Kerala

It would seem that we arrived at Mangalore at 04:15 and got a connection to Ernakulam from where we took a ferry to Fort Cochin. To tell the truth the notes are a bit sketchy. The remaining notes suggest we ate fried fish at the Hotel Elite and stayed at the Princess Tourist Bungalow. This could very well have been a room in a former colonial house.

I remember that the room was a decent size and I was able to hang up my mosquito net over the double bed. I do have quite vivid memories of that night because I recall laying down with Claire. There we were alone in an exotic location beneath a mosquito net. We had been getting on very well but until that point nothing had happened between us. You have to be very careful. Just because someone agrees to share a bed with you doesn't necessarily mean they consent to anything more than sharing the bed. So I had to ask whether Claire wanted a cuddle. That was literally what I asked her and it would have been fine if she had said no but she said yes. We cuddled and it was all very nice indeed. I won't go into details, I don't have to do I?

Next morning after breakfast at the Hotel Elite one of the first things on my agenda was fixing my telephoto lens. I found a likely place (a watch mender's) where they had tiny screws to tighten it up.

After that we went to see the fishing nets. My Lonely Planet Guide is still unfound but I think I remember that it said these nets represented a very inefficient method of fishing. They are called Chinese Fishing Nets because they may have been imported when Cochin was a major centre for the spice trade. Wikipedia says that some suppose they were introduced by the Chinese explorer Zheng He.



They are huge contraptions at least 10 meters high and the nets are about 20 meters across. The engineering involved is entirely out of proportion to the size of the catch. I didn't see them in operation but it seems that the fisherman walks out over a beam which causes a shift in the machine's balance resulting in the net being lowered gently into the water for a short period of time. When it is raised the catch is a few fish and some crustaceans.

It's a lot of work for not much fish. Mind you, such fish that are caught must be enough to make the investment worthwhile. They say that the fish that are caught are sold to passers by and there are people on hand who will cook them for you for a small fee. This demonstrates that it a business large enough to have a subsidiary service industry allied to it.



All the same, although I have never seen either Dragons' Den nor The Apprentice, I think I understand the principles behind the shows and I can't see how one could successfully pitch the idea of constructing such an enormous and fairly complicated thing as a business proposition. The paltry returns would render it unviable. I don't think anyone would buy in to the project. Likewise an apprentice who came up with such an idea would be likely to hear the famous words. That's a pity because they are fantastic things. By "fantastic" I mean they must have been dreamed up rather than designed.



The picture above perplexed me for a while. I wasn't sure anymore what it was. In the course of checking some information I found that it is a picture of Mattancherry Palace. Viewed close up you can see how the climate has eroded what once was probably a great deal more splendid than what we eventually found. I say "eventually" because I think it took a little while to find this place because of the Indian trait of not being able to admit that one doesn't know the answer to a question or simply doesn't understand what is being said. My researches have also shed some light on why the question "can you tell me the way to Mattancherry Palace" might have been a hard one to understand. It seems that the palace is known locally as the Dutch Palace. What is the point of having a local name for something, I wonder? I remember we asked this guy if he could tell us the way to Mattancherry Palace and he seemed reluctant to be precise. In the end I asked if it was "this way" pointing down the road and he was very relieved to say "acha!". We found it eventually but I think it was no thanks to the perplexed local.

There are some very good paintings in Mattancherry Palace but the one that stayed with me the longest is that of Krishna cavorting with the Gopis. What a guy Krishna was!

At www.fortcochin.com/mattancherry.htm it says "His languid pose belies the activity of his six hands and two feet, intimately caressing adoring admirers". Those words are quoted within this article on a blog at http://ssubbanna.sulekha.com/blog/post/2009/01/the-legacy-of-chitrasutra-twelve-the-murals-of.htm and there is a small reproduction of the mural. Honestly! He's all hands! (and feet).



Traveling as a couple almost imposes an obligation to do things and see things. I am sure Claire and I were taking it easy but our next stop was Jew Town. I don't know why but the name sounds perjorative. Why should it? There are China Towns in plenty of cities. I dare say that armed with the right guidebooks and much more time there would have been more examples of the 16th Century Jewish community to see but the Synagogue built in 1568 is the prime attraction. I bought the postcard shown above.

I can't honestly say that I remember visiting St Francis Church (built 1503). I bought the postcard below anyway.



Cochin is a place with Portuguese, Chinese and Dutch influences. I have fond memories of the place. At some point Claire and I must have gone into a shop because I bought a another "black star sapphire" to match the one I got in Jaipur.

Claire and I ate well that evening. My notes don't say where but I did make a note of the cost because it was remarkable. Just Rs 3.50. That was 10p at the official exchange rate. You can't say fairer than that.

I dare say we turned in early, earlier than we might have been expected to. I was very much under the influence of Krishna.

A Development

The next day my notes remind me of a significant development. Remember when I left Jaisalmer when I shared a compartment with some British people and we locked ourselves into the First Class compartment and smoked ourselves to sleep? Well my note says I ran into Claire who was the girl who seemed to have been traveling with her Dad and his mate.

This was a significant development although the notes don't say a great deal more because the next note says "Stupendous Beach Party". It must have been a good party because the note says so but I can't remember anything. It is likely that I got really stoned and possible that I got drunk too.

The following day appears to have been a bit of a nothing day. There's note that I missed Anjuna. Perhaps I was supposed to go there with someone, I don't know with whom. Anyway I didn't go. I must have made an arrangement to meet up with Claire again. It seems I went to the tailor's "shop" in Calangute and missed Claire. The tailor hadn't finished what he had been asked to do so I had to go back again the next day.

Things were getting a bit boring. I was doing nothing, just cycling to Calangute to see the tailor or cycling to Baga beach. Life was a bit too easy. As I mentioned there was a young lad called Suraj who acted as a "house boy" and cook and another mysterious thing that I noticed was that the clothes that I had discarded the day previously would end up washed, dried and folded the next afternoon. The lady across the road who was the housekeeper was collecting it and did it without me noticing. I never ever saw her.

I remember on one of these days I got a lift into Calangute with Ute on the back of her motorcycle. She was, as I have said more than once, the essence of cool. Sitting tight up behind her on the back of her motorbike holding on to her slim waist was about as near as I was ever going to get to her. She knew she was beautiful and she knew she was cool. She probably knew that I might have enjoyed sitting behind for reasons apart from the fact that it was a free ride into town. She was a long term resident and being with her just added to the feeling that I was part of the cool scene. After visiting the tailor to collect the items I had ordered she and I sat in one of the lassi bars on the street that leads to the beach. Then she rode back to our village and if I hung on to her a bit too tightly I don't think she noticed.

Later that afternoon Claire turned up out of the blue and we sat and talked about our travel plans. Claire wanted to come with me. I have no idea where her father or his friend was and I think she was a little out on a limb. She was on her own and needed a traveling companion. She was young and blonde.

