Sunday 9 May 2010

Sat on a roof on an old toilet in Amritsar

Dear readers,

It has been some months now since I returned from travelling and almost exactly a year since I departed. I find myself living in London with a new job and things are starting to feel settled. At almost exactly the same time I began to feel settled, my feet started to itch.

In order to combat this - I've found myself going through photos and writings from my travels which I have barely looked at since their creation.

It now seems as good a time as any to actually start going through all this stuff and publishing it.

As a result what you find below is the first entry I've published since my return.

All these pieces were written on location and the tense matches accordingly.

So without futher ado - I take you back to Amritsar, where I'm on the roof sat on an old toilet...
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I'm sat on the roof of a hotel on an old toilet drinking beer.

Beer’s not supposed to be sold in the old city near the Golden Temple, but the hostel staff did a beer run for us. When I say us - I met a guy yesterday called Brock - who is an Australian [23]. Brock is a mechanic by trade and by the sound of an engine can tell you not only what model of motorbike it is, but if it’s an Enfield he can tell you which year and where the engine was made. We were also joined by a couple Brock had met. They were an English couple who are motor biking round the world on an old BMW. Presumably Brock heard them coming. They have already ‘done India’ on an Enfield bullet [a very popular bike here] and now are doing the whole world over land and sea with their bike. The first leg is a short nip from London to Perth...
[see a link to their excellent blog at the end of this].


We all got talking and, as it often does between Australians and Brits, talked turned to beer. There was initially some confusion about the time of day that it was as we all had different time zones on our phones. After some deliberation it was agreed that it was some time after 4pm and most certainly beer o'clock. Our parched palates needed quenching and the hotel informed us a lengthy walk of over an hour in the punishing heat was the only way to get beer. We were too thirsty to try and prove them wrong, so for a reasonable fee, the hotel did a run for us [on and Enfield Bullet, of course].

We all agreed to meet on top of the hotel and drink together in about half an hours time, where the hotel had agreed to deliver it. For various reasons I'm early [it's a new habit I'm forming] so I find myself sat alone in the sun on an old toilet on top of a hotel with a fresh delivery of some ice cold beers - watching a man fly a kite from another rooftop in front of the Golden Temple. I write this, sweating quite profusely as I'm about 5 ft away from a rooftop diesel generator. The heat from the exhaust and sun has made my body try to force as much water as possible out of my pores. The nearest thing to hand is a ‘Kingfisher Strong’ [Strong – as opposed to light - means 'much more glycerine syrup than light'].

The generator is a common sight in India. I'm near the Pakistan border and in both Lahore and Amritsa electricity seems to be rationed out by the Government. I pay a 'luxury tax' of an extra 10% everywhere I go and stay [e.g. somewhere with Air Conditioning]. In the place I am the power cuts out about every 40 min for about 30 min. I wake up in the night, puzzled to be awoken by my body at such strange hours – only to discover that it's because my mouth's drier than a sheet of sandpaper sanding down the sphynx's arse. Then I realise the power has been stopped for our region and my room has gradually reached the temperature and humidity [and often scent] of a builder's arse crack in a portaloo on a hot roof. Sometimes though, the lights kick back in before the AC, and this was a mystery. Brock, my seasoned traveller of an Australian friend - informs me there are two power systems in most places. The normal electricity feeds TV, lights and fans etc but ACs must be plugged into the Government grid as they are so power hungry. I imagine a fat man in an unbuttoned shirt sitting at a computer in a fridge temperature room pointing at random to areas of a map and plunging them into darkness/semi-infernos. This is how it feels anyway. So most places have their own generators to power fans which idly push hot air around a room, teasing you with a breeze every ten seconds or so before plunging you back into a dark and chocking heat. Let's hope this 'luxury tax' goes towards some nice shiny new nuclear power stations for India, with big gates to keep out those pesky terrorists...

Anyway, all this merely explains why I'm sweating while writing this. I barely seem to have begun to actually write. Ok. I'll start.

The best way to start to write about India is not to. Well, not to start somewhere.

