More India

Hi everyone.

The night that I did that last blog post I met up with two indian fellows, the guy from the train museum, and another guy. I don't remember either of their names, but I do remember enough to know that I wouldn't be able to spell them even if I did remember them. We went out to eat, then went to a bar. It was a standard indian bar, lots of men stood around drinking whiskey with lots of water. While there we met a very drunk man, who said I should call him Willy or Billy. Knowing I wouldn't be able to say Willy without grinning, and not wanting to offend, I chose Billy. As the night went on, he told us a lot of times that he was a drummer in a band, and that it was his birthday, he told us again and again and again. He also did a few renditions of smoke on the water. It became obvious that he wasn't a drummer, and it probably wasn't his birthday, he was a bum and was going to ask for money after he thought he had befriended us enough. He asked if I played any instruments, and I told him I played the trombone. It was a fun night, but at the end the two indian guys from the hostel got a bit spooked by Billy and were determined when we left the bar that he should walk in the other direction to us. He did ask us for money and one of the indian guys gave him some. Then on the walk back, one of them was yelling at me telling me i wasn't safe in India and I wasn't cautious enough and blah blah blah. He was kind of drunk, and everytime I tried to speak he was just talking over the top of me, telling me that if they hadn't been there I would have gone off with Billy and woken up dead and with no money, not much of a problem when you're dead. He told me about how I was becoming his friend and wishing him happy birthday and about how impressed I was that he was a drummer and telling him I played the trombone. When he quietened down I told him that I didn't play the trombone and that shut him up all together.

I think I stayed in Mysore one more night, then I went to Bangalore. Oh, on the last day in Mysore a guy came over to me and talked at me about various places he could take me. This happens a lot, most of the time I ignore them, other times I tell them I've been to all the places that they mention, sometimes I tell them unpolitely to go away. I asked this guy where an internet cafe was, he led me there. I came out an hour and a half later, and he was waiting for me. I was kind of impressed by his presistence, so I went with him to an oils shop, then I told him I don't really care about oils, said thanks, and left.

Bangalore was next on the list. I stayed there for two nights but it was kind of uneventful. There are a couple of nice parks that I went to. There was a good science and technology museum. There were lots of bag shops near my hotel, and everytime I walked past them I had to tell them that I already had a bag... It wasn't the most interesting of cities really, and I didn't meet anyone that I have stories about.

I took a night bus to Hampi, which is my favourite place in India so far. It's a small village really, so its very obvoiusly just aimed at tourists, and lots of rickshaw drivers were shouting names of guest houses at the bottom of the bus steps. Not nice to deal with after a nights kip on a bus. I got in a rickshaw with a French girl called Alice, the only other westerner on the bus, and Moss, the driver managed to find us a place where we could get two rooms with attached bathrooms for 150 rupees a night. Alice has a brother that works in India, and she's been living in Delhi for one month, translating things from french to english and vice versa. She was in Hampi on her way to Chennai. Later that day I walked up a massive hill to take in the surroundings. Hampi is an incredible place, the story goes that the Moneky god, Anuman or something, took a rock from the himilayas, and flew and dropped it in the sea to make Sri Lanka, but on the way a few pieces broke off over hampi, and that's why there are huge smooth boulders for miles and miles around. There are also lots of deserted ruins, which makes the surrounds even more spectacular, I took some pictures.

The next day Alex, a postman from England who arrived that morning, Alice, and I all walked to another big hill. The map in the lonely planet said that there was a bridge over the river, so we headed for that. On the way there we met a french couple, called Ann and Laurent, but it's not said Laurent, it's said in a french way. When we got to the bridge, we found it had broken down, so we had to get some weird little circular boat across, we had to space out around the edges to stop it from tipping over, it seemed pretty unstable, but coming the other way was one with two motorbikes on it! There were lots of monkeys around the big hill, and puppies aswell, a strange combination. The views from the top were again fantastic, I took pictures, but I don't think pictures of views are ever anywhere near as good as actually being there. That night we tried to go to eat at a few places, but apparently Hampi basically shuts down after 9pm, we eventually found somewhere open, although there was a kid in a bed on the floor next to us while we ate.

Alex the postman had planned a day of sight seeing with a rickshaw driver for the next day, so me and Alice went to a few of the ruins we hadn't seen the day before and then met up with Alex and the french couple later for dinner.

The day after the three of us went to some water falls, they were ok, and then I had to get the bus to Goa.

