

Gandhi was from the Gujarat and it shows in the relaxed temperament of the place, it is mostly vegetarian and it is the only dry state in India meaning there ain’t much in the way of night life.  The people I met were all very friendly, with all the shop keepers buying me drinks and pan.  On one of my wanders I somehow ended up in a backstreet factory for fake jeans with a small room stuffed with sowing machines another piled high with finished products.  All work ceased when I arrived and the factory floor turned into a Bollywood disco, they even gave me a free pair of jeans as a parting gift.

The staff at my hotel seemed a bit odd too, all the staff kept asking when I was leaving, even the lift boy asked me every morning and evening if I was checking out, I was the only guest so thought they would be more pleased to have a paying customer.  After I had told him for the 4th time I was not checking out today he started looking a bit frantic and followed me to my room.  When I opened the door he ran straight to my bathroom stood on the toilet and removed a half full bottle of whiskey from the suspended ceiling!  Everyone lost interest in my departure after that.

The city fort is a rambling old structure the downstairs of which is now a government office, but if you ask nicely they unlock the gates to the roof and let you explore.  I spent so long looking around the place that by the time I came to leave they had forgotten about me and locked me in.  I went back around and tried all the many different dark staircases and dingy passageways but every exit was bricked up or locked.  Finally I managed to attract the attention of one of my jailers to release me from incarceration.  Not the easiest places to break out of, forts.

Martin

Colonel Kashmir

Headed to Srinagar with some Korean’s I met in Dharmasala.  Good people to travel with, they take somany photos I can leave my camera behind.  We are staying in a boatmans house on a small island in Dal Lake,

Indian families are chaos.  On our first two nights the neighbors had a wedding which I was invited to attend.  There was much chanting, singing and dancing with the party lasting until 8am.  At one point they had a professional dancer so everybody sat around in a circle and watched, then somehow they persuaded me to go into the middle and have a 20 minute dance off with ever more extravagant moves ending in him picking me up spinning me around and thowing me to the ground, guess that means he won..

The best thing about staying in the boatmans house is that there is a small boat I can use whenever I like.  Very handy as most days there is a strike meaning no busses and an army enforced curfew meaning no walking.  Most people get around by boat which lends a very relaxed atmosphere to the place.  One day I was allowed to take his 20ft water ferry out, so filled it with his daughters and piloted it all the way to town about an hours paddle away. People were throwing rocks at the police though so we didn’t hang around too long.   Apparently it’s not always like this but the police have just killed a student so the locals are a bit roudy at the moment.

Met up with some friends from Dharmasala and went up into the mountains proper for a night, very beautiful but also freezing cold.  Instead of getting about by boat up here they canter round on sturdy little horses.  Weather was pretty foridable so didn’t vernture too far onto the mountain but the scenery was epic none the less.  Had to meet up with Jonny in Shimla so while every one else carried on up to Ladakh I took the stomach churning jeep ride back down south to the British Raj’s summer capital.

To Guppa,

Much Love,

Martin

Dharmasala

The heat finally got too much on the plains so I jumped onto the tourist trail and followed everybody up to Dharmasala in the Himalayan foothills, home to the Dalai Llama.  Seemed like I already knew most people in town when I arrived as everyone had headed up through Amritsar which was nice but made it hard to get out into the mountains as every few steps brought into view another familiar face.

After a few days managed to escape town for an evening wander up the hills and ran into a baba living in a small mountain side temple.  He lit a fire and made some chai, then discussed his spiritual quest till it got dark and I had to feel my way back off the mountain again.

The next day I set off to try and find a waterfall with a friend, we went the wrong way and ended up at a small village at 3000m, not bad considering I was still in flip flops.  Decided to try and find a less trodden route back down which mostly involved traversing shear shaley slopes, luckily a local hound accompanied us all the way to the bottom, showing all the hidden trails on the way.

