Gymnastics

So in this last few weeks, I have come back to work at a job I have held for many years, taking tours at the AIS. I think it must be right around 5 years on the dot since I first read an email offering the chance to be a tour guide, which I was very excited by.

The last little while the national teams have been holding their training camps for Gymnastics, which has been good to watch. When I started doing tours, Australia had never done much in Gymnastics. When I first started, you would often see Phillipe Rizzo training on the high bar. It wasn't long after when he became the first Australian to get a Gold Medal in Denmark.

In this squad currently, we have Lauren Mitchell, who will be defending her world title quite soon. The link I have put is to her Commonwealth Games performance. I didn't find anything from the worlds immediately, but this also fits into our trip we recently went on.

I asked a few people when we were in Delhi about the Games. Nobody cared about it at all, barely anyone I met went. I think I mentioned this bloke who worked for a lift company that we met on the train. He said he was there looking after the lifts. I'm sure he would have had a lot of work to do. You see in this video, there's a crowd of approximately 3 people. I wasn't sure if I was watching a footbag tournament...

Anyhow, there have been many accusations (mostly true) in regards to corruption of the games, which must be a big disaster for public relations of the government in India.

Please refrain from being friendly with other passengers on the train

Please do not accept any food from strangers on the train

These were a couple of phrases I heard on the train yesterday. It was Indian Independence Day and I guess they wanted to have a strong message in case of any terror attack etc.

The day before we went to the Taj Mahal. How about the crowd...as it was the Independence Day, all of India decides to go to some famous monuments etc. So it was totally packed. I heard from a number of people Agra wasn't worth staying the night, and it seems they were right. We just stopped for a few hours, leaving our bags at the station, then continued on to Delhi.

We had a very interesting train ride back into Delhi, lots of people came to sit with us and our main companion was from Kone Elevators, I told him we had a Kone at the hostel and I got to wondering, how do I know the brand of elevator? It is for the simple reason that it breaks down all the time. I didn't tell him that though.

In the morning we caught the metro to the airport, that one is a brilliant service, straight there no troubles. From there we went through all the security checks, they looked at your passport, it must be 20 times before you get on the plain, and a couple of hours later we were in Nepal.

Not all that many hours after that, I had a sprained ankle, but I guess that one is a longer story...

Hello, Sir, Hello?

Dear diary, it's been a while. A few days really, but in those few days we both got a bit sick. Probably not the best country to get sick in, but probably one of the least surprising as well. We've been playing it pretty safe, but you can't always win.

At the gates, Jaipur, the pink city

So last I wrote we were in Delhi. From Delhi we took the train to Jaipur and had a couple of nights there. I had a pretty mean fever there, so we decided to stay another night. Unfortunately Suryya Villa, the place we were staying had no more room for us the next night, so we moved next door. Even though next door had palace in the name, it was a bit of a downgrade and still the same price.

In Jaipur we got a rickshaw man to show us around the sights. His name was Yusuf, he was a pretty good guy, he didn't try to pull too many scams, not as many as the driver we had in Delhi. We don't have much time in each place which is why we have been toured around etc.

We are now in Udaipur, which is really where we should have come from Mumbai, but the past is the past just leave it behind (ruuuuuuuuuuuuunnnn awwwwwwaaaayyyy etc). It's a very nice city, but you know, there's still that overhanging stench all around and the honk honk beep beep and the hello...sir...hello? From every shop corner. It's not as intense here though. We went to the City Palace, which was very interesting, I liked that a lot, probably one of my favourite places I have been to in India. Mostly just the way you could read things from the wall, and following the signposts took you on a complete tour of the place.

I must say the thing that has surprised me the most, and of course it's not the stench or the poverty or the loudness of the beeping of the cars or the speed that buses overtake on the wrong side of the road going up or down a mountain, though they are all pretty full on...is the lack of cricket.

