Palm trees, hot enough to fry eggs on my forehead, cement buildings, in-yer-face catholicism, I’m wearing shorts and sandals without socks: yep, I’m finally in Goa. I’m at a village called Colva, near Margao/Madgaon and already the wierdness has started. But before I get into that, how did I get here? (Can you hear Chris Franz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison on backing vocals?)

Sunday 2nd
Last time I blogged, I was in Satara, the nearest big town to Mahabaleshwar, so I could get a train south. I seem to have spent most of Sunday 2nd blogging and trying to get the Indian Railways website to obey me. It didn’t, mainly because while the major town near here is known as Margao, officially it’s called Madgaon. I gave up in disgust and near tears and crawled back to my hotel. (On the way, I met a couple of lads I’ll blog about later.) At the hotel, I started chatting with a guy who asked where I’m from (the usual first question). At some part in the conversation, he did a very fast piece of mental arithmetic and so I asked if he was an engineer or scientist. He laughed and said that he owned the hotel. He mentioned that his cousin was getting married the next day in the hotel’s reception/function room and pointed out the happy couple (Vaishakh and Latika). I asked him to pass on my congratulations and he said I should speak to them myself, so I did and they invited me to the ceremony. Thank goodness I’d just had some reasonably new clothes washed.

Monday 3rd
I spent the morning wresting with Indian Railways website again – this time their server crapped out. The cyber-cafe owner told me that this is a regular occurence. ABout 11.30, I gave up again and decided to go to the station later (it’s about 11km from the town) and book my ticket there. So I got as smart as I could and headed into the nuptials.

I found out later this was the 4th day of the wedding – the previous 3 days being mostly prayer for a good wedding and a happy marriage. This part was an unusual (to me) event – about 200 guests, all dressed in sumptuous but unique variants on sarees, shalwar kameezes, lunghis and ‘Indian male uniform’, people wondering onto the stage, apparently at random, as a piece of cloth was held between the fiance(e)s and happy(?) songs were played and prayers(?) were spoken. At several times during the proceedings, the guests threw coloured dry rice at the couple (this had been handed around earlier) but because there were so many guests, hardly any actually hit them. In all, it was a lovely, spontaneous/casually-formal occasion and I enjoyed it very much, even though I felt rather out of place because I wasn’t part of either family, nor a friend of either the bride or groom and because I didn’t really understand what was happening.

I was also invited to eat – in another part of the hall, people sat where the liked or could find a space at one of three long trestle tables while waiters walked up and down, offering two types of rice, pakora, curries, puris, other vegetables, fruit-custard deserts, soft drinks and water. I was sat next to a man who described all the food to me and reassured me it was vegetarian and asked me about UK wedding customs.

By 3pm, it seemed to be winding down, so after speaking again to Vaishakh and Latika, I collected my clobber and headed for the bus station to try to get out to the train station. Yet again, Indian folk were wonderful, showing me to the right bus and ensuring that someone would point out the station from the right bus-stop. The only snag was at the station where I was told that all sleepers to Goa the following night were booked and that I should simply turn up the next night, buy my ticket then and live with it.

I also met Marc, a French painter, who was getting similar unhelpfulness – although I think his way of speaking English may have come over as a bit curt (I don’t for a moment believe he intended this) and his accent may also have been an impediment. He’d just arrived from Pune and was on his way to Kolhapur but had had enough travelling for one day. (If he’d been traveliing third-class then I can see why.) We shared a rickshaw back to town and I showed him the hotels I’d seen: he ended up staying at mine but got one of the now vacant, not-en-suite partition-rooms for 80 rupees (I’d paid Rs275 for mine). I also took him to a restaurant that I’d been eating at where something totally unique occurred – two Indian women started conversations with us. It turned out that they were an English teacher and her pupil and so wanted a bit of practice and to hear about Europe but even so, it was pleasant to talk with women and not feel rejected by half of Indian society. (Again, I know ‘logically’ this is a ‘cultural’ difference but it still feels very strange to me!) By a further amazing coincidence, the teacher is a good friend of Wahid, a great bloke I met in Mahabaleshwar.

After dinner, Marc and I walked through Satara. He keenly felt the pollution and longed to see the mountains around the town. He’d had a rough time in Pune because the pollution was worse there. Even so, he kept an essential-oil enhanced Vicks nasal doo-dah up his nostrils and a cloth over his mouth. We found a brand new Ganesh mandir which was absolutely beuatiful but nothing else of note and repaired to the hotel. I didn’t sleep well: insects, traffic noise and random Bruce-paranoias kept me tossing and turning until at least 3am.

Tuesday 4th
After eventually surfacing well after mid-day, I went out to try to get my latest photos backed up to CD. Eventually I found a camera shop which would do this because none of the cybercafes here had card readers. While I was waiting for this, I sat watching a real (Adobe) Photoshop artist at work, retouching photos, arranging family portraits and generally doing professionally and well many of the things I do (now) badly and slowly. I was a bit narked when the artist made strenuous attempts to buy my camera, a bit more narked when he removed my photos from my card after burning the CD (however, he copied them back to the card from the CD when I told him that it was a back-up, not trying to create room on the card) and very narked when it was time to pay: I asked him the cost of this service and he said “up to you”, then appeared unhappy with what I thought was a resonable price for a blank CD and 10 minute’s PC time.

This prompted me to buy a card-reader of my own (it cost Rs 350 [about 5 pounds) because I’m sure I’ll be backing up more as I go along and don’t want any more such hassles. I got a bit of grief from the owner of the shop where I bought the reader because he wanted me to pay in dollars and/or give him UK currency. Er, if I’m going to give anything to anyone here, it’ll be to folk who are down on their luck or who have become special to me in some way or other, not to flashily dressed PC-sellers!

