Okay, so Singapore's a bit of a shock after six weeks in Egypt, India and Sri Lanka; the order, the cleanliness, the effective road traffic code. All good things.
I kept looking out the window of my cab at the landscaped perfection of the roadside gardens as I rode to the hotel last night thinking; "Holy crap." Sure, not exactly insightful but I hadn't slept for nearly 30 hours so shut-up.
Still Singapore's got its seedy side, which I know on accout of my hotel being smack bang in the middle of it. I can now tell you what it's like to go out on a Saturday night as Andy Kolleskie. I've never been propositioned so much in my life.
Anyway, the last leg home leaves in just over two hours. I can't wait.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
Friday, 30 November 2007
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
LESS THAN 50 BPM
For some reason every time I log onto my preferred computer in the internet cafe at the eastern end of the seedy backpacker strip of Grand Bazaar the default language of the machine has changed. Today it is Japanese. Yesterday it was Polish. The day before that is was German. It hasn't been English yet. I'm starting to smell a conspiracy.
So let me tell you a little bit about my hotel here in Delhi. It sits about halfway along Grand Bazaar, a turbulent stretch of road bordered on both sides by restaurants, tat shops, hard sell merchants, touts, hustlers, urchins, beggars and a poorly concealed drainage system. Negotiating this stretch is made precarious by the street merchants, fresh-juice sellers and the fryers of sweet things to eat, who have claimed all the claimable fringes of the road, which means that in order to make your way from the metro station to your digs you're obliged to launch yourself into the unpredictable flow of the cycle rickshaws, tuk tuks, touts and tourists, motorbikes, mopeds, bongo vans and cows for whom this seemingly uninhabitable stretch of road seems home.
From the road the Hotel Shelton is a blue sign and a double glass door. From the inside it's a four story building with an atrium which runs from the ground floor reception to the rooftop restaurant. The shaft of the atrium acts as a central pivot around which the rooms, which only occupy the first, second and third floors, are arranged.
The rooftop restaurant is run by a Nepalese family who have perfected the art of making everything they cook taste roughly the same. In the last three days I have had the banana pancake, a chicken burrito from their Mexican Fiesta menu, a fish curry and the lasagna and aside from texture and colour I'm not sure any serious differences existed between any of them. What the roof top restaurant does afford you however is a slightly higher vantage point from which to inhale the filthy air.
My room was on the third floor, a cell with a double bed below a window with an exhaust fan which opens out onto the atrium. The exhaust fan, the useful purpose of which I was never completely able to ascertain, meant that any noise which was made in or around the central atrium, on any level and at any time, would be allowed unfettered entry into my lodgings. Last night I was woken at about three o'clock in the morning by the unmistakable bellowing of a cow.
When I wasn't being woken by livestock I was frequently being disturbed by the proprietor of the establishment, a shifty looking little man with a moustache and calculating eyes, who would knock on my door as soon as he was aware I'd returned to the hotel to ask if I had any washing that needed doing. His eyes would slowly scan the room as I answered, taking in my backpack, which sat on the floor beside the bed, and the things I'd laid out on the bedside table. When I assured him that my clothes were fine his eyes would suddenly snap back to mine. "Do you want some beer then?" he would say. I would tell him I did not. He would look at me with something approaching spite, take a long, cool look at the water bottles beside my bed and grunt before walking off. I got used to the ritual. It became the point at which I would turn off the light and go to sleep.
I was staring up the ceiling last night shortly after the little ritual, chasing sleep and thinking about the trip through India. I was trying to nail down one incident where I'd been shocked or confronted or horrified. The poverty, the desperation, the destitution, all the things that are supposed to touch something raw in you when you travel to the third-world don't seem to have left a mark on me these past four weeks. And I wondered why that was. Shouldn't your first reaction to a grubby child asleep in the gutter be compassion? Or grief? Or anger? Or revulsion? Why did I feel nothing? Why did I find it so easy to walk past? Where's my humanity?
I am proud of the strength of my heart. It works well. I've worked hard to make sure it does. I know that at rest it circulates the seven litres of blood in my arteries and veins at a rate of less than fifty compressions a minute. I'm so proud of this that sometimes I like to drop it into conversations. I also know that my heart is strong enough to let me run 14 kilometres in an hour and probably further if I pushed it. During the 14 kilometres my heart rate will never get over 165 beats-per-minute because it doesn't need to. The red-blood cells in my blood stream so efficiently distribute oxygen around my body that there's no need for my heart rate to rise further or for my breathing to become puffing. Physically my heart is stronger and more reliable and better than most.
But for all its physical efficiency something's rattled loose in there because the essential element of human compassion seems to have stopped working. The grubby little urchins wrapping at my taxi window get no change and no sympathy. The crippled beggars who drag themselves behind me on callused hands give me no sense of shame at my own wealth and robust good health. The old man, lying in a pool of his own shit, doesn't make me feel anything at all. And I wonder why that is?
Two days ago I assaulted a child. He can't have been more than eight. He was in a group of about six boys of various ages who surrounded me shortly after I left the hotel. I was walking down a road which would take me to the shopping district in Connaught Place. Normally when children approach you in India they do it with a sweet sort of shy reverence. They will smile, ask you your name, ask you where you are from, maybe shake your hand and then, their English exhausted, they will generally run away. These kids were not like that. The eldest, who must have been about 14, immediately demanded a drink, placing his hand on the strap of my backpack. I brushed his hand away and kept walking. I told him there would be no drink. He insisted. I insisted back. I kept walking. He kept following. One by one his friends would hustle up and pat me down while the old boy chattered incessantly, his hand continually drifting to my shoulder. I tried to remember if I'd left anything valuable in my backpack. I hadn't. I shoved my hands in my pockets to protect my wallet and my reading glasses. The only thing left exposed was my camera which was in a zip-up pocked on the outside of my shorts. The eight year old found it and grabbed it with both hands. I did the same to him, grabbing each of his scrawny arms just above the elbows. I spun around and shoved him into the ringleader. I pushed them both back and stepped into a rickshaw which had stopped on the off chance I wanted a ride. It turned out I did.
How did I feel about that? Laying hands on a child? Laying hands on an uneducated child who survives from day to day by taking valuable things from wealthy western tourists whose travel insurance covers the loss? Did I feel bad that I'd had to put the kid in his place? Did I feel bad that the kid had so few options available to him that he was forced to steal to survive? Was I angry that the Indian Government allowed this situation to persist amid its growing affluence? None of the above. I felt pissed off that I had to pay a rickshaw driver 20 rupee to get me where I'd planned to walk.
I was thinking about all this last night and wondering if my heart had become like a fully furnished but unoccupied home. Inhabitable but uninhabited. Everything about the house is great; the furniture, the white goods, the kitchen benches, the bathroom tiles, the duvets on the beds, the rugs in the hall, the throw cushions on the couch. Everything's exactly as it should be except there's no sign of life in there at all. There's no takeout menus on the fridge, no toothbrushes in the bathroom, the Sunday supplements aren't smothering the coffee table in the lounge. There are no six day old bananas in the bowl over the sink and there are no half-read books in the bedroom and no photographs on the walls.
What element is missing here? I don't know.
Anyway, I fly out tonight for home. I'm not nearly as melancholy as all of that self indulgent rubbish makes me sound, I've just spent too much time over the past three days wallowing in self-pity and struggling to sleep. The cold's on the mend now.
I'm just praying that my Spice Air flight from Delhi to Mumbai is not delayed tonight and I don't miss my flight to Singapore. I think I'd create a scene.
That's it for now. More from South East Asia.
Dale Atkinson
So let me tell you a little bit about my hotel here in Delhi. It sits about halfway along Grand Bazaar, a turbulent stretch of road bordered on both sides by restaurants, tat shops, hard sell merchants, touts, hustlers, urchins, beggars and a poorly concealed drainage system. Negotiating this stretch is made precarious by the street merchants, fresh-juice sellers and the fryers of sweet things to eat, who have claimed all the claimable fringes of the road, which means that in order to make your way from the metro station to your digs you're obliged to launch yourself into the unpredictable flow of the cycle rickshaws, tuk tuks, touts and tourists, motorbikes, mopeds, bongo vans and cows for whom this seemingly uninhabitable stretch of road seems home.
From the road the Hotel Shelton is a blue sign and a double glass door. From the inside it's a four story building with an atrium which runs from the ground floor reception to the rooftop restaurant. The shaft of the atrium acts as a central pivot around which the rooms, which only occupy the first, second and third floors, are arranged.
The rooftop restaurant is run by a Nepalese family who have perfected the art of making everything they cook taste roughly the same. In the last three days I have had the banana pancake, a chicken burrito from their Mexican Fiesta menu, a fish curry and the lasagna and aside from texture and colour I'm not sure any serious differences existed between any of them. What the roof top restaurant does afford you however is a slightly higher vantage point from which to inhale the filthy air.
My room was on the third floor, a cell with a double bed below a window with an exhaust fan which opens out onto the atrium. The exhaust fan, the useful purpose of which I was never completely able to ascertain, meant that any noise which was made in or around the central atrium, on any level and at any time, would be allowed unfettered entry into my lodgings. Last night I was woken at about three o'clock in the morning by the unmistakable bellowing of a cow.
When I wasn't being woken by livestock I was frequently being disturbed by the proprietor of the establishment, a shifty looking little man with a moustache and calculating eyes, who would knock on my door as soon as he was aware I'd returned to the hotel to ask if I had any washing that needed doing. His eyes would slowly scan the room as I answered, taking in my backpack, which sat on the floor beside the bed, and the things I'd laid out on the bedside table. When I assured him that my clothes were fine his eyes would suddenly snap back to mine. "Do you want some beer then?" he would say. I would tell him I did not. He would look at me with something approaching spite, take a long, cool look at the water bottles beside my bed and grunt before walking off. I got used to the ritual. It became the point at which I would turn off the light and go to sleep.
I was staring up the ceiling last night shortly after the little ritual, chasing sleep and thinking about the trip through India. I was trying to nail down one incident where I'd been shocked or confronted or horrified. The poverty, the desperation, the destitution, all the things that are supposed to touch something raw in you when you travel to the third-world don't seem to have left a mark on me these past four weeks. And I wondered why that was. Shouldn't your first reaction to a grubby child asleep in the gutter be compassion? Or grief? Or anger? Or revulsion? Why did I feel nothing? Why did I find it so easy to walk past? Where's my humanity?
I am proud of the strength of my heart. It works well. I've worked hard to make sure it does. I know that at rest it circulates the seven litres of blood in my arteries and veins at a rate of less than fifty compressions a minute. I'm so proud of this that sometimes I like to drop it into conversations. I also know that my heart is strong enough to let me run 14 kilometres in an hour and probably further if I pushed it. During the 14 kilometres my heart rate will never get over 165 beats-per-minute because it doesn't need to. The red-blood cells in my blood stream so efficiently distribute oxygen around my body that there's no need for my heart rate to rise further or for my breathing to become puffing. Physically my heart is stronger and more reliable and better than most.
But for all its physical efficiency something's rattled loose in there because the essential element of human compassion seems to have stopped working. The grubby little urchins wrapping at my taxi window get no change and no sympathy. The crippled beggars who drag themselves behind me on callused hands give me no sense of shame at my own wealth and robust good health. The old man, lying in a pool of his own shit, doesn't make me feel anything at all. And I wonder why that is?
Two days ago I assaulted a child. He can't have been more than eight. He was in a group of about six boys of various ages who surrounded me shortly after I left the hotel. I was walking down a road which would take me to the shopping district in Connaught Place. Normally when children approach you in India they do it with a sweet sort of shy reverence. They will smile, ask you your name, ask you where you are from, maybe shake your hand and then, their English exhausted, they will generally run away. These kids were not like that. The eldest, who must have been about 14, immediately demanded a drink, placing his hand on the strap of my backpack. I brushed his hand away and kept walking. I told him there would be no drink. He insisted. I insisted back. I kept walking. He kept following. One by one his friends would hustle up and pat me down while the old boy chattered incessantly, his hand continually drifting to my shoulder. I tried to remember if I'd left anything valuable in my backpack. I hadn't. I shoved my hands in my pockets to protect my wallet and my reading glasses. The only thing left exposed was my camera which was in a zip-up pocked on the outside of my shorts. The eight year old found it and grabbed it with both hands. I did the same to him, grabbing each of his scrawny arms just above the elbows. I spun around and shoved him into the ringleader. I pushed them both back and stepped into a rickshaw which had stopped on the off chance I wanted a ride. It turned out I did.
How did I feel about that? Laying hands on a child? Laying hands on an uneducated child who survives from day to day by taking valuable things from wealthy western tourists whose travel insurance covers the loss? Did I feel bad that I'd had to put the kid in his place? Did I feel bad that the kid had so few options available to him that he was forced to steal to survive? Was I angry that the Indian Government allowed this situation to persist amid its growing affluence? None of the above. I felt pissed off that I had to pay a rickshaw driver 20 rupee to get me where I'd planned to walk.
I was thinking about all this last night and wondering if my heart had become like a fully furnished but unoccupied home. Inhabitable but uninhabited. Everything about the house is great; the furniture, the white goods, the kitchen benches, the bathroom tiles, the duvets on the beds, the rugs in the hall, the throw cushions on the couch. Everything's exactly as it should be except there's no sign of life in there at all. There's no takeout menus on the fridge, no toothbrushes in the bathroom, the Sunday supplements aren't smothering the coffee table in the lounge. There are no six day old bananas in the bowl over the sink and there are no half-read books in the bedroom and no photographs on the walls.
What element is missing here? I don't know.
