The Goa Way

Vagator, Goa, India

In this blog... cows on the beach, snakes in the bushes, drug dealers in the shadows, and peace and quiet on the cliffs.

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It's been a long time since the last update - the slow Goa way of life has obviously got to me, but fear not, normal service will now be resumed.

After eight days in the north Goa beach town of Arumbol, I headed twenty miles or so south to the coastal village of Vagator, via a couple of shared taxis and a bit of walking. Less hippies, nicer beaches and more bit nightlife were the draws, but only the first two ended out to be true.

Fishing boats at Vagator

I was struck straight away by how much more chilled out it was than Arumbol. More space, less people, less commercialism - more the Goa I expected in the first place. I found a very basic, clean and as ever, brightly painted room in a guesthouse for £4 a night, and headed to the beach, with my walking shoes on ready for a stroll. I was warned the beach would be full of bus loads of excitable Indian day trippers, and consequently very busy and noisy, but in reality it turned out to be pretty quiet most of the time, with beautiful white sand fringed by a sloping grass hill behind. I spent a couple of hours walking along and around the rocky headland, doing a bit of scrambling and easy climbing along the bottom of the cliffs at a few points, exploring small isolated beaches. After an hour or so I came across a small harbour full of local fishing boats. Many fishermen were hanging around together on the boats, some were making repairs but most just lazing about or sleeping. The boats were all wooden hulled and pretty crude, with flaking paint and many botched repairs - there's no way you'd catch me out on one.

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View from the cliffs towards Anjuna

I stopped at a small cafe for Chinese mushroom noodles, before walking for another hour or two around the small quiet roads of the area, trying a custard apple at a fruit stall for the first time along the way. A strange dimpled fruit with a deceiving name, it's actually more along the lines of an avocado than an apple, but instead with many seeds inside coated in what could actually be mistaken for custard, and fairly testing on the patience to actually eat. A few miles later I found myself walking up into the hills behind the coast, across a large expanse of scrubby plain with no people in sight - very rare in India and immediately relaxing. I reached the cliffs and hung out on a rock for an hour or so listening to music, taking in the amazing view along the coast both ways, and enjoying the sunset. 

The disappointment that night was that far from Vagator having great nightlife as I understood, the town was pretty dead. I went to a local tourist bar, and talked to a couple of English guys at the bar for an hour or so - one holidaying on his way to emigrate to Australia, and the other living there full time. Both were decent enough to talk to but turned out to be quite the fan of recreational drugs, the latter describing himself as a 'retired drug dealer' to the rich and famous. 'I dealt to George Osbourne, and have a photo of him doing a line, it's my passport out of any trouble' so he said. Probably total bull, but who knows! I didn't exchange contact details funnily enough.

The next day was a relaxing one mostly spent on another nearby beach nicknamed 'spaghetti beach' due to the amount of Italians who go there. This was quite obvious, with too many older men in speedos (not pretty) and women in skimpy bikinis. I spent the day reading, listening to podcasts, swimming, and of course eating pasta. This being India, it was no normal beach though. First you have the hawkers - local women in saaris walk up and down the beach all day persistently flogging jewellery, sunglasses and other tat. You have the odd beggar, demanding small change. There's the amusing sight of the herd of cows who wander down to the beach in the morning after being fed by their owners and back in the evening, after spending the day sunbathing - there must have been a good thirty or so cows on this small beach, with one herd of about fifteen all sat lying together in a group soaking up the rays - a sight to make you smile. There's also the many stray dogs, who also spend the day lazing about, when they're not having the odd play fight, swim or spot of cow chasing.

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And then you have the ear cleaner - that's right, another very Indian profession. I've seen them elsewhere before, often at bus stations where a guy carefully cleans out the ears of other locals whilst they sit waiting. Here though, they've turned it into a tourist scam whereby an innocent looking local Indian casually says hello as you pass him, then ten seconds later chases you saying you have something your ear. He then in the flash of an eye, pokes his finger in your ear before you have chance to stop him, pulling out earwax which in actual fact he actually put in there himself. Yes, disgusting! This happened to me a couple of weeks back in Pune, and I could tell straight away what the guy was upto and immediately walked off telling him what I thought. On spaghetti beach though, you clearly watch them targeting tourists, the odd one falling for it, and the guy magically pulling out his cleaning kit and getting to work. 

Anjuna beach

Not exactly a Harley Davidson

The following day I wanted to get out and about, so I hired a scooter for the day and went exploring. The roads around the area were pretty quiet, much less chaotic than other states in India, and the local scenery very nice with small colourful villages, a few lakes, and thousands of palm trees growing naturally. I went south to Anjuna, a small village and thin strip of beach, and as I rode down a dirt track into the makeshift tourist area a local attempted to flag me down, furiously yet quietly shouting out a menu of drugs he had as I passed, whilst others tried to lure me into their shops whilst I was still riding - these hawkers were extreme. 

Needless to say a quick stroll on the beach was enough before getting out of this dive. Further south, I stopped in the town of Calungate for lunch - the biggest resort in Goa, and as far as I was concerned, pure hell - a beach packed with loud and uncouth package-holidaying Russians, Indians and Brits, people on jetskiis roaring around, tacky shops, and more hawkers. It was more overdeveloped Spain than beautiful Goa. I got out quick, heading back north, and spent a few hours reading on the beach at Morjim, a long, pretty and fairly quiet beach where turtles sometimes nest.

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View over Vagator beach from the fort

The final day in Vagator was spent locally again. I walked to an old Portuguese fort looming above one end of the beach and had a wander around for a while. The views along the coast were fantastic, but the deladapadated fort was basically just a walled enclosure without much to see. Walking back down the steep path to the beach, I heard a rustling in the bushes next to me. I instantly assumed it was small birds moving about. I then realised it was at ground level, and stopping to look realised it was a snake. An actual wild snake, crawling past less than two metres away. The hairs on my neck stood up, my shoulders tightened, and I walked on down the hill a little faster than before. It was no baby either, with a girth of at least 1.5 to 2 inches, and from the bit I could see, quite a length. Slightly chilling I must admit, but we agreed to leave each other alone.

