Altered Images

Istanbul may be one of my favorite places on the planet, but it's rather surprised me coming back here for a second time. I seem to remember in June that the city greeted me as an exotic first taste of the Orient, a place that struck me as distinct and remote from the safe and familiar currents of European life. Oddly, I've had precisely the opposite impression on returning here from India. I've been quite overwhelmed by how very European it feels, even the Grand Bazaar which I remembered as seeming labyrinthine and faintly intimidating now strikes me as ordered, clean and remarkably polite. I bought a Fez hat earlier today, and when I firmly halved the price quoted to me by the shopkeeper he didn't even attempt to haggle further. I felt rather like the bloke in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' - slightly cheated because nobody wanted to bargain me. Clearly, I've toughened my technique without realizing it through my various dealings with Indian taxi drivers and others of their ilk.

The past few days have been a welcome break from overlanding and it's been particularly nice having a friend pop out to see me for the weekend from England. I also got a progress report on the behaviour of my cats who seem to have been up to a fair bit of mischief in my absence. We did a couple of the big sights such as the Hagia Sophia, which always leaves me awestruck and capable of becoming deeply boring on its prime importance in the history of both Christian and Islamic architecture. Mostly though, we've been hanging out in fish restaurants, draining a fair few Efes beers, and generally poking around various obscure Byzantine churches in search of medieval mosaics. All rather fun really if you're into that kind of thing.

Tomorrow I head off to Gallipoli with a whole new bunch of fellow travelers, new drivers and even a new truck - this one's called Bentley. On first meeting the group seems noticeably older in average age than at any stage before, though it's too early to say whether that means I'm going to have to be on my best behaviour for the next few weeks. Let's hope not.

Bombay Mix

One of the things I particularly like about Ibn Battutah compared to your average medieval travel writer is that he was unashameably interested in the good things in life. And there are few things he seems to have enjoyed more than a good old slap-up meal. This strikes a cord with me, not least in India, where the opportunity to get in among the curries has been a big part of the country's appeal. Faced with just half a day to explore the delights of Bombay, the culinary capital of the country, I decided to take the risk of sampling a fish curry, a treat I've been denying myself in this hot land for the same reasons I've been laying off the local turd-fed pork. Well, nothing ventured nothing gained, I can now say I've just eaten one of the best meals of my life at the Mahesh Lunch Home - a fabulous tandooried white salmon served with a spicy Mangolorean coconut based sauce. Old Ibn Battutah would be proud of me, and it's certainly brightened up a day otherwise filled with grinding train travel and irate arguments with taxi drivers.

Bombay was one of the only bits of the British Empire we didn't obtain through warfare, violent intimidation or post-victory peace treaty. It came as a marriage gift from the Portuguese in 1661, following the wedding of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza. As such, it was one of the longest held British possessions in India and of greater importance until the twentieth century than Delhi. Given that fact it's interesting to see that the old colonial Fort area of the city is fairly modest in scale. It's comparable to the town centre of a middling size English county town. There is some grandeur here, of course, particularly in the colossal Victoria Terminus railway station, which dominates the north end of the Fort with all the appearance of a neo-gothic cathedral of science and industry, a sort of V & A Museum for steam trains.

However, the building I made a bee-line for was the more modest and homely St Thomas' Cathedral. This simple church houses a fascinating set of memorials to the great and good of the East India Company and the British military services, primarily dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among the countless memorials to young men who seem mostly to have died in violent circumstances or of sudden disease in their 20s and 30s, is one that particularly struck a cord. It is a cenotaph that remembers Lieut. Bertie Bowers of the Royal Indian Marine, who died on Capt. Scott's Antartic Expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Recently, I finished reading a book entitled 'The Worst Journey In the World' which is a memoir of the expedition written by one of the survivors. It's salutary to remember as you sashay through one country after another that the occasional irritations and difficulties encountered along the way are nothing compared to the hardships put up with by other travelers in different places and times.

Desert Rats

The past few days have found me pootling around Western Rajastan and the Thar Desert. Wow this place is hot. Here is classic Rajput country. The handful of creamy sandstone towns that dot the desert are each dominated by a magnificent palace citadel where the wealth on display of the former maharajhas is simply staggering to see. It's not easy to comprehend from where that wealth derived (other than plunder and pillage), since the land here is exceedingly poor. In the villages you still see people living in thatched mud huts, and turbaned men out in the 'fields' using camel drawn ploughs to plough a soil that is vitually all sand.

