Monday night was awesome. Finally we had some rain, and along with that, a spectacular electrical storm. So we went up to the rooftop, which is a great place to be a spectator at such a time. Walking on the roof to the sheltered bit was a little freaky, as we were ankle-deep in water on slippery marble and lightening was all around. You can’t really rush when walking on wet marble, as it’s bound to lead to a trip to the hospital and an intimate relationship with a plaster cast or two. However, once seated and with a gin each and Pink Floyd playing on my little iPod stereo, it was a fantastic show. We watched airplanes in the distance landing and taking off and wondered how that felt for the passengers in them. I hope I don’t get to experience it!

The whole scene was just brilliant and if it wasn’t for the waiters passionately yelling at each other , TV blaring at top volume on the next level down, dogs fighting on the street below and the honkings of millions of horns, it probably would have been quite romantic.

At least it cooled the air off for a while. Once it stops raining though, you quickly feel the temperature rising again within moments you’re living in a sauna. Paul calls this ‘raining up’.

India is a place of noise. Even back in your own room you still have to listen to the fan spinning around and the next door room’s air conditioning going. There is no such thing as quiet here. It’s funny how you get used to it though and filter most of it out. And it really is an odd thing to put a staunch padlock on your door every time you leave your bedroom, and to watch out for little lizards running between your toes. I’d hate to stand on one of them – a little squishy for me, and without a doubt a real discomfort for the lizard.

The guesthouses have a lot of character in this neighbourhood and ours is no exception. On the rooftop, at the ‘restaurant’, they have made an attempt to get it looking nice. They have cane chairs, a woven bamboo roof, pot plants, etc. This is then offset by black plastic water tanks, lime green tarpaulins around the edges, air coolers that have to be one of the ugliest things ever invented and cats that squat inches away from you watching your dinner with mercenary eyes. An eclectic mix.

And the waiters are characters also. Yesterday we used the room service for lunch. When I asked the waiter, Akash, how much we owed him he said “Too much.” “Oh dear”, said Paul, “we only have one much.” Akash cracked up and laughed all the way back upstairs.

Our new tailor is a wonderful Muslim guy of great style and an excellent sense of fashion. His name is Saleem. He took us to his thinking room’, which has about as much room as the average kiwi toilet. It’s loaded up to the gunnels with samples of clothing he has either made or collected, which appear to have been thrown against the walls until they have piled up near to the ceiling. There’s about 3 square feet of floorspace and once all three of us are in there there’s not enough room to swing a teabag, leave alone a cat. But he really knows what he’s doing, charges very reasonably and has a hilarious giggle. I reckon he’d fit right into the Hollywood scene, no problem. Always he wears his own designs and has far too much panache to sweat. How he manages that I don’t know – once I’ve been wearing clothing for about one minute I’m dripping already. This is not an exaggeration!

Sunday night we dined on the rooftop of our guesthouse again and we actually counted at least six stars. We were amazed – the last two times here we would say ‘all the stars are out tonight’ if there were three! On Monday I had a horrible head cold. A really bizarre thing to have in the middle of summer in Delhi. I sort of flopped around feeling sorry for myself in the morning and alternated between having cold showers and lying under the fan while still wet, blowing my nose and coughing. I blame the air conditioning on the airplanes. This always gets to my sinuses! Last year I brought sinus spray with me and it worked a treat, but this year because of the security measures with liquids and whatnot, I had to toss it away at the airport. So really, it’s the terrorists’ faults, darn them.

In the afternoon, we went to the R-Expo shop, where the esteemed Mr Om holds court. His name is apparently Mr Sharma, but he calls himself Mr Om to make it easier for the tourists. What’s hard about the word ‘Sharma’ to pronounce I don’t know, but there we have it. As usual, he was incredibly charming whilst charging me like a wounded bull for the things he kept (most unchivalrously) showing me that he knew I couldn’t resist, and as usual I found myself buying two of some things that I didn’t really even need one of. A man of great talent.

On the way back to the room an older man on the street said to me “You are a teacher”. “How did you know this?” I enquired. “You have the face of a teacher” said he, with a look that bespoke both humbleness and wisdom. I didn’t have the heart to say to him that I had already told a few people here what I do and it’s not that big a neighbourhood. (Gossip is a national pastime here and moves faster than water downhill.) It was much more fun to listen to him try to have me on with his apparent insight and they do spin a good tale around here.

