Cave Top Trumps, missed trains, riding a triceratops and Lakes.

11:05 10/11/2012 Hanuman Ghat, Udaipur. 

HELL OF A FEW DAYS.

Currently sat on a roof terrace overlooking the lake in Udaipur. We really need to get an Udaipur in the UK. In layman’s terms it’s kind of like if you took Leamington spa, then popped Rutland water in the middle.  (For the record I have never been to Leamington spa.) Udaipur also has a palace so I reckon the fictional British town would need something like Kensington palace but bigger.
(loft conversion?)

Its been a crazy few days, So 4 days ago I got the bus from Aurangabad to Jalgoan stopping off at the Ajanta caves on the way. Ajanta is much like Ellora but better. In cave top trumps the break down is as follows:

	Ellora	Ajanta
Location	2	5
Masonry skills	5	4
Facilities	1	5
Monkeys	5	- (no monkeys)
Number of caves (lower value wins)	34 (Too many)	28

Ajanta scrapes it on average. Top trump caves should definitely be made, might suggest it to the fellas at Top Trumps HQ.

From Ajanta to Jalgoan I got chatting to a guy called Abi he was shocked to hear that I was atheist. He suggests I read the Quran as I will be more fulfilled. Apart from the thorny issue of religion we had a good chat about cricket and agriculture Abi was training to become a farmer like his father. The array of fruit and crop he wanted to grow was ridiculous about 10 different things bananas, wheat etc. He told me his love for his JCB’s and laughed at our family having a mini tractor to cut the grass.

In Jalgoan I found a nice hotel from the holy scriptures of lonely planet. Nice hotel got him down from £6 to £4. His service was ridiculous though bringing me hot water and chai as soon as I got in the room extended my check out time drew me a map of Jalgoan. Very nice chap. The next day I had to get a train at 5 hung about all day went to buy some new headphones, which are now broken anyway. Got to 5 I made my way to the station.

At the station I sat at the platform waiting for the train reading The Corrections. I had just began the chapter about Denise which is very salacious then I look at my watch and its 1715 and the train has gone. That’s £2 I’ll never see again and another 2 for the connection in Ahmedabad I’d certainly miss. I went and bought an unreserved ticket for £1.50 on the 2130 train this would guarantee me standing space and no sleep for the proceeding 10 hours on the train. I sat outside of the station and was called over by a 55 year old man in a blue shirt telling me to sit on the bench with him so I’m not spat on from the station footbridge. I told him what had happened and he said he’d get me a sleeper berth no problem. He was a ticket agent and told me that because I’m foreign if he helped explain I was tired to the conductor I would be fine. I sat with him for the next couple of hours he spent a lot of time on his phone shouting and negotiating with the person on the other end. Him and his heavies then went away for an hour explaining in a rather sinister way that he ‘had some business to take care of’. Now from my experience of the language of nefarious characters in films and TV this usually means someone is about to be ‘rubbed out’, extorted, or raped. Still I sat and read while I waited keeping a close watch of the minute and hour hand this time round.

When he gets back with a surprising lack of blood stains, bandaged knuckles, he said to follow him down the darkest alley imaginable. From School I remembered ‘personal safety’ talks explaining that I must not accept sweets from strangers (even if it was a ‘whole four fingered KitKat’ as one boy asked) and somewhere in that same pool of information came the instinct that I shouldn’t follow this murderer, extortor and possible rapist down this alley. I climbed the stairs telling him I would meet him on the platform. As I get on the platform I hear a train’s horn blaring from the track to the left of me. The ticket agent had a just wanted to take me on a shortcut over the tracks in front of a moving train not stopping at the station. Explaining when he got to me, ‘shortcut, shortcut’.

Eventually he got me on the train and somehow from the fear of standing for ten hour in a crowded carriage I was asleep in my sleeper berth.