When I first arrived here I kind of freaked out a bit. The place was huge, everywhere seemed fascinating and the options and possible directions from each place were overwhelming. Usually when I travel I'll have a rough idea of my route before I get there and an idea of how long I'll stay [with a couple of days here or there thrown in for flexibility]. When I arrive somewhere I usually find people who can give me good advice. Ten minutes talking to the right person can equal ten hours of searching on the Internet.

Well India is a bit different.

It is almost impossible to get ten minutes talking to the right person here. Even tourist information centres are full of sponsored scammers.

The advice I got from friends who have travelled in India is 'Don't plan - be flexible'.

It took a while for this to sink in - but after nearly getting scammed into a package tour in Delhi I took it easy. I later met some people who'd done a package tour north to Srinigar and worked down - they felt scammed. I was also slightly freaking out as I'd been offered a volunteer position in a school in the Himalayas and didn't know whether to take it or not.

After a few frantic days in Delhi I concluded that I needed to get out of Delhi – so I thought I’d start with something easy like the Taj Mahal.

So that was that.

I'd met some girls at the Red Fort who were doing just that at the same time I was, so we marched off to the railway station to get some tickets. The price of a ticket from Delhi to Agra [125 miles] is about equal to half the price that a rickshaw driver will quote you to go around Delhi for the day. Trains in India are cheap. And great. Every scammer and dickhead tourist-predator will say 'why you go by train? - bus better! come into my shop I give you good deal!'. Well fuck busses, fuck them with bells on. I only travel on busses if I have to when I travel, where as I actively seek out trains. Busses are lurchy, bumpy and impossible to sleep on. India was no exception and I travelled by train whenever possible.

Everyone knows a little about Indian trains, even if they don't think they do. We all summon up images of people sat on them [I have seen this a bit, but only a bit – it’s more common in the south I'm told]. Most people know it was the British Empire which aided the construction of the major routes which still run today, thereby creating arteries through the country which still support the postal system, amongst everything else you can imagine, from milk to Nuclear waste.

Despite it's delays and chaos, the railways really are a backbone of India in a way not many the other countries can claim [the generator has just turned itself off - the hostel is back on the grid and I can hear the lovely live sitar music coming from the Golden Temple]

India has the largest railway network in the world. Let that sink in for a minute. We're not talking longest [I.e. Trans-Siberian or Australia's incredibly recent north south railway of this decade]. It's the biggest and most complex in the world. And it works. Not only that but it caters, quite effectively, for some of the poorest people in the world. So once I'd taken that into account I found myself beginning to marvel at it more than slag it off. [this toilet seat is really quite comfortable - the sun is lower now, the generator has stopped - my beer is at an acceptable temperature and the batteries in my fold-out Bluetooth keyboard seem to be lasting].

So, having travelled quite a bit by train, I think that in India, more than anywhere else on earth, the trains are a real way of life. In North America, you fly or get a Greyhound bus if you don't drive - the few train routes that do run are prohibitively expensive and very slow. In South America, I'm told you mostly get the bus. In Europe, trains are there, but only as a hangover from the industrial era really. If we started building Europe all over again today, it’s unlikely a train network of as large a scale would be constructed.. In Japan the trains are amazing, but can't be said to be a way of life - like I said in another blog - even the Japanese can't afford the Bullet trains, and the 'local' trains are nothing special. I can't speak for anywhere else - I guess in China, when travelling between the big Chinese cities the trains must play a similar role in life- but there just isn’t the capacity in China for them to be described as a way of life for everyone.

I felt very at home on the Indian railways. Despite the dust and clunks - everything is well rehearsed with a real human touch. I had one of the best omelettes of my life at 6:30am on a train from Jaipur to Amritsar sold by a man with 300 omelettes in foil tins carried on a tray on his head. It was about 15p. In Japan, the food servers might bow when they enter and leave the carriage but you could live in India for three days for the price of a beer on one of those trains - and I prefer India in that sense.

People live off the railways too, wondering into carriages selling chai and leaping on and off trains as they begin to lethargically slide out of the stations - and those who live off the railway cater for real people [i.e. not tourists] - so it's not ripping you off [I'm thinking British rail sandwich levels of inhuman rip offs] and on the trains it's all good stuff, it's got the human touch [unfortunately quite literally in most cases].

So I think I like India's railways, more than anywhere else, you feel so much a part of the culture just being a passive passenger on it - which can't really be said anywhere else I've been.

