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Its hot... very hot.

Pardon me for the informality and let me expand. Its very very very hot! We currently reside in Agra, home too the Taj Mahal and very impressive it is too.. a big white domed tomb... lovely!
Any way more if this hot place later firstly let me tell you a tale of thieves, corpses and of course our return from the mountains. So we were riding racks around a snowy lake last time, yes. Well I shall continue from there.. after discovering China 'pon a Yak, we headed west toward a little town named Pelling. Pelling is a samll place with a few hotels, a couple of Buddhist Monestrys..and a small compliment of tourists all of whom are trying to book jeeps out of Pelling! Its just a little bit too quiet.. and the monestrys are inconveniently located atop of mountains, one assumes the walk lets a monk become one with nature or someother hippy nonsense, but after seeing a nice jeep full of monks and driven by a monk arrive in the car park of one of the monestrys after her ladyship (i will explain in a moment) and I had struggled up the lofty hillock I get the impression its more for the lovely views and of course their amusement as the foreign tourists arriv on the brink of a heart attack! When your religion prevents you from harming all other living things I guess you do get a little passive agressive!

* Her ladyship is christened thus as she has been suffering a little in all departments.. back, neck, stomach, insect bites and the rest, anyway shes not shy about informing me of her many problems and as such I must treat her in a precious fashion for of breaking her! Just as well for the lonely planet guide to infectious diseases theres plenty in their for her too choose from!*

Anyway for all Pellings charms it was like I said.. too quiet! So we like everyone else left swifty enough.. heading back to the Darj.. we did have one interesting experience when we joined an Indian tour group for half a day... the Indians are a bit like Japanese tourists only with crap cameras and absolutely no respect for nature... the general form is:
1) Get in jeep
2) talk loudly and shrilly (if female).. intersperse with burps and the occasional hucking up of phlem.
3) Arrive sight, decamp from jeep.. through rubbish over the edge of road.
4) Take picture of sight with friends (if waterfall throw more rubbish in the catch pool at the bottom)
5) Get in jeep and repeat at next sight!

It was as you can imagine a rubbish tour! But there you go.. anyway we retired to the Darj where you proceeded to buy up souvenirs from the local bric a brac stores. It looks like we have a buddhist monestry in our back packs! Anyway the Darj passed and the time came for us to take of our jumpers and return to the heat of India in the summer! Hmmm Hmmm.

And here starts the most grueling journey to beset us so far! Darj to Varanasi by jeep and by train. The journey did not start well, about an hour into our jeep ride down to the station a small child began projectile vomiting like the girl out of the exorcist only rather than green slime it looked like a banana smoothy.. delicious! Pandamonium broke lose with the father cupping the protein rich shake in his hands whilst the child maintained an erie calm throughout, never once crying and I think I saw it turn its head 360 degrees! Anyway the journey continued and after 3 hrs of vomit induced nausea and the fear of repeat performances.. we tumbled on to a train for the next leg of the journey a 14 hr trip to Patna... located in precisely the middle of nowhere. We arrived at 4am having had barely any sleep to find a railway station rammed full of sleeping Indians! I should note that just before arriving at Patna a thief had tried to steal some jewelery from a woman on the train sitting right next to where we were. There was a huge commotion with Indians running allover, but the thief had been smart and struck as the train was pulling out of the station.. suffice to say he got away, extremely sneaky! Anyway where was I..yes Patna.. Patna is rubbish we had to stay there for 7 hours or so untill our train on to Varanasi left and they were punctuated by bugger all with the exception of being befriended by an Indian boy who gave me a magic calculator.. hmmm ok. I'm still not sure if its a bomb or whether there's some drugs hidden inside.. I wont be taking it with me from india! But still he seemed like a nice chap!

Anyway we got to Varanasi finally and it was hot! Varanasi as some of you will know is famous for its ghats where the hindus come to bathe, clean and burn their dead relatives on the banks of and in the river Ganges. Its a strange place with the old town being made up of hundreds of cris crossing narrow passage ways all of which have the potential to be extremely dodgy indeed! As you can imagine the 25 degree jump in temperature took its toll and for most of the 2 days we were there it looked like we had just been swimming in the Ganges! Not a good idea as the water is septic playing home to 1.5 million nasty bacteria jobbys per cubic millilitre of water.. basically its about 5000 times dirtier than the max amount deemed safe for bathing by the WHO.. nice! We took a guide on the second day who toured us through the streets of Varanasi and around the many temples as well taking us on a dawn boat trip which was pretty amazing. He even took us to the temple where a bomb went off about 2 months ago.. good old morbid tourism then! We saw our share of toasted ex hindus on the banks of the Ganges mostly in ash form thankfully for Jens sake! Our guide was an interesting fellow by the name of S.K. Roy who is notable for 3 things; 1) he drank the water from the ganges and survived 2) he had a huge tooth that stuck straight out of his mouth and 3/ whenever he dated a building artifact etc his date would be out by between 500 years and a millenia. I think the last 2 can be attributed to 1st probably! A strange man, who at one point declared he wanted a picture of me to put in his advertising, where he would pass me off as a young 'before he was famous' Andrew Flintoff. He obviously would have to put before he was blonde, blue eyed and six foot whatever flintoff is and also before he undeerwent facial reconstruction surgery.. a strange man as I said before.

