Fifteen: Beer And Loathing In Las Pondy, and On The Road (again)

No Comments »

Finally, my three months of Pondicherry living are over. Briefly summarised, I worked with an NGO based there, gaining more experience than I could have imagine. Including; how to write grant proposals; how to attempt to set up a sustainable business (don't ask); how to recognise when you're beaten; how to raise puppies; how not to run an NGO and how to navigate the treacherous waters of the Indian management 'system' (read: there is no 'system'). It's similar to a headless chicken, except the head is still squawking non-stop and the wings don't know what to do. It wasn't easy, and sometimes it wasn't fun, but for the most part I enjoyed it and by God, it's certainly washed away all those ideas of rosy eyed, saving-children-and-having-fun that often come with NGOs. I also managed to pick myself up an internship for a month at a consultancy company, so now I've seen both sides of the coin.

Pondy wasn't boring, by any stretch of the imagination, but most of it was barely blogable. I had fun,a made a lot of friends and ended up feeling at home in that little slice of India by the sea. I also managed to pick up some people who I will most definitely be catching up with, including my Stoke Newington exiled, dahl addict, vegan and soon-to-be travel buddy, Elise, from whom you will be seeing more of on these pages. (I'm trying to convince to write a blog purely about dahl, if you don't think it's worth it, you haven't had good enough dahl). Besides that my fellow voluncherries Loretta, Tiffany and Elodie(one incredibly English, one a fake English women from Paris, one a hip hop dancing putain from le Sud); Udai, Maus and Kent consultant extraordinaires, and mentors in the dark arts of capitalism and high fashion Indian émigrés, Rashi and Komal, were all standard fixtures of my time here.

I can't leave too, without mentioning the best idea ever, the AC Bar Crawl (mentioning it here breaks the first rule of ACBC, alas). The basic premise is to visit a string of A/C bars (local bars, invariably without A/C and hostile to our presence) and drink as much dirty Indian liquor as possible before they shut everyone out and then to wander to a party thrown by some nonchalant French expats we don't like. It may sound grim but they were the best of nights, if you ever find yourself in Pondy, try and get yourself an ACBC night. All that coupled with salsa nights, too many Kingfisher's to count, bribing police and watching the sunset (and rise) over the Bay of Bengal, made for a pretty amazing time.

And so now I have gone and am back on the road. Leaving, I managed to miss a train and get my first taste of the monsoon but have finally made it to Orissa, a state in the East. I have officially left South India and everything is about to get a whole lot more hectic. From here (Bhubaneswar, the unpronounceable, dreary, smelly capital) I'm whistle stopping through some of the holiest sites in India before hitting Kolkata, Varanassi and then Delhi, to be reunited with Udai (briefly) and Elise ( until the end of this runaway's exile).

Back on the road, back in tiny, dank hotel rooms and night trains, I can't stop smiling. The whole of the baking North awaits before my return back to dreary Britain (and incredibly London) and I'm ready to gobble it all up with eyes, mouth and overloaded nose.

Love to all back home and elsewhere.
Keep in touch (even if I am awful at replying).
Gx










Fourteen: Long Overdue, or Why Life is Pondilicious

No Comments »



This is so long overdue, and I apologise firstly. Since last time I posted I have trekked across the width of India and found myself rather firmly planted in Pondicherry, last bastion of French India and home until June.

Before that I stopped in Madurai, a ludicrous place. It's effectively a rather charmless, dirty city with the most beautiful temple plonked in the middle. Although the temple far out dates anything else, it has the feel of being the other way round, as if Madurai Town Council decided to put a gigantic ancient monument in their corner of grimy Tamil Nadu. And accordingly, stepping over the threshold of the temple, it feels as if you have been transported away from everything else. No honking rickshaws, shouting men, people unloading and reloading furniture into tiny vans, hawkers selling jasmine and steaming chai stands. Instead there is the great dense mass of pilgrims, making their way around the gigantic complex. But unlike Churches where it seems silence and solemnity are the only appropriate actions, here everyone was so happy! Parents with their children were laughing, and the whole atmosphere was convivial and fun and exciting. I wandered around for almost 2 hours, watching people pray, seeing how the priests could part the crowd with their presence and all the other things that happen in the various antechambers, halls and shrines. It wasn't until I heard the beating of drums and a huge wave of movements through the crowd that I saw the procession of the idols pass 10 feet behind me, accompanied by several elephants and numerous cows. It was all incredibly surreal and dead exciting. 

