Getting Into The Groove

India seduces you. The harder you look the more you are rewarded, and perhaps more worryingly, the less you notice the daily horrors and irritations that confront you in amongst all the fascination.

Of course, the experience of India can drive you spare at times. At the exceptionally preserved, deserted, Moghul city of Fatehpur Sikri, I could have punched a shop-owner who despite every discouragement stuck to my shoulder like glue throughout the entirety of my visit to the the palace mosque, advising me with unalloyed enthusiasm and bugger all knowledge on how I should be taking my photographs. All of this done in the forlorn hope that I was afterwards going to buy some overpriced junk from his miserable little shop. The fact that everybody here wants a piece of you has the perverse effect of hardening you to the constant approaches, which are therefore rarely rewarded. Only occasionally now does it ever get to me.

Nonetheless, India always has the capacity to surprise. Yesterday, the most astonishing thing happened to a couple of friends and I when driving back to our hotel in Udaipur. Approaching the fortified city gate, we spied an elephant and rider emerging through the gate and leaned out of the motor rickshaw to take shots. The driver pulled up to assist us, and then as the elephant drew level it also stopped and began tapping the rickshaw windscreen with its trunk. "It wants payment for the photo", quipped our driver, which we all thought a very good joke. Only we soon realised that it wasn't meant as a joke at all. After some hasty rummaging in pockets Graeme laid a 10 rupee note on the end of the elephant's trunk which it promptly palmed with such accomplishment you felt it must have been grafting amongst tourists for years. It really does come to something when even the elephants are on the make in this country. It's bloody lucky they haven't been successful in getting the cows trained up or we really would be going home with empty pockets.

The compensation for the irritations is the fascination of the culture and the beauty of the country and its treasures. It seemed at times in the past few days that the senses were about to overload with yet another beautiful sight. The prize of course must go to the Taj Mahal, which defied every expectation on my part that such a familiar building must surely disappoint in the flesh. It is the most sublime building I have ever seen and simply takes the breath away. We went at dawn when there were very few visitors and I was transfixed by it, wandering around and around the mausoleum with my camera for a couple of hours, watching the white marble pass through a whole gamut of colour gradations with the changing quality of the light. Simply awesome. The amazing thing is that the Taj is just one of three stunningly elegant tombs in Agra, which served as the Mughal capital for much of the dynasty's heyday.

We have seen beautifully carved Hindu temples of the 10th century in Uttar Pradesh which depict a whole karma sutra of erotic images that somehow escaped prurient destruction by later Muslim rulers of Northern India. At Orchha we camped amongst the ruins of splendid palaces and monuments at a delightful riverside spot. In Rajastan I have seen more dramatic hilltop castles than I could ever wish to in a lifetime, and now I find myself in the fantastically romantic city of Udaipur, lazing beside the lake which has filled up for the first time in 9 years after the heavy monsoon experienced by India this year. This place was the home to the greatest of the Rajput Maharaja dynasties, who used their fabulous wealth to built palace upon palace in and around the picture postcard lake. We've been tremendously lucky to see it with the lake full, and the same can be said of a marshland bird sanctuary we visited where the heavy rains have attracted literally thousands of breeding birds of every shape, size and shade of colour. I never thought being a twitcher could be so easy.

The friendliness of the people and especially the children is also a delight. Away from the touts and the young men on the make, we've been welcomed wherever we've gone. The opportunity to travel by truck has taken us to some pretty out of the way villages where I suspect our unannounced visits will prove to be one of the most talked about events in their year. In one place the whole village got up before dawn just to come and watch us take our tents down.

So India is delivering a whole cocktail of impressions and I haven't even got bored with eating three curry meals a day yet either.

India

Our new trip has departed Kathmandu under the aegis of a new leader Ben, who hails from Australia, and with a whole new set of passengers hailing from Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Oz, Sweden, the UK and the US, thirteen of us in total. We also have a new truck named Archie, who is slightly smarter than Tonka, but essentially very similar. The first port of call was the Chitwan National Park where I got my introductory full-on wildlife experience of the trip, walking out into the jungle, helping to wash elephants in the river and getting close up to rhinos in the bush while riding on the back of an elephant.

Soon enough we were heading onwards to the Indian border which we crossed with astonishing informality compared to any other border crossing since Europe. Ben had advised us (or perhaps warned us) that in order to enjoy India you need to have patience, a sense of humour and be broad-minded. It was sound advice, as it's proved to be a country that hits you immediately and with full force right between the eyes.