After spending the rest of the day on the beach, I headed out that night in search of the nightlife I'd heard about. Once again, Vagator proved to be disappointingly quiet of an evening, devoid of other like-minded travellers, and generally a bit dull. I got talking with a couple of Dutch brothers at a restaurant, who invited me to join them for a beer at what turned out to be a hostel full of other young travellers. There's not many hostels in India 'cause a room in a guesthouse is so cheap, so I was surprised to find this hidden away spot full of young travellers. I turned out to be the old man amongst this bunch of mostly 18 to 25 year olds, most of whom conformed to the 'young hippie in India' stereotype, wearing tie died t-shirts and brightly patterned baggy trousers, with dreadlocked hair and piercings, and talking of turning vegetarian, doing yoga, and finding themselves, whilst simultaneously and quite ironically, ordering a take away Dominos pizza and constantly looking at Facebook on their smartphones. 'Blenders' I've amusingly heard this type of traveler called - people trying to blend in with the natives, but instead looking like a right bunch of plonkers and standing out even more. It was a bit of a crack, but none of them were really the sort I'd normally hang out with, so I called an early night, ready to move on the next day.

I've got conflicting thoughts on Vagator. In some ways it was disappointing - a bit dull, devoid of other travellers, and maybe a waste of time, but in other ways I'd seen some interesting stuff and had a relaxing few days on my own. I wasn't done with Goa yet though, it's a state about the size of Cornwall with lots to see, so the next day I headed south to what was supposed to be one of the most beautiful spots - the town of Palolem.

Custard apple

Open plains above Vagator

I came back to me room one night to find not just one, but
two invaders- A Gekho and a red cockroach. I didn't let them stay.

Goa To The Beach

Arumbol, Goa, India

In this blog... I go to the beach, have my palm read and see a load of live music

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Goa is synonymous with India, but in reality isn't the real India at all. One of the country's 28 states, the former Portuguese colony was only taken back as part into India about fifty years ago, giving it a much more laid back and European feel than the rest of India. For me personally it's always eluded thoughts of swaying palm trees, hippies, and trance music, and indeed I've found that to be the reality. But with Arumbol at least, it's heyday as a travellers paradise appears have since past, with hoards of tourists, commercialisation, unplanned development, and police rules taking away the relaxed magic it would have had in the sixties. That said, it's still a very appealing destination and in many places beautiful. It's just not paradise.

Naturally it's fair to say the past week or so hasn't been action packed or cultural like the previous few, and the pace of life has slowed down to that of a turtle. It's a nice change in many ways, but doesn't necessarily make great reading, so I'll spare you the full diary and pick out a few bits. 

Arumbol beach

Waking up on the night bus from Pune, I was shattered, having reminded myself that the irony in the phrase 'sleeper bus' is that it's very hard to actually get any kip due to the constant moving around whilst you lay down. Arriving in the inland town of Mapusa, I shared a taxi to the coast with a German girl who'd also been on the bus, and once at the large coastal village of Arumbol had breakfast with her at a little vegan cafe, her choice I add, before heading different ways. Arumbol is a pretty, laid-back village in the north of Goa, dominated by a strange mix of hippies and Russians, and sometimes Russian hippies. Indians are most definitely the minority for once. The long white-sand beach is beautiful, and backed by a small jungle of palm trees, indispersed with lovely little makeshift bamboo huts you can stay in, but after asking in about ten different places I disappointingly found nothing available, so went to a boring ol' guesthouse in the village behind instead.

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I started my time in Goa as I meant to go on - with a doze, some lunch at a nearby cafe, a walk along the beach and a late-afternoon beer at another place on a quiet rocky piece of coast. These small bamboo and palm leaf cafés seem to dominate the whole stretch of coastline, and are great hang-out spots with their nice seats and sunloungers. Most days thereafter consisted of various combos of hanging out with people, reading, writing, walking, swimming and listening to my new-found passion - podcasts. I finished off the book I'd been reading - What Young India Wants - an interesting read which seemed to boil down India's problems to government corruption, lazy politicians, an undemanding population that only votes for people for their own caste, Simon-says schooling and a lack of creativity generally. 

The highlight of the first day was a trip to the doc, I say highlight as this was thankfully my last rabies vaccination, after a month of weekly jabs following the dog bite on New Year's Day. Come get me dogs, cause I'm immune! The process of getting the jabs has varied whichever town I'd been in at the time - one was at a pharmacy where a guy, hopefully a nurse, turned up on his motorbike and did it. Another was done at a backstreet pharmacy by the owner himself, another whilst sat in the back of a open fronted pharmacy, and one in a fairly posh clinic by a nurse, and the cost every time -just £1 (100 rupees).

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Abiah and Lambo

The first couple of days in Arumbol I found it difficult to meet people to hang out with, thanks to the majority either being couples, stoners, or large clique groups. But as the week went on at various points I briefly met and hung out with a couple of Finnish guys, some Israeli girls, a German electrician who helped to build the Fendt tractor factory, and a Spanish guy who by chance I'd met in Pune a few days before. Yes, a very male dominated place again. On the third evening at the nightly sunset drum circle on the beach, where foreigners bring along a drum and jam away whilst others dance wildly in front, I spotted a familiar face. One that's hard to miss since he's a 6'6" dreadlocked Dutch guy, known by his pals in India as Lambo - the Hindi word for tall. I tried to think where I'd seen him before, then remembered back to East/West cafe in Rishikesh, northern India, where I'd hung out a number of times back in December. Along with an Israeli girl we met the next day, most evenings over the week the three of us hung out together, which was great since we shared a similar sense of humour, and as with many people from both those nations, they spoke perfect English. 