The craftsmanship you see, especially in ornate exterior stone carving is quite astonishing. The palaces and old town houses are exuberant with finely carved latticework windows that ensured noblewomen in past times kept the 'purdah', hiding themselves away from the prying eyes of horny men. They could look out on the world below their window, but the outside world could not look in. I particularly liked Jaisalmer, a very highly atmospheric town with twisted, narrow streets and suprisingly few scars from modern tourism. Jodphur has a slightly more aggressive feel to it somehow, but it is undeniably a beautiful sight when viewed from the palace ramparts looking down at twilight on the blue-painted houses.

India has some strange sights to behold, but perhaps none stranger than the worship of rats at a Hindu temple close to Bikaner. The colony of rodents are held to be the reincarnations of dead storytellers and have a free run of the temple, where worshippers feed them milk and rice. It's held to be highly auspicious to have a rat run over your bare foot. Not exactly what you want to hear as you jostle your way through the entrance door with nowhere to run when the rats detect your good karma. Well, I headed inside having removed my shoes and crossed my fingers that it wasn't going to be my lucky day. It wasn't fortunately ...and unfortunately, as I discovered a little later that evening when I twisted my ankle falling down some steps after a few light ales.

Having made it to Jodphur, I've bid farewell to the group and am heading off by train to Mumbai, there to catch a plane to Istanbul. I will have been travelling for exactly 150 days overland to get this far. It really feels like cheating to clamber aboard a plane after more than 25,000 km travelling by road, rail and sea.

Earthquakes And Massacres

All India has been gripped by the news of the tragic earthquake in Pakistan, or PAK (Pakistan Administered Kashmir), as the worst effected area is referred to here. Aside from the basic human tragedy in the event, one suspects that India's territorial claim to the area and people most effected lends the event some added piquancy. There has been much trumpeting of improving relations between the two nuclear powers in recent weeks and it would be nice to think that a natural disaster of this magnitude that effects both neighbours might provide an unlooked for opportunity to build important bridges.

I felt the earthquake while in bed in Shimla, initially mistaking the shaking of my room for vigorous shagging activity in the bedroom next door. It last just a few moments and I didn't feel the subsequent aftershocks. I'm now in Amritsar which has been more directly effected, though there is no discernable sign of damage to buildings as you roam the town and life is very much proceeding as normal in the streets.

It's rather poignant coming to Amritsar straight from Shimla. The old British summer capital is still redolent of the British Raj in its heyday, offering a vision in stone and wood of the civilising influences of a supposedly liberal Empire. Here in Amritsar you get the flip side of the British imperial hand. Walking through a peaceful shaded garden I watched countless ordinary Indians paying homage to the martyrs of one of the worst atrocities on the long road to independence. Here, in 1919, a pumped up British colonel ordered his troops to open fire on a gathering of 20,000 unarmed civilians who were protesting about a draconian new powers of arrest bill which had been introduced in the aftermath of World War One. Unable to escape because the troops had blocked the only exit, over 2,000 protesters where killed and wounded in a hail of gunfire that lasted barely ten minutes. Incredibly, the officer in charge was exonerated by the ruling authorities, but news of the event lit a torch for freedom in India which was not to be extinguished until independence was achieved almost thirty years later.

Of course, the main reason to come to Amritsar is to visit the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. It is an astonishingly beautiful sight. The golden roofed temple is contructed of translucent white marble, inlaid with the most delicate images and patterns done in enamel and coloured stone. The temple sits isolated in its own holy lake, which in turn is entirely surrounded by an elegant sequence of structures also faced in white marble. Alongside the Taj Mahal, this for me is the most beautiful place I have visited in India. The difference is that unlike the Taj the Golden Temple is a living place, a veritable hive of activity as Sikh pilgrims attired in brightly coloured turbans and saris perform their prayers and ablutions.

Echoes Of The British Raj

Until you come to Shimla it's easy to forget that India was ruled by the British for such a long while. The colonial traces have seeped away in most places and even the signature buildings in New Delhi have acquired a particular Indian character of their own. But somehow Shimla seems to have retained a whiff of Empire about it which makes it an interesting antedote to the hustle and bustle of modern India.