Claire's visit seemed to change the atmosphere. It seemed to me that a girl turning up at Jeannette's house to see me put Jeanette's nose out of joint a little. There had never been a repeat performance of Jeanette's parading naked as she had on the first morning after our arrival. My pretending not to have noticed that might have already had an effect. Anyway, a distance developed between us and I started to feel that it was time to move on. Jeannette also mentioned that I might contribute something towards my keep. I had been staying there for free, eating in at the house (and eating very well), getting my laundry done by an invisible woman, had free use of a bicycle and had the run of the place generally. My illness was a dim and distant memory. I had completely recovered control of my bowels. So it was fair enough. I had been there eleven days already and whatever I paid was well worth it. I don't remember how much it was but it was less than a tenner.

So my last weekend in Goa was upon me and I got my souvenirs together and headed to Panaji to post myself another parcel home. The notes are so sparse in the filofax pages that it is hard to think now what else I did. I do remember that on the Friday morning I had to ask Suraj what had become of my recording Walkman. I didn't think he had stolen it but I was right to ask him because he immediately handed it over having borrowed it (without mentioning the fact) before he went home at the beginning of the week.

That day there was a 50 over One Day International cricket match between India and Sri Lanka at in the Nehru Stadium, Fatorda, Margao which staged its first One day International in 1989. It might have been fun to have gone to watch the match because I am sure the atmosphere would have been better than the fifth day of the Test Match I had watched at Lords before I had set off on this trip.

It is probably just as well I didn't go because India lost very badly - bowled out for 136. Their top scorer was Sachin Tendulkar with only 30. They didn't even use up the allotted 50 overs. Their Innings was over in 40.3 overs. Although Sri Lanka did lose a couple of early wickets they reached the 137 needed for victory at a canter for the loss of just 3 wickets. A stand of 82 between P A de Silva and Sri Lankan captain A Ranatunga finished off India and there were 17.1 overs remaining. It must have dampened the spirits in the crowd and perhaps it wouldn't have been so much fun after all. The three match series had been decided anyway because India had won the first two matches.

It gave Suraj and I the chance to have a discussion about cricket. Cricket was something that generally united Indians but India's captain Mohamed Azharuddin was a Muslim and under pressure given the problems concerning the Babri Masjid/Ram Temple. One thing that does unite Indians is cricket against Pakistan and Suraj mentioned a controversy concerning a recent match between India and Pakistan. He was convinced that the Pakistani bowlers had been cheating. This was not the last time such an accusation has been made. What proved it for Suraj was the "unprecedented swing" the bowlers were achieving.

That night and the following morning I said my goodbyes to Jeannette and Ute and at 4.15 on Saturday the 9th of December 1990 Claire and I boarded a bus to Panaji and from there got a bus to Mangalore on the first leg of our adventure together.

St Xavier's Festival

My notes are headed "St Xavier's Festival" and there is a note saying "Suraj's village?". It was a public holiday because St Francis Xavier is the patron saint of Goa. I did not go to Suraj's village. I was supposed to but he had gone by the time I got up. I went to Old Goa. I took a bus, a ferry and another bus and I wandered around. Apart from the picture above and the one at the foot of this post all of the other illustrations are in fact postcards I bought somewhere or other. I have quoted the descriptive from the back of each card in italics below each.


Vegetable Seller Goa Market - a quiet smile lighting her face this vegetable seller threads flowers before the rush of buyers flock to the market - Photo - V.B. Anand


Goa (India) No.16
"Kunbis" - Goa's loveable tribals - are hard workers and hard worshippers. Seen at the fair, Old Goa, on St Francis Xavier's feast day

From this point on I should own up straight away and say that the historical information comes for the most part from a pamphlet I bought called Old Goa by S. Rajagopalan published by the Director General Archeological Survey of India in 1987. I can't reproduce it all but it says that Vasco de Gama landed in Calicut in 1498 and the Portuguese established their trading station at Cochin down the coast (see later) but they met opposition from the Zamorin of Calicut. I had to look up the Zamorin because his name sounds so good, and discovered that at that time the Zamorin was considered the wealthiest monarch of India who had contacts with Arab countries, Egypt and even beyond, and as a port Calicut ranked foremost on the west coast shipping the bulk of pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and ginger (my ceramic spice jar certainly does not date from this period). I read that the initial welcome of the Zamorin was dispelled because of Vasco de Gama's insignificant gifts and rude behaviour. Indeed it seems that an emissary of the Zamorin was sent back with his ears nose and hands chopped off and strung round his neck! My friend Steve tells me that in fact a whole shipful of emissaries met this fate and the ship was set on fire. To describe this as rude behaviour is understating it, isn't it?

Apart from the perhaps understandable opposition from the Zamorin, trade competition from the Arabs made life difficult so the Portuguese looked for a place from where they could control the seas. Goa was was the answer because it had natural harbours and navigable rivers.


Velha Goa, Basilica of Bom Jesus (16th Cent.)


Velha Goa: Altar of Our Lay of Dloures, Sè Cathedral (16th Cent)

With the advent of the Portuguese, both public and private buildings began to be erected. The pamphlet says there was an epidemic in 1543 that swept away 200,000 people but the city recovered and churches of lofty dimensions attached with equally large convents were built by the various religious orders who settled down in Goa under Royal mandates. The Franciscans were the earliest to arrive in 1517, followed by other orders like Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Jesuits.


Velha Goa:Facade
St Francis of Assisi (17th Cent.)


Velha Goa: Sè Cathedral (16th Cent.)

On 7 April 1541 a small fleet of 5 ships left Lisbon on its way to the East Indies and one of the passengers was Francisco de Xavier y Jassu whose noble parents were (and I only quote this because of the extraordinarily florid names) Don Juan de Jessu y Atondo and Donna Maria de Azpilcueta Aznaraz de Sada. He was 35 years old and having been an associate of Inigo de Loyola (St Ignatious Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits). He had been given the arduous task of spreading Christianity among the subjects in the Portuguese colonies in the East. He, it says, surpassed all others in his missionary zeal. He reached Goa in May 1542 and left in September that year (managing to miss out on the above mentioned epidemic, which I suppose was lucky for him). He went south along the coast preaching but returned to Goa which was the base of his operations. He went on to Indonesia and Japan (where he was given permission to preach by King Yamaguchi) but made little headway and disappointed boarded ship to return to Goa but disembarked at an island called Sancian or Shangchuan off the Coast of China where he fell ill and died aged 46 on 3 December 1552.


Velha Goa: Main altar, Baslica of Bom Jesus (16th cent.)

"It was the 3rd of September, that day I'll always remember, 'cos that was the day my daddy died"" Those are the opening lines of "Papa was a rolling stone". In this case it was the 3rd of December, that day Goans all remember, cos that was the day St Francis Xavier died.


Velha Goa: Relic-casket, Basilica of Bom Jesus (16th Cent.)

Anyhow, he was buried at Sancian, but subsequently was dug up and moved to Malacca where his grave was opened four months later so that his successor could pay his respects (as you do) and his body was found to be fresh and life-like and so the body was moved again to St Paul's College on 16 March 1554 in Goa.

