Goan son

Compared to the rest of our travels Goa is a different kettle of seafood indeed. We arrive at clean and sandy Margoa station and take a rickshaw for an hour and a half to Palolem Beach. Once a deserted hippy hangout the crescent palm lined beach is ow slightly overpopulated by tree houses and beach huts and seafood restaurants of varying quality.

Palolem is very relaxed and very beautiful - it seems quite easy to get stuck here. Unsurprisingly, what with the white beach, lovely sea and cheap drinks we have done very little of any import - it really is who you meet here that provides interest rather than what you do.

Our first character is Christian the hyperactive tout who takes us to our first beach hut. "Full power!" he shouts, rather quixotically, as he greets me. He takes us into our hut and starts proudly showing us the amenities.

"Lights... full power!" he exclaims as he flicks on a five watt bulb.

"Luxuy fan... full power!!!" and on comes a creaking dusty old fan.

We move into the bathroom and he flushes the toilet... not a lot happens but still he remains undaunted "State of the art western toilet with flush... Full Power!!!"

And now the shower - a trickle of luke warm water... "Full power shower!! Full Power" he says, pleased with his joke.

We take the hut though and start to chill.

The first couple of days are spent sunbathing, eating seafood and body boarding - something you will know i am an expert at due to my ability and experience at surfing on the East Coast of Australia. Friends at first are few and far between - a couple of girls who are rather uninspiring. We start to get a bit worried as there seem to be a lot of louts who may have been better off sunning it in Magaluf rather than India but we try to hold back our snobbery and by the third night we meet some very interesting characters indeed.

First there are Mick and Danny two guys from Ilford, Essex who set up market stalls. We meet them at Cafe Del Mar and they are quite evidently off their faces. They tell us proudly that they have no insurance and no malaria tablets and that they have been risking their neck on scooters for the past couple of weeks. Nice boys though and Mick was a Spurs fan so I like him straight away.

From here we moved onto Another Essex guy called Cookie. He split up from his wife a month ago and after a particularly drunken night out found himself on a plane to India about to start a cross country motorbike rally. Him and 200 other suicide wannabe's had bought Enfields (old english motorbikes) and planned to race them from North Goa to the tip of India. This is a perilous feat with plenty of near-death experiences. Their photographer has broken his back and is now in hospital in Cochin for the next six weeks.

Finally we meet a guy from Liverpool whose name escapes me at the moment. He fixes you with a stare and answers your questions about five seconds after you ask them in that curious way that scousers over the age of fifty seem to do. As if they are about to deliver a Jimmy Tarbuck style one-liner or slag off a Manc. He is covered in tatoos on Penguins. When Jayne asks him about them he pauses for five seconds and then tells us his slightly unbelievable story.

Do you remember that just before Christmas a baby penguin called Toga was stolen from an Isle of Wight Zoo. The Zoo was appealing for his return as they didnt believe he could survive in the cold of Winter without his parents. He claimed that he was the thief and that he was travelling around the World on his 25,000 pound reward money.

A small bit of detective work, however, has proved him wrong. According to www.bbc.co.uk the penguin was stolen and never returned. Bad news for our scouse friend as he is clearly insane but good news for Toga's parents as they hatched another chick on the 23rd of February.

The next day we go to see a reggae concert by Graeme from UB40. He's not bad but seems to get in a mood and storm off stage. The plot thickens however when I go onto UB40's website.* No one called Graeme has ever played for the band. Our Graeme does however looks a lot like Astro, the bands MC (part Grime/part Lilt advert). Yet more research though reveals Astro's real name to be Terence Wilson. Strange.

Paranoia sets in - is anyone in Goa who they claim to be.

Then there are the Nepalese guys who run our shack who claim to be in a Nepalese Hip-Hop group. Are they really... how can i be sure?? - I know so little about Nepalese Hip-Hop?!!!

Anyway with these worrying tidings I probably should scarper.

There will be some more photos up pretty soon so stay glued - and not like a crappy prit-stick left in the sun.

Lots of love

James and Jayne xxxxx




*(with the immortal and perhaps fatal-for-the-street-cred intro... UB40 Band Members to Start Rover Raffle at Birmingham Children's Hospital. Apparently Konk the Clown will also be there to entertain the children. Further news on the site reveals that Ali Campbell the whiny lead singer would love to move into Drum And Bass despite being a superlative guitar player. Follow this link for lots of UB40 facts... http://www.ub40.co.uk/news/20050107a.php).