Typical scene outside the crazy Love Temple resort

One morning I awoke to the sound of laughter outside. It was a very strange laughter though, continuous and very forced sounding. Was this some sort of early-morning stand-up comedy extravaganza consisting of just one-liners I wondered? Even better - it turned out to be people doing laughter yoga, at a strange beachside resort nearby, interestingly named the Love Temple. This placed seemed to be the epicentre of hippiedom in Arumbol, with the beach outside filled with dreadlocked and tattoo covered people meditating, learning various circus skills, smoking pot and generally fulfilling the stereotype you come to expect. It sounds like I'm hippie bashing here, but I did meet one or two by end of the week who were quite fun and engaging. Still not my scene though.

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Nightly drum circle at sunset

Soon after hearing said laughter yoga, the noise from my room changed to Goa's signature sound - trance music, coming from the roof of our hotel where it turned out a Russian guy was interestingly living in a bamboo-framed cotton tent, and practicing his DJing outside. But trance wasn't the only music to be found in Arumbol, 'cause there's also a good live music scene. One evening I watched a couple of American acoustic guitarists who surprised me with their creativeness, another evening a live reggae performance consisting of various travellers who seemed to have formed a band for a few days.

The best though was a live jam session in a tiny makeshift cafe, run by a hilarious Tibetan guy known as Cookie who's catchphrase was greeting everyone with a funny Mary Poppins-esq 'hello'. This live jam session had a mix of people playing acoustic guitars, an accordion, a bongo and a bass guitar all coming together in fantastic quirky manner. It was so infectious that they went on long past the 10pm noise curfew enforced in the town, and Cookie got taken off by the cops! 'Its not the first time, nor the last' he said the next day smiling. A couple of the beach cafés sometimes paid a bribe, sorry bought a licence, from the local police to stay open til 3am. So two or three nights we ended up out 'til closing time at these great beachside trance parties, with some excellent foreign DJ's, and everyone either inside or on the beach dancing around barefoot. It was fantastic, and I loved the laid back feel to it all.

You may recall a few weeks back I wrote about getting my palm read. I couldn't help but think at the time it was a load of tosh, just someone picking out the obvious or generalising to get my cash. To be fair I had it done in a gem shop, where they guy obviously just wanted to flog birthstones 'to balance your jupiter' as he said... Hmmm. Lambo was telling us how he'd learnt to read palms over the past couple of years, and knowing he was a genuine guy and all he'd want in return was a beer, I asked him to read mine. This time I felt a little more convinced that there might be at least something to it, partly 'cause I trusted him but also because the outcome was more accurate. His reading described my personality and past with a depth beyond an acquaintance of two days, and told me some interesting future predictions, and whilst there was a couple of things that didn't quite tie up, he did admit as much. The trouble for me with someone predicting your path ahead is that it's based on the notion of the future being pre-destined, written already, but as with most people I tend to believe that the future is based on a mixture of preparation and chance so can't be predicted. That said, whilst not completely convinced I now believe there might be a bit of something to it, and recommend palm reading to anyone for a bit of fun or curiosity as long as it's done by someone you trust.

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Trees along the shoreline

The beaches around Arumbol are beautiful, and surprisingly clean for a nation that leaves their rubbish wherever they like, and great to stroll along. Indians for once were the minority, but the few Indian tourists never ceased to make me smile, jumping around and playing in the water like ten year olds, I guess it's the first time in the sea for many of them. In this conservative and sexist country as ever the groups were mostly men, who go in the water either fully dressed or in their underwear, and when you did see a woman on the beach or sea they were generally covered up in saris or loose t-shirts. One day I wandered off behind the beach up a narrow sheltered valley, to a fantastic big banyan tree that people talked about - with a spiders-web of branches drooping to the ground. It seems the tree is quite an attraction for the hippies and there was a circle of them sat at the base if it smoking pot with an Indian sadhu - an old holy man sat in a white robe giving them pearls of wisdom. It was a strange sight, but not as much as when I wandered down one of the small paths that led away from it, to find a few groups of hippies living in small camps in the woods. Sometimes in tents, sometimes just sleeping in the open air.

Catholic church, Indian Goa style

Goan food is a little different to the rest of India, with more emphasis on meat and fish, and some different Indian dishes that I'd not seen elsewhere in the country, such as xacuti (chicoti) and vindaloo - the latter not having the notorious spicyness as at home. Or maybe my spice tolerance has just gone through the roof. I also found and ate beef for the first time in India, not generally eaten as cows are sacred in Hinduism, but with Goa having a high Christian population and lots of foreign tourists, things are a little more relaxed. The beef wasn't terrible, but the finest steak of Philip Warren butchers' it certainly was not. Alcohol is another difference in Goa - much cheaper (lower taxes) and available everywhere, rather than just a few tightly controlled shops elsewhere - Portuguese influence again.

Arumbol grew on me over the eight days I was there; it was quite moorish and I'd ended up quite liking it. But Goa is a big area with lots to see, so I headed next a few miles south in search of quieter beaches and better nightlife.

Of course there's cows on the beach, this is India!

Fresh water lake behind the beach

India pics III

Third album of pics from India now online - here. I've really struggled to cut it back to this many pics - India is a very photogenic country!

You don't need a Facebook account to view them

Voluntary Fun

Pune, India

In this blog: roaming the countryside, volunteering with Asha Kiran, and a birthday with a difference.

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This follows on from the last blog, where I was in the city of Pune (poo-na) doing a couple of weeks of volunteering with a charity called Asha Kiran.

Sunday 26th January

Dam beside one of the villages I passed through

I'd hired a scooter for the weekend to explore the area around Pune, and having not seen a lot of countryside recently, headed out of town. I stopped briefly on the way at the fairly low key Aga Khan Palace to have a quick look, which in later years was used to imprison Gandhi and his chums - he spent a lot of time in prison for civil disobedience over the years. A few miles later I was out of the city, and into the countryside - sometimes scrubby, and sometimes irrigated with many small farms growing crops and vegetables. It was great to be free from the city, and away from people, noise and chaos for a change. However the downside to being remote was when I realised the scooter was very low on fuel. After a bit of freewheeling and crossing my fingers, I eventually made it to civilisation and breathed a sigh of relief.