By now it was 5pm and I was very conscious that

• it was time to leave Satara
• but first I wanted to fulfil a promise to meet up with two lads I’d met a couple of nights ago. Mahesh and Hrumesh are two first-year law students here. We’d met the night before the wedding and they’d invited me into a cafe for chai and insisted on paying because I was their/India’s guest. We’d talked a lot about the different customs and social mores in our contries and they’d wanted to meet up again to continue this.

So I phonedthem, wondering if they would have time to meet before I had to go to the station or whether I’d spend another night in Satara.

By luck they were taking a break just then from revision and so we headed to a nearby cheap restaurant for chai and masala dosa* (and a lesson in how to eat them properly: apparently the thing to do is use cutlery or right hand to dunk some in the ‘oxtail soup’, then spoon a bit of what I’d taken to be coconut dip into my mouth.
*of course, I was happy to pay this time, even though they again tried to insist I didn’t

Mahesh and I shared an autorickshaw with a young couple to the station while Hrumesh followed on his motorbike. I bought my ticket, not realising it was a third-class passport to pain and then chatted a bit more with the lads before they left me in the hands of Munaa, a very young bloke who was heading back to Goa to work after spending a long weekend with his girlfriend in Satara. He was keen to say goodbye to his lady but his phone was out of credit so I offered him use of mine. He couldn’t get through, probably because mine is a UK phone but this still kicked off at least a ‘single-serving’ friendship (obviously I hope for more) and he found us seats and we guarded each others’ luggage as the other tried to sleep or visit the toilet.

A word about travelling third class on India trains: DON’T! The seats are made of wooden slats with no padding, there are about 10% more passengers than there are seats and the **squat** toilets stink. (There was no sign of unpleasant matter on the toilet floor but all the same I’m very glad I didn’t have to use them.) I also found I can’t sleep on a wooden seat and was too slow to grab a luggage rack, not that I would have slept on that either. So I sat up most of the night, sustained by chai and matchsticks propping my eyelids open. I also got to try some of the chewing-tobacco and chalk mix that’s so popular here: once was enough.

Wednesday 5th
The train finally completed its 425 km/11 hour journey (I’m not kidding – at times I could have walked faster) and Munaa led me out of the station and showed me where I could get a taxi to a hotel. For tonight and tomorrow night, I’m staying at Vailankanni, 4th Ward, Colva – Beach (2788584) but I think I’ll move on after that: there are other places in Goa that interest me more, and 400 rupees a night for a room without hot water seems a bit over the top.

I slept for a few hours, changed into shorts and then went out to explore. As I was walking along the main drag, noting escape routes to Benaulim, Palolem and Anjuna, a bloke hailed me and asked me to come to his house. At first I was, er,somewhat hesitant but having checked that I was ready to flee at the first sign of trouble and havving got a vaguely good vibe from him, I agreed. At the house, he introduced me to his sister and niece (aged 11 and wearing girl-scout uniform, complete with left-hand shake). It turned out the house was Suriya (the sister) and Priya (her daughter)’s home but that Raj visited often because Suriya was widowed, so he worked here in Goa* to support them. He and Priya were returning this evening to their native Tamil for his wedding (Suriya would follow later, just in time for the actual ceremony) but for now, apparently because I reminded him of a German friend and because he’d somehow seen something good in me just as I was walking along the road, he wanted to be my friend and offer hospitality in the form of food, chai and conversation.
*as a social worker[? – his english was very emphatic but also idiosyncratic and a little difficult to follow and I don’t yet speak any Tamil]

Again, much chat, punctuated by communication difficulties but accompanied by jeera rice, lime pickle and ginger chai. Raj extolled the virtues of Tamil Nadu and his brother/cousin’s orphanage and school there, along with the tea estate in the Nilgiri hills which pays for all of this. He insisted that once I’d seen it, I’d never want to return to England. (I did demur, saying that I’d need to return to the UK to be near my parents which apparently endeared me to him a bit more but he kept on repeating that I’d still not want to return to the UK.) SUch over-enthusiasm does make me a bit nervous but just guess who wants to visit Nilgiri anyway! If I’m being offered an expense-free place, apparently without strings, well it’s worth a look at least.

Raj then took me back to the main road, I found this cybercafe and that’s us up to date.It’s now about 5pm, so I’m heading to the beach now it’s less madly hot.

I forgot my cellphone was in my pocket and so it got a bath in the Arabian Sea and is hence comprehensively buggered. If you need to contact me just now, phone 0091-832-2788584 and asked for the pommie git in room 7 of Vailankanni Cottages.

My first task tomorrow is to buy a new one, then chase India post for non-delivery so far of a parcel to my parents, then head to somewhere selling memory so I can re-RAM my brain…

to be edited later…

Thursday 30th part 2
Decide to buy sarees for two friends to whom I’m due birthday presents so I start checking prices in the shops on the main street. Most places sell kurtas (long, loose, typically ‘islamic style’) blouses but I’m noting prices in my diary when a young bloke (Wahid) approaches me to ask me to come and talk with his uncle. Mr Shah has seen me writing in my diary several times and is curious about what I’m writing. So I tell him it’s my diary and we talk about what I’m doing here and what he does. He runs a small shop called the Kashmiri Arts Palace, selling clothing and other textiles he buys in his native area (near Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital) and sells here.