The scenery here in Uttar Pradesh is unremarkable after what we have seen in Nepal, a rather relentless vista of a flat, green landscape dotted with trees that break up the small fields. However, it is the human and bovine dimensions of the place that jump out at you, quite literally a lot of the time. In this sense, India assaults your senses like no other place I've visited. It's noisy and crowded, it smells, and it thrusts sights before your eyes that challenge you deeply. Today, in Varanasi, looking out on a street scene from a motor rickshaw, I watched two street urchins crouched on a low wall crapping into the street below. Meanwhile, half a dozen pigs troughed away on a whole pile of excrement already deposited at the spot. I decided not to order pork for lunch.

Driving in Archie we are a constant focus of attention. No matter where we stop people will gather immediately, often in large numbers, simply to stand and stare at us. They are polite and friendly, and seemingly mesmorised by our presence. If you walk around the back of the truck to get something from a locker they simply follow you round, crowding in to get the best view of whatever is happening, but not seeking to interfere. Ben calls them the staring squads. Of course this lack of privacy or any developed sense of personal space in India can be a bit problematic if you've stopped for a roadside pee, and in the worst instances it's sometimes necessary to set up a locker-related diversion at the truck to allow one or two of us to slip away unnoticed behind the bushes. In the towns you tend to get pestered a lot more directly and more often by an endless stream of young men apparently convinced that the only thing getting in the way of you buying whatever tatty piece of junk they are shoving in your face is a mutual agreement on the right price. As a result they are not remotely fazed by you telling them that you're not in the least interested, and just persist in giving you the sales pitch. In the worst places it can get quite wearing and it's hard not to be rude.

Indian towns and villages are ramshackle with many decayed and dilapidated buildings, a profusion of low-slung electricity cables leaching power in all directions, and generally a busy shopping street lined with cheap food stalls selling tasty curry based meals for around 25p. The road quality is quite good for Asia, but when faced with an obstacle course of wandering and seated cows, local drivers are forced to take a fairly relaxed approach to staying in lane and the rules of overtaking. Everything travels relatively slowly as a result, and the intention to overtake another road user, whether it's a bus, a rickshaw or a cow, is announced by a deafening blast on the horn. Bicycles and bicycle rickshaws are ubiquitous, with motor rickshaws more evident in the cities. Cars are less of a sight, though there are some fabulous old fifties style vehicles still in service here as taxis in Varanasi. The roads are also fully used as a convenient spot to dump rubbish, go to the toilet, and in the case of poorer folk as a bed for the night. There seems to be a general attitude that with so many cows, goats, dogs and pigs wandering around that everything will get eaten in the end. It takes a bit of getting used to.

I particularly like watching the people (call it revenge) from the safety of the truck or a rickshaw. The women are often beautifully dressed, invariably in Indian clothing of sari or salwar kameez. The men generally wear western clothing and it's clear that the moustache still reigns supreme among Indian males. You also see some hilariously awful haircuts which, like the cars, seem to faintly mimic a fifties rock 'n' roll era image without quite pulling it off.

I think it's still too early to make up my mind about this place which is probably why this piece is a bit impressionistic in style. I'm loving the sights so far and find even the difficult stuff fascinating rather than simply tedious. Taking a dawn boat ride on the Ganges at Varanasi this morning to watch people bathing at the ghats and cremating the dead was very atmospheric and interesting to see. We'll see how the rest of the trip unfolds.

Dodging Maoists In The Mountains

The second half of my stay in Nepal has been dominated by a nine-day trek in the Annapurna Region of the country. Graeme and I flew to Pokara which is a relaxed lakeside town nestling below the mountains and catering for a currently non-existent tourist industry centred around the most popular and spectacular trekking region in the World.

Our walk took us through fabulous mountain scenery from our start point at Naya Pul (1100m) to the top of the Thorung La Pass (5416m), the highest pass in the World. Technically we were following a trek known as the Jomsom Trek, which takes you to the joint Buddhist and Hindu temple complex at Mukinath, a pretty Tibetan village in the Lower Mustang region that juts northward of the Annapurna and is consequently a dry and arid region sitting above the monsoon belt. However, through hard and knackering walking we managed to get a day ahead ourselves to make an attempt on the Pass. Climbing from the western side is the difficult way to do it (though we didn't have a choice) and consists of a gruelling five and a half hour climb of over 1600m in increasingly thin air. We made it, though only after a lot of cursing and cussing on the way up, and posed for photos with jelly legs and mild headaches by the prayer flag decked sign at the top. This was quite honestly the hardest physical challenge I've ever undertaken, added to by the knee crushing impact of an immediate 1600m continuous descent straight back down to Mukinath.

Our party was actually comprised of three, as we were joined by a very chipper little dog who popped up out of nowhere beside the Mukinath Temple, and following a pat and coconut biscuit from Graeme, proceeded to accompany us all the way to the top and back down again. We named him 'Everest' in honour of this canine mountaineering expertise and he certainly looked a lot less bashed in by the experience than we did at the end. He mysteriously disappeared just as he had materialised outside the Temple. We wondered if he'd been some sort of guardian angel guiding us through snow and rain showers on the way up to enjoy the perfect sunshine and views at the top!