I met a family who’s mother was rather ‘new age’. I told friends about her and took the piss out of her as she’d said it was a 'special experience’ to be in a crowded carriage on a full capacity train with her two small children - but in a way I guess it kind of is. The staff-supervised rugby scrum when getting onto the Delhi metro was quite bad. I saw disabled people pushed out the way and all sorts - even the Tube rarely gets that bad - but once people were on it was fine. A few elbows and armpits in places everyone could do without, but it was air-conditioned [which can't be said for London] and it was all a bit of fun really. For example, something quite interesting happened on one metro trip. The train kept stopping suddenly and throwing people around over and over again. With only each other to hold onto in most cases the whole carriage slopped around until people regained their balance – then the train sat there for 5 minutes with no obvious reason. Then it would lurch again, causing people to grab at any part of anyone near by. It really was a groper’s dream. Each time this happened a knowing laugh went around the carriage and people smiled. People who 5 minutes earlier had been sworn enemies pushing old ladies and disabled dwarves out the way to get on were now all the best of friends. It's something quite British too, I think, in the face of something pretty shit - to just make a joke of it all. But in London I think a few meaningful nasty looks would have been given and nothing else exchanged. Here there was an odd sense of comradely. But that’s the Metro…quite different from the mainliners.

On the Indian trains you're just one in a crowd rubbing along and rattling your way to your own personal destiny and you've got nothing to do but sit and stare at life going by for 15 hours and drink chai. You're not hurtling at 177mph from Tokyo to the next identical metropolis, but neither is half your train unexplainably left in a siding for two hours with your girlfriend on the other half, still in the toilet and no English speaking staff to explain [this happened to me at the Greek/Turkish border and is, perhaps, another story].

In India it's a stately pace through the lives of so many in India. You see the vast and wonderful countryside, the incomparably expansive farmland and countless villages that your brain can actually make sense of. It’s not a Japanese blur of concrete, it’s a field being ploughed by a bull, probably in a very similar manner as it would have been done maybe 8000 years ago. The whole experience is very intelligible, very humbling and, despite the general filth, quite civilised. India seems to have kept the humanity in it's transport. In doing this, as it has in so many other areas of life, I think India has kept something that more developed countries have sacrificed it in favour of profit margins and efficiency tables. I don't think I can really articulate any more why I liked the trains, but they just matched my pace of life and mind. Things slowed from a blur and hum of noise and returned to the steady lub dub heartbeat of the steam trains from my childhood. Maybe that's why I liked it.

I’ll end these ponderings with a passage I wrote on one such train journey:

“I'm on the train from Jaipur for Amritsar at the moment. It is due in at 10:30 am and it's now half eleven. The train is suspiciously empty and my two unfinished water bottles have been tidied away before they were finished. This tidying is mysterious - everything else on this train is filthy. The whole train -inside and out - is covered in a thin film of dust and diesel oil. There are windows but no one shuts them. You'd have to be Swedish and in the mood for a shite-scented sauna. As a result the whole train is very much open to the elements, which I like – but it means everything I own has a kind of brownish tint to it now.

I don't actually know if I’ve missed my stop and we've turned around back to Jaipur - it's quite possible - I have slept for most of these 14 hours [what else is there to do on a sleeper train?]

Despite the babies crying, the calls of 'Chai' entering my dreams, the wafts of shite scented stale air, the jolts, stops and starts - I have rested remarkably well. I always enjoy sleeping on trains. I think there is something maternal about it. From my most early memories of going on a steam train [I am rare in my generation- living in Loughborough, the first train I ever went on was a steam train thanks to my Dad taking me to the Great Central steam railway] my most early memories are of extreme joy and excitement at the idea of boarding such a colossal and 'gallant' machine. The rhythm and movement cast a spell which has lasted my life. I have the best dreams on trains too. Something about the movement and the rhythm gets into my brain - all the sounds and smells and voices must combine into a thrilling cocktail for my subconscious.

Ok I'm here now so I better shut up and go and see the Golden temple”

So, from rolling trains and typing on broken toilets drinking beer, I sign out for now and leave you only with a link:

http://globegallivanting.blogspot.com/

1 comment:

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