The Belated Wrapping-Up Of Things

After writing on this blog from internet cafes down twisty alleys, up rickety stairs, and in hotel lobbies, on sticky-keyed, decrepit computers, it seems almost farcically easy to stroll into the kitchen, sit down with a cup of tea, and type. And yet it's taken me almost a week. For this, I apologise.

There are a few reasons it's taken so long. I could allude to events in my personal life both happy and sad, but if you know me, you'll probably already know about them already. And if you don't know me, you probably aren't reading this blog. Okay; you definately aren't reading this blog...

It's more that after having been back for a week, I'm beginning to feel as though I've never been gone. The success of a travel blog, I think, depends on its immediacy - and back in Melbourne, without the jumbled-fragrant stench of India clinging to me like a film, without the compulsion of new things to do every day, and with friends and family at my fingertips, things are beginning to fade.

In fact, it's probably a good thing I've kept this blog, because it - and the good chunk missing from my bank balance - is all that's letting me know at the moment that I've really been gone. I went to get my photos developed in Mumbai and they all came out completely underexposed, so I don't have any photos to look back on. The negatives are possibly ruined, which would be disappointing... but Helen's photos turned out as well as expected and I might be able to get a few copies now, rather than having to buy them down the track for a fortune at some gallery.

So. From reading over this thing I see that I haven't written about our last weekend in India. Helen nearly became a Bollywood star, but pulled out at the last minute. We spent a lot of time walking around the street markets doing some last-minute present-shopping - our haggling skillz are superb, by the way. We finally discovered the perfect Indian meal, after a month of sharing everything in the hope of finding the perfect combination. (It's mutter paneer and chana masala with lots of rice and puri and raita, if you're interested. And I know you are.)

The last night we went to the cinema and watched an independent film called Mixed Doubles, which was pretty interesting. It was a Hinglish film, which meant that the characters would all say, "Now let me explain something to you..." and then break into a stream of Hindi - or else the joke was in Hindi but the punchline was in English. We didn't realise, but there's a whole stream of cinema in India called, appropriately enough, Parallel Cinema; small movies that break with Bollywood convention (and Indian conventional morality) and play basically like independant movies you'd see anywhere in the world.

This one was a sex farce about a man trying to convince his wife to become a swinger - not exactly something you'd expect in a country where kissing is forbidden in major movies. It would be fun to watch the movie with subtitles should it ever come out in Australia - though it didn't seem like a terribly good film, the audience loved it, and it would be nice to find out the punchlines to certain jokes, and vice-versa.

The flight back was fairly uneventful, though time-comsuming. Bangkok Airport is more entertaining with another person, especially when that person has a pack full of toys and is trying to attain the perfect spirograph. Qantas gave us truffle ice-cream to apologise for the lack of leg-room. Not to apologise exlicitly, but we all know what they were thinking... and then we were back, and home, and home has consumed us so thoroughly that it's begun to seem impossible that we were really away.

But we were, weren't we? I've not just made this whole thing up? (With no photos I could easily have written this from a darkened hideout in suburbia). We were gone, and now we're back - and I guess that pretty much wraps things up. Helen told me this afternoon that she has officially retired from Helen says, much to the dismay of her legions of fans. Instead, she is taking up a new career in photography, and the speaking of Japanese, possibly inspired by our Japanese photographer boyfriend Munenori.

As for me - I'm off to bed. I'm really bloody tired. I'm procrastinating a bit because I never know how to end things - so I think I'll go out with a whimper...

Bombastic Train Journey

Well, we're back in Mumbai, or Bombay, or whatever you're supposed to call it... there's a really interesting, not-at-all-marked divide as to who uses which, but Helen and I have decided to settle for Bombay, because then all our experiences here will be Bombastic.

We pulled into Bombay last night after twelve hours on the train. Taking the train in India is actually one of the few experiences that lives up to the romance of expectation. As you settle into your sleeper compartment, the wheels start turning, and the Train Song starts up... a symphony of toy and food and drink wallahs advertising their wares. In booming voices -

"CheesesandwhichbhajiOMlette!"
"Tomaaato SOUP! Tomaaato SOUP!"
"CoffeecoffeeNEScoffeeeeeeeee!"
"BIS-keeeeeee! BIS-keeeeeee!"