The contrast of India - some people living in
makeshift tents, others next door in comfortable flats

I cruised around a couple of small rural villages, where people lived in concrete homes surrounded by makeshift fences and tracks. It was basic, but not the bleak poverty I've seen in parts of many cities. I continued on, stopping to see kids playing cricket on wasteland, and farm labourers living in makeshift bamboo and tarpaulin tents beside the roads. Hearing loud music, I stopped outside what turned out to be a wedding, and upon them seeing me, was ushered into the car park by a group of locals who were getting ready to do the disco for it. I only went into the car park though, not the wedding itself. Rather than just a table with some equipment as you'd normally expect, they actually drive straight into the outdoor venues ready to go with a purpose built disco bus, clad across the front with huge powerful speakers and a DJ inside. Just awesome.

Commonwealth War Graves

Pune was surrounded by various military camps wherever I went, and it turned out to be the largest base that the British Raj had established during their rule of India. India now has a huge military budget, and the camps all seemed to reflect this, being well established and professional. Coming back into the city, I spotted a very well tended area, which turned out to be a Commonwealth War Graveyard. It was very similar to those I'd seen in Normandy when I cycled through six months before, with identical lines of pale sandstone headstones set amongst perfectly manicured grass, commemorating mostly British soldiers who fell in India during the world wars. An unexpected sight for sure. 

Monday 27th

Manish Stroff, director of Asha Kiran

Back to work, sort of. It was week two of volunteering with Asha Kiran (see previous blog for details), and upon arriving at the office I learnt my task for the week. Amongst other projects, Asha Kiran run a community centre in one of the slums surrounding the city, and the director of the charity - Manish - had tasked me with creating the syllabus and all course material for a three-month basic computer course they were soon to be holding. The idea being that these disadvantaged folks would then be able to use their new found skills in their own business, or to help get a job. Whilst I'd initially envisaged my time volunteering to be hands-on in the projects, I soon realised that it didn't matter how I helped, as long as I helped. 

Millions of people across the globe learn how to use a computer, and because of that, initially I was sure I'd be able to just download and adapt a free course that someone else had done, but it turned out not to be that simple. The circumstances were also a little special as well making it trickier, in that the students could be aged anywhere from 8-80, and some of them might only recently be partly literate - the literacy rate in India is only 74%. I got to work and spent the day deciding what I thought they should learn, and started gathering bits of freely available material from across the web.

Tuesday 28th

More of the same, working on the computer course all day. At lunchtime, the five guys in the office all gather round a desk to chat or read the paper. Everyone brings a tiffin lunch - a set of three stacking stainless steel containers, containing different foods such as chapattis (flatbread), curried cauliflower, curried mixed veg, and daal (a type on lentil soup), and shares it round with each other which I thought was nice.

That evening I took advantage of the fantastic cinema nearby again and went to see 'Mandela' which had just come out (though I understand came out in the UK six weeks before). It was a fantastic film, and it was obvious Nelson Mandela had a big heart and gave so much to his country, though had a more chequered early background than I realised. A fantastic, noble guy. 

Wednesday 29th

Great breakfast again in a great local cafe next door to where I was staying, where all the local students and young office workers eat. I had the typical local breakfast of an onion and tomato omelette with toast, followed by an uttappa, which is a kind of Indian savoury pancake with tomato and onion mixed, in served with a spicy dip. Spicy food for breakfast almost seems normal now!

Another day of working on the computer course.

Thursday 30th January

It was the day of my 31st birthday, and I decided to take the day off just because I could. Despite it being completely at odds with the volunteering work I'd been doing, I thought I'd be a bit self-indulgent for the day and loosen the purse strings a little, as well as doing what I love best. So I hired a bike.

After a stop at the office, to use the internet to open my birthday messages and Skype a friend, I pedaled south exploring another part of Pune city. I stopped at the racecourse, a legacy of the Raj era, as there appeared to be a race meet but it turned out to just be a load of locals gathered round a big screen gambling on a race in Delhi. A little further on I turned down a side street into a quiet residential area, and came across some farmers who were herding big flocks of sheep along the road; an unexpected sight given both that there was no fields and I'd seen very few sheep in India so far. Just as I started to ride away again a local, stood there with his two sons who had just finished school, started talking to me in broken English, and after a few minutes he decided to kindly invite me into his home - this seems to be becoming a regular habit. I thought 'why not?', and we walked down a short dirt track to his house which it soon became apparent was on the edge of a small slum. 

I was led inside his house, a hut made from wood and corrugated iron, and whilst being careful not to reveal it, I was quietly pretty shocked. The family of four lived in just one room, which was no bigger than the average British bathroom. There was a set of shelves, a plate rack on the wall, a pile of assorted stuff and a kind of trough-come-wash area. It was all kept clean and tidy, but was no toilet, and they all slept together on a fairly thin stuffed mattress which they rolled out every night. This was poverty. Despite him having a job in security and his wife being a housekeeper for someone, he explained they were very poor and this was all they could afford, at a rent of £20 (2000 rupees) per month. Despite all this, he was extremely hospitable and sent his son to the shop, returning with a bottle of 7UP for me to drink. We chatted for twenty minutes or so, before conversation ran a bit dry and I thanked him and said goodbye. I wanted to give them something, and it didn't look like the boys had much in the way of books, so I gave them the book I was reading, 'What Young India Wants'. This family has virtually nothing but still wanted to share a tiny bit of it, a heartwarming experience.