I honestly expected to see kids running around everywhere, scraps of wood, bucket stumps, makeshift cricket games everywhere. To be honest, I haven't really seen a ball bowled in anger at all. Only one underarm lollipop early in the trip in Mumbai, and we went past an oval where a kids cricket match looked to be being prepared, but that's it.

And that, that may explain the current situation in Indian cricket. They are down vs England in the Tests 2-0, and are being destroyed in the third test, with A.Cook already on 200+. I actually saw a few minutes of a program, it was kind of like Insight on SBS, and the question they asked was "what's wrong with Indian cricket?" They did just win the world cup a few months back though....you know, you can't win them all, and they are missing Zaheer Khan who is better than the rest of the bowlers put together. So that's that on cricket. I read somewhere else that if Sachin Tendulkar scores another century, it will be his 100th, a mammoth effort that.

After all of these Hello, sir? Hello? The tactic to try and get you into a shop, onto a rickshaw, into a scam, etc, I can't stop think of Lionel Richie. Hello. Is it me you're looking for? Maybe that should be the next answer back. Hello friend, Hello, is it me you're looking for.

The plan from here is to go by an overnight train tomorrow night to Agra. I have heard a few people say that there is nothing but the Taj Mahal there. From Agra we are going to go to Nepal, so we might return to Delhi and take a flight. Which of course renders that previous flight fairly useless, but that doesn't matter.

Delhi

So we were sitting on Mumbai deciding what to do. We only had vague plans and what we were trying to do just wasn't seeming to work out, so we had a look at some flight options, and jumped on a flight to Delhi. It wasn't really in the spirit of what I had in my idea of our trip through India, but the main thing it did was got us out of the monsoon. It should be monsoon season here too, but it's hot and dry (climate change for you....).

Anyhow, using the Cleartrip site, which is good for booking trains, I had a look to some hotels and we came across the Hari Piorko, which is in the downtown area. "A backpacker ghetto" according to Wikitravel. Anyhow, this place is quite nice, for less than we paid for a pretty crappy airport area shoebox, we have marble floors, a huge bed and also, a fish tank (righto....)

There is a nice rooftop terrace on the top level, after taking a little walk around and not really getting anywhere, we came back and had some dinner up there. Anyway, back to the check in, a couple of places we have been (looking at you in particular Singapore), the people behind the desk have just had no character, no fun, and that puts you in a bit of a mood to begin. Anyway...we came in the door...

Hello, you must be mr Daniel....yes....the famous movie man himself! I totally forgot that old Danny Boyle was the directed of Slumdog Millionare, as the guy at the desk said "it was a bit of a mega-hit". But anyway, he was a bit of a joker and we had a laugh, and that gets you in a good mood, then your room has a marble floor and you think, hey, this is pretty good.

So having this big bed, fish tank etc, and the dirt, sweat noise etc outside, we kind of slept in a while and didn't get on the road for sometime. We asked downstairs for the best way to get around. Since we really only had one full day, they suggested a driver. It was a bit more than we wanted to pay, but it meant everything would be pretty smooth.

I'll probably write a bit more about that later, we visited some main sites, though most things are closed on Monday and we tried to avoid scams, but the biggest scam of all (common to all countries, not just India), is when it's lunchtime, oh I'll take you to a place. So in we go, and it's even more expensive than the flash place we ate in Mumbai, so we kind of stare at the menu, look at each other, let's go, and old mate's probably gone for the secret good place of unbelievable cheapness, so we just bought a packet of chips and had to wait a while for him, and we saw a whole bunch of people, who must have all been on tours (mainly white), wandering around, coming out of a few different places running similar scams (I'm sure the driver gets a nice commission).

Mumbai, India

So we have moved on to the new stage of the trip, landing late last night in Mumbai. Now the traffic of Mumbai (featuring, 20 million or so people, who allll like to HONK HONK their horn), makes Jln Tun Perak back in KL seem like a quiet back street of Bega....now they are demolishing those streets to make a mall, so you know, same deal... kind of...

