kolkata

Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) has turned out to be a pleasant surprise, with much to see and do and something interesting happening on every street corner. It was once the main base of the British in India, and so - as you might expect - the city centre is well equipped with elegant, fading, old colonial buildings dwelling along streets and roads which have a slightly British feeling in terms of layout.

When I arrived four days ago I decided that I would not spend too much time in the museums and sites laid out in my guide book, and that I would try to tackle the city a little differently. So on each of my four days here I've spent the mornings just wandering around the city streets, the afternoons at the cinema watching Hindi films, and the evenings in my hotel room reading the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi (my current book).

My wanderings have included some interesting places. I've walked all the way round the Maidan (the central park here). I've been to the Howrah Bridge which spans the river that divides Kolkata down the middle - it's similar in size to Sydney Harbour Bridge and supports a stream of 100 000 vehicles a day apparently making it the busiest road bridge in the world. I've had a look around the Park Street Cemetery, full of colonial graves and flamboyant (Gothic?) tombs for those who came in service of the British Empire but never returned. I noted how young most of the occupants were when they died, many of them younger than me. Most interesting though has been my walk to the Mission of Mother Teresa and the morning I spent there, visiting her grave, and reading about her life. Whilst I admire the selfless devotion she put into caring for the poor, I couldn't help but feel she would have been yet more productive if she had looked at tackling the causes of poverty in Kolkata rather than just allowing the unfortunate to be dependent on her and her Mission. Sat by her grave I was brought to mind of a passage I had read earlier in the Gandhi book and couldn't help but make comparison. He says, words to the effect, that whenever he is about to undertake a task on behalf of someone else he asks himself first: will my action help this person to increase their self-governance and self-reliance? If the answer was yes he should go ahead. If the answer is no he should decline. As I walked the surrounding streets of the Mission it was plain to me that little seems to have changed for the poor here. They're still here, in great numbers, still poor, dependent, and struggling to support themselves, no less self-reliant and with no more self-governance. Two streets away I saw three children bathing a toddler in a drain, no adult about as far as I could see. It was an unsettling image and clarified for me that despite Mother Teresa's best efforts poverty is still overwhelming in this part of the city.

On a lighter note, I've seen three more Hindi films thanks to my afternoon cinema visits, all of them at Inox, a shopping mall complex. It's funny how everyone outside the mall is dressed in fairly traditional Indian clothing, but inside everyone is in jeans and t-shirts. I even saw two Indian women in khaki mini-skirts and wearing enough make-up to sell out a Boots cosmetics counter. The cinema at Inox is air-conditioned which has provided me with a good secondary reason for going along there each afternoon. The films I watched are: 'Life in a Metro,' 'Cheeni Kum,' and 'Shootout at Lokhandwala.' The first of these stars England's very own Shilpa Shetty and the second two star Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan. I thought all three were good films, well made, and with interesting plot lines. 'Cheeni Kum' was interesting because it is set in an Indian restaurant in Chelsea in London, and is filmed around the area I used to work. I'm pleased I've finally seen Amitabh Bachchan on screen. He's so hyped in India. My verdict: he's got great screen presence, there's a stern gravity about him. He's clearly a very talented actor. He's good in 'Shootout' where he has a fairly minor role. That film has some serious violence in it. Anyway, that brings my Hindi film count up to six.

Two nights ago it started to rain hard for about an hour. 'The monsoon will be coming soon,' said the old fellow sheltering beside me in a doorway, and indeed it will. I also saw in a newspaper yesterday the headline 'monsoon hits Kerala sooner than expected.' So a new weather system is beginning to hit India and will be my next challenge and experience. It can't really be worse than all this heat and humidity so I'm happy for it rain down even if that will create restrictions for me.

