Heading north but mission not yet accomplished
3rd May 2006

They think it's all over. It's not yet!
Any excuse for a cool night
A tourist town we enjoy. Wonders will never cease.
Spiritual spring in the step
Have you ever wondered where Baroda is? We did.

Heading home

We thought that our arrival in Kathmandu was the beginning of the last leg but then we turned south when the obvious direction to head towards England would have been west. Having said good bye to Tricia and JP with comments along the lines of “See you in England” and turning back from the most southern spot we’re going to reach in India we felt once again that we were on our way home. I suppose that we’ve been on the way home from day one but the strange thing about going around the world is that very strange circular property of heading away from home to get home. Even now we are on our usual north south kind of zig zag rather than taking the shortest route.

We had a small errand to run in Goa before really getting cracking. It was a good idea to have a gentle 60 miles to contend with after having had a few weeks off proper travelling and so we popped up to Arambol (confusingly also known as Harmal and sporadically sign posted thus) where Jan had spent a couple of months. He’d lost touch with Sanjay, the manager of the resort he’d stayed in, and it was one of our two promises to stop in and make sure that e-mail contact could be established between them. (The other is to stop in Esfahan in Iran to buy a backgammon set for his father - let’s hope we remember) Jan had sung the praises of Sanjay, in a land where he had not always found people easy to deal with.

We found Arambol, we followed Jan’s directions to the tee, but there was nothing resembling a set of beach huts. We asked and asked again and eventually came back to where we started, could this be it? There was nothing there, there was meant to be a bar, and huts and stuff. Clearly, the season finishes earlier up here than down in Agonda. Eventually we discovered him, in a barn full of fridges, that had, we gathered been the bar when the place was up and running.

We were greeted with the warmth of long lost friends when he found out that we were friends of Jan. He had obviously made quite an impression. He offered for us to camp there, but I was feeling vulnerable, after hearing Ingo’s tales of theft at knife point camping in India. I knew that nothing so dramatic would happen in the middle of town, but some opportunists might filch a few things from the tent when no one was looking. Even ignoring my paranoia, it could rather hinder with our mission to make good distance north might be delayed by having to pack up our tent and the like in the morning.

We got into discussion with the lovely Sanjay. He was honest and frank about worries for Arambol. This year had seen an influx of rich Russians to his wee village. The sort of tourists that happily flash their money around. For decades the place had been the haunt of hippies who, although they didn’t spend a huge amount of cash, would often stay for 6 months at a time, would bring in steady reliable cash, and really not want to disrupt the peace and calm that had attracted them. The new breed of tourist, brings in wedges of cash in local terms, but only for a short season, he claimed they were often arrogant and insensitive. But what worried him most was the effect it was having on the young people of the town, who were choosing to drop out of school to wait in restaurants, because the tips were so high. More and more of the touristed restaurants were being run by Europeans who happily encouraged kids to not finish their education and wait on tables. With the town’s success, the fisherman no longer fish because there is more money in taxiing, land prices have risen out of locals reach, and all this for a short holiday season.

He also explained the temporary hut thing that, there is a ruling that no permanent building can be erected within 200m of the shoreline. In the past locals would dodge the law by building a rattan hut and then put a permanent structure inside, so now the authorities insist that the huts come down each year. If they are not down the authorities they will pull them down wreck all the materials in the process and charges you for the privilege - quite a motivation to comply with the law.

Sanjay invited us to join his family for Easter day. But unfortunately we had to be heading north, the truth is that I also felt a little awkward at the warmth of his hospitality. We could do nothing to repay him, or show our appreciation.

We set up in a cheapy hotel next door, that seemed to be rather ill-conceived. In non-AC type rooms in hot weather the art of good construction is to design it to ‘catch the breeze’, and to thus naturally circulate the fresh air. The bamboo huts we had been in in Agonda, were perfect, windows facing the breeze and rattan walls for a through flow, we hadn’t even needed a fan. But this hotel had but the windows on the wrong walls, and with only one window the hot air has no exit route. So the fan effectively just moved hot air around. The structure of the building was concrete. Concrete has a nasty feature of absorbing heat in the daytime sun and then dispensing it through the night. The floor was warm; the walls; the bed; the screened window was so dense that it stemmed any hope of air flow. I was suddenly home sick for our simple beach hut. The outside was noticeably 5 or 6 degrees cooler and the sea breeze made it pleasant.

