TORTOISE PROGRESS

KOLKATA: MARCH 18
A guest swims lengths of the pool as I breakfast at a window table at the Taj Bengal. I must face the laptop keyboard. The latest BA High Life piece needs final editing. The Guardian requires 600 words. I am late with 1500 words for MCN and this Blog is way behind. I occupy the same window table for a lunch-time meeting with the hotel's Director of PR, Mrs Modhurima Sinha. Six tourists lounge on sunbeds the far side of the pool. I head for my room. Dinner is Room Service Biriani and 30 minutes of IPL cricket live on TV. I call Bernadette at midnight and collapse into bed.
Have I finished? Of course not.
Why do I write so slowly?

A LADY WITH VERY SPECIAL TASTES

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
I sit on a sofa in an outer office on the top floor of a commercial building in central Kolkata.
The invitation was for 7 pm to 7:30. It is now 8:30. I have read the Times of India, The Telegraph and The Statesman. Sensible would have been to leave an hour ago. On the other hand the woman I expected to meet is my only contact here in Kolkata. I am told that she is rich, that she is interesting, that she does interesting things with her money. I am a writer. Interesting people are the grist for my writer's mill. The lady arrives at 8:45. She is short, plump, middle-aged and has steel chains woven into her hair. The chains reach midway down her thighs. Her desk is piled with pink purses encased in glass-bead spaniels. The curved doggy tail is the handle. Wow!

A SOAK FOR THE SOAK

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
How ever great the number of rooms, the best hotels make each guest feel unique and treasured. Is it years of training or brilliant selection of staff? Probably an amalgam of both.
Taj staff are brilliant.
First goal? Soak in a hot bath...And soak and soak. Then sprawl on a perfect mattress and check my address book. Then connect the laptop to the WiFi for mail.
Is Bernadette OK?
Has my suicidal Last Born survived a further week of snow boarding?
What news of my other children and my grandchildren?
What work am I late delivering?
And what funds remain in the bank? This last is always a major anxiety on a long journey.

TAJ WELCOME FOR AN ANCIENT SCRUFF

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
Six guards protect the gates into the Taj hotel, Kolkata. No entry for an Old Blimp on a Honda 125. Bikes are for servants. I park with the social pariahs and walk. Security at the lobby entrance is airport style. Place keys, small change, mobile phones etc. in a wicker tray for Xray scan. Pass through the detector gates. My braces/suspenders set off the alarm. Take them off and I have to hold up my pants. Hardly a glorious entrance to five star luxury...
I giggle. So do the security guards.
A suave gentleman in a frock coat betrays neither surprise nor dismay at spotting an aged tramp on wealth-hallowed ground. “Mister Gandolfi?”
“Yes,” say I. Are they expecting another ancient scruff??

SECURITY BLANKET

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
Pointless to ask direction to a one star hotel unless you are close. Not so with the Taj Bengal (not so with any Taj hotel). I stay at the Taj for two reasons. Firstly, the Taj group invite me. Secondly, the Taj in Bombay was my security blanket forty years ago. Entering the great dining room overlooking the sea was an instant antidote to depression or fatigue. I took personally the storming of the Taj by terrorists. They attacked treasured memories. Fear them and they are victorious. This ride is both my response and my inadequate memorial to the killed and to a dear and respected friend, sadly departed, Darab Tata.

PUNCTURED PRIDE FOR A DOUBTING THOMAS

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
I suffer from the sin of pride. Not always, but on occasion. You know? Hey, I'm nearly eighty and look at me, Brrrm Brrrm on a cafe racer round India. Wow! Some guy. Fearless...
Kneeling on the gas station forecourt is an act of humility.
The pump attendants and a few drivers and bike riders watch as I waggle the eight inch nail out of the tire. The tire is unpunctured. Not so my pride...
Such is the punishment for my momentary lack of faith.
Remember, Old Man, Honda 125s never never never break down.