This place was the summer capital of the Raj. The Viceroy and his minnions would escape here from the oppressive heat of Calcutta and Delhi to enjoy the cooler climate of the Himalayan foothills. From this small hilltop settlement decisions were taken that effected one fifth of all humanity at the time, including the momentous decision to partition India to create the state of Pakistan in 1947.

Given its significance as a seat of power, the architecture of Shimla is remarkably understated. It feels to me like an overgrown and somewhat delapidated version of Great Malvern, only situated on a rather more impressive escarpment that commands magnificent mountain views in all directions. The town has undoubtedly seen better days, but there is evidence of an effort at restoration ongoing, and in any case, I rather like the intrusion of a more Indian feel into this place. I suspect this might have been a stuffy old place to be cocooned in its Raj heyday. Still, it's noticeable that some of the givens of ordinary India do not apply here. There is no litter in the streets, the ubiquituous rickshaw is banished to the lower town, and most remarkably, there isn't a cow to be seen for love or money.

Little Israel

One thing I hadn't banked on in coming to India was running into quite so many Israelis. There seems to be some sort of Jewish hippy trail in operation which means you bump into them at certain spots only, but then in very large numbers.

I met quite a few in Kathmandu, but really first became aware of the phenomenon at Pushkar in Eastern Rajastan. This is a Hindu holy city associated with Brahmin. It envelops a small holy lake with ghats cascading down to the water's edge on all sides. The town is strictly vegetarian and alcohol free, although religious prohibitions do not extend to marajuana, which is available in all shapes and forms including the uniquely Indian 'bang lassi'. It's a pretty spot but ultimately a little bit too phoney for my taste. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of pilgrims bathing in the waters when I took a stroll by the lake shore, but instead the whole town from the beggars through to the sadhus seemed to be in the business of fleecing tourists of their every last rupee. As I say, these tourists were predominantly a young and wealthy Israeli set bent on experimenting with long hair, ethnic clothing and large, pungent reefers. Inbetween puffs, they could avail themselves of just about every cosmic Indian cure-all going, from your basic fare of meditation and yoga through to a much advertised spiritual cure for Aids. It was an interesting place to see, but I was happy to escape the psuedo-hippy treadmill and the strong smell of bullshit to get back to a rather more real India.

Leaving Delhi the trip has entered an interesting new phase. We have lost all but five passengers and gained none for the short leg to Mumbai. Among the farewells was a sad one to Graeme, who was the last survivor of the original group who set out from Istanbul in June. This part of the trip replaces a planned visit to Iran, and with such a small group we've been given license to concoct our own itinerary. So after discussion we have opted to head north for the Himalaya and the old Raj hill stations. Hopefully Amritsar and the desert cities of Western Rajastan will also make it onto our bespoke tour.

Our first stop has been another Hindu holy town beautifully situated where the Ganges bursts out of the wooded foothills of the Himalaya. Laxman Jhula is a major centre for yoga and the place The Beatles came to in the 1960s in order to smoke a lot of joints and play the sitar. And you guessed it, it's also heaving with those very same Israeli tourists we kept meeting in Pushkar. So many in fact that people keep opening up conversations with me in Hebrew and the restaurants are falling over one another to offer Israeli menus.

Crapping All Over The World

I was reading an article in the Hindustan Times earlier today comparing public lavatories in Delhi and London. Apart from thinking that the article was a bit over generous in asserting how pleasurable it is to visit a typical British WC, it put me in mind that I haven't yet mentioned toilets in this blog. This is undoubtedly an oversight which I need to rectify. Relieving oneself in the best available comfort is an issue that overlanders think about on a daily basis. It is as much a part of the travelling experience as the sights, the scenery and the ongoing war of attrition with mosquitos. After four months on the road I'm becoming quite a connoisseur of the Asian lavatory experience.