Some items in the Indian press

The Indian English language press is mesmerising - ranging from left wing broadsheets such as the Goan Gavind Times or the cheeky but fun tabloid the Bombay times.

Inevitably the news is littered with stories of horrific bus crashes, mass corruption, poverty and the faintly ridiculous. Despite this the press still seem to manage to put a brave face on it all.

A typical story might run a little like this;

"A protest was held today outside the offices of Gandhi Construction Ltd who were responsible due to corporate neglicence for the collapse of the local library which resulted in the deaths of a hundred school children.

The company had cut corners and not installed the correct girders. They had been found not guilty in court amid rumours of bribery and backhanders.

The vigil of course changed nothing but on the bright side the local village have started up a new book stall."

Some real stories from the press which seem completely alien to us include:

A man who bought a flat who was not allowed to live there with his family by the other tenants because his son had cerebral palsy - they thought he was clinically insane. (Bombay Times)

An astrologer was sentenced to 3 years in prison because he photoshopped a picture of himself and the prime minister and fooled his clients into believing he was the prime minister's personal sooth-sayer - despite living at the opposite end of the country.

An article determining whether you should go to the hospital if you break an ankle or whether to just rest it.

A bank that threatened to kidnap a debtor over an unpaid credit card bill for 150 quid.

A comparison of Gandhi and Tolstoy that concludes that Gandhi was spotless while Tolstoy was a syphillic, lechering brute. (not sure on my history here so unsure as to the validity of the argument).

A story about a judge who declares that all politicians involved in corruption should be hung from trees.

And some stories that are surprisingly like our own press:

A story about young doctors burning out - turning out and falling victim to "smoking uptake".

A million articles on how to avoid high blood pressure, obesity etc.

Suduko

Famous actor checks into rehab.

Fascinating - well I think so... one good thing for me is the extensive cricket coverage which seems to be written by people with a Phd for the game!

Cheers

James

Out for a Bombay Duck

We arrive in Bombay after an eighteen hour train journey and immediately get ripped off by a taxi driver who charges us about three times as much it should from the station to get to our hotel.

Our hotel is expensive by Indian standards - about 11 pounds a night. We enter its lurid pink corridors and are met by a middle aged Indian man standing completely still over a Hessian mat looking intently at the wall at the opposing end of the corridor. Thinking I had perhaps caught him in a moment of repose, I peeked out of our hotel room about fifteen minutes later and he was still there staring at the same wall. The other members of staff seem to be particularly unfriendly, and virtually clamber over me to get a sight of Jayne even when she is in her favourite Burka. I seriously think a mere sight of ankle with these boys would see them all needing a new pair of trousers.

Putting these initial problems aside we emerge into Bombays humid day. It is very unlike most Indian cities - no rickshaws or cows cluttering the roads; pavements, trees and so on. We go for a lovely meal in a place called Busaba which actually sells Beef. When I get the bill though I realise that Bombay comes at a price, everything is about twice the price here as it is elsewhere.

The young Indian's of Bombay are also very different from their peers in other parts of the country. They are a lot drunker for a start - a group of lads were earlier chanting the refrain "We are the champions of the world... and we'll keep on drinking to the end!!!" to the tune of the famous Queen song. We chat to them for a bit - their names are apparently Ashar, Fernandes and Shaun. Yes Shaun. We talk about working for call centres (which they all do) and music we like (a band called Stain'd are quite big - as are the Killers and Nirvana). I eventually start talking to Ashar, who seems the quietest and most thoughtful (although how this can be said of a man who has consumed about five pints of beer in forty minutes in 35 degrees celsius, im not sure), about Shiv Sena. Shiv Sena are a political group who propose a sort of fundementalist Hindi or Hindu state. The party has varying levels of popularity across India and are also linked to to the BJP another Hindu party that up until about three years ago had a majority in Parliament. They are also extremely blinkered when it comes to religions outside Hinduism. Both parties have been indicated in causing riots that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of muslim's and both seem to have quite shady pasts.

Ashar is very anti-Shiv Sena (the mayor of Bombay is currently Shiv Sena). They apparently banned Valentines Day because it is immoral (and not because its flogged to death by Hallmark et al either) and they are also responsible for the rash of confusing name changes accross India. Thereby - Bombay is now Mumbai, the main station Victoria Terminus is now rather awkwardly monikered Chatraphati Shivaji Terminus. Ashar, who seems fairly typical of the new urban, young elite (liberated and sprinkled with new found cash) - dislikes them very much - bemoaning any restriction of his freedom.