HELL AND DAMNATION

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
Tacka tacka tacka fires the machine gun as I creep into a gas station. Hell and Damnation...
I come to a halt and rev the engine. No machine gun, so the engine is OK. It must be the gear box. I dismount and heave the bike onto its stand. I look at the gear box. My knowledge of gear boxes could be written on the point of a very very thin needle and looking doesn't help. I touch the gear box tentatively with a finger tip. Touching tells me nothing. I look at the two gas pump attendants. Surely one of them can wave a wand?
The smaller of the two grins and points at my rear wheel. An eight inch nail sticks out of the tread. I put the bike into gear. The rear wheel spins. The nail strikes the rear mudguard: tacka tacka tacka...

TACKA TACKA TACKA

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
A rattle of heavy machine gun fire erupts directly under my butt.
HELP!
I slow and the rate of fire slows.
I speed up, the rate of fire increases.
I pull in to the curb and the firing stops.
I am riding a Honda 125.
Honda 125s never break down.
This article of faith supported me on my exploration of the Americas - sixty-six thousand kilometers.
It has supported me on this journey through India - eleven thousand kilometers.
Fear hits.
Real fear.
Or belly emptying anxiety (which is fear, surely?).

UNDER MACHINE GUN FIRE

KOLKATA: MARCH 17
I complained once to a dive companion that he didn't understand how frightened I am when a dive becomes difficult, or even threatens to begin to become difficult. I'm a coward, I insisted.
He argued that I merely had an unusually strong survival drive.
He was wrong.
I am a coward, particularly if threatened with an emotional confrontation.
Or when an unsilenced machine gun fires a burst directly under my butt: Tacka tacka tacka.
HELP!

ENRAGED DRIVERS

Chandipur to Kolkata on the map looks an easy ride. Difficulties arise on entering any big city. Sign posts either abandon you midway through the suburbs or, worse, point in a direction which doesn't correspond with the six exits from an intersection.
OK, so it's a left- but which left? The first? Or the second?
Hesitate a millisecond and three hundred enraged drivers hit their klaxons.

TOO MANY BREAKFASTS

Mrs S M Crawford, Hampshire, England
I am criticised often for being too political in my writing and having an anti American agenda. These critics mean the USA rather than America in general. Now I have a new critic, the husband of Mrs S M Crawford of Hampshire, England. Mrs. S M Crawford has posted on Amazon the following criticism of Old Man On A Bike.
I bought this for my husband at his request. He was fired with enthusiasm from an article he read in The Telegraph. He is totally disappointed in this book and literally had to struggle through it. He sums it up as a description of breakfast in many places. It is therefore not recommended.
So for those readers who don't care for breakfast, be warned...

GREAT CRAB AND A FIVE K TIDE

CHANDIPUR: MARCH 16
The ride north was tough, not simply the distance and the traffic, but the heat. Perhaps I aimed for too long a daily distance. Or age is overtaking my ambitions. What ever, I remain tired despite the day's break at Puri. Puri to Kolkata is a further 500 Ks. I break the distance midway with a night at a small fishing village, Chandipur. A clean a/c room with a reasonable mattress is 650 Rupees at the Hotel Shubhan. I planned a swim before dinner. The tide is out. Out at Chandipur is 5 Ks! I return to the hotel, apply a coating of Deet, sit out on the terrace and enjoy the evening breeze. Deet is miraculous. In four months of travel I've been bitten at most half a dozen times. I should write. I prefer meditating on the fresh crab the hotel manager has promised for dinner. Chandipur is famous for crab – and , of course, that five kilometer tide. The power cuts when I am on the stairs to the restaurant. No problem. Obligatory evening wear for India includes a Leatherman flashlight.

ADIEU TO PURI

PURI: MARCH 15
I have walked the beach, struggled through a few thousand pilgrims to admire the temple, eaten curd and fruit salad with my Chinese lady friend (she leaves for Darjeeling tomorrow)and avoided further discussions of belts and diamonds. Tomorrow I head north towards Kolkata.

BELTS OR DIAMONDS?

PURI: MARCH 15
The elderly overweight Canadian remains undecided as to beach diamonds. He has a further concern. Leather belts are a tenth the price of belts back home in Canada. Should he buy belts with the standard buckle or in the modern flip-over style? I gave up wearing belts on my fiftieth birthday. I wear what we Brits call braces and the Americans call suspenders. I wear them outside my shirt. The Canadian is clearly asking advice of the wrong person. This doesn't stop him.