This evening I catch a night train south to Puri, an Indian seaside resort which looks out into the Bay of Bengal. It will be my first time by the coast in India. I'll probably stay there for about two days (Thursday and Friday) and will then move on to nearby Konark to see the famous Sun Temple. I'm having the rest of today off although later I do intend to wander down for another peak at the Victoria Memorial, which is on the south side of the Maidan. It was built by the British in colonial days, and is perhaps the finest building they constructed in India. It looks like a cross between the Taj Mahal and St Paul's Cathedral.

same old questions

I've been in India for 60 days now and on every single one of them I've been approached by large numbers of people in the street who routinely ask me exactly the same set of questions. It's beginning to drive me slightly mad. This is what I get asked roughly 50 times a day...

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1. Hello, which country?

Answer: England. I say England rather than Great Britain or United Kingdom as this term is in more popular usage due to our cricket and football teams.

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2. What is your 'good' name?

Answer: Charlie. I normally say 'Charlie' to keep it informal and easy although a few times I have said 'Charles Edward Bury.'

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3. First time India and how long India?

Answer: Yes. 4 months.

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4. How old are you?

Answer: 29 years old.

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5. How many people your family?

Answer: Six: mother, father, sister, niece, and grandmother.

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6. Are you married?

Answer: No. Are you OK? You look like you're going to faint.

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7. What is your profession?

Answer: I used to be an Education Welfare Officer until I started travelling.

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8. Salary?

Answer: Now: 0.

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Actually, there are a few questions I would like to ask back like: how come you all ask me the exact same set of questions using the exact same wording? And have you been on a course for this? Is there a textbook called How to question foreign tourists? How is it you all ask the same questions in the same order as well?!

Perhaps I should get a fact sheet printed up on myself if every one's so interested. It might save time.

I'm also reaching the point where I'm beginning to ponder giving fantasy answers: 'I used to be a ballerina but now I've retired and mould garden gnomes for a living. My country? I'm from Iceland.' That kind of thing.

bodhgaya: the land of enlightenment

I reached my current location, Bodhgaya, yesterday lunchtime following a delayed train ride which began in Varanasi. I'm here to visit a tree. A fairly ordinary looking banyan tree known as the Bodhi tree. Not a rare species or a record breaker in terms of height. But there is something special about it. For 26 centuries ago the man who was to become Buddha, and the father of Buddhism, sat under this tree and had a good hard think until he found enlightenment, or to use Buddhist terminology: nirvana. Actually he didn't. The tree he really sat under was cut down sometime after by the wife of the Emperor Ashoka and the tree that is there now was grown sometime later on the same spot from a cutting of a cutting of the original (which had been kept by a Sri Lankan Alan Titchmarsh). It's just a tree yes, but it's also the centre of the Buddhist universe and the most important place of pilgrimage for Buddhists around the world.

Next to the Bodhi tree is the tall Mahabodhi Temple which was built in the Sixth Century, but has been altered many times since. Other than that there is the Buddha Statue a few streets away and 25 metres high, and a collection of monasteries in the surrounding area representing most of the Buddhist world: Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Tibetan, Cambodian and Nepali to name but a few. That's really about the size of Bodhgaya - a tree, a temple, a statue, and several monasteries, not forgetting of course tourist hotels, restaurants and trinket shops.

The heat in Bodhgaya is overpowering and regular power cuts mean regular interruptions to the much needed circulation of ceiling fans and air conditioning. I just about coped during the day yesterday but after I went to bed an all night electricity cut meant that my ceiling fan was inoperable. I was unable to sleep and could only just about manage to breathe. I got up around 5am feeling tired but resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be getting any rest, and I decided to walk over to the gardens containing the Bodhi tree thinking it would feel cooler to get outside. It was getting light and I could sit and enjoy it before the heat of the morning really built up. I left my room near 6am and as I closed my hotel room door the electricity kicked back in and my fan finally thrust back into action. I was up and ready to go by then so I kept going. Situations of this kind are what swear words are made for. Being so early I had the gardens to myself save for a couple of Tibetan Monks. I wandered around the pathways and sat opposite the 'the tree.' I felt rather unmoved and a bit short changed, being in the knowledge that this was not the tree that Buddha sat under. More impressive for me was the adjacent Mahabodhi Temple. It looks better from a distance than close up - perhaps because it is 50 metres high and standing back helps you better take in the size and scale. The temple is a world heritage site visited by thousands of people every year.

