old man on a bike

My Footprint guidebook recommends a walking tour through New Delhi from the Broadway hotel: R350 including a great lunch. The tours no longer take place. Management at the Broadway hotel telephoned a guide: R2400, no mention of lunch.
So I walked without guide.
Study a map and advice comes from all sides. Some of the advice is accurate, some is useful, much is either incomprehensible or not pertaining in any way to my goal. However all is well meaning so relax and go with the flow...

Labels: Broadway Hotel, Delhi, Footprint

No partridge and the Moti Mahal suffers from having been excessively guide-booked in the 45 years since my last visit. I shall go on a walking tour of Old Delhi tomorrow and commune with ruins.

Labels: Delhi, Moti Mahal

Most of a day spent toing and froing across Delhi in search of a Panasonic service agent capable and willing to fit a new screen to my damaged Lumix. My driver for some five hours was an elderly, very thin, kindly and helpful Sikh. His PukPuk was equally ancient. I had to push the time he stopped at an intersection with a rear wheel in a pot hole. Only faith and a few prayers got us up a fly-over. Fortunately Delhi is mostly flat.
And I am in the flow.
The flow is to banish all expectations.
Ming, in his monastery, should he read this, will be pleased with my progress (however temporary) to a state of acceptance...though he might frown at the partridge.

Labels: Delhi

I ride to dinner in a rickshaw and pass men struggling with huge loads - not beasts but men of burden. My destination is the Moti Mahal where 45 years ago I glutted on a superb partidge. Does the Moti Mahal continue to serve partridge?
And why do I feel guilt as I pass the men with their loads? My guilt is of no help.
Yet I continue to feel, if not guilty, at least uncomfortable.
India, all ready...

Labels: Delhi, Moti Mahal

My neighbour on the flight from London intended becoming an extreme sports instructor - specialising in rock climbing. Early into this career he discovered the attractions of capitalism. He is married now with two young children at Private school and is an associate partner in a branch of IBM.
He keeps fit rough-water life saving.
My youngest son, Jed, is night portering at a hotel in Tignes this winter season and snow boards all day. He intends becoming a ski instructor.

I have a memory of taking a rickshaw in Bombay.
I instructed the driver, "Drive slow."
The driver nodded happily.
I emphasised, "Slow, slow, slow..."
The driver did a U turn and slammed into a pedestrian with a wooden leg. The leg snapped.
Today I was about to hire a rickshaw when a young man from the mobile telephone shop offered me a lift on the pillion of his motorbike.
Politeness made me accept.
Fifty yards of side street and ten near-death experiences separated us from the junction with the main road. The young man stopped at the T junction.
I abandoned ship...

Labels: rickshaws

Crossing a Delhi road near Connaught Circle. I am on the side of the pedestrian crossing closest to oncoming traffic. Terrorised, I shift to the outer side of the pedestrian crossing, felow pedestrians between me and the traffic.
A gentleman smiles and says, "No matter where you cross, death is Fate..."

This evening's meal awakened a memory of 1960s Bombay (as it was then) and a Parsee Bombayite recalling great food at a restaurant in Bombay's Muslim Quarter. Neither he nor his friends had eaten in the Quarter since Partition. Four of us took a cab. The restaurant existed, though with few patrons. Tables were in tall-backed wooden booths similar to those in a workman's cafe on Chelsea's Kings Road in the early 50s, bread and dripping, bubble and squeak, massive white mugs of tea. The cafe is long gone.
As for the restaurant in what is now Mumbai?
I'll make enquiries in hope of discovering food as delicious as it was back then.
As for this evening, I chewed a while on unchewable chunks of mutton and mopped up a divine brain curry with a mediocre nan.
The curry remains within - no mean feat given a drunken driver weaving an unsprung rickshaw on Delhi's humpity and cratered roads...

Labels: Delhi, Kings Road

I took a rickshaw across town this evening for dinner at a Muslim restaurant behind the Jama Masjid mosque. The driver was moderately drunk. I told him not to wait. He waited. He stopped at a bottle shop on the return journey for a small bottle of 999 Rapidsmash whisky. He showed me the label. I may have mis-remembered the name. He wants to drive me tomorrow. I shall hide....

I have been travelling round Delhi in motor rickshaws much of the day in search of solution to my camera. Here are a few observations on Delhi traffic. Right of way goes to the most determined. A gap opens, go for it - left or right lane is immaterial and red lights are for wimps. Side mirrors are obligatory yet would survive a few minutes. Car drivers fold them in while on rickshaws they are on the inside. What can the rickshaw driver see in his mirrors? His passengers.

Labels: rickshaws

I am in Delhi!!!!!
Flew in with BA, arriving 0125 this morning. Car from the Jyoti Mahal hotel met me. Great room, HOT WATER! Bliss...
One small problem - the flight attendant dropped my computer bag. The screen on my camera is broken - fun given that I am writing for BA in-flight magazine! So off now to the BA office...
But my telephone functions and I know how to use it.

Labels: British Airways, jyoti Mahal

Yes, I know, The Times is Murdoch - but so is HarperCollins.

Labels: HarperCollins uk, London Times, Murdoch

Today is both my eldest son's and my youngest son's birthday. There is a twenty-five year difference in age. I love them totally and they both speak to me so I am an exceptionally fortunate dad.
I am also a fortunate writer. The Times travel editor asked for a piece on why and how I travel. The piece will be in The Times for November 21.

Labels: The Times

The Resident ex-Teenager has three friends staying. They were out in Worcester last night. Nearly noon and they should surface soon - meanwhile I have the radio turned low.
Jed asked whether I would mind collecting them from the car park at 3.45 am.
The piece I have in the latest Lonely Planet anthology, BEST OF LONELY PLANET TRAVEL WRITING, ends on this exact topic - that it is an honour to be asked, part and parcel of the joy in being a Dad.
As was telephoning my daughter on her wedding anniversary the day before yesterday. I am a very very very lucky and privileged old man.