The bus to Goa was a "sleeper" bus. Basically it has beds, the same width as the width that two seats would be on a bus, so you share a small double bed, with someone you don't know. On this occasion it was a girl I guess from Germany or somewhere, I didn't speak to her much, she kept to her side, I kept to mine, I slept quite well.

In Goa I went to a place in the north called "Arambol", on the reccommendation of Alex. It was pretty good, served it's purpose, I just wanted to relax on the beach all day and eat and drink and swim and read. I did this in the same restaurant three days running, as they had loungers outside. On the first evening I just had a few beers and an early night, the bus ride had caught up to me. The second evening I met two guys, one from South Africa, called Reese, and an Australian, called Nick. They had met in their guest house, and were quite different people, Reese was a hippy, had a shaved head apart from one dreadlock, and carried around a bongo, while Nick was a brash Australian who told me lots of crazy stories involving lots of drugs. Over the night we briefly met some guys from yorkshire and a german guy, they all seemed more normal than Reese and Nick.

The next day I saw Reese sat on the beach, facing the sea, playing a digeridoo. Nothing weird about that, I went over and said hi, we chatted for a while, he had brought the didgeridoo from South Africa, and he did agree with me that that was a bit of an effort, especially as he also had another digeridoo with him. He started playing, and I patiently waited five minutes for him to stop, before telling him I was going to leave. It would've been rude to leave while he was playing.

Later that evening I bumped into the guys from yorkshire, called John and Luke, and the Greman, called Christian, and I tagged along with them for the night. We also met a girl from sweden, another German guy, a guy who claimed he was from yorkshire, and his friend from Ireland who told us he was actually from Derbyshire. It was a good night, and I got on with these people better than I did with either Nick or Reese.

The final night in Arambol I met with the yorkshire guys again, John didn't want to drink, so in the end just me and Luke went to the bar, where we bumped into various characters we had already met, along with some new ones. Suddenly I started to feel ill, so I bought some water and went to bed.

I awoke at 4Am and spent most of the hours untill 8Am throwing up into a bucket. At 8Am I shakily went and bought some more water, then managed to get a bit of sleep. I don't know exactly what caused me to become sick, but a guess would be the mushroom lasagna that I had for tea the previous day. I hadn't eaten any meat, or drunk any bad water. Anyway, I was due to get a "sleeper" bus to Mumbai that evening, so I didn't eat anything all day apart from a mars bar, hoping that in remaining empty nothing could go wrong on the bus, and thankfully it didn't.

This time I was sharing a small bed with a biggish Indian fella, I tried at first to keep to my side of the bed, ready to sleep as I was still feeling unwell, however, Indian ways are different from western ways. With the German girl, if I kept to the very right hand side of my bit, she wouldn't spread out onto the bit I wasn't using, she'd stick to her side, thats what westerners do, along with waiting in orderly queues for things and letting people off trains before getting on. Indians don't do any of these things, in India, you take what you can. You get on the train and to a seat as fast as possible, you push your hand through to the front of the queue with money in it and shout your destination in order to get your train ticket first, and if the guy next to you in the small bed on the bus isn't using all his space, you use it. So he was always touching me, not like groping me with his hands, but lieing right up next to me, spreading out more everytime I manage to take up less space. Eventually I gave up, and pushed back, deciding that if we were going to sleep touching each other we were going to have the same amount of space.

I didn't sleep well.

When I got to the Hotel in Mumbai, the receptionist asked me if I wanted to do some extras work in a bollywood film the day after. I said yes, as I'd heard about this, and he put me on the phone to some guy who explained it all to me. They picked us up at 7:30Am, provided food, and paid 500 rupees per person. The rest of the first day I just wandered around a little tired from the bus. The next morning while I waited to be picked up I talk with a guy in the hostel who told me that he had done extras work a few days ago, but it was just for a tv show set in the 19th century, and wasn't that good. I was a little dissappointed, but in the end we, in total there were 9 of us from the hotel, were all taken to a different production. Its a film called "No problem", and we were extra's in scenes where the good guys, or bad guys, came into the "international diamond trading centre", which was supposed to be in canada, so I guess I was supposed to pretend to be canadian, anyway, they came in and there was shooting and stuff, in one scene there was loads of us and we had to crouch and put our hands over our heads and run around, while gun shots went off. I also had a ridiculous costume, a pair of white trowsers, a yellow shirt, a pink jacket, and a red tie and briefcase. It was all good fun for the first 3 hours or so, but then it started to drag, and we were there until 9:00pm. Still it was a good experience, and it'll be fun to watch if it ever comes out, even though it look kind of crappy.

