The Ministry of Bad Stomachs
By Johno
Following the trials of Southern Iran and Pakistan the team were looking forward to entering India and relaxing a bit…
In the car we tend to read trashy Andy McNabb novels found at hostel book exchanges or old copies of The Economist brought out by visiting friends. They sound pretty dull but they actually provide a really good overview of all that’s going on around the world and allow us to regurgitate the opinion of someone clever than us when in current-affairs conversations thus making ourselves seem brighter than we really are.
The cover of one of these back-issues proclaimed, “India-Pakistan: The World’s Most Dangerous Border?”, and that was all I really knew about it as we passed through the relatively ordered Pakistan customs and into the chaos of the Indian side.
Indian border chaos
Once we had cleared the road of the piles of baggage to allow us to drive through the ornate iron gates we found ourselves racing to make it through before they finished for the day and the famous border ceremony started. By the time we had officially entered India in the early afternoon the surrounding roads were thronging with people making their way to the huge stands overlooking the border gates. Apparently, every day around 20,000 people from each side attend the elaborate ceremony to cheer loudly for their respective soldiers as they proudly march up to each other with all the sincerity of John Cleese in the Ministry of Silly Walks.
As we were ushered to prime position along with hundreds of other Westerners I felt a little uneasy. This was the first time in months I had been near so many other ‘travellers’ and quite frankly it felt a little weird not to be only one being stared at by all the locals.
The spectators of both sides poured their hearts into the cheering and chanting and the atmosphere was incredible as the immaculate soldiers with bristling moustaches kicked up above each other’s heads and symbolically slammed the gates shut and lowered their flags. I couldn’t deny the electric mood created by the thousands vehement patriots even if the symbolism of the whole affair did seem a little bizarre.
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Dehli Belly was the last thing on our mind as Paul and I hit the streets of the first city, Amritsar, to find some food. It wasn’t until we had drunk half of our glasses of pressed sugarcane that we noticed the guy we bought them off was mixing them with ice, no doubt not made with clean water, and washing the glasses in a large bucket thick with floating scum.
We shrugged, downed the sweet drinks and went off to find some street curry. “In for a penny, in a for pound” we told each other as we knocked back some glasses of Lassi – a type of yoghurt drink, from another guy who we were pretty sure didn’t have his GNVQ Level One in Food Hygiene.
As the minutes passed we started to regret the decision as we became hypersensitive to the rumblings of our stomachs and developed an unspoken code mainly consisting of, “Uh-oh!” followed by a serious look.
“We are going to be staying in Shittsville, USA tonight!”we repeatedly joked.
Luckily we were wrong and the evening looking around famous Golden Temple and associated Sikh Museum went without any problems other than the shock we encountered at the brutal paintings of Sikhs refusing to deny their religion and their having their families and children slaughtered in front of them as punishment!
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We left the sweltering heat of the plains and headed north into the mountains. Paul had previously visited an old hill station called Manali where British Raj had waited out the sweaty summers a hundred years before and now it seemed like a good idea to follow in their footsteps.
As soon as we started to climb into the lush jungle hillsides we could almost feel the mercury dropping and we were confident we had made the right decision... until the reoccurring specter of the cooling fan once more reared its ugly head and we were forced to stop for emergency repairs.
Once the radiator had cooled enough to touch we patched up the broken fan-bearing with some liquid metal and sat around waiting for it to set as we sweated, much to the suspicion and amazement of the hundreds of passing trucks. It seemed like this road was the only major route into the huge mountain area of Himachal Pradesh and once we did get going again we were instantly stuck behind the slow-moving juggernauts. We very quickly realised that the crazy blind-hill-and-corner overtaking moves were borne more of intense frustration than impatience.
Despite being on the road from 6am until 8pm we had covered a mere three hundred miles by the time it started to get dark and so once again we broke our vow, “Never to drive after dark once outside of Western Europe”: keeping up our record of breaking it in every single country so far. But after ten minutes of negotiating the pitch black roads littered with people, cows and other debris and punctuated with speeding drivers with dazzling full-beams on our side of the road we all agreed to stop at the first hotel we saw. We prised our fingers from the edges of the seats and rested our weary heads, ready to catch up the distance the following morning.
We actually ended up staying in a little village called Vashisht, next to Manali that proved very very chilled out and was mainly populated with aging hippies and frazzled out babas wandering round in flowing clothes and enjoying the natural hot springs.
The beautiful setting was augmented by the soothing chanting from the nearby temple that seemed to wake me up every morning although it was also slightly ruined by the hippy equivalent of chavs playing Scooter out loud on their mobile phones on the bus: a group of hippies that would gather on a nearby balcony and “jam” whilst singing deep and insightful lyrics mainly consisting of the phrase, “We feel… so good!” over and over again.