Unfortunately the temple is about the only thing in Madurai that is exciting, besides a Independence Museum where it was all about how nasty the British were (we definitely were) but which made me feel incredibly uncomfortable as the stream of people read about the crimes we angrez committed. Many a bad look was sent my way and I scuttled off to feel bad and spent my last night sat on the roof of my hotel watching fireworks over the temple gopuras.

And then, suddenly, I was on a flight (picked up for the outrageous price of 20 Great British Pounds) flying over the ginormous expanse of Tamil Nadu, were I was picked up in Chennai and driven down to Pondy, my new home. It was all slightly reminiscent of moving into halls again and meeting your mates for the first time. I drew up, backpack-on-back, and wandered into the office where I knew i'd be for the next 3 months. Luckily for me it has all be incredible. I'm now firmly ensconced and feel amazingly at home. The work with the NGO (www.primetrust.org) is bloody hard, but rewarding, and I feel like I'm learning new things everyday. The other volunteers are great funny and (mostly French) bunch. There's a little buzzy, boozey group of expats who make great permanent drinking partners and we have a rooftop that can host a mean little party. 

Pondy itself is an odd mix of Tamil and French which bizarrely cohabit rather well. The French Quarter, near the see, has all the nice restaurants and bars, which are pricier but nice night spots, while the Tamil section (which is by far the majority) is full of snack bars, samosa stalls and A/C bars (the best worst thing ever, bars filled with old Tamil men drinking cheap beer in a shit hole which oddly never seem to actually have A/C). It's proving to be a great mix of all the things you need to survive a long stay (a bit of European food, a lot of drinks, good parties, nice people) with all the things you want from being in India (crazy rabid dogs, meandering cows, onion wallahs, bloody good curry and steaming hot parathas). It's hard to summarise what I've been up to but suffice to say it's been great fun and that although I'm working hard I'm playing hard too (hence the lack of time for updating this!).

Right now I am putting the finishing touches on a Funding Proposal for a bank, and waiting for my flat mate, Tiffany, to bring me tandoori chicken. Life is pretty bloody good. HOWEVER, unfortunately by SD card with ALL of my photos from India has been corrupted (one too many scummy internet cafes) and so there are no photos to accompany this! As soon as I have some I'll post them but in the mean time if anyone knows how to fix this please write your answers on the back of a postcard to POBOX GEORGE, names and address on the back please! A Blue Peter badge for anyone who helps me save them.

That's all for now,
Love to all,
Gx. 

Thirteen: Deep South and the Backwaters

1 Comment »

From googling Murdeshwar one of the things that struck me was that everything was called RNS. A tourist board maybe? Nope. Apparently RNS basically owns the entirety of the place, having been born there, he decided to revitalise it with a shit ton of money, a giant statue of Shiva, a gopura and the words RNS emblazoned on the skyline. It's all a little odd. The statue and the gopura, a kind of Hindu pagoda look nice from afar but up close it all seems a little Disneyland. This especially apparent when you spot that it has UVPC double-glazing, the scourge of Middle England, in all of its windows. However, the diving was incredible, which was really why I came. I have officially done my first two qualified dives and it was amazing, alas, no turtles, but plenty of coral and hundreds of fish and a (possible) shark! I actually had a great time in this weird little town and kept getting taken down alleys to illegal bars when people found out I was English, the food was great and I met my first unattractive Swedish couple ever. That, and while eating lunch in a tiny restaurant where they spoke no English I turned around to find a holy cow had wandered in and was stealing all the rotis.

From Murdeshwar I zoomed down to Cochin (on a train! I actually managed to get on one this time!) just in time for the Biennale. I won't lie, this was complete fluke and I had no idea of its existence but it has to be better than the Sharjah Biennial, which was summarised by my mother as "almost as good as a class of Year 2 students".