(Teacher is easier to say to these guys than trying to explain you are a literacy tutor and listen to them trying to get their tongue around it. I tried that once and it made me wince a lot.)

Anyway, this man, who hails from Bhutan, failed in his attempt to get me sitting down for a chai. I used my old backup emergency exit plan of “My husband is waiting for me and tapping his foot” and disappeared. When I got back to the room, Paul said “Ah, yes, the man from Bhutan.” Turns out Bhutan man has a few things to sell and strolls about the bazaar looking for fresh, untried tourists whose grip on their rupees is not quite as strong as it should be, or will become after a few days of dwelling in this circus. It’s nice to know that my wits are getting sharpened in this area of things.

Speaking of our room, I had a bit of a giggle when I realised that the curtains were both floral and completely mismatched. The ones on the other window are completely different again. There should be a sign on the wall – “This room and probably all others in this establishment were proudly decorated by Rough as Guts Interior Designing Co.”.

We went for a ride on the Metro to Connaught Place. The metro is a lot busier this year – you actually have to queue for a token. Although the queues are still fairly civilised there – unlike a lot of other ones in Indian situations, where it’s every man for himself and the more elbows you have the better. Again, we went through an electronic gateway and were scrutinised by security guys. Mind you, the first guy looked at Paul’s bag and then I lifted mine towards him and said “woman’s things” and he waved me away. This mortal fear of women’s’ handbags appears to be a worldwide phenomenon.

Connaught Place is a large (really) circular area with a round garden in the middle and shops around the outside of that. Of course we got out of the metro through the gate on the opposite side of where we needed to go so we had to walk through the center garden in the roasting hot sun. A truly horrible feeling. (At 40-odd degrees, this is not such a good joke.) By the time we got to our destiny I was almost reeling from being broiled alive. Only mad dogs and Kiwi twits will put themselves through this. To add insult to injury, we went to a restaurant to cool off and have lunch and I ordered vegetable pakora. I was so busy reeling that I hadn’t realised that the restaurant was a southern Indian style one. They really like their spices down there. And I do believe that half of Southern India’s spices were loaded into my pakoras. This is just what I needed – broiling on the outside and blistered on the inside. Spice is all very wonderful, but I don’t understand this concept of cauterizing your taste buds so you can’t even taste the food anyway and even drinking water now hurts. I was really kicking myself by now because I was really hungry. Oh well, lesson learnt and in the future I shall make careful enquiries as to the origins of the restaurant chefs.

Finally we got back to lovely, smelly, noisy, crazy Paharganj. Now this place I feel at home with. Across the road from our guesthouse I amused myself haggling for a second-hand book – a great pastime, this haggling with the locals – went up to our rooftop for a plate of nice, mild chinese chow mein and commenced to get over my jet lag, hunger and internal blisters in the laziest manner possible. In fact, I went to sleep at approximately 4.30pm and found myself wide awake at 4.30am. At this time of day, only prowling cats and lizards are awake. However, they all kept me company out in the hallway while I continued reading my book and waited for the rest of the world to catch up with my totally sane sleeping and waking habits.

Sunday found me back out on the street trying to find my tailor from last year. I led Paul down the alleyway he was in – creeping past Paul’s previous tailor’s doorway, a man we love to hate – but couldn’t find my tailor anywhere. So, back out onto the street to find the Ravindra Bros. material shop. Couldn’t find that either. So, down another alleyway to Sunny’s place. Sunny, as it turned out, was the guy that recommended the Ravindra Bros to me in the first place, so he gave us directions. When we got to the shop (essentially a large hole in the wall at the side of an alleyway, or ‘lane’ and Paul so nicely puts it), I gave the main brother (a smiley man in a fabulous turban) a photo I had taken of them last year. He was grinning from ear to ear about this. It was well worth the trouble it took to see that look on his face.

