Still Darjeeling (I think that is finally the correct spelling...)

(Editor's note: I haven't properly proofread this post, so please excuse my haste -J.B.)



I like this place more than any other I have been in in India - it is much cleaner, much better preserved, the people are nice (and good looking Nepalese mainly) and I have found a place that has excellent food. There are

no touts and very little pressure to buy.



IMPORTANT



ON THE OTHER HAND, BECAUSE IT IS SO HIGH AND SO COLD THIS IS SWEATERLAND - MUCH BEAUTIFUL HANDMADE JERSEYS ETC. I COULD NOT HELP GOING INTO A " WOMANS SELF HELP" SHOP AND BUYING WHAT I THINK ARE LOVELY SWEATERS FOR THE KIDS - ALL 4 - AND I HAVE POSTED THEM AIRMAIL TO ROY. THEY SHOULD BE THERE FOR PESACH. AS I SAID THIS IS SWEATERLAND AND I WOULD LOVE TO BUY SOME FOR ALL

OF YOU, OR FOR THOSE WHO TRUST MY TASTE. IF THE PARCEL IS NOT TOO BIG I CAN SEND IT AIRMAIL OTHERWISE IT IS OF COURSE FAR CHEAPER TO SEND IT SNAIL-SNAIL MAIL. WHATEVER, I WILL BE HERE FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER 3 DAYS SO YOU CAN ANSWER BEFORE THEN.



I am having fun here, wandering up and down the narrow streets and I have ridden the "toy train", visited the zoo - which is all up and down the mountain but very animal and human friendly and I have now seen my first

tiger in India. I also visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Center and the Botanical Gardens. All in all I am having a relaxed and enjoyable time here and will be sorry to leave, but leave I will.



Jono, don't bother putting this on my blog, it is just for you guys.



(I know, but I still wanted to leave it in. -JB)



I still miss you guys and am sorry that I won't be with you all but when duty calls I cannot ignore. Enjoy your time together.

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Darjeeling

So thats where I am now after 4 days of travel through unLonley Planet India where I had to find lodging by myself along the way. I have just arrived, checked into a hotel which I may leave tomorrow, and came down to check my mail and to put your minds at rest if you were worried at all.



Now I am going to look for food and then have an early night (not unusual). I will write an extended mail in the next couple of days. I will probably stay here for about a week as it is very pretty and after all that riding to

get here I wont run away.



At the moment sitting next to me, are probably the only other Israelis in town who I happened to find when I arrived.

Off to Darjeeling

Yes, that is my next stopping place, why? I have no idea, perhaps because my motorbike is parked facing north and I can just go straight without worrying about turning early in the morning.



At the moment I am in Puri which is another temple town (one of the four holiest Hindu shrines appaently. The main attraction is apparently the fact that, like Amsterdam or Nimbin in Australia, you can buy "ganja" legally, at

government shops! (but of course it is not nearly as of high a quality as the private enterprise sector). It is an accepted part of the local religious ceremony and very popular. Besides the gezillions of Indian tourists who come here to worship (and smoke religiously) there are quite a few European tourists and there are also a number of Israelis, a very small number but I spent a couple of days with some nice kids and after they left I also did my touristing, visiting a couple of interesting sites/sights. In addition there are some excellent fish restaurants here and I have been eating very well - no meat however. So I have been here for about 6 days and

tomorrow I leave.



Just to update you all. I was in Pondicherry for a while, from there I drove to Malallapuram which is very similar to Puri except that it has some excellent meat restaurants and my guesthouse had a great swimming pool which

I used every day after I had visited the beach the first day and crossed it off my "must swim here" list.



After a pleasant stay in Malallapuram I decided to make for here and when I looked at the map it looked like about 1400 - 1500 kms. I didnt know what the road was like but from my experience up to now with Indian roads I reckoned on 5 - 6 days for the trip - No worries mate" the bike is good and time doesnt seem to be a problem at the moment. I got up early in the morning loaded the bike and set out. I immediately found myself on a lovely

2 lane (each direction) highway and in less than an hour was in Chennai/Madras.