My birthday summed up

After a nice lunch at India's version of Starbucks - Cafe Coffee Day - I continued cycling, past some tower blocks and a large slum, before coming across a local cricket match in progress with a big crowd lining the oval, so stopped and watched for half an hour. A few miles later I found myself in one of the many large and modern IT parks that dot the city. In the centre of it I was amused to find a nice  green city park which despite being deserted, had Hindi music pumping out through speakers on all the lampposts. Finally back to the upmarket Koregaon Park area where I was staying, I went to the ninth-story rooftop bar of a very smart 5* hotel nearby, and had a beer whilst sat beside the infinity pool in the fading light of dusk, followed by a massage nearby. A brilliant nearby jazz bar was the perfect end to the day, having a huge portion of tandoori chicken pieces whilst watching a brilliant live jazz band. I was surprised though to find I couldn't have a beer, as it transpired it was a 'dry day' for the anniversary of Gandhi's death. They sneaked a vodka into my lemonade anyway! It was of course a little sad not to be able to celebrate the day with family or friends but that of course couldn't be helped, but was still a truly diverse day of poverty and luxury all-in-one that I'll remember for a long time.

Friday 31st

Seasons mall - one of the many in
well developed Pune

It was my final day with Asha Kiran. Having had a few days stuck in the office I took up the chance to visit one of the crèches again. Rajesh took us on his motorbike across town to Cerise, the crèche I'd visited the week before which had a farm next door. On the way we passed many modern IT parks, huge malls, the offices of international companies such as IBM and Microsoft, and top international hotels such as Hyatt and Westin, and even a Premier Inn. Pune is one of India's big outsourcing hubs, where American and European countries get Indians to do skilled rolls such as programming and accountancy at around a quarter of the cost, and consequently is a pretty developed place because of it. Trade and commerce is more effective at lifting people out of poverty than charity, as I've heard said many times recently.

Daft but fun slapping game at Cerise crèche

Teaching anything to young kids of a wide range of ages who don't speak English, turned out last time to be a little tricky. This time at the crèche, I was armed with some ideas for games to play with the kids from my sister, a primary school teacher, and the teacher encouraged me to go for it. I started with a bit of Simon says, followed by a game where you make a rhythm by slapping against different limbs. They really seemed to enjoy a daft game where I got them to run from one side of the room to the other, whilst making the sounds and actions of different animals. It was a fun morning, something I never expected to be doing on this trip, and the kids were buzzing when we left.

Back at the office I finished the slum computer course I'd been working on, and gave Manish all the photos of the projects I'd taken so they can use them for publicity. 

Before I knew it, it was 8pm and the end of my two week volunteering placement. Whilst it had started off a bit slow, it ended up being an interesting, fun and rewarding experience. I was impressed by the efficient bare-bones basis that Asha Kiran worked on, with nothing wasted and favours pulled in wherever possible from local companies. It's sad in many ways that it exists in the first place though - these NGOs/charities are only there because the Indian government is so corrupt, and not able to fund proper infrastructure themselves, whilst many politicians and government workers live comfortable, if not lavish lifestyles on the back of it.

Leaving the office, Manish said to me 'want to drink a beer?', indicating a quick thank you drink, and he told his wife he'd be home in an hour. Four hours, five beers and a meal later we finished up! He even insistented on paying for it all personally. He's a very interesting guy, very aware and open about India's problems, and fascinating to talk with. He told me stories about the problems of child labour which he works to help stop; still a big problem throughout the country. It seems that clothing sweat shops aren't much of a problem now as the government cracked down hard, but other industries still are. I was shocked to hear that fire crackers for example are usually made by children because they have small and dexterous fingers, but is also a very deadly and hidden-away industry.

1st and 2nd Feb

It was the weekend - a concept that I'd long since forgotten existed - every day is the weekend when you travel. But after a busy couple of weeks, I fancied a quiet couple of days, which in truth hardly justify writing about - just listening to some podcasts, going for a couple of walks, some reading and writing, and a trip to the cinema.

Late Sunday night it was time to leave Pune, and I reflected on my two weeks there. Helping other people is supposedly to be an entirely selfless process, but I tend to agree with the notion that altruism can never be entirely selfless. No matter how much many people believe that helping people purely benefits the other party, the reward of satisfaction also benefits the giver as well. For me personally that was true - it was satisfying that people have benefited from my time, even if in a tiny way, but also good to have a couple of more normal and settled weeks for a change.

Disco bus - great idea!

Heading back from work

Farmers at work

Some Richer, Some Poorer

Pune, India

I needed a break. A break from moving every four or five days, from looking at stuff, working out where everything is, planning what to see and do, and from the constant haggling. I just wanted a bit of normality, a bit of purpose and to stay in one place. 

As much as I love travelling, you can have too much of a good thing sometimes. I had a contact who ran a charity in Pune, a few hours from Mumbai, whom I'd met and helped out a few weeks before, so decided a good way to live a bit more normally, be productive and contribute something to this country was to do some volunteering. 

Manish

You see poverty everywhere in India and it makes you feel pretty helpless, and indeed guilty for having so much yourself, a common feeling. Giving money to beggars is pretty unconstructive as I've mentioned before (it creates dependency, there's too many of them to make a difference etc), so I wanted to help in a more constructive way. Asha Kiran, managed by my contact Manish Stroff, is an NGO based in the city of Pune (pron: Poona) that runs a children's hospice, a community kitchen, and a number of crèches on building sites, and seemed like a good organisation to work with. 

Monday 20th January 

Quietly it's a fear many people have, but is one of those things you never expect to happen to you. I got stuck in a lift. 

I'd awoken early at the hotel in Mumbai to pounding techno music - not something you generally hear in India, but this place is full of surprises - and went to leave the hotel in the lift. I descended five floors and thought I'd reached the bottom, so slid across the old-fashioned manual concertina door, the type you'd see in a 1930's movie, to find it was still in fact between the first and second floor. I shut the door again and pressed the button, but nothing would happen. I couldn't go down nor up, and there was no emergency hatch or telephone link. There was however a buzzer you could press to attract attention, but helpfully it was only loud enough for me alone to hear. Thankfully it didn't turn into the disaster that it could have been, and fifteen minutes later the lift miraculously sprung into life again and I was on the way to catch a bus to Pune.