Once again I helped pay off the Ravindra Bros mortgage by buying far too much material. They’re just so pleasant and the material is just so gorgeous – rotten tactics, I say. We than went around the corner into another ‘lane’ and sat down for a chai. We’d just decided we might as well eat there when a little mouse ran across the courtyard and into the kitchen. Mulling it over, we decided that we would risk eating there, as the mouse was actually very skinny, which we took for a good sign. If the mouse had been fat, we would have presumed it ate there regularly and removed ourselves to another establishment. Also the fact I’d seen a weasel in plain sight an alleyway or two over told me that the pest control services were alive and well and chances were it was a fairly good risk.

Turns out the food was fine. I had Aloo Bhiaj Paneer (a very exotic name for mashed potatoes with onion and cheese) which I didn’t think had a lot of risk attached to it and it was rather nice. There were various westerners sitting around and wandering through. The types that look like they got left behind in the 70’s and 80’s and have quite forgotten how to get home and don’t care anyway.They’ve probably been lurking in these alleyways and sleeping in cheap rooms for years – their familiarity with the area and the locals gives credence to this concept. All in all, very entertaining. And a touch you will never see on a New Zealand cafe wall – a sign saying “I Love U – F #@* Off”. You have to wonder at such times if the owners actually know what the sign says. Or did they put it there because it was shiny and the words show up in the light nicely?

Well, we made it. I’m now sitting in an internet cafe in Paharganj, Delhi.

The beginning of the trip was kicked off by a severe tasting session at the Duty Free shop in Auckland Airport. As far as drinks go, I can recommend the following:
Nah, never mind. The list is too long. However, may I say it was condusive to looking at a 12 hour plane trip with a slightly enhanced enthusiasm and by no means a dry whistle.

I had forgotten to take the scissors out of my spongebag, so I got had up by a customs guy. They didn’t open as wide as 6cm though, so he let me through. Neither he nor I could figure out how that lessened the killability of said possible weapon, but hey – who’s complaining? And combined with my lack of mean, killer look…

The new Bangkok airport is pretty Jetsons style. You stand on moving footpaths to get throught the miles-long corridors. We had a bit of fun with that. After checking into the hotel, we wandered across the road – nay, veritably risked our lives in a suicidal dash, to be nearer the truth – to have a taste of wonderful, genuine Thai cuisine. YUM!!! As fantastic as ever.

Yesterday we went shopping in Bangkok. (As is a girl’s wont.) Most fortuitously, the market is right outside our hotel room door. A few new clothes later, we find ourselves restudying the age old travellers art of stuffing more into your backpack than it can actually hold. This includes one bottle of alchohol each, because apparently going from Bangkok thru to Delhi, you aren’t allowed to carry the usual 2 bottles through. Go figure. Crossing fingers that they didn’t break and we didn’t land in Delhi to pick up alchohol-sodden backpacks. When we got to the BK airport, we were told we also couldn’t carry the one bottle each we had left in our duty-free bags! So we had to go find the Post Office (which of course, bowing to Murphy’s law, was at the other end of the monstrous terminal) and repack them into a box with mega bubblewrap, etc. Then they had to be checked in. What a performance, just to have a drink at the other end! It will be enjoyed with relish, of course.

Just before we went through Customs, Paul realised he’d forgotten about the free hipflask he’d gotten with his duty-free purchase in Auckland. Customs said he couldn’t take it through because it added up to more than 100ml. So they gave him a choice of throwing it away or going to some seats at the side and drinking it. What do you think he did? (With a little tiny bit of help from me. I’m his friend – what to do?)

So again, we had lots of fun with the Jetsons moving footpaths and hopped onto the plane to Delhi. After landing, we – now experts at the art of being amongst the first off the plane and cueing at India customs lines – raced through and were amongst the first to be at the baggage claim. Well, serves us right for being so smart. Two bits of our luggage turned up fairly quickly, but the third was one of the last bits to come out. So that set us back about three quarters of an hour. How on earth does that work when you checked your luggage in together in the first place?! That was when we knew we were in India. The law of Randomness and the Bizarre is still alive and well here.

Taxi and richshaw later (and wonderful, noisy, honking traffic that makes Bangkok look totally sane), we’re finally at the Guesthouse. We would have celebrated if we hadn’t been so exhausted. All we could do was dump our luggage, crawl up to the rooftop restaurant and flop about in cane chairs drinking Limca, saying ‘Yay’ in pathetic weak voices.