Everywhere, in the town had a end of party feeling about it. 70% of the shops were shuttered up. Some places had already been ensconced in improvements for next year’s season. The souvenir shops had a mellow resignation about them. not really expecting to make any more sales for the next few months. There were a few tourists like ourselves who seemed to have arrived unaware that the town was closing and a section of resident hippies that by their age and tan level have probably been there since the ‘70s. One lad, Ingo, from Germany, had returned especially because it was the down season and only the local restaurants and such would be open. Coincidentally, he had been here when Jan was here - it’s a small world.

The restaurant we wandered into was run by a group of Nepalis who were planning to shut up shop for the season after the weekend. It seems that a lot Nepalis make their way in India to try and make a living. People mither in England about foreigners coming to England to seek work, but the same is true everywhere. Clearly, there are Indians with no work but still people from Nepal see that there are more opportunities for success here than back in their own Kingdom. (seemingly not going to be a kingdom much longer)

We decided to spend a day getting back into the flow. We heard there was a sweet water lake was a stroll along a coastal path. It sounded like the perfect diversion with the prospect of a little overdue exercise thrown in. The fresh water pond was held back by a sand bank. Perfect the sound of the sea, the sand between your toes and a swim without the saltiness of the sea.

Sanjay had invited us round for another chat and to sample what he considered to be the best in mangoes and guavas, but each time we looked at his place is was as dormant as a hibernating hedgehog. That was it, in fact the whole town felt like it was hibernating at a temperature of 40 degrees. The shame was that we left without seeing Sanjay again. He was a lovely man, honest, intelligent and wise. After only 3 years in the hut business he already has a number of people that regularly make repeat bookings with him, I hope his success continues.

Easy in, easy out

We headed back up to Mahabaleshwar mainly because we knew it would be cool after being in a sauna for the last 2 days, and we knew where we were going and where to stay. The sheets were cleaner this time, but it was the same old, same old place. It was nice for a change to be back somewhere familiar.

Although we were more or less retracing our route north, we wanted to pop into some different places and avoid the blob of Mumbai, and headed across country to Nasik.

As we do so often we found ourselves following a Tata truck, billowing the usual exhaust fumes but we were a little distracted. A wonderful bit of truck art, the rear of the truck had a mural of the Taj Mahal. There is something rather ironic about an serene marble mausoleum, represented in gaudy colours on the back of a Tata truck. As I pulled out the camera to grab a shot the trucker, responded with a symphony of horn use. The first shot was not ideal so I tried again and again the chorus from the truck. In India, horns come in all types, and certainly most trucks seem to be fitted with a range of acoustic communication, there is the toot, toot variety, the fog horn for overtaking in reckless situations and the symphonic tuneful ones for saying ‘Hi’ to fellow truckers or giving thanks to foreign bikers taking photos. It was a lovely moment in highway communication. For a few minutes, we entirely understood each other; he, proud of his truck and chuffed that a tourist thought fit to photograph it, us enjoying the appreciation of our actions.

Another intermission in the trip that day was a parade, orange flags and truck loads of mean covered in pink dye were waving and cheering down the road. Why? Because this is India.

Nothing nasty about Nasik

Maybe it’s having been on holiday in Goa, but I was feeling rejuvenated about travelling. Maybe, we had needed a break from being on the road. Maybe it was Nasik itself, but we instantly like the place. It was the first Indian city we had been to that we had liked for it’s Indian-ness. Yes we had liked Panaji, but that felt more European with a hint of Indian about it. Nasik, was pure Indian. In fact in the 3 days we spent there we only saw 3 other tourists for 15 minutes we jointly picked each others brains over navigating the streets and the corresponding maps and then parted company.