Yesterday I had a massive wander around the city, looking at a few of the sights, the Haji Ali Mosque, the temple I can't remember the name of, a couple of markets. I also went to the train station to book my ticket for the night train tonight to Ahmedabad. Last night I met a guy called Walt "Like Walt disney" who was from Taiwan, but has lived in London since he was 12, we got on pretty well, had a few beers, I told him about a hippy that I saw walking to the train station with nothing on his feet, he agreed that was pointless and just for attention.

So, today i'm stuck with my rucksack again. Earlier I went in a cafe, and an indian chap entered at the same time as me, we had tea together and some cheese croissants, he talked about cricket and John Major, then he said he could show me a few places, and listed a lot of places i'd seen the day before. I said, I thought quite clearly aswell, "I have already been to most of those places", he said a couple of others that I hadn't been to, I said ok then, the guy said I should use the opportunity to break a 500 rupee note, not a bad idea, so I gave him one and he went and paid with it, but didn't give me any change. The guy was at least 50 and wore a shirt and tie and didn't look very fit, I didn't think he was capable of mugging me. We got in a taxi and the guy said a load of stuff in Hindi or Marathi to the driver, and we were off. First stop, somewhere I told him I'd already been, he insisted on taking me photo there, then we got back in the taxi, went some where else I had already been, quickly got out, and back in the taxi again. It was really weird, and alarm bells were ringing, but I was being careful, and I didn't have anything else to do, so I let it continue. We stopped after a while and got some juice a place near the Haji Ali mosque, I had of course been there the day before, and of course told him that in the cafe earlier, we got the bill, and I just stood there, as did he. "You've still got my change from the cafe" I said, he responded, then paid the bill. By now our food and drink bills had come to about 300 rupees between us, and it had all come out of my 500. We got back in the taxi and briefly visited a few more places, the meter went up and up. Knowing that I was going to be hit with a big taxi charge at the end, I eventually asked how much the taxi was so far. Lots of theories had been running through my head about the plans of this guy, and maybe the taxi driver too, he could have been in on it. I think he most likely was and the plan was to take me on a big taxi ride, briefly jumping out and in again at different places, taking photos. Whether they knew each other before we got in, or maybe we got in and the guy told the driver what he had planned in hindi so i didn't understand, I don't know. I could have misread it completely and he was just a really odd old bloke. Or maybe he didn't know the driver, and he was just trying to get a free day out from me. Anyway, I didn't get a straight answer from the driver about how much the taxi was so far, and eventually the guy changed the subject and said "what do you want to do this afternoon?". I switched to blunt mode and said i'm on a budget, you've had 500 from me already today, of which I've spent roughly 150, i'm going to go to an internet cafe and waste some time before my train. He said some stuff about what he was going to do that afternoon. I knew that he knew that I knew that he (hahaha) was taking the piss a little bit, and I think I managed to give the impression that I wasn't scared to just walk away, or if it came to it, hit an old man like himself in the face. Eventually we pulled up at the cafe where we started and he asked for any contribution I liked towards the taxi fare, I said "Oh, thanks very much" and started to get out of the taxi, and he quickly added "lets say minimum 200 rupees". "How much is the taxi?", "Well I need to carry on a bit, but lets say you pay 200 rupees and then I'll pay the rest, probably around 300 rupees, and we'll call it even", "Oh, ok, so the taxi costs 500 rupees? I gave you 500 rupees for food earlier and didn't get any change, and I suspect there's around 200 left of it", "No it's all gone", "Ah well, so I spent 500 rupees on food for us, you can spend 500 on the taxi, that splits it 50/50 we're friends aren't we, its been a good couple of hours, bye" I started to get out again, "ok, just 100 rupees...", "bye bye." and that was it. Although I probably would have prefered not to have met this guy, and still have the 500 rupees which I could now go and spend in Mcdonalds or something, we didn go to a couple of places I hadn't seen, briefly, and I think I came out the winner. If they were working together, they wasted a couple of hours and petrol on me and probably gained 50 rupees each and a mango smoothy.

So, now i'm in the internet cafe, and I still have all my things, I just hope I dont wake up dead.

I really need a wee now, so bye