Underpinning the whole thing like a Gloria or Dominus is the chai-wallah with his deep intonation of

"Chaaaaaaaaaaai! Chaaaaaaaaaai! Caaaaaaaaaaai!"

as he swings his kettle like a brazier, spilling wafts of cinnamon and cardamon and vanilla fleetingly beneath your nose. Every couple of stations, there is a flurry of activity, as the wallahs in their bright orange catering company shirts haul empty ice-cream and samosa and cheese sandwhich containers off the train and cart new ones on. Enterprising old women appear at the windows with baskets of bananas or hot roasted peanuts on their heads - beggers poke their fingers through the grates.

In the brief interludes between vendors strolling up and down the aisle bellowing, people-watching can keep you more than adequately occupied. The train to Bombay was especially good for this, as the people going there seemed more modern than those travelling in the opposite direction. We nearly passed out when we realised that there were women on the train wearing jeans. One had even chopped all her hair off. After sarees everywhere - even Delhi - it was a bit of a shock.

The other option is to stare out the window and watch the country change from red and dusty with palm trees galore, to wet and lush, to suburban, to urban... or if you're Helen, listen to cello adagios on your iPod and read The Odyssey.

In any case, it was great to be hurtling back towards the city - although saying goodbye to Shae was a bit sad. When you spend so much time with a complete stranger, you form a particular relationship with them - and it's odd to think that I won't see someone I spent two weeks of my life in close contact with for a year at least.

In anycase, that's that. What else? We spent our last few days in Goa visitng Panjim and Old Goa taking photographs, and went to the weekly markets at Anjuna. The markets were fun - rows and rows of tents set up like a makeshift village in a field in the middle of nowhere, perched on the shore. Amongst the usual crap we found some really beautiful things - rugs and shawls and Tibetan silver, embroideries, ground shell jewellery, shoes... and I took a photo of a whole row of Che Guevara T-shirts, flapping in the breeze.

"5 rupees for Che!" the vendor shouted out - and at that price it was almost worth it. Shae got her nose pierced by a woman who looked like Bjork, and Jane, our Irish speech-therapist/hippie friend (insert cheap "Irish accent/speech impediment" joke here), disappeared and came back with a giant moonstone bracelet. You could read your future in that thing. Helen and I walked around eating ice-cream. It was stinking hot in that field, and the ice-cream was easily the most exciting thing that happened to us that day. We took some very repetitive photos of gypsies and spice vendors and rows of shoes glistening in the sunshine, and went home all of us tired, happy, and loaded up with bangles.

Helen and I have been taking it easy here in Bombay, eating lunch at the restaurant next door to our hotel - we were the only white faces in there, I think - and wandering around. We're planning to do some last-minute shopping at the markets tonight, and catch a Bollywood film - hooray! Our grossly over-priced hotel even has a hot shower, so I will be soaking myself thoroughly. I thought I had a tan, but it turns out it was just dust from the train...


Helen says:

After recieving this glowing review, I have been forced to eat my words and grovel at Helen's feet, begging her to take some time out of her busy schedule and humour an old friend:

"Tell Helen says that I love her sardonic wit and adore the way she is able to sum up, in very few words, the absolute essence of her experiences. Her comments balance your writing perfectly... beg her from me not to stop!!!!"

A request with four exclamation points cannot be denied. Hopefully, this spells the end of my italicised attempts to account for Helen's whereabouts.

G'day everyone ! What's cracking?

I apologise for the lack of Helen Says-es during the last few weeks. I've been keeping busy getting in touch with my inner-hippie or, as Jess likes say, inner-ex-chiropractor-hit-mid-life-crisis-gone-on-vacation-to-India-15-years-ago-and-never-came-back/Israeli trance-dancer/Eurotrash.

Since I've spoken to you through your computer screen last, I've become a fully-fledged hippie! I've made friends with a Raaasta-mon (A.K.A. Jane with her monster dreds) and joined a drum circle on the beach. We sat in a circle jammin' on our djambes and I even tasted their apple pie. Jess and Shaemus were thoughtful enough to tell me after I digested that magic slice that it would surely have been packed full of mushrooms! Fortunately for Helen says, I came out of that drum circle with nothing more than a smile on my face. Rasta Jane on the other hand... She felt the wrath of that pie at her 8am yoga class the next morning when the crabs scuttled out of the Indian Ocean, up the sunny beaches of Arambol and into her yoga hut to "get her".