The following comes from goacentral.com

The ship carrying his body made its final voyage to Goa and arrived at Goa on 16 March 1554. It was taken in a procession to the College of St Paul where it was on display for three days. The viceroy Dom Alfonso de Noronha ordered an official medical examination of the body. Dr. Cosmas Saraiva, his personal physician and Dr. Ambrosio Ribeiro, the Vicar-General examined the body and so did Brother Antonio Dias.

Dr. Cosmas Saraiva writes "I felt and pressed all the members of the body with my fingers, and paid special attention to the abdominal region and made certain that the intestines were in their natural position. There had been no embalming of any kind nor had any artificial preservative agents been used. I observed a wound in the left side near the heart and asked two of the Society who were with me to put their fingers into it. When they withdrew them they were covered with blood which I smelt and found to be absolutely untainted. The limbs and other part of the body were entire and clothed in their flesh in such a way that, according to the laws of medicine, they could not possibly have been so preserved by any natural or artificial means, seeing that Father Francis had been dead for a year and a half and buried for a year."

Dr Ambrosio Ribeiro writes "I felt the body with my own hands from the feet up the knees and about all the other parts of the body. I certify that in all these parts the flesh was entire, covered with its natural skin and humidity without any corruption. On the left leg a little above the knee on the exterior there is a little cut or wound, a finger length, which looked like a hit. All round the wound there oozed out a streak of blood gone black. And much above in the left side near the heart there is a small hole which looked like a hit. Through it I inserted my fingers deep as I could and found it hollow. Only inside I felt some small bits which seemed to me like pieces of intestines dried up due to the long times the body lay in the grave. But I smelt no corruption although I put my face quite close to the body. The head rested on a small Chinese damask pillow leaving on it below the neck some thing like a stain of blood similar to that on the leg, faded in color and turned black.

Brother Antonio Dias writes " To others who come to see the body, they show only the hands and feet and a part of the legs and arms. But I, who am a true witness, saw the body enshrouded and with priests and brothers wrapped it up in another sheet. I assure you that it emitted a wonderful and sweet odor. I myself put one of my hands into the stomach and I found it full because they had not drawn out the intestines at his death or afterwards, and what I found there was all like coagulated blood, smooth and soft, which looked reddish and smelt sweet.

Both the above texts are signed and dated 1556, more than two and half years after the examination - the one of Saraiva on November 18 and the other on December 1, 1556.

In 1613 it was moved again to the Professed House of Bom Jesus. Then, after he was canonised, a rich silver coffin was provided and he was moved again to the Church of Bom Jesus on the Gospel side and then the Epistle side where an artistic mausoleum was built.


Velha Goa: Altar of Our lady of Hope, Basilica of Bom Jesus (16th Cent.)

The body of St Francis Xavier suffered several mutilations beginning in 1553. The first was when the person who opened his grave for transporting the body to Malacca had a small potion of the flesh removed from near to the knee to show the captain the unusually fresh condition of the corpse. His neck was broken in Malacca because he was kept in a coffin that was too short. Unbelievably during the first exposition of his body the fifth toe of his right foot was bitten off by a Portuguese lady who carried off as a relic of the Saint!

In 1890 one of the toes fell off and this is kept in a crystal case in the Sacristy of the Basilica of Bom Jesus. Part of his arm was severed and sent to Rome in 1615, a part of his right hand was cut off and send to the Jesuit province of Japan in 1916. Even parts of his intestines were removed and sent to various places as relics. His body was exposed for public viewing on the anniversary of his death particularly after he was canonised in 1622. From 1707 for 36 years there was no exposition at all. In 1744 and 1751 the body was exposed privately for the then Governors of Goa. There was then an Exposition (with a capital E) in 1752, then 1860 and, then 1879. Since 1891 there have been regular Expositions more or less every 10 years.


Velha Goa: Painting, St Francis of Assisi (17th Cent.)


Velha Goa: Wooden statue of St. Francis Xavier, Basilica of Bom Jesus (16th Cent.)

These practices are beyond me. I don't understand why people do it. During the festival thousands of people line up to kiss the relics of "Goencho Saib" (Lord of Goa). Pilgrims march huge distances to do this and in their prayers ask the Saint to intercede with God to cure sick relatives etc. The Exposition of what is left of the body between November 23rd 1994 to January 7th 1995 was attended by 2,000,000 pilgrims and tourists. I don't want to disparage all of this and if I go on I certainly won't be able to stop myself.

There are many Christians who consider the religious practices of non-believers, followers of other faiths, as "mumbo jumbo". Perhaps they are right but for goodness' sake what is putting the toe of a deceased missionary into a crystal case supposed to be about? What spiritual significance could a portion of St Francis Xavier's intestines really have?

A short distance from the Sè Cathedral and the Basilica of Bom Jesus there is a roundabout called the Mahatma Ghandi Circle. In the centre is a statue of Mahatma Ghandi. Now there was someone whose memory is revered for reasons I can understand. It's a pity no-one had bothered to clean the bird droppings off his head. I tend to think that priorities have become confused.



Before I made my way back to Calangute I got a hair cut (not a very good one). I just can't remember how I would have got back from Calangute to Jeannette's house. I might have parked the bicycle somewhere and cycled.

Almost becalmed

The fifth, sixth and seventh days of my stay in Goa were Friday 30 November 1990 to Sunday 2 December 1990. Notes end about 11.00am on Friday and resume late Sunday afternoon.

"Mapusa - Spice Jar + Port Wine jug". This means that I went with Ute to the market in Mapusa. I can't remember if we went in the new Ambassador/Premier or not. I cannot remember very much at all. It was busy and Ute did her shopping and we did some browsing. There was no hassle here. The things for sale were ordinary things. It wasn't touristic at all. Outside the shops there were informal market pitches where people sat on the ground with a few items for sale. Some of them were pretty sad. Some of them were like Shadwell's collection - I think he had three things but the last two were a comb and and biro. Still, there is a buyer somewhere for anything so they spread these things out and look hopeful. They might get a few rupees and a few rupees, say 20 or 50p, amounted to a day's pay for some people. It's impossible to know but 20 rupees per day might have been good wages. So they sat there and did their best to convert what they had into cash.

All kinds of items were for sale including a pair of ceramic spice jars and a ceramic bottle which I was told was used to hold port. This was very possibly true given that the state was once administered by the Portuguese. Apparently, the ceramic jars originally contained ginger sent by ship from China. I don't know if this was true nor whether the items were all that old. They were not particularly fine but I liked their shape and the glaze. I bought them, they probably cost me no more than a couple of pounds. The port wine bottle is light blue in colour with a handpainted dark blue dragon design. Again, it might not have been very old but I liked it as a possible souvenir ornament. The things, or most of them are 20 years older now. One of the two spice jars made it to inspection by Customs in the UK. Regrettably, the very busy customs officers failed to rewrap it before sending it on so it arrived here in smitherines.

... That's it. It would seem nothing else happened from then on until Sunday afternoon where it is noted: "Ute's Cake Party - Ice Cream mountain". I vaguely recollect being in Ute's kitchen where she had made some sort of ice cream and cake creation. I think it was nice but I didn't make a note.