Wahid’s interested in setting up his own business, ideally wholesaling into the export market (so that he can work on smaller margins but make more money overall). He’s not aiming to get rich but simply to make a living and raise money to benefit his home area. He also tells me about a charity which helps street-children in Goa (see http://www.childrescue.net) that he’s trying to help and of a local multi-faith inititative/conference in nearby Panchgani (see http://www.mraindia.org/) he’d like to attend. His stated dedication and philanthropy put my dilletantism to shame. I’ve agreed to look for places he might use as outlets in the UK – anyone got any ideas? I suppose it’s possible that I could order a job lot of Mr Shah and Wahid’s produce, so is anyone interested in hand-made Kashmiri shawls, sarees, pashminas, wood-carvings and carpets? Kashmiri sarees differ from ‘standard’ Indian sarees by being made of slightly heavier white cloth which is embroidered. Sometimes there’s cutwork, reminiscent of some my grandmother made in Vienna and it all looks quite special and beautiful.

Wahid and Mr Shah tell me that, contrary to my guidebook’s recommendation to avoid Kashmir, over 300,000 tourists visited last year and more are expected this year. There’s a popular ski-ing resort at Gulmarg (Ian and Jenni – want to check it out?) Wahid also begs me to understand that hardly any muslims are terrorists, contrary to the impression he fears I might have from western media. I tell him that I don’t have this attitude at all, citing the example of a couple I knew who were South African but of muslim/north Indian origin and were two of the most caring and intelligent people I’ve ever met. Wahid reckoned (and I tend to agree) that there’s just a few idiots in any faith (or other) group who spoil it for the rest of the group. Incidentally, I read in today’s Times of India that Iran now claims it doesn’t want nuclear weapons but only its ‘rightful’ civil nuclear power.

Back to saree-buying: I realize that if I’m buying sarees, I’ll also need to buy the accompanying short ‘saree-blouses’ and that these are made to measure and so I need my friends’ bust and chest measurements. Cue two immensely-silly, giggle-ridden calls to Scotland, during which one well-known joker achieves his longest-distance ever ‘mess-with-someone-elses-head’ mind-f***.

Much hilarity later, and in possession of one set of highly-classified vital statistics and basic colour/style preferences, I now know I’m shopping for one Kashmiri set and one ‘Indian’ set. I decide upon the exact Kashmiri saree, while amusing Wahid with my decision process, then hand over the measurements for the blouse and am told it will be ready in the morning.

I then go to an Indian-style saree shop and find three I like that match the intended recipients’ colour preferences. However, I don’t yet know her measurements so can’t yet buy. Later, by when the shop has closed and I’m in bed, she texts me her measurements. (I promise I’ve deleted this text!).

I recall meeting the magician again while I was having a very late meal – a gurjurati thali which contained the most delicious sauce I’ve yet tasted in India and getting upset with him when he asked to see my cellphone (I had no problem with him comparing it with his own Nokia) but then appearing to change some of my settings. I realized he wasn’t actually trying to do so and so calmed down and apologized. (I think I was more fractious than usual because of lack of sleep, clothes-buying and the occasional communication breakdown.

Friday 31st: either a lesson on India or a classic Bruce-style farce

1. I check out of my hotel but ask to leave my rucsac there for a few hours. For this I’m charged 100 rupees. I’m inclined to argue but eventually realized how little this is for keeping my stuff safe.
2. I return to the Indian saree shop with the measurements and am told it will take until 5pm to make up the blouse. So it looks like I’m staying here tonight because I don’t want another arrival after dark.
3. An assistant takes me to a local tailor and we talk in broken English and pulverized Marathi. I watch in horror as the tailor cuts off about 1 metre of the saree material. (I realize later that this is the part that’s used to make the blouse and that the other material, whose colour we’d discussed, is used to make the petticoat that is used to hold the saree on.)
4. I agree to return at 5pm and pay for the petticoat and blouse tailoring and wonder off for breakfast (Idli sambar, khala chai and pani) and of course leave an almost full 2-litre bottle of drinking water at the restaurant.
5. Back at Kashmiri Arts Palace, I pick up the completed Kashmiri set. I give Wahid a wee donation towards the Goa street-children organization and ask him to recommend someone who can sew some parcels ready for posting back to the UK because there isn’t a sewer/packager at the post-office.
6. Wahid takes me to the lady tailors who made the ‘Kashmiri’ saree-blouse – they run their business in their home. I’m offered chai and gurjurati bread (a deep-fried chapatti) that are very welcome as I sit on the bed in their bedroom/lounge/workshop and gurn at the wee child while the younger woman sews up my parcels and then tells me how the blouse has several rows of stitches so it can be loosened if it’s too tight. So much friendliness, I feel like Polyanna and this work cost 20 rupees (the cost of 2 litres of bottled water).
7. Wahid takes me to the post office. They weigh my parcels and tell me the price to post them but that I need to get Mr Podhar, back at the main bazaar, to seal them with wax.
8. So we trudge back to Mr Podhar’s stall but he’s away for lunch.
9. I then ask Mr Shah about getting a room for tonight because he tells me that I’ve been paying over the odds for an off-season room. His other colleague takes me to a hotel on Mesjid Road who charge 150 rupees a night for a nicer room.
10. I pay for it with a 500 rupee note but they don’t have change so, once I’ve received my receipt, I tell the receptionist that I’ll collect my rucsac and then get my change from him.
11. I collect my rucsac, dump it in my room and use the blessed sit-down, flush toilet and pick up my change.
12. Back to Kashmiri Arts Palace to collect the parcels I left there while hotel-swapping and then to Mr Podhar’s to get the parcels sealed.
13. Back to the post-office but now I am 25 rupees short of the postage cost so leave the parcels there while I visit the ATM.
14. Back to the post-office to pay the 25 rupees I owe them, then sit on the post office’s steps and write this drivel.

