GOOD NEIGHBOURS

dusk from the garden


MURUD: FEBRUARY 8
Murud is more of a large village than a town. Fishing and tourism are the main pursuits. The off-shore fortress of Janjira is the main attraction - apart from fresh seafood. I am staying at the Seashore Resort, listed in Footprint as having three rooms, a pretty garden, and run by a friendly family – accurate, though one room is closed while they extend the main house. I didn't find the place through the guide book. The doorman at a posh hotel across the street recommended it. A German family occupy the second room. Mother is a retired teacher. Father, a mathematician, is about to be retired with a golden handshake by a software company; younger people are available at half the salary. In her mid twenties, the daughter is cogitating on a career in what might loosely be described as the Social Services (or good deeds). They are traveling by hire car with a driver. They laugh a lot, love each other and read books. Good neighbours...

HEROIN AND OTHER DRUGS

MURUD: FEBRUARY 6
My knowledge of heroin is academic, though extensive. Thus I know that taking a hit develops a hunger for more. Prawns are similar which explains why I am on the road early and racing south from Daman for the small seaside town of Murud. The highway is good. I cruise at 90 kph and cut inland to avoid Mumbai – why risk bronchitis?
I pull in beside a sextet of cops for directions on which road to take.
An officer asks my age.
“Seventy-six, seventy-seven next week,” and I show him my passport.
The cops yak and laugh amongst themselves. Are they going to hit me with a fine for something? No, they are giving me a birthday present: permission to ride up the Pune (or Poona) Expressway (illegal for bikes). A secondary road to the right leads to Pale and so to the coast and a room with three beds in Murud at 450 rupees. Pile all three mattresses on one bed and you have three layers of rock. Walk down the garden and you are on the beach. Beach is rocks ground small.

RIDING'S A BITCH - SO WHY AM I ENJOYING IT?

Riding a bike in India is tiring. This is not a complaint. I am having a great time. However a day in the saddle leaves me with insufficient energy to mount an Internet connection hunt. Back in the UK we have an image of India as the burning tip of high tek Internet development. Not on any connection that I've used. Slow as a slug and often fails when uploading pictures. However I have reached Cochin safely and am waiting for Professor Doctor Betty de Swann to sashay off the plane on the 21st. So I have two days to get up to date with the BLOG - Oh, and there is the next piece for BA and a film Presentation for Veronica. I think that's all. Or do I owe MCN? Though to have any sort of work at my age and in the present economic climate is a miracle for which I am immensely grateful...
That's enough.
Get back to your room, Old Fool, and start writing.

BACK TO THE ROAD

DAMAN: FEBRUARY 5
Daman is on the coast 250 Ks south of Baroda/Vadodaras. The territory was annexed by the Portuguese in 1531 and ceded to the Portuguese by the Sultan of Gujarat in 1539. Prime Minister Nehru ordered the invasion of all Portuguese territories in India on 19th of December, 1961. Thus ended 430 years of Portuguese rule. So much for history...
Modern Daman is in two halves divided by the Daman Ganga river. Nani Daman is a moderately chaotic mix of high rise and bazaar, hotels, restaurants and wine shops, all geared to sell cheap booze to Indian males on holiday from dry States.
Cross the bridge to Moti Daman and the Portuguese fort and enter a quieter more tranquil world. Indian forts are built to guard Maharajas and their palaces. Daman fort sheltered bureaucrats, traders and their families. No palaces here. Trees shade peaceful streets of modest buildings. Even the cathedral is little bigger than a parish church. I sit a while on a bench in the plane white nave. The Eucharist light flickers on the alter. A small elderly woman and her pre-teens granddaughter kneel and light votive candles. A plump grey-haired priest smiles welcome as he passes. I am at peace. This is my culture. I practice dying. Then back to Nani Daman and Nana's restaurant for a splendid fish soup followed by spicy prawns.
Where am I sleeping? First I tried the Hotel Marina where polished wood floors and high ceilings of an old-style Portuguese home promised romance. An arrogant young manager showed me three rooms that smelt stale and damp. The TVs were secured in wooden cages. (when did you last steal a hotel TV?) and he demanded a 1500 Rupee deposit for a 600 Rupee room. No, thanks. Better a clean room with a clean smell in a modern building at 350.

WICKED WOMEN WITH MEDIA CAREERS

GOA: FEBRUARY 11
First I am pampered by the Taj. Then I am pampered by two Dutch friends who take me to a Burmese restaurant, Bombas, for dinner followed by a party at the home of a wealthy Delhiite. The dinner is as fine as any I have eaten. Prawns? Naturally - raw tuna, tender beef, chicken salad, etc etc etc etc etc, plus a gently lethal but delicious drink, the Bombas special. The Delhiite's home is modern and built on a lagoon. Water reflects overhanging trees. An Italian male struts his stuff in golden shoes and platinum self-regard. Two young women, Brits from west London via Solihull, grandparents from the sub-continent, coo their admiration of Italian men. Italian men have such wonderful taste. The Italian preens while the wicked ones extend their admiration to cover every aspect of male peacock self-adulation. Perhaps an hour passes before doubt creeps beneath the Italian's carapace. Doubt turns to certainty. He flees. His persecutors prance in victory. The Dutch drop me back at the Taj. Wash, teeth in a glass, heart medication, read birthday Emails from my children then lie in bed and call Bernadette. I wish she were here.
But a good birthday?
Yes, one of the best.

FAMILY FEELING

GOA: FEBRUARY 11






1) happy helmet








2) good place to work














Before leaving England, I wrote in a article for the London Times that I would beg, borrow or steal for a night at the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodphur. The Umaid Bhawan is Paradise for any lover of art deco. I spent two nights in blissful comfort. Yet more important were the days of exploration with one of the front desk managers and the discovery of so many extraordinary treasures of the period.
For Christmas I stayed in the Taj hotel at Gwalior, a palace built by the Maharaja as a guest cottage for King George V. I was suffering from bronchitis which antibiotics had failed to shift. The chef blended a herbal tea that worked a miracle.
I write of these visits today because I am being so totally spoiled and need to say thank you. Thank you not only for the comfort and the cosseting, but even more for the welcome. One of the managers, Derek, yesterday took me for a drive up to the old Portuguese fort. Rather than a courtesy car, we used the hotel work jeep. Because they didn't think of me as a guest, Derek explained, but as a member of the Taj family. Derek is Goan with University degrees in everything from ecology to law. I had lunch today at the restaurant above the sea - pan fried sea bream. Delicious! Derek arrived with a two-man Happy Birthday orchestra and presented me with a ribbon-tied coffee table book on Goa. So do I feel special? Yes. Is this part of the Taj experience? Perhaps. And yet there is something more and it for this that I wish to offer gratitude - not only of being made to feel part of a family but of a family of which I am immensely proud.

BIRTHDAY BOY

GOA: FEBRUARY 11


1)view's good,too










2) birthday cake unveiled

















Today is my 77th birthday so please forgive me if I skip ahead to the present. I ride faster than I write - a disadvantage for a travel writer - and, though trying to catch up, have been unsuccessful. Daman is behind me. So is the charming small coastal town of Murud south of Mumbai/Bombay and Malvan a little north of the Goa border. And, yes, I have eaten many a prawn!
For my birthday I am staying as a guest of the Taj Hotel Group at their beach resort in Goa. I am housed in a small cottage, really a luxurious minny suite, though with a private garden rather than a terrace. I have been writing this morning at a table in the garden. A waiter has delivered a chocolate birthday cake with candles and a card from management. I feel treasured - a sentiment echoed this morning by a couple from the Cambridgeshire Fens.

CAMERONES, PRAWNS, WHATEVER

I have written often that Om never did it for me. Camerones is my key to a state of blissful oneness with the universe, the Spanish word for prawns - though Prawns doesn't carry the same mystical power. No need for the Lotus position. An upright chair at a table is fine and a waiter for Guru. “Camerones,” I pray, “Grilled with chillies and garlic...” or in a spicy Veracruz tomato sauce. Oh, the incense...
Rajasthan, being a desert, doesn't do prawns.
Now I am into Gujarat. Veradora is a one night way station. Ask for directions and I draw a blank while Baroda (the old name) achieves an immediate response (nor did any Indian I met at the Jaipur Literary Festival speak of Mumbai or Mollywood). I digress. My original intention was to explain why I am speeding down the main highway for the coastal town of Daman, once a Portuguese territory. Daman has good restaurants serving great sea food.