I must have done something for three days and nights but I was clearly getting so used to whatever I was doing I wasn't making any notes. Stuff that was worth noting happened over the next few days. One thing that I do remember doing which is not noted but I definitely did was go to the cinema in Calangute with the "house boy" Suraj. We went by bike and I gave him a lift. He sat on the luggage rack over the back wheel.



It would make sense that this happened on the Saturday night. The film we went to see was "Chandni", a wholesome Bollywood all singing, all dancing, action, thriller, musical, comedy, romance blockbuster shot on location in Bombay and Switzerland. I remember that I wrote my mate Steve a long letter in which I spelt out the plot of the movie. I can't remember the details now but it was part of the genre of films involving a wealthy well bred young man who falls in love with a happy, pretty but not very rich girl who knows her place, in this case, Chandni (which translates as Moonlight"). His mother doesn't approve of Chandni, I think there is another snooty girl she prefers for her son but he is obsessed by Chandni. There is one scene where to demonstrate his love he reveals to her a whole gallery of photographs he has secretly taken of her. This would probably have scared any normal person off. That's the kind of thing that should sound an alarm that perhaps he might be a murderer. Nevertheless, despite all the obstacles the young successful eligible bachelor and Chandni find love and enjoy a very romantic courtship.



The film was in Hindi and Suraj would tell me what was going on from time to time. What he told me was usually apparent from the screen (see below). At one point for no discernible reason that I could understand from the action (and with no explanation from Suraj) our hero sweeps Chandni off to Switzerland. All of a sudden from running around singing and dancing in India they were singing and dancing while running hand in hand through lush green meadows full of flowers. It was quite surreal. I have a theory about the Swiss location (see below).

I really couldn't follow the story very closely but it was a lavish production. I have relied on my own memories of the night but there a tens, if not hundreds of thousands of web pages out there about it. Where information about the movie is not from my own memory I will own up. An example of Suraj's commentary on the film comes in a memorable scene where our hero is going absurdly over the top in his demonstrations of love for Chandni. In the scene he flies over her house in a helicopter and showers her with rose petals. The helicopter then disappears from view and there is sudden tension, there is a telephone call and Chandni receives shocking news. Suraj says, head wobbling agreeably "He has met with an accident!".

Our hero is paralysed and severely depressed as a result and although Chandni tries to help him he rejects her because he can never be what she deserves because he is now disabled. He even whitewashes over the gallery of photographs. He is in a bad way.

Come to think of it, there might have been a third person in the story. I think Chandni may have always been adored from a respectable distance by a much less flashy and more dependable man. I think Chandni has to make some difficult choices between the two suitors. I really didn't remember how the story ends but I think in an emotional scene the crippled playboy insists that the saintly Chandni accept the advances of the other man whom she really loved anyway.

That's how I remember it but I am wrong. What happens is that rejected by the hero, Rohit, Chandni relocates to Bombay. There she rekindles love in the heart of the other man who is her employer. His heart had previously been broken when the love of his life (up until that point) died. She gets engaged to this guy. This man, Lalit who runs a travel agency, meets Rohit in Switzerland where he is having surgery and they become great firends. Blow me down, but Rohit's operation is a complete success and he is restored to perfect health and mobility. Lalit invites Rohit to his wedding and he turns up in Bombay to discover that Lalit is engaged to Chandni! They pretend to be strangers.

The wedding is all set. From my memory there is a big scene in the tropical rain and Chandni sings about the dilemma she faces. She is a good girl. She is promised to this other bloke and she cannot let him down.

Rohit hits the bottle (another good sign that perhaps, although immensely rich, he is not an ideal choice for a life partner, but it doesn't occur to anyone else but me). At the wedding he gets pissed and falls down some stairs. Chandni screams for him to be saved and Lalit realises that she belongs to Rohit.

The web tells me now that the film was a big success in 1989/90 and starred Sridevi, Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna. It had been released for about a year before it reached Calangute. By that time Sridevi and Rishi Kapoor had been nominated for the Best Actress and Best Actor awards in the 1990 Filmfare Awards for their performances as Chandni and rohit. The film had a lot of other nominations but won only the Best Cinematography award.

It was great fun to watch and everyone enjoyed it. I wonder if my experience of the Raj Mandir in Jaipur might have been better had something like Chandni been on.

On the way home in the dark Suraj fell off the back of the bicycle but suffered only grazes and bruises.

My theory about the scenes shot in Switzerland relate to the fact that at that time the Indian rupee was not internationally traded and I reckon that the scenes shot there were contrived so that the principal cast members and the Director and Producers could check on their Swiss Bank accounts and deposit money smuggled out of India.

Winding down

The following day I am pretty sure I got up. If I hadn't I wouldn't have made a note of it between 09.00 and 10.00. Perhaps that was the point of the note. I didn't get up until about 9.30am.

I got off the big comfortable bed and out from under the trusty mosquito net (postively one of, if not the, most useful of my pre trip purchases) and stood up on the red tiled floor wrapping a lunghi I bought at the beach the day before around my waist. I still have it and will feature it shortly. "Lunghi" is the Malayalam word for a wrap-around cloth worn as a skirt by both men and women in Kerala. A sarong type of thing.

Yep, I was chilling. Sleeping in and getting up with no particular place to go. I had lost weight on the road (drastically in the week preceding this) but I had eaten well over the last few days, taken some light exercise (on the bike and swimming) and been sunbathing. I was feelin' good and, damn!, I was lookin' good too. Yes I was beginning to feel like one of the beautiful people. I was in the scene. I was living in a Portuguese style house, sharing with a cool woman next door to a even cooler beautiful woman, just a bike ride from a cool beach. Furthermore, I was almost perpetually a little bit spaced out. I did have quite a bit of the stuff to get through.

After opening the internal shutters to let the morning light flood the whitewashed walls and to check whether the black scorpion was there again (he was), I had breakfast (of I don't know what) and then cycled to Calangute.

"Up bfast → Calangute". That is all it says for the whole day. This is what I have to work with! I think minimal note making went beyond any useful level when I wrote such a short note. Two of the words are absolutely redundant and the third is just a place name.

There must have been more than one reason to go to Calangute and I am fairly sure that one of the reasons was that I had postcards to send and there was a very pleasant post office there. In fact Calangute was a fairly large place. It is probably a great deal bigger now. It was reasonably "cool" but bustling too. It was the local holidaying centre. I have a vague recollection that the road from Jeanette's house just ended up going through Calangute and that the centre of the place was where the road to the beach joined it in a T junction. Lining the side of the road to the beach were little shops and stalls and lassi bars and the like. Just behind these little shops I found a tailor and ordered some clothing made up. I wanted to have a couple of pairs of shorts modeled on some trousers I brought with me.

After that I went down to the beach. It was much larger beach than Baga and much more touristic. The hawkers were there in force. I did some more sunbathing for as long as I could. I probably ate a light and late lunch of some sort and might have listened to the radio and/or the walkman.