Bodhgaya itself is located in Bihar 13 kilometres south of Gaya. To the north the Ganges runs eastwards towards the coast and nearby are the Barabar Caves. These are the 'Marabar' Caves in E M Forster's A Passage to India, a book which I have spent the last few weeks reading (prior to reading Are you experienced?). I found it an enlightening book, thoughtfully written: a fair handed account of the British Raj in India and the racial tension that was inevitable while such a humiliating arrangement existed. I timed my reading well for now here I find myself in the same area where the story takes place. Reading the book has helped me to think in more depth about India's semi-recent history, and what was happening here 80 years ago. The India of the novel is not the India I am visiting today, and the two share little resemblance. The British Raj are evident now only in colonial architecture and museum photographs.

I'm trying to look at the increasingly extreme heat here as a positive challenge. I'm trying to prove to myself that I can still operate in it, and with a little care not let it get to me. I've made progress on yesterday afternoon and evening, both of which I spent contemplating voluntary euthanasia. Today I've just felt really hot but pretty OK about it. Around Bodhgaya there are lots of roadside signs saying 'Bodhgaya: the land of enlightenment.' The heat and regular lack of my ceiling fan has given me something a of desire to add underneath '...but not electricity.'

My time in Bodhgaya follows on from my visit to Varanasi which was a very nourishing experience. Most interesting was my day long walk along the ghats by the river. I was able to stop at one of the cremation ghats and watch the public burning of bodies. I would have said that this marks the first time I have ever seen a dead body, if I had not been confronted by the sight of two policemen removing the corpse of a beggar from the street in Delhi last week, an experience which I found very disturbing. I only noticed the contorted and emaciated body at the last minute and almost tripped into it. The bodies at the ghats were wrapped in white linen and after being dipped in the Ganges were surrounded with fire wood which was then set alight. Lighting the fire is the duty of the elder son. I noted that women did not seem to be allowed to be present by ritual which rather annoyed me. The family members that were there didn't seem very outwardly emotional which also seemed rather strange. Bodies take three hours to burn, and once the process is complete they are shovelled from the shore into the water. Babies, pregnant women, and Sadhu's are not allowed to be cremated (I can't remember why) and are attached to stones and sunk in the middle of the river.

Changing subject - I must note, before I forget, that I visited the cinema again recently (in Delhi) and saw a Hindi film called, 'Good Boy, Bad Boy.' It was about two university students, one a nerd the other a rascal, whose identities and lives become switched for some reason I couldn't quite fathom. The upshot is that the nerd learns to relax a bit and gets a girlfriend whilst the rascal learns the value of study and applying himself. In the climax of the film the nerd wins a dance contest and the rascal wins a quiz. The result is that by the end of the film we learn that, in the words of the college principal, 'there are no good boys and bad boys just smart boys.' His statement didn't seem entirely coherent to me but I took it to mean that although both main characters were cut of different dhoti cloths they were both still alright.

varanasi

I'm in Varanasi, one of the holiest places in India, and a location most Indians will try to visit at least once in their lifetime. I had a good journey across here from Khajuraho which has somewhat restored my buoyancy and mood. My bus left on time (3pm) and during the journey the conductor kindly moved me to a seat with good leg room just to be nice. It also rained about four hours in which broke the heat and made things more bearable, and helped me to fall asleep periodically on the shoulder of a strapping Spanish backpacker. On arrival (at 5.30am) a cycle rickshaw driver offered me a competitive price to my hotel and took me straight there with no messing about. In recognition I gave him a hefty tip and was genuinely appreciative. There are, it seems, some reasonable people around after all. I hope he had a nice day today. The hotel I checked into, the Alka Hotel, is nice. I've spent most of the day asleep in it getting over last night. The hotel is located in one of the old alleyways of the old city and looks out over a broad stretch of the Ganges. The river below is full much of the time with the strange mixture of Indian bathers frolicking with rubber rings (bathing in the Ganges is a great honour) amongst the ashes of freshly cremated corpses (being cremated in the Ganges is an even greater honour).