WOMEN ARE BEASTS OF BURDEN

Good-bye to the not-Maharaja and the good people of Dhariyawad. Off again on a narrow road through small villages and lush fields of wheat, borders shaded by trees, leaves stirring in a light morning breeze, scents of fresh cow dung and freshly irrigated soil. This is the India of my imagination, the India I came to visit. I am a country boy. Send me up to London for four days from my beloved Herefordshire and I am often back on the evening train. So remember, Old Man, don't get trapped again. Stop sight seeing. Start experiencing. Yet sight seeing is easy. A past of temples and fortresses and palaces protects you from reality. Read history rather than the newspaper. Don't notice, as I must, the trail of village women balancing on their heads loads of wood. The weight forces them to take small rapid steps. Beasts of burden, whether with child or cargo, such is their lot. And the men? Still gathered to discuss the implications of Sunday's election. Will this or that permit be more easily acquired? Or Is five years of obsequious attention to a minor elected official wasted? This is India's rural politics.

THE GIANT FLYING SQUIRREL HUNT

The hunt is on for giant brown flying squirrels. In fact they don't fly. They glide. And they are nocturnal. The not-Maharaja's majordomo is the expert. We depart at 1730 in the hotel's World War One jeep. So they didn't have jeeps in WW One. Nor have you ridden in the Dhariyawad jeep. It predates suspension. It probably predates God.
The squirrel sanctuary is 18 kilometers up the bad road on which I arrived yesterday. A painter of zero talent has painted squirrels on the tall stone walls surrounding the sanctuary. The majordomo parks on the roadside beside the well outside the gates. The squirrel warden brings a bucket. Well water transforms the jeep's radiator into a steam geyser.
Now for the squirrels. The majordomo connects a powerful flash lamp to the jeep's battery and points to the center tree of three, possibly mangoes, growing between the sanctuary wall and the road. The warden, also with a lamp, assures me that squirrels will materialise at 1845 hours. I sit on a stone bench beneath the trees and wait in company with a small cloud of mosquitoes. Fortunately the mosquitoes dislike Deet. Night descends. Warden and majordomo shine their lamps on the tree. I see a small black face with pointed nose and bright eyes, plump body, bushy tail - at a guess three times the size of the grey squirrels living in the cedar tree shading our garden.
The lamps discover two more.
The warden rushes me directly under the tree. The squirrels disappear. I saw them fly?
“Absolutely, wonderful...” or so I reassure the warden and tip him 100 rupees.
Back we bump to the Fort where I am served an excellent dinner on the terrace. So ends a blissful day. Thank you, Dhariyawad.

SNEER-FREE BANKERS!

Plastic is the magic wand enabling modern travel. Magic is unreliable. I expect the worst each time I insert my card in an ATM. Or to mix metaphors, the Sword of Damocles accompanies me. The thread snaps in Dhariyawad. I refuse to panic. Or I refuse to accept that I am panicking. I stroll back to the Fort, sit on the terrace and call Smile, the E-Bank. The Fraud Department has blocked my card. Someone has been trying to use it with the wrong Pin. Not me. My Pin is etched in my memory with emotional gore. The card is unblocked. I must now institute an unblocking procedure at the ATM. The procedure doesn't exist in India. I consult the staff at the Dhariyawad bank. They advise that the card will probably work in 24 hours, meanwhile why I don't I join them for tea and a leisurely chat...?

CLEAN SWEEP

fort terrace and garden

Sunrise in Dhariyawad. The Congress Party has swept the board. The spoils must be divided - small groups of male activists gather on the lawn below the hotel terrace. I watch the not-Maharaja mingle, affable, contented. Seeking greater privacy, a couple drift away. The elder gives instructions. The younger nods. Victory music blares from loud speakers in the bazaar. Later starts the victory procession. The not-Maharaja leads in his jeep. Small hatchbacks follow, motorcyclists two abreast. A tight group of women in sari glad-rags smile respectful support from beyond the arches - so much for equality of the sexes. The procession moves away through the bazaar and market square. The music stops. I am in search of an ATM. The majordomo leads, murmuring greetings left and right - a semi-semi royal progress. I follow in his footsteps – traditionally the woman's place. The ATM won't pay. Bloody Hell... Back to the Fort and back to work.
Firecrackers and drum beat herald Congress foot-soldiers. The brave spill through the archway into the Fort's parking lot. A fresh fire-cracker volley and drum roll encourages the timid. They have come to pay homage only to find the not-Maharaja absent. More fire crackers, more rattle of drums, then off they troop, supporters of no importance now the vote is in.

WHY VISIT DHARIYAWAD?

There is no logical reason for visiting Dhariyawad. To get there you take National Highway 79 east from Udaipur and turn south after Bhatewar down a crumbling single track road for fifty Ks – not a comforting experience for the nervous. The road passes through a forest, mostly teak. Teak, when shedding its leaves, looks more dead than alive. The forest is a wild-life sanctuary. Langur monkeys are common – as they are elsewhere. The fortunate may spot four-horned antelope, niglai, possibly a jackal or hyena. The miraculously fortunate (or imaginative) may even spot a panther stalk the shadows – though I doubt that even the evening flight of giant flying squirrels warrants the drive. So let me offer a very different experience: a rest from sight-seeing, escape from the tourist route.
Dhariyawad is an Indian country market town at the confluence of the Jakham and Karmoi rivers. No havelis here tarted up as guest houses, no restaurants promising veg and non-veg, Chinese, Italian, Continental (all of which taste the same), no tiresome tourist touts. Drive through the market and through the bazaar. At the T-junction turn right through the pointed key-hole arches emblazoned with a radiant sun smiling over a Rajput moustache - the massive wooden doors should be open - and you enter a 16th century mini Paradise. This is the domain of the eldest living son of the eldest son of the last Maharaja of Dhariyawad. The sixteen spacious rooms and suites offer total peace, comfortable beds, comfortable easy chairs and always a desk. Bathrooms are huge, water hot, proper towels. Dine outdoors on the terrace or upstairs in the dinning room. I am here for full moon. What could be more romantic?
Only at breakfast do I realise why I feel so at home. The Fort has the feel of a small manor house in an English village or off a Cathedral Close, though too small to be a Bishop's palace. Arches are a different shape, servants more numerous, home-made marmalade marginally less chunky. But the feel is there, peaceful, unpretentious, timeless, embedded in the community. What joy to be able to stay a month, ride horse-back, bird watch, explore tribal villages, wander the bazaar without being nagged with buy buy buy. Yes, and tell tall tales later of the panther seen while following a forest guide...

THE NOT-MAHARAJA

bazaar on election day


The owner of the Fort Dhariyawad hotel would be the Maharaja if such titles had not been abolished by India's post Independence dictator, Indira Ghandi. He is also President of the local branch of Congress, India's ruling and dominant political Party. This is election day for mayors and District assemblies - the village gatherings are explained. The not-Maharaja has been out marshaling his men (no women) to get the vote in. A moment to greet me, then back to oversee the count!

ROAD TO PARADISE

Following eleven days of imprisonment in Jaipur, the ride to Bundi was a confidence builder. Today I follow a minor road south west through dark emerald wheat fields and small villages. The oncoming traffic is mostly bikers delivering milk to town – presumably to a dairy to be transformed into cheese and curd. Four churns is the standard load. A few men manage six. The churns are copper and bell bottomed.
Here, way off the highway, riding through villages demands extra caution. The tarmac is already sun-warmed and the street is extra living space. A cow dozes in the sun; a woman combs out her hair; men gather round a spectacled reader of a newspaper. Men and women are dressed in Sunday best. The only people working are the milk delivery men and bus drivers. Is today one more of India's innumerable holidays?
An egret pretends to be a heron on the borders of a shallow reed-rimmed lake. The road zigzags up and crosses a barren plateau cratered with stone quarries, then down to more wheat fields and finally meets the four-lane Highway 76.
The highway is almost deserted. The concrete surface is excellent and the Honda cruises happily at 90 KPH (yes, I'm a real speed freak). Then follows 100 Ks of dilatory meandering down mostly single track tar. Men have gathered in every village. Serious faced, they squat and talk quietly in the shade of flat topped thorn or mango trees, few women visible, and most shops closed as I ride through the narrow main street of the bazar in the small market town of Dhariyawad. I turn in through the key-hole entrance arches to the Fort and my day is done. I have ridden 368 kilometers ending with 40 Ks of tinder-dry forest. My butt is numb but what a totally joyous ride.