Unbeknownst to me, while I am talking politics with Ashar, Fernandes is smooth-talking Jayne. He reluctantly moves on though when Jayne tells him I am her boyfriend... I'll warn you now - sisters, cousins and friends of Jayne's there is a very drunk, call centre worker in Bombay who really wants to meet you!

Other Bombayites we see look straight out of an episode of Friends, all leather sofa's, intellectual glasses, linen trousers and glamorous girlfriends. One group we sit near in a posh restaurant, gently ribs an incoming friend with a low mocking roar as he approaches their table - they ruffle his hair and laugh as if he had done something rather embarassing last night. This is unusual behaviour indeed!

On the flip side though, the contrast between rich and poor here is at its greatest. There are a lot of child beggars, and mothers with malnourished babies asking desperately for milk. Sometimes you give, but it can mean you get mobbed by other beggars and other times you don't and then you feel awful. Despite not being the cause or the solution of the problem you can sometimes feel like a complete bastard.

Our first night out is in a travellers pub called Leopold's. The music is hip hop of the Kanye West variety (i.e. listening to me light my farts over a loudspeaker would be more pleasant), on my way to the toilet I am accosted by a large Hoochie Mama (my camp friend Michael's description not mine), perhaps a more politically correct way to put it would be a cross between Naomi Campbell and Dawn French with Whoopi Goldberg's hair, but that really isn't very politically correct either. I make, what I believe, to be a valiant attempt to strut my stuff with her but she soon loses interest and turns away making me look a bit like the fading Rugby player forced by his agent to do a celebrity dancing show. Flustered, I press through the crowded dancefloor and stand next to what I assume to be the "engaged" toilet door. I am slightly embarassed when a huge guy pushes past me opens the door and looks at me like I am a pervert when the room is shown to be empty!

We make our way home, a little tipsy and are slightly shocked to see our hotel owner still staring forlornly at the wall.

Next stop Goa where we will mainly be doing absolutely Sweet FA.

Take Care, love

Jayne and Jamesx

A picture of Jayne and I during the paint festival of Holi. The guy in the centre is our friend Balu.

Udapussy

The seminal Bond classic Octupussy was shot in Udaipur. It is a faintly ridiculous tale revolving around, circuses, Faberge Eggs, teams of sexy female smugglers dressed in red lycra catsuits and a nuclear bomb that may just may allow the Russians to overtake Western Europe.

All the cheap hotels here show the film at seven pm. Although in the hotel we watched it at the kitchen staff kept on turning our telly down and their radio up so we couldn't really hear it.

If we thought Jodhpur was beautiful - Udaipur trumps it. A serene lake surrounded by an impressive palace, , and some beautiful Haveli's. In the centre of the lake there is a floating palace - a picture of which Jayne has helpfully provided you with. This serenity was perhaps boosted by our dodgy start in the city.

After enduring a terrifying bus ride (overtaking on blind corners, bravely taking on huge lorries in games of chicken) we made our way to Badi Haveli, a hotel which according to our guidebook is delightful with a garden restaurant. We get into our room and its a shit heap, Jayne isn't feeling too well after the bus journey so I try to put a brave face on it and resolve to leave the next day. However, when we find out that our shower doesn't work and that the sink leaks and that they no longer have a restaurant we decide to move next door to a hotel that really did fit the bill of delightful. To top it off our friends Rich and Shona were staying there.

This turned out to be a big mistake as when we I informed the hotel owner that I wouldn't be staying because of the state of our room he went completely ballistic called us a "pair of fuckers" and Jayne a "stupid fucking woman". At one point after I laughed nervously he shoved a finger in my face and warned me of the "direst consequences". Well nothings happened yet.

The palaces are beautiful etc but I am sure you must be bored of such things by now so I'll skip straight to the Holi festivities.