I’m glad to report that the bottles we packed into our backpacks arrived intact. We would have celebrated that too, if we hadn’t been to weak to take the lids off.

This morning, after a hot sticky sleep on concrete-hard beds, we were back on the rooftop eating ‘butter toast’ with VEGEMITE and NZ Coffee, which I brought with me in tubes. Yum. We were very glad to see the usual waiters here. They’re lovely guys and were very welcoming. It was so nice to see them again.

I watched some cows being milked over the side of our building. Hard case sight in the middle of the city – crows and eagles flying overhead. Where else do you get such a mixture of city and nature so close together? No sign of monkeys raiding the water tanks yet though.

Well, it’s hot and sticky, and we’ve managed to accomplish 2 chores and now we’re exhausted again. Takes a bit of acclimatising, this. I’m about to dive back out on the street and take my chances with the traffic, cows, potholes and heat again. It’s gone fairly smoothly though – I’ve only turned down 15 offers of rickhsaw rides and 22 touts asking if I want everything under the sun at ‘special price madam’. I’m now off to find a chai wallah for a cup of Indian tea.

We woke up to a day tinged with sadness, as this was our last day in Orchha. I went out to the balcony to do a nostalgic nosy-parker act over the edge and watched a boy going round the sweet-sellers selling recycled packaging. These are packets made out of newspaper, etc, and rather professionally put together if you ask me. I don’t know if people have machines somewhere or do this by hand, but I reckon it’s a great idea. I’ve collected a few of them now, at drapery shops, hardware stores, etc – I decided to abandon the ones served with oily food, for obvious reasons. Some of them are rather interesting to read. In one case I received a schedule for a tour of Egypt. Three nights in Cairo and a tour of Luxor anyone?

Another thing I love to see is the plates made out of leaves. These get pressed into a bowl shape and are held together at the bottom with a toothpick. When you’ve finished your food, you toss your plate on the street and the cows come along and do your dishes for you. Wonderful system. The Western world should be taking example from this. Photo of one here

After a little while of indulging in the art of couch potato, along came Paul’s friend Indu. He’s a tour guide in Orchha and nearby areas. He’d heard Paul was back in town and had got up at 4.30am to drive to Orchha from Kajuraho (about 150km) and get together with us. It was wonderful to see him as all sorts of people had been trying to get hold of him to let him know we were around, but he’d changed his phone number. We thought we were going to miss him – bummer! Eventually, by some miracle, he found out about out arrival and hot-footed into town just in time.

He put himself in charge of our morning and took us to a friend’s place for breakfast. A lady from Finland who has been around for a while and has established a school of yoga, reflexology, etc in Orchha. They call each other brother and sister and she growls at him and kisses him on the cheek at the same time. He takes it all with a pleased grin.

We all ended up in Maya’s kitchen putting together a breakfast fit for a king, with the help of a lovely young boy from somewhere nearby, and sat down on the floor to indulge. Quite an extensive menu for such short notice – spicy omelette, toast, an Indian sunday noodle dish, curd, a Finnish sweet dish which nobody could identify in English, etc. Shortly, along came two more guests – a couple of delightful young women from Holland, both teachers. A little while later, an Indian woman, also from nearby, joined us also. She does some sort of massage and has a shop nearby as well. Then another Indian guy popped in and threw himself into the fray. It turned into a lovely, spontaneous gathering and every person there was interesting and added greatly to the conversation. What rotten luck that we only discovered this fascinating lot on our last day in town. It was one of those times that could have easily gone all day long and into the night. Which I gathered from the conversation just before we left was precisely what was going to happen.

Of particular interest was the Indian guy’s life story. He was raised in a small jungle village and lived in a home that was less than pleasant, largely due to his father by the sound of things. Trains often stopped at his village and he’d watch them come and go and vow to himself that one day he would get on one of those trains and travel to somewhere else.

When he turned eleven, that’s exactly what he did. He jumped on a train and left town. He didn’t know where he was going because he’d never been out of his village before, but he didn’t let that get in the way. He ended up falling asleep on the train and at the last stop the train conductor woke him up to kick him off. He told the conductor his story and the conductor took pity on him and sent him off to his brother’s chai shop to work until he got on his feet.