Nasik, is one of the many pilgrimage sites in India. The river Godavari runs through it from it’s source up the road at Trimbek. The Godavari like the Ganges is a holy river in the Hindu faith and people come there to wash themselves in its water and wash away their sins and bring them blessings. It is believed that this is one of the 4 rivers that Shiva bathed in, on earth. In honour of this we witnessed the weekly anointing of a Shiva shrine by the river. The ‘anointing of Shiva’ was a slow ponderous process; pouring over milk, then honey, then water. The anointing fluids flowed from the shrine into the river making a white sheen on top of the water. One presumes this is to give thanks and to top up the spirituality of the waters for the following week. But there’s a lot more of a kaleidoscope of life going on than just that. Down at the ramkund, or the bathing ghats, every part of life goes on. They are women and men washing clothes, children dive bombing into the river and splashing each other, with old biscuit tins tied to there backs as improvised floats, some swimming against the flow of the weir for fun or exercise, Indian families posing for souvenir photos, a string of people selling snacks for the pilgrims, Sadhus ritually cleansing and, predictably, but surprisingly few people begging. It was the colourful Indian atmosphere that we had been hoping to see in Varanasi and instead had seen empty ghats with boat loads of tourists looking at them.

A vibrant local market alongside the ghats just added to the scene. Tip of the week, don’t go through the spice section of the market if you are hungry. The smells bombard the nostrils, enough to test the conviction of the ‘slimmer of the year’. Whilst the women shop for the weeks groceries the men folk go to the barbers, gaff or pass the time of day in the shade paying a game of ??. The game had 4 four players, working as pairs. Each with a number of pieces. 4 cowrie shells were used in place of dice, the number with their openings upwards indicated the score. Based on the score, playing pieces could be moved about on a grid. It was hard to get to grips with the finer points of the game. But it had the look of a game that looked to the novice to be very straight forward, when there is the potential for a lot of strategy play - a bit like the game mankala in Africa. Being completely baffled by what was going on, we chose not to take up the offer of playing. I envisioned one of those situations where we would get embroiled in a game and leave with nothing but the clothes on our backs and those only by a lucky break.

Nasik, being a pilgrimage site has been an important town for centuries, with that there are street of wonderful old tall buildings. Despite the obvious disrepair there was a certain charm about the place. If you took the time to raise your gaze above shop front, at the balconies and carved masonry, it was a delight. Even the streets were pleasant to walk around in, the was the usual cows, but none of the rotting piles of rubbish on the road and no pestering auto rickshaw drivers and again only a couple of imploring beggars. It is amazing that so much of the town is of considerable age given some of the huge flooding that goes down. Last year the waters rose half way up the hill towards the hotel completely submerging three storey houses.

Of course the town is littered with shrines and temples, both old and new, being such a religious place. Most are of the standard construction, but one Seeta Gompha was intriguing. It’s plain black facade, was unassuming, and strangely un-temple-like. One man told us it was the only temple in the world that is made out of a single rock. It seemed odd that he had not heard of kailasa temple a couple of 100 km from here. Notwithstanding the ones in Ethiopia. The rock hewn feature did not necessarily make it unique, but it’s tunnel made it so in our experience, at least. It was like being in a child’s discovery tunnel, not least because the warren was made for people of diminutive Indian morph. I have always had a proportionately large rear end, but after year’s of travel felt I was at a slimmer phase of my life, but I found it a squeeze to get through. Through the magical mystery tour, the warren riddled through stairways, twisted and you emerged in a tiny room with a shrine. Then twisted and riddled some more to discover a different shrine. The only issue was because of the claustrophobic nature of the passageways and the steady stream of pilgrims, meant it would have been impossible to pause and make a prayer even if you wanted to, which kind of gave it more of a discovery tour, then a religious aura.

Thankfully, tourists have not really discovered Nasik as a destination, and so people (well men mostly) are keen to have there photos taken. I fact it became almost irritating the number of 10-30 year old males that wanted their photos taken. The truth was that the women would have made more dramatic photos than cocky males on an ego boost. Mention must be made of male Indian vanity. Hardly a moment passes that they are not teasing their hair back into perfect alignment. Any object that offers the possibility of a reflection is irresistible. Berthette has large round mirrors that are ever so tempting, I’m convinced that most of the crowd that usually surround her when we stop are simply waiting for their chance to admire themselves.