Holi is one of the four major Indian festivals (Diwali, Dhussera, Holi and one whose name escapes me but involes sisters travelling to meet their brothers to give them a bracelet that will bring good luck). According to the elderly gentlemen weho is making me a tailor made suit for sixty quid (bargain!) the festivals were traditionally designated to each caste. The brother sister thing was for the Brahmins (top caste, nearly out of the circle of reincarnation, priestly types), Dhussera is for the Kyshatriyas (warriors and second from the top), Diwali is for the Veshu (merchants etc) and Holi is for the Lebud (labourers and the lowest caste). He warns Jayne and I to be careful as these "bloody vagabonds are drinking too much whiskey and feeling up the women".

As it turns out all the festivals are now celebrated by everyone in India. The first night in Holi involves huge bonfires filled with firecrackers all around the city. Once these are burned people rush to the temple to see dancing and so on and for the final burning. The dancing is done on a stage next to the temple and we are treated to a performance by the Hedran, a community of eunuchs and drag queens that come to events like these to dance and earn money, or beg for it - one or the tuther. After that they drag some reluctant western travellers onto the stage and make them dance to Lonely by Akon and an Indianised version of Firestarter by the Prodigy.

After this has finished they go to light the bonfire. Unfortunately one of the power cables behind JAyne and I catches fire - there is a power cut and a mad scramble to get out of the way of the fire. The fire is sson out though and we spend the next twenty minutes watching a little man with a pair of pliers and some marigolds shin up the pylon to restart the power. There is a great cheer when it comes back on and the bonfire is lit - this is the biggest one and the noise from the firecrackers is deafening. As Jayne mentioned, this would never be allowed in England as it seems that the whole place is just one misplaced firecracker away from complete incineration.

The next morning is the main part of festival (or at least the bit people look forward to). We descend to the streets to find that everyone is covered with luminous powder paint. The indian men come up to you smear paint on your head and then give you a hug and say Happy Holi. Some of the hugs that they give the women are a little over-amorous but people for the most part are very friendly. We start water bomb fights with local children and generally get covered with paint. By the end of it all we look like a couple of purple turds but it was great fun. Some groups of lads got a bit unruly but we were protected by the staff at our hotel and a young lad of eighteen called Balu.

When Holi dies down we play cricket with Balu and his little brothers. They are amazing... although I obviously play an obdurate innings full of grit and then get out playing the hook shot for four like all great English batsmen.

Udaipur is the first place in India that we have had a television so I have only just been introduced into the joys of Indian programming. The sitcoms are great, plenty of tripping on banana skins, canned laughter and suggestively raised eyebrows. The adverts for men are hopelessly unrealistic - portraying the average Indian guy as a nightclub crawling, womaniser whose girlfriend always wears a mini-dress reminiscent of Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies. My favourite adverts are for the Get Wet range of mens products. The hair gel apparently makes your hair turn into "maffia style!!!!". The advert for deodarant rather bizarrely involves two, White!??, adolescent boys queuing up for a blue movie. They are obviously worried about getting past the lady on the door but entrance her with a spray of their deodarant while sneaking past.

The best programme by far is one called "Champion Of Knowledge" - unfortunately this range of knowledge is restricted to cricket and besuited and bespectacled boys, paired up, compete for a top prize of about 120 pounds. The presenter is an Indian version of Lloyd Grossman. One of the competitors hobbies was actually "mathematical statistics" which even surprised Lloydy. Questions generally run in the form of:

Who scored the fourteenth run of the match when India played the West Indies on 24th April 1978. They almost always get the answer right and give eachother innapropriate high fives for each point they get. Easy questions get you a quick single, harder ones a four and super hard ones a humongous six! At the end of the show the winners are presented with an oversize cheque for ten thousand rupees (120 pound) which they have to give to their school. Considering the amopunt of bullying they must be about to receive its surely not worth it?

Anyway better go.. lots of love

James and Jayne xxx

The floating palace of Udaipur

We're currently in Udaipur "the most romantic city in Asia". It probably deserves the label as its such a beautiful place. Its centered around a lake surrounded by palaces and temples. This is a picture of the floating palace..,. now a very posh hotel. The closest James and I got to it was about 50 metres in a leaky pedalo.

Ramptart

So we arrive In Jodphur in darkness and take a rickshaw to our guesthouse. We are just about ready to collapse in bed after our nerve-wracking journey but deciding to have a beer and a bite to eat upstairs. Our hotel is in a Haveli - an old style of traditional Indian dwelling that was favoured by the reasonably well off before everything got trampled after partition or by blood-thirsty and ignorant clod-homping English sopldiers around the time of the Mutiny (1857). These building are dying out but are in many places preserved a hotels and guesthouses ranging vastly in quality. Yogi's where we were staying was about in the middle - quite comfortable but as with most hotels in India blessed with dubious plumbing.