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The journey was remarkably good for a change, taking what's considered a luxury bus along the country's only six lane motorway, passing massive hoardings for luxury housing developments, IPL premier league cricket stadiums and luxury German car showrooms along the way. This was an area with money. Of course, you're reminded straight away that you are still in fact in India, when the bus stops twice on the motorway itself (not even the hard shoulder) to drop people off.

Arriving in Pune at lunchtime, I got a rickshaw to Asha Kiran's office and met the four people working there, who spoke some English but seemed quite shy, apart from Manish - the Indian director of this Spanish-formed charity, who even speaks English with his wife at home. Manish is a top guy, very welcoming and helpful, and after a spot of lunch took me on his motorbike to find somewhere to stay, which ended up being in the house of a family who generally take in long term guests. My thoughts of getting stuck-in with work straight away were quickly dampened when I found out there was nothing to do that day.

Tuesday 21st

After a typically Indian breakfast of an omelette sandwich, a dosa (fermented rice-batter pancake) and of course a chai (masala tea) I walked to the office, based in the posh Koregaon Park district of the city. When I say posh, this was the Beverly Hills of India and I'm not joking. I passed one huge mansion after another, all with security guards and grand entrances - homes of various businessmen and industrialists, including one of the top 500 richest men in the world. It was a very different world to what I'd seen in the past couple of months.

Manish and I chatted about suitable jobs I could help with for the two-week stay, and despite his prior assurances that there was loads to do, it didn't seem like there actually was. My heart sank a little to think I'd given up two weeks of my time and paid up-front for accommodation, 'would this be a waste of time?' I wondered. He soon decided they needed some proper photos on the website; right up my street, so sent me off with Rajesh - one of the guys in the office, to some of the building site crèches they run. 

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Crossing the city on the back of his motorbike, it was apparent that despite being a more affluent city, this didn't stop the traffic from being typically lawless and chaotic. We arrived at a large building site of some part-finished blocks of luxury apartments, and reached the temporary village where the contract labourers were housed. The contrast and irony was immediately apparent - luxury flats being built by poorly paid folks living temporarily in tin shacks. The government requires that facilities are provided for the children of these workers, and for once the law seems to be adhered to even if the crèches are less than basic. The kids seemed happy though, after all they were young enough to not know any different, and after taking a load of snaps I was invited to join in some of their games, one of which was like an Indian version of 'it'.

I went to the cinema that night in a luxury American-style mall nearby and saw a Hollywood movie called Jack Ryan. Once again then cinema was fantastic, as good if not better than anything at home, and a bargain at £1 entry. The movie was excellent, but I was more amused by the strange method of censoring they used. The spoken words in English weren't censored, but the subtitles strangely also in English were. Rather than just putting the normal astrixes in place of swear words though, they replaced them with darned, blooming, fricking and so on, but in a totally illogical order, giving strange lines like 'I wish you'd just gosh off', and 'this is a load of darn' which made me chuckle. Leaving the posh enclave of the cinema I got chased briefly on the way back by three street dogs, then walked past people sleeping rough on the streets. Yep, definitely still in India.

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Wednesday 22nd

The Indian work ethic can be a little different to what I'm used to. The Asha Kiran office starts at 9 - 9.30, but I found myself waiting for it to open until 9.30, followed by half an hour or so of everyone reading the newspapers before cracking on. To be fair, they do work until 6pm or later so it all balances out, it's just a different way.

I visited another couple of building site crèches with Rajesh to take more photos for their website. The big sites appear fairly professionally run, with compulsory helmets being worn, actual portajohns, and proper steel scaffolding instead of bamboo. I was given a chai in the site hut, where the labourers took a break and watched some India vs New Zealand cricket live on the TV. Asha Kiran run a kitchen that delivers meals to all the crèches, so at lunchtime I was invited to join them to eat, sat cross legged (or more like sprawled in my case) on the floor, eating curried veg, rice, curried boiled eggs and a soup with our fingers, ripping off small pieces of roti bread to pick everything up. Messy, for me anyway.

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Thursday 23rd

After another slow morning in the office, doing my own things whilst waiting for a job to do. I later went with Rajesh to a couple of other crèches on these edge-of-town new build sites. On the second site, Rajesh had to meet the site manager so left me with the teacher for an hour, as well as the very friendly construction Camp Manager, Nivrati who bizarrely also taught the kids sometimes. Crèche is a very loose term in this case, as the kids are between three months and eight years, so they're sort of schools really, though without a proper curriculum or qualified teacher. Better than nothing I suppose. I was given the honour of entertaining the kids for a while but it's not exactly my area of expertise; it's been a few years for me since school and there was the obvious language barrier as well so it was a pretty terrible attempt. On the spot all I could think to do, which you'll laugh at, was get them to attempt to sing and do the hokey dokey (I forgot half the verses), sing humpy dumpty by following me, then arrange themselves by height order then age order. The kids once again on the face of it seemed to be happy and well-adjusted despite the basic conditions.

Workers' accomodation

Nivrati then showed me round the labour camp (workers accommodation) which though very basic was clean enough and well run. I spotted a farm next door so persuaded him to take me for a look. On a scrubby piece of ground, and surrounded by building sites on all sides was a shed with a couple of sets of cubicles where about a hundred buffalo were tied to their stalls - it was an urban dairy farm. I was actually surprisingly impressed. They were fed plenty of vegetation of some sort in concrete troughs, they had access to water and the passages were regularly scraped out into a concrete slurry pit. Very interesting, for someone who's lived on a dairy farm much of their life anyway. Buffalo milk actually makes up 54% of India's milk production, the largest producer in the world - interesting article here.

Buffalo dairy farm

We finished up by visiting a community centre that Asha Kiran run in one of Pune's slums. A group of around twenty women were on the last day of a three month free tailoring course that had been organised. Like the few other Indian women I'd met they were fairly shy, but were pleased to show me a selection of garments they'd made, and allowed me to take photos for Asha Kiran. 

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Friday 24th 

An introductory computer course was soon to be starting, and Manish had six or seven second-hand computers in the office that had been donated by local companies, that needed checking and testing before being taken to the slum community centre. So after an hour of this, disappointingly my day was done. 