We spent our anniversary in Nasik. The hotelier had recommended a restaurant for us to mark the day, a swanky rooftop gaff with nasty food, the only down side being a lack of mutton to go with the bones in my curry. Knowing that bones in many countries are considered a bonus in a meal, I thought a cultural fait pais to complain. The evening was lovely, the Indian wine to accompany it was even passable. We also understood a little more of Indian eating out etiquette. We ordered and waited and waited and wondered why no food arrived, our puzzled expressions brought over the maitre de, who asked when we wanted to eat. Clearly he had been waiting to be summoned to deliver the food we had ordered, rather than assuming that because we had ordered maybe we wanted to eat. As the place filled up around us it was obvious that Indians dine past 9 p.m. and so it was not surprising that they had not expected us to want our meal around 7.30. We also broke Indian etiquette by supping our drinks slowly over conversation after we had paid the bill. Bill paying means you leave immediately, not linger. Oops, we will try better with our manners next time.

But more than that the hotel had rustled up a touching gift for us, that was made more appropriate and wee brass jobby for holding the red dye for putting on binti in a Hindi marriage ceremony. It was lovely and so unexpected. There was something generally pleasant about the hotel, it was clean, and cool (for a temperature of 40 degrees outside), cheap, with a B and W cable TV and they even offered to clean the room after a couple of days of being there.

Source of the spirit

When we left for a trip out the next day to visit the source of Godavari, I forgot my helmet, you would think after 4.5 years on the road that this would be automatic by now but I’m useless. Anyway, I nipped back up while the cleaners were doing the room to find one of the cleaners peering into the gift box given to us by the hotel. He claimed he had seen the name card and got curious, but the box was closed and the card inside. I then remembered the computer hadn’t been locked away as we usually did and such. I was uneasy. The pleasantness had led to a little complacency on our behalf. I spoke to Pat, Pat spoke to the manager. We hoped everything would be OK. I know that some Indians are nosey to the point of irritation at times, that everything is theirs to touch and inspect, so it may have been that the cleaner saw a gift box and was just being nosey, but maybe it was something else. I really didn’t want to think ill of the place, they had been so nice. But it had been a timely reminder. It is always when you let your guard down that things can potentially get stolen and we’ve been getting a bit lackadaisical.

And so to Trimbek. The truth is that it made an excuse to stay in Nasik an extra day, on the basis that finally we had found an Indian city we liked we may as well enjoy it. At Trimbek the source of the holy river trickles from a huge rock outcrop. It seems logical that the nearer the original source you get, the more blessings are available. Hence many Hindus make the pilgrimage to Trimbek itself rather than just Nasik.

The bathing area had a steady stream of pilgrims coming to do their thing. The bathing well was surrounded on three sides by a colonnade. We took our shoes off to enter the area, with many of the pilgrims carrying their shoes with them we followed suite, only to be yelled at by a guy at a shrine. Confused as to why we had been chosen out of the dozens of others people, and slightly embarrassed that we had caused even more attention to be drawn to our pallid complexion, I rushed to fulfil his order to place our shoes outside. In doing so I stumbled on the step and twisted my ankle in the drainage channel around the edge. No doubt the officious man thought that this was God’s vengeance on being so thoughtless as to follow others lead. Maybe it was. But there seems to a joy some men have here in ordering the white folk to do something that they go not ask or expect the locals to do. Maybe it is just their way of getting their own back for year’s of colonial rule. Forgivable.

Being nearer the source of the river, it can be assumed that the water is purer and more ‘full’ of blessings. Is the blessing capacity of a holy river unlimited I wonder? Total immersion seemed to be the order of the day, with people filling bottles of water to take home one assumes for absent friends and family. Many make a long and costly trip to come here, they must really believe that this will make a difference in their lives. I have often thought it would be nice to believe in something that much.