Anyway, I fly out tonight for home. I'm not nearly as melancholy as all of that self indulgent rubbish makes me sound, I've just spent too much time over the past three days wallowing in self-pity and struggling to sleep. The cold's on the mend now.
I'm just praying that my Spice Air flight from Delhi to Mumbai is not delayed tonight and I don't miss my flight to Singapore. I think I'd create a scene.
That's it for now. More from South East Asia.
Dale Atkinson
Monday, 26 November 2007
TIME AND THE ISSUE
I'm aware that I'm slowly slipping further and further behind with the maintenance of my blog. The last genuine entry was Hampi, and all that stuff happened two weeks ago. There's no real reason for that aside from the fact I've been lazy and at some points along the way a little ill.
I'm in Delhi at the moment. I arrived last night from Chennai on a flight which was delayed by four hours for no apparent reason. I didn't enjoy the flight. I wasn't in the mood.
I'd spent the previous night sweating feverishly through the ragged sheets on the bed in the featureless room of the crumby, overpriced hotel I'd consented to be taken to in a moment of weakness when I arrived from Sri Lanka, tired, ill and beyond caring. At around four in the morning the fever broke and I spent a delirious hour in a half wakeful state wondering how I could attach a red light to the tea I'd purchased in Sri Lanka to ensure Australian customs would know that it was safe and untainted by any quaranteenable disease. My brain had obviously closed down for re-tooling.
I'm still suffering a head-cold which has since settled on my chest and I spent last night coughing up some unpleasant things. In my guide book it says that 25 percent of travelers in India will catch a chest infection at some point during their journey. Eachway odds if you ask me and it looks like I've came in among the places.
In Delhi the sun doesn't rise or set, it contents itself with the possible which, over a city covered by an almost chewable sludge of dull grey smog, simply means illuminating the dirty streets and baking the town whole. Actually I'm only guessing at the source of the heat and light. I've yet to see any direct evidence the sun exists at all in this part of the world. In much the same way a stranger could visit London for a week in January and conclude that the sky over England's capital is permanently grey, I'm beginning to think you could live a lifetime in Delhi and never know the true colour of the sky is blue.
I slept badly again last night, kept awake by the unceasing horns on the auto rickshaws, which sound like the last pleading cries of strangled geese. In India the horn is a safety device, indicator, warning signal and attention grabber all in one. All drivers are obliged to sound it no fewer than 12 times a minute. This takes some getting used to.
The fatigue and illness are undermining my sense of humor and touts are starting to piss me off. I've enjoyed India hugely but right now Wednesday and the prompt departure UL flight 123 can't come soon enough. I think the oppressive heat, the unrelenting filth and the ceaseless human turbulence of Delhi are contributing to it all too.
I want to write about all the good stuff now, like swimming in the Arabian Sea at sunset or drinking sly-grog and playing cards with some people I met in an opium-den-like rooftop restaurant at Hampi - beating them more often than not on account of them both being stoned out of their heads - and meeting the kids at Belinda's tiny village school and being so generously and warmly welcomed into the homes of the village people with whom she has become friendly. I'd tell you about Belinda almost poisoning me by telling me it was okay to drink the local water too.
And from Sri Lanka I'd like to write about the fact I saw Iain Bell and Ryan Sidebottom in the Cricket Club Cafe and that Sidebottom's hair looks even more ridiculous in person. I'd like to write about climbing Adam's Peak and our tour guide Manju, who taught himself English and German and frequently came out with the most uniquely apt little phrases for all sorts of situations and things.
And the surf at Hikkaduwa would get a mention and Ffion too, who is Belinda's colleague and insists she be referred to in this blog as the "flame-haired Welsh sexpot".
But to be honest I'm in a bit of a shitty mood so I'm not going to go into that stuff now. I'll scribble it up when I get to Singapore or back home.
Right now I'm going to leave this internet cafe, not because I'm finished, but because every five minutes a giant German man with short cropped hair and denim shorts hangs his head through the door and shouts "CAN I DO PRINTING NOW?"
It's wearing me down. The answer has been no the last twenty times the question has been asked. I'm not sure why he thinks repeatedly asking the question is going to change the outcome buy his Teutonic persistence seems to be limitless. If I stay any longer I'm going to start an international incident that will probably end with him being called Fritz and me suffering a broken nose. Prudence is the better course of action.
That is all for now. I'll be less grumpy tomorrow.
Dale Atkinson
I'm in Delhi at the moment. I arrived last night from Chennai on a flight which was delayed by four hours for no apparent reason. I didn't enjoy the flight. I wasn't in the mood.
I'd spent the previous night sweating feverishly through the ragged sheets on the bed in the featureless room of the crumby, overpriced hotel I'd consented to be taken to in a moment of weakness when I arrived from Sri Lanka, tired, ill and beyond caring. At around four in the morning the fever broke and I spent a delirious hour in a half wakeful state wondering how I could attach a red light to the tea I'd purchased in Sri Lanka to ensure Australian customs would know that it was safe and untainted by any quaranteenable disease. My brain had obviously closed down for re-tooling.
I'm still suffering a head-cold which has since settled on my chest and I spent last night coughing up some unpleasant things. In my guide book it says that 25 percent of travelers in India will catch a chest infection at some point during their journey. Eachway odds if you ask me and it looks like I've came in among the places.
In Delhi the sun doesn't rise or set, it contents itself with the possible which, over a city covered by an almost chewable sludge of dull grey smog, simply means illuminating the dirty streets and baking the town whole. Actually I'm only guessing at the source of the heat and light. I've yet to see any direct evidence the sun exists at all in this part of the world. In much the same way a stranger could visit London for a week in January and conclude that the sky over England's capital is permanently grey, I'm beginning to think you could live a lifetime in Delhi and never know the true colour of the sky is blue.
I slept badly again last night, kept awake by the unceasing horns on the auto rickshaws, which sound like the last pleading cries of strangled geese. In India the horn is a safety device, indicator, warning signal and attention grabber all in one. All drivers are obliged to sound it no fewer than 12 times a minute. This takes some getting used to.
The fatigue and illness are undermining my sense of humor and touts are starting to piss me off. I've enjoyed India hugely but right now Wednesday and the prompt departure UL flight 123 can't come soon enough. I think the oppressive heat, the unrelenting filth and the ceaseless human turbulence of Delhi are contributing to it all too.
I want to write about all the good stuff now, like swimming in the Arabian Sea at sunset or drinking sly-grog and playing cards with some people I met in an opium-den-like rooftop restaurant at Hampi - beating them more often than not on account of them both being stoned out of their heads - and meeting the kids at Belinda's tiny village school and being so generously and warmly welcomed into the homes of the village people with whom she has become friendly. I'd tell you about Belinda almost poisoning me by telling me it was okay to drink the local water too.
And from Sri Lanka I'd like to write about the fact I saw Iain Bell and Ryan Sidebottom in the Cricket Club Cafe and that Sidebottom's hair looks even more ridiculous in person. I'd like to write about climbing Adam's Peak and our tour guide Manju, who taught himself English and German and frequently came out with the most uniquely apt little phrases for all sorts of situations and things.
And the surf at Hikkaduwa would get a mention and Ffion too, who is Belinda's colleague and insists she be referred to in this blog as the "flame-haired Welsh sexpot".
But to be honest I'm in a bit of a shitty mood so I'm not going to go into that stuff now. I'll scribble it up when I get to Singapore or back home.
Right now I'm going to leave this internet cafe, not because I'm finished, but because every five minutes a giant German man with short cropped hair and denim shorts hangs his head through the door and shouts "CAN I DO PRINTING NOW?"
It's wearing me down. The answer has been no the last twenty times the question has been asked. I'm not sure why he thinks repeatedly asking the question is going to change the outcome buy his Teutonic persistence seems to be limitless. If I stay any longer I'm going to start an international incident that will probably end with him being called Fritz and me suffering a broken nose. Prudence is the better course of action.
That is all for now. I'll be less grumpy tomorrow.
Dale Atkinson
Saturday, 24 November 2007
THE SEEDS OF MISTRUST
I wrote this about a year ago but given the election today I think it's relevant even if it is a tidge out of date. Plus I've got man-flu so leave me alone.
The seeds of mistrust
Every sun that sets brings us a day closer to the demise of John Howard and further away from wherever we were on the second day in March in 1996 when he scrambled over the battered, exhausted carcass of Paul Keating and into the Lodge. On that day the Australian public put a beige blot on the national copybook, which has since seeped through the pages and eaten away the varnish on the table top. In less than 30 days he’ll celebrate 11 years in office. He is not finished yet. We are to blame.
In what is an extremely competitive field, John Howard is easily the least inspirational leader the country has ever seen. An office clerk in the office of the Prime Minister.
Howard is like the socially awkward treasurer of a suburban cricket club. The stalwart that lingers self-consciously around the change rooms on practice nights and turns up to all the home games with a thermos and a folding chair, waiting patiently for the tea break when he can corner someone for a chat and a ginger snap. Apparently Australian voters like that sort of thing. He is our second most successful Prime Minister.
And why not? Charisma has been something of a liability in Australian politics. We don’t really trust it. The eloquent Gough Whitlam was big on social inclusion and cultural development but he was so financially incompetent no one really cared when Sir John Kerr brought down the curtain on his programme of cultural enlightenment.
Bob Hawke was a cracking raconteur and a lively drinking partner but in the 80s bugger all people could actually afford to meet him in the bar. With interest rates running at over 15 per cent most were too stretched holding off foreclosure to scratch together the price of a schooner.
Paul Keating, for all his acerbic wit, could only manage one election victory against an opponent in John Hewson who created a policy platform so complicated no one could understand it, including, as he proved under the withering gaze of Ray Martin, himself.
Whitlam may have had vision, Hawke charisma and Keating drive but Howard has expediency and the cunning of a professional survivor. No one has ever been able to read the Australian public more deftly. And so we end up governed by a bald man with a hearing aid and a little brother’s keenness to join in the games of the bigger boys.
He is also the most pragmatic politician of the modern era. At a time when the ideological differences between left and right on most issues are farcically narrow he has created the prototype for the modern leader. His ability to claim and hold the middle ground is unsurpassed in the last ten years.
In the western world leading a political party and even more so leading a country has become less about providing leadership in a traditional, inspirational sense and more about being a giant fairground mirror, absorbing, magnifying and then reflecting a refracted version of the public opinion back at the public. A decision isn’t made without asking; “how will the public react to that?” or “will the punters agree?”
That a leader might actually put forward a genuine list of well thought out and simply explained ideological principals and attempt to inspire people to adopt that point of view is an idea from a bygone era.
Ideological differences remain between the major parties, but these differences are rarely the chosen battleground for any confrontation. The disposable nature of the media and the rise of the opinion pollster has made the existence of any kind of detailed policy platform something of an embarrassing little secret, which all parties share but no one really wants to talk about. Publicly debating issues of policy has become as likely as two sexual partners who have shared an STD meeting on a bus to shout detailed accusations of infidelity at each other across the aisle.
So the national political debate is wound down to nothing more than single issue head butting. What the issue is is hardly the point provided it can be presented in the most basic black and white terms.
This isn’t John Howard’s fault - the structure of the popular Australian media doesn’t allow for a more developed analysis – but he has been the most successful at exploiting the situation. He is a master manipulator of the media agenda. He also reads the Australian public mood better than most and has extremely good pollsters, which means that more often than not he’s first to the middle ground, leaving his opponents little opportunity to oppose his stance with anything stronger than mealy mouthed semantics. Simon Crean discovered that to his peril, Mark Latham to his demise and Kim Beasley first to his frustration and eventually to his ruin.
What marks John Howard out as a danger is not that he dominates the debate but that he does so seemingly without principle. His failure to genuinely distance himself from Pauline Hanson, his manipulation of the Tampa and the lies of Children Overboard amount to nothing but a shameless appeal to the darker aspects of the Australian psyche.
That a seam of isolationism and xenophobia exists in Australia is no surprise. It exists in every country in the world and is no bigger problem in Australia than anywhere else. But it is one thing to acknowledge its existence and completely another to tap into it in order to gain and keep power, which is exactly the trough we’ve found John Howard snuffling through for the past decade.
Whether he genuinely believes the promotion of multicultural migration puts Australia in danger of becoming un-Australian is irrelevant (although given past statements and the fact he was born in 1939 and probably spent the first six years of his life having the fear of south-bound Asiatic hoards threatening the Christian shores of Australia drummed into him it’s a fair chance he at least empathises with the view). He has manipulated the belief in others. And Australia is a worse place for it.
No one goes on forever and as surely as his predecessors were eventually forced to stand aside, he too will retire to his fat pension and unlimited free air travel. He will fall but it won’t be for the right reasons. It won’t be because he made Australia a more hostile place to live. Old age will claim him, or the ill wind of economic chill. The latter would be an absolute disaster.
The damage he will leave behind will take a long time to repair and could prove irreparable if interest rates start to climb and the bottom falls out of the housing market. The true extent of the damage might only be revealed when the unemployment queues start growing and people start looking around for someone to blame.
In an affluent society there’s less need to look over your shoulder and fear what you don’t know, yet in a time of unrivalled prosperity John Howard has taught us how to hate and fear each other anyway. How much more will we hate and fear each other when desperation and hardship germinate the seeds of mistrust he has planted?
Dale Atkinson
The seeds of mistrust
Every sun that sets brings us a day closer to the demise of John Howard and further away from wherever we were on the second day in March in 1996 when he scrambled over the battered, exhausted carcass of Paul Keating and into the Lodge. On that day the Australian public put a beige blot on the national copybook, which has since seeped through the pages and eaten away the varnish on the table top. In less than 30 days he’ll celebrate 11 years in office. He is not finished yet. We are to blame.