The highway just sort of ended in the middle of the city, no ring road, but I had my trusty map and soon found the right road but then a large gentleman on a bike like mine stopped me and started chatting. He is a member of the "Chenai Bulls" a motorcycle club that travels all over the country and he offered to show me the way to my highway so I followed him and 10 minutes later was off my map and I lost him at a traffic light when I stalled and he didnt. I spent the next couple of hours driving around Chennai but eventually, with the aid of Zen and several helpful locals I was once again on the highway and what a highway it was.



For 1100 kms I could drive almost as if i were in Israel or the States, except of course for the many vehicles, from bicycles to the biggest busses, coming towards me on the wrong side of the road - of course I have mentioned this before but I was struck anew by it on this great highway. In fact it was such a good road that from time to time I would push the bike to 100! Great fun soaring down the open road with the wind in your face and no obligations. The scenery too was lovely and I had a great drive (except for about 100 kms on the 3rd day when the road reverted to normal Indian highway standard). The first night I spent in Ongole(!) a town which looks like it sounds and the 2nd in Vishakhapatnam which has over a million inhabitants and really needs them with a name like that. All in all I ended up driving 1325 kms in 30 hours on the road! I am having fun.



So now I have another 1000 odd kms before I reach my next destination on unknown and maybe interesting roads. The road less travelled.



Lonely planet is not much help if you are not at one of their recommended sites, on the road here only Vishakhapatnam was given a mention. But I managed. The road less travelled.

And more pictures

Pictures, galore!

Pondicherry and other stuff

I was taught as a little boy by my Christian nurse (in my house we had a nurse to look after the kids) "cleanliness is next to godliness". If so, then India, despite its myriads of gods and temples, is the most godforsaken place I have ever visited.

I am now in Pondicherry, a little piece of France left behind when the French moved out some 50 years ago (I think). It is unbelievable: wide streets, a beautiful waterside boardwalk (tayelet) but with no cafes restaurants along it, which I can't understand, well preserved buildings, policemen with 'kepis' and French and other European restaurants - and you all know what that means! Last night I had a real hamburger. Thank the gods that I have decided to service my bike here and to rest up a bit, the last leg to here was 430 kms in one day and I could not think of a better place to rest up. The only problem here is that it seems to be the worst smelling town I have visited so far - you smell shit half the time! However the town is full of French tourists and even a number who live here permanently - there is some sort of international community - - that leads a special lifestyle, I hope to visit the area and check it out tomorrow.

If you remember I left Varkala and the delicious fish on the 2nd of Feb setting happilly off for Kodaikenal - well no zen, no nothing - got completely lost, I must have driven an extra 150 - 200 kms and most of that in the mountains on real scary roads. I bought a map in Varkala, the best map of India available here - I think I will use it for toilet paper. Half the roads marked on it don't exist or don't go where they show they are going or end suddenly at some ashram in the middle of nowhere. And roads that do exist and lead somewhere are oftimes absent from my Eicher Map Book - Aaaaaaagh! But the drive was magnificent and the road filled with animals, squirrels, monkeys, birds of a gazillion varieties, cows dogs, donkeys, horses, pigs and of course at least one elephant and the views were breathtaking etc.....

I finally in Kodaikanal in the late afternoon after 2 hard days of travel and checked into a fairly decent guesthouse. And then it got cold, and then it got colder and then it froze. I spent about 3 nights there and never left my room after 6pm, what kind of a holiday is that? Mind you, it is very beautiful up there and I did do a couple of walks and was impressed by the scenery. of course the Israelis have taken over Vattakanal, a little village about 4 kms from Kodai and a bit higher in the hills - they can have it. On my second day there I met a guy who knew me from Om Beach and he invited me to visit him and his girlfriend in Vatta and so I walked about 30 minutes downhill to their little hovel on the mountainside. I then crawled up the hill for about 60 minutes - fortunately I was alone and nobody saw what a wreck I really was. I found a place that made really good chicken pies and I think that because of the food I stayed in Kodai an extra day. But it was too cold and I wasn't enjoying it and so I left.