ARE MUSLIM GRANDFATHERS MORE RELIABLE

I go in search of breakfast at a cafe across the street. A male toddler in a yellow bed cap tied under the chin, no pants, points at me. I point back. He giggles coyly. His dad sweeps him up and tells him to shake my hand. He whimpers. His mum grabs him and ducks back through a low doorway.
The teenage help at the cafe says there's no fresh orange juice because there's no electricity.
However, not all men are useless. Proof is a bearded Muslim grandfather in a white skull cap, knee-length white shirt and loose white cotton trousers riding four children to infants school on a older model Honda 125 – three on the pillion, one straddling the gas tank. I follow in his wake. Farewell to Bundi.

CASTE PROBLEMS

Sunday: January 31.
I love this room. Out of bed at 7 am. The Buddhist nuclear engineer is meditating. Eyes closed, he sits facing the morning sun in the lotus position. A josh stick has replaced the herbal. I pack and hump my bag and backpack downstairs and load the bike then return to an upper courtyard in search of a bill. The owner is a small kindly man of my generation. The haveli was built by his great grandfather, Prime Minister of the State in the days of the Maharajas. He his helped in running the guest house by family members. There is so much that could be done to improve the place: fix the lavatory cistern in my room, freshen paintwork, tidy the lake-side garden - simple tasks that, were this our home, Bernadette and I would enjoy. The owners are the wrong cast. They don't do manual and they can't afford help...so the lovely building crumbles.

MONKEYS DON'T MEDITATE

The roof is a way station for monkeys on their evening trek home to the fort. One picks up a torn black T shirt from the parapet and shakes it aloft. The shirt envelops his head. Blinded, he chatters with fear and tears at the cotton. The shirt catches on a water pipe and drags loose. Off he scampers. I go in search of a shave and dinner.

DON''T PANIC - OR MAY BE YOU SHOULD

I share a stone bench on the terrace with the Austrian Buddhist and gaze with joy across the roof tops at the palace cascading down the hillside. Ancient walls glow in the misty evening sunlight – so does the herbal cigarette the Buddhist offers. I decline politely and wonder that a Buddhist smoker should earn his bread as a technical engineer at a Swiss nuclear power station. Easy there, don't panic but do remember to say your prayers.

220 K DODDLE

Jaipur south to Bundi is a 220K doddle through flat farmland on a good road. Indian Bundi is an industrial city. Tourist Bundi is a thin strip of 17th and 18th century havelis converted into hotels and guest houses with roof top restaurants. For tourists the attractions are the 13th century fort and decaying palace. Both Footprint and Lonely Planet recommend Lake View Paying Guest House. The lake is a square tank half full with green scum. A kindly Austrian Buddhist hikes my camel bag up three flights of steep stone stairs and across the flat roof to my 400 Rupee room. I follow slowly with backpack and helmet and collapse on a king-size bed. Survive the climb and the room is heaven, sofa, easy chair and upholstered lolling space beneath arched windows that filter sunlight through stained glass. Murals of painted flowers and garden greenery surround the windows. The ceiling border is gold and blue. A mural of a smiling young woman livens the wall beside the bathroom door. So the bathroom is basic. Big deal...

PANASONIC BRONCHITIS

I am invited to a Muslim household for dinner this evening. Mutton biryani and liver are on the menu. Yum! India is great - however pollution in the cities is a danger to old men with a chest problem. One day in Delhi gave me bronchitis. Jaipur has taken eight days. I take the bus to Delhi and back tomorrow, twelve hours, to retrieve my camera from the vile (though official) Panasonic Agency. Has it been repaired? Of course not! I head south the following day for Goa, fresh fish and that essential of any Paradise, prawns grilled with chili and garlic. Brrrmmmm Brrrmmmm...

JAIPUR LITERARY FESTIVAL

Others were present, speakers both serious and comic. Of the comic, wondrous were Brigid Keenan recounting a King and I style solo dance with the President of Kazakhstan and Geoff Dyer queueing at an ATM in Varanasi. Larry White (The Looming Tower)fascinated with his knowledge of Islamic terrorism. Wole Soyinka was both poetic and regal. Of course there were more, Tina Brown, Tony Wheeler (founder of Lonely Planet) and a hilarious debate on Scotland as the West's Belarus between Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew O'Hagan, Professor Neil Ferguson and William Dalrymple. William Dalrymple was everywhere, even reading at length from his latest book from the stage during an evening of startlingly varied and always brilliant music.

JAIPUR LITERARY FESTIVAL

I am back in Jaipur for the Literary Festival. I leave the guesthouse at 8 a.m and return around 10.30 p.m. I have been doing this for five days. How was the experience? Always interesting. Sometimes hilarious. And best of all, new friends and an invitation to Lagos for my 78th birthday (should I live so long). Two young Nigerian writers listened while a third interviewed me at length. Why me? God knows.
We talked (or I talked) of my African experiences and of turning my back on Africa. Time I returned, they said, rediscover my original love for the continent. They will put me up at a boutique hotel, have me ride a way with the local Biker Club, try myself out on the dance floor, experiment with a new drink or two, give a few readings, a few interviews, film a little. And they promise me a few days recuperation out on the beach. No politics. Strictly fun - which is something I think I can hack.
Best of all was their energy and humour and their warmth.

THE 60s MOVED TO PUSHKAR

PUSHKAR, RAJASTHAN: January 20
I had thought that the 60s died. They simply moved to Pushkar...

THE SUBORDINATE FROM HELL

CONVERSATIONS: January 21

A small cheap restaurant. A tall man with fierce grey beard sits alone at the next table. He asks my nationality before introducing himself as a retired Lieutenant Colonel. He talks of honour – or the lack of honour in today's society. It is lack of honour that is destroying India. “Ninety percent of Indians are corrupt. More than ninety percent, ninety-eight percent” he assures me.
Of his two brothers, one is a full colonel and the other a General. “They are having big houses and cars with drivers,” he says. “Always they have been telling me only to be reasonable and I am saying that reasonable is not honour. I have acted honourably always,” he says. “This is why I am eating here and why I am living in a small room. It is the same everywhere,” he continues. “Look at you British. You were always known to be honourable and now see what is happening with you. This Blair with his lies. Your reputation is destroyed. It will be hundreds of years before people will be believing you.”
He has stomach pains (presumably an ulcer) and eats only dahl with curd. He leaves, very upright, very military in his bearing. An honourable man, he must have been the subordinate from Hell. I imagine his brothers pleading with him over the years to just once refrain from arguing, to drift just once within the official current, if not for his own good, for the good of the family.

PLEASE GOD, NOT THIS...

JOHDPHUR: January 18
I imagine myself a foot soldier in an invading army. Mehrangarh Fortress is an island of rock soaring vertically out of the dust of our advance across the desert. Dust is in our throats and in our eyes and crusting our nostrils. Water is short. Food is almost non-existent. Already exhausted, we must storm fortification after fortification merely to reach the foot of the precipice above which soar the fortress walls. Please God, no, not this...

MATCHSTICK TOURISTS

JODPHUR: January 18
Matchstick tourists look down from the fortress balconies. They look out across the town and beyond the outer fortifications to a ravaged land of rock quarries. The sky on the horizon is sun-bleached.
Uphill views are always preferable. Near distance, middle distance and far distance add depth. Meanwhile three green parakeets have begun an argument in my tree – or perhaps discussion is more accurate; they don't sound cross. Doves have occupied every available hole on the rock face and in the fortress walls. They coo softly. Gliding off the fortress, their arched wings have the rigidity of plastic models.

WHO NEEDS PSYCHEDELICS?

JODPHUR: January 18
Swim along a coral reef and all you'll see are the big fish and the big coral. Stay still, the more you notice. It is an unpeeling process. Detail by smaller detail emerges, fish small and bright as small jewels. Traveling is the same. I have been seated here on the parapet beneath this tree for close on two hours. Enough sun filters through the leaves to keep me pleasantly warm. Mostly I have been looking upward. Rather than separate, the fortress appears to be a continuation of the precipice from which it grows, rock on rock, up and up, the highest levels honeycombed with decorative caves and balconies and topped with a filigreed crown of carved marble. The sky beyond the fortress is a clear royal blue of extraordinary depth. Tilting my head to the left I can view the sky and the fortress though an old stone arch and over a newish building of golden sandstone. The contrast between golden sandstone, grey rock and sky is of a beauty to be enjoyed and enjoyed and be blown away by. Who needs psychedelics? And why move until the sun sets? Such blissful peace is hard to come by when traveling in company...