1. It’s 42 degrees centigrade here. That’s 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. The nice man at the street stall yesterday showed me many newspaper stories in yesterday’s Times of India. One was that medical students here are now regulalry cheating in exams by texting the questions to colleagues who then text back answers. This is despite them being searched for cellphones before they go into the exams.

Back at the cyber café, using a fairly modern LuckyGoldstar* PC which has been endorsed by Sourav Ganguly, Sunil Gavaskar, Krish Sakant and Ravi Shastri. I wonder if I can get Kevin Pieterson and Andrew Flintoff to autograph my Pismo? For no real reason apart from having been able to wash with hot water and get my pile of manky clothes washed, I’m in a fairly silly mood and I hope this will carry on today.
*It’s running windows 98 – they cybercafe owner tells me that it’s easier to network 98 clients than XP or 2K clients. (He uses XP on his server.) I’m a bit surprised by this choice for clients and would appreciate comments from the BOFHs out there.

I’m going to stay at the Rajanthandri tonight and get a train south tomorrow, assuming I can book a ticket on-line today. Apparently India Rail offers a very up-to-date online booking facility. I’ll let you know how I get on with it later but for now, on with the blog-catch-up…

Tuesday 29th
Walk to Wilson Point to watch the sunrise – yes, I was awake and moving before 6pm! After the sunrise, I bought a cup of ginger-enhanced khala chai from a vendor who had a wee stall on a handcart. (How did he get the water up here?) Of course, this stimulated my abdominal systems and I had to crawl into the undergrowth. Thank goodness I don’t go anywhere without necessary supplies…

I went back to Haji Kwajabhai’s shop to continue my Marathi martyrdom and met a chap called Virindra who’s a local licenced taxi-driver/guide. We arranged for him to take me on one of the official tours of the more distant viewpoints, starting at 11am on Wednesday. He also spontaneously offered me a 50 rupee discount on the official price of 350 rupees.

I ate lunch at a fairly upmarket place called Tinklers – the tastebud and watched England’s attempt to beat India’s score in the first one-day international of this series. England were chasing 226, IIRC, and had plenty of overs to do so. However, after both Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pieterson were both out for just over 40 runs apiece (KP’s innings included two beautiful 6s, IIRC), and Geraint Jones failed to score, the match was interestingly poised when the inevitable powercut finished my viewing. (Much later, a friend in the UK sent me the final score: England’s tail enders just can’t bat, while Harbajan Singh, after having been India’s top run-scorer, had taken 5 wickets for a piffling amount of runs.)

While England were crumbling in the afternoon heat, I slept off my lunch and caught up on the miserable amount I’d slept last night. Every night in that hotel, there was a lot of shouting, banging and crashing until about 1am: it restarted around 6am, so I averaged around 5 hours’ sleep a night in Mahabaleshwar.

I then searched for a restaurant that took either of my plastics because I was down to 50 rupees and the only bank I knew of was closed. No-where wanted to know but fortunately I met a magician* who showed me to an ATM (which isn’t mentioned by my guidebook). I ate a Maharashran-style thali, accompanied by a strawberry juice somewhere, phoned a friend in the UK, found out I’ve become vaguely famous here for allowing someone to overcharge me and crashed out.
*I forgot to add that last night, I’d encountered a magician from Pune. We talked quite a lot – he’s been all over Europe and had a show in a theatre here. He gave me a private show on the pavement, making all sorts of things (including my signet ring) disappear and reappear. We all know it’s just sleight-of-hand (he insisted this himself) but it was truly brilliant.

Wednesday 29th
After another patchy sleep, I finally surfaced at 10.45 and charged to where I’d arranged to meet Virendra, arriving just after 11. He wasn’t there and so I waited, while getting more Marathi ‘lessons’, for about half an hour. I’m still in two minds about this – I was a couple of minutes late and so broke our agreement and feel I owe him something. However, I’d have expected him to wait at least 5 minutes before giving up on me, I called his cellphone several times without success and I didn’t get any service from him at all, so I certainly don’t feel I owe him anything like 300 rupees – maybe a glass of chai, over which we could chat and remake the arrangement. (I didn’t get the chance because I never saw him again.)

I couldn’t face any more Marathi martyrdom and so decided to walk to a viewpoint called Arthur’s Seat, about 12km from Mahabaleshwar. (Constantly being bothered by taxi and autorickshaw drivers had turned me against them.) I’d got maybe half a mile down the road and realized that I was getting quite warm when two blokes in a wee three-wheeler van overtook me and then stopped to ask me where I was going. They insisted on taking me halfway, to Old Mahabaleshwar, to where they were delivering a load of laundry at a posh hotel. So we pootled off, me wondering whether the van would turn turtle under our combined weight or whether the engine would simply refuse to get all thee of us up the slopes on this road.

They dropped me off at Old Mahabaleshwar, which seemed worth a look. However, fist I downed a very welcome Mirinda (Indian fizzy drink) and bisleri (bottle of water) and a café, while watching a bloke wash his scooter and then his socks just next to me.

There are two temples at Old Mahabaleshwar, one of which is built over the spring which gives rise to (or at least is used to celebrate) 5 rivers. (Mahabaleshwar and surrounding hamlets appear to be on a peak from which various spurs and ridges fall away. I’ll scan my map when I update my photo-website so you can see what I’m on about.) The water has been channeled to come out of a carved bull’s mouth, into a sacred bathing pool, then to flow through five neat channels, each in a niche with a statue/altar to an appropriate god, on its way to the rivers.

I can’t show you any photos because photography was forbidden within the temple and I searched all the stalls around the temple for postcards or pictorial guidebooks. All I could find were written guidebooks (in Marathi!) so I’m really sorry I can’t share with you how this temple looked. It wasn’t grand, yet it was obviously important and in constant use by a thin trickle of visitors. In fact, the lack of grandeur made it more impressive to me. It seemed to be saying ‘here is water, here is god: react how you will’ without saying ‘I am god, I am going to overpower you.’