It was about 20 minutes (maybe more) on the bike back to Baga. I don't think that I waited for the sun to go down before riding "home".

Pictures below were taken from the road as I rode either to or from Calangute. One of the slides seems to have slipped in its frame, never mind.







After a day riding the bike and at the beach all I wanted to do was relax in the house. I got changed, donned the lunghi and walked off to the back of the house and out to the mandi bathroom. It really was the most wonderful feeling to tip buckets of well water over my head and wash.

When the sun goes down in these places, unless you are going out to somewhere like Tito's, or have transport to go back to Calangute, after eating there's not much to do bar read, write and get ready for bed. There was no TV.

The house was a few yards set back from the road. I think that it was pretty dark. The trees that provided shade during the day made it darker at night. Jeannette's house had a cool outside light which I photographed. It was a sort of three dimensional kite shaped box with vellum filling the panels. The clear incandescent bulb inside filled the box and the lamp gave off a warm (if rather dim) light. Without the light on someone coming home after dark might have cycled past the house.

The light box trapped the insects drawn to the light and the gecko didn't have to work very hard. These pictures are the only two I took and both rank with my favourites.





I turned in fairly early and was doubtless well and truly stoned. Smoking was another pastime. What can I say? I was on a holiday within a holiday.

Baga Beach by bike

There was no repeat of Jeannette's naked performance of the day before which was a shame. Two days running and I might have mentioned it. Oh well, never mind.

My notes begin "By bike to Baga Beach'. There was a bike at my disposal. It was a couple of miles to the beach and a very easy ride.



The beach was okay, if a bit windy and the waves crashing onto the beach made going into the sea less than fun. Sunbathing was about all there was to do. Even though the pace of life was completely different here it was not completely devoid of hassle. You had to keep you head down or else the many hawkers plying their wares up and down the beach would catch your eye or, in my case, ears.

I was sitting on the sand minding my own business reading, smoking and listening to music when this guy comes up to me and asks if I want my ears cleaned. He handed me a piece of paper explaining the process and extolling the benefits and as I began to read it, before I could say "no thanks", the man inserted a kind of surgical instrument into my ear and then showed a pellet of gritty gunk that he claimed had just come out of my ear. I was half done by then so he did the other ear. It was probably just another sleight of hand trick. I don't think it cost very much. It was an experience. My ears felt cleaner but I am not entirely sure that the instrument used was very hygienically safe. I suppose I could have ended up with a serious ear infection, but I didn't so if there was any harm done I didn't notice then and haven't noticed since.



I am not a beach bum. Sitting in the sun catching rays has never really struck me as a very profitable use of time. I don't like trying to read lying down and sitting up on the sand isn't much better. Whatever position adopted gets uncomfortable after a few minutes and my Ray Bans always begin to side off my nose.

My notes say that I took a ferry from Baga Beach to Anjuna to visit the flea market. If I hadn't noted in the filofax I would never have remembered and it wasn't until I uploaded the postcards I bought at the time that any memory of it began to return. I think there was a small boat that acted like a bus up and down the coast. The notes say that I met a solicitor from Streatham who made a similar impression on me to the visit to Anjuna. I also met another Canadian who was more memorable. He was a beach bum. I recall that he told me he worked as a maintenance man at a Canadian Ice Hockey rink where he piled up as much cash as he could to fund a few months bumming around in Goa. What was remarkable was the temperature range between Canada when he left which he said was sometimes 30 degrees below zero to over 35 degrees above on arrival in India.

There were plenty of people like this guy to be found. Jeannette and Ute were in the same kind of lifestyle. It seems great. You work hard for say 5 months and then chill out in Goa and perhaps some other tropical paradise for the rest of the year living pretty well very cheaply on the cash earned. It's great while you are young, fit and good looking but there's no pension and there has to come a time when you get a bit too long in the tooth for it, when perhaps the new generations of beach bums seem more interesting to the waves of likely conquests that blow in and out on holiday flights.




I don't think I took my bike to Anjuna so I must have caught the ferry back to Baga beach before cycling back to Jeannette's. She wasn't there but Ute was in next door and she was just in the process of buying a car, a second hand Hindustani Motors Ambassador (as pictured in my post about the trip up to Aru in Kashmir) or perhaps it was the Premier. Anyway she was taking it for a test drive so I went with her. Great fun it was. To tell the truth, though, just sitting anywhere close to Ute was great. She was just so cool and so beautiful.

I ate in again and after dinner went out to Tito's bar again.

Baga Beyond

The heading for this post is a terrible pun for which I apologise.

I was woken the next morning in a way that just increased the feeling of surreality. I became aware of Jeannette coming into the room. It was her house. She was opening the wooden shutters. I came to and as my eyes adjusted to the light I realised that Jeanette was stark naked.

What was I supposed to make of this? I suppose my reaction was typically English. I just paid no attention at all. I do sometimes wonder whether I should have reacted differently. Perhaps I should have done something else. Maybe this was an invitation. Jeannette was not bad looking. Anyway the moment came and went. Jeanette left the room telling me that breakfast was at Ute's next door. I was left just wondering what that was all about.

I got up and noticed that beneath the large window there was a big black scorpion. I decided to ignore that too.

My notes say that after breakfast at Ute's I spent the day planning (exactly what, I don't know), reading and chilling. Then there is a big gap to the words "eat in". Jeannete had the services of a houseboy called Suraj. I think he acted as the cookm too and I think dinner was a prawn curry.

The big black scorpion had disappeared by the time the shutters were closed again.

Goin' on a Goan holiday

This was a good decision. Another long train journey. More re-hydrating powders and snoozing, reading and recuperation.

It is funny how things work out. Things seem to be so random. There doesn't seem to be any reason for things working out the way they do.

One of the subjects I took as part of my university studies was "Sociology of Law". It was a bit of a soft option. It was all a bit woolly and I never really grasped what the point of the course was. It was very difficult to revise for the exam at the end of the second year because I couldn't really say for sure what the course was about. I don't know how I passed. Anyway, the point is that something came to mind that I think I learned about in that course that might be of relevance here. For some reason the phrase "intersecting teleologies' popped into my head.

I had not planned to be on the train to Goa. The only reason that I was was because the illness that had begun in Pushkar had laid me so low that the plan to visit Mumbai had had to be abandoned. I found myself sitting next to, or possibly opposite, a European girl with whom I struck up a conversation. Her name was Jeannette. She was a German from Berlin who was on her way to a rented house in a village near Calangute in Goa. She invited me to stay at her house.

So what were the chances of that happening? You could get into a pretty heavy philosophical discussion trying to understand how these things happen and it's not a discussion that would be helped by smoking any dope. To tell the truth I can't remember very much at all about teleology. My recollection is limited to a vague idea that some things happen for some causes and other things happen by reason of other causes and each of these have their own teleology. From time to time there is an intersection of teleologies bringing about different events.

I'm not sure about this at all. I have been off to research it and it hasn't helped much. It would be nice to put it into a nutshell but you can't. Wikipedia (which may not be the soundest reference work) has quite a bit about it. It says: "A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists."