ONE VERY SMART ASS

JODPHUR: January 18
To my right a bunch of donkeys carrying empty sacks stand placidly beside a pile of builder's sand. All the donkeys but one are small and grey. The exception is white, larger and older than the others. He keeps to the shade of a tree while a labourer loads the other mokes with sand. Last to be loaded, he intends to be unloaded first and heads immediately down a steep dirt path with the others following. One very smart ass...

MOVING HOUSE

JODPHUR: January 18
I have written of the art deco glories of the Umaid Bhawan Palace. The Maharajas of Jodphur moved house in the the 1940s from the Palace within Mehrangrah Fort. Founded in 1459, Mahrangrah is the finest fort in India, the best preserved, cleanest and best organised for the visitor with excellent audio guides for rent at the ticket office. OK, so that's enough of the tour guide spiel. A rickshaw driver asks for 100 rupees to run me up the hill. We settle for forty. The narrow twisting lane through town is surfaced with craters divided by drains and speed bumps. Why speed bumps when a Ducati under maximum acceleration might make 15 KPH before the next bend or the next hole in the road? That is without cows, rickshaws, motorbikes, bikes, pushcarts, absentminded pedestrians and kids playing tag. Sunday and a never ending river of visitors flows up from the ticket office. My fellow Oldies stumble upward. Watch their eyes as they measure how much further they must climb, questioning whether they can make it, understanding now the ambulance on stand-by below the first gate. All have guide books in hand, camera at the ready. The current weakens on the outside of a sharp hairpin above the second gate. I break clear, turn down hill towards the Chokelao Palace and find a comfortable parapet shaded by a small tree.

A SERIOUS BITCH

JAIPUR: January 20
I arrived in India to find the screen on my camera broken The camera has been with the Panasonic rep in Delhi since December 10. Repair was originally promised for four days, then ten, then not until today, January 20. The lying son of a bitch is a lying son of a bitch. He hasn't got the replacement screen. He has no idea when he will receive the replacement screen.

JAIPUR CRICKET ACADEMY

JAIPUR: January 21
I am back in Jaipur for the Literary Festival. They do things differently here in India. I have ridden pillion on a motorcycle across Jaipur this afternoon to a Youth cricket academy. The bike's rider plays for Rajasthan in the Under 14s! His father, a new friend, told me not to be nervous, that his boy was a very safe biker. True - also one hell of a batsman and an excellent fast bowler.

OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING...

FATEPHUR SIKRI: DECEMBER 29
0730 on the roof terrace at the Sunset Guesthouse, Sikri. In the valley below, a thin mist lies across pale green fields bordered by trees. The Nepalese owner of the guesthouse feeds birds each morning on a smaller terrace. Five green parakeets watch me from the parapet while six striped squirels scavenge for yesterday's seeds. Doves wheel above the trees. Shrill children's voices argue with mothers in the nearly village, a drum beats in town. Here, on the hill, the sun burns through the mist and warms my fingers as I type. Staff appear rubbing sleep from their eyes. “Breakfast, Uncle?”
Breakfast would be great, coffee, masala omelet, toast.
The lower end of the fortress is now a faint grey line of stone teeth and the mist gentles the ghastly tower monument to Crunch Crunch.
The owner spreads seed on the bird terrace. Sparrows are first to the feast followed by a gray necked crow, now twenty or more parakeets. The parakeets are argumentative and drown out the village voices. The staff have a fire burning outside the kitchen. Woodsmoke faintly scents the air. Breakfast arrives.The diffident French couple come to table, muffled and gentle voiced. Next the Argentinian tandem bicyclist to drape laundry on the rail. Francis briefly surfaces to report that he is only running ten minutes late for our proposed 9 0'clock departure for Jaipur.
On such a glorious morning, time tables are for the birds.

NO, NO, NO...

FATEPHUR SIKRI: DECEMBER 28
While peacefully wandering the citadel, I am accosted by a small pugnacious Indian gentleman wearing a pale green suit and a felt elf hat.
“What do you think of this?” he demands without preamble or introduction. “Is it beautiful? Have you been in England? Have you visited Hampton Court. That is beauty. Built the same time as this. I know. I am history graduate.”
I attempt the smallest protest - surely we should imagine the citadel as it was: courtyards spread with carpet and cooled by fountains, every channel filled with water, great pots planted with lemon trees and pomegranates, sweet scented roses, beautiful maidens in embroidered silk...
“No, no, no – that is all only decoration with no importance. Hampton court is not needing imagination...”
We meet again later in the afternoon. He immediately launches a fresh attack on Akbar's citadel. He is accompanied by a tall well-built 30 something to whom I plead, “You have to listen to this?”
“Listen?” he says in one of those wondrously casual up-market Home Counties voices. “I've had to listen for three weeks. He's my Dad.”

CRUNCH CRUNCH, THE ELEPHANT

FATEPHUR SIKRI: DECEMBER 28
The researcher for Lonely Planet suggests that Akbar sentenced criminals (a loose term under all-powerful rulers, whether Emperors, Kings or Secretary Generals of the Communist Party) to be trampled to death by his favourite elephant. According to Lonely Planet, Akbar enjoyed watching. A stone tower decorated with hundreds of stone elephant tusks is said to be Akbar's memorial to Crunch Crunch. The FootPrint Handbook, though perhaps more prosaic, is more reliable in matters historical. Both have excellent description of the citadel while Eyewitness contains the best illustrations (this is a personal opinion). Yes, I travel with three guidebooks! And the brilliantly researched History of India by Keays...

LIBERAL?

FATEPHUR SIKRI: DECEMBER 28
For those who admire intricate stone carving, Fatehpur Sikri is superb. Building of the citadel commenced in the 1570s at the command of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. As Emperors go, Akbar was a liberal. Of his three favourite wives, one was Turkish Muslim, one a Hindu princess and the third a Christian from Goa. Of all the citadel, the Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Private Audience) is most remarkable. Here Akbar sat on a throne raised high on a pillar and debated with philosophers of every faith. The philosophers sat in a circular gallery connected to the throne by four bridges. The pillar head is lotus shaped while the pillar is carved with motifs, Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist. Akbar is one of two protagonists in Suleman Rushdie's perceptive, gentle and witty novel, The Moor's Last Sigh. Read and enjoy...

WEIRD

FATEPHUR SIKRI: DECMBER 27
You probably need to be a little weird to seek a guest house the far side of a refuse tip though weird is a subjective judgement. I consider riding a tandem pedal bike from Barcelona weird. The riders are Argentinian. They probably think me weird, septuagenarian on a cafe racer. And Francis and Miyuki on a customised antique Enfield aren't exactly a standard couple - plus the very tall, skeletal French couple communicating in plaintive whispers. The man combines careers as an comercially unsucessful musician and reluctant sound engineer in the French movie industry. She does something artistic with puppets (not a biggy in the earning stakes) and no doubt spends hours cooking taste-free vegetarian meals (why am so bitchy?). They have been on a duty visit to his mother who escaped to a Bhudist monastery fifteen years back. This is his third trip to India and he loathes pretty much everything – particularly the food. His companion is a novice. Traveling by bus has thrown her into mental shock and chili has done for her belly.

HEAVY TRAFFIC

DECEMBER 27
Last night Muharram at a Lonely Planet doss house in Agra, tonight a Tibetan owned guest house outside the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri discovered today by a few thousand holidayers. All standard accomodation is either full or trebled in price. A kindly local cop leads Francis down a dirt footpath beneath the fortress walls and across a stinking refuse tip into what has tried to grow into a village over the past hundred or so years. The Sunset Guest house is cheap (£1.50 for a single). The welcome is warm. Our fellow guests are a little weird.

ORCHA

ORCHA: DECEMBER 24
Joyful Christmas Eve. 7 a.m. and upright tufts of thin mist float down stream along the far bank of te Betwa river. The sun rises out of the jungle. A lone bird flies up stream, perhaps a cormorant. I must pack and load the bike. Taj Hotels have invited me to spend Christmas at the Usha Kiran Palace in Gwalior.