Cochin is gorgeous, though actually, the fort, with its heritage hotels and fishing nets is nothing spectacular, but the roads off of it, leading to Jew Town, are an amazing rarity in India. More like Marrakesh, old buildings are crumbling but have yet to be demolished and replaced by high rise apartments. Antique shops full of old doors, battered old cameras and bronze idols were penny-a-piece. While it is decidedly shabby, it is also incredibly chic, which is perhaps why the Biennale was curated so well and was genuinely interesting. We tend to forget how lucky we are in England, that we can toddle off and see world class art by getting on the tube. Often art galleries and especially modern ones in places like India are full of mediocre (at the best) and unsophisticated work. Of course, all the best is usually already in the Tate, and it is investment that is the problem, but not so in Kochi. I was happily surprised at how amazing it was, and the spaces, old spice warehouses, docks and public gardens had been appropriated amazingly for a mixture of modern art and traditional music. I even stumbled across an amazing (and frankly unphotographable) collection by home grown London girl and Sri Lankan Tamil Maya Arulpragsam a.k.a M.I.A, which was incredible.

I'm definitely in the south now, and things have changed. Besides the languages, the appearance and the thinning out of Russians, it's the food and the culture that are most apparent. After being overcharged for bad seafood in Goa it was amazing that when I asked for crab in Kochi they obliged by sitting me on the back of a motor bike and taking me to the fish market to chose one, which happened to weigh about a kilo and cost the grand total of £5.50 along with a teapot of "special tea", also known as Kingfisher. Life here is a little more carnivalesque and a little more fun.


From Kochi I headed down to Allepey, apparently once dubbed the Venice of the East, I find this comparison as accurate as Jordan being called the Kate Middleton of Essex. Dirty, busy, full of highly polluted canals populated only by plastic bottles, at first it's just another busy Indian town. But once I got out into the "backwaters", the marshy, river strewn land between the towns and the sea, I became slightly more sympathetic to the comparison. Sliding through tiny villages perched on little canals in the middle of nowhere, accessible only because I was too cheap to rent a houseboat and went on a canoe, it was gorgeous, striking and felt like the "deep south" that people have talked about. I had the most incredible thali, which was replenished with well meaning vigour. The whole thing was jut beautiful and I was sad to leave. Kerala deserves more time than I could give it and I would love to take the little local ferries from one place to the next, jut exploring. Alas, I had an appointment to keep in Pondy, a good 750km to the East, and so had to dash off.






Now I am in Madurai (or was, it's taken me almost 5 days to find WiFi and post this...), half way between Kerala and Pondicherry, it's a temple town in Tamil Nadu frontier. More of that next time, this is far too long already. But tomorrow I land in Chennai, ready to be scooped up and taken to the little ex-French enclave of Pondicherry, home for the next two months. Let's hope that it's all it's cracked up to be, by god I need a glass of wine and a decent coffee!

Gx















Twelve: Is this even India?

1 Comment »

My route from Matheran to Goa was undoubtedly arduous and slightly harrowing. After waking up early to go for a final ride out onto the cliffs I packed and set off. First, a shared taxi down the tiny mountain roads, then a Mumbai commuter train (think rush hour Victoria line but for two hours and the train doors don't close/exist) and then I was faced with the fact I couldn't get the train I'd booked (I'd be "waitlisted" and was too far down the list). I had to fork out to get an overnight bus. Comfortable, I was told, and it has AC, it will only be 14 hours. Lies. 18 hours later, after lying on a pleather mattress with a turmeric (or piss) stained sheet in the sub-zero AC (I was so cold I took my socks off and put them on my arms, like inelegant evening mittens) I finally arrived in Goa.
Hut living in Arambol

Goa has been interesting. It's certainly made me think a lot. After the frenetic introduction to India in Mumbai and then Matheran, it was a shock. Arambol, where I arrived, is basically a beach and road, the beach lined with shacks and restaurants serving spag bol and mild curries, the road lined with shops selling "hippy clothes", undoubtedly made in the slums of Mumbai along with the H&M handbags. The whole thing was covered in a cloud of hash smoke.