I awoke in Ahmedabad freezing (told you I’d need my barbour Mum) and proceeded to scout out hotels for the cricket when I come back to Ahmedabad on the 14^th November. This killed an hour in the city just 13 more before my train to Udaipur at 11pm. I decided to cross Nehru Bridge and find an internet café to kill some more time, on my way visiting Sidi Sayid’s mosque on the way. Across the bridge I met two Students on on there way to work the other on there way back from Lectures. I had the routine conversation: where am I from; why I am in India; how long I am here for; where I am going next. I then went on my way and sat down at a bench to apply some child’s suncream. Whilst sat there one of the students, Nehal, passed me again and stopped to ask what am I doing just sat on a bench. I explained my predicament and he offered to show me somewhere nice for breakfast.

He then offered to take me back to his house near the airport meet his family and have some lunch with him, and then he would show me around. With nothing else to do this seemed a perfect solution. He proceeded to reassure me that he was a ‘good guy not a bad guy’ and that I should be careful as not everyone was like him. Everyone is very suspicious of the neighbouring states in India, people in Maharashtra warned me about going in to Gujarat, and then in Gujarat, Gujaratis warned me about going into Rajasthan.

Having got to his house we had lunch and he let me shower. Then he showed me around his home village. Nehal’s lived in a small village near the airport, populated mainly by families who worked at the airport. A series of peach 3 floor houses with a balcony and each with a roof top terrace, which as Nehal explained was often  populated by monkeys that some times got into the house and wrecked the kitchen looking for any fruit and veg they could get there simian paws on. As we left to go exploring the rest of his village I saw one of the audacious thieves running down the street.

From exploring his village he took me on his bike to meet his girlfriend at the beauty parlour in the city. Weaving through traffic on the back of a motorbike in India is one of the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences you can have. Reaching your destination alive is incredibly satisfying. 

(By the way I am writing this listening to Bright Eyes –Burn Rubber [Simon Joyner Cover Live @KCRW 2003] Connor describes it as his favourite travelling song and it is brilliant.)

Me and Nehal then went back to his and he showed me photos of his family, some incredible 90’s fashion. Reminded me of all the crap we used to get on a Sunday afternoon from ‘Fame Fashions’ in Leicester.

We drove to Ghandinagar to the national park, with its leopards, antelopes, crocodiles and dinosaurs. I Sat on a baby Triceratops made me think of Jurassic park erotic fan fiction and Eavis riding his Tri-Tops through Glastonbury. Nehal also told me the story of how he once was lost in a forest in Assam for four days surviving on oranges and a snake. One of his friends cried the whole time [bet he gets shit all the time ‘ …remember that time in the forest when you cried for four days straight.’] Eventually they found someone who couldn’t speak Hindi, English or Gujarati but was able to understand they were lost.

Back at Nehal’s house we had dinner it was amazing Gujurati food. His family were so kind to take me in clean me and feed me such incredible food. Despite being stuffed to the gills his mother kept offering me more they were too generous. His mother even offered to do some washing for me! Anything I asked for she would have helped me.

Later on Nehal dropped me off the station rushing through traffic at night on a motorbike always makes me feel like I’m on a Lightcycle. Nehal concurred. Looking back at the previous 13 hours on the way to the station, my smile stretched from ear to ear. India seems to be full of surprises, kind people and sheer bloody fun everywhere you turn. Me and Nehal were talking about how strange it is how half way around the planet you can meet people and it seem like you’ve known each other for years, and that in fact no ones life is really that dissimilar. Unless like you don’t have a smartphone, middle class up-bringing and a safe home, in which case our lives would be pretty different.

Udaipur

Train to Udaipur was fine, I went sleeper class again which is the lowest priced reserved bed. 10 hour journey for about £1.50 is alright. With it being quite cool in the north AC is an unnecessary luxury.

Right this post is getting pretty dry need to up the tempo a bit.

Udaipur:

§         Lot of tourists, which is a change from the weird places I have been in the last week.

§         Tailors everywhere, not sure if I trust a suit made for £30.

§         Obsessed with Bond here. Octopussy, which was filmed here, shows Roger Moore at his most sexist and racist. Also the bit where the soviets are calling the west ‘decadent pigs’ whilst sitting on an automatic rotating cabinet desk is my favourite.

§         Venice of India.

§         Lots of little alleys.

§         Big Ol’ Lake

§         All you can eat, Thali place near the station is incredible.

Chittorgaugh next. (REALLY BIG MEWAR FORT)