Anyway, it was pretty late by the time we arrived at I had a mean headache, so it was pretty well straight to bed. We got up pretty early but it took a while before we even got across the road. Not far off I saw someone jump onto a bus that was still moving quite quickly, and we went to McDonalds for breakfast (sorry to all travel gurus, however the main reason was we needed change, and also some directions as the people here didn't give us good directions at all, and they didn't have a map.

We got talking to a guy in the line and he gave us some really good advice, so we got one of these auto rickshaws, they just call them autos, these are mini little machines with suicidal maniacs driving them, looking for anyway to make a quick buck. One of the favourite ways is to rip off tourists, so it's always best to look at the rate card that they will have.

Onto the train, first class...more space on that section apparently. And we travelled along the way and you see blokes hanging out the carriage doors, getting some fresh air...although a city of 20 million is probably not going to have air that fresh....

The train took some time to get us into town, Mumbai CST we had been advised to go to (apparently not the one you would normally go to, but it got us where we needed to go). Our friend Viv recommended that we get in touch with her friend Andrea who has been living in India for about 4 years now. One of the elements of this trip is that neither of us has a phone, which hasn't really proven too big a deal (especially because so far we have had regular internet access), but can be a bit troublesome with meeting people.

We popped into an internet to print out a map from google, we were told there would be a tourist office at the CST, however, there was nothing there...there was a small box with something about tourist written on it, but it was closed anyway.

We had a walk around, went to the Gateway, avoided scams, didn't buy any junk and met up with Andrea and another girl from Australia, who I think her name was Salwa. She is doing some kind of internship here and has been here for just a few weeks. It was lunch time by the time we met and we ate at a delicious place, Khyber. It was a bit on the flash side I guess, I don't think we will be eating like that every day, however that was a great start. We got things that were very mild as we didn't want to blow our brains out with spice and spend the next few days on the toilet...not on the first day anyway. That will come later in the trip.

We went around the city to a couple of the main attractions, to of which were A+++. Haji Ali is a Muslim tomb/shrine (I linked to a wiki article) that you cross a causeway to get to. The waves were splashing up at us and we got pretty wet. We also stopped by a nearby Hindu temple, but there will be plenty more of that during the trip.

Next stop was Mani Bhavan, this is a museum dedicated to Gandhi, and it was very impressive. Lots of posters, photos, a library filled with books, and these little dioramas, all about the life of Gandhi. Some interesting letters that he wrote too....the link will take you to a letter he wrote to one Herr Hitler though apparently it never got delivered.

Our final stop in the tour was the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is overlooking the bay and very flash where apparently lots of top stars come and stay. Of course the rest of the trip won't be filled with flash hotels (there could be some), but it is an icon in itself.

Anyhow, it reminded me of something that my Nanna said (We had lunch with her in Sydney just before flying to the Gold Coast). She was talking about when Dad was in India, he was here in 1981, so that's 30 years ago and he had sent a postcard back home. It would have said something like.

Dear Mum and Dad

Everything is going well in India, we are in (somewhere, probably renamed since that time) at the moment. Last night we went to a 5 star hotel for a meal, it was only $2! However, you come back onto the street and you get the real picture of India.

Anthony

So it would have been something like that. There wasn't too much of that picture immediately afterwards, but we got back on a train and a train gives you a great picture of India. Or a suburban train to some middle of nowhere place at 8pm on a Saturday night will probably give you a bit of an overview of any place in the world really.

Tomorrow it's time to move on. We don't have any ticket yet which could probably be a problem as we were having some troubles with using the Cleartrip site but I'm going to go to sleep now and hopefully will wake up and get ourselves a couple of tickets. The plan is to make our way north up until Nepal. I think that's the key to avoiding disappointment is to not have too much of a grand plan, then not too much can go wrong.... (one might hope)...