Anyway thats that from the big V.. quite a nice place and I had a haircut from an overzealous barber who should have know better.. after telling me he would cut not to short not to long he proceeded to cut far far to short to the point where he had a cutthroat razer our to cut 'a beeet closer sir'! Jennie throughout expressed her displeasure at his handiwork by sighing heavily as opposed to stopping him.. she later told me she coud see it was getting to short and I shoud have stopped him.. she obviously failed to notice that a) I cant see what he does on the back of my head and b) he had a sharp knife! Anyway I look like a marine now which isnt as fetching as it might be.. thanks god hair grows back... I feel i got my moneys worth all 35p of it! Right anyway we jumped on yet another train last night to get to Agra this morning where it is hot! around 43 degrees today and rising towards 47 degrees later this week... i think we might melt! Right thats it I'm off to get an ice cream! hooray

p.s. I lost my pipe somewhere so am feeling less colonial without.. should find it soon enough.. so will still be able to take Dehli for England and the Queen come sunday.. we shall attack from the east where they least expect it! Off to Jaipur tomorow before Dehli and then on to Singapore and next stage of our adventure.

Regards all... A.J. Mulliner Esq

Hello People,

Let me take some of your time and tell you all about my holiday!! hohoho... as you may well have deduced i am in goa which is rather nice if a little full of pink bodied brits of which i suppose I am one.. ho hum! Anyway we're leaving here in about 4 hours for a place called Hampi, so it'll be bye bye to all those wannabe Hippies fresh out of public school! Dear lord how I hate hippies! Anyway so much to tell so if your seated comfortably then i'll begin...

Twas with a heavy heart that my lady love (referred to herein as her/she or maybe Jen if I'm feeling nice) and I departed a magnificently overcast Britain (herein refered to as the Motherland or Gros Brittania).. there were many tears and much fluttering of hankerchiefs as we stepped into the immigration queue where we proceeded to remain as good as stationary for about 15mins whilst our families tried to look sad to see us go and concerned for our safety which after 10 mins or so was starting to look more like concern for the price of the carpark if things were to continue in the same way, fortunately clearly the securtiy personnel changed shifts and we were ushered though by glorified Alton Towers attendants.. still I digress, onwards with my intrepid tale..

WE flew out on a Virgin aeroplane.. bad films but there you go.. arrival in Mumbai was splendid, they have some work to do to their airport and the one construction person we saw at work looked like he may have a job for life (possibly engineered by himself as he replaced marble tiles in the arrivals lounge with more marble tiles one might suggest cleaning them instead but no need to be a spoil sport on the first day!). We managed to enter the country fairly succesfully and achieved our first goal of obtaining a taxi to take us to Colaba.. a 20km drive but more than 2 hours by toy taxi. Let me just explain what I mean by toy taxi, it is now apparent that the designers of noddy's car got a fairly comfy job supplying the Bombay taxi drivers (about 3/4 of the population by the looks of things... so about 12 million then.. hmmm that seems about right) with rediculous vehicles about the size of a ford ka but shaped like a traditional car, they are i am informed fiats from the 50's and they are crrrrap! Anyway about the taxi.. driven by a mute and possibly blind lunatic (probably saved us 15mins then), he didnt say a word all trip and when i gave him a tip at the end, he looked at the 20 rupees i proffered as if i had just deffecated on my hand and asked if he'd like a taste! Unsurprisingly he eventually took it and then spat some red stuff on the pavement.. i think its an indiginous symbol of thanks (except when he does it on your shoes maybe).