BREAKFAST AT THE Z HOTEL

PURI: MARCH 15
A portly Canadian in his sixties and looking older wonders whether he shoud buy a diamond from a peddler on the beach. The unanimous opinion offered by his fellow guests at the Z Hotel is an instant negative. He, however, is determined that he has found a bargain. He bought a stone in Rajastahn some years back for US$1000. The gem dealer assured him that it had a value of US$2000. Back home a jeweler confirmed the value at $2000. This, of course, was the price a jeweler would set for a punter rather than the price at which a jeweler would buy the stone. The Canadian eventually sold the stone for US$600 yet believes that he made a profit.
Perhaps he should try baskets...

VSO CYNICISM

PURI: MARCH 14
Eight guests for dinner are thinly spread at the Z Hotel 's single dinning table. The table seats forty. Perhaps it is a remnant of the Maharajah's long-gone splendour. A young couple from Pen State are in management with a VSO program further south. The previous volunteer left six months prior to their arrival. No trace remains of the previous volunteer's work – work that these two are now duplicating. Little wonder that they are increasingly cynical. They will be in India for two years. They came with hopes of achieving something for the poor. Their cynicism worries them. They admire Obama and fear that he will be a one term President. They talk of his race speech during the Primaries as a turning point in the Election. He talks of feeling proud as he listened to the speech, proud to bare witness to the good side of America.

THE LSE IS ANOTHER BRAND NAME

PURI: MARCH 14
I share a bowl of fruit salad and curd with a placidly beautiful Chinese woman whose age I underestimate by ten years. She is trying to find herself. More fruit salad and she corrects herself. She has a low boredom threshold and is searching either for an occupation that will hold her interest or for the discipline to resist moving on at the first yawn.
In part, her problem is a fast well-trained mind (my opinion). She is a graduate of the London School of Economics.
I suggest Day Trading as an Adrenalin rush. She did that for ten years. She says that it became obsessive, one more computer game.
Writing appeals to her – though she doubts her staying power.
I suggest a fake autobiography: Chinese high flier drops a million in the morning and makes her dinner date suffer. Have you done that?
Yes, maybe...
Which is a definite Yes in any language.
And she doubts whether she could satisfy the US/UK Chic Lit market. Chinese women have a perception of romance more subtle that the Western sob and groan version, so she claims. The perfect husband is perfectly manipulable...
We will meet again tomorrow for more fruit salad. Aged forty, she is a year or two younger than my friend, Ming, with whom I traveled through Ecuador and Peru. They share a splendid Chinese elitism.
Four thousand years of bad ceramics was Ming's critique of pre-Colombian art.
My present companion dismisses the LSE as one more brand name along with Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuiton.

Z HOTEL, PURI

PURI: MARCH 14

In a previous life the Z Hotel at Puri was a Maharajah's beach house. The manager is vague as to which Maharajah. My room is marginally smaller than a squash court. The cloud island in the middle is a four poster bed with mosquito net. A fan turns slowly above the net. Open all the windows and the net billows in the breeze. For furniture there is a desk, one easy chair, two upright chairs, a wardrobe and a wooden clothes rack. Crossing the bathroom is a major expedition – pack sandwiches. All this for 750 Rupees. Not such a tough life...

CONSTABLE

PURI: MARCH 14

The painter, Constable, marketed a fine line of rural romantic poverty. I've been taking photographs...

BAD ROAD, GREAT COUNTRYSIDE

PURI: MARCH 14

Most visitors travel to Puiri via the State Capital. I take a short cut down a single-tack country road from the south west. The first five kilometers are good tar. For the next fifteen I creep between elephant traps and dirt moguls. But what a glorious countryside of straw-cottage villages, temple ponds shaded by giant pepul trees and baobabs, emerald paddy studded with coconut palms. I bump and bounce past a truck. A bridge crosses a creek sheeted with water Hyacinth and water lily. Buffalo bask with only their noses above the surface. I stop to photograph a basket market, pull in at a tin-shack canteen for a cold soda. The owner has been playing cricket.