Not only have I excelled in djambe rythms, but I'm now down with quantam physics! In further attempts to get in touch with my inner-Israeli-trance-dancer, I sat at a rooftop cafe (with my fellow Israelis) one night watching a DVD of What the Bleep Do We Know? projected onto an all-natural, organic cotton sheet hanging off the bamboo roof!

I became even more intouch with my inner-topless-Eurotrash-doing-yoga-on-the-beach-in-my-g-string-at-sunset (vicariously) when Shae had her nose pierced by Bjork. This was possibly maybe (PLEASE let there be other Bjork fans reading this blog) the penultimate step in the long and windy road to becoming the world's whitest white-girl hippie, the ultimate being the massage I copped from some barbers today.

Allow me to digress...

I had about an hour to kill this evening while Jess was writing on this thing, so I thought it might be an idea to see if I could score a massage to rid my body of the damage done on the 12 hour train trip.

After being harassed 24/7 by massouses (please forgive my spelling) in Goa, I thought it would be piss-easy to find somewhere in Bombay! How wrong was I...

I only had about 20 minutes left until I had to write Helen Says so in a last ditch effort I ran into a barber shop and yelled "Gimme a massage, STAT!" So the fellows there put me in a chair and wrapped a towel around my shoulders. So far, so good. Then they promptly massaged 2 or 3 handfuls of Vaseline into my face and clean hair. Disappointing! THEN, my eyes sealed shut by the sheer weight of the mighty petroleum jelly - but heightening my other senses in the process - I heard my barber switch on some electrical instrument which began to buzz in fury! I used all the strength in my mortal body to open my eyes just in time to see my Warwick Capper-esque mullet-ed barber poised, [I should take this time to apologise for the length of this sentence] with what looked like a power-sander attached to a rubber glove with cable going into the wall, ready to go to work on my face!

"Yikes!", I screamed. I decided to flee the scene, seconds later there was nothing left in that shop but a cloud of dust in the shape of Helen, Road-Runner-style.

Does anyone know the nightmare when (and Steve I know you will - Jess told us tales of your late night experimental dental surgery back in the day) you're at the dentist, and you wake up from the gas to see Dr. Death with a power drill or chainsaw rather than an electric toothbrush hovering over your mouth, ready to strike! If you have experienced such a nightmare, then, and only then, could you perhaps begin to grasp the magnitude of my newly aquired fear of barber-shop-massages... and Australian footballers from the 80s.

Gotta run, have a hot date at the movies with a choc top (and Jess).
See you soon!

Love Helen

Goa-ing Strong

That is, the puns about Goa are still coming thick and fast. Ah, puns about Goa. You never get old.

Turns out I won't be going to Hampi after all, which sucks, frankly. Part of the reason we're spending so long here was so we could fit in a trip there in the middle, but the overnight bus is booked out for the next few days and that's really the only affordable way of getting there. Rats.

I'm not really complaining, of course, but I didn't come to India to spend a week lying on the beach, lovely as it is. Still, I have no doubt that I'll be back sometime in the near future - that is, as soon as finances allow - that is, retirement. I'll go to Hampi when I retire.

However, if one has to spend a week lying on the beach (...I'm so unfortunate), there's no arguing that Goa is a pretty good place to do it. This place really does have a split personality. There's the Eurotrash and Israeli trance crowd, the dropouts and the stoners on the one hand - all the whities that have made Goa famous for its party scene - and the locals on the other, who, away from the beaches are just mainly living traditional village lives. They come to bathe in the ocean in sarees, standing bright against the gemlike sea, while half-naked Western women haggle with male sarong vendors on the beach. Some of these women make me blush. Really.

The women wear sarees, but the men just get around in their jocks, which Shae is immensely taken with. She's got photos of men walking along in Mumbai holding hands, as well - this place is homosocial heaven. While coming out is still pretty much the worst thing a Good Indian Boy or Girl could do, society has no issue with the full gamet of homosocial behaviour - which means that boys walk along the beach in their wet singlets and jocks with their arms slung around each other's waists, totally platonically. It's hot.

