This is long overdue what with me being back for just over a week now (although it feels like about 3 months I’ve been back). Anyway I thought I would write about all the things that I left out of the other blog entries. India is defiantly a place to expect the unexpected and having new experiences.Up there with the random things we have done is being extras in a bollywood film…they required white people to dance around in a mock London club, so if your into ya bollywood films keep your eye out for a film named “Namaste London” and you might well see me and tom dancing about like a couple of fools in the background…along with a crowd of other westerners that had been found the day before on the streets of Bombay.
Fishing at 6 am after a long night in Goa drinking in the “café del mar”….with some Irish guys in the morning after staying out all night we were going for some breakfast when a bunch of fishermen were pushing one of the boats out (they are heavy boats, and it takes a number of guys to lift them)…we leant a hand and then me and a guy from New York decided to jump in…instead of telling us to jump out they motored it away from the shore and round the coast a bit where we dropped the nets and heaved them back onboard again (really hard work actually)…this is possibly one of the most random things that has happened to me on a night out.
The driving is crazy and you put your life in someone’s hands every time you step into a cab or tuk-tuk- im very surprised there aren’t more head on collisions. On time on a bus to the north there was a steep cliff to on side of us and a drop of to the other side…there was all of a sudden a loud crash of rocks and rubble as there was a landslide right there in front of the bus, the driver slammed the brakes on, backed up and then drove round the pile of rocks on the road that had nearly taken out half the bus. Most of the Indians seemed to be oblivious to the fact they were nearly crushed- or just thought this a normal event…I on the other hand was standing up out of my chair scared sh**less.
They don’t use handbrakes either as I found out on our ride to the rotang pass when the driver of the 4x4 stepped out of the vehicle for just long enough for me to insert a tape to play and turn on the ignition (making sure it wasn’t in gear), the thing staled straight away and lurched backwards rolling backward down hill, tom tried the handbrake that didn’t work.. so I jumped into the driver seat and slammed the foot brake on…the 2 Canadian guys who were in the back had got ready to bail, before we rolled of the side of the mountain pass.
Getting ripped of is generally due to your own bad bargaining skills, a lot of the time you can walk away and use your common sense so as not to get ripped of…however…some things are unpredictable…buying head and shoulders shampoo and finding out after a wash with it that it was in fact a type of fabric conditioner, asking for a pint and finding out that in India- a pint means any measure of liquid that they see fit (usually a bottle)…in varkala we decided to buy some beers based on that they were listed as 30 rupees on the menu….later after they had taken the menu they tried to charge us 70 rupees per beer….yet they conveniently couldn’t find the menu that said they were 30…or in fact any menu with the prices displayed.
In munnar (famous for its tea plantations) we went to several different places thinking we could find a normal cup of tea, or maybe even ginger tea or badam milk or something…based on that every other shop is a tea and spice shop)…but no…every where just seemed to sell chai- a tea made with powdered milk and lots of sugar…. eventually we found one but after going round to about 5 different places…as tom said – never mind “couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery” more like “cant get a regular tea in a tea plantation”. Also whilst in munnar we went to the “midnight café” for a snack, only to find out that it closed at 10:30 pm!
Buying things can be interesting in India, opportunities to buy all sorts…one time walking along the shore in kerala a group of kids were throwing bags and things about buy the water…turned out they were gathering mussels…me and tom were able to buy 2 peoples worth of seafood for 20 rupees (that’s about 26 pence or so)…and had them cooked buy a restaurant. We have been offered saffron several times by saffron dealers….who come up to you and in a hushed voice offer “saffron, you want? 1 gram 60 rupees!?” . We were up in the north of India on something called the rotang pass in manali and we were approached by a saffron dealer who offered us a deer’s nipple…at first thinking he was talking rubbish he then asked me to hold out my hand, he proceeded to place an actual severed deers nipple in my palm!
Although it seems like a world of unpredictable slightly undesirable experiences, this is what makes India so great…waking up in the morning knowing that you cant predict what will happen, and not knowing even where you will end up that evening or what you’ll be doing…. that and things are so, so cheap make India a very desirable place to travel indeed.