In what is an extremely competitive field, John Howard is easily the least inspirational leader the country has ever seen. An office clerk in the office of the Prime Minister.
Howard is like the socially awkward treasurer of a suburban cricket club. The stalwart that lingers self-consciously around the change rooms on practice nights and turns up to all the home games with a thermos and a folding chair, waiting patiently for the tea break when he can corner someone for a chat and a ginger snap. Apparently Australian voters like that sort of thing. He is our second most successful Prime Minister.
And why not? Charisma has been something of a liability in Australian politics. We don’t really trust it. The eloquent Gough Whitlam was big on social inclusion and cultural development but he was so financially incompetent no one really cared when Sir John Kerr brought down the curtain on his programme of cultural enlightenment.
Bob Hawke was a cracking raconteur and a lively drinking partner but in the 80s bugger all people could actually afford to meet him in the bar. With interest rates running at over 15 per cent most were too stretched holding off foreclosure to scratch together the price of a schooner.
Paul Keating, for all his acerbic wit, could only manage one election victory against an opponent in John Hewson who created a policy platform so complicated no one could understand it, including, as he proved under the withering gaze of Ray Martin, himself.
Whitlam may have had vision, Hawke charisma and Keating drive but Howard has expediency and the cunning of a professional survivor. No one has ever been able to read the Australian public more deftly. And so we end up governed by a bald man with a hearing aid and a little brother’s keenness to join in the games of the bigger boys.
He is also the most pragmatic politician of the modern era. At a time when the ideological differences between left and right on most issues are farcically narrow he has created the prototype for the modern leader. His ability to claim and hold the middle ground is unsurpassed in the last ten years.
In the western world leading a political party and even more so leading a country has become less about providing leadership in a traditional, inspirational sense and more about being a giant fairground mirror, absorbing, magnifying and then reflecting a refracted version of the public opinion back at the public. A decision isn’t made without asking; “how will the public react to that?” or “will the punters agree?”
That a leader might actually put forward a genuine list of well thought out and simply explained ideological principals and attempt to inspire people to adopt that point of view is an idea from a bygone era.
Ideological differences remain between the major parties, but these differences are rarely the chosen battleground for any confrontation. The disposable nature of the media and the rise of the opinion pollster has made the existence of any kind of detailed policy platform something of an embarrassing little secret, which all parties share but no one really wants to talk about. Publicly debating issues of policy has become as likely as two sexual partners who have shared an STD meeting on a bus to shout detailed accusations of infidelity at each other across the aisle.
So the national political debate is wound down to nothing more than single issue head butting. What the issue is is hardly the point provided it can be presented in the most basic black and white terms.
This isn’t John Howard’s fault - the structure of the popular Australian media doesn’t allow for a more developed analysis – but he has been the most successful at exploiting the situation. He is a master manipulator of the media agenda. He also reads the Australian public mood better than most and has extremely good pollsters, which means that more often than not he’s first to the middle ground, leaving his opponents little opportunity to oppose his stance with anything stronger than mealy mouthed semantics. Simon Crean discovered that to his peril, Mark Latham to his demise and Kim Beasley first to his frustration and eventually to his ruin.
What marks John Howard out as a danger is not that he dominates the debate but that he does so seemingly without principle. His failure to genuinely distance himself from Pauline Hanson, his manipulation of the Tampa and the lies of Children Overboard amount to nothing but a shameless appeal to the darker aspects of the Australian psyche.
That a seam of isolationism and xenophobia exists in Australia is no surprise. It exists in every country in the world and is no bigger problem in Australia than anywhere else. But it is one thing to acknowledge its existence and completely another to tap into it in order to gain and keep power, which is exactly the trough we’ve found John Howard snuffling through for the past decade.
Whether he genuinely believes the promotion of multicultural migration puts Australia in danger of becoming un-Australian is irrelevant (although given past statements and the fact he was born in 1939 and probably spent the first six years of his life having the fear of south-bound Asiatic hoards threatening the Christian shores of Australia drummed into him it’s a fair chance he at least empathises with the view). He has manipulated the belief in others. And Australia is a worse place for it.
No one goes on forever and as surely as his predecessors were eventually forced to stand aside, he too will retire to his fat pension and unlimited free air travel. He will fall but it won’t be for the right reasons. It won’t be because he made Australia a more hostile place to live. Old age will claim him, or the ill wind of economic chill. The latter would be an absolute disaster.
The damage he will leave behind will take a long time to repair and could prove irreparable if interest rates start to climb and the bottom falls out of the housing market. The true extent of the damage might only be revealed when the unemployment queues start growing and people start looking around for someone to blame.
In an affluent society there’s less need to look over your shoulder and fear what you don’t know, yet in a time of unrivalled prosperity John Howard has taught us how to hate and fear each other anyway. How much more will we hate and fear each other when desperation and hardship germinate the seeds of mistrust he has planted?
Dale Atkinson
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
SO, YOU LIKE IT SPICY?
Twelve hours on an overnight sleeper bus will make you do dumb things, like pay four times more than you ordinarily would for a room based on the fact it seems unlikely that it will lose traction on a steep downhill stretch of road and crash headlong into the room across the hall.
All my independent-traveller's vanity wilted in the face of wall-eyed fatigue as I stepped off the bus in Hampi. I had planned to walk from the bus-stop to a row of guest houses I'd circled in the tour guide but like a man in a spy film who's just discovered that he's been betrayed to his enemies by the woman he loves I'd lost the will to fight. Instead of confidently brushing past the hotel touts and taxi-drivers I resigned myself to fate and didn't even offer token resistance when a young lad lifted my backpack into an auto-ricshaw and motioned me to get in.
Kumar must have noticed my disinterested state and, like the professional young hustler that he is, put me down as an easy mark. I didn't even blink when he quoted the price for the room. He couldn't believe his luck. Beyond caring I just shrugged and took the key. I desperately needed a shower.
An hour later, after a shower and a change of clothes, I left the room in search of breakfast. I opened the main door to the guest house and almost fell over Kumar, who was sitting on the top step. "Ah sir", he said, "it is a good surprise that you are here. I have arranged for you a most exciting tour. You are feeling refreshed I think?"
I was impressed by his dedication even if his desception was a little thin so I invited him to tell me more about this most exciting tour over breakfast.
As I munched my way through a banana pancake Kumar outlined the tour's exhaustive itinerary. It sounded pretty good. I'd get to see all of the ruins I was already planning to visit and get lunch and a corracle ride thrown in as well. I asked him how much and, with the same look of uncertain optimism he'd assumed when quoting me the price of the room, he said "thirty Euros". I laughed so hard I nearly choked on a slice of banana.
To put that price into perspective, thirty Euros is roughly what you would pay for a week's accomodation at a decent guesthouse within spitting distance of one of Goa's beaches. I told him as much and asked if he'd like to reconsider the price. He gave a little smile and wobbled his head. "The Russians" he said, "they always pay without question".
I told him he'd gotten me at a weak moment earlier in the day and that as the guide book suggested 500 rupees (about 10 Euros) for a day-tour we might want to start negotiations there. He looked disappointed.
I ended up agreeing 800 rupees after he promised me an extra-long corracle ride and some sundown beers on a hilltop overlooking the ruins - no mean feat considering Hampi is dry town. I paid the bill for breakfast while he whisteled up a ricshaw-driving pal.
At 18 Kumar has already been spruiking tourists for six years. He learnt a few words of basic English during his limited schooling but the relative fluency with which he speaks the tongue was mostly achieved on the job.
During the five months of the tourist season he works every day without break. He rises before six each morning to meet the overnight sleeper busses which rumble into town shortly after sunrise. The backpackers and budget travellers they offload are not the most lucrative target on the tout circuit but they provide useful income through the commissions the guesthouses offer him for delivering business to their doors. And occasionally they even throw up a lucrative pigeon like me.
On Wednesdays and Saturdays he rises before five in order to sell postcards to the Russian tourists who arrive on those days to watch the sunrise from the temple on the hill to the east of town. They rarely haggle over price.
And he gets a small kickback every time he acts as a fixer for the tourists; the corracle boatmen and the ricshaw drivers paying him a retainer to keep business moving in their direction and the drug dealers and sly-grog shops offering him a finder's fee for scouting cashed up travelers looking for weed and booze.
For the other seven months of the year he works in the banana plantations and rice paddies which surround the town, labouring in the ocean of green which spreads between the islands of ochre-hewn boulders that rise like pyramids of oranges from the flood plain.
He told me he was saving money for his sister's dowry. She is 16 now and will want to marry before she turns 21. As the oldest son in his family it is his responsibility to make sure it happens. All the spare money he earns over the next five years will go to her.
His next priority will be to buy himself a house, which will put him in a position where he himself can marry. He expects this to take him a further five years.
If everything goes according to plan for Kumar, in ten year's time he'll have a house, a wife and a married sister.
"You'll be twenty-eight" I said after he outlined his plans, "that's nearly the same age as I am now."
"I see" he said, "Do you yourself have a house and a wife?"
"Ahhh, no." I replied, "I don't". He looked shocked and then sympathetic.
"But my sister is married" I added quickly. He looked relieved.
That night I ate dinner on the balcony of my guesthouse. As I munched slowly but diligently through the moulten hot vegetable thali I'd ordered the waiter, perhaps noticing the film of sweat that had formed across my face, walked over to inquire if I perhaps needed something to take the sting out of the meal. "No" I replied, not wishing to admit weakness.
"Oh I see" he said, leaning in and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "You like it spicy!"
Indeed.
That is all for now.
Dale Atkinson
All my independent-traveller's vanity wilted in the face of wall-eyed fatigue as I stepped off the bus in Hampi. I had planned to walk from the bus-stop to a row of guest houses I'd circled in the tour guide but like a man in a spy film who's just discovered that he's been betrayed to his enemies by the woman he loves I'd lost the will to fight. Instead of confidently brushing past the hotel touts and taxi-drivers I resigned myself to fate and didn't even offer token resistance when a young lad lifted my backpack into an auto-ricshaw and motioned me to get in.
Kumar must have noticed my disinterested state and, like the professional young hustler that he is, put me down as an easy mark. I didn't even blink when he quoted the price for the room. He couldn't believe his luck. Beyond caring I just shrugged and took the key. I desperately needed a shower.
An hour later, after a shower and a change of clothes, I left the room in search of breakfast. I opened the main door to the guest house and almost fell over Kumar, who was sitting on the top step. "Ah sir", he said, "it is a good surprise that you are here. I have arranged for you a most exciting tour. You are feeling refreshed I think?"
I was impressed by his dedication even if his desception was a little thin so I invited him to tell me more about this most exciting tour over breakfast.
As I munched my way through a banana pancake Kumar outlined the tour's exhaustive itinerary. It sounded pretty good. I'd get to see all of the ruins I was already planning to visit and get lunch and a corracle ride thrown in as well. I asked him how much and, with the same look of uncertain optimism he'd assumed when quoting me the price of the room, he said "thirty Euros". I laughed so hard I nearly choked on a slice of banana.
To put that price into perspective, thirty Euros is roughly what you would pay for a week's accomodation at a decent guesthouse within spitting distance of one of Goa's beaches. I told him as much and asked if he'd like to reconsider the price. He gave a little smile and wobbled his head. "The Russians" he said, "they always pay without question".
I told him he'd gotten me at a weak moment earlier in the day and that as the guide book suggested 500 rupees (about 10 Euros) for a day-tour we might want to start negotiations there. He looked disappointed.
I ended up agreeing 800 rupees after he promised me an extra-long corracle ride and some sundown beers on a hilltop overlooking the ruins - no mean feat considering Hampi is dry town. I paid the bill for breakfast while he whisteled up a ricshaw-driving pal.
At 18 Kumar has already been spruiking tourists for six years. He learnt a few words of basic English during his limited schooling but the relative fluency with which he speaks the tongue was mostly achieved on the job.
During the five months of the tourist season he works every day without break. He rises before six each morning to meet the overnight sleeper busses which rumble into town shortly after sunrise. The backpackers and budget travellers they offload are not the most lucrative target on the tout circuit but they provide useful income through the commissions the guesthouses offer him for delivering business to their doors. And occasionally they even throw up a lucrative pigeon like me.
On Wednesdays and Saturdays he rises before five in order to sell postcards to the Russian tourists who arrive on those days to watch the sunrise from the temple on the hill to the east of town. They rarely haggle over price.
And he gets a small kickback every time he acts as a fixer for the tourists; the corracle boatmen and the ricshaw drivers paying him a retainer to keep business moving in their direction and the drug dealers and sly-grog shops offering him a finder's fee for scouting cashed up travelers looking for weed and booze.
For the other seven months of the year he works in the banana plantations and rice paddies which surround the town, labouring in the ocean of green which spreads between the islands of ochre-hewn boulders that rise like pyramids of oranges from the flood plain.
He told me he was saving money for his sister's dowry. She is 16 now and will want to marry before she turns 21. As the oldest son in his family it is his responsibility to make sure it happens. All the spare money he earns over the next five years will go to her.
His next priority will be to buy himself a house, which will put him in a position where he himself can marry. He expects this to take him a further five years.
If everything goes according to plan for Kumar, in ten year's time he'll have a house, a wife and a married sister.
"You'll be twenty-eight" I said after he outlined his plans, "that's nearly the same age as I am now."
"I see" he said, "Do you yourself have a house and a wife?"
"Ahhh, no." I replied, "I don't". He looked shocked and then sympathetic.
"But my sister is married" I added quickly. He looked relieved.