I recall buying some rather foul peanuts (still in their shells) from a stall and watching a couple of boys play cricket along the alley between the stalls. However, it was soon time to move on and so I started trudging up the road again. I encountered two little girls who were selling bunches of flowers wrapped in newspaper, ready to offer at a temple, for 2 rupees a bunch. Again, I felt unable to refuse and so bought a posy from each of them, then tied these to my rucsac. While I was doing this, some other children arrived, asking me to do ‘jaadoo’ (magic). This confused me for a while but I soon understood they wanted me to take photographs of them (I think they’d realized I have a digital camera and so they’d be able to see themselves on its screen.). I have a few shots of them spontaneously dancing and cavorting in front of me. I intend to send them hard copies sometime and so have the address of one of the older lads.

Again, after walking less than a mile, I was offered a lift on a scooter by a photographer going to Arthur’s Seat. He knew this road very well and so it was quite a smooth ride, punctuated by stops to restart the engine after freewheeling (to save petrol) down slopes wherever possible.

The views from Arthur’s Seat are breathtaking and I really hope my photos do them justice. I also met the photographer: he takes Polaroid photos of punters who are on a platform overhanging one of the many drops from this point. Since he had refused to take anything for the lift and I fancied having a ‘professional’ photo, I got him to take one. It’s hopefully on its way to my parents in the UK but I’m a bit concerned that this parcel is overdue.

I bought two makkai (cinder-grilled corn-on-the-cob which is then rubbed with lime and masalas [spices]) – absolutely delicious and ate them while dodging flies and watching other stall holdes play ‘throw-tag’, then walked back to Old Mahabaleshwar.

Back at Old Mahabaleshwar, the kids I’d met earlier were playing cricket with other friends. They asked me for more jaadoo and again I have some shots which amuse and give rise to other emotions I can’t name. It’s always lovely to watch children playing without falseness or guile and with amazing exhuberance. I noticed that one of the small children wasn’t getting into the shots and so hoisted him onto my shoulders and got an older lad to take the photos. Of course, quite a few others wanted a turn at this. Also, some of them, learning I was from England, wanted me to pose with their cricket bat, and finally a shot of me holding a very young child. I don’t have any qualms about any of this – it was pure enjoyment for all of us, as far as I could see and two local adults were looking on. (I’d also asked one of them if I was causing problems: he laughingly said ‘no’.) Also, one of the kids gave me a sprig of small black berries (reminiscent in flavour and colour of individual blackberry pips) and showed me that he ate them, so I munched away quite happily – again, purely delicious! By now, dusk was approaching so I got a seat in a shared jeep/taxi back to Mahabaleshwar.

I ate an indifferent methi dahl with jeera rice at a dhaba (restaurant) near my hotel, then played a couple of frames of pool at an amusement center on the main street. While waiting for a table, I chatted with some trainee homeopathic doctors from Mumbai. One was a curious about western marriage/relationship ‘culture.’* On learning my status, he asked how many sexual partners I’d had. I replied honestly (but incorrectly because I was quite surprised by this question) and his friends joked that he was offering to be my next – this had all of us giggling. I jokingly declined and they went away.

I played a couple of frames with a man who turned out to be the owner of the pool-hall. He beat me but I was quite proud of some of my shots – I haven’t touched a pool-cue for over a year. I also learnt that women don’t smoke here (unless they’re super-rich and ‘westernised’, though many men do) and that the owner’s woman cashier (who appeared to be around 25) was divorced due to some domestic problems. (This information was volunteered by a local lad who runs a stall here. We’d also been chatting while I was waiting for a table, during which we touched on the conversation I’d had with the homeopaths.)
*Many people here have asked whether I’m married and whether I have any children. My usual replies that I’m separated from my wife and so am glad we didn’t have any children [because otherwise they’d have been hurt by our break-up] is usually understood and accepted but the questioners’ reactions imply that such events just don’t happen here.

After the hall closed (at 10.30!), I returned to my hotel but played a bit of football in the street with some local lads who asked me to join them. They were all apparently under 13 and one (Shubham) is the son of the man who runs the phonebooth I’d used quite often. I’ve also played a version of hopscotch with these lads (Rohit, Pratik, Pamesh, Dhananjay, Kaitan, Shubham, Yashodam, Ashitish and Daud) a couple of times. You throw a stone into a scoring area chalked onto the path, then hop to it, then through the numbered sections to your stone, then hop-kick it out of that area. If you succeed, you get the number of points in that area and then get another go. However, if you don’t get your stone into a numbered area (or if it lands on any of the chalked lines) or if you put your foot down, take more than one hop between numbered areas, land on any chalked lines or fail to hop-kick your stone completely out of the scoring area, your turn ends.

Thursday 30th
Woken by kid hall- porter – am I checking out? No, so I pay for tonight and then catch the state tour-bus to Pratapgadh, a hillfort built by Chatapatri Shivaji in the 17th century BCE. Here he killed Shah Jahan, a muslim king from Delhi (I think) who was trying to take over the Marathi area at a peace-conference they’d agreed to hold in this hall. It’s an amazing structure at the top of a very high hill, with brilliant look-out posts, escape tunnels and other features which may well have made it impregnable.

(The tour-bus also stopped at a handcraft and fruit-selling center – the strawberries in this area are a large part of its ‘industry’ and are delicious.)