The bathing-in-sarees thing seems really sensible, and I suppose the funny thing is is that India has made me quite conservative, not in thought, but in dress - I'm so used to the women being covered head to toe and so aware of being respectful to the culture that it's become second nature to cover myself completely (less chance of sunburn, too). I mean, it's not as though I get around half-naked in Melbourne, either, but Shae lent me a skirt that was above the knee the other night and I barely felt dressed at all. Getting out in my bikini was horrifying - although I think that had more to do with not having seen any sun (malaria pills make you really photosensitive) or having done any excercise in the last five weeks. Ugh.

There's not really much to do, though, except laze about, except get Ayurvedic massages (there are little massage huts everywhere) and shop for hippie-chic threads. Last night we went to see the advertised "Jam Session" at a local restaurant. The place was packed out, but open-air, so we went to the restaurent next door and ordered a beer. The band came on and it was, quite honestly, the worst thing I've ever heard, playing original songs like "Hey hey, little monkey" and butchering a medley of Bob Marley classics. The "jam" part of the session came when a random balding, bearded German guy came up on stage and played a selection of pseudo-folk songs on a borrowed guitar. We thought his head would fall off from all the emphatic shaking it was doing between lyrics.

There was also an Afro'd white guy who falsetto'd into the mic at ill-timed intervals, and a drummer tapping a tabla and grinning manaically at all the pretty patterns. Patterns everywhere, man. And so many colours. The crowd really dug it. Best Worst Gig Ever.

There was also a big Hindu bash on the beach, which was a bit like a school fete. The music was blaring, and then some guy started making speeches over the megaphone in Hindi. The speakers were aimed right at our tiny bamboo hut, so we got the full benefit. We're used to it by now, though... the other morning we were woken at dawn by a bunch of hippies having a drum circle on the beach. There are people here who walk up and down the beach strumming their guitars and singing. I kind of wish I'd brought my flute along so I could break out into some Mozart over the loudspeaker. That'd learn those hippies...



Helen says:

Helen is off lazing on the beach - again - and it might be time that we acknowledge the failure of this section. It was a noble experiment... Apparently, she has no desire to spend half an hour every couple of days in an internet cafe purging her own inane observations onto the interweb - unlike some of us writing on this blog... Whatever will become of an Arts student with no taste for literary self-indulgance?

"It's a Goa!"

( ...has been Helen's response in the affirmative to every question posed since we ditched the city, took a 12-hour train and wound up in Arambol, in the north of this state.)

Goa, from what we've seen today, is a pretty amazingly contradictory place. Everyone we spoke to before we came warned us, "It's not India," - and they were right. I do kind of miss Mumbai, for all the pollution, the poverty, and the commercial hustle: you don't get more India than that. Still, with me still recuperating and Shae coming down with a cold, we thought that a few days on the beach sounded like a good idea - and just because it's not India doesn't mean there isn't plenty to see.

Oh no. Arambol is supposed to be one of the most relaxed places in Goa, but if so I really can't imagine what the others are like. Here it's a frenticly low-key mix of faded hippies, stoners, middle-aged drop-out ex-lawyers, Israeli psy-trance freaks, multitudes of backpackers, locals, shopkeepers, tradies, and cows. There's no getting away from the cows in India - they wander on beaches framed by palm fronds past topless, G-stringed Eurotrash; by yoga devotees doing stretches as the sun goes down; and into the rubbish bins beside the restaurants and beach shacks that line the shore.

We're staying in one of these shacks, for about $3 a night each - a little bamboo hut with a double bed, mattress on the floor for the third of us (we plan to rotate), and a little plaster Jesus above the light switch. Goa is the most heavily Christian place we've found so far, being a former Portugese colony - there's a little whitewashed church lit up by neon lights on the main road, and crucifixes and statues everywhere. We're planning to spend some time in Old Goa, where there are many many cathedrals, some ruins, and the relics of St Francis Xavier, who last went on show two years ago and who will be resting deep in the tombs when we visit.

It's odd to be in a place with such a heady mix of religious devoutness and hedonism. We're planning to go to church tomorrow to atone for the day on sloth we've had today, browsing the stalls and drinking Indian wine. Then for me it's on to Hampi, and after that... well, a few days of leisure never killed anyone, did they?


Helen says:

Helen is off drinking wine and so not available for comment. I plan to join her very, very soon.

Continued as promised...

...though I still don't have much to say.