The day after I joined a mountain cleaning expedition which, it turned out, was at the same place we went the day before.  The only difference was we had to carry a 500L water tank and 35kg metal stand up with us as they were to big for the donkeys to take, took us 6 hours to reach the top.  They were very excited to have someone who knew about concrete with them as they were mostly art students and social workers so I helped install it at the top.  The next day a group of us carried on up the mountain to stay in a cave between two glaciers, a further test for the flip flops as the path quickly turned into a steep boulder field.  It was pretty cold but we managed to get a good fire going and slept in a big heap to keep warm.

Best wishes,

Martin Marley-Morley

Mauks X)

Shiva temple

Room mate

Dalai Llamas temple

The cave men (and women)

Product placement

Sunset at Triund

View from cave

Leaving our cave

Ananpur Sahib – Turban Tastic

This place is just a sub note in the guide book but decided to come here on a whim, and what a whim it turned out to be.  The town is one of the holiest sites for Sikhs and has loads of huge glistening white temples which give the place the feel of Diney’s Aladdin.  This is added to by all the men having huge beards and turbans, and every man woman and child carrying a large curved dagger at all times.  The Sikhs are very proud of their warring traditions so many also carry around large swords, axes or spears in a casual manner.  Despite all these things this is the friendliest place I have ever been to, everybody wants to talk to me and get me sweets and tea, I cannot pay for anything in this town no matter how much I insist.

Another good aspects, especially after the expense of Chandigarh is that each Gurdwara (Sikh temple) has an attached palatial guest house where all rooms are free and cavernous eating halls which can easily dish out free food to 1000 people at once.  Lines of people from all walks of life from beggars to lawyers sit on the floor and eat the lentils and chapattis which are dished out 24 hours a day.   You can volunteer to wash up or dish out food as part of your religious duty so I spent a few hours in a chain of people washing dishes which helped stop me feeling to guilty about all the free things being forced upon me.

On the second day I walked to a  Hindu temple 15 miles away up in the mountains with a guy visiting from Delhi called Frank. The temple had a surreal feel because as the heat haze of the day set in the plains below vanished giving the impression it was floating in mid air. The site is sacred because of a small cave where a goddess is supposed to have hidden from a ghost who was hunting here.  To get to it you crawl down a small fissure in the rock just big enough for a person which ends in a tiny cave where 10 devotees at a time cram in to offer worship before untangling themselves and crawling back out.  After a little rest and eating in the Hindu free kitchen it was just the small matter of a 15 mile walk back to town in the midday heat.

The next day I was adopted by some of the street vendors who invited me to their house for dinner.  Me and Frank set off on their bicycles to buy some chicken and whiskey, but had to head 5km out of town as meat and alcohol are banned within the town limits.  Despite only having a small stall on wheels selling lime soda their house was really nice, Frank is a chef in Delhi so he made an amazing chicken curry and all the whiskey was soon disposed of.  Slept on the concrete floor which seemed nice and soft at the time.  The best thing about meeting them was that they gave me a turban and taught me how to tie it myself!  Now my quest for knowledge is complete.

I also spent several days as a cloak room attendant in the biggest Gurdwara with a my Sikh Aunty, Pandit little brother, Christian uncle (Frank) and deaf Muslim mate.  Think we should start some kind of movement.  Was a difficult place to leave, but eventually managed to say my goodbyes and head for the holiest place in a long list of Sikh holy places, Amritsar.

Raghead-Morley

Chandigarh – Wraggamorley Story

Now the lone adventurer sets forth and finds they city of his dreams, unfortunately dreams don’t come cheap.  This whole city was designed by the same dude who ‘did’ the Barbican in London.  His modernist concrete slabs are artfully hidden behind thousands of huge tress making this the greenest city I have ever been to.  There are no two ways about it this is just a nice place to be, the traffic speeds around outside large blocks of flats or shops inside which are large spaces of peace and harmony where all you can hear is the wind in the trees, the babble of voices and birds singing.  Makes a nice break from the oppressive noise and bustle of every other city in the country.  Unfortunately this is a consensus view so even the cheapest hotels are crazily expensive (12 pound a night!) so I left after a few days to save my pockets from being ravaged.