After working there for a while, he met up with a doctor who came regularly for chai and they would often chat and practice English together. Months went by, then the doctor offered him a job as assistant in his general practice. He spent about seven years working for the doctor and putting himself through college. Then, with a pocket full of rupees, he went back to his village. He sat in a chai shop across the road from his house for a while, watching his family come and go. Then he went and approached his mother. She didn’t know who he was until he spoke, then she knew this was her son and promptly fainted. As it turned out, his father had died and his mother and sisters were probably struggling a fair bit. He built them a house to live in, then carried on with his travels. He’s since been all over the world, including New Zealand (he knew enough to call us ‘bluddy kiwis”) and worked in all sorts of situations and is now a yoga teacher. He’s a very cruisy type of guy who speaks beautiful English and has a marvellous sense of humour. And an amazing life story!

After reluctantly pulling ourselves away from Maya’s magic hospitality, we wandered back to check out of our guesthouse (well after checkout time, which cost us another day’s rent, but it was worth it). On the way we saw a dead snake on the road outside the tailor’s shop. I was rather fascinated – it was the first time I’d ever seen a real snake close up. It looked a bit like a kid’s rubber snake toy, except it’s head had been crushed by something or someone less than sympathetic to its kind. Later on I walked past it again and had another look at it, and an old guy across the road went “burrggghh” at me to make me jump. We both cracked up laughing – old he might be, but he still had plenty of kid left in him yet.

We spent most the afternoon and early evening packing and saying goodbyes to everyone. I made a little movie with the kids saying “Namaste” to my daughter Ayla, as Ayla and I had made one to say “Namaste” to Nilu from New Zealand. I watched the next-door neighbour chasing his calf around with assorted children, as the calf was not only a Houdini but also a very fast runner, and then I had to take assorted photos of him, calf, kids, kids and calf, kids, calf and him, etc. Rani gave me a beautiful necklace, Mokesh gave Paul some “Rattlesnake” magnets (the latest in groovy toys) to play with, Nilu cried, people gathered round the front of the restaurant and a flutist played beautiful music while cows meandered by peacefully, and the whole time was lovely while tinged with the sadness of knowing we wouldn’t see each other for at least another year.

Finally we pulled ourselves away and boarded Niru’s rickshaw, then set off down the road to Jhansi. We stopped along the way to have chai at Niru’s house and meet his beautiful new wife, then carried on to play out the usual masochistic performance at the railway station (sigh).

Once again, we had the correct platform sorted out, even to the extent our names were on the lists pinned on the board, then of course the “hang on a minute, you’re looking too comfortable” goblin turned up and the intercom started in on us. “Tadaaaaa!! Your attention please! Important announcement. Werhslhgdsla soigr hudfoim;g lkkjgosdsufewoinbh. Would all passengers on this train please board immediately on platform ioesghjroi ;jg, as your train is about to leave”. Naturally, the number they are quoting sounds exactly like your train number and you don’t know whether to run up and down stairs and platforms and check it out, risking missing the train if you are in the right place, or stay put and hope you’re just hearing it wrong. Of course, added to all this, is the train coming from the other direction containing a driver who really likes to sound his horn profusely during the most crucial wording of this really important announcement and you feel your teeth starting to clench and your hands curling into talons and you try to resist thoughts of throttling said driver. You then embark upon the generally unhelpful practice of asking twelve to twenty people around you which city they’re headed for, taking from this a mathematical average of how many indicate the same destination versus those who say otherwise and really look like they know what they’re talking about, and try not to let your brain turn into knotty soup. There should be a homeopathic remedy for this whole thing, perhaps named “Platform De-Stress” or “Train Be Calm”.

I don’t know why I haven’t learnt yet to just lapse into “it’ll turn out fine, it always does” mode, because we were on the right platform and our train was only twenty minutes late and before we knew it we were rolling our way back to Delhi.

I was regularly watching a woman who sells vegetables over the balcony of our guesthouse, and came to admire the way she could wield her long stick at the cows who came to check out her wares. I thought they were rather polite actually, sniffing each pile with great delicacy first, before attempting to help themselves. But they didn’t reckon on her clubbing abilities. She’d let out a great yell then baton them on the rump with a wonderful flourish and off they’d run, looking as surprised and embarrassed as a cow possibly can.