That night I ate dinner on the balcony of my guesthouse. As I munched slowly but diligently through the moulten hot vegetable thali I'd ordered the waiter, perhaps noticing the film of sweat that had formed across my face, walked over to inquire if I perhaps needed something to take the sting out of the meal. "No" I replied, not wishing to admit weakness.
"Oh I see" he said, leaning in and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "You like it spicy!"
Indeed.
That is all for now.
Dale Atkinson
Sunday, 18 November 2007
The apparent lack of an Indian road traffic code has created a transport environment which nurtures what those in the spin-doctoring game would call 'creative traffic solutions'.
You cannot travel more than 500m on any road in India without coming across a truly novel piece of transport innovation. Some measures, like driving a motorcycle along the raised concrete median strip that separates a two lane highway, appear to be straightforward responses to the problems of traffic congestion. However, others show truly outstanding imagination. Four stars to the man who used himself as the pivot with which to attach his hand-cart to a passing truck. This unlikely partnership passed my bus at some speed on the road between Chennai and Canchiparum. He was clinging to the rear tray of the articulated vehicle like a small boy trying to hoist himself over a tall fence. A strap was wound around his waist and tethered to his ungoverned four-wheeled cart, which wobbled and swayed as the momentum of the truck shifted through acceleration, braking and passing maneuvers. The only regulating force on the cart was the sinewy torso of the limpet like man. I was impressed.
And in this spirit of uninhibited transport innovation India has gifted the world the overnight sleeper bus, a means of public transport which would be illegal in almost every country in the world purely on safety grounds. The overnight sleeper consists, naturally enough, of a bus. A bus which has been stripped of all conventional seating. It its place, running the length of the vehicle on either side of a narrow aisle, small sleeper cabins have been installed. Double beds are situated on the driver's side and, on the opposite side, singles. Lower and upper births are available. In all the bus is able to sleep some thirty passengers.
Each cabin is basically a box with a mattress in it. By some miracle of engineering each box is roughly about two centimetres shorter than the individual who is sleeping within. On the inside a curtain hangs from a rail. It can be drawn to provide privacy from one's fellow passengers however, this feature is rendered somewhat obsolete as the outside wall of the box consists of a large, uncurtained window. Two posts are welded to the floor and the ceiling and run up past the inside of each box. Their main function appears to be to make it difficult to enter the cabin, without providing any real security from falling into the aisle should the vehicle be required to take evasive action.
Needless to say I spent the twelve hour trip from Anjuna to Hampi acquainting myself with a number of deities - many of whom are in direct competition with one another - in the desperate hope that at least one of them would be able to deliver me safely to the ruined city of temples.
I spent a few hours of the trip drinking beer and playing cards with a Californian photographer called Ben, whose relaxed style of speech and lazy eyes marked him out as a stoner of the highest order. If he'd been any more laid back he would have been asleep. But he was interesting company and he told some good stories, all of which he concluded with an odd little chuckle, which started somewhere in the back of this throat, was choked down on his soft palate before escaping through his nose. It sounded something like; nnnnggghhaaaa. I was the kind of sound that immediately makes you want to laugh too and I spent much of the trip in anticipation of that little chuckle. Try as I might I couldn't help but laugh in response.
At each one of the relatively frequent rest stops Ben would announce that he needed "just one more beer" to put him in the right physical condition to bring on sleep. His impressive intake of lager meant he also had to relieve himself at the same time. Watching him attempt to go to the restroom, find a bottle shop and return to the bus in the allocated time was like watching the closing credits of the Benny Hill show in fast forward, except without any girls dressed in French maid's costumes. On more than one occasion he failed to return on time and, in gleeful amusement, I would allow the bus to drive about 100 metres down the road before alerting the driver that we were a passenger short. I'm not proud of how funny I found it to watch Ben desperately scuttle after the bus, shouting for the driver to stop. It's wicked but by Christ I laughed like a drain.
At least I laughed until the third time it happened, when he slumped down in the cabin, short of breath but smiling triumphantly and opened the beer which just seconds earlier he'd been brandishing above his head in order to catch the driver's eye. Its contents erupted all over my sleeping bag and pillow. It was his turn to laugh. Karma is a bitch.
At the last stop before lights out I was buying a bottle of water when I caught sight of a sign over the counter offering instant mental relief through the healing powers of Brain Cooling Balm. I pointed this out to my Californian friend who immediately purchased some. He applied it to his forehead and declared it to be good. I was of a mind to give it a go myself but thought I'd wait to see what effect it had on Ben. He certainly seemed relaxed but weather that was the Balm, the eight beers he'd consumed over the course of the evening or the cumulative effects of more than a decade of heavy marijuana use I couldn't be sure. Judging by the sounds coming from the bunk below it certainly didn't hamper his attempts to sleep.
I'm in Colombo now and I'm heading up to climb Adam's Peak this evening. I might be off radar for a few days but should be back by the end of the week.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
You cannot travel more than 500m on any road in India without coming across a truly novel piece of transport innovation. Some measures, like driving a motorcycle along the raised concrete median strip that separates a two lane highway, appear to be straightforward responses to the problems of traffic congestion. However, others show truly outstanding imagination. Four stars to the man who used himself as the pivot with which to attach his hand-cart to a passing truck. This unlikely partnership passed my bus at some speed on the road between Chennai and Canchiparum. He was clinging to the rear tray of the articulated vehicle like a small boy trying to hoist himself over a tall fence. A strap was wound around his waist and tethered to his ungoverned four-wheeled cart, which wobbled and swayed as the momentum of the truck shifted through acceleration, braking and passing maneuvers. The only regulating force on the cart was the sinewy torso of the limpet like man. I was impressed.
And in this spirit of uninhibited transport innovation India has gifted the world the overnight sleeper bus, a means of public transport which would be illegal in almost every country in the world purely on safety grounds. The overnight sleeper consists, naturally enough, of a bus. A bus which has been stripped of all conventional seating. It its place, running the length of the vehicle on either side of a narrow aisle, small sleeper cabins have been installed. Double beds are situated on the driver's side and, on the opposite side, singles. Lower and upper births are available. In all the bus is able to sleep some thirty passengers.
Each cabin is basically a box with a mattress in it. By some miracle of engineering each box is roughly about two centimetres shorter than the individual who is sleeping within. On the inside a curtain hangs from a rail. It can be drawn to provide privacy from one's fellow passengers however, this feature is rendered somewhat obsolete as the outside wall of the box consists of a large, uncurtained window. Two posts are welded to the floor and the ceiling and run up past the inside of each box. Their main function appears to be to make it difficult to enter the cabin, without providing any real security from falling into the aisle should the vehicle be required to take evasive action.
Needless to say I spent the twelve hour trip from Anjuna to Hampi acquainting myself with a number of deities - many of whom are in direct competition with one another - in the desperate hope that at least one of them would be able to deliver me safely to the ruined city of temples.
I spent a few hours of the trip drinking beer and playing cards with a Californian photographer called Ben, whose relaxed style of speech and lazy eyes marked him out as a stoner of the highest order. If he'd been any more laid back he would have been asleep. But he was interesting company and he told some good stories, all of which he concluded with an odd little chuckle, which started somewhere in the back of this throat, was choked down on his soft palate before escaping through his nose. It sounded something like; nnnnggghhaaaa. I was the kind of sound that immediately makes you want to laugh too and I spent much of the trip in anticipation of that little chuckle. Try as I might I couldn't help but laugh in response.
At each one of the relatively frequent rest stops Ben would announce that he needed "just one more beer" to put him in the right physical condition to bring on sleep. His impressive intake of lager meant he also had to relieve himself at the same time. Watching him attempt to go to the restroom, find a bottle shop and return to the bus in the allocated time was like watching the closing credits of the Benny Hill show in fast forward, except without any girls dressed in French maid's costumes. On more than one occasion he failed to return on time and, in gleeful amusement, I would allow the bus to drive about 100 metres down the road before alerting the driver that we were a passenger short. I'm not proud of how funny I found it to watch Ben desperately scuttle after the bus, shouting for the driver to stop. It's wicked but by Christ I laughed like a drain.
At least I laughed until the third time it happened, when he slumped down in the cabin, short of breath but smiling triumphantly and opened the beer which just seconds earlier he'd been brandishing above his head in order to catch the driver's eye. Its contents erupted all over my sleeping bag and pillow. It was his turn to laugh. Karma is a bitch.
At the last stop before lights out I was buying a bottle of water when I caught sight of a sign over the counter offering instant mental relief through the healing powers of Brain Cooling Balm. I pointed this out to my Californian friend who immediately purchased some. He applied it to his forehead and declared it to be good. I was of a mind to give it a go myself but thought I'd wait to see what effect it had on Ben. He certainly seemed relaxed but weather that was the Balm, the eight beers he'd consumed over the course of the evening or the cumulative effects of more than a decade of heavy marijuana use I couldn't be sure. Judging by the sounds coming from the bunk below it certainly didn't hamper his attempts to sleep.
I'm in Colombo now and I'm heading up to climb Adam's Peak this evening. I might be off radar for a few days but should be back by the end of the week.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
Saturday, 17 November 2007
THE NEED FOR VIGILANCE
I have to hand it to the brains trust at Indian Railways. All this week they've been conducting a highly visible campaign to raise awareness of the need to be vigilant. Vigilance Awareness Week is as close as I think any one's ever managed to get to promoting Awareness Awareness and someone deserves a biscuit. What can I say? I'm a fan.
I've been a bit lax on the posts lately but I'll be putting a few more forward in the next couple of days including some revelations about sleeper buses and the importance of keeping your brain cool.
I'm in Sri Lanka now.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
I've been a bit lax on the posts lately but I'll be putting a few more forward in the next couple of days including some revelations about sleeper buses and the importance of keeping your brain cool.
I'm in Sri Lanka now.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
RED DAWN
The bus finally wound into Mappusa and I reached the beach at Arjuna shortly before noon. After a shower and a sleep I felt better about life.
The ringing in my right ear had stopped and I walked down to the beach and swam in the Arabian Sea for the first time. The water felt unnaturally warm.
After an hour I walked up to one of the restaurants which stand on concrete footings just above the high-water mark and ordered a beer. I watched the ochre gold of the sun punch its way through the grey brown haze of pollution which sits permanently on the Indian horizon. The breeze, which had been cloying and humid all afternoon grew suddenly cool.
The sun, which had moments earlier falling sluggishly into the Arabian Sea, disappeared and a deep green gloom fell across the beach. The wind, blowing from the west now, smoothed out the waves and huge gusts ruffled the tablecloths and blew out the candles. The waiters politely ordered their guests up under the pagoda.
The blue sky above disappeared behind a massive bank of black clouds and the sound of thunder rumbled from the landward side of the beach. The wind shifted south and the first drops fell viscous and heavy, landing on the tyles of the restaurant floor like tea-spoons of clotted cream falling on kitchen linoleum. The first flashes of lightning lit up the sky and, as if to signal the downpour, a huge peal of thunder echoed across the beach and the rain began to fall. Rain like grapeshot peppered the ocean, wickedly churning up the livid green sea. The pagoda began to leak just as the wind shifted west again, driving the rain under the shelter, which was open on all sides to the elements, drenching the guests.
Fork lightning light up the darkness, striking at the tankers dotted along the horizon. The rain fell ceaselessly and hard, driven to the ground by the swirling fury of the wind. The power failed and the lights went out.
I sat there in the moist green gloom for more than an hour drinking beer and talking to the other tourists who were trapped there just like me. The wind, the rain and the lightning undulated in intensity but never fell to a level were any of us felt confident enough to make a dash for our rooms. Darkness enveloped everything and then, after a final show of violent fury the rain stopped and the wind died, just as suddenly as it had begun.
I have never seen a storm to match it in intensity and as I waded gingerly back to my guesthouse, ankle deep in the red-soil mud of India and soaked to my skin I was childishly, stupidly happy that I'd seen it.
The next morning I woke early and decided to walk the five kilometers around the headland to the next beach along the coast. It was humid despite the early hour so I took off my t-shirt and stuffed it into my backpack. There were already a few signs of life as I walked along the first stretch of beach. The fruit sellers in the colourful saris were picking their way between the beach-huts offering fresh pineapple and mango to the people setting out an early stake on the sunbeds. One girl in purple approached me, her basket of fruit balanced expertly on her tiny head. "Coconut sir?" she said with a coy little arched eyebrow. "Lovely jubely!"
I let out a little laugh and said no thanks. She smiled. "You are English sir?"
"No, Australian" I replied.
"Oh." She said looking confused. "You are very white."
"Yes" I said.
"Okay." She said. She seemed happy to go along with what was so obviously a fiction provided we both knew I was lying.
I spent the next hour scrambling over rocks and paddling through the shallows around the headland only to discover the other beach was occupied exclusively by English tourists, who in the main were as equally white as I, slowly roasting themselves on sun beds, while waiters scurried about serving them beer and chips. 'Fry on you pasty fools' I thought.
I decided to stay only long enough to buy a bottle of water before heading back. The tide had risen fast and the going was significantly more precarious. About half way back I decided discretion was the better part of valor and clambered up the bank to take the cross country route back to Anjuna. It took significantly longer than I'd planned and by the time I'd returned the Boots sunscreen I'd applied that morning had been sweated off my and the prickly heat of sunburn began to tingle on my stomach and shoulders. I cursed my stupidity.
As I trudged back along the beach to my guesthouse I came across the same fruit seller I had met in the morning. She smiled; "Good afternoon sir." She said.
"Hello" I replied.
"How are you?" she said, looking me up and down.
"Good" I said.
"Would you like a coconut?"