I didn't mention in my last blog that I made a friend in Khajuraho called Meike (she is German and has been working in Nepal but has taken some time off to visit India). We kept each other company for a few days and she also gave me a short novel called Are you experienced? by a guy called William Sutcliffe which has utterly consumed me. It's about 'Dave' who goes travelling in India (on much the same route as me and even in some of the same hotels) on his gap year in pursuit of a girl. He soon finds he can't stand her, backpackers, or India, and sets his powers of sarcasm to work in describing and deconstructing it all. It's very, very funny. There are descriptions of backpacker hostels as prison cells, being so hot you feel like you are cooking slowly from the inside, chapters with titles like 'what do backpackers do all day?' and effective character assassinations of all the middle class young people who came out here to find 'the real India' and act all new age, plus a good knocking of all the tourist operators. Dave also struggles to cope with India itself and is not backward in coming forward on the subject: 'I had heard the old cliché about how when you arrive in India it's like stepping into an oven. But this hadn't prepared me for the fact, that when you arrive in India, it is like stepping into an oven.' Meike's gone back to Nepal now, but it was an enjoyable interlude and she was good company.

I'm going to chill and wander in Varanasi for a couple of days now (tomorrow I'm going to visit an Indian university!) and from here I will carry on to Bodhgaya, which is where the tree is that Buddha sat under to achieve enlightenment and nirvana. It's the most sacred site in the world for Buddhists. The hotel are booking me a train ticket onwards so I don't have to go down to the station and go through all the hassle of trying to queue up in a country where queuing roughly equates to a group of people charging at ticket booths in the manner of a cattle stampede. Reminds me of another quote from Are you experienced? in which Dave is questioned by a grumpy Indian journalist on what he does whilst backpacking: 'so basically once you arrive somewhere your main interest and priority is booking tickets to leave to the next place?' Dave: 'yeah.'

the journey to khajuraho

I'm in Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh. The journey down here was a real pain in the arse. It had been supposed to be a seven hour train journey from Delhi to Jhansi and then a five hour bus ride from Jhansi to Kahjuraho. It turned into two trains, three buses, and a ride in a jeep, took 35 hours non-stop, and a near nervous breakdown on platform 1 at Kota station in Rajasthan. The problems began when my train, which left Delhi at 5.30am on Monday, was diverted west (it should have been going east) following a train derailment further down the line, and it was several hours before I realised it was going completely the wrong way and several more before I could actually get off.

I eventually got off at a place called Kota and went to the enquiries desk to ask how I could get back to my train destination (Jhansi). I was passed around six officials in different parts of the station all of whom gave me drastically different information. In the end, after losing it with station master, I just walked out of the station not caring anymore where the hell I went and got in an autorickshaw and asked to be taken to the bus station in the hope that (a) there was a bus station and (b) it might have buses to Jhansi. There was. It didn't. But they did have a bus to a small town called Shivpuri (about eight hours away), and the man selling tickets thought there might be another bus on from there on to Jhansi. It was my only option so I bought a ticket. The bus didn't leave until 9pm (it was now about 4.30pm) so I went and had my haircut opposite the station and then sat down until the bus came.

An uncomfortable night followed in the impressively hot and cramped bus. I sat next to a woman at the back who spent most of the journey puking out of the window, and the lack of leg room meant my leg were killing me all the way. All I saw through the night was darkness except for when we drove by a brightly lit pesticide factory.

We finally made it to Shivpuri in the early hours and I discovered to my relief that there was a bus on to Jhansi. I boarded this and it left at 6am. By now I was beginning to find it hard to stay awake but just about managed. This bus took about three hours and arrived at about 9am. The bus jerked to a halt as we arrived and I gashed my hand on a nail sticking out of the seat in front me. As I tried to get a couple of plasters across my knuckles a merciless tout came up to me and, unable to give me even a few seconds to try to stem the blood flow, tried to sell me a hotel room. I advised him to 'f*ck off.' He obliged.