I pondered whether to bathe the scarf in the waters but maybe this would bring more heavenly wrath upon poor Hippy. Sometimes, I struggle to know what to do in such places. My gut feeling is that as a non-believer it is a sacrilegious and insulting to bathe in the waters, or to buy an offering to a God we don’t believe in. Certainly, in Islam and Christianity to blaspheme is more of an insult to God than honest Atheism. But then do the devotees think we are snubbing their religion by not joining in, or just put it down to us being weird foreigners? Some gestured to us what to do, encouraging us to join in, but it seemed so wrong to make a pretence at a ceremony that we were not sincere about. Just as I had felt that for me to marry in church would be wrong and disrespectful to those who believe it to be a place of God. But possibly, in a place like this that is so religious to the people here, I would make them feel more comfortable if I went through the motions. They would not know, I did not believe, so would it do any harm? But I could not bring myself to do it. Paradoxically, cynical as I am about such things, I felt I would contaminate their religious waters with my atheism, or at least belittle their beliefs. Can atheism contaminate, if you did not believe the waters are holy? Maybe my reluctance to take part is more for my own comfort than theirs.

Anyway now my ankle hurts, I try to regain my dignity, and hobble into the shade. Sadhus were offering blessing for donations. There seem to be a lot of Sadhus (holy men) in India, that seem to fulfil a number of roles, counsellors, religious advisors, someone to give confessional to. I assume they have some spiritual awareness beyond the norm, because I never see them reading the scriptures, occasionally reading the paper or doing a crossword, but nothing more. It appears that semi-nakedness and spirituality go hand in hand. There seems to be a inverse relationship between prudishness and wisdom on the part of the Sadhu. In fact nakedness is even better it seems, some Sadhus we met, asking for alms showed us pictures of themselves naked at a ceremony, implying that that made them more worthy of alms. I wanted to smile at the juxtaposition of it all. For a moment my mind transported these 3 bearded saffron robed men to the deep South of the US, or parts of Europe for that matter, flashing their pocket book of themselves naked showing these pictures to unsuspecting folk on the street. Reminds me of an Italian offering to show the owd queen pornographic piccies in Herculaeneum! Something that in their eyes should be greeted with reverence could be so easily misunderstood. In the end we offered them a roll-up ciggy each (as they were smoking anyway), which they turned their noses up at when they realised that it was not cannabis but tobacco. Again we smiled.

Obviously, Sadhus are not female, and in fact females are not meant to speak to Sadhus, maybe it is something to do with the nakedness thing. It would all be very embarrassing if the old fellah down stairs got perky in the middle of a blessing. I haven’t yet figured the modesty customs for women. When bathing in public most wear their saris, which tend to become see through and clingy when wet. In the rural areas I had seen women bathing topless also. And as we rode through Trimbek whilst a lady put a basket on her head, her top pulled up over her chest. I expected a sudden bashfulness and a rush to make herself ‘decent’ but getting the basket properly balanced was of far greater importance. I wondered, if our Western perception of Asian ladies modesty is incorrect, and whether practicality is paramount. The lady was very poor, and I pondered if the Dalits, lowest caste, who are to many ‘invisible’ it also means that their nakedness is unseen and therefore inoffensive. Or is it just that there comes a point that you are too poor to be concerned with such prissy issues and are just worried about survival.

We decided to make the trip up the hill to the true source of the river, more for the need for a bit of exercise than anything else. Probably the pilgrims would have thought we had lost our marbles if they knew we were braving the heat of the day for a stroll, rather than to obtain enlightenment. But then we have to live up to our reputation of being mad dogs. The stepped pathway had trellises for shade and a series of little drink stops offering lime water. There was a relay of child beggars on the way up, each seemingly having their own patch, and gave up when the reach the next families patch, and a replacement beggar would take on the baton. Nice to know there is honour amongst beggars. The shrine at the source was so understated that if you blinked you missed it, the only thing that really marked the spot was the usual troop of monkeys scavenging the offerings placed there by the pilgrims.

From the top, the size of the rock face that the spring sprang from was apparent. In itself it was awe inspiring. You could also see that there a number of other bathing tanks in the town below. I struggled to understand; if the holiness was in the waters, why was it that only one of these bathing areas had pilgrims attending it? I doubt if I will ever understand.

My ankle seemed to have eased, until a stumbled for a second time on the way back down. Doh! Maybe the Gods are upset with me after all. Cynical Pat says, “Maybe you were just having one of your clumsy days, dear.” It still functioned so I knew it wasn’t serious but it did hurt.