The first thing you need to master on the road is a stable stance for the squat toilet. You really don't want to go tumbling backwards into the hole in the floor, nor do you want to dump your doings into the pulled down seat of your pants. Once you've got this mastered, squatting can actually become quite enjoyable, particularly when you're out in the fresh air on bush camps. Tonka and Archie are amply supplied with 'shit shovels' to aid this process and ensure we're not littering the landscape. The idea is to dig yourself a hole in which to aim and then to fill it in afterwards with the piled up earth. A surprising number of people seem to experience early problems with their aim, but as with most things in life, practice makes perfect, and you get a lot of practice on a trip like this one. The 'dig your own hole' policy isn't one followed by many Indians, who merrily leave their turds to bake in the midday sun, whetting the appetite of the local pork life in the process. I've even heard that these pigs are actually owned by the Government and have been introduced expressly for the purpose of providing an organic solution to the human excrement problem. Certainly you tred warily in long grass in India.

I had imagined at the outset that India would offer the very worst in Asian toilet experiences. However, this was unfair. When you do find public loos, and they're not widespread, they really aren't all that bad in my experience. You need to bring your own paper of course, but surprisingly often you are welcomed by a proper western sit down loo. In fact the prize for worst toilets encountered in Asia goes unquestionably to China, though a renegade group of fellow travellers did put in a good word for an especially nasty pit toilet at the Turkmenbashi dockyard in Turkmenistan.

China has quite a social approach to the whole crapping thing. Though public lavatories are widespread compared to in India, they are universally holes in the ground other than in more expensive hotels. Furthermore, the sense of community living in China is sufficiently strong to discourage the building of actual cubicles in many places. Instead, you squat merrily alongside your fellow man enjoying a good old chinwag between strains, separated solely by a very low wall. No danger of accidentally opening the door on anyone else either, since there ain't no doors to open.

One thing you do learn is that full-on toilet horror is more a matter of smell than of sight. This was demonstrated at Everest Base Camp in Tibet where my journey to the drop zone literally involved picking my way through a minefield of desiccating human turds that stretched wall to wall all the way to the entrance, - and I mean the entrance to the building not the cubicle! However, altitude was my friend that day, so there was little in the way of aroma to accompany the visual devastation. Unfortunately, the same was not true of my all-time worst loo encounter which took place at a grotty little restaurant stop on the Karakorum Highway in western China. Battle hardened as I am, this was the one time in the trip where I actually gagged at twenty paces from the target, eventually having to abort my mission altogether, or at least divert it to the friendly cover of a hillside bush. Unfortunately I did get close enough to see a mountainous pile of steaming turds poking right up through the squat hole before I finally fled in terror. It was a sight I hope never to see again in my travels and the awful stench haunted me for days afterwards.

Catching Up With Ibn Battutah

I've not mentioned my fourteenth-century travelling companion Ibn Battutah for a while. We parted company in Samarkand when I headed on eastwards through Kygyrstan into China, Tibet and Nepal. Meanwhile, he turned southward through Afghanistan and crossed the Kyber Pass into the province of Sind (now Pakistan), before entering Northern India. In Delhi I've been re-acquainting myself with my wandering muse. This is a city in which he hung up his boots for quite a number of years, obtaining a position of some authority under one of India's greatest and most tyrannical rulers, the Sultan Mohammed Tughlaq.

Back in 1333 the centre of Delhi was a good 15 km to the south of the present 'Old Delhi' and was focused around the magnificent Qutb Minar mosque complex. At the heart of this was a 73 metre minaret of surpassing beauty, already old at the time of Ibn Battutah's visit. He describes it as the most beautiful minaret in all of Islam, which is quite a statement coming from one who had travelled so extensively.

Finding myself with an inadequate amount of time to explore this fascinating city, I vowed that at least I would make a pilgrimage into the suburbs to see this one place that had so greatly impressed Ibn Battutah. I didn't regret the decision. The mosque, which is actually the oldest in India, is now ruinous and rather reminiscent in its gutted grandeur of some the great ruined abbeys of northern England. Yet the minaret still stands tall and proud as it has done since 1193, betraying a slight tilt as a small concession to its old age. It is simply gigantic. Ibn Battutah described it's internal staircase as being wide enough to ride an elephant up and suggested this was how the building materials were carried up to the top. The lower sections are constructed of red sandstone with a lovely fluted exterior that accentuates the effect of the minaret's taper. The top section is faced in translucent white marble which in the fourteenth century was surmounted with a golden ball.

Given that Delhi is a big and brash city that bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to its antecedent of the fourteenth century, I found it rather moving to be confronted with one building at least which would be instantly recognisable across seven long centuries.