So we arrived at the overpriced hotel I had booked from home, it was nice enough i suppose and was in a quiet road which actualy is probably the most valuable thing to have in Bombay, so after passing out for a few hours as one might expect one too after being cooked alive in 35 degree heat whilst simlutaneously experiencing near death at 60 mphs in a tin can time and time again.. we set off to explore bombay.

mental is one of few words that sums up the city.. people everywhere and al of them engaged in some form of activity be it begging or selling enormous ballons (and i mean enormous.. man sized ballons 6ft tall), very bizarre. what most fascinated us was the fact that it didnt matter if you were the most unlikely man in the whole of India to want a full set of plastic fighting spinny things, they would at least attempt some form of sales pitch.. however i am the sort of man who wants a full set of fighting spiny things and was within a hairs breadth of obtaining them for some ungodly sum of rupees when the other half stepped in, slapped me about abit and scared off the little urchin doing the selling.. clearly i was under some sort of jedi mind trickery these salesmen employ.. sadly i have to confirm i fell for those same mind tricks some days later but more of that later.. anyway we saw the sights that the lonely planet recommended, all of which were pretty amazing espeacially the gateway of India which conjured up in me my colonial heritage and almost had me singing rule brittania at the top of my voice!! again relaity being what is, I stopped my self and instead did what any stranger from a foreign land would do and took a picture instead! That evening we met with a guy named Bryce who i had been put in contact witth by a friend form Old Mutual.. Bryce was out there working for a partially owned OM (yes yes I know tis sad to abbreviate ones ex place of work but there you go, a company man I am) subsid... Bryce is an absolute legend who not only took us out for drinks that evening and for some of the best butter chicken I've ever had but also gave us the use of his driver Martin otherwise known as "Number 8" as in the 8th wonder of the world for his huuge knowledge (some of which maybe fictional) of all things Mumbai and beyond.. i smelled bullshit when he tried to convince us that Fujifilm was a german brand, apparantly when Martin starts a sentence with "well actually.." he may well be talking out of an orifice other than his mouth!! That said he was amazingly informative and without him and his skillfull driving we certainly would not have seen so much... highlights were seeing the Bollywood stars homes, just a tad different from Hollywood maybe!! Certainly it was a luxury to have the use of an a/c 4x4 to geta round in instead of the toy car taxis... It has to be said that Bryce went above and beyond for us, not only doing all of the above but also inviting us for dinner at his appartment byut also booking bus tickets to goa etc... So raise a glass to Bryce! Of the many other sights we saw Chor bazaar also deserves a mention.. also known as the thieves market anything you can think of that you would not expect to find in India can be found there.. tin toys form the 20's and ancient cameras among other antiques such as gramophones are everywhere and it was in one of these funny little curio shops that I bought what can only be described as a piece of crap... My weakness for tat let me down big time and Jen was powerless to stop it.. I was buzzing around the camera sellers as they all had these cool old cameras like the ones they used to take your achool picture with, the longer bendy concertina jobby with a big glass lenses on the end.. amazin! there were it should be said some very nice ones there bound to be worth a few quid in england but being the tight arse that i am, there was no way i was spending 25 squid in India on an old camera, so instead I managed to plump for a 1960's German compact camera with a foldy snout bit like i wanted, but that didnt work and and has the appeal in hind sight of congealed bird shit! still it only cost me 7 squid (it still hurts to say it) so let by gones be by gones, still it haunts me the look of glee in the sellers eye as he pocketed my 500 rupees.. ah well lets put it down to experience!

Enough aready I hear you say.. well ok then, we left Bombay that same day on a luxury sleeper bus which was surprisingly quite luxury.. National express could learn a thing or too.. however the inflight entertainment was a little trying, Bollywood anyone.. classic stunts though and lots of posing and a bit of song and dance so all good! anyway we made it about 14 hrs later to sme back water of Goa and transferred on to a bus to take us to this idyllic little beach called Palolem,, a jolly nice beach with charming little beach huts! however there is one problem it is stuff full of hippies and not free love ones, i'm talking about "i'll just call daddy on my mobile whilst you get some herbal tea and incense" type hippies, fresh out of Marlbrough and the like.. toads all of them!! still there you go thats Goa and you cant exect much else.. on the plus side its cheap.. about 30 p a beer and and about 60p for a big bottle so thats always good.. hmmm and thats about it I have been pursued by thou8sands of tiny little crabs on the beach and Jen has been harrased by locals so I'd say we've ticked most boxes for Goa, there are some other places i'd like to see here but time being what it is i fear we will not see them! Ok then peeps thats about it from me think i've written quite a lot i hope its not all nonsense..

ciao

ahh wait i havent told you about the plastic towel i bought.. wel thats about it.. it was a plastic towel and therefore about as useful as a chocolate teapot! A plastic towel! give me a break.. only in India.. take care untill next time!