My ankle seized on the way back to Nasik on the bike. I tried to move it a little as we rode along but to no avail. When we stopped to change oil at a garage, I had a whole audience of mechanic-greased onlookers to watch me limp pathetically around. I could have done with a little more privacy to lick my wounds. Some excuse about the engine needing to be hot to change the oil.

That evening Pat thought I made a bit of a meal of my injuries by insisting on hobbling round and round the hotel room to exercise it and stop it seizing again. I nipped out to go to the internet to test it still further, and returned to find Pat stood naked on the bed brandishing a towel! Was he into some new form of self abuse I was unaware of? No he was on a mission - a mission to rid the room of mosquitoes, which had sought sanctuary on the ceiling and the tops of the walls. Both my ankle injury and my ineptitude at towel whipping (not enough practice in male changing rooms) debarred me from swatting duty. So I was on clearing and moving furniture to make an off ground course to reach every corner of the room, to reach the little fellahs. It had all the comedy of a Frank Spencer sketch, as I hobbled moving furniture about and Pat leapt, his tackle waggling, around the room whipping the walls and ceiling mid flight. We should have caught it on video for our children to find in their teens to laugh at with their friends. I knew there was a reason we don’t have children. The nudity clearly was not a factor in my success but I managed to take out about 40 of the varmints so it was clearly a job that needed to be done. We slept uneasily with mosquito-coil smoke wafting around us.

It’s baking hot in Baroda. You can bank on it.

North of Nasik is the town of Baroda or Vadodara. Curiosity, and a suitable distance for a days ride, encouraged us to make it a destination. We would be entering the state Gujarat. A number of Gujatatis have decided to make Britain their home and hence numerous branches of the Bank of Baroda have sprung up around the UK. So I was intrigued to see what Baroda was like. We cut across country, on pleasant roads, blissfully free of traffic. I had begun to learn a few letters of Hindi to try and decipher road signs, I could usually recognise a couple of letters and then make a best guess. I had failed to find something that would translate Hindu font into a familiar one. But now I was at a loss again. We were in Gujarat where there is a completely different alphabet again. But there was relief. Because Gajarat is the only state that uses their font they put many more signs in both English and Gujarati. Ahhhhh.....

We went through some lovely terrain, forested hillsides and cultivated plains. At a truck stop we typically became the centre of attention. Not least because I was the only women in a group of about 50 men. I wondered if truck stops were meant to be men only, but there was a women’s toilet, so..... Anyway we were there now so we may as well eat. A group of men did the customary Indian thing of just standing and staring at us throughout our stay. Not trying to engage us in conversation, just staring. We have on occasions decided to stare back, to see if they feel uncomfortable about it, and on the whole they do. But for some reason they do not seem to make the connection that maybe we feel uncomfortable also being stared at.

Today, I just wanted to eat, refresh myself and head off. Today, if they wanted to stand for 45 minutes and stare at us, let them. One Indian had said when we were clearly, bothered by a crowd of onlookers, said that the problem with many Indians is that they have too much time on there hands. Maybe that’s true. I went to the waterless, blocked toilet, hey ho..... part of the course. It is all very well having a bottom washing toiletry culture but it does rather rely on the presence of water, and I had left my toilet roll at the table. I went on a mission to find water. Part of my refreshment routine is to comb my hair, after being on the bike for hours and wearing a helmet, I feel unkempt and tetchy until I comb my hair. The complication of sourcing some water to do ablutions had distracted me from hair combing. Anyway after a satisfying meal of dhal fry, chapati, rice and spiced lassi for 2, for less than 70p, became newly aware of hair sticking out in a helmet users kind of a way. Anyway, without thinking I began to comb my hair. This taught me more in the next few seconds than a wealth of cultural advice. A guy a table back, began leering at me, and the waiter rushed over and gestured for me to leave the restaurant area and comb my hair outside. He was right of course, it was unhygienic, but I could have been forgiven for thinking my indiscretion OK when all around me truckers were noisily clearly phlegm and spitting it on the floor. My apologies.