I am tempted to say "whatever", who cares? What is true is that for a lot of random reasons I was on this train and for a whole lot of totally unconnected reasons Jeannette was sitting opposite. It was a simple coincidence but a lucky one, I think. Synchronicity has something to do with teleology.

We alighted the train at Madgaon and took a taxi to Arpora and Jeannette's amazing house which was in a Portuguese style. The rooms were enormous.

We are now nearly where this blog began. We had arrived in the morning and after dropping our bags Jeannette and I went next door to Ute's house. This was Ute Schutz mentioned in my first post. She was super cool and super good looking. What's more her house was even nicer than Jeannette's. Ute gave us breakfast after which we returned next door to clean up.

The bathroom had no running water. It had a well and you pulled up a bucket of fresh water from the well and then just tipped it over yourself. This is, I believe, called a "mandi" because "mandi" means to bathe. It is something that takes time to get used to doing but after a while it seems like the most natural thing in the world and now whenever I am somewhere hot a mandi is something I look forward to.

Arriving in Goa was turning point on my trip. This was a holiday. The weather was lovely and warm and we were by the sea. There seemed to quite a community of cool cats who populated this place. On returning to Ute's kitchen next door there was a Canadian guy there. Spliffs were being rolled up and I could tell that I had arrived in some kind of paradise. Plans were being made for the evening and before too long we were off out for something to eat.

I was ready to eat something. I couldn't really remember eating anything substantial since the blow out that made me ill nearly a week before. I must have eaten something but if I had it was probably the usual yellow dal, aloo ghobi and rice with chapatis that can be advance ordered when on the trains. This evening I had stuffed crab at "Electric Cats" on the Baga Road a restaurant featured in the LP guide but also actually frequented by these "locals". After eating we went to Tito's which was a happening sort of beach bar.

I was riding pillion on a motorcycle being ridden by the Canadian guy whose name escapes me. Everyone was smoking chars and it was the most chilled atmosphere you could imagine.

It had been a long day and eventually it was decided we should go home. It was already "home". Before we got back on the motorcycle the Canadian guy warned me that if a policeman should try to stop us there was no way he was going to stop. It seemed that although hash was in plentiful supply and everyone seemed to be smoking it, it was just as illegal here as anywhere else and the cops hung out on the roads to stop tourists and make as if to bust them. Of course the "bust" could be negotiable. It depended on how much money you had.

The Canadian knew what he was talking about because as we sped back to the house, sure enough, there was a policeman with a lathi standing on a corner waiting to try to stop us. It would have been disastrous to be stopped and busted. Just as he promised the Canadian didn't even slow down. The cop was standing at a junction where we had to turn right. The cop brandished his lathi at us but we swerved around him and sped off. It was a scary moment. The lathi could have snagged the front wheel, we could have come off the bike. It didn't, we didn't. We got home unscathed.

So ended my first day in Goa. I had a giant double bed and hung my mosquito net over it and crashed.

Agra Cantonment Incontinence

So as darkness fell I returned to Agra Cantonment station. As I arrived I began to feel unwell again. One of the symptoms was a burp that left an eggy taste in the mouth. Once more I was thankful for the First Class waiting room facilities.

My next destination was Bombay or, more properly, Mumbai. I had about an hour to wait before the earliest time the train might depart and I was in and out of the rest rooms all the time. I felt absolutely wretched and became increasingly weak. By the time the train was ready for boarding I was feeling very faint indeed. I was almost glad of the unasked for assistance of a First Class porter who helped carry my pack onto the train. My seat was located, the pack secured and I lay down.

I wasn't laying down for very long. I'm not sure whether I adhered to the golden rule about not using the w.c. while the train was in the station. I was in a bad way. Even if I did I'm sure as soon as the train set off I was back in the very unsatisfactory lavatory. It had been bad before but this night it was worse. I ran out of toilet paper and was reduced to doing things Indian style (ie washing my backside with water and my left hand). I can't remember how long this went on.

Eventually when there seemed to have been a relatively decent period of time since the last cramps I popped an immodium tablet and hoped for the best.

This turned out to be a very long journey. The train left Agra Cantonment at approximately 8.00pm on Saturday 24 November 1990 and trundled to Mumbai. I think it arrived there at about 6.00am the next day. I still felt dreadful. I didn't know what to do. I had absolutely no energy and couldn't face what I could only suppose would be total mayhem and anarchy outside the station. My dreadful feeling was not only related to the loss of fluids but also because I was full of dread about be jostled and hustled if I attempted to leave the station and go to a hotel.

I hung about in the station which was at least fairly peaceful at that early hour. I need not have worried about whether it was OK to use the lavatory on the train while I was in the station because I could not help noticing at least one person squatting down with his backside hanging over the edge of one of the platforms performing an evacuation of his bowels straight down onto the track below. Sanitation in India today is improving but I understand it will be a very long time before there is sanitation in every home. Even when there is there will still be a problem for people who do not have a home. At that time vast numbers of people lived on the streets of Bombay, people with respectable jobs, not homeless people as we know them here. There just weren't enough places to stay. It was stories about, say, teachers, having to camp out on the streets that decided me that I couldn't cope with a teeming city. The sight of someone doing a crap over the edge of the platform at the station was another reason I decided not to remain there. It wasn't because I was disgusted. I had started to take things like that in my stride. I just decided I wanted a change of pace and to be somewhere less crowded.

I decided to head South and booked a seat on the next train out to Goa. Then I went and had some chai in the Station's restaurant. It is still strange to recall that tea served in a pot in India already has the milk in it. I think I may have nibbled on some dry toast too.

A couple of hours later I took my seat, the one always reserved for me as an Indrail Pass holder on the train to Goa. This was a First Class A.C. Chair car, rather than a sleeper.

Agra and the Taj Mahal

So eventually I got on board my train and lay down with my bottle of drinking water and rehydration fluids and let the train rock me to sleep.

When I woke I was nearly at Agra. I was feeling quite weak but thankfully I was at least continent. I'm pretty sure I didn't attempt to eat anything and probably breakfasted on chai. My existence was beginning to resemble that of a wandering Sadhu. Not quite, of course, but I recall someone telling me that there was an aged Sadhu living the life of a hermit up in the hills behind Pushkar who ate nothing at all and survived on only 4 cups of chai per day (plus I presume, all the bhang he could eat). So it was that I was now surviving on very little more than the ascetic and whereas he was probably reaching a higher plane through meditation (and bhang, don't forget the bhang) I was getting somewhere near there as a result of an abundance of hash.

I checked my rucksack into the left luggage office and made for the exit. I was getting quite cranky and wasn't really fit enough for the scrum that was waiting for me at the Station.

It's a bit of a pain in the neck arriving in places you really want to visit but then dreading the arrival because you have to gird up your loins and have your wits about you to deal with the competition for your rupees waiting for you. It is a sad fact that I found I was getting into the way of trying to look quite sternly confident and businesslike, like someone who really knew where he was going and was not about to be conned. I'm not sure it was ever very effective. This time I wasn't 100% fit anyway so I probably gave in and went with the most persistent would-be all day motorised tour guide rickshaw drivers.