"No thank you."
"Okay." She said, and then after a pause; "You are not white any more sir."
"Yes, I know." I said.
"You are a very red man now, sir." She said.
"Yes." I said.
"Okay." She said and walked away
The ringing in my right ear had stopped and I walked down to the beach and swam in the Arabian Sea for the first time. The water felt unnaturally warm.
After an hour I walked up to one of the restaurants which stand on concrete footings just above the high-water mark and ordered a beer. I watched the ochre gold of the sun punch its way through the grey brown haze of pollution which sits permanently on the Indian horizon. The breeze, which had been cloying and humid all afternoon grew suddenly cool.
The sun, which had moments earlier falling sluggishly into the Arabian Sea, disappeared and a deep green gloom fell across the beach. The wind, blowing from the west now, smoothed out the waves and huge gusts ruffled the tablecloths and blew out the candles. The waiters politely ordered their guests up under the pagoda.
The blue sky above disappeared behind a massive bank of black clouds and the sound of thunder rumbled from the landward side of the beach. The wind shifted south and the first drops fell viscous and heavy, landing on the tyles of the restaurant floor like tea-spoons of clotted cream falling on kitchen linoleum. The first flashes of lightning lit up the sky and, as if to signal the downpour, a huge peal of thunder echoed across the beach and the rain began to fall. Rain like grapeshot peppered the ocean, wickedly churning up the livid green sea. The pagoda began to leak just as the wind shifted west again, driving the rain under the shelter, which was open on all sides to the elements, drenching the guests.
Fork lightning light up the darkness, striking at the tankers dotted along the horizon. The rain fell ceaselessly and hard, driven to the ground by the swirling fury of the wind. The power failed and the lights went out.
I sat there in the moist green gloom for more than an hour drinking beer and talking to the other tourists who were trapped there just like me. The wind, the rain and the lightning undulated in intensity but never fell to a level were any of us felt confident enough to make a dash for our rooms. Darkness enveloped everything and then, after a final show of violent fury the rain stopped and the wind died, just as suddenly as it had begun.
I have never seen a storm to match it in intensity and as I waded gingerly back to my guesthouse, ankle deep in the red-soil mud of India and soaked to my skin I was childishly, stupidly happy that I'd seen it.
The next morning I woke early and decided to walk the five kilometers around the headland to the next beach along the coast. It was humid despite the early hour so I took off my t-shirt and stuffed it into my backpack. There were already a few signs of life as I walked along the first stretch of beach. The fruit sellers in the colourful saris were picking their way between the beach-huts offering fresh pineapple and mango to the people setting out an early stake on the sunbeds. One girl in purple approached me, her basket of fruit balanced expertly on her tiny head. "Coconut sir?" she said with a coy little arched eyebrow. "Lovely jubely!"
I let out a little laugh and said no thanks. She smiled. "You are English sir?"
"No, Australian" I replied.
"Oh." She said looking confused. "You are very white."
"Yes" I said.
"Okay." She said. She seemed happy to go along with what was so obviously a fiction provided we both knew I was lying.
I spent the next hour scrambling over rocks and paddling through the shallows around the headland only to discover the other beach was occupied exclusively by English tourists, who in the main were as equally white as I, slowly roasting themselves on sun beds, while waiters scurried about serving them beer and chips. 'Fry on you pasty fools' I thought.
I decided to stay only long enough to buy a bottle of water before heading back. The tide had risen fast and the going was significantly more precarious. About half way back I decided discretion was the better part of valor and clambered up the bank to take the cross country route back to Anjuna. It took significantly longer than I'd planned and by the time I'd returned the Boots sunscreen I'd applied that morning had been sweated off my and the prickly heat of sunburn began to tingle on my stomach and shoulders. I cursed my stupidity.
As I trudged back along the beach to my guesthouse I came across the same fruit seller I had met in the morning. She smiled; "Good afternoon sir." She said.
"Hello" I replied.
"How are you?" she said, looking me up and down.
"Good" I said.
"Would you like a coconut?"
"No thank you."
"Okay." She said, and then after a pause; "You are not white any more sir."
"Yes, I know." I said.
"You are a very red man now, sir." She said.
"Yes." I said.
"Okay." She said and walked away
Sunday, 11 November 2007
DO GOAN
Fat men are everywhere.
I was thinking about this on Tuesday night and wondering, in a patronising way, how this could be true even in a place like India where there is such enormous competition for such finite resources.I know where the tubbies come from in London where wages are high and food is cheap. They're sired by pints and pork scratchings and a national food hierarchy which makes the least nutritious food the most attractive and available. But India? Whose lunch money had this monolithic man suctioned into the seat beside me been stealing?
I had a lot of time to contemplate this during the 14 bone-rattling hours I spent cannoning around the bus from Mumbai to Goa, the excess weight of my travel companion in the window seat to my right, splashing across the dividing armrest and into my lap.It started out as a pretty exciting adventure. I was the only westerner on a bus carrying a capacity 45 passengers, all of them ready with a smile and a head waggle. A benign looking black dog rounded out the team. Even it was willing to offer a welcoming waggle from its owners lap. I gave it a friendly little ruffle behind the ears as I took my seat, unaware of the patient and calculated malice of which it was capable. Six hours later I would discover just how devious this malignant little creature could be.
The bus contained 45 tightly spaced recliner seats, some incapable of reclining, others incapable of doing anything else. Protocol dictated that, once seated, those passengers in seats which could be reclined were obliged to do so immediately, preferably with a maximum of force. The seats were not to be returned to the upright position until after the journey’s conclusion. A bank of fans between the windows on each side of the bus promised some relief from the stifling heat reflected off the baking tarmac beneath the tyres and the humidity generated by the burbling engine, the late afternoon sun and the kinetic energy of 48 humans and one canine, breathing and sweating together in a metal and glass box. Their promise was not fulfilled. The fans didn't work.
Nor did the reading lights placed over each seat, so I put away my books and stared across the pitching hillock of my fat companion’s stomach and out of the window at the grubby Mumbai streets.The bus swept into the liquid chaos that marks the roads of every major city in the developing world. Traffic swirled and eddied around us as we poured our glutinous way through the never ending rush-hour. Gradually the crumbling colonial grandeur of Colaba and The Fort and the rotting buildings of the failed Raj gave way to more recent, but no less dilapidated structures. These mossy high rise apartment blocks and offices in turn gave way to incrementally less distinguished premises until finally we reached the seemingly limitless fields of shacks and hovels which make up the southern slums of Mumbai, the home of more than a million souls.
Just as we left the last stretch of city behind us the dull strip-lights which ran along the centre of the bus were dimmed and the television screen at the front of the bus flickered into life. The burble of conversation slackened and died and the opening credits of a film appeared. Outside the world was darkness, broken occasionally by the flare of the headlights from an oncoming vehicle or the dull neon of the signs which mark the rest stops, petrol stations and hotels – little more than neon-lit open concrete shells – which loomed sporadically out of the gloom. The ocean of darkness offered nothing of interest so I turned back inwards and focused on the film.
I don’t speak Hindi. I can say “thank you” and “please” and “bill please, thank you” but I was concerned that unless Indian cinema had embraced a strangely limited form of Art House movie making I was going to have some trouble following the plot. I needn’t have worried.
The basic plot was as transparent as any romantic comedy produced in the west and decidedly less fatuous than most. The basic outline was this; clumsy but endearing fat man likes pretty girl. Handsome friend hatches schemes to help clumsy but endearing fat man. They sing a song. Schemes fail as a result of hilariously unpredictable mishaps. They sing a song. Handsome friend falls in love with single mother. Single mother’s ragamuffin son launches well executed schemes to prevent handsome friend from singing songs with mother. Hilarity. Song. Clumsy but endearing fat man finally gets pretty girl. They sing a song. Handsome man wins over single mother’s son and, subsequently, single mother. All get together to sing a song. Credits roll.
My traveling companions offered none of the uncontrolled enthusiasm I’d previously been led to believe Bollywood sparked in the Indian people. I was disappointed, particularly as that morning I had been offered the role of dancing westerner by one of the scouts who routinely work the traveler’s haunts in Colaba, looking for cheap and enthusiastic extras to shimmy for their cameras. ‘I’d have unlocked the fervor in them with the overwhelming passion of my patented Motown shuffle’ I thought as the bus wound its way though the darkness. ‘They’d have been dancing in the aisles’.
The road between Mumbai and Panji is an unlit two-way stretch of pot-holed bitumen. It is the main artery between the state capitals of Maharashtra and Goa and yet it is less substantial than most of the B-roads in England. It carries a phenomenal amount of traffic.
A sizable fleet of busses leaves Mumbai for Panji at around 6pm every night. All of them squeeze out into the rush-hour on MS Road at almost exactly the same time. They race each other from rest-stop to rest-stop, those buses with more powerful engines overtaking the slower moving older vehicles on the upward stretches, the less powerful vehicles, through the obstinacy and reckless courage of their drivers, frequently reclaiming their rank a short time later on the downward slope. Whether the newer vehicles have governors which restrict their speed on the decline or the drivers of the less powerful machines have some unknown motivation for taking greater risks than their rivals I do not know. What I do know is that our whining old tub, which was forced to take even the slightest of inclines in second gear, lost very little ground on far more modern rivals across the entirety of the trip.
The passing ritual in India is rudimentary and universal. A vehicle grinds up behind a slower means of transportation, sounds its horn, swings onto the far side of the road and accelerates. If during this maneuver a vehicle coming in the opposite direction appears the driver of the passing vehicle must sound his horn and gesticulate toward the driver of the vehicle on his left. The driver of the vehicle on the inside is then obliged to either respond with his own horn and series of gesticulations before staring straight ahead with a determined look on his face, or, he grudgingly slows his pace to allow the driver of the passing vehicle ahead of him.
If the driver of the inside vehicle does not honor the driver of the passing vehicle, the driver of the passing vehicle may choose to slow down and resume his place behind the vehicle he was attempting to pass, shaking his head and cursing violently. He will then regroup in order to attempt a renewed passing effort at the next available opportunity. It is more likely however, that when faced with this challenge, he will sound his horn a further time and accelerate harder. At this point oncoming traffic may very well be upon the passing vehicle. If this is the case the driver of the oncoming vehicle is obliged to sound his horn, flash his lights and slow down. In that order. The driver of the overtaking vehicle then has two options; he either swerves hard left, forcing the driver of the vehicle on his inside to concede the passing maneuver by driving him off the road, or he can begrudgingly concede defeat and fall back, gesticulating wildly at the drivers of both the oncoming vehicle and the vehicle he has failed to pass. He will then await the opportunity to execute a fresh passing maneuver at the nearest possible opportunity.
Bus drivers in this country are proud, courageous and obstinate men. They should not be challenged lightly.
After the film finished my fat companion chose to attempt sleep. He closed the windows to stop the wind luffing in his face, spiking the humidity and making a clammy and damp situation even damper and clammier. Soon he began to snore fulsomely. As an added torment he started to fart.
We stopped for petrol. An enormous poster of India’s cricket captain was plastered to the window of the garage garlanded with the words: "MS Dhoni drives on Speed". Surely not something to be widely encouraged, I thought, recalling the manic fervor of earlier downhill runs.
I turned to my iPod and closed my eyes, hoping to insulate at least two of my senses from the unpleasantness that surrounded me. My back was stiff and my legs tight and amid the heat on my skin, the stink in my nose and the discomfort in my coiled muscles, sleep seemed a long way off.
For some reason I could feel an unaccountable dampness on the bare toes of my left foot. I thought about this momentarily before opening my eyes to see my foot awash in a foaming, sticky liquid which had worked its way to me from somewhere at the front of the bus. I followed the course of this unpleasant little stream along the aisle. It stopped about three seats from the front, where a small reservoir of the substance had pooled, before it broke banks and ran freely, driven backwards by the inertia of the bus.
My eyes reach the source just as a heavy droplet of the sticky liquid smacked to the floor, facilitating a further breach of the pool’s banks. I looked up at the source of the droplet and there, staring back at me with those seemingly benign dark eyes was the black dog, its long pink tongue lolling from the side of its mouth. It met my gaze briefly and with a look of whimsical disdain it shifted its weight in its owners lap and dismissing me from sight. Even the animals didn’t want me to sleep.
The songs shuffled for almost two hours before my head began to loll. A lecture by Noam Chompski on linguistics and philosophy began. I thought this curious as I couldn’t remember uploading it onto my iPod but his voice had a pleasingly mellifluous tone which made me feel very relaxed, so I let it run.
I began to doze, stuck somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, occasionally bumped into partial consciousness by the startling screech of a truck's horn as it powered past us up a hill or the sudden jolt of an aborted overtaking maneuver.Then beneath the soft round tone of Professor Chompski’s East Coast English came a loud and persistent sibilance, like the sudden white-noise which used to appear on car stereos whenever you were listening to the radio and went under a bridge. More alarmingly the vehicle began to wobble. My body was thrust forward onto the fully reclined seat in front of me, the top of the chair striking me in the solar plexus. The brakes screeched and I was thrown back into my chair as the vehicle came to a sudden rest.
Passengers stared at each other through sleepy, confused eyes. A stunningly loud horn sounded in my ear as the air was torn from the cabin and a rival bus whined past at alarming speed. Our bus shifted on its suspension, sucked toward the turbulence of the passing vehicle.
The road at this point was narrow and the soft shoulder virtually non-existent and already partially claimed by a sturdy bank of lush and well established trees. The road turned sharply to the right less than sixty metres from where we stood. We were worryingly exposed.