When I thought about it later. In all the scenes in Bollywood films where the heroine is enticing the hero, her hair is down and when she is being coy and chaste her hair is up. Just as in Western movies the prim school ma'am, loosens her hair and takes off her glasses to be sexy. So letting your hair down to comb your hair is akin to deliberately hitching your skirt up to reveal more leg. I must be more careful with my displays of wantonness. As to the hygiene issue, it is hard for me to understand how hair is more unclean than a gobbet of phlegm but the Western world is capable of it’s own irrationalities. Gobs of phlegm stay stuck on the floor, hair blows around until it sticks in your dal.

As we climbed back in the bike, the leering bloke continued to leer and the crowd of guys with too much time continued to stare.

As we head north we head toward the desert areas of India. With deserts come camels, and the occasional camel cart, began to join the traffic on the road. Camel carts look a bit odd. The carts are pretty much the same as you would find behind a horse or oxen but with a camel there’s far too much beast above the centroid of the cart. Camels make the same kind of speed or more than the alternatives in a much more casual fashion.

Entering Baroda, we vied for space on the road with the bicycles, buses, auto rickshaws and pedestrians. Ancient, impressive gateways, marked our entry to the older part of the city. The chaotic traffic was squeezed from 4 lanes to two through the gateway. Each vehicle wriggling and squeezing to get through. People have no sense of safety. Even after 2 months in India, riding through heavy traffic is still a roller coaster of adrenaline fuelled stress. I try my best to chill out about, there is nothing I can do after all. But I feel vulnerable as each vehicle is out for themselves rather than others on the road. I see sari-ed ladies perched side-saddle, helmet-less on the back of bikes, calm and worry free, as their male escort rides recklessly through the traffic. So what you’re saying is that you don’t trust your pilot as much as they trust theirs. Thanks. Do they really believe in the hand of fate so much, or is it just a coping mechanism. I have thought that if you tried to replicate Indian traffic on a video game, people would think you were exaggerating. The cows, rickshaws, a car deciding without indication to do a U-turn, a bike reversing out of a parking spot without looking, then a lorry coming the wrong way down the street towards you, parting the chaotic traffic, meanwhile pedestrians weaving between the moving vehicles. Indication is rare, observation minimal, it is continuous and unrelenting. On my return to the UK, I will be able to counter those racists who claim Indians do not integrate into the UK. No-one drives with such a lack of order, as the people in India. Err, that’s not entirely true, dear. You once got a ride from an Indian colleague when you worked in Leicester ........ Funny how one tries to forget horrific memories, both in India and at home.

There was no sign of a huge head office of the Bank of Baroda which was a bit of a disappointment. I’d imagined some exotic tower touching the sky but probably the institution is now housed in Bombay, oops Mumbai, or Delhi. There were, however, absolutely splendid city gates at many of the road intersections and some extremely attractive buildings breaking up the monotony of what is mostly a large modern city. Appropriately the Fine Arts department of the University is housed in a rather lovely Mosquesque structure; many of the other University buildings are rather fine too. Just along the way from the Uni, past the railway station are series of residences with charming names like ‘Bungalow No.1’ (these were not bungalows in the British understanding of the word, seems like we got the things a little confused when we adoped the word) that house the great and good of Baroda i.e. Chief of Police, Head of the Judiciary and a host of other powerful officials. Given the stifling heat and the lack of decent sleep we were getting due to our less than sophisticated pension, we just managed a brief look at the city in one day before we had to head out of town.

We had an introduction to a couple of cultural items that cleared up some confusion for us before heading out. One was a wedding party (for which the street where we were residing seemed to be a magnet) where the groom was arriving on horseback escorted by a cortege of ladies with illuminated water pots on their heads. They were connected together by a continuous wire that was attached to a portable generator. This rather suggests that the metal vessels that they were sporting were attached to either 110 or 240 volts, probably the latter. The significance of the lit pots is still unclear to us but at least it goes some way to explaining this photo taken near Varanasi.

The other thing we’ve been somewhat confused by is the reluctance of waiters to bring all our food at appropriate stages of the dining process. Invariably the rice arrives later than everything else. Having had a demonstration Gujarati thali, which we could not eat without constant instruction from our rather too persistent waiter, we now understand that rice is considered something of a poor man’s filler and is only used to plug the last remaining gap in your tummy after you have eaten all of the chapatis. Apparently it is thought that rice is fattening and chapatis, made with ghee and glistening with butter, are not. Close but no cigar.