The local folk are raising money for a school at Pratapgadh. there (15 families live in the fort, working as tourist guides and/or running refreshment stalls or maintaining the place) My diary entry simply says that I cooked in the sun and reminds me that I don’t have many photos from Pratapgadh because my camera’s batteries ran out of charge and I hadn’t brought any spares.

My diary then has several pages of notes, scribbles that won’t mean anything to you and then continues….

Thursday 30th part 2
[needs to be re-written]

Friday 31st
[needs to be re-written]

I recall watching India win the second ODI at Faridabad that afternoon. Young Raina and Dhoni were very impressive and it’s a shame that India didn’t have a slightly bigger target to win so that Raina could have scored a century.

Saturday 1st April
There’s nothing in my diary for this day. I recall being woken at 7.30 by the hotel receptionist to ask if I had any problems. (I did – being woken up un-necessarily to be reminded of the check-out time!) I went back to Kashmiri Arts Palace to say ‘au revoir’ to Wahid and Mr Shah then to Haji Kwajabhai’s shop to say goodbye to him. He and some other men were dealing with some photocopies so he asked me to wait for 5 minutes (which turned into an hour) while they finished their business. It appeared to be some local council business so I was quite interested to hear about it but they couldn’t really explain. While I was waiting, I heard some loud Indian/techno music which apparently was part of the start of celebrations for a wedding. I was invited to come in and dance but embarrassment/shyness (and a desire to move on) made me politely refuse.

Having said goodbye to Haji Kwajabhai, I just made the 10.30 bus to Satara. It descended through the usual mind-boggling gradients and overhangs to this town, which appears to be quite big. I sat in the bus-station, recollecting my thoughts from wherever they’d been shaken to on the journey and then walked across the road to a diner-style hotel for breakfast (idly sambar and a bottle of thum’s up [the local ‘coke’]). I also asked around for a cybercafe and a hotel and was directed towards the hotel Rajathadri where I’m now staying.

On the way, I stopped at a street stall and spent 3 hours talking with the man running it. We talked about language origins, local and national politics, the differences between Europe and India and the differences he’s seen in Goa since India took over. (While the portugese ruled there [they still owned it until the 1980s, long after the rest of the country was independent], you’d be arrested for spitting or any other such offense and so the place was neat and well-kept. Now anything goes!) He had a lot of time for British rule, saying that it had kept the country mostly on the straight and narrow but that now politics (in fact the whole state apparatus, including the police) is so corrupt that there’s probably no cure. Several times I was reminded of western corruption and food waste and the conversation rubbed me emotionally quite a lot.

I wondered why an obviously educated (we could even talk chemistry, albeit he knew no organic chemistry and I’ve forgotten almost all I knew of inorganic chemistry [I never really saw the fascination in it anyway]) and cultured man was running a street stall – he had so much more potential – and he told me that he was retired from a fairly senior position in a bank but saw sitting at home all day as morally wrong and physically harmful. Anyway, this work was in lieu of the state pension UK folk are used to. He worked there during the day while his older son was at his main job. Then his son would come to work here while he went home to eat and unwind.

Since my hotel was on his way home and he was going there by autorickshaw, he offered to take me but wouldn’t take any contribution towards the cost of this journey. I have to say that yet again, I’ve been wonderfully treated by most folk I’ve met here. So long as I speak slowly enough, I get along fine and people have spontaneously volunteered help many times.

At the Rajathadri, I asked for direction to a cybercafe and whether I could get some clothes washed (they’re being done by hand just now!) and then came here to blog. I ate masala and sadha dosa at a restaurant the owner recommended (it cost under 60 rupees for another delicious meal, returned for more blogging and then crawled back to the Rajathadri to sleep..

Sunday 2nd
Did I say that my room has a balcony overlooking Chatrapatri Chowk (roundabout)? Er, no – well it does and this is a mixed blessing: great views of the town but traffic noise all night long. Once I’ve posted this, I’ll check on my internet banking and then look into traveling on. Next blog will be from Goa or Ernakullam in Kerala, where I expect it to be even hotter…

Old Mahabaleshwar: Mukund Rajendra Zade, Old Mahabaleshwar, District Satara, Maharashtra, 411002.

Phonebooth: He’s Peshant Jadhow of 20 Cowasji Road, Mahabaleshwar, District Satara, 412806, India.

Well, I’ve just lost an hours’s typing when this bloody Windows 98 box randomly closed my ‘update journal’ window so I’m hoping I can recall the nice ways I phrased everything.

I’m in Satara, staying for a couple of days in the faded grandeur of the hotel Rajathadri on Shivaji Circle, Powai Naka, Satara 415001 (tell [don’t know the code ] 33818). Satara is the ‘county town’ for the Taluka (‘county’) in which Mahabaleshwar nestles. For 300 Rupees, I get a room big enough to contain the lounge of Mycelium Mansion, fresh sheets put on the bed by a flunky as I watch, a clean towel, a new bar of ayurvedic soap, an en-suite, flushing squat toilet and tepid and cold running water!

Last time I blogged, I was in Mahabaleshwar, having arrived from Pune. However, I’ve yet to blog how I got there.

Saturday 25th
Another Brit turned up at the hotel, fresh off the overnight bus from Goa – he’s Tony, an Edinburger (although my ear for accents let me down and I thought he was from, er, a bit further west). He and Adam fancied a look at Pune’s old town and invited me to join them. We meandered through a large area or ‘typical Indian/medieval’ suburb, with no problems apart from relying on the rather hopeless map in Adam’s guidebook. (I’d left my map in my rucsac back at the hotel.) We were approached for performance money/baksheesh by two characters dressed in bright patchwork trousers who wanted to perform with their bullwhips for us but we weren’t keen and refused to pay for things we hadn’t asked for.

