Tiger tiger burning bright...

In Mumbai we got our car parts, got the car serviced and Tom got a nasty fever, before heading back into the countryside again, camping in the cool and quite spectacular Northern Western ghats on our way out to the stunning buddist caves at Ajanta, 20 or so caves with elaborate carvings cut into a beautiful horse shoe shaped gorge. We also took a lovely long walk above the caves taking in a stunning waterfall through cascading pools, getting an amazing view of the gorge the buddists had chosen to live out their days many years ago. After Ajanta we continued east to Nagpur on the main Kalcutta / Mumbai trunk road, that road summing up all that is worst about Indian roads - the multitudinous hourdes springing multitudinous trucks, multitudnous motorbikes, bikes, carts, cars - did we mention trucks? - and multitudinous (mostly dead) dogs - the road kill in this country is like a horror movie, from half a monkey sticking out of the road being mourned by its confused friends on the roadside, every imaginable part of a dogs anatomy every other mile, occassional dead cow, too many wreckages of smashed trucks, staining the road with blood from the night before, etc etc - still we weaved our way through eventually.....keeping road rage to a minimum and disobeying every road rule to the maximum, like any self respecting Indian driver should. We were in Nagpur, the exact centre of India, to visit Duncan and Alan, victims of the unjudicial Indian legal system, and inmates at Nagpur central jail - we got to see them for 15 minutes speaking through a grill with many others in the room, but they were pleased to see us and we hope the things we got them will help relieve the boredom, and that they are not there too much longer. We then headed to Pench tiger reserve in central Madya Pradesh just to the North of Nagpur, the area where Kipling is supposed to have set the Jungle book, and being covered in a kind of tropical forest that is not quite rain forest, but very pretty. We had a good game drive in the very cold morning air trying and failing to spot the elusive tigers, but seeing jackals, various types of deer, bush pigs etc. We did get to see the tigers eventually though, after paying a little extra to ride an elephant through the jungle to a spot where 5 tigers, including a larger male, were resting. Elephants must be the king of the jungle as they took us right to within a few feet of the very beautiful tigers, our elephant, the littlest but seemingly bravest of the three that were with us, even walking through the bush where the tigers were resting, driving them out into the open so we could get a better look!

Madya Pradesh much less busy than any of the other states we have visited, and as the road quality declined to earth and the trucks were replaced with very sweet bullock carts with little toggle decorations and bells, we found ourselves in the heart of rural India that we’d hoped to find, a truly magical area of forest, hills and cliffs, charming villages and very colourful and friendly locals. We spent a couple of days walking in the hills around the old British hill station of Pachmari before taking a very rough road west, which soon turned to farm track then to single path – at one point we were driving across fields – but taking us deeper into the countryside; through jungle partly but also through lots of picture perfect and pristine little villages (you can imagine the stares we got - god damn crazy westerners), the scenery often looking like a Constable painting, particularly in the soft autumnal light, and the area and its people seemingly untouched by the last few hundred years – the way of life of the subsistence farmers how most Indians still live. For four wonderful days of weaving around the area but keeping a rough westerly heading, camping in the woods amongst giant spiders webs and listening to the sounds of the ubiqitous beating drum, we popped out onto a road with a semblance of tarmac, and, at the tiny village of Chiriptola, right into a band and conga line of people celebrating something or other, which took a half hour to flow around us before we could move on. Our westerly progress through the woods speeded up on the better road, and we got to the holy town of Om Kareshwar on the holy Narmada river. Only a breif two day stay at the truly fascinating little town that is Om, as, planning to come back, we moved onto Maheshwar further down stream as Tom decided he'd like to find a telly to watch the start of the Ashes...Maheshwar another very tranquil, friendly and colourful little town with beatiful temples on the river, we moved on again after a few days, as far away from a TV as we could get..., ending up in Mandu, a small village on a plateau surrounded by hundreds of elaborate overgrown Afghan ruins in the fields, and stunning views of the surrounding ravines. Mandu, Maheswar and Om all being relatively close, we returned to Om after 5 or so days of pottering and cycling around the ruins in Mandu. With a perfect view from our room over the river to the island with its many temples that forms part of Om, we spent a week rambling around and gawping at the visual feast that charaterises the place, full of lots of temples, old and new, every type of holy man performing their various forms of Puja, well dressed goats, nicely face painted cows, hundreds and hundreds of monkeys (of two types), very freindly Sadhu's and other characters - our favourite was a tall elderly fella who seemed to spend his entire life walking in a triangle on a large step near our hotel, occassinally helping himself to a ball of Shiva bhang...he seemed a happy soul, as were we! With a lovely spot for swimming in the clean river, and great veggie food - the first real travellers fare we have had since Diu - Om had it all, but just to be sure that we capped off all the Indian experiences, Cadie got dysentry...

A speedy recovery saw us back in Mumbai a few days later, where we have left the car in a lock up until we return from NZ in Jan. With a few days spare we got the night bus down to Palolem in Goa where we are now, enjoying beach luxury before the long trip to NZ. On our return the plan is, at the moment, to ship the car straight to Dubai, before heading across the Arabian Peninsula, then across the red sea to North East Africa, then north home. So thats us done in India really. By only really concentrating on two or three of the central states, with a few exceptions we seem to have (without really meaning to), almost completely avoided the tourist scene, and had a really really wonderful time. So intensely colourful, so intensely noisy, and so fundementally different from anywhere else, coming to India, the outermost point of our trip (after Xmas we are on the return leg) has been as rich an experience as we could have hoped for.