(Paul: my favorite was the crusty who sang an improvised song to a child about her mother and their love, only for the child to yawn theatrically, tell her ‘beloved’ mother that she was bored and proceed to cover her ears with her hands.)
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Travelling tends to soften social rules regarding what it’s okay to talk about in public and since we had left England I had learned that the list of things that make Leigh have a, “bad stomach” is longer than the Daily Mail’s list of things that give you cancer and included amongst other things, cucumber, onion, beer, vodka, cha-cha, malaria medication, lassi, curry and kebabs.
Leigh's spider was much bigger than this and positioned itself between him and the door leaving him stuck on the toilet... in a powercut.
Now something else has added itself to the list and poor Leigh spent what was supposed to be a week of chilling out and recharging our batteries after the stressful Southern Iran and Pakistan legs getting better acquainted with his bathroom and the huge spider that terrorized him in there. Meanwhile Paul and I fixed the fan up,explored the local area and met up with his old school friend, Ellie who was working as a Doctor in Manali town.
One day I went for a long walk through the beautiful pine forest next to the raging river that stemmed from the Himalayas and after eventually walking to an area that wasn’t strewn with rubbish sat down and started to read my book. However, you’re never alone in India and I was quickly joined by a charming young man who earnestly questions me about my past and seemed to actually want a real conversation. That was until the usual question I was asked by Manali locals; either I have one of those faces or they just ask every single tourist, “So you want to buy some Manali cream?”
Luckily even the drug dealers in Manali are chill and we actually did have a decent chat before he wandered off without making a sale.
But they don't like to use litter bins
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The newly fixed fan and Leigh’s stomach, aided by masses of Immodium, both managed to hold up for the descent back onto the scorching plains and as the night fell we found ourselves entering the outskirts of Delhi. Although we were unsuccessful in our hunt for a cheap hotel we did somehow manage to find ourselves chatting to a local man who said his friend could put us up for then night.
As we followed a strange scooter into the darkness for the second time on the trip I had visions of an Indian palace far away from the huge mosquito breeding ground that passed for a canal next to us. In reality things weren’t so luxurious and we found ourselves in the unusually decorated house of a fashion designer. After directly asking whether we had any of the infamous Manali Cream he looked disappointed and set about explaining his career highlights which included apparently designing outfits for Michael Jackson and Bryan Adams as well as Armani, Versachi and numerous outfits for Bollywood’s brightest and best (none of whom we had heard of… yet).
We really appreciated the offer of the floor to sleep on when we were stuck in the middle of the strange city but the lack of doors or windows meant that none of us got more than a few minute’s sleep at a time as the bugs feasted on our pink bodies. We left grumpy and tired and only had a whistlestop tour of Dehli before deciding to continue down to the tourist haven that is Agra.
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The Taj Mahal, one of the most famous landmarks in the world, left us feeling a little underwhelmed, especially after the beauty of Iran and we spent more time grumbling that foreigners had to pay and entrance fee forty times greater than the locals did than admiring the epic mausoleum.
Taj Mahal
That we were all so jaded by such an amazing sight showed us how tiring driving through India had been; we had only just had a break up in Manali and now we almost immediately felt like we needed another one. As we fought back to the car through the hordes of hawkers one at least brought a smile to my face: “Sir! You buy buy fridge magnet? Twenty Rupees!”
“I don’t have a fridge”
“It’s okay, you can buy fridge here too!”
Trying to get closer for a photograph...
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We spent the evening in a nice little guesthouse where the porter/chef cooked us a great curry and seemed blown away that we actually spoke to him normally and treated him like a human being. I don’t know if he was just used to being spoken to like crap by other guests but he just could not stop smiling and trying to help us out, he even went away and cooked us some pancakes on the sly then sneaked them into our room under the nose of his boss.
The next morning we had planned to drive south to Mumbai and the coast after a quick look around the city’s second famous landmark, Agra Fort. But first we had to find it...
We had largely given up on the GPS and maps and resorted to asking people for directions and the first Tuk Tuk driver we pulled up next to looked like a knowledgeable fellow.
“Agra Fort?” Paul asked him hopefully and slowly.
The man looked thoughtful and slowly rubbed his beard whilst looking in the middle-distance, “Hmmm... Agros Port?” he repeated slowly, seemingly unaware that we were over a thousand kilometres from the sea, “No, I don’t know”
Agros Port
We found it ourselves later in the morning, the man had been standing a few hundred metres from it, and after a quick stroll around were back on the road south to Mumbai where certain Bollywood fame awaited us.
Coming next time: Will Paul finally emigrate to Shittsville, USA? Stay tuned!