Around 1pm, Tony’s lack of sleep and my feeling that I should be moving on led us to aim to get back to the hotel, while Adam decided to carry on to a museum he wanted to see. Tony and I got to within 3 blocks of the hotel before asking at a pharmacy for directions. The pharmacist drew us a good sketch-map and we continued on. About two minutes later we were approached by the pharmacist who offered us a lift on his scooter – it turned out he was a close friend of our hotel’s owner. Tony was leery about 3 people on a scooter (I’ve seen families of 4 or five on scooters and motorbikes here) but I was keen to accept a cooler mode of transport and so gratefully accepted.

The pharmacist whizzed me to the hotel and then went back to find Tony while I ordered a large beer to split between us. When the pharmacist reappeared with Tony (and then refused to accept anything for the lift), Tony and I chatted with the two local politicians on the next table and ordered food. As we were eating, Adam arrived, having failed to fin his museum. We chatted and ate for a while, then Toney retired to catch up on sleep and I left for the bus station.

My somewhat annotated diary takes over:

Natraj Tunnel
New road in places – smooth
Cold stores in mountains
So dry it’s like SCC are of OC
Many hotels [most of which are just wayside diners rather than accommodation], then farming and more random hotels and buildings
Purander Taluka (Kharipol Village)
Swerve to avoid cow
Devanagari* lessons – near crying and puking [because the combination of failing light and road vibrations makes it impossible to focus on the letters and the guy who’s decided he will help me can’t understand this and won’t stop]
At Mahabaleshwar, set on by hotel touts. I forcefully tell them to go away because I’m about to vomit. All but two go away and these two back off at least 5 feel. I sit, swigging water and recomposing myself until I’m ready to ask for help. (It’s after dark and I don’t have a map of Mahabaleshwar.) I ask one to get me to a hotel costing 300 rupees or less a night and am taken to the hotel Vishva Shanti on Cawasji Street. I get a large room with en-suite, sit-down toilet and only two roaches!

*Devanagari is the script used for Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit and other languages in the Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. I’ll blog later why it’s so annoying but for now, just don’t try to learn it unless you have a really pressing need or deathwish.

I’ll blog more later this evening or tomorrow but I’ve just about caught up with where I was and need to eat!

My dad has emailed the following:

Today, Sue received her payslip with back pay to 5th March. ACAS phoned this morning aand said that Morisons had refused to pay her for the period 5th March to 29th March, her restart date. Rather than let the thing drag on, Sue has agreed to accept the settlement. I have written to ACAS, telling them that Morrisons were mean over what, to them, must have been a piffling amount. I suppose it was one of the [people] in their HR Dept, trying to make a name for himself. However, she is back, is happy, the people whom she knows have greeted her like a long-lost relative, so all is now well. There is still the tidying-up to do, like Tribunal to unwind (ACAS is handling this) but basically it’s over!

Just been chatting with the young owner/manager of this cyber cafe. He asked me how Scotland compaed with Mumbai – it was impossible to answer, except to relate my feelings about the huge numbers of poor there. He too insists that India has it all but just can’t get it together because politicians here are corrupt and just don’t give a stuff. He says that because of this he feels as if he’s living in hell.

He agrees with what I was told earlier – that all police here are corrupt because they have to bribe their way into their jobs in the first place. If true, the only saving grace is that they’re armed with lathis, not firearms. Armed police, such as I’ve seen in Belfast, UK airports and the USA, scare the bejasus out of me – and now I’ve stopped to think about it, armed street-gangs (which exist in all those places) probably scare me more!

And yet this district is quite reminiscent of, say, the outer reaches of the modernised* Bull Ring area of Birmingham (once you factor in the crap road surfaces here). Plenty of high-tech, modern shops, educated/middle-class people.
*and in its way quite acceptable – it used to be eerily horrible.

Before I get on with the blogging, are any of the Leckie/Granada folk reading this? If so, can someone ask one of my former Scottish colleagues to contact me privately, please? (Text me on 07909 504328 or add a ‘for Bruce only’ comment to this post if possible.) I’ve tried emailing and not yet recieved a reply. Of course this may be due to spam filtering by my ISP…

OK, on with my diary’s drivel…

Sunday 26th
Woke a few times in the night – hello to Roachie the roach!
10am surface, put on clean clothes – including brand-new socks and shirt
It ain’t half hot mum!
Ear-cleaning [this bit censored to avoid over-embarrassment and prevent any of the squeamish amongst my audience puking]
No power just now so no internet. It may be restored at 11am or maybe at 12 noon (er, actually it came back at 1pm.
Now in CentrePoint, a ‘pure veg, pure Jain’ fast food joint. It’s quite posh, judging by the nice details in the concrete décor, the clothes and girths* of the customers, the clean tables – think of a posh diner in the US.
*There are actually some fat people (other than me) here.

I’m eating masala dosa (crispy rice-flour pancakes) with green chutni. The chutni is basically a lovely tangy, spicy/citrus variant on bubble-and-squeak (using mustard seeds, onions and fresh coriander/cilantro leaf) and is wrapped up in the dosa, which is served with a small bowls of what tastes like oxtail soup and a coconut-based dip. It’s purely delicious!

Some kids are playing on the next table – wish I could play with them. I’m badly missing Boo, M-J and the flower garden. I realize more than ever how much I need more than ‘single-serving’ friends. [Of course I have them but today brought home just how much I need these relationships.]

Just recalled seeing in Mumbai a poster advertising an Indian remake of Fight Club

I pay with a 500 rupee note which causes problems for the cashier who has to run for change. The bill is printed with a dot-matrix printer on a 3-inch wide roll. My chai has worked – need to amble back to my hotel…

Wondered around more, getting very confused by the map I’d bought. Eventually, by locating 3 definite landmarks, I realized that the cartographer had moved 3 hotels a block east. Since these seemed to be obvious landmarks, I’d navigated by them – and got hassled.