From Kodai I drove to Madurai where I spent 2 days visiting the local temple and the Ghandi Memorial Museum. In Madurai I found a great supermarket (there are a couple like that here in Pondi too) sold all sorts of western foods and stuff, Scottish butter biscuits, decaffe coffee, impoted cigarettes but most important of all - tinned meatloaf (luf!, the Israeli equivalent of spam --J.B.) and I bought a couple of tins and had a gastronomic orgasm. (okay, I admit that luf is not a reason for an orgasm but after my experience with meat in Varkala it was the best meal I had eaten in days)

From Madurai I drove to Rameswaram which is as close as you can get to Sri Lanka in India - the town is about 40 kms from Sri Lanka and if you drive east for about 18 kms you reach Adams Bridge (after a 4 km walk along the beach) which is only about 18 kms from Sri Lanka - unfortunately it is 18 kms across water and there are no ferries so you can only almost see S.L. as it is beyond the horizon - in Rameswaran I ate luf because even the dhabas were bad there.On my second night there I went for a walk around town, well there is no real around town so I walked to the temple which is the center of town and came across a ceremony with guys carrying statues of gods and of course in front a beautifully decorated elephant.

So as long as I am enjoying the food I will spend a couple more days here and then start making my way slowly north.

Shpitz - Varkala

Most of the men wear diapers for fucks sake, and I have seen them expose themselves at each other and I have noticed that all the teachers of girls wear the diapers. Makes you stop and think, right!

So I am still in Varkala, first it was because I was sick and then because the next day I was thrown out of two (yes, 2) guesthouses because they didnt believe that I had had food poisoning but I really did! And I was damned if I was going to let them chase me away. And then the fish is the best food Ive eaten since leaving Goa, I never thought I would say some thing like that but there, I have, the blue marlin/swordfish is especially tasty with an almost steaklike texture to it and very little 'fishiness'. I have stayed in 5 different guest houses in Varkala and on Saturday I am leaving for Kodaikenal.

The day before yesterday I set off with Eyal who also has a bike but it is hospitalized so he rode pillion, for the shpitz ('tip' or 'point') of India, Kunyakumari, where that night I watched the sun sink into the ocean on my right and that morning I got up at 5.45 so that I could watch the sun rise from the ocean on my left. The sunset/sunrise is a big thing with Indians and they come in droves to watch it. The sunset is watched from the beach by thousands but the sunrise only by those who dont have a hotel roof (we did), those who do have a roof gather there in their hundreds from about 6am, at about 6.45 they begin to leave but our sun only rose from behind the clouds at about 7.15, well worth waiting for. I also took a tour of the island memorial to some revered 'baba' but since I am pretty irreverant myself I didnt bother remebering his name. Kunyakamary is very pretty in a rundown, dirty sort of Indian way and for the life of me we couldnt find a decent eating place even though the town appears to have about 2000 active fishing boats!

On the way back we got lost and then hit a really deep pothole! 10 minutes later the steering begins to wobble and people to shout at us, we reach a town and by then the wobble is uncontrolable. Descending from the bike we find that about 8 of the spokes (shpitzim or slikim - what do you call them, I'm taking a census) on the rear wheel are broken - it must have started with the pothole and as the wheel weakened spoke after spoke broke, eventually 14 had to be replaced. Luckily (Its India, its the zen thing again) we were right next to a puncture-wallah who took the wheel off and sent it to the spoke-wallah by a ricksha-walla and 3 hours later (just twice the promised one and a half) we were on our way again only to promptly get lost again and then after finding the right road getting lost yet a third time! Okay, I'm not the best navigator ever! We did find a very nice air-conditioned restaurant (my first AC in India!) where I had a reasonably good chicken-liver and no food poisoning.

Eventually, about 9 hours after setting out we arrived back in Varkala - WHICH I AM LEAVING TOMORROW!!! It only took us 4 hours to get there. Mind you, on the way we saw an elephant being washed in a river by his mahout and when I stopped to take pictures he invited me to join them, some stupid 'Polish" prissiness prevented me from doing it, the water was dirty, I didnt have a change of clothes, and other stupid shit. Ten minutes later I was overcome with regret but by then it was too late. If I believed in anything I could say that they broken spokes were punishment for not joining the elephant, you know, karma and all that shit.

Thats all for now folks, I have to get back to my exceptional Kerala-grass of which I have a goodly supply. Ha!