ORCHA

ORCHA: DECEMBER 23
Chaturbhuj Temple was built to contain an image of Rhama. The temple is cruciform to represent the four arms of Krishna. May be – yet stand within the towering space at the juncture of the arms and any European will recognise the familiar echoing majesty of a cathedral...

ORCHA

ORCHA: DECEMBER 23
A glorious day of exploration accompanying Francis (the Hungarian raised in Germany, and Miyuki from Tokyo. Orcha was founded by the Rajput Rajas of Bundela in 1501. The two main palaces (11 in all) command a rock promontory within a bend of the Betwa river. Every room and every courtyard is designed to capture and channel the cooling breeze off the water. No need for energy-devouring air-conditioning here. What an example for modern architects...

ORCHA

Right, I have most entries transferred from my journal to disc.
Readers will be confused. So am I.ORCHA: DECEMBER 23
A glorious day of exploration accompanying Francis (the Hungarian raised in Germany, and Miyuki from Tokyo. Orcha was founded by the Rajput Rajas of Bundela in 1501. The two main palaces (11 in all) command a rock promontory within a bend of the Betwa river. Every room and every courtyard is designed to capture and channel the cooling breeze off the water. No need for energy-devouring air-conditioning here. What an example for modern architects...

OK, one more...

FATEHPUR SIKRI: DECEMBER 29
Last night Muharram, tonight a Tibetan owned guest house outside the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri today discovered by a few thousand holidayers. All standard accommodation is either full or trebled in price. A kindly local cop leads Francis down a dirt footpath beneath the fortress walls and across a refuse dump into what has tried to become a village over the past hundred or so years. The Sunset Guest house is cheap (£1.50 for a single). The welcome is warm. Our fellow guests are a little weird. You probably need to be a little weird to seek a guest house the far side of a refuse tip - though weird is a subjective judgment. I consider riding a tandem from Barcelona weird. The riders are Argentinian. They probably think me weird, septuagenarian on a cafe racer. And Francis and Miyuki on a customised antique Enfield aren't exactly a standard couple.

I have photographs to sort and upload and have been writing and uploading pretty much all day. Apologies but I need a break...

DECEMBER 26.
From Gwalior I rode to Agra to meet with Francis and Miyuki. We planned to ride together into Rajasthan. We hit Agra on the holiest day in the Sunni calender, Muharram, the day of mourning for the assassinated son-in-law of the Prophet. Drums beat at every corner from dusk till dawn while eight loud-speakers directly outside my bedroom blare the incessant chant: Hassan Hussein, Hassan Hussein. Sleep is impossible. I watch from my window a ballet of whirling stick fights and wonder that Islam's schism should have followed so closely on the Prophet's death.

I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as the guest of the Taj Hotel Group in their hotel, the Usdhan Ka Pallace in Gwalior. The Taj housed me in a small suite. Windows to the East caught the morning sun across a wide lawn. To the north French windows opened to my private garden courtyard where, were this summer, I would loll on a stone bench in the evening and perhaps imagine myself very grand. For now I made do with a bubble bath. Though bath is a misnomer. Granite and mosaic pool is better to which I climbed two marble steps. Back home in England my beloved Bernadette lay curled round a hot water bottle. Our eldest son, Joshua, was home from Leeds for Christmas. When I called yesterday they had a stuffed boned duck in the oven.
My brother and sister-in-law have given my grandson, Charlie, a large twigwam for Christmas. Charlies insisted on it being erected in the living room. I called and my son and daughter-out-of law were in the tent! Charlie, very excited, shrieked what might be a greeting at his Grandpa Oops.
Later in the evening I called my daughter, Anya, in Duchess County, NY - snow and a turkey.The mini suite was divinely comfortable. I, unfortunately, was sick as a pig, coughing, coughing, coughing. Why as a pig? Are pigs sick?

My diary contains more on Orcha, much more. However here in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, we have electricity after the third long cut of the day. So forgive me if I skip and leap towards the present...

ORCHA, DECEMBER 22
The bathroom is clean. I am clean. I lie at peace in a vast bed. Black beams divide the ceiling overhead into four. Each segment is painted with a freeze of green leaves, a vase of flowers in each corner and a pattern of pointed arches down the center. Midnight here, six-thirty in England. I call Bernadette.

ORCHA, DECEMBER 22
Miyuki from Tokyo has a head cold and goes to bed. Francis (the Hungarian German Egyptian dive instructor) drinks his Single Malt in my room and talks of his fears of an imminent heart attack. Pains in his chest began shortly after the death of his father, of course from a heart attack. The fear has been with him for more than a year, in the first month so severe that he was unable to leave the house. He suspects that his panics are psychosomatic – or wishes to believe that they are, yet, unconvinced, seeks medical advice – though, as a precaution, deliberately choses doctors whose diagnosis he can discount. At this point in his tale I have to bolt for the lavatory. I get my pants down with a millisecond to spare. The first spasm doubles me up and I fall off the seat in mid defecation. I shout to the dive instructor that he must leave and begin cleaning myself and the batheroom. The dive instructor laughed at himself – so can I.

BACK IN ORCHA

betwa river, orcha
Ba December 22.
Dinner with a a young American NGO married to a yoga-teaching Ukranian. They live in Cambodia,he running the office of a Conservation Trust while she has founded a Nursery school. A daughter (five?) tells me that her dog died. The dog, so she says, was untrainable and pooped and weed in the house so was kept in the yard. The vet proscribed the dog the wrong medicine, so the daughter says. Given the dog's habits, possibly the right medicine?
Also at our table are an attractive but mostly silent Japanese woman (Miyuki from Tokyo) traveling with a Hungarian born German who has built himself a house outside Sharam Sheikh, Egypt, where he runs a PADI dive school.
Miyuki and Francis met at and decamped from an Ashram in Kerala. Francis owns an ancient Enfield Bullet, much modified and a fast emptying bottle of Single Malt whisky!

BACK IN ORCHA

BUNDLSKHAND RIVERSIDE HOTEL, ORCHA, DECEMBER 22
Guests meet before dinner in a circle of easy chairs arranged round an open fire. Musicians play and sing softly. The hotel manager introduces me to a captain in the Indian Army Air Corps and to a young couple (architects) with baby daughter from LA. His family is from Pakistan, Moslem. She is Hindu. The daughter will have interesting choices. A young relative of the Maharajah sits beside me. He is waiting to be told of the approaching train for Delhi. A keen biker (Enfield Bullet and new Yamaha 250), he accuses we tourists of being interested only in fringes of the subcontinent and ignoring India's heartland. He extols a ride through gloriously forested hills where streams tumble into crystal pools.The station master telephones to announce the approaching train - no time for me to write down the magic route.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES, EXCUSES

I arrived in India on December 8. My first rickshaw ride across Delhi did for my lungs - three weeks of bronchitis plus various days of dysentery. Add that most every place that I have visited suffers frequent electricity cuts - usually when I am about to upload onto the Internet - and when there is electricity the Internet connection is often down - then readers may understand why this Blog is chaotic. So here follows a few entries from my diary that never reached the net

COLD SNAP IN A HOT CLIMATE

JANUARY 13
7 a.m. at the Simla Hotel in the Rajasthan desert town of Jaisalmer and the day is trying to get light which is fortunate as the electricity cut out some time back. I am huddled under three layers of thick wool blanket. For the past hour, I have been reading Hunter S Thompson by the light of a Leathermam flashlight. Toby Brocklehurst insisted I would need the flashlight – wise advice given that electricity cuts are common as cockroaches.
North India is suffering a cold snap and under the blankets is the only all-body warmth available after sunset in Jaisalmer. All good restaurants in Jaisalmer advertise magnificent views of the fort from the roof terrace - great for a warm evenings, miserable in a cold snap. Miyuki and Francis have developed an antipathy to Indian curry and we ate Korean last night in the company of some forty Korean juveniles dressed for an Everest expedition (I am packed for the beach). The stew and the soup required two hours preparation. Miyuki telephoned our order in mid afternoon – as if ordering ahead would speed the serving. The cold was a reminder of Bernadette's favorite shaggy dog story: a baby polar bear questions whether he really is a polar bear. If I'm a polar bear, how come I'm freezing my butt off?
Polar bear stories don't do it for Miyuki. Disaster is Japanese humour. We were joined at dinner by a Japanese man whose entire Indian trip has been one ghastly rip-off after another. Miyuki shrieked delight at every detail. Now she is up on the hotel roof giggling away with the disaster prone Japanese, bitterly cold, no electricity, no hot water, the sun not up, and Francis suffering a bout of dysentery. Hilarious...
I do have hot water. I shall uncurl in a little while, shower, take my medication, dress in five layers and stroll to the German bakery for a breakfast of freshly baked croissant and strong coffee – and a wifi connection once the electricty comes back on.