The situation didn’t phase the bus driver or his two companions however, who swiftly maneuvered the vehicle onto even ground. Fortunately the tyre which had blown was on the rear driving axle, which was supported by four tyres in total. Had a front tyre bust the outcome would have been significantly less benign.
My fellow passengers seemed untroubled by these dark thoughts and all had returned to the business of sleep. I listened to the sound of the men changing the tyre for a few minutes and then tried to zone out myself.
My tubby companion woke just long enough to re-open the window to let some air into the stifling humidity of the now stationary bus. The breeze felt nice on my damp face and I was on the verge of nodding off when an almost supernaturally loud screeching tore through my semi-conscious state. I shot up, startled and confused. It was like I’d just been punched in the head by a sonic fist. I looked up to see the tail-lights of a goods truck disappearing into the distance. I’d just about shaken off the incident when it happened again. And seconds it happened a third time. And it kept happening. I don’t know if it was out of solidarity or triumphal gloating, or if it was some kind of safety measure, but the driver of every passing vehicle sounded its horn, which was generally placed at such a height and directed in such a way that its full volume was channeled directly through the open window of our bus and into my right ear hole. And nothing would stop it. It was like the noise was made up of real material. Like hard atoms of sound were forcing their way directly into my head. I did not like it.
I got up to get off the bus. I needed to get away from the fury of those terrible horns but as I rose to leave the driver resumed his seat and the door was pulled shut. We had lost just thirty minutes.
At the next stop I got off the bus and inspected the tread on the tyres. I wished I hadn't. I spent the rest of the journey fatigued but far from sleepy.
And that, is it for now.
Dale Atkinson
I was thinking about this on Tuesday night and wondering, in a patronising way, how this could be true even in a place like India where there is such enormous competition for such finite resources.I know where the tubbies come from in London where wages are high and food is cheap. They're sired by pints and pork scratchings and a national food hierarchy which makes the least nutritious food the most attractive and available. But India? Whose lunch money had this monolithic man suctioned into the seat beside me been stealing?
I had a lot of time to contemplate this during the 14 bone-rattling hours I spent cannoning around the bus from Mumbai to Goa, the excess weight of my travel companion in the window seat to my right, splashing across the dividing armrest and into my lap.It started out as a pretty exciting adventure. I was the only westerner on a bus carrying a capacity 45 passengers, all of them ready with a smile and a head waggle. A benign looking black dog rounded out the team. Even it was willing to offer a welcoming waggle from its owners lap. I gave it a friendly little ruffle behind the ears as I took my seat, unaware of the patient and calculated malice of which it was capable. Six hours later I would discover just how devious this malignant little creature could be.
The bus contained 45 tightly spaced recliner seats, some incapable of reclining, others incapable of doing anything else. Protocol dictated that, once seated, those passengers in seats which could be reclined were obliged to do so immediately, preferably with a maximum of force. The seats were not to be returned to the upright position until after the journey’s conclusion. A bank of fans between the windows on each side of the bus promised some relief from the stifling heat reflected off the baking tarmac beneath the tyres and the humidity generated by the burbling engine, the late afternoon sun and the kinetic energy of 48 humans and one canine, breathing and sweating together in a metal and glass box. Their promise was not fulfilled. The fans didn't work.
Nor did the reading lights placed over each seat, so I put away my books and stared across the pitching hillock of my fat companion’s stomach and out of the window at the grubby Mumbai streets.The bus swept into the liquid chaos that marks the roads of every major city in the developing world. Traffic swirled and eddied around us as we poured our glutinous way through the never ending rush-hour. Gradually the crumbling colonial grandeur of Colaba and The Fort and the rotting buildings of the failed Raj gave way to more recent, but no less dilapidated structures. These mossy high rise apartment blocks and offices in turn gave way to incrementally less distinguished premises until finally we reached the seemingly limitless fields of shacks and hovels which make up the southern slums of Mumbai, the home of more than a million souls.
Just as we left the last stretch of city behind us the dull strip-lights which ran along the centre of the bus were dimmed and the television screen at the front of the bus flickered into life. The burble of conversation slackened and died and the opening credits of a film appeared. Outside the world was darkness, broken occasionally by the flare of the headlights from an oncoming vehicle or the dull neon of the signs which mark the rest stops, petrol stations and hotels – little more than neon-lit open concrete shells – which loomed sporadically out of the gloom. The ocean of darkness offered nothing of interest so I turned back inwards and focused on the film.
I don’t speak Hindi. I can say “thank you” and “please” and “bill please, thank you” but I was concerned that unless Indian cinema had embraced a strangely limited form of Art House movie making I was going to have some trouble following the plot. I needn’t have worried.
The basic plot was as transparent as any romantic comedy produced in the west and decidedly less fatuous than most. The basic outline was this; clumsy but endearing fat man likes pretty girl. Handsome friend hatches schemes to help clumsy but endearing fat man. They sing a song. Schemes fail as a result of hilariously unpredictable mishaps. They sing a song. Handsome friend falls in love with single mother. Single mother’s ragamuffin son launches well executed schemes to prevent handsome friend from singing songs with mother. Hilarity. Song. Clumsy but endearing fat man finally gets pretty girl. They sing a song. Handsome man wins over single mother’s son and, subsequently, single mother. All get together to sing a song. Credits roll.
My traveling companions offered none of the uncontrolled enthusiasm I’d previously been led to believe Bollywood sparked in the Indian people. I was disappointed, particularly as that morning I had been offered the role of dancing westerner by one of the scouts who routinely work the traveler’s haunts in Colaba, looking for cheap and enthusiastic extras to shimmy for their cameras. ‘I’d have unlocked the fervor in them with the overwhelming passion of my patented Motown shuffle’ I thought as the bus wound its way though the darkness. ‘They’d have been dancing in the aisles’.
The road between Mumbai and Panji is an unlit two-way stretch of pot-holed bitumen. It is the main artery between the state capitals of Maharashtra and Goa and yet it is less substantial than most of the B-roads in England. It carries a phenomenal amount of traffic.
A sizable fleet of busses leaves Mumbai for Panji at around 6pm every night. All of them squeeze out into the rush-hour on MS Road at almost exactly the same time. They race each other from rest-stop to rest-stop, those buses with more powerful engines overtaking the slower moving older vehicles on the upward stretches, the less powerful vehicles, through the obstinacy and reckless courage of their drivers, frequently reclaiming their rank a short time later on the downward slope. Whether the newer vehicles have governors which restrict their speed on the decline or the drivers of the less powerful machines have some unknown motivation for taking greater risks than their rivals I do not know. What I do know is that our whining old tub, which was forced to take even the slightest of inclines in second gear, lost very little ground on far more modern rivals across the entirety of the trip.
The passing ritual in India is rudimentary and universal. A vehicle grinds up behind a slower means of transportation, sounds its horn, swings onto the far side of the road and accelerates. If during this maneuver a vehicle coming in the opposite direction appears the driver of the passing vehicle must sound his horn and gesticulate toward the driver of the vehicle on his left. The driver of the vehicle on the inside is then obliged to either respond with his own horn and series of gesticulations before staring straight ahead with a determined look on his face, or, he grudgingly slows his pace to allow the driver of the passing vehicle ahead of him.
If the driver of the inside vehicle does not honor the driver of the passing vehicle, the driver of the passing vehicle may choose to slow down and resume his place behind the vehicle he was attempting to pass, shaking his head and cursing violently. He will then regroup in order to attempt a renewed passing effort at the next available opportunity. It is more likely however, that when faced with this challenge, he will sound his horn a further time and accelerate harder. At this point oncoming traffic may very well be upon the passing vehicle. If this is the case the driver of the oncoming vehicle is obliged to sound his horn, flash his lights and slow down. In that order. The driver of the overtaking vehicle then has two options; he either swerves hard left, forcing the driver of the vehicle on his inside to concede the passing maneuver by driving him off the road, or he can begrudgingly concede defeat and fall back, gesticulating wildly at the drivers of both the oncoming vehicle and the vehicle he has failed to pass. He will then await the opportunity to execute a fresh passing maneuver at the nearest possible opportunity.
Bus drivers in this country are proud, courageous and obstinate men. They should not be challenged lightly.
After the film finished my fat companion chose to attempt sleep. He closed the windows to stop the wind luffing in his face, spiking the humidity and making a clammy and damp situation even damper and clammier. Soon he began to snore fulsomely. As an added torment he started to fart.
We stopped for petrol. An enormous poster of India’s cricket captain was plastered to the window of the garage garlanded with the words: "MS Dhoni drives on Speed". Surely not something to be widely encouraged, I thought, recalling the manic fervor of earlier downhill runs.
I turned to my iPod and closed my eyes, hoping to insulate at least two of my senses from the unpleasantness that surrounded me. My back was stiff and my legs tight and amid the heat on my skin, the stink in my nose and the discomfort in my coiled muscles, sleep seemed a long way off.
For some reason I could feel an unaccountable dampness on the bare toes of my left foot. I thought about this momentarily before opening my eyes to see my foot awash in a foaming, sticky liquid which had worked its way to me from somewhere at the front of the bus. I followed the course of this unpleasant little stream along the aisle. It stopped about three seats from the front, where a small reservoir of the substance had pooled, before it broke banks and ran freely, driven backwards by the inertia of the bus.
My eyes reach the source just as a heavy droplet of the sticky liquid smacked to the floor, facilitating a further breach of the pool’s banks. I looked up at the source of the droplet and there, staring back at me with those seemingly benign dark eyes was the black dog, its long pink tongue lolling from the side of its mouth. It met my gaze briefly and with a look of whimsical disdain it shifted its weight in its owners lap and dismissing me from sight. Even the animals didn’t want me to sleep.
The songs shuffled for almost two hours before my head began to loll. A lecture by Noam Chompski on linguistics and philosophy began. I thought this curious as I couldn’t remember uploading it onto my iPod but his voice had a pleasingly mellifluous tone which made me feel very relaxed, so I let it run.
I began to doze, stuck somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, occasionally bumped into partial consciousness by the startling screech of a truck's horn as it powered past us up a hill or the sudden jolt of an aborted overtaking maneuver.Then beneath the soft round tone of Professor Chompski’s East Coast English came a loud and persistent sibilance, like the sudden white-noise which used to appear on car stereos whenever you were listening to the radio and went under a bridge. More alarmingly the vehicle began to wobble. My body was thrust forward onto the fully reclined seat in front of me, the top of the chair striking me in the solar plexus. The brakes screeched and I was thrown back into my chair as the vehicle came to a sudden rest.
Passengers stared at each other through sleepy, confused eyes. A stunningly loud horn sounded in my ear as the air was torn from the cabin and a rival bus whined past at alarming speed. Our bus shifted on its suspension, sucked toward the turbulence of the passing vehicle.
The road at this point was narrow and the soft shoulder virtually non-existent and already partially claimed by a sturdy bank of lush and well established trees. The road turned sharply to the right less than sixty metres from where we stood. We were worryingly exposed.
The situation didn’t phase the bus driver or his two companions however, who swiftly maneuvered the vehicle onto even ground. Fortunately the tyre which had blown was on the rear driving axle, which was supported by four tyres in total. Had a front tyre bust the outcome would have been significantly less benign.
My fellow passengers seemed untroubled by these dark thoughts and all had returned to the business of sleep. I listened to the sound of the men changing the tyre for a few minutes and then tried to zone out myself.
My tubby companion woke just long enough to re-open the window to let some air into the stifling humidity of the now stationary bus. The breeze felt nice on my damp face and I was on the verge of nodding off when an almost supernaturally loud screeching tore through my semi-conscious state. I shot up, startled and confused. It was like I’d just been punched in the head by a sonic fist. I looked up to see the tail-lights of a goods truck disappearing into the distance. I’d just about shaken off the incident when it happened again. And seconds it happened a third time. And it kept happening. I don’t know if it was out of solidarity or triumphal gloating, or if it was some kind of safety measure, but the driver of every passing vehicle sounded its horn, which was generally placed at such a height and directed in such a way that its full volume was channeled directly through the open window of our bus and into my right ear hole. And nothing would stop it. It was like the noise was made up of real material. Like hard atoms of sound were forcing their way directly into my head. I did not like it.
I got up to get off the bus. I needed to get away from the fury of those terrible horns but as I rose to leave the driver resumed his seat and the door was pulled shut. We had lost just thirty minutes.
At the next stop I got off the bus and inspected the tread on the tyres. I wished I hadn't. I spent the rest of the journey fatigued but far from sleepy.
And that, is it for now.
Dale Atkinson
Monday, 5 November 2007
MUMBAI, WHAT I KNOW
Mumbai, it's hard to leave. And not in a "Christ this is fantastic I don't ever want to go" kind of way. Just logistically it's hard to depart. This is particularly, or perhaps even exclusively, the case if you've been dumb enough not to arrange your departure for Goa in advance. Anyway, what this boils down to is that instead of catching the air conditioned, overnight sleeper train I'll be cramped up on a bus for 14 hours. It's really not a great result for me.
Still, things are good. The sub continent is as hot and sticky as you'd expect, which a surprisingly large number of the locals seem to overcome by attempting to sell ludicrously large balloons. You should see these things, they're roughly the size a smart car. What possible use they can be to anyone apart from marking the purchaser out as a pigeon of the highest order it's hard to grasp but there must be someone out there buying or it wouldn't be going on. No doubt it's hard graft selling giant balloons to the discerning consumer, not least because you've got to blow the jeffing things up every morning. I was up early this morning and there, lined up along the wall on the far side of Colaba's main drag, sat a bank of hyperventilating balloon sellers busting a lung to earn a buck. I almost bought one on the spot out of admiration but didn't fancy carrying it around for the rest of the day. I couldn't bare the though of buying one and bursting it. They'd invested too much effort.