I found a school and a well. Two old blokes came up, each carrying two five(?)-gallon containers on yokes over their shoulders. They would attach one to the well-spindles rope, let it down to fill, raise it 10 metres (estimated from the spindle’s circumference and the number of turns to raise the containers), empty its contents into the other, refill the first one, untie it from the spindle-rope and then attach both to their yoke and walk off. Since both looked over 60 and one smelt of shit and I had the luxury of bottled water (stop me from buying it, please!), it seemed reasonable to offer to help them at least raise their water while I waited for a local tailor to shorten my other trousers.

I was also curious why they used the well when there was a pump across the road, which a trio of young girls were using to get drinking water and to wash themselves and their crockery. One even got her mates to pump water inside the back of her trousers so she could wash her backside. I was impressed by she did this without losing any decorum. The went away and another little girl came up to me, asking me by gestures to fill her water container. I took her container to the pump and found out it’s harder work than the well. I also pumped water to fill a middle-aged woman’s container (about 3 gallons). She then hoisted it up on her head and walked smoothly away. They build them tough here!

I took my altered trousers and map (I’d also gotten the main part xeroxed so I could fold it into my pocket) back to my hotel and then wondered back to tinklers to try the cyber café again. Another power-cut!

Another little girl begged for some food. I had no coins and was getting a bit hacked off with it but not enough to refuse so I saw a solution in a stall selling small coconuts. I bought two (they were 7 rupees each) and gave her one and she scampered away. I also asked the stall-keeper to open mine and he directed me to the temple next door. The attendant there beckoned me into the central altar and whacked my coconut with a curved knife/trowel until it broke into two unequal pieces. He then put the large part on the altar and sent me away with the small part and so I sat outside the temple, eating the delicious flesh from this part and writing my diary.

Eventually I was hungry and went back to Centrepoint for more food: this time a special Jain pav bhaji (fried bread rolls to dunk in a spicy sauce) and realized that I AM TWOFLOWER.* I am also an idiot, putting myself in a place where there are many very attractive women with whom I can’t even start a conversation!
*Read Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels if you want to know.

I then watched the sunset from Mumbai point – my photos are quite fun and the sunset itself was pleasant, and then got monstered on a bottle of Khahuraho lager (not less than 8.75% alcohol) in a permit room. I have to insist that I was not as monstered as the two blokes in the corner who’d majored on shorts.

Suitably steaming, I wove my way back to Vishva Shanti…

Monday 27th
Trying to learn Marathi – arggh! I’ve been taken under the wing of a local big-wig who runs a clock and watch retail and repair stall. He’s Haji Khwajabhai Warunkar of Reward Watch Service, Mutton Market Street (near police station), Mahabaleshwar, District Satara, Maharashtra, 410012, India and is keen to help me but I don’t think it’s getting through.

He’s bought me an ‘uncool pee’ (you can transliterate that into Devanagari yourself if you want – it means little book) which shows how the letters are formed and gives examples of their use in words, with vaguely useful illustrative pictures for some of them. (Well, is a picture of a steam-engine meant to mean ‘steam-engine’, ‘railway’, ‘day-trip’ or ‘John Prescott’s worst nightmare’?) Despite his keen-ness to teach me, which I do respect, it’s not getting through:

• He simply shouts the Marathi if I get it wrong, without really telling me what I’ve got wrong and not letting me explain my questions, such as ‘which bit am I getting wrong?’ ‘Please say it slowly so I can hear the differences?’
• Too many other folk are trying to help me at the same time with bits I’m not actually having problems with at this particular time.
• The script is a nightmare:
  1. There are several symbols for consonantal sounds that sound exactly the same to me.
  2. If two consonants or consonantal syllables follow each other, they’re written as a single symbol combining parts of the two single-consonant symbols. Because there are 34 single-consonant symbols, there are 1122 combination symbols and I haven’t yet seen the rules which allow me to analyse them into single-consonant symbols.
  3. The 12 vowels are written either as their own symbols (if they start a word) or as ‘accents’ above, below, behind or in front of symbol for the consonant after which they’re said, thus meaning there are 12 variations on each single-consonant symbol (and hence 13464 symbols altogether). If no vowel-accent is present, a short ‘a’ is understood to be there (unless there’s an ‘accent’ denoting that this ‘a’ sound isn’t to be pronounced).
  4. All the tops of the symbols in a word are joined by a line, thus eliminating the gaps between symbols that help us parse ‘roman’ script.
• Transliteration is also, er, a bit random. For example, a word I hear as ‘now’ means ‘name’. Yet it’s transliterated as ‘nawa’, which Haji Khwajabhai insists is pronounced ‘by the English’ as ‘now’ and won’t accept that of the two of us, I must the expert on English because
  1. it’s my native language
  2. part of my job (and a part at which I am quite skilled) is proofreading and correcting English.

Having said all this, I am very grateful to Haji Khwajabhai for volunteering his time, introducing me to some of his work and local vegetarian foods and his patience with an apparent no-hoper. (As of now (1st April), I can just about pronounce most short words in street-signs, if you’ll accept that I’m guessing at most of the vowels.)

I later met one of Haji Khwajabhai’s friends who took me to his home for chai and chat. His (adult) eldest son showed me their new-born kittens who were nestling with their mother under the bed – so cute I could almost begin to like cats!

That’s all I appear to have dialysed that day. It’s now 10.30 and I want to get a reasonable night’s sleep, so will blog some more tomorrow. See you anon, space-cats.