I hung out for the afternoon to use the internet, and chatted with a pair of Spanish and Portuguese women who came in for a while to see Manish and use the internet, who are former volunteers. One manages a factory nearby that makes labels that go in clothes, and the other works on theatre shows in different parts of the world, and was in Pune for practice and research. Interesting lifes. I told Manish I'd like to really get stuck into something the next week, and he promised there would have more on offer. To be fair to them, two weeks of volunteering isn't really enough to get someone like me established and properly setup, so it was the situation that dictated, more than anything else.

Saturday 25th

View from Parvati hill over nearby Slum. 
Note the satellite dishes - simple relief from
poverty, or unnecessary extravagance? You decide.

Even though I was in Pune for a break from travelling, I couldn't help but see a bit of it, so decided for the first time on this trip to hire a scooter to explore the city. I've ridden one a few years ago on some quiet roads in Thailand and Cambodia, but on the crazy city roads of India, this was a whole different story. All I can say is I got used to it, and survived. I hated it at first I must admit; the other drivers are so ignorant towards each other, but I soon learnt to become ignorant myself. I rode to Parvati Hill, a nice vantage on a hill surrounded by the city. I continued to a nice park, where a women came out of nowhere to try and a red dot on my forehead whilst I sat relaxing, and I saw a guy eating a curry literally out of a clear plastic bag, using just his fingers of course.

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Pateleshwar Cave temple was an interesting stop a bit further on, a rock cut cave temple built by digging a big hole in the ground, then excavating sideways into the hill. Inside, they'd carved out a huge room, leaving moulded columns and shrines - all from the original material without putting anything back. It was very impressive and reminded me a lot of Petra, Jordan where I went a couple of months back.

After more aimless cruising and exploring around the city on the bike, I stopped at one of the big posh malls to see what it was like. It was Independence Day throughout India that day, which didn't turn out to be the celebration I expected, but the mall was packed with people waiting for some entertainment on a stage put on for it anyway, which I must add was terrible. I looked around a huge supermarket briefly, since I'd not actually seen one the whole time in India, and it was based on, and partly supplied by the UK's Tesco, with loads of their products and signs present; a strange sight so far from home. Apart from that it was a typical mall, large soulless and boring, yet I couldn't get over how high quality and well crafted it all was - another world completely compared to the typical street shops and stalls of India. 

More from Pune soon.

More Mumbai

Mumbai, India

In this blog: a laundry with a difference, the posh side of India, a marathon and a very different cinema experience.

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Everything breeds well in India - cows, monkeys, dogs, birds and most of all, people, but strangely something I've barely seen is the common pussycat. I was surprised then, that Mumbai was the first place I'd really some across cats, though still only in sensible numbers. They say cats are intelligent, so obviously they understand the overpopulation issues well, and abstain for the sake of their country. Noble creatures.

18th January

Still exploring the huge city of Mumbai, I took a commuter train north from my base in the south of the peninsula to Malabar Hill, a fairly classy part of town which wouldn't look out of place in any developed country. This is the thing about India; yes the chaos and poverty is the bit that sticks in people's minds, but there's also a large middle-class and upper-class population that can afford to live well. Malabar Hill was nice to wander round, with some lovely parks, modern flats and houses, and dramatic banyan trees overhanging the roads - a tree with loose drooping vines which would allow Tarzan to commute around the city pretty quickly. Was Tarzan Indian I pondered? There were also hundreds of eagles circling overhead, thanks to a walled area nearby where a certain religious sect places the bodies of their dead on plinths to decompose naturally... or rather be pulled to death by vultures and birds of prey. Interesting idea.

View from Malabar hill district

On the way to Malabar Hill, as I walked along I couldn't help notice tens of thousands of Police along the streets, not doing a lot as ever, but obviously prepared for something. I asked what was happening - 'nothing, nothing at all' said the first in a strange denial of something that obviously was happening, the second spoke in English but didn't make any sense, finally the third told me there was a Muslim march happening in honour of a leader who'd just died. Hindus and Muslims generally get on well, but there are definitely some underlying tensions, so I guess the Police were just very prepared. After Malabar Hill, I strolled down to a nice middle-class house named Mani Bhavan - Gandhi's house in Mumbai for many years which is now a small museum. There were some interesting letters he wrote to world leaders at the time, and a small collection of photos, most interestingly him hanging out with with Charlie Chaplin, a unlikely pairing I thought. 

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Mahalakshmi dhobi ghats - the laundry

Stoking the fires

I continued on to Mahalakshmi 'dhobi ghats' - a huge outdoor maze of rough and ready buildings and washpools that serve as the city's washer-dryer - most people send their washing here rather than do it at home it seems. I looked down over the area from a bridge along with a few other tourists who soon came and went, and decided to wander down to it to have a closer look. A local guy started pestering me to go on a tour around. I only wanted a quick look on my own really, but eventually relented and agreed a price. Paying to see a laundry eh?! He then slyly sent me off inside with his mate, who it turned out could barely speak English, and instead of a half hour tour, it was only just a quarter of an hour. Whilst it wasn't a lot of money to me, I left at the end with a bitter taste in my mouth at having being deceived somewhat. It was however a really interesting place to visit, where over two thousand people separate and wash the garments in concrete troughs, often stood in them themselves, before smashing them hard against an angled slab of concrete. 

Other people were then hanging, carrying, drying, ironing and folding. He led me into a long dark and dirty building that surrounded the site, where there were old oil barrels full of chemicals bubbling away, used for removing stubborn stains. A guy walked along the row of them with a long stick, stoking the fires below. It was a nasty place to work, and I would imagine life expectancy is pretty short for anyone in there. What you can't see from outside the area however, is that only some of the clothes are washed by hand - many are done by huge machines and dryers, so it's not all as primitive as it looks.