After my first day the relief of not travelling wore off and it started to seem that this was all somehow, "inauthentic". As if Arambol (and Arambol being one of the "best" beaches for backpackers), had sprung out of the ground to provide people with the India that was comfortable, sanitised and safe. As if it wasn't really India at all. It seemed incongruous with the rest of small part of India I've seen, almost culturally spayed. But the more I thought about it the more I realised how I wrong was.

As travellers we often talk about searching for the "authentic", trying to beat the rapid development of resorts from hippy paradises into package holiday destinations. This has fuelled the constant beach hopping in Goa as well as the move from Thailand, to Cambodia, to Laos and now Vietnam as the place to go to experience the "authentic". But certainly in India, that idea of authenticity is a lie. The idea that it's a land of spices, colour, elephants, women in saris, curries, chapatis and the exotic mysticism of the "east" is simply not true. It is (and forgive, but I'm still a humanities student at heart) a Western construct, an Orientalist view of the 'Other', of the exotic otherworldliness of anywhere non-Western.

That is not to say that parts of India aren't like that, of course they are but there so many facets to modern Indian culture, to modern India itself, that this universality no longer holds true. India includes the Mumbaikars in their chic coffee shops, drinking espressos and playing with their iPhones; the people in Dharavi who looked at me like an was an alien and wanted to try out their English; the Matheran horseboys who had travelled from all over the country to plod plump Indian bourgeoisies around on ponies. And it includes these beaches in Goa too, that shrugged off Portuguese rule and replaced it with swathes of tourists, just as England includes Blackpool and Dawlish.

After Arambol and Palolem, Patnem was a gift. Still tiny and undeveloped I walked from Palolem through Colom, a beautiful little fishing village sat on a rocky cove, down onto the long, empty white sand. While still decidedly quiet and unfrenetic and with many an English voice (although the TOWIE extras have been replaced with young yogic families from London) it's been a lovely little beach break and a lot more Goan as opposed to subcontinental Malia.

After this I'm off to a tiny place called Murdeshwar (so tiny it's not in my Rough Guides, not sure how I'll cope!) to do some diving and then onwards to see some more of the great, wide South. Besides everything, I've met some great people and had some good nights, including one where I met a Russian chiropractor who clicked my back so many ways I couldn't stand and nearly vomited. And of course, I think it's been nice to sit around and process the tiny slither of India I've seen so far (so small in fact, it's frankly daunting). Wish me luck! I'm sure at some point I will be sat, hot and bedraggled off of a 12 hour train, shovelling rice into my hungry mouth and will miss the glorious calm of here, but right now I can't wait to hit the road again.
Best,
Gx











Patnem Beach this morning.

Eleven: The Return to Hope Hall

No Comments »

I had been waiting in Mumbai for what felt like weeks (5 days) for my camera to be fixed and I was itching to get out. Not that I don't like it but how anyone can stand it for more than a week is beyond me. Luckily I was saved by the arrival of Shaan, Rhys and Will, on their way from Goa to Sri Lanka. It was nice to see some familiar faces after being stared at since I got here and I managed to get some good tips on where to stay (not Delhi), where to eat (not hair thali) and what to drink (my discovery of sweet lassis is now a full blown addiction, rivaling my former penchant for Diet Coke). Check out their blog at http://wellstreetwanderers.blogspot.com, they're now off to the rest of Asia which has made me jealous as I realise I will be eating only curry for the next 6 months.

 I was finally able to quit the hot sweat of Mumbai, leaving behind the enormous rats and constant buzz for streets full of horses and not a lot else. I arrived in Matheran yesterday, it's a tiny (in fact, the smallest in the world apparently) hill station about 300kms east of Mumbai. It's a great little place and the rather ardous journey ends with a tiny toy train (think thunder mountain at Disney) that rolls up the impossibly steep hillside for 2 hours. Luckily I was entertained my three wonderful old French Hippie ladies who made jokes about Toulouse being known for rugby, saucisson et le saucisson de jouer rugby. Putains sale!
Ganesh on the way up.
Thunder Mountain! 