Earlier in the trek we had a close encounter with the Maoists who operate in the Annapurna Region, extracting 1200 rupee fees from trekkers to help fund their revolutionary activities. We were told they were very friendly provided you paid up, and would issue you with a receipt for you payment which was theoretically redeemable after the Revolution! A group of Maoists came into a village in which we were staying one evening, but we were out of sight upstairs in a teahouse hostel and they passed on unaware of our presence.

The Maoist problem is a symptom of a wider political malaise in Nepal which is all too apparent if you speak to the local people. In fact, the willingness and openess of the Nepalese in talking about the problems of their country has made my stay here all the more fascinating, and it contrasts greatly with the sealed lips of the people of Central Asia, China and Tibet on such matters. Essentially, there is very widespread and deep-seated resentment of the actions of a highly unpopular king who has revoked the constitution and imposed an autocratic form of Government in response to the heightening of tensions in the country. The Maoists, who have declared a unilateral three-month ceasefire in the past few days, represent only one wing of the opposition. A coalition of opposition parties clamouring for the restoration of multi-party democracy represent the voice of much of the people, and in Kathmandu there have been daily mass protests throughout the past week which have been met by a violent response from the riot police and many hundreds of arrests. It's not particularly effecting this Western tourist enclave of the city, but the papers are full of the stories, the locals complain bitterly of the king, and everywhere there are armed police and military checkpoints. There is some optimism here about the future thanks to the Maoist ceasefire, but the tragedy for Nepal is that the tourist industry which feeds so much of the economy is suffering catastrophically as a result of all this upheaval.

Kathmandu And Not Bust

I've been a bit tardy with the blog of late as a number of readers have pointed out by e-mail. Life in Nepal has been a hectic round of activity, with all manner of new impressions and experiences mixing with the sadness of a whole round of goodbyes. Although this is halfway for me, the official Dragoman trip ended here on arrival in Kathmandu, so over the course of a week I found myself saying farewell to a whole host of old friends, new friends and ex-girlfriends. In many cases I think it will be farewell rather than goodbye, at least I hope so. Now there is just Graeme and I left to travel on to Delhi, and our leaders Claire and Riki who are stranded here battling with Nepalese bureaucracy in an attempt to get a permit to allow two parked up Drago trucks to depart the country for India.

Nepal is a remarkable country passing through a very troubled passage in its history. The first impression you get is of the extreme beauty of the landscape. Unlike Tibet, this is an intensely green and watered land. It also offers a more breathtaking view of the Himalaya, since the land literally rises from not much above sea level to the very roof of the World. Last week while trekking I walked through the deepest gorge in the World and could look up to either side at mountains rising 6000m above my head. In Tibet, the average height of the land is 5000m, so the mountains tend not to tower over you in quite the same way.

The people and culture are also markedly different. In fact there is a sizeable Tibetan community in Nepal, and trekking through Lower Mustang above the Himalayan rain belt you could kid yourself you were back in Tibet from the dusty, brown nature of the landscape and the wholly Tibetan communities you encounter inhabiting tiny hillside villages. Nonetheless, arriving in Kathmandu you are hit immediately by the bustle and noise of the Indian subcontinent, and the predominently Hindu rather than Buddhist feel of the culture. The Nepalese people look Indian in appearance and the influence of India is felt is a whole host of ways from a curry based cuisine to cows wandering into the middle of the roads. Kathmandu is also a city highly geared for Western tourism, which comes as rather a shock after most of the places we have passed through on this trip. The Thamel area in which we are staying is a mass of hotels, souvenir shops, restaurants serving Western food, all jumbled up with any number of hawkers and salesmen selling everything from rafting and terkking trips to bicycle rickshaw rides around the city's main sites. It's a cramped and atmospheric quarter of the old city, which is seductive in terms of its Western amenities and the ease with which one can meet fellow travellers, but it also builds in you the desire to escape to a more real Nepal.

We did get out during the first week here. Travelling around the Kathmandu Valley to visit a group of ancient Nepalese cities which have preserved remarkably intact central zones of temples and palaces, just as Kathmandu has done with its famous Durbar Square. Later the final remants of our group took a two-day white water rafting trip down the Tisuli River. I was a little apprehensive in advance about the idea of plunging headlong into 6ft raging waves in an inflatible raft, but the moment we went through the first rapid I became an addict. Aside from the adrenile rush of each soaking, the middle hills scenery was just spectacular. Nepal truly is the place to go rafting if you ever have the chance.