We went to Jahangiri Mahal, Agra Fort pictured below. It was a peaceful place. It was mid morning and it was a lovely day. I wandered about the place taking as long as I liked. The auto-rickshaw driver had promised to wait and I hadn't the energy to rush around.





It was probably exactly the right place to go for a person in my condition. There was no hassle in there. I was left to my own devices and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere. There was a school party coming out of Shah Jahan's Diwan-i-amm (Hall of Public Audience) and they livened the scene. The Diwan-i-amm was was used for durbars, formal receptions in which the emperor would conduct state business while ceremoniously enthroned.

I remember that the ambiance of the surrounding grounds was like that of a large park and at one stage I stopped under a tree and sat down on the grass to read my guide books about the place. My day-pack was a portable entertainment centre, I leafed through the books and rolled up a small spliff of Hookmah the camel driver's hash while listening to some music on the Walkman.

The stuff Hookmah gave me was very pliable and burned with an acrid smell. I'm sure it was what it was supposed to be but it was a bit debilitating. It wasn't physically stimulating and the sensation of being "out of it" was quite intense and almost overpowering. I wasn't exactly sure that I liked the sensation but what can you do? By then I had smoked it and had to cope as best I could. I decided to have a snooze and probably dozed for the best part of an hour. When I came round I was a little more invigorated.



"The ornate, sinuous carving and pendants on the brackets are typical of early Mughal style, much of which derives from Hindu forms". That's what I just cut and pasted into this entry from www.art-and-archaeology.com/india/agra. I wouldn't have known. All I know is I did take the above picture and the fact that someone else did too and explains why is gratifying. I'm glad that there was a reason. It was surely the sinuous carving.

I think I must have spent about 3 hours in the environs of the Jahangiri Palace just mooching around. I think the next picture is of the Khass Mahal (Private Pavilion) which dates from 1636. This was probably a multifunction room that could have been used for various kinds of gatherings, or even for sleeping, says www.art-and-archaeology.com/india/agra.



If I recall it right, the Agra Fort was where Shah Jahan was eventually imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb and he lived the last days of his life with his greatest monument in view. What a view! The picture below is the view I had and ranks alongside the photograph of the woman harvesting lake vegetation in Srinagar as among my favourites from India.

Says www.art-and-archaeology.com/india/agra: "The Agra Fort was begun by Akbar between 1565 and 1573. It is situated on the west bank of the Jumna River, about 2km upstream from the Taj Mahal (map). Akbar built the fort of sandstone; his grandson Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, constructed palaces of white marble within the fort itself. Shah Jahan was imprisoned in Agra Fort following the coup of his son, Aurangzeb, and died here in 1657."

The footnote to the above says: "The behavior of Mogul rulers, towards members of their own family, was appalling by any humane standard. Besides overthrowing and imprisoning his father, Aurangzeb murdered two brothers and a nephew on his way to the throne; his father, Shah Jahan, had similarly killed one brother and two nephews during his own climb to power. It wasn't because they were "bad" people (at least, not by their own standards, however much we moderns may deplore their evil deeds); in that time there were no fixed laws of succession, and the harem system provided all too many candidates for the throne; it was, literally, kill or be killed for eligible males of the royal family. History shows an astonishing number of such deplorable examples, from ancient China all the way across to the Roman and Byzantine Empires, ancient Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and, at times, even Medieval and Renaissance Europe."



Of course the monument down and across the Jumna River was the real reason for visiting Agra and having glimpsed it from a distance I decided that no more time should be wasted in getting there. This was only a day trip after all. I had to be back at Agra Cantonment station for my next destination later that evening.

I wandered out to find the auto-rickshaw driver was indeed still waiting. He was a bit peeved at having had to wait such a long time but I really didn't care. He whisked me to the Taj Mahal. I have a vague recollection of the journey and I have a fragment of a memory of being in a street where there were musical instruments for sale. I really fancy one day owning a sitar and/or a fine lacquered wood harmonium (if a harmonium is what I think it is, a keyboard with bellows?). Such items were quite out of the question then but I still hanker after them even now.

When we arrived at the Taj Mahal we were in the second half of the afternoon. The contrast to the tranquility of the Jahangiri Palace within Agra Fort couldn't have been much greater. The scene outside the entrance was of throngs of tourists surrounded by hawkers of every convenience. No sooner had I got one foot off the auto-rickshaw than one of these shoved a tray at me with the single word question: "Fillim?". For some reason, probably because I was under the weather, this made me quite cross. I said "No thanks" and tried to move on but the man said "Very fresh!" indicating the films he had on his tray were all within date.

On another day this would have been a fun encounter. I really enjoyed observing and jousting with people trying to sell stuff. They just never took no for an answer. If the guy had oranges for sale he would thrust them at you and say "Oranges?" If you said No his next words would be "Very sweet!" and you would have to thank him all the same but say no thanks again. "Very delicious!" and so on.

Today it just annoyed me and I may have snapped back so rudely that the poor man seemed genuinely taken aback and upset. From being quite chilled in Jahangiri Palace I was suddenly crotchety. I didn't want his film. I had enough film. Just leave me alone!

I went into the Taj Mahal and my first impressions were coloured by the momentary grumpiness. The place was pretty packed. There were people everywhere. I began to get a bit more irrationally pissed off. Here I was at the Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world, and I couldn't get a picture of it because the view was never clear enough for long enough. See what I mean?



Try as I might I couldn't get the classic shot. The second effort seems OK but there must have been a reason why the subject is not centred.



Probably the reason was that there was woman standing in shot and actually keeping her in shot makes the picture better.



The place was quite busy. If you click on the pictures you can see them enlarged somewhat and you can see the people up on the mausoleum. They help give an idea of the scale of the architecture.

The Taj Mahal is not just something to take a few snaps of and tick off as having been "done". It is far more than that. There is no way to accurately show just how beautiful it is. Photographs don't do it justice. There aren't enough superlatives. It is positively the most beautiful piece of art I have ever seen. It is exquisite:

ex·qui·site (kskw-zt, k-skwzt)
adj.
1. Characterized by intricate and beautiful design or execution;
2. Of such beauty or delicacy as to arouse intense delight;
3. Excellent; flawless;
4. Acutely perceptive or discriminating
5. Intense; keen;
6. Obsolete Ingeniously devised or thought out.

The definition above is an edited version of that in the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition and I apologise for using it without permission.

With the same apology from me, the Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 (also copyrighted) has it as follows:

exquisite
Adjective
1. extremely beautiful or attractive
2. showing unusual delicacy and craftsmanship
3. sensitive or discriminating: exquisite manners
4. intensely felt: exquisite joy [Latin exquisitus excellent]

Both definitions can be found here and I hope by including this link I am forgiven for plagiarising the definitions.