I'm back at the Salvation Army Hostel, where we've been leading a very school-camp-like existance for the last couple of days. Mumbai is much more expensive than Delhi, oddly enough, so the Rs 150 we're paying for a bunk bed, a breakfast consisting of white bread, jam and a banana, and all the cold showers we can handle is a comparative bargain. Also, there's the free entertainment provided by the Indian women staying there hacking up their phlegm in the early hours of the morn. Hacking up one's phlgem is a national passtime in India. Sometimes I feel as though I'm on holiday in a TB colony.

We got into Mumbai late last night, although it seems much longer ago than that. It's such a vibrant place - though when people tell you that it's filthy, they aren't kidding. We taxi'd it out to the Hanging Gardens today and could hardly see across the bay to the other side of the city for all the smog. It's a city of tar-filled lungs, of slums, and of colour - so much colour. The air smells alternately like roses and sulphur gas.

It's funny how precisely the mood of a place changes with its climate. Jaipur was beautiful, dusty-pink, with pigs snuffling in the streets, and kites for some reason lodged in every tree. The people moved slowly there, being technically in the desert, though the tourist-hassling aspect was at full bore. Mumbai has the peculiar affability I always associate with places on large bodies of water - Can Tho had it, as did Hoi An - as though every day is a holiday.

We met Shae, Dave's friend, at the hostel, after a gruelling two-hour taxi trip - the traffic here is incredible. We got in tired, and were immediately taken to the local pub by Shae, her friend Anna, and a career counsellor from Melbourne Uni named Julie - five Melbourne girls sharing a beer on the other side of the world. It was pretty surreal. We took the circuitous route back to the hostel, via the India Gate, and took in some of the night-lit sights. This area has such a funny British Raj feel to it; colonial architecture and red double-decker buses, taxis instead of rickshaws, and an incredibly elaborate train station built like some Duke or Earl's place in the country somewhere.

Shae had, with great forsight, organised a taxi to drive us around for the morning on a photography excursion, to places like the Hajiali and the Hanging Gardens, finishing off with a jaunt at the Ghandi Museum. The museum was really cool, the highlights being a recreation of the room where Ghandi slept, and a series of three dozen one-and-a-half by one metre dioramas, each depicting a key scene in Ghandi's life, using very elaborately handcrafted dolls. It sounds odd, and could have been really condescending, but instead it was a good way to follow his biography without the usual drily-captioned photos and heavy tomes printed onto the walls. Yes, dolls. You had to be there, alright?

The Shanteram reading turned out to be for Saturday (if in fact it's happening at all); we just had dinner and a beer instead. Right now, Helen, Anna and Shae are out at an Indian hip-hop night - I'm bloody exhausted, so as soon as I finish this, I'm off to bed. The bug I wrote about wasn't too bad but the hangover from being sick is a bitch - I'm just tired all the time. Of course, I've been getting up at four to catch trains and whatnot and haven't really slept for the last few days, so it could just be that. I'll let you know in the morning.


Helen says:

What, weren't you listening? Helen is off dancing to Indian hip-hop and is having far too good a time to sit around this hostel thinking of witty comments to write on her friend's blog. Jeeze.

Pinch and a punch...

...what am I, six?

This is going to be a brief one, as I don't really have much time. Also, I don't really know where to start with this entry - we've had an action-packed last few days, and listing everything we did in them would be tedious and time-consuming.

If you want to know the sights we see'd in Jaipur, I suggest you grab a guidebook and look up the entries for the Mammoth Crazy Giant Jaipur Fort; the Legoland Telescopic Theme-Park; and the Honeycomb Observation Deck; all of which have real names that I've forgotten. It will make for a fun fact-finding expedition. (Actually, I'm just too lazy to run upstairs and grab the Lonely Planet, but I'll fill you in on the real names when I can be bothered - possibly, never.)

We see'd all these sights with a hugely enthusiastic French guy that we met on the Agra-Jaipur train. His name is Sylvian, he's a jeweller, and apparently he found us hugely amusing, as after a few hours of conversation in (his) broken English and (my) broken French, he declared,

"I will go shopping tomorrow with you. It will be funny."

"Fun," we corrected, fearing being laughed at.

"Fun," he amended, "but also funny."