QUIRKY HOTEL

JANUARY 10
We are booked into the Simla hotel within the fortress. The Simla is a six-room 550-year-old haveli of golden sandstone. The conversion is imaginative. Rooms descend in cost and comfort from first-floor quirky opulence to ground-floor somber meditation cells. My room was once the first floor cloister overlooking a small marble-paved central courtyard. Carved sandstone pillars support the ceiling of polished wood. One corner is walled off as a bathroom with steaming hot shower, hand-basin set in a marble slab and a sit-down lavatory with an effective flush. Much of the rest is an L shaped platform covered with good foam mattresses and piled with bolsters and cushions and pillows of every hue. Arabian nights quirky – so where is the hubble-bubble?

JAISALMER

JANUARY 10
Jaisalmer is romantic. The 17th century citadel on the hill dominating Jaisalmer is built of golden sandstone as are the temples and havelis and palaces within the walls - in India there are always palaces. Perhaps unique amongst India's citadels, Jaisalmer fortress remains home to some hundreds of families so beware children and cows and goats as you ride the narrow, stone-paved streets. And beware the touts selling desert crafts and desert trips and desert whatever. They would sell the sand if they could...
But, above all, Jaisalmer people are friendly – as Pushkar people are friendly. Hence the town is way up there as a hangout for backpacker kids in search of enlightenment (or a bhang lassie).

SLALOM TEENAGER

JANUARY 10.
Jodhpur to Jaisalmer is a great ride of 300 kilometers on a good-surface two-lane highway across the desert. Traffic is minimal. The Enfield bumbles along at a steady 58 Ks while I play teenager on the cafe racer, slaloming the central road markings. Two slender gazelle watch me. A covey of sand grouse scurry through thin scrub. A peacock stands on a dry stone wall at the entrance to a village.

PAMPERED SYBARITE

zodiac pool

And played overweight hippo in the art deco indoor pool

SYBARITE

and basked a while in the spa's jacuzi

TOUGH DAY AT THE OFFICE

tough day at the office

There have been moments today when I wondered whether I had been killed on the road to Jodhpur and wafted direct to Paradise - though a quick perusal of my past puts paid to the possibility. In love with a building? Why not? And not to love the Umaid Bhawan is impossible. The same is true of the staff. Whether senior management or gardener, all are both charming and considerate. Obsessive myself, I am stunned here by meticulous detail after detail both in the architecture and in the service. In late afternoon I strolled down the garden to the heated outdoor pool. Beyond stood the great fortress of Jodhpur, massive on its rock plateau. Behind lay the palace, sandstone glowing in the evening sun.

OFFAL ORGY

Back home in Herefordshire Roger Gill from Cradley and I take turns cooking a weekly lunch of those dishes we relish and which our loved ones won't eat. Offal is most frequently on the menu. So this Blog is for Roger Gill. Dinner at the Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur. The Palace boasts three restaurants. I chose the Indian. Spiced lamb liver and kidneys lightly grilled to begin followed by a curry of minced sheep's brains together with breast of chicken curried in a cream and cashew nut sauce. Good? Outstanding!!!!

ART DECO GLORY

The art deco Umaid Bhawan in Johdpur and the Persian Itmad-Ud-Daulah in Agra do it for me. Those two alone make as visit to India worthwhile. To create a palace as vast as Umaid Bhawan demanded extraordinary courage from the architect and an obsessive attention not only to detail but to a continuity of decorative vision. The result is breath taking. Check out the web site.

HEAVEN

Bronchitis and dysentery combined with the pollution and insane traffic of India's heartland left me exhausted. I fled to the deserts of Rajasthan, four days of crystal air in Pushka, pilgrimage town both for devout Hindus and Western Dreadlocks in search of enlightenment through Bhang lassies. I worked! An article for The Lady and an article for MCN - very different in tone and content!
Today I sped westward on an almost empty road to Jodhpur where I have been invited to stay at the Umaid Bhawan Palace, most glorious of Royal residencies. I arrived at 6 p.m. and had a blissfully hot shower before basking in a vast hot tub. A second shower after the tub and I am ready for dinner.

SPEEDY GANDOLFI

Hey ho and away I go!

INDIAN COFFEE HOUSE

GWALIOR, DECEMBER 21
I am invited to coffee at the Indian Coffee House in town by two late middle aged advisers from the Ministry of Education, Delhi. I remark on the language handicap for a traveler trying to understand India to which one says, “We Indians are most complicated. We are friends for a thousand years, then in a moment we are all killing each other - killing each other for no reason – only because some politician is saying so.”
His companion assures me of the extraordinary advances over the past ten years. The quantity of cars, milions of mobile telephones.
“Even ther cast system,” he says. He himself knows Untouchables in high positions. The Minister of Justice is himself an Untouchable. “Now that they are in power they are the most corrupt. A hundred times worse. It is their turn that has come. Human nature is to use such opportunity.”
“You British were always more honourable,” his companion says. “And now look at you. Your Blair has destroyed all your reputation. Such a liar. It will be centuries before you are able to recover.”

MAN SINGH PALACE

GWALIOR,DECEMBER 21
Gwalior sprawls as do all Indian towns and cities. The fortress commands the town from high on a solitary plateau 3 Ks in length. Entry is barred by massive wooden gates that, open, would permit passage to an elephant with howdah.I duck through a small portal for pedestrians. A guide at the ticket office accompanies me back to my bike and lifts it in.
For facts on the fortress read the guidebooks or check the internet. I write impressions and my impressions here are of decay other than at the small museum that contains wonderful scuptures ranging from 1st century to the 17th
Of the palace, the top floor is closed and crumbling. Down a floor and you find typical rooms of the period of hewn stone and pillars opening to courtyards, small in scale and not impressive.
I remark to a probable English speaker, middle-aged, intellectual, on the difficulty of imagining how it once was.
He replies that it will be gone in fifty years, destroyed by neglect and coruption.
The truth of the palace lies below in unlit layers carved from the rock and connected through narrow twisting stairways and through dog leg doorways and corridors down which no man, however thin, could pass another. Such is the Man Sing Palace, surely a dark sinister creation of regal paranoia - or excavated as a cool retreat from the summer heat.
Or let the walls speak to you of prisoners incarcerated in pain and fear-filled misery.
As always, in India, make your choice.
Better scurry back down the hill to enjoy a later Maharaja's opulent fantasy caprice, the 19th century Jai Villas Palace.
Curse, it's closed on Wednesdays.

AGRA TO GWALIOR - Brrrrm Brmmm

DECEMBER 21
Yes, I know. Dates are confusing. However I am attempting to get up to date.

From Agra south I ride an excellent highway through flat fields splodged with yellow rape. Traffic is sparse and I make good time between village. Millennium of monsoons have gouged twisting gulches between pinnacles of gray-red earth tufted with sparse scrub. Or did thousands of years of brick-making create this chaotic landscape, thousands of men and women endlessly picking at clay to feed the kilns?
Tumbled walls of a fortress cap a long ridge. What in this ghastly land was there to protect? Yet, suddenly, appears the magic of a bridge that once carried the trunk road and is now bypassed by the highway. Seven pointed Islamic arches of red brick span the river, delicate spires at each end, pepper pots in the middle – beautiful!

BANDELKHAND RIVERSIDE

ORCHA, DECEMBER 23
The hotel is a cloistered rectangle surrounding on the lower level a lawned garden divided into four quarters by low hedges – Persian in concept. And on an upper level, a charming swimming pool.
The walls are pale ocher while the pillars and Islamic arches of the cloister are a deep teracotta outlined in white. Red and white bougainvilleas and pale plumbago drape the arches while trees shade the lawned-surounds of the pool terrace and carpet the grass with deep pink blossom. Lapis domes on slender pillars rise above the roof line, perfect size for a single rotund but diminutive sentry.