With luck the next post will come from Goa.
That is it for now,
Dale Atkinson
Still, things are good. The sub continent is as hot and sticky as you'd expect, which a surprisingly large number of the locals seem to overcome by attempting to sell ludicrously large balloons. You should see these things, they're roughly the size a smart car. What possible use they can be to anyone apart from marking the purchaser out as a pigeon of the highest order it's hard to grasp but there must be someone out there buying or it wouldn't be going on. No doubt it's hard graft selling giant balloons to the discerning consumer, not least because you've got to blow the jeffing things up every morning. I was up early this morning and there, lined up along the wall on the far side of Colaba's main drag, sat a bank of hyperventilating balloon sellers busting a lung to earn a buck. I almost bought one on the spot out of admiration but didn't fancy carrying it around for the rest of the day. I couldn't bare the though of buying one and bursting it. They'd invested too much effort.
With luck the next post will come from Goa.
That is it for now,
Dale Atkinson
Sunday, 4 November 2007
THE TASTE
You can't go back they say and I'm starting to think they're right after being upgraded to business class for the Dubai to Mumbai leg of the trip. Economy will never be the same for me now I've seen how they live on the other side of the curtain. And it's not just the champagne or the extra legroom that's won me over, although that is nice, and I'm sure I can learn to live without the more expansive list of specially selected wines and the better grade of orange juice. No, those memories will fade with time. What will not, and what will ultimately ruin economy for me for the rest of my life is the jar of fruit conserve which was offered to accompany the assortment of breakfast pastries I enjoyed about an hour out from touchdown.
The strange thing about being upgraded is that my immediate thought once I'd been informed of the bump in class wasn't "that's awesome", it was "damn, why couldn't this have happened on one of the longer legs of the trip". So evidently I'm a glass half empty kind of guy.
At the Emirates Transfer Desk in Dubai International, just before I was informed of my good fortune, I was sleepily watching the information screens above the tellers as they rolled through the departure times and gate numbers. Every fourth screen showed an ad for Skywards, the Emirates frequent flyer scheme. The picture was of an oak desk-top scattered with travel information, a ticket envelope and some nice stationary with a Skywards Blue membership card taking pride of place in the centre of the picture. "Emirates. Make travel more rewarding" was slugged across the top of the page. I didn't really take much notice at first but I was in the queue for some time and after about the fourth rotation I noticed the name on the membership card. I did an immediate double-take but the page disappeared just as I was about to confirm my suspicions. It took another four minutes for the ad to reappear. And then there it was, Skywards Blue member EK 168 803 876, Mr John Denver.
Someone needs to fire the creative at Emirate's ad agency, or give the black humored bastard a raise. Genius.
I'd mentally prepared myself for the absolute worst from Mumbai; heat, beggars, rip-off merchants, ageing hippies. Looking across the tarmac at the corrugated iron shacks of the shanty town next to the airport as we taxied to the terminal on arrival I felt sure my trip to the Colaba was going to be a rather shocking assault on the senses. But it never came. My trip through customs was swift and efficient, securing a taxi was cheap and hassle free and the traffic into town smooth and unintimidating, all of which might be accounted for by the fact it was 8:15 on a Sunday morning.
Finding a clean hotel room was relatively easy and by 10am I was showered up and fast-asleep.
When I woke four hours later and headed out to wander the streets all my pre-conceived notions were confirmed. Within forty minutes I'd been hassled by beggars and shysters, offered more hash than I could take on in a lifetime and was targeted with no fewer than six scams of varying degrees of sophistication, from low end hustlers offering to clean out a potentially fatal excessive build up of wax in my ears, to the polite and well spoken 'Terrance', who approached me in the vast park opposite the university, where dozens of concurrent informal cricket matches take place each afternoon, hundreds of kids scattered across each other's turf, guarding their outfield from the infield of the game going on two pitches over.
'Terrance' came up while I was taking photos of the melee. He was engaging and inquisitive and spoke excellent English. His Irish Catholic father had taught him, he said, and then he asked me what I did for a living. I explained, he listened. I asked him in return.
"To be honest Dale, I take people on tours of Mumbai, and show them the real city. I call it the 'Terrance Experience'." He said.
He then went on to list the kinds of things which are included in the 'Terrance Experience', playing up to my independent traveller's vanity, deriding organised tours and corrupt tour guides. His tour was different. On his tour I wouldn't have to "hop about taking photos like a Japanese tourist". On his tour I would see things the guidebooks dare not speak about, like the Silent Hole, where the Parisi leave their dead to be consumed by vultures. He has a friend, he said, whose penthouse apartment overlooks this terrifying, yet intriguing site.
I must have looked incredulous at this point because he swiftly acknowledged my scepticism before complimenting Australians on being a generally inquisitive bunch and asking where my hotel was located. At this point I decided to pull the pin, thanking him for his offer, shaking his hand and walking off.
"I think you have really missed a wonderful opportunity." He said as I walked away.
You hear about these scams all the time. Someone offers you an extremely intriguing and well presented not-to-be-missed opportunity, you accept and the next thing you know you've been driven to some seedy part of town and at best they're demanding a huge sum of money in exchange for your safe return and at worst... well who knows?
Despite that knowledge and the cynical scepticism of a reasonably seasoned traveller there's still a part of me that says 'what if?'
What if he wasn't some crooked hustler? What if he was just a genuine guy offering me an amazing and eye-opening opportunity? What if I'd agreed to go with him and I'd witnessed something truly phenomenal, something which would change my life forever?
Meh? What are you going to do?
I'll probably have another day in Mumbai tomorrow and then catch the train to Goa to hang out with the hippies.
That's it for now,
Dale
The strange thing about being upgraded is that my immediate thought once I'd been informed of the bump in class wasn't "that's awesome", it was "damn, why couldn't this have happened on one of the longer legs of the trip". So evidently I'm a glass half empty kind of guy.
At the Emirates Transfer Desk in Dubai International, just before I was informed of my good fortune, I was sleepily watching the information screens above the tellers as they rolled through the departure times and gate numbers. Every fourth screen showed an ad for Skywards, the Emirates frequent flyer scheme. The picture was of an oak desk-top scattered with travel information, a ticket envelope and some nice stationary with a Skywards Blue membership card taking pride of place in the centre of the picture. "Emirates. Make travel more rewarding" was slugged across the top of the page. I didn't really take much notice at first but I was in the queue for some time and after about the fourth rotation I noticed the name on the membership card. I did an immediate double-take but the page disappeared just as I was about to confirm my suspicions. It took another four minutes for the ad to reappear. And then there it was, Skywards Blue member EK 168 803 876, Mr John Denver.
Someone needs to fire the creative at Emirate's ad agency, or give the black humored bastard a raise. Genius.
I'd mentally prepared myself for the absolute worst from Mumbai; heat, beggars, rip-off merchants, ageing hippies. Looking across the tarmac at the corrugated iron shacks of the shanty town next to the airport as we taxied to the terminal on arrival I felt sure my trip to the Colaba was going to be a rather shocking assault on the senses. But it never came. My trip through customs was swift and efficient, securing a taxi was cheap and hassle free and the traffic into town smooth and unintimidating, all of which might be accounted for by the fact it was 8:15 on a Sunday morning.
Finding a clean hotel room was relatively easy and by 10am I was showered up and fast-asleep.
When I woke four hours later and headed out to wander the streets all my pre-conceived notions were confirmed. Within forty minutes I'd been hassled by beggars and shysters, offered more hash than I could take on in a lifetime and was targeted with no fewer than six scams of varying degrees of sophistication, from low end hustlers offering to clean out a potentially fatal excessive build up of wax in my ears, to the polite and well spoken 'Terrance', who approached me in the vast park opposite the university, where dozens of concurrent informal cricket matches take place each afternoon, hundreds of kids scattered across each other's turf, guarding their outfield from the infield of the game going on two pitches over.
'Terrance' came up while I was taking photos of the melee. He was engaging and inquisitive and spoke excellent English. His Irish Catholic father had taught him, he said, and then he asked me what I did for a living. I explained, he listened. I asked him in return.
"To be honest Dale, I take people on tours of Mumbai, and show them the real city. I call it the 'Terrance Experience'." He said.
He then went on to list the kinds of things which are included in the 'Terrance Experience', playing up to my independent traveller's vanity, deriding organised tours and corrupt tour guides. His tour was different. On his tour I wouldn't have to "hop about taking photos like a Japanese tourist". On his tour I would see things the guidebooks dare not speak about, like the Silent Hole, where the Parisi leave their dead to be consumed by vultures. He has a friend, he said, whose penthouse apartment overlooks this terrifying, yet intriguing site.
I must have looked incredulous at this point because he swiftly acknowledged my scepticism before complimenting Australians on being a generally inquisitive bunch and asking where my hotel was located. At this point I decided to pull the pin, thanking him for his offer, shaking his hand and walking off.
"I think you have really missed a wonderful opportunity." He said as I walked away.
You hear about these scams all the time. Someone offers you an extremely intriguing and well presented not-to-be-missed opportunity, you accept and the next thing you know you've been driven to some seedy part of town and at best they're demanding a huge sum of money in exchange for your safe return and at worst... well who knows?
Despite that knowledge and the cynical scepticism of a reasonably seasoned traveller there's still a part of me that says 'what if?'
What if he wasn't some crooked hustler? What if he was just a genuine guy offering me an amazing and eye-opening opportunity? What if I'd agreed to go with him and I'd witnessed something truly phenomenal, something which would change my life forever?
Meh? What are you going to do?
I'll probably have another day in Mumbai tomorrow and then catch the train to Goa to hang out with the hippies.
That's it for now,
Dale
Saturday, 3 November 2007
TO A HAS-BEEN
I'm here at the Internet cafe in Cairo winding down my last few Egyptian pounds and the last hours before my transfer arrives to ferry me through the hectic afternoon traffic and out to the airport.
Cairo is a city of more than twenty-three million people and you get the feeling that at any given time around a third of them are on the roads. Jerry Seinfeld said that there weren't enough parking spaces in New York to accommodate all the cars, so a significant percentage of them had to remain in constant motion to avoid complete traffic meltdown. I think the same is true here.
Egypt is a funny country. Unemployment is virtually zero, but only because the wages are so low. There's someone to do everything for you over here, and most of the time, unless you're trapped in the tourist enclaves, they'll charge you almost nothing to do it. Walk past a petrol station and you'll see twelve attendants ready to fill your tank, check your oil and tyres and clean your windscreen. I walked into one of the local takeouts yesterday to buy a felafel sandwich and there were fourteen people behind the counter and one toilet attendant. I was one of just two people in the restaurant. The Pyramids were build by tens of thousands of slaves, it seems there has always been a broad base of cheep labour in this country, something the French used to their advantage excavating the canal from the sand and rock of Suez.
Steve pointed out something a few days ago which I'd subconsciously noted but failed to fully grasp; that one in three buildings in nearly every town and city you pass through in this country appears to be in either an advanced state of construction or dilapidation. Apparently, for the most part it is the former rather than the latter. The tax system is set up in such a way that any landlord or owner is not required to pay rent on an incomplete building. As a result most of the buildings which have been constructed in the last fifteen years remain intentionally incomplete, with steel cables poking from concrete pylons on the top floors of most new residential blocks. Common practice appears to be to attach tv antenna or satellite dishes to the poles in order to receive a better signal. This policy has given the entire country a slightly dilapidated feel. The contrast between the astonishingly well preserved ancient wonders and the almost carelessly incomplete modern architecture is uncomfortable and it is hard not to feel that Egypt's best years are Milena behind it.
Sometimes, when I was being guided around the ancient cites by our enthusiastically proud -almost to the point of evangelism - tour guide, Romany, I was reminded of watching a once-great footballer or cricketer on the after-dinner speaking circuit, ruminating for just a little too long on the events that put him at the pinnacle a generation ago. The room is generally full of patronisingly indulgent, but increasingly disinterested, fans, who have heard all the stories before and are frequently embarrassed for him. I might be a cynic but I sense the same patronising indulgence from the tourists which pour off the air conditioned buses to marvel at the ruins and shake their heads in wonder at the ingenuity and sheer bloody minded tenacity of the ancient's engineering achievements. We appreciate the romance of the past, admire the game as it used to be played, pay tribute to the fallen heroes, but ultimately we're only there for a night out and eventually we'll head home safe in the knowledge that the game as it's played today is stronger, faster and in every respect more deft than it ever was. You get the feeling that Egypt, like the once-great footballer, can't match the modern game.
Its two biggest earners are the Suez Canal and tourism, in that order. It produces only just enough oil to support its own needs and the industry is limited. What it does have however, is water, in abundance, and the manpower to harness it. So perhaps, as the population of this hungry world grows and water increases in importance, Egypt's ancient source of strength, the Nile, will push it up the rankings again. Who knows. The other thing they have over here which should be the envy of every western country is free university study. A lack of opportunities for skilled graduates is the only thing that needs to be overcome.
Obviously a lot of the countries wealth goes into military spending. With the Suez providing its most important source of income it has to protect and hold the Sinai Peninsula at all costs. This might account for the lack of investment in infrastructure and general state of dilapidation.
So what did I learn from Egypt? One thing for sure. Nothing lasts like rocks. The Pharaohs are dead and the gods they served and worked so tirelessly to honour died with them, but the rocks they shifted and carved four thousand years ago to mark their time on earth and, with luck, guide them to eternity, remain. So what does that mean? We're temporary. Everyone dies and ultimately all a man can do, all any man can do is carve his name in the rocks and hope that in four thousand year's time someone's still around to see it. Nihilistic stuff I know but there you go.