Labels: LONELY PLANET

My writing of William Dalrymple's books may lead readers to question my preparations for India. Why do I read a Brit - a Catholic Brit educated at a Benedictine boarding school. I attended the same school and recognised in Dalrymple's writing a similar views of history - though mine were of Hispanic America.
And my recent reading has been broader. Pavan K. Varma strikes me as a Must while Mark Tully's years as the BBC's India expert has led, for me, to irritating presumption of all knowing infallibility.

Labels: Mark Tully, Pavan K Pavan, William Dalrymple

I wrote a piece a while back for a Lonely Planet anthology, FLIGHTLESS.
Now Lonely Planet has included the piece in a new anthology, BEST OF LONELY PLANET TRAVEL WRITING.
I am in there with some of those I believe truly great. One is William Dalrymple. In preparation for my journey through India, I have read, enjoyed and learned from four of Dalrymple's books:
WHITE MUGHALS
THE AGE OF KALI
THE LAST MUGHAL
CITY OF DJINNS

FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN is equally brilliant,

Labels: LONELY PLANET, William Dalrymple

Tomorrow is Jed's twentieth birthday. Goodbye to the Resident Teenager - though Jed has always been mature for his age. He gave a party Friday night. Bernadette and I stayed the night at my brother's. We came home yesterday afternoon. The house was immaculate.

Sending a new m/s or article to an editor is similar to presenting an exam paper for marking. Believeing or feeling this makes me a septuagenarian schoolboy and both Bernadette and the Resident teenager are irritated by my lack of confidence. I argue that I am gaining confidence - ok, so a little late in life. Writing articles for the first time in fifty years helps. Send the m/s of a book to your agent and you wait months. Send a piece to a broadsheet editor and you get an immediate response. Bliss...

Seventy-six and off to rediscover India, fantastic (even if I am nervous).
So why are the recent posts depressing?
Mostly because the past months has been waiting for answers to Emails and waiting for telephone calls. Having no control over one's life makes one (me) feel helpless, powerless. Which is depressing!
Are writers manic depressives by nature or does being a writer lead to manic depression?
Only fellow writers should reply.

I haven't described last month's car crash. I had been feeling dopey for two days and was booked to drive a neighbour's granddaughter to the train station in Cheltenham and collect our resident teenager. Dopey as in falling backward into the bath and not making too much sense - only in the mornings, Afternoons I was fine. Nights I wasn't sleeping. To continue the saga: having collected the granddaughter and luggage, I reversed the car into the neighbour's wood-frame house. The car was OK. The front of the house has had to be rebuilt - so much for wood-frame construction!
The resident teenager claimed I drove through two red lights on the way home.
Bernadette put me to bed.
It was only then that we discovered that the pharmacist at the clinic had accidentally added a very strong sleeping pill to my monthly sack of cardiac medication. The sleeping pills were the same size as a blood pressure pill I take in the mornings!

The Indian journey is fact. I fly out from Heathrow to Delhi on December 7.
How do I feel?
Excited...
Yes, and a little scared.
Am I recovered from the accident in Tierra del Fuego - not the physical damage but the fear of getting run down.
Will Indian traffic be totally terrifying?

Labels: ballet, High Life, MCN

Weird...I sought commisions from various editors before traveling the Americas. None of them gave me the time of day, I presume, because the odds were against a septuagenarian surviving such a ride. I'm a couple of years older now. The odds are worse. Yet I turned down an offer from the Guardian and have been signed for both High Life and MCN. MCN want a fortnightly video plus a couple of articles...

Labels: High Life. BA, MCN

I will be covering my journey through India in the British Airways in-flight magazine, High Life. and writing a monthly diary for the High Life web site.

Labels: British Airways, High Life

The Victoria and Albert museum in London is hosting an exhibition of the Maharajas' treasures. The Taj Hotel Group are co sponsors of the exhibition and kindly invited me to a reception at the museum. I have been reading history for the past months. The history cast a thick veil over the exhibits, often of blood, and made the exhibits difficult to see simply as works of art.

Labels: Taj Hotels, Victoria and Albert museum

I was greeted with enthusiasm in my first approach to ROYAL ENFIELD. The use of a bike for my tour of India seemed assured. I warned Enfield in my Presentation that I wouldn't lie. Now I am back to Honda. Why? Perhaps there is a question of reliability? And, to be truthful, I was unhappy at changing steeds. My Brazilian built Honda 125 carried me 40,000 miles through the Americas without mechanical failure or problem. We reached an altitude of 4,700 meters, not fast, but without a splutter. I expect the same reliability from an Indian built Honda. All that I would change is the seat...

Where have I been? Malvern Spa most days attempting to get fit for India. Also traipsing to London, visiting and having family visit. And wondering whether the India trip is fantasy or reality...and wondering whether I can cope if it does happen. And feeling fat and ugly and old old old...

Life is exciting. Firstly I am represented by a new literary agent, Piers Russell-Cobb and a new agent for Foreign Rights, Camilla Ferrier. I've had meetings with the Marketing Manager for the Taj Group and with the Royal Enfield representative for Europe.
Last week I was in London and down to Kent to meet with Toby Brocklehurst.
Tomorrow I drive north to talk with members of the Wakefield Branch of the Classic Bike Club.
Tuesday I'll be at MCN in Peterborough.
Friday to London again for a meeting with Dan Foley of DF Entertainment.
And I've had my hair cut...

Labels: DF Entertainment, MCN, ROYAL ENFIELD