Once no longer bleeding, I went into the ticket office and found that the first bus I could get to Khajuraho (my final destination) left at 11am and would take a final five hours. I bought a ticket and went and sat out it out on the bus station kerb now feeling completely numb. The bus got within 30 kilometres of Khajuraho and for no reason that I could discern I was transferred to an overfull 'share jeep' which finally got me to end point Khajuraho at 4.30pm. I'm not precisely sure of the time because I was mildly delirious. I checked into the Surya Hotel around 5pm and breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Really the time I've spent here has been spent recovering from getting here, and quietly wandering the temples. The temples at Khajuraho are famed for their erotic sculptures but in actual fact not many are erotic. They are attractive structures, not as large as I'd imagine they'd be, but really once you've seen one of them you've seen them all. Khajuraho is good in that it is sleepy and quiet, but there's been more hassle from tourist industry types than I'd expected and I just haven't been in the frame of mind to deal with it.

I'm moving on again to Varanasi this afternoon. This will be a long journey too. I'm going to see how I go but if I arrive as exhausted as I did to here I'm going to halt my itinerary for a few days just to rest, recover, and to become less irritable. We'll see - may be I'll be fine, there'll be good leg room on the bus, I'll meet someone nice, and I'll be ready to go when I arrive. Like I said, we'll see.

the british in india

Yesterday's anniversary has started me wondering about British/Indian conflict and how the British came to be involved in India in the first place. Rather than consult the history books like any reasonable person I've used my imagination instead to work out what happened. Maybe it all went a little something like this... picture it... the Royal Court at Windsor... 1600... everyone in wigs...

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Queen Elizabeth I: Hello. And what do you do?

Chairman of the East India Company: Hello. I am the Chairman of the East India Company.

Queen Elizabeth I: That's a bit presumptuous isn't it. You haven't even discovered India yet have you?

Chairman of the East India Company: No, err, but we're pretty sure that...

Queen Elizabeth I: Yes, yes. And you say you want to establish a presence in India?

Chairman of the East India Company: Yes Maam*.

Queen Elizabeth I: Why?

Chairman of the East India Company: We have intelligence suggesting they have weapons of mass destruction.

Queen Elizabeth I: Jolly good. Off you go. We've no option really. The rest will be history...

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* Maam as in farm not Mam as in ham. Yes, I've seen 'The Queen' with Helen Mirren.

meera nom charlie ha

On this day, 150 years ago, there was a mass uprising in India against the British. It began in Uttar Pradesh with the mishandling of a rumour that army bullets were to be greased with cow fat and soon turned into a full on army mutiny culminating in the four month siege of Delhi. It was the beginning of the movement that lead to full independence in 1947, and also the beginning of an intervening 90 years of tightened, tyrannical, and more oppressive British control (the East India Company, a private company which had previously informally run things in India, was dissolved and the British Government proper stepped in to become the formal masters of India). It's a sensitive piece of history and as I was leaving my hotel this morning the manager said to me half-jokingly, 'maybe you should tell people you are Australian today.'

I've survived the morning so far and thought I'd take a break and write down what I've been up to for the last few days. Following on from Manali, I spent last weekend in Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj, which for the last fifty years has been home to the Dalai Lama. I say 'home' - he travels the world so frequently (to raise publicity for Tibet) I wonder he can call anywhere his home. I was unsurprised, but still disappointed, to hear that he was in Chicago on my arrival. I did visit the monastery complex in which he lives though, and I also took a walk down to a lovely waterfall nearby and sat with my feet in a rock pool. McLeod Ganj is a tourist circus and I found being there a rather up and down experience. It was inspirational to visit the residence of such a compassionate, kind and good humoured man, but something seemed not right about wealthy Europeans and Americans wandering to and from their Yoga classes and DVD cafes in the village, dodging and ignoring the street beggars (of whom there are many) and Tibetan refugees as they went. Michael Palin came to Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj to interview the Dalai Lama during his Himalaya series. He also noted the uneasy contrast between the tourists and the unfortunate during his visit: 'passing these wraith-like figures are the substantial, muscular, Western backpackers who home in on these places, looking for cheap accommodation while sporting designer shades that would cost a street mender six months' wages. Poverty is corrosive, but it's always worse when it is found side by side with wealth.' It's the fact that no-one seemed uncomfortable that made me feel uncomfortable if that makes sense.