Reading all that back I can see the thoughts are a bit disordered and poorly laid out. They might not even accurately represent my genuine feelings once I've had time to order my thoughts properly but it'll have to do for now.
I'll be in India on Sunday morning, I'll post a bit more next week.
That's it for now,
Dale Atkinson
Cairo is a city of more than twenty-three million people and you get the feeling that at any given time around a third of them are on the roads. Jerry Seinfeld said that there weren't enough parking spaces in New York to accommodate all the cars, so a significant percentage of them had to remain in constant motion to avoid complete traffic meltdown. I think the same is true here.
Egypt is a funny country. Unemployment is virtually zero, but only because the wages are so low. There's someone to do everything for you over here, and most of the time, unless you're trapped in the tourist enclaves, they'll charge you almost nothing to do it. Walk past a petrol station and you'll see twelve attendants ready to fill your tank, check your oil and tyres and clean your windscreen. I walked into one of the local takeouts yesterday to buy a felafel sandwich and there were fourteen people behind the counter and one toilet attendant. I was one of just two people in the restaurant. The Pyramids were build by tens of thousands of slaves, it seems there has always been a broad base of cheep labour in this country, something the French used to their advantage excavating the canal from the sand and rock of Suez.
Steve pointed out something a few days ago which I'd subconsciously noted but failed to fully grasp; that one in three buildings in nearly every town and city you pass through in this country appears to be in either an advanced state of construction or dilapidation. Apparently, for the most part it is the former rather than the latter. The tax system is set up in such a way that any landlord or owner is not required to pay rent on an incomplete building. As a result most of the buildings which have been constructed in the last fifteen years remain intentionally incomplete, with steel cables poking from concrete pylons on the top floors of most new residential blocks. Common practice appears to be to attach tv antenna or satellite dishes to the poles in order to receive a better signal. This policy has given the entire country a slightly dilapidated feel. The contrast between the astonishingly well preserved ancient wonders and the almost carelessly incomplete modern architecture is uncomfortable and it is hard not to feel that Egypt's best years are Milena behind it.
Sometimes, when I was being guided around the ancient cites by our enthusiastically proud -almost to the point of evangelism - tour guide, Romany, I was reminded of watching a once-great footballer or cricketer on the after-dinner speaking circuit, ruminating for just a little too long on the events that put him at the pinnacle a generation ago. The room is generally full of patronisingly indulgent, but increasingly disinterested, fans, who have heard all the stories before and are frequently embarrassed for him. I might be a cynic but I sense the same patronising indulgence from the tourists which pour off the air conditioned buses to marvel at the ruins and shake their heads in wonder at the ingenuity and sheer bloody minded tenacity of the ancient's engineering achievements. We appreciate the romance of the past, admire the game as it used to be played, pay tribute to the fallen heroes, but ultimately we're only there for a night out and eventually we'll head home safe in the knowledge that the game as it's played today is stronger, faster and in every respect more deft than it ever was. You get the feeling that Egypt, like the once-great footballer, can't match the modern game.
Its two biggest earners are the Suez Canal and tourism, in that order. It produces only just enough oil to support its own needs and the industry is limited. What it does have however, is water, in abundance, and the manpower to harness it. So perhaps, as the population of this hungry world grows and water increases in importance, Egypt's ancient source of strength, the Nile, will push it up the rankings again. Who knows. The other thing they have over here which should be the envy of every western country is free university study. A lack of opportunities for skilled graduates is the only thing that needs to be overcome.
Obviously a lot of the countries wealth goes into military spending. With the Suez providing its most important source of income it has to protect and hold the Sinai Peninsula at all costs. This might account for the lack of investment in infrastructure and general state of dilapidation.
So what did I learn from Egypt? One thing for sure. Nothing lasts like rocks. The Pharaohs are dead and the gods they served and worked so tirelessly to honour died with them, but the rocks they shifted and carved four thousand years ago to mark their time on earth and, with luck, guide them to eternity, remain. So what does that mean? We're temporary. Everyone dies and ultimately all a man can do, all any man can do is carve his name in the rocks and hope that in four thousand year's time someone's still around to see it. Nihilistic stuff I know but there you go.
Reading all that back I can see the thoughts are a bit disordered and poorly laid out. They might not even accurately represent my genuine feelings once I've had time to order my thoughts properly but it'll have to do for now.
I'll be in India on Sunday morning, I'll post a bit more next week.
That's it for now,
Dale Atkinson
Friday, 2 November 2007
LEAVING ON A JET PLANE
I fly out tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. Three days in Cairo is about one too many and now that I've seen all the headline sights and the rest of the crew has departed I'm ready to move on. You can only wander alone through the streets of a foreign city like Cairo, with its frantic traffic and cracked footpaths, for so long before the novelty wares off. The colour and tang of the fruit shops and butchers, shisha pipe cafes and felafel houses can only do so much to insulate you from the filth and the poverty. But the friendliness of the people is infectious and its easy to squander an hour shaking hands with the kids and answering their two stock questions; "what is your name?" and "where are you from?"
I get into Mumbai first thing on Sunday the 4th, hopefully I'll make it the first race meeting of the season that afternoon. If anyone has any hot tips please let me know.
I'm hungry, so that is all,
Dale Atkinson
ps. Steve headed back to London this morning leaving me alone with Bubbles, who is becoming increasingly despondent and his behaviour worryingly erratic. Last night he spat at a waiter and tipped a whole vegetable tagine down the cleavage of one of my traveling companions. It didn't go down well.
I tried to convince Steve to take Bubbles back to London and billet him out with either Sarah, Tracey or Yvette but he was reluctant. I don't blame him. Hopefully things will improve by the time we get to India.
I get into Mumbai first thing on Sunday the 4th, hopefully I'll make it the first race meeting of the season that afternoon. If anyone has any hot tips please let me know.
I'm hungry, so that is all,
Dale Atkinson
ps. Steve headed back to London this morning leaving me alone with Bubbles, who is becoming increasingly despondent and his behaviour worryingly erratic. Last night he spat at a waiter and tipped a whole vegetable tagine down the cleavage of one of my traveling companions. It didn't go down well.
I tried to convince Steve to take Bubbles back to London and billet him out with either Sarah, Tracey or Yvette but he was reluctant. I don't blame him. Hopefully things will improve by the time we get to India.
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Sixteen tonnes and what do you get...
Well, according to the song, another day older and deeper in debt. But if you're a Coptic Monk with an isolationist streak and a huge burden of sin you can turn those 16 tonnes into 3,000 precarious steps up a steep mountain in the middle of a moonscape desert. It just takes a few years.
We arrived at Mt Sinai at a bit past one am a few nights ago, groggy from lack of sleep and with heavy legs courtesy of a two hour bus-ride through the barren desert of the Sinai Peninsula. We took on some water, secured a Bedouin guide and started the long trudge up the winding camel track which loops up the less sheer north-eastern face of the mountain. Once we'd cleared the more sheltered lower stretch of the trip, which lies in a cleft between two mountains, the wind swiftly picked up and the temperature dropped sharply.
Progress up the mountain was steady, with plenty of rest stops in the tea-houses along the way to let the tourists catch their breath and pay too much for Twix bars. It took us about two hours to reach the final rest-stop, where we were presented the opportunity to pay 5 Egyptian pounds to go to the toilet. A bargain few were able to resist.
The camel track runs out just short of the summit and at this point even the lazy tourist has to dismount and climb the final 760 steps to the plateau where Moses supposedly collected the two stone tablets inscribed with the ten commandments. The camel option struck me as not only lazy but incredibly dangerous. The narrow track is barely wide enough to accommodate a camel and a man walking side by side and the drop off the edges in some places is breath-catchingly sheer. I was continually called on to avoid a rapidly descending camel.
I had the chance to speak with out guide on the way up and he said they get about one death a week through accident or heart attack. Last year he was behind a camel which stepped on a sharp rock, lurched unexpectedly to the right and plunged more than 80 metres to its death. Its passenger did not survive the fall. And the night before our climb he and four others had had to carry the body of an overweight Russian down half the mountain in a blanket, each holding a corner, after his heart gave out on the climb. That said it's not exactly the North Face of the Eiger.
Speaking of North Face I should throw in a mention here of my former colleagues at the BRC who were kind enough to purchase me a Northface Windbreaker as a leaving gift. Despite the chilly wind and the low temperatures I was toasty warm throughout the climb. If anyone from Northface is reading this please feel free to offer me some form of remuneration for this ringing endorsement. I am thoroughly up for sale.
The final 760 steps made the quads sing a little and required a bit of extra concentration in the darkness but everyone made it up without too much hassle, including Clay, a 60 year old American from Oregon, who stumbled into the tea-hut, face wet with sweat, arms raised aloft declaring; "sixty and I'm here". Thirty seconds later he was sound asleep.
We hired some blankets and, after a thirty minute rest in the warmth of the hut, we climbed the last few steps to the peak, where we hunkered down to await the sunrise, passing around Pringles and chocolate.
Now static and exposed on the summit of a 2,200m tall mountain I have to confess I got a bit cold. Part of this may be accounted for by the fact I was wearing shorts. We waited about an hour for first light to show and a further twenty minutes for the sun to breast the horizon. It was a good feeling, although I'd have to say I've had more religious experiences watching the sun rise as I stumbled back home from the pub. That might have something to do with my relative emotional state at the time.
I opted to take the stairs on the return journey, down more than 3,000 steps and past the temple of Elijia. As an experience that probably surpassed the sunrise.
I'm getting bored with writing now and if you've made it this far well done.
We visited the Cairo Museum yesterday. Today I'll be spending an afternoon by the pool and trying to figure out some kind of itinerary for India.
Hope you're all well.
That's it for now,
Dale Atkinson
ps. We located Bubbles in the front bar of the Sheherezady Hotel. It seems he has developed something of a drinking problem and can be easily found any time he gets it in his head to run by conducting a simple sweep of the local night-spots. He is currently locked in our hotel room and we have left the staff explicit instructions that under no circumstances is he to be served alcohol. God help us if he's found our stash of duty-free.
We arrived at Mt Sinai at a bit past one am a few nights ago, groggy from lack of sleep and with heavy legs courtesy of a two hour bus-ride through the barren desert of the Sinai Peninsula. We took on some water, secured a Bedouin guide and started the long trudge up the winding camel track which loops up the less sheer north-eastern face of the mountain. Once we'd cleared the more sheltered lower stretch of the trip, which lies in a cleft between two mountains, the wind swiftly picked up and the temperature dropped sharply.
Progress up the mountain was steady, with plenty of rest stops in the tea-houses along the way to let the tourists catch their breath and pay too much for Twix bars. It took us about two hours to reach the final rest-stop, where we were presented the opportunity to pay 5 Egyptian pounds to go to the toilet. A bargain few were able to resist.
The camel track runs out just short of the summit and at this point even the lazy tourist has to dismount and climb the final 760 steps to the plateau where Moses supposedly collected the two stone tablets inscribed with the ten commandments. The camel option struck me as not only lazy but incredibly dangerous. The narrow track is barely wide enough to accommodate a camel and a man walking side by side and the drop off the edges in some places is breath-catchingly sheer. I was continually called on to avoid a rapidly descending camel.
I had the chance to speak with out guide on the way up and he said they get about one death a week through accident or heart attack. Last year he was behind a camel which stepped on a sharp rock, lurched unexpectedly to the right and plunged more than 80 metres to its death. Its passenger did not survive the fall. And the night before our climb he and four others had had to carry the body of an overweight Russian down half the mountain in a blanket, each holding a corner, after his heart gave out on the climb. That said it's not exactly the North Face of the Eiger.
Speaking of North Face I should throw in a mention here of my former colleagues at the BRC who were kind enough to purchase me a Northface Windbreaker as a leaving gift. Despite the chilly wind and the low temperatures I was toasty warm throughout the climb. If anyone from Northface is reading this please feel free to offer me some form of remuneration for this ringing endorsement. I am thoroughly up for sale.
The final 760 steps made the quads sing a little and required a bit of extra concentration in the darkness but everyone made it up without too much hassle, including Clay, a 60 year old American from Oregon, who stumbled into the tea-hut, face wet with sweat, arms raised aloft declaring; "sixty and I'm here". Thirty seconds later he was sound asleep.
We hired some blankets and, after a thirty minute rest in the warmth of the hut, we climbed the last few steps to the peak, where we hunkered down to await the sunrise, passing around Pringles and chocolate.
Now static and exposed on the summit of a 2,200m tall mountain I have to confess I got a bit cold. Part of this may be accounted for by the fact I was wearing shorts. We waited about an hour for first light to show and a further twenty minutes for the sun to breast the horizon. It was a good feeling, although I'd have to say I've had more religious experiences watching the sun rise as I stumbled back home from the pub. That might have something to do with my relative emotional state at the time.
I opted to take the stairs on the return journey, down more than 3,000 steps and past the temple of Elijia. As an experience that probably surpassed the sunrise.
I'm getting bored with writing now and if you've made it this far well done.
We visited the Cairo Museum yesterday. Today I'll be spending an afternoon by the pool and trying to figure out some kind of itinerary for India.
Hope you're all well.
That's it for now,
Dale Atkinson
ps. We located Bubbles in the front bar of the Sheherezady Hotel. It seems he has developed something of a drinking problem and can be easily found any time he gets it in his head to run by conducting a simple sweep of the local night-spots. He is currently locked in our hotel room and we have left the staff explicit instructions that under no circumstances is he to be served alcohol. God help us if he's found our stash of duty-free.
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