A servant leads me across the lawn to my room and opens French shutters to display the river fifty meters down a sloping bank. The sun will rise directly across the river. I must be up by dawn. Now a hot shower in a vast marble bathroom, walls patternd in blue and white tiles and towels thick and big as a winter blanket. What delight...

BANDELKHAND RIVERSIDE,

ORCHA, DECEMBER 23
Take the right fork out of janasi to Orcha (I took the left and had to backtrack fifteen Ks) so watch for the sign. Once on the side road the countryside changes to a gentle switchback with patches of woodland between small fields. Massive walls of dry-set rock breached by a gateway that has lost its gates announce the traveler's arrival on what was once the Maharaja of Orcha's domain. Drive a further kilometer and turn left beneath a high arch onto the driveway leading to the Maharaja's hunting lodge, now converted into a hotel.
I have ridden 160 Ks. I am whipped physically, continuing to cough and have the runs. The hotel manager is a miracle of welcome. Face him towards a winter cold-front back home and apple trees would glow with blossom.

THE ROAD TO JANASI.

DECEMBER 23
A mile left of the road two massive palaces or temples dominate a small town. Should I investigate? Such is the traveler's dilema in India, a myriad magical buildings to explore yet only a few months to journey. I recall driving through Rajahstan all those years ago in convoy with Elizabeth Camus and stopping at everything. We camped at night, me with a foam rubber mattress on and under Afghan kilims, Elizabeth with a VW camper and an Orissa marriage tent. What was her boyfriend's name, Swiss Italian, who later studied the tabla at University in Varanassi. We were intent on reaching Goa for Christmas yet one day managed only twenty miles.
I was young then. Time seemed infinite and no, I don't stop to explore.''

THANK GOD FOR HISTORY GRADUATES

GWALIOR, DECEMBER 23
Thank God for history graduates...I have had two hours of joyful conversation with Nagendra Singh Bayal, Front Office Manager at Usha Kiran Palace (Taj hotel in the grounds of Jai Villas). We begin with motorbikes, progress via religion in history to God as love, family and the insanity dictating much of the region's politics - splendid accompaniment to a fruit salad and black coffee breakfast.
A dual carriageway to Janasi is under construction. Trucks and construction machinery have ripped the surface of the old road. Not a fun ride...so why do I enjoy myself? Afterglow of the morning's conversation ripened by memories of Cuba and the warm humid scent of sugar cane in the fields and of over-loaded trailers swaying towards a sugar central.
Two men work on the top of an electricity pylon. Hard hats? Safety belts? Don't be ridiculous. Men are replaceable.

CHRISTMAS EVE

I have been ill most of the time since arriving. Now I am finally on the move. Here is a blog of today.I will catch up with past days after Christmas.

ORCHA - Hotel Bundelkhand Riverside
I have dysentery. I should be miserable. I have discovered Paradise. 8 a.m. and I have been sitting for the past hour on the balcony of my bedroom and watching dawn break across the river. A pale mist lies across the water and across the jungle on the far bank. Not a mist of carbon monoxide, a true natural morning mist. Water tumbling over a low weir and over boulders is the only sound. An Indian in black walks down to the river bank and washes his hands before facing the sun, I think in prayer. He turns, sees me and, hands together, Namastes. I return his greeting. His disappears up the steps to the courtyard garden only to return and, standing below my balcony, reaches up to offer me two saffron coloured flowers. My mobile buzzes – a happy message addressed to Grandpa from Nagandra Singh at the Taj in Gwalior. Yes, Paradise. So my bowls are loose – I can deal with that! I shall dress in a little while and sit in the garden and have fresh fruit and black coffee for breakfast. Then a wonderful day of exploration. Orcha, though no more than a medium sized village, boasts two magnificent though abandoned palaces and three superb temples. strike>

SHAMPOO

DELHI: DECEMBER 1
I am having tea in a large State emporium with the motherly manageress. Beautifully coiffed, beautifully dressed, she has adult children and must be in her early fifties. Her husband is an engineer and both their children are professionals. I mention the street children.
"Very clever," she tells me. "Yes, they are very clever. But nothing can be done with them. Such people do not like to work."
The children connect in my hostess's mind with her new servant girl. The servant girl is one of fourteen children. The father is a manual worker. "We are giving her soap. Now she is wanting shampoo. Can you imagine? Shampoo. This is what these people are spending their money on."

CHILD BRIDE

DELHI
This is the bride's big day. The owners of a hotel beside the wedding tent give her shelter in the lobby where she cowers on a sofa surrounded by mother and aunts and siblings. She is tiny and thin and vulnerable and looks to be fourteen. Is she most terrified of her future husband or of damaging the scarlet and gold sari and head scarf or lose a piece of the gilt wedding jewelery, all hired for the occasion. The mother and aunts depart to add their screeches to the contradictory instructions at the marquee. A plump female German tourist in her mid fifties photographs the bride. Wanting closeups of the make up and jewelery, she holds the camera half a meter from the child's face.
The child bride remains immobile, a fear-frozen statuette. Oh that she were brought to life. Oh that she would spit in the German's lady's eye - or kick her future husband in the balls.
Enough, I am off to bed...

STREET WEDDING

DELHI; DECEMBER 16
A five-man cornet and drum band heralds the groom. The bandsmen wear white uniforms and red and gold cockaded hats. The groom, also in white, and with plastic gold threaded through his wedding turban, sits a skeletal white horse. Four men, not in uniform, carry electric candelabra powerd by a small generator on a push cart. Male guests or family in ill-fitting dark suits shout contradictory instructions. They need to speed up the decision making before the horse founders.

STREET WEDDING FOR UNTOUCHABLES

Lack of a common language has me scared. And that I contracted bronchitis with the first inhalation of what, in Delhi, passes for air. Add a broken camera and things look bad. Lack of language has seemed most catastrophic. Who should I talk to? My fellow foreigners? Then why travel?
I determine to conduct myself as I would in Hispanic America. Get out on the street...
It is a narrow street of down-market apartment buildings and down-market hotels. The Municipality had the road tarred some years ago, perhaps by mistake. The tar is mostly gone. My vantage point is a plastic chair outside a tailor's shop. I am one of a group of four men. One is a travel agent, good-looking, mid-thirties, one ear-ring. A second, Nepalese, has been in Delhi eighteen years and works as a packer for Sikh brothers in the export business. I learn nothing of the third. He may be the tailor's brother.
The street is being taken over by preparations for a wedding.
The arrangers of the wedding have erected a ridge marquee in the street. The marquee is thin washed-out saffron cotton that began life cheap and hasn't improved. The frame looks to be iron reinforcing rod. Twin gates stand open my end of the marquee to receive the wedding party. The gates have been draped with marginally less faded saffron cotton. A very old man squats in the dust and weaves bouquets. A younger man wires the bouquets to the gate.
The Nepalese dismisses the flowers as cheap plastic.The wedding is for a sweeper family. Bad people, they will get drunk and fight. Who would rent such people a hall?
Chairs, tables and a sort of altar arrive on three hand-drawn carts.
I ask whether a permit is required to close the street for a wedding.
Why would they require a permit?
The occasional cow strolls the street, sheep, sometimes a goat. Why not a wedding?

SALAAM BAALAK

A large overweight bearded buffoon faces a class of diminutive Indian waifs. Were this Hispanic America I would sit on the floor with them. We would talk, mostly the children asking questions, and we would laugh together and perhaps learn from each other. Certainly there would be a sharing of emotions. Here the most that we can accomplish is to grin and giggle at each other. A grin seems insufficient when confronted by thirty ten-year-old ex-Typex addicts. Or should that be Typex addicts in recovery?
Meanwhile a young project manager has been giving the Trust's spiel while the University students take notes. The project manager is from North Carolina. She worked here as a volunteer whilst studying for her Sociology degree. Next step is her Masters - followed perhaps by a Phd and a career with NGOs or the State Department. She tells me that the street children are the victims of Multinationals who expropriated their families' land without compensation. Interesting...
The Salaam Baalak Trust is a worthy cause. Your contributions will be well spent. Clothes, money, whatever...
Right, that's enough on that subject. Let's move on.