For the last few days I've been in the Punjab at Amritsar, location of the famous and beautiful Golden Temple. The Golden Temple is the most important Sikh Gurdwara in existence and a work of exquisite beauty. The Hari Mandir (God's Temple) sits in the middle of a huge tank of water ('nectar') filled with languishing fish. It has four entrances, one on each side - indicating that all are welcome and encouraged to visit. A Sikh teenager toured me round the complex and also took me to the large communal kitchens where free meals are churned out for hundreds of people twenty four hours a day. I saw - and touched! - the famous chapati making machine and conveyor belt and then was taken to eat with the Sikh worshippers. It was a terrific experience. You must cover your head whilst inside the complex and I wore a rather unflattering bright orange bandana throughout making me look like a pirate at a rave.

Today, I'm still in Amritsar, and I've just been to the Hindu Mata Temple, which is a strange combination of religious building and adventure playground. To process around the Gods you have to go up and down corridors, crawl through small tunnels, across a little stream, and through mirrored rooms. Crazy Indians.

tibetan monk

I recently had the below encounter with a Tibetan Monk I met whilst walking back to my hotel in McLeod Ganj. It was early evening and I was wandering home after my dinner when he emerged, with a big friendly smile on his face, from one of the many restaurants...

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Monk: Hello!

Me: Hello.

Monk: (Holding up a boiled egg) I've just bought this boiled egg.

Me: Oh really. Is that your dinner?

Monk: Yes. I want to get stronger. I also go swimming every morning. To get fitter.

Me: Really? At the little pool up by the waterfall?

Monk: Yes. If I can get good enough maybe I can make it to Beijing in 2008 and swim in the Olympics.

Me: That would be good. But you'll have to work hard.

Monk: Yes. Then maybe I win and they give me gold medal.

Me: Would you take it? From the Chinese Government?

Monk: (Chuckling) No I'd say, 'thank you very much, you can keep the medal, just give me back my Tibet!'

shimla and manali

I left Mussoorie for Shimla last Sunday morning at 8.30am. First I caught a bus down the hillside and on to the nearby city Dehra Dun, and from there I picked up the 10.15am bus to Shimla. Unfortunately there were no seats available on the small bus and initially I had to stand. About an hour in the conductor called to me to come and sit up front with him and the driver in their compartment, which was very kind of him, and this gave me a great view for the rest of the journey as we slowly climbed through the hills and mountains towards Shimla on the ten hour journey.

We arrived in Shimla a little after 7pm, and once away from the bus I began ascending the alleyways and narrow roads up from the bus stand on foot to the centre (which is known as the Ridge) and on to the YMCA, which is where I decided I would stay. On my climb up a group of men asked me if I would stop to be photographed with them and I duly obliged. The YMCA has bags of character and I knew I would stay the minute I walked into the reception. Massive, painted bright fireman red on the outside, and with two wings it had the feel of a Victorian boarding school out of term. I was shown to an enormous room on the top floor and told that an English style breakfast was included in my room cost. It was mid-evening by this stage so once I'd unpacked I nipped out for a quick mutton rogan josh with a side order of anti-malarial tablet and then got off to bed.

Shimla was taken over by the British in 1819 and so popular had it become with the Raj set by 1864 that it was officially made the summer capital of India. Every summer the entire apparatus of Indian government was transferred up to Shimla. Described sometimes as a little bit of Cheltenham in India, Shimla is strung along a 12 kilometre ridge 2205 metres above sea level and has a population today of 144 900 people. It is designed as though an idyllic English village with mock-Tudor buildings attempting to recreate Old England, an illusion somewhat spoiled by the the many monkeys jumping around the rooftops.