The hotel is run by Yogi's son an ambitious young Indian who tells us that he wants to see his name on every coffee table in America. If he was in England he would seem a little stuck in the Eighties, a bit overly entrepreneurial, a yuppy perhaps. Quite a few of the Indian middle classes seem to have a similar attitude and there is a real sense of get up and go, the recent glut of foreign investment bring out he businessmen in many of the Punjabi's (and no thats not a racist term!).

Anyway, I digress. We reach the top of the Haveli and survey the view. It is spectacular - above us the imposing fort and in the other direction the lights of houses, temples and palaces stretch into the distance.

The view in the morning is equally spectacular. The fort is perhaps slightly more worrying at night but the town regales in a wash of bathroom blue. Many of the houses in Jodhpur are painted blue to ward off insects. At first this was the preserve of the Brahmins (the highest strata of indian society) but now anyone can do it. The town now looks like a chalky sea, choppy with the peopled roofs of crumbling Havelis.

We visit the Fort and so far it is easily the best "attraction" we have seen. You are given a useful audio guide as you meander around and soon you are taken into the intricate palce within the fort. The previous owners seemed very fond of stained glass windows and mirrors and the rooms reszerved for the ladies are particular fetching. After this we walked around the ramparts where you might feel like the safest soldier in the world. I really cannot imagine how anyone would have contemplated attacking this fort until at least the invention of the scud missile!

As we walk around the ramparts, Jayne, who is wearing a skirt that seems to take considerable pleasure in blowing skywards Marilyn Monroe style at the most unfortunate moments, noptices that we are being followed by three Indian men. Unfortunately stares and being followed are a favourite pastime of Indian men when it comes to western women. The whole country is quite sexually repressed, despite being able to buy the Kama Sutra in every bookshop you walk past. Sexuality is a little bit Carry On style - sometimes you half expect their eyes to bounce out on springs and for some Benny Hill throwback to make a fart noise.

Talking about eyes on springs, Michael, our American friend, told us another amusing story. He had made friends with an Indian guy who promised to take him to see some sacred stones which were supposed to resemble the first of all Hindu Gods, the elephant Ganesh. When he got there he found an old stoned priests wearing RayBans, laughing to himself as he sat next to a big rock with googly eyes on stalks and a hose for a nose. Hinduism is quite easisly the most amusing religion i have ever come across.

Most Hindu god's seemed to have a favourite form of transport - Ganesh travels on a tiny mouse and according to the picture in my hotel room Vishnu prefers an overweight pigeon. I have to admit to being slightly non-plussed about the basic set up of things so Jayne and I were quite pleased to hear some of the Religion's stories one night.

On our final night in Jodhpur there was a lightning storm - the great hawks that circled the castle were initially nowhere to be seen as the clouds closed in and then there was a crack of thunder and torrential rain for about two hours. When it rains in Jodhpur they turn the electricity off as some poor guy got killed last year while holding onto a cable at the same time as standing in a puddle. Consequently we were stranded in this restaurant trying to play cards by candle light. The young boy who was serving us our food demanded to tell us the story of Diwali - in short it goes like this.

Brahmin and Vishnu exist at the beginning of the universe which at that point is no more than an infinite line of holy fire. They challenge eachother to get to the end of each side of the fire and set off, Vishnu eventually gives up but Brahma decides to pretend thathe wento to the end and basically said it was great. When Vishnu found out he was lying he gets very angry and therefore creates the Earth.

Ram and Laxman are best friends (Ram is an incarnation of Vishnu). Ram is a very good guy. He loves Sita who is the prettiest girl around. She is stolen by the Demon Ravana who takes her to Lanka (Sri Lanka) which is a bit like Hades or hell and populated by demons (a suppose a bit like believing that all Irish people are green or leprechauns).

Ram gets Hanuman (monkey God who can fly either like a Kite or with a kite (not sure which)) to track her down. There is a war for fifteen years, Laxman gets poisoned, nearly dies. Eventually Ram wins and gets the girl.

The whole things a lot more complex and as this boy told us the story he animated it with gestures of flight, fight, love and beauty that would have made Marcel Marceau proud.

He finished his story as the storm abated and then escorted us home.

Next one will be in Udaipur.

Take Care

James