Photos are of tigers at Pench, piper in Chiriptola, Madya Pradesh bush route, monkey with Puja flowers & well dressed Goat, Om K.

Beach, mud, snot & noise!!

Been a while since we last updated this thing (in Jodhpur), too long. Still the fun hasnt stopped even though weve slowed down. A few days of travel south through pretty Rajhastan got us our long awaited appointment with the beach in Diu, Gujarat, where we stayed almost two weeks (some kind of record for us) soaking up the sun, eating delicous seafood and Gujaratí Thali's and enjoying general beach action, but with a really quaint old portugese town and some nice villages to explore as well. Only a few tourists in town zipping around on mopeds, more than we have been used to on this trip but a nice number, including a charismatic couple of roadies from Northants , Keith - 'we've done some shit aint we Joe'- (&Joe), who we spent alot of our time with. First we were staying in the old church now converted into a backpackers, but after some youngster was violently ill in the shared bathroom and didn't clean it up we packed our bags AGAIN and moved to the Super Silver which was luxury, own bathroom, clean sheets and a tv for Tom to get his cricket fix....oh and the howling dogs each morning singing along with the mosque was a good wake up call. Our birthdyas were celebrated in style gorging on seafood, Keith pointing out that Tom had crab in his eyelashes - a snack for later? - Cadie stumbling home after a few too many G & T’s with a few rest stops to admire the view of the asphalt. Time slipped by here and we realised we hadn't done any sightseeing so zoomed around in the cruiser taking shots before settling back into beach life, get up eat, beach, eat, then drink o'clock and bitings at the Alishan (which put the cricket on for Tom)- bliss. Diu was my first (Cadie) real introduction to the Inidan version of public toilets.....ANYWHERE...one kid going about his business on the the street wished to stike up a conversation at the point of ablution with "hello"....hmmm not very nice. After leaving Diu and its readily avaialble supply of cheap booze, got some exercise....kinda... joining the pilgrims on the 10,000 step climb up to some beautiful Jain and hindu temples perched at the top of a hill above the plains at Junanagh... then with shaking legs marched back down again. After that brief interlude we headed back to the beach, but this time in the wholly different setting of Dwarka, a very holy little town right on the western tip of the peninsula, and very pretty too with the sky line dominated by a tall ancient temple and its huge ever changing flags, Ghats and Sadhu huts strung along the banks of an aquamarine tidal river where it meets the sea, and long beach stretching out on the other side. We got a spot to stay right at the mouth of the river and right in the middle of the action, and settled into several days of watching the Sadhu's and pilgrims performing their Puja and living out there simple, colourful and entirely spiritural lives. Tom starting to look like sideshow Bob got a haircut and shave from a guy in a hut for 20 rupees, now resembling a man straight out of the military...Cadie had to giggle. However the town became rammed with Pilgrims as Diwali, India's Xmas, meant all those who can afford a holiday in India were on holiday, meaning Dwarka started to resemble, in a weird kind of way, an English seaside town on a bank holiday, camel rides on the beach etc...... time for us to leave. After a couple of days battling through flood damaged roads (and managing to get rid of a stow away rat we picked up in Dwarka), but stopping in a marine park for one more dip in the sea, we made it out to the 'island' of Kutch, the western most bit of India 'seperated' from the mainland (and Pakistan) by the Great Rann, a huge salt / mud flat. After a few days in the very friendly and pleasant town of Bhuj, visiting some of the tribal villages famous for their handicrafts in the North, we headed out to the Great Rann itself, though shelved plans for driving on it after we realsied it was more mud than salt flats after Tom sank up to his ankles in the mud whilst testing the ground. Gujarat a dry state - however you can get a alcohol permit stamped in your passport (Cadie's as apparently Tom only has a few pages left, ha he just does not want to look like the old soak) in certain towns, Bhuj being one of them, so we stocked up on medicinals as essential camping equpiment. The Kutch much less populated than the rest of the state, and looking like parts of Africa with its acacia bush and red laterite soil, we enjoyed a few nights camping out on the western edge of the Kutch, staring out at the Rann, my (Tom's) progress at walking out on it stopped this time by a large Hyena that crossed my path about 30m ahead, thankfully seemingly uninterested in me. The cackle of the hyena's lulling us to sleep that night, next night we had the beat of a drum (Indian's loooove to drum), as we camped miles into the bush, the beat coming closer and closer then further and further away then closer again for hours, the constant noise of this the noisest country on earth unescapale even when you think youre in the middle of nowhere. We spent 8 days in all on the Kutch (the most pictureque part of the state with very freindly and colourful tribal people), including one more visit to the beach at Mandvi (Cadie getting a face full of holy snot from a passing sneezing cow), before heading to Mumbai to get car parts via Ahmedabad (a city where it seemed to rain bird shit) and an incredible vegetarian feast.....

Photos are of cave detail, Ajanta (see post above), view from temples, Junagarh, slipslide on the Rann, Ghats at Dwarka...& sideshow Bob