Next day I woke refreshed and after my complimentary breakfast I walked several kilometres across the ridge to the Vice-Regal Lodge, which was once the summer home of the Viceroy of India, and from which he ruled one fifth of the world population. It's a delightfully peaceful stately home, which was built in the 1880s in Scottish Baronial style, and is now a university of sorts called the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, or as my friend Nitesh put it: 'the Hogwarts of India,' a place for postgraduate study in the humanities. I was taken on a tour of the interior and saw the actual conference room where Gandhi, Mountbatten and Jinnah discussed (or perhaps failed to discuss) the partition of India, and the actual table on which Mountbatten agreed the partition line between India and the new Pakistan. A significant place where significant history was made. It was sobering being there. I walked back after, visiting on my way Christ Church (the second oldest church in Northern India), and then I climbed up to the Jakhu Temple which at 2455 metres above sea level is the highest point in Shimla. This made my legs hurt so once I got back down to rest and relax I wandered into the Ritz Cineplex to watch the evening showing of 'Ta Ra Rum Pum.' Day two in Shimla saw me take a long walk down to the Glen and the Shimla polo field, and then in the afternoon I walked over to the Himachal State Museum where most of the exhibits bored me with the exceptions of the beautiful Parhari miniature paintings and some fascinating letters sent by Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, in essence asking him to calm down and have a re-think on things. It seems Hitler did not respond and history suggests he did not take the advice. That evening I went to the Ritz Discotheque, where I found myself in an empty cavernous room save for a man a woman and their baby and two men sat at the bar drinking whiskey. I saw one of them the next morning as I was walking to the bus station and he shouted at me, 'eh discotheque!' even though we had not actually spoken the night before. I shouted back the same and we gave each other a smile.

I left Shimla at 9.30am on Tuesday morning and sat next to Nitesh from Solan with whom I chatted throughout most of the ten hour journey. He was only 17 but seemed much older than his years. He is on the verge of entering university to study engineering and we talked a lot about the education system in India and about Indian films. We were joined early on in the journey by a small boy from the aisle who came and sat on my lap and periodically vomited out of the open window by which I was sitting. After a while he fell asleep, and after about an hour he and his Mum (who stayed in the aisle) got off to his relief. We arrived in Manali at around 7.30pm but not before being delayed for nearly an hour by a sheep and goat herd making its way along the highway. I arrived to find a town in a power cut, but still managed to grope my way from the bus station to the Hotel Pawan.

Manali sits in the northern end of the Kullu Valley at an elevation of 2050 metres above sea level and has a population 4400 people. The small town is surrounded by mountain peaks (the higher ones snowcapped) and a fast running clean river (Beas River) runs through the middle.

I've been a little less active in Manali than Shimla, partly because I've felt tired, but more because it has rained a fair bit. However, yesterday I did manage to visit the Hadimba Temple above the town, and the Tibetan Gompa to the south. This is a Tibetan monastery. I was allowed to go in to the main hall and watch the monks chanting in unison - which was a wonderful experience. I also walked up to Old Manali and had a quick look around. It's set in a pretty location just outside of town, but like the northern side of Rishikesh it's a ghetto for Western tourists - full of English people talking about their love of India whilst eating cheese omelette or pasta. I soon descended back to the town proper to be with the Indians and have dinner at a Punjabi restaurant. Today, my second here, I've been on a 10 kilometre walk through the Kullu Valley and a bit closer to the snow capped peaks I am able to see at all times on the horizon. My walk took me through the Tibetan Colony, and re-emphasised what I had been thinking in Mussoorie - that the exiled Tibetan communities up here don't exactly seem to be thriving. In fact they seem to be very poor indeed. It's all reminded me of the hill tribes up in Northern Vietnam - women with wizened faces plodding around with babies tied to their backs, the baby looking like it needs a good bath.