It struck me just now, as I write this in some internet cafe next to a child playing GTA in Spanish and someone just stop for a chat while saddled up, that this really is the only place where people actually ride through the middle of the town to get to the shops. Cars and auto-rickshaws are banned so the now familiar tooting has been replaced my the clip-clopping. It's all rather lovely and definitely cured me of Bombay malaise (... I sound like a Raj civil servant, dear god). I actually got the balls to go out for a ride today (bearing in mind most of the bridle ways are next to sheer cliffs) and it was bloody amazing. Before I wanted to buy a Hindustan Ambassador and drive around, now I want to ride a horse to Goa. Unfortunately, there were no photos, I was too scared for the safety of my accident prone camera, and today also happened to be laundry day so I rode in shorts. Suffice to say I'm in pain.

 I head back down tomorrow and back into Mumbai to hop on a train to Goa. I'm not quite shore what ticket I have so god knows what will happen but hopefully I'll arrive in one piece eventually. Wish me luck! As always, love to all. Send me an email and I solemnly swear I'll write back.
P.S Check out where I'm staying! 
Gx

Ten: Mumbai Dreams

No Comments »

Well I have definitely missed an update or two. My last few days in Turkey were spent in the South East, Turkish Kurdistan, and they were remarkable and filled with more busses, more kebabs and more lovely Kurds. I zoomed my way from Urfa (I say zoomed, my flight was cancelled and was bussed half way across the country to then zoom) to Istanbul and then was back to Dubai for Christmas. And now, a few weeks and a whole lot of paperwork later, I am firmly ensconced in a room (I am denying it the classification of "hotel") in Mumbai.

We've all read (or seen) a hundred clichéd introductions to Mumbai and nothing I can say will change that. Suffice to say that it is not Slumdog Millionaire. It is the noisiest place in the entire world, it stinks and it is constantly rammed. I've nearly been run over twice today, someone tried to sell me peacock feathers for 10 minutes and I'm pretty sure I stepped in wee (in flip flops). Saying that, I love it for all of those reasons and more. When the smell of car exhaust and sewers is suddenly cut with the waft of frying rotis or you turn a corner from grey, concrete tenements to be met with bright, crumbling Raj-era buildings, it definitely makes it all worth while. Despite it's problems modern Mumbai hasn't obliterated old Bombay and it still maintains a lot of its charm.

The place I'm staying, admittedly is definitely not the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It must have once been quite nice but it's now such an indistinct dirty colour it could have been yellow or blue or green for all I know. However, it has an original cast iron lift and it costs the equivalent of a Boots meal deal so it's swings and roundabouts.

 I flew in two days ago, arrived in the evening and had the inevitable problem of my taxi drivers not understanding me, or my map or the women on the phone and so I got to wander, backpack and all, through the middle of "Old Bombay" before I finally sunk onto my rock hard mattress. It definitely felt like a scene from a movie (one of those clichéd intros to Mumbai) but it was less than amusing at the time and I've never been happy to find see a streaky sign that said "Hotel Lawrence".

As much as I'm enjoying it here I'm not hugely inclined to stay too long. I know I'll eventually be back and it's a drain on funds (yes, a Hoisin Duck Wrap priced room is expensive...) but my camera broke the night I left Dubai so it's currently in a tiny shop somewhere getting fixed and I'm here until Tuesday. After that I start to make my way South and will end up in Pondicherry in early March to start my internship. I've written this sat in my room trying desperately to tune into BBC world service as internet access here is properly lacking and WiFi even more so and I've got Guardian withdrawl. Hopefully I'll be able to post this soon.
Love to all,
Gx











Nine: My Love of Kurds and Other Stories

No Comments »