It doesn't matter where you are standing to look at it nor from how close or far away. In fact the closer you get the more amazing it is. The white marble is inlaid with semi precious stone and the intricate detail is stupendous.

I hadn't been wasting my time at Jahangiri Mahal (although I was probably wasting the rickshaw driver's time). Jahangiri Mahal was a great place to spend a few hours but they might have been as well or better spent at the Taj. If I had another chance to visit I would get to Agra the day before, pack enough provisions and spend from dawn til dusk at the Taj Mahal.

As it was I had just the afternoon and sunset to explore and experience the monument erected by Shah Jahan for the resting place of his departed love, Mumtaz.



It is amazing to think that at one point during British rule there was a lucrative market for white marble and there were serious plans to dismantle the Taj Mahal for the cash that could be obtained for the marble. Luckily the bottom fell out of the market before the vandalism began.

It is also difficult to understand the insensitivity of those colonial times. They used to hold dances in the mausoleum. Such a lack of respect is almost incredible.



So with the sun setting I turned to leave. The entrance/exit is shown below. If Araungzeb not bumped off two of his brothers and a nephew and then deposed his father, the view would have been of a mirror image of the Taj mahal in black marble for his own mausoleum. It is hard to imagine what the effect would have been.



India is a place of incongruous juxtapositions. It always seemed that wherever there was beauty there was also ugliness very close by. My long shot of the Taj Mahal across the Jumna River shows buzzards/vultures circling above it. From the balcony at the rear of the mausoleum I found out the reason why. On the muddy bank of the river hard up behind the most beautiful building in the world a flock of these flying waste disposal experts were waiting for their chance to pick over the carcass of a dead pig that was being torn open by a stray dog. Another side of death.

Jaipur

I notice that my notes have, for the time being at least, stopped telling me that the first thing I did was get up. If the truth be told, at this point they are a mess.

I can't recall details, but after a good sleep I packed my stuff and checked it into left luggage ready for my return the the Station later. I might have booked my ticket to my next destination the night before or I might have done it this morning. It doesn't matter.

Sure enough, when I emerged from the Station I was greeted by the rickshaw driver who had invited me to breakfast. I went with him. By this time I was more than wise to the fact that there would be more to it than breakfast. I was taken to a the home of a friend of the driver. My memory it is hazy but breakfast was only the lure. The real business in hand concerned gemstones. While I was treated to a very good breakfast (although I can recall not what) I was being given the patter about the export of gemstones. I was up to speed on this scam. It appears that not only are there travelers who would risk all their cash on one illegal black market money changing deal but also there are others who risk all their budgets having become convinced that a fortune could be made buying gems in Jaipur; exporting them to their home country; having them sold there; and then having the profit remitted back to boost their funds and extend their journeys.

It is perfectly possible that one could achieve the above. They do have a gemstone industry in Jaipur and doubtless bargains could be had. It's a pretty sure bet, however, that an introduction to a gemstone dealer of genuine repute was unlikely to be effected through the offices of a rickshaw driver and what the fools forget is that it is usually vitally important to know something about gemstones. I wasn't going to be taken in, not even after reading various testimonial letters thrust at me to convince me that there had been very many satisfied customers before me. I thanked my host for breakfast but did not feel obliged to return the favour by investing in worthless beads.

I then took a tour of the Pink City as it is sometimes called. The notes have the itinerary and pictures are below. This was a busy day of sightseeing. The first stop was probably the Palace of the Winds or Hawa Mahal. It is a magnificent sight. Try as I might though, I couldn't seem to stand anywhere to get a shot of it that would do it justice. There are hundreds of great pictures of it all over the web. My token Pink City photo was really a snap. I noticed a monkey scampering across the front of a building.



Next stop was Maharajah Jai Singh II's Observatory. One of his five observatories or Jantar Mantars built between 1727 and 1734. One thing I distinctly recall reading was that the sundial was accurate to within I think 15 seconds of the true time. My photos are below and in the first you can see the Palace of the Winds in the distance and the second shows the sundial.





I can't really say that it was a very exciting place but the feat of precision engineering construction was really amazing. If you want a better idea of the scale of the site I recommend that you visit this site There's a VR tour.

Next stop: the City Palace which I wandered around for a little while. This was another beautiful place. Limited as I was to a few slides only I only took a couple of pictures. The first shows two members of the palace staff. They could have been security personnel but the level of any security alert must have been pretty low because they didn't look like they would have put up too much of a fight if someone got a bit lairy. Incidentally the spell-check on this Blog doesn't recognise "lairy". It is a word in the English vernacular that means inter alia confrontational. I am sure most people know that. I only use the word here because it tickles me to imagine some beered up oik attempting to lairy with these two individuals. It just couldn't ever happen.



There's another member of the staff dozing on the right of this photo. Look through the arch and you can see a large urn. That is one of a pair that are on show there. They are two enormous water containers. I read that the Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II used them to carry water from the River Ganga to drink on his trip to England in the late 19th century because the water in England was deemed unsafe to drink. The urns are made of solid silver and the pair of urns are acclaimed to represent the two largest pieces of solid silver in the world. There's a great picture of one of them here.



Then it was off to see Amber Fort. On the way I snapped an elephant making its way back to wherever it was supposed to be going with its mahout paying no attention whatsoever. There's no way to describe it really. The guy seems to be asleep at the wheel.



On the way I also passed the Jal Mahal, a water palace in the centre of Mansagar Lake. The foliage is water hyacinth and when in bloom it must be even more fantastic. My rickshaw driver told me that it was also known as the Honeymoon Palace and that the royal occupant who inhabited the palace had been so fat that his lady guests were often crushed to death by his amorous advances and their bodies were thrown into the lake.



I think that the dearth of pictures of Amber Fort and Jaigarh Fort is as a result of having purchased the Insight Guide to Rajasthan. There were excellent pictures in it and since I bought it as a souvenir there was no point taking pictures that were already in the book. Little did I know then that my book would disappear! So this is all I have:



My memories of touring the forts have gone. There is nothing that I can recall at all except that there was a Government run shop in one of the two forts and it was selling gemstones. The seed had been sown early in the day and I did buy gems after all. The stones were guaranteed genuine by the Government of Rajasthan and that was good enough for me. I bought a Topaz, a white Moonstone and what I thought was a Black Star Sapphire but which is probably a Black Star Diopside, still very attractive. Photos of these will appear when I have taken them. I was well pleased with these souvenirs. I can't remember right now what they cost but although it wasn't much, on the budget I was supposed to be on it was an absurd amount.

Then it was back to Jaipur and the trip to the Raj Mandir cinema. I did get in. There is s ticket stub somewhere. I think it is between the pages of my lost Lonely Planet guide. I think I went in the Emerald Circle and had a grandstand view not only of the screen but also of the scene below. I didn't rate the movie. I couldn't follow it and a great number of the people inside weren't paying attention either. I left before the end and returned to the Railway Station and collected my luggage and waited for the train to Agra.

While waiting I started to feel a bit queasy and within minutes was suffering a recurrence of the illness from Pushkar. Thank Heavens for the First Class Waiting Room facilities.