Tomorrow I move to Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj which for the last fifty years has been home to the Dalai Lama and the headquarters of the Tibetan Government in exile. It will be 10 more hours of riding through the hill roads of the Himalaya which can be no bad thing. My ticket says the bus leaves at 8.23am which seems very precise.

ta ra rum pum

Rajveer (known as R.V.) is your typical Indian New York cabbie in a largely Indian populated Hindi speaking New York. He is mad about driving fast cars and dreams of being a famous Nascar driver. With the help of his friend Harry he gets a shot at the New York Speedway. He wins his race and is hired as a race driver. This marks the beginning of his career in Nascar and he is soon the best racing driver in the field. Simultaneously he meets Shona, they fall in love, marry, and have two children, a son and a daughter, to whom they allot typically Indian names: Princess and Champ.

After eight successful years at the top of the Nascar leagues R.V. is faced with a rival. A new driver called Rusty hits the scene. Rusty is evil because his car is black and he smiles whenever someone gets knocked off the track (usually they get knocked off by him). In their first race together Rusty knocks R.V. (spectacularly) off the road and R.V. is hospitalised. He recovers but loses his confidence as regards future racing. After a string of failures, and not having saved for a rainy day, R.V is sacked from the team. The family house in the suburbs is repossessed, the family are forced to move to the Bronx in reduced circumstances, and R.V has to resume his old job as a lowly cabbie. Rather than admit reduced circumstances to their children R.V. and Shona tell them they are moving to the Bronx to take part in a reality show and that they must be brave if it seems a little tough at first. Initially the children are stupid enough to buy this utter bollocks. But later they realise what's going on and rather than discuss it with their parents they elect to stop eating lunch at school in order to save their lunch money to help their Mum and Dad out.

Champ eventually collapses and is hospitalised. He needs an operation (for what?) if he is going to survive and it is going to cost 65 000 US dollars. R.V. has no medical insurance so there is only one thing for it - he must go back to Nascar and race again to save his son. His old team, Speeding Saddles, won't take him back but his taxi driver friends and Harry club together enough money to get hold of a race car and become his team instead. A comeback race follows and at the beginning Rusty (remember he is evil) says 'this time I'll take R.V. off the road for good' and then laughs (an evil laugh). The race begins and things go back and forward. Rusty tries some underhand tactics but they fail because R.V. is too sharp. He has to be. His son's life is on the line. Just before the finish line R.V. rams Rusty. Rusty's car flips into the air and he is killed in an ensuing inferno. R.V. crosses the finish line and victory is finally his again. Everyone cheers, Champ simultaneously comes out of his coma, nobody cares that Rusty is dead (because he was evil), and everything goes swiftly back to normal. R.V. regains his dignity and the life that once was his.

This is a brief summary of 'Ta Ra Rum Pum,' the film I went to see last night at the Ritz Cineplex in Shimla. There were only about three of us in the large cinema but I think we all enjoyed it. I certainly did. The film was in Hindi without subtitles although occasionally sentences like, 'hey chill out ok,' would pop out in English. This helped me understand what was going on better. For example, there was one scene between Shona and her wealthy disapproving father in which she was telling him that she planned to marry R.V. and he was saying he didn't approve. I was struggling to get the jist of this but then he blurted out, 'but no college education,' I knew then what was going on. R.V. was played by a slightly too 'buff' for my liking Saif Ali Khan, and Shona was played by the extremely attractive actress Rani Mukerji. Harry, the mate, was played by the Indian comedian Jaaved Jaffrey. I enjoyed watching Jaaved Jaffrey the most although he is not in a lot of the film.

On an uncharitable day I might discuss various holes I noticed in the plot, and the unclear morality of the some the characters, but this is not such a day so I'll point out instead that the interspersed music and dance routines were terrific, and the high gloss filming of New York was terrific.

My favourite bit of the film came towards the beginning when R.V. is given his big shot. Shona (who at this point is playing hard to get) reluctantly goes to watch him and takes a seat in the middle of the 100 000 plus Nascar stadium crowd. R.V. shouts across from the pit: 'you came' and with seemingly superhuman powers of hearing she distinguishes his voice and hears his two word comment. Coyly, she says back: 'good luck cabbie,' and he, also endowed with superhuman hearing gives her a thumbs up and then tears off in his car to the start line and to victory.