A day or two later, a young girl was sitting nearby with some flowers to sell to the temple-goers. She also had a bovine audience, but she just couldn’t deal to them in the same direct and effective way that the vegetable woman could and some of the flowers did indeed end up in some of the cow stomachs. Never mind, in a few years I expect she’ll have developed more talent in this direction.

There was also a young man of about seventeen who sold flowers and I watched his display skills with great admiration. He did a wonderful job of it and I’m sure in a different situation he would make an excellent interior decorator. Perhaps I should have suggested it to him – I’m sure he could really make it in New York.

Here’s a photo of some women on a pilgrimage to the Temple. They stared up at me with great curiosity. According to one of the guys at the guesthouse, these women would never have seen a foreigner before.

While Paul was still abed, I went for breakfast at the Ram Raja. Little Laxman (spelling?) who is about two or three years old, was crying about something or other, and he had men around him blowing up balloons, talking to him, trying to distract him in various ways and even one guy playing beautiful flute music to try and cheer him up. It was rather a lovely scene. Meanwhile his mother, who he was leaning all over trying to tell his very sad story to, was being terribly pragmatic and unsympathetic and I guess he just didn’t have enough blood or broken limbs on him to get through to her soft mother-heart. I had to chuckle to myself, as I myself have been the same way with my kids when I was busy and they were telling dramatic stories about how someone had just stepped on their pet flea or whatever.

A man came along with a women in tow, veil over her head and a rag tied around her finger. I’m not sure what the story was, but before long a crowd had gathered around and one of the old characters always hanging around the restaurant took the rag off and gave her some instructions. It was one of those times I wished I knew Hindi, because whatever he was saying was apparently quite humorous.

Another humorous part was the children trying to teach me how to count to ten in Hindi. I got as far as five and was quite proud of myself. Admittedly I could already count to three. Give me a break here – I’m getting old.

We walked up to the Chauta Bhuj (must get the spelling for all these words) and watched the langurs for a while, taking a few photos along the way. There were a lot of centipedes and they all looked very busy going round and round in circles. I don’t know where they thought they were going or what they were doing but they all seemed to think it was very important to get there. We had to be careful where we sat and one or two even walked over my hand when I was trying to take photos over the side of the stairway. It seemed we had bumped into rush hour on Centipede highway.

Later on we thought we’d take a stroll through some of the streets I’d never seen before. Paul reckoned some of them here and there looked a lot like Spanish streets. We got “hello hello hello” from kids, so many we actually started looking for an exit, when we got invited into the home of a man he vaguely knew to take chai. In the one room we entered I counted six kids and lost count of the adults milling and sitting about. I ended up in the courtyard out the other door with some women and was requested to meet and take photos of the mother, sister, sister-in-law, niece, nephew, etc and one rather spoiled puppy. My duty done as journalist/personal photographer, I stepped back inside to the mens world and had my chai. Yummy as usual. I must learn how to make that stuff as well as so many of the men here do. There were pictures plastered all over the walls – magazine pictures of gorgeous women mostly – and they didn’t have sarees on either! Men!

Again, slim Hindi versus slim English. Everyone runs out of conversation fairly quickly in this situation and you sit there smiling at the kids and the dog and drink your chai until you’ve finished. It is pretty cool though that you get to see their world and they get to see and stare at you for a while (generally fairly politely) and one way or another, I think we all give some form of inspiration to each other.

Evening time came and we went to the Ram Raja and popped out the other side to their back yard. Never before have I seen a back yard with a river and a palace in it. Rather a nice way to see the sun set, I must say. Paul’s friend Biru had a small bottle of 8PM whiskey, about the size of a hip flask or so, which he kindly shared with us and we whiled away a pleasant hour or two sipping on that and eating pakora.

Biru slipped off after a while, leaving us with the rest of the whiskey. It wasn’t that bottle that did the damage. It was the second bottle we managed to conjure up that did it. I’ll always have fond memories of that night – meandering our way home, saying goodnight to all our favourite cows and street dogs, all of whom did a fabulous job of hiding their snickers at these two foolish people walking slightly sideways under the streetlights, stepping with great and unneeded exaggeration over the cow pats.