In any case, we never made it to the bazaars - there goes our dorky plan to get matching friendship rings in Jaipur. We did see practically everything else the town has to offer, though, courtesy of Sylvian, who had organised a driver for the day and whisked us around the city in a whirlwind or spectatorship and tourism. And all without us contributing more than a few dollars. He told me (while Helen was sleeping on the train) that an older traveller had shouted him a day on the town twenty years ago, and so he was repaying the favour, and Helen and I should take out some young kids when we're jaunting around the subcontinent at the ripe old age of 42.

So that was lovely. The next day at four in the morning - I was suprised to find out that they have one in the morning, too - we got up to take the train to Delhi - then on to Mumbai - then many things after that that I will detail the next time I write, as now I am off to see Gregory Roberts of Shanteram fame do a reading around the corner. You can take the girl out of Melbourne Uni Arts...


Helen says:

Still reeling from the back-gammon loss; too ashamed to type.



To be continued (like so many cheap radio serials)...

She's got it...

Oh baby, she's got it.

A cripplingly painful stomach bug, that is.

Serves me right. After reassuring my nearest and dearest that I really am being careful and that it's safe to eat from street kitchens, I've spent the last 24 hours shivering, vomiting, and sleeping. Not to mention taking a two-hour train journey.

You'll have to ask Helen what the vegetarian breakfast on the Shatabdi Express was like - she ate mine as well as hers, seeing as I was passed out most of the time. I have to say, she's an excellent nurse; got me water, fed me crackers, even humoured me about chaining up our bags when it appeared that it was blatantly unneccessary. I wasn't really making sense at that point, being at the nadir (or as I prefer to think of it, Turning Point, parabola-style) of the bug; cold sweats, prickly skin, dizzy, hot, blah.

The irony is that tracing it back to 6 hours before the symptoms started, it wasn't even Indian food that did me in - it was a vegetable chowmein at a goddamn Israeli cafe. Just another reason to curse the name of Zion forever. I told you you couldn't trust those Israelis!

All of which is to say that while we've been in Agra all day, I really have no idea what it's like. I'm feeling much better, so we'll probably make up for lost time by hitting the Taj at sunrise. It's about a ten minute walk from our hotel, and easily visible from the rooftop, which is a bit surreal. Agra's just like any city we've seen, except that there's this great shimmering marble monument, palaces and the fort forming a background to all the square concrete buildings. As far as city monuments go, it beats the shit out of Federation Square.

The other thing is that as well as the usual cows, there are monkeys everywhere. Helen suspects that they sit on the rooftop cafes and drink tea and play backgammon when we are not around. There are heaps of parakeets as well, and the odd camel - which is to say that all camels are pretty odd. It's a menagerie over here, though the animals are not as interesting as the human zoo, which is made up, from what I've seen, of backpackers, Indian sight-seers, and non-plussed locals.

Helen is currently playing the owner of this internet cafe for free internet - her mad backgammon skillz are standing us in good stead. I'll let her fill you in on Agra, as she's spent most of the day exploring, whereas I've spent it with my head next to a bucket. Looking out the window of this cafe, Agra looks really interesting, and we have most of the day to explore before catching a train to Jaipur, so hopefully the next time I write I'll have something fascinating - and not nauseating - to report. Fingers crossed.


Helen (regretfully) says:

I am struggling to lift my head high enough to see the words I type. I am so crippled by shame. I just lost 184 freaking Rps in a game of backgammon!

Oh, Don't worry! I was as shocked as you are all, no doubt.

As soon as Jess finished writing on the blog I yelled for help and tag-teamed her into the ring.

It all started out so well; I defeated Shahid back-to-back in a way that could only be described as "brutal" or as a "devastating loss" on his behalf. Alas, it all went down-hill from there. As I watched (in utter bewilderment) our money for tonight's dinner... the hotel... a trip to the Taj... mortage on my house - disappear into the pockets of our cheerful friend Sha-hiddle , as we so fondly refer to him..

...so the sun set on Agra.

And it was the end to a magical day, full of vomitting and crushing defeat.

PS. The vegetarian breakfast on the Shatabdi Express is second to none ...NOT


Jess writes a coda:

The tag-teaming was an idea about on par with eating that chowmein. We now owe our firstborn children to this Indian hustler, who has backgammoned us out of house and home. As I slumped down across the counter on which the board was set up, I gave out a muffled scream; "You don't understand how much pain I've already been in today!" This got a laugh - yeah, ha ha, you Indian bastard. With a glimmer of hope, I asked, "Is gambling even legal in India?" Apparently, if he's winning, it is; if he's losing, it's not. Never before has a friendly game of backgammon ended in so many tears.