DELHI STREET SCENE

I have found a seat outside a cafe on a main drag. Buildings are run down or never came up. TukTuks weave between overladen trucks and busses. Rich men own cars and presume on their right of way. Every driver has his hand on the horn. Noise and smog are stupendous.
Four laden camels plod by.
The hoarding on a bookshop proclaims: ALL TYPES OF RARE PERSIAN AND URDU BOOKS.
Earlier in the day I passed a splendid sign: ELECTRIC CREMATORIUM.

DELHI TRANSFORMATION

Street kids are a solemn subject. Hence I have slotted in the odd BLOG on a different subject.
Here is my take in the changes from the Delhi of the 60s: more cars, less cows and the cabon monoxide smog is thicker.

SALAAM BAALAK

We climb four flights of stairs. Our guide asks if I wish to rest. I reply that the climb is easy - that I am in training. And I picture, for a moment, Malvern Spa and my almost daily visits to the gym where I bicycled, speed walked and rowed before luxurating by the pool or took a sauna or sat a while in the steam room to aclimatise myself to India's heat. Yeah, yeah...
Our guide lectures again, recounting names of street kids who made good through being rescued. I peak into a classroom. Thirty or more kids sit cross legged on the floor. Why are they here? Why did they run from home?
Hunger, abuse - or chasing a Bollywood dream of the kid made good. And what they get is drugs (Tipex is the drug of choice, cheaper than a can of glue) and more abuse from which Salaam Baalak strives to save them.
Salaam Balaak gives security, education - and, most importantly, the knowledege that someone cares for them - that they matter.
To look at, they are cute kids, ten years old or twelve. I look at them. They look at me. They giggle.
There is always a voice, the class comic, class leader. This one sits in the front row. Good kid, very bright. Give him a chance and he'll transform himself from urchin to plutocrat - or spokesperson for a splendidly corrupt politician (of which India has many).

SLICK KID

I was at the Honda factory today outside Delhi. I sat on my bike, a 125 naturally, but what a 125, a new model red Stunner with electic start and fuel injection - 64K to the litre and only 2000Ks on the clock. I started the engine. Brmm Brmm sweet!
OK, so I hear you middle-aged BMW crowd tittering in the back ground. A 125 again! Sad old guy, what can you expect from a septuagenarian?
So let me set you straight: Honda designed the Stunner as a slick kid's cafe racer. It has style!
Though wrecked somewhat once the fat old Blimp takes to the saddle.
Honda are trying to fit panniers to it and find me a suitable helmet plastered with Honda decals. I meant to pack, when leaving home, my Mexican scarlet-and-white Honda racing shirt. I looked everywhere. Maybe my sons burnt it.

SALAAM BAALAK

We follow our guide down a potter's alley. He lectures the students with statistics. I watch an elderly potter turn tiny bowls that, at home, might be used to serve salt at the table. The potter works with a large tower of clay on the wheel, turning rapidly bowl after tiny bowl, cutting each free with a thread, setting it to dry beside its bretheren. Eighteen seconds - no pause, not even as he looks up briefly to present me with a smile...

SALAAM BAALAK

The South African is filming two street urchins on the railway platform. The urchins are movie buffs. They understand film. Hands in pockets, they swagger and smile for the camera. And they dream of becoming movie stars. Every slum child dreams. Such is the influence of Bollywood. Without such dreams there would be less disapointment, less heartbreak.

SALAAM BAALAK

I am invited to accompany a South African woman on a tour of a rescue project for Street Children. We are a party of six. The other four are Indian university students. One, a woman, is studying philosophy. Her mother is a teacher. Her grandmother was a school Principal. Thus she inherited the joy in thinking. The other three students are studying for degrees that will lead to careers. Our tour is geared to these three and they take notes. Our guide (lecturer) is an ex-street child. Our tour begins at Delhi's Central Railway Station where the Project has one of its nine collection centers. The collection point is a small concrete hut. A dozen children not yet into their teens sit at a table. Two good women are attempting to teach them to read and write. The children giggle when I introduce myself. We are at the end of the longest of the railway platforms. Where the platform ends, tiny shacks begin, homes to adult outcasts and their families. The scene is heart wrenching. It should breed fury. Sadly I have seen far worse in South America. I wrote in Peru of puzzlement as to what the poderosas of the country, the powerful,thought as they drove past slum encampments. I remember one such out in the desert. The huts were black plastic sheeting beside an ilegal refuse dump. A truck had dumped a stinking heap shortly before my arrival. Men and women and children hunted through the refuse. Vultures perched on the skeleton of an overturned trailer and waited their turn. Cacti held their arms aloft in surrender to the horror - or in an apeal to God.
So, no, I am not shocked at what we are shown.
But sad? Yes, of course...

BOTTLED WATER IN MY SHOES

0550: In getting out of bed I knock over the water bottle on my bedside table. The top was loose. Water flows into my shoes. Bottled water is symbolic of the developing world. In the Americas the requirement extends from the Rio Grande (Mexico's border with the US) to Bolivia's frontier with Argentina or Chile.
How many tens of thousand of people live from the bottled water industry?
In lands of great unemployment clean water would be an economic disaster for such families.
I am aware, of course, that dirty water is a major cause of infant mortality.
I am also aware that my shoes are wet.
In composing this BLOG I am attempting to go with the flow...

TB and GWB

0530. I have been awake an hour. I click the TV to BBC World News. The Iraq Governerment is auctioning Iraq's oil fields to foreign oil companies. Thank God our invasion of Iraq wasn't fueled by desire to exploit Iraq's oil.
TB is a secret social desease...

AN UNSUITABLE BLOG

Go with the flow down narrow whitewashed alleys punctuated with small stores toward voices raised in prayer. I am amongst small men dressed uniformly in white skull caps and long white shirts and loose white trousers. The moment is familiar from a dozen cities that I've travelled, cities in a dozen countries. Yet in my memory there is one incident that surfaces again and again. It is of crossing the frontier from India into Pakistan. The bus was crowded and I stood beside a man dressed similarly to the men I am now following to the Sufi shrine. I remember him as tall and slim, pale eyed and with clipped grey beard. And I remember mostly that he was a serious man - not that he was being serious but that he was serious in himself. Wise might be a better description but different from what I felt then on the bus or, more accurately, knew then on the bus. He questioned me politely as to where I was going.
"To Afghanistan," I said.
He said that Afghanistan was not a good place for me, that his village was a community of Sufis and that I was welcome to be their guest.
He was offering more.
He was offering a retreat and a new direction - and the opportunity to begin to learn whether I could begin to understand wisdom.
I was certain of this and certain that I should go with him - that doing so would change my life and give me at least the chance to be a better person.
I knew all this while I said to him that I had friends waiting for me in Afghanistan.
He made no attempt to persuade me.
So I continued deliberately in a direction I knew to be wrong and from which I had been offered an escape. It was a path that gave great pain to those who should have been foremost in my thoughts and it is a decision that I have regretted often and deeply over the years.
Yet this evening I feel an immense gratitude for having taken that wrong path. Had I taken another I would never have met Bernadette, never been the father to Joshua and to Jed and privileged to be adopted by Anya as her father. My joy in them in no way lessons the regret I feel for those I hurt.
This is rather a solemn BLOG. As I wrote at the beginning, perhaps more suitable for a book - or to be kept in private.
I expect an Email in the morning from Bernadette ordering me to expunge it...

HAZRAT NIZAM-UD-DIN

Thursday after prayers and the devotees are singing at the shrine. Their voices swell and fade, swell and fade.

HAZRAT NIZAM-UD-DIN CHISTRI

A young Frenchman arrived yesterday evening from Kabul where he works for the UN - this is probably immaterial information, however I was about to leave the hotel to pay respects at the shrine of the Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizam-ud-din.
A maze of alleys separates the shrine from Marthura Road. No need for a map, follow the flow of devotees. The flow is tranquil and, what joy, free of that curse of Delhi, pestering touts.

REMEMBER, NO RANTS

I have delayed writing of yesterday evening. I have delayed writing through concern as to what I should include. A book demands disclosure of the writer's thoughts. A BLOG is not a book and my wife, Bernadette, is in my head warning that I should keep it light. And no rants...!

WALKING WITHOUT FOOTPRINT

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...

IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

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.

THE FLOW

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.

PARTRIDGE IN A GUILT TREE

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...

EXTREME SPORTS

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.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

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...

ARE SOME FATES AVOIDABLE?

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..."

DARAB TATA

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...

RAPID SMASH WHISKY

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....

RED LIGHTS ARE FOR WIMPS

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.

WOW!

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.