At one end of the city is the huge capital complex which houses the Punjabi senate and high court in futuristic 60’s styling.  I had to go though hours of security checks to have a look about, and even then I had an armed escort for some of my trip.  Well worth it though, the views from the top of the massive secretariat were stunning, even though it looks out directly over the city all you can see is a forest of trees, hardly a glimpse of concrete at all.  Wandering about the high court was quite cool too with the pomp of the judges and barristers marching about and the bustle of those waiting to give their case, you can even watch the disputes taking place in the court rooms.

Near by is a rock garden full of sculptures and model buildings all created from junk and old toilets, it starts off very small and gets bigger and bigger as you go through till by the end you feel like a dwarf.  The whole thing was made by an ex bus conductor in his back garden, something to do in your retirement I suppose.

The morning I was checking out of my hotel to leave I was accosted by an old Sikh in the lobby who insisted on presenting me with a Chandigarh postcard whilst being photographed by the receptionist in proper award ceremony style.  He then showed me a cheap place to eat near by and in another mock award ceremony he presented me with … a banana! more useful than a trophy I suppose. Sent off in style.

Moley Moley Morley

Weekend sight-seeing in Delhi

Even though we have settled in one place for a bit, there is still loads to do in Delhi that should keep us occupied at weekends. In the last week we have visited the towering Qu’tab Minar monument (where other tourists were more keen on taking photos of Kat than the actual tower), Gandhi’s house and the site of his assassination, the grand British-built parliament buildings of New Delhi, and the lotus-shaped Bahai Temple. We also caught up with Rohan for a film and dinner at his house on Sunday afternoon. On Sunday evening we had to get back in time for cricket at 9pm and so a crazy car ride through the mental evening traffic of Delhi ensued, getting lost several times and with his car overheating and refusing to start again upon getting home. Luckily, after cooling down again it worked and he got back ok.

Jonty

DELHI SIGHTS – Lotus Temple, Delhi parliament buildlings, Gandhi’s house & Qu’tab Minar

Ein kleines Haus in Hauz Khas Village

After several days of looking, Kat and I finally found the perfect place to stay for the next few months. A three-bedroom flat in Hauz Khas Village, South Delhi. We spent the first day or two, just wandering around and being amazed at what a hidden gem of Delhi we had discovered. Hauz Khas Village is a small residential area, surrounded by a massive park & forest, complete with ancient Mughal ruins, a scenic lake, and roaming deer and peacocks. It’s a short rickshaw ride away from central Delhi, yet feels like you have escaped to a small country village, with children playing in the narrow dusty streets, bicycles rattling past and fruit and vegetable sellers standing by their rickety wagons. The regular five-hour power cuts have given the place even more of an ‘olde-worlde’ charm, with us resorting to Rummikub and tea by candlelight on several occasions!

The people here are extremely friendly – our apartment block is filled with a mixture of twenty-something Internationals and Indians doing a range of jobs, such as journalists, photographers, political scientists and students. We’ve already become good friends with the four German’s living on our floor. Friday was an epic night of beer & German drinking games, Saturday night was pizzas and star-gazing on the building’s massive rooftop (the site of frequent 70-person parties… we await the next one!). Sunday was more beers and England’s triumphant Twenty20 World Cup final win over Austrailia (Woop! woop!), with me trying my best to explain the rules of the game to four Germans, a Spaniard and one Kat…

So, after two months of travelling I’m now looking forward to a few months, staying in one place. Kat’s weekdays are taken up with volunteering in a school for mentally disabled children. Her plan is to gain  speech therapy experience before applying to do a Masters course on the subject back in Blighty. I am getting underway with researching and planning my documentary which I hope to film in late June / early July. In my spare time I’ve applied to do some volunteer English teaching at a free school for Slum children. This starts tomorrow, so more about that when the time comes…

JONTY PANESAR

p.s. It’s very hot at the moment. Delhi is experiencing record highs for this time of year (45 degrees centigrade!) The Watson Lee family would not be amused.

HAUZ KHAS VILLAGE – Ruins, streets, rooftop & in da haus