Aussie Shaun in Zoe Cafe-Bar

The weather in Mumbai was perfect; twenty-nine degrees but not humid with it. I wandered on through a working class neighbourhood, though for a change nothing really stood out as interesting or different, and stopped at one of the many home-made cake shops and tried a Ladoo, a small orange coloured ball of doughy, syrupy texture. Indians definitely have a sweet tooth. Shaun text me, the Australian guy I'd been hanging out with who I first met a month before, and I went to meet him for a beer. The cafe-bar we visited was in a creative hub of the city, and I was surprised at how classy, well designed and just plain cool it was. It wouldn't have looked out of place in London, and the clientele were all young, hip and affluent, something I'd not seen much of in India thus far. A total contrast to the areas I'd been in earlier that day, such is the diversity of Mumbai. 

We went for a Chinese afterwards - something you find surprisingly often in India though they're never run by Chinese - before heading back to the hotel. Almost home, we chanced upon a local bar, the first I'd been to in the country believe it or not, they're not that common. It was a stark white room with wooden benches, devoid of any character, and had more staff than customers which is about normal here. We were surrounded on all sides by stacks of boxes of beer bottles, making it feel more like being in a stockroom than a bar, and a few locals sat around quietly watching cricket on the TV. It's fair to say going to the pub isn't really an instringsic part of Indian life. Sean studied philosophy at uni, so we whiled away some time trying to decide the meaning of life, 'is it all pre-destined, or just meaningless random events' was about the cut of it. No conclusions were drawn.

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Sunday 19th January

I'd seen a lot of impromptu cricket being played around India, but until now no organised games on proper pitches. Mumbai has a huge area in the centre called Oval Maiden where there are about seven pitches side by side, and being a Sunday it was ram jammed with locals in their cricket whites playing matches, some for fun and some more serious. Despite not really being a cricket fan, I stopped for half an hour, and watched the passion with which they treated the game.

Mumbai marathon

It was a sports morning, 'cause a little further along I reached a road barricaded off and lined with people, for it was the day of the annual Mumbai marathon. I'd missed the main action, as the 10km and elite runners had set off early to avoid the heat - the first race was at an unbelievable 5am! It was still good to watch and professionally run, though typically Indian, with most runners being both natives and male, with the odd Chinese or westerner having a go.

Tiffin carriers, aka 'dabbawallas'

Nearby, I saw for the first time a Mumbai phenomenon I'd heard a lot about. At lunchtime everyday, local men in white cotton coats and funny white hats, carry tiffins (stacking food tins) containing freshly-prepared lunches from housewives at home to their husbands at work. It's quite a sight, seeing lots of these guys walking or cycling around, overloaded with these colour coded bags. A very efficient system apparently. I took the commuter train north, and was interested to see people growing vegetables on the narrow area between the two sets of train tracks  - no land goes to waste here. 

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Party time

At the Bhandra district, another middle-class area, I went for a walk to the coast, surprisingly passing a large Marks and Spencer along the way, followed by a Portuguese church - a legacy of their time in certain parts of India. Hearing a lot of noise, I stopped with some other people to look over the wall of a community area which was having some sort of games day, and ended up spending nearly an hour enjoying watching the action. Four colour-coded teams were competing against each other in different party games, such as to make the longest complete straw out shorter drinking straws, and dance together to music whilst swinging around balloons. It was quite obviously a middle-class event, with everyone wearing western clothing instead of traditional saris etc, and the commentator speaking only in English. 

Mumbai coastline

I soon reached the coastline, which was nicely strung by a beautiful palm tree lined and walled esplanade, and sat and relaxed on the wall for an hour. Skyscrapers across the bay nearby were fronted by tarpaulin and tin sheet slum houses on the shoreline, and a guy with no legs somehow lifted himself over the harbour wall and across the rocks for a swim. Despite having seen no westerners all day, a Canadian girl showed up and sat nearby, and we started talking. She turned out to be quite an experienced traveller having been to thirty-six countries, and in the two days she'd been in India she'd already been around a big slum on her own - brave or stupid for a lone girl I pondered. We spent an hour or so talking away, but unlike many Canadians I'd met before, she was a little too sure of herself and very quick to brag about how many countries she'd been to, and how many amazing experiences she'd had, and I found her quite irritating after a while. We went our separate ways, and after walking along the coast a bit more, I got a rickshaw back to the station with one of the craziest drivers yet, who spent more time on the right side of the road than the left, going flat out, beeping and swerving his way around everything in sight. I held on tight.

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That evening I went to the cinema again, only this time to see a proper Bollywood movie. I knew beforehand it was in Marati (local language) and didn't have any subtitles, but wanted to watch the first half just for the experience. After paying the extortionate £0.80 (80 rupee) entry fee, I bought some masala popcorn (what else?), and found my seat in the huge 1,500 seat cinema. India takes cinema very seriously, and it was a fantastic art-deco style room with top-notch sound and picture, and so much leg room I couldn't reach the seat in front if I tried. Everyone stood for the National anthem at the start, then the movie began. The crowd cheered enthusiastically at various points, people whistled and shouted at certain moments, and during one of the typically Bollywood set dances, where the whole cast dances together, a couple of guys in the audience stood up and started dancing themselves much to everyone's amusement. The film itself however was truly awful, and I say that not just cause I couldn't understand the dialogue. It was a wishy-washy plot of boy meet girl, girl doesn't like him, he persists (like a stalker), wins her favour, but he's from a different caste and her father doesn't like him and so on... It was more pantomime than movie. Amused and entertained by the experience rather than the film, at the interval (yes interval) I left, and went to meet Shaun for one last curry.

I was convinced beforehand I was going to Mumbai for the experience itself, rather than cause I'd like it, but left there quite liking the place. There's so much life there, it's in many places quite modern and clean, I enjoyed the colonial history, and seeing so much diversity. As mentioned in the previous blog, only in Mumbai can you find Asia's largest slum, and the most expensive house in the world pretty much side by side. 

Having spent no more than a week or so in one place for the past six months, I decided it was time to slow down for a bit, so coming next... a two week break with a difference.

Slum near Bhandra station

Locals hanging out by overland water pipes