So, why did I have so much time? And why was I on a boat, when I was meant to be on the vast planes of Anatolia? Van, that's why. And what is there to say about Van? On the banks of a vast salt water lake 800km east of Cappodocia and only 80km from the Iranian border, I had seen this place and thought, fantastic, sounds great, certainly not Goreme or Istanbul or, god forbid, Bodrum. Better still I was told it was the centre of old Armenian territory and in the heartland of Kurdish Turkey. And yes, the lake was astonishingly beautiful, sitting in the permanent half light haze of winter surrounded by snow cone mountains on all sides, and "Eski Van", the old city, was stuck on a huge promontory overlooking all of this. The castle, the old Mosque and the various remains were eerily beautiful but were destroyed by the Ottomans near the end of World War One  as a kind of punishment to the Armenians (who had fought with the opposing Russians). And it's what replaced it that was so dire, with a dearth of... Well just about everything. 
New Van has literally retreated from the gorgeous lakeside setting and is a planned, hastily built new town with all the charisma of Luton. Honestly, I make do, I get on with it, but after I'd wandered to the old town, walked around for a few hours and waited an hour to get a dolmus back in the dark (but only about 5 p.m) I stumbled back to a ghost town. What little had been there during the day was now packed up and it took me about 20 minutes to find somewhere to eat a very mediocre pide and then had to retreat to my dire hotel room (no showers, no heating, one footprint toilet) with a good book. Effectively I had travelled for about 16 hours, just to plan to make my escape as soon as humanely possible.
And that was it. A summarisation: Van, with all it's potential to not be, is ugly and dull, like a Turkish maiden aunt. I planned my escape, I'd take the ferry over the huge lake to Tatvan on opposite side, bed down for another night and escape. I woke up, had read that the ferry left at 12 so zipped out of the city in a taxi (we must allow ourselves some luxuries, it cost 10 lira) only to arrive at a dock in the middle of no where that was missing a ferry. After some scrabbling I found out that the ferry left precisely at 16.12 another four and a half hours of waiting. And am I glad I waited instead of trekking it back to Van to sit in some nondescript çay house, because this was the only redeeming feature of the whole failed venture: the people. As I sat around writing my last blog entry and shivering I was bought a çay, then an old man called over and chucked me two oranges he was loading onto a crate. Eventually I had been installed in the ramshackle café with the dock workers and the little Kurdish waiter, being softly interrogated as a token foreigner: "From where?" "Ingleterre", "Student?" "No, I finished" and, best of all, "What you speak? Turkish, Kurdish,   Russian, German, Farsi?" reeled off like bullets... "Arabi?" roars of laughter, "NO!" big belly laughs from all the grizzled guys once this had been translated. 


I guess you start to realise how far off the beaten track you truly are when people start to take an interest in you purely because you're foreign. In Van I was a mild curiosity, by the time I'd got to Hasankeyf I was like a dog riding a camel, walking on two legs. And here was the thing, I was officially in Kurd country, the part of Turkey that has been fighting for independence since the 80s, the part that is meant to be dangerous, unstable and backwards. And they were the warmest, most hospitable, most friendly of all the people I'd met. Yes, they are fiercely proud of their heritage, a lot of them are deeply religious, poverty stricken, and so arrest me Turkey, systematically suppressed. In fact, the more you read about it the more it makes my stomach turn. There are no Kurdish language newspapers or TV channels until 2005, it is illegal to speak of Kurdistan and many, many Kurds have been internally displaced and arrested by the Government. And after all of that, they have none of the haughty indifference so many people in Istanbul have, but are genuinely warm and affectionate. So as the hospitality continued as the ferry tugged long Lake Van, I was fed and watered by the elderly Kurdish steward who was stood at one end of room like the captain of the Titanic, rigid in front of the fireplace as the ship flooded, except this one was watching football and desperately trying to explain to me why "Galataseray GOOD" and "Manchester United win, GOOD!". 

 We arrived into Tatvan at what felt like the middle  of night (9 O'Clock but it was pitch black and almost as dead as the desolate, corpsly Van) and I somehow managed to hike up a hill, across some railroad tracks and catch a dolmus by following the instructions of "Follow that light!", of a giant green, illuminated minaret. A quick bed down in my luxurious 3 star hotel (which featured a shower hose over a squat toilet) and off I hopped at eight on (another) bus, this time for Hasankeyf, the jewel stuck on the side of the Tigris. After the previous days rivetting excitement even a vaguely old rock would have been interesting, so heading off to one of the oldest continually inhabited places on earth (so I'm  told, all though Byblos in Lebanon says that too...) definitely perked up my spirits. That's all for now, my fingers are sticky from eating Baklava,More soon, Gx 




« Previous Entries