And I would have had him in the third game, if he hadn't rolled three consecutive high doubles. Now who said anything about loaded dice?

Culture Vultures (Eat the Parsi Dead)

We've been in Delhi for a few days now but haven't really done much sightseeing, preferring instead to walk, shop, and drink gallons of tea. Yesterday we hiked up to the train station and organised tickets to Agra, then Jaipur, then back home - tomorrow we leave for the Taj. So today we decided to have an Explore Old Delhi day, which we did, with varying degrees of success.

The first item on our agenda (of aproximately two-and-a-half items) was the Jama Masjid, a gigantic, beautiful old mosque in the heart of Old Delhi. We got there too early to enter - we could see prayers taking place on the terrace with the Red Fort in the background. So we wandered around for a while at the Tibetan Refugee Textile Market and the streets surrounding the mosque, until we could haul ourselves up the steps, take off our shoes, and take photographs galore. It was a challenge - there were bright sarees and men in traditional dress in front of dusty, centuries-old architecture, and everywhere we looked, a great photo sprung up.

Helen's been using her long-range lens as a spy-cam, but she got caught out today - the group of women she was taking a photo of caught on and got out their own cameras, and proceeded to pose for photos with us for the next ten minutes. We were like celebrities - it was bizarre. One woman even handed her baby to Helen for a cuter shot. We took all the photos we could and hot-footed it out of there, mobbed by children who all wanted their photo taken too.

From there we autorickshawed it over to the Museum of Modern Art, which, it turned out, was being renovated, and so was mostly closed. We still managed to see a few good exhibits, including one by Amrita Shargill, who is kind of like Gaugin, but without the post-colonial exploitation and pedophilic tendancies. On the way back, we even passed a street named after her; Amrita Shargill Marg. It was very cool, and made us feel very cultured, even though thirty minutes beforehand we'd had no idea who that was.

The museum itself is in a gorgeous old residence, which was nice, with a hideous sculpture garden as an added bonus. We love hideous sculpture, so that was probably the highlight of the day. On the way back, we also passed a Parsi cemetary (a link! I wasn't just being tasteless!) which I found pretty interesting. I read in the newspapers that India's declining vulture population is posing a major problem for the Parsis. I think there's a breeding program underway. That's kind of irrelevent. But interesting, don't you think?

Helen's Israeli friend Noy had recommended a good market to us, so we instructed the driver to take us there. He was, (justifiably, as it turned out), incredulous. "If you want to see another side to Delhi," Noy had said, "you can go to Khan market, about 15 minutes by autorikshaw from the main bazaar, it's a small area with western shops, a couple of cafes that cater mainly to expats, embassy workers and rich Indians, a cool book shop, and grocery shops selling imported stuff. You can also get indian red wine, which is almost drinkable, in the wine shop across the street (it's hard to find, you have to ask for it)."

Well, we went there, and unless there's another Khan market, it was a dud, more of a suburban shopping strip full of pet stores and ice-cream parlours than a cool, happening enclave - which just goes to show that you can never trust an Israeli. We've even bought special locks and chains for the train tomorrow just in case all those Israelis try to steal our packs.

Better head off now - Helen and I are getting up ridiculously early to be at the station at 5.30. We are catching the Shatabdi Express, which sounds classier than it probably is; it will get us to Agra in two hours though, and they're giving us breakfast. Either plane and train food has improved immensely in the past couple of years, or I've spent so much time with impoverished Arts students that I get ridiculously excited about free food by proxy; either way, I can't wait to see what vegetarian goodies the Shatabdi dishes up.


Helen says:

Hi there ! We've had a splendid day. Jama Masjid was rocking, and it was cool to be on the otherside of the lense when a muslim family asked Jess and I to have photos holding their babies and whatnot. The Gallery of Modern Art was equally smashing . Noy (you suck) recommended that we hit up the Khan bazaar. Worst bazaar ever.

Probably the highlight of my day occured at around 5.30pm when Jess went to have her hair washed. I left her there, 20 minutes and Rupees 500 later, Jess had lovely clean hair and I had a lifetime's worth of holographic stickers!

Yessssssss......

Love Helen