Have you ever had a cow wander up to you at a restaurant? This is only one of the delightful features of dining in Orchha, aside from the wonderful food. Another one is being guarded by street dogs, as you share their territory and dine whilst watching the traffic veer around you, nobody blinking an eye at the fact this might be a little unusual.

We arrived in Orchha at the reasonably civilised hour of 6.45am. As opposed to about 3am last time. Paul thought I should have a tempo experience from the train station, so we got into a tempo (sort of like a large auto rickshaw) and apparently we were lucky that there were only thirteen people in it rather than twenty or more. This is in a space about the size of your average hatchback car. Luckily we were in the front (three of us and driver) and I had the window seat – in other words, squashed into the outer seat with bits of me spilling over the edge – so I was able to see the drive into Orchha and take a bit of movie footage as well.

The first thing we did when we got there was walk up to Ram Raja restaurant, where our friends are, and there were the kids setting up for the day. When Mokesh, the eldest at 13, saw Paul, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Paul” he screamed, then more or less jumped into Paul’s arms. It was really sweet.

We appeared to have bought the monsoon to Orchha with us, so after we booked into our guesthouse, I went and stood on the balcony, smugly using my new umbrella as shelter, and watched the langur monkeys for a while. Three of them were perched on the rooftop and archway just across from us, spying on the people below and sheltering from the rain. There were also a bunch hanging out on the Chautabhuj, one of the big temples here which is a mixture of Moghul and Hindi architecture. Lizards abounded on the walls of our guesthouse also, which was nice. I didn’t see any monkeys or lizards up at Bharmour and I was starting to miss them.

We went for a bit of a wander across the river and took a few photos from an angle I’d not seen before, then had a late lunch at the corner restaurant, trying to spread our money around a bit amongst the business. While we were waiting for food, a little street puppy trotted happily past us with a mouse in its mouth. He had his lunch sorted!

Back to the Ram Raja for dinner. Yummy. Then we went through to the back to give the kids the presents we had brought with us. At first they were all asleep in a bundle on a woven cot in the corner, but within seconds one of them woke up and saw us, then next thing they all sprung out of bed in one lump and were all over us and wide awake. Mayhem proceeded to erupt. The knucklebones were cool, so were the diary, coloured pencils and train whistle, they had no idea what a yoyo was, so that took a bit of explaining, and they all knew how to use the bubble blowers. But the best present of all was a simple rubber toy, like half of a tennis ball. You turn it inside out, put it on the ground, then when the tension has loosened enough it goes “POP” and jumps way up in the air. They thought this was a great joke.So did the adults. And as it turned out, so did half the village. Might take two back next time. I can see this one’s going to get worn out in a hurry.

Next day we went up to the Laxmi Temple. Parbat borrowed a mate’s rickshaw to drive us up there, which was a bit of a giggle. Brand new rickshaw too – it felt very posh. The Laxmi Temple was built around about the 15th century or so (see the sign here) and has murals painted on the walls inside, really ancient wooden doors held together by some impressive-looking staples, and a 5 story high temple part in the center which has some really nice Ganesh carvings, etc on the outer surface. And a really nice view of the village too, as it’s set up on a hill. We perched up on the 3rd and 4th floors for a while enjoying the breeze and taking a few photos.

On the way back we saw a mama pig with her kids and a dog resting (rather wisely, we thought) in a puddle. We took a few random shots of this and that also, such as some men doing some building with bricks.

Back at the restaurant later, Mokesh was still trying to figure the yoyo out and Nilu (10) wrote her name and all the kids names in my notebook in Hindi, with her new green and gold pens. Ram (5) was blowing some great bubbles, and of course the rubber toy without a name was going off marvellously. It had now graduated to being set off on people’s heads.

Later on, we went out the back and were ambushed into a birthday party. A young man, now 17, ordered us to come and have some of his birthday cake, then stuffed it down our throats while the photographer took our photos. I felt like a baby pelican being fed by its mother at a zoo. We exited out of their as fast as was politely possible. I reckon the photos will be funny though, because Paul had been in on this particular custom before and so was prepared for it. He pretended to swallow the guy’s hand, so it was the birthday boy who had a shocked look on his face for that photo!

A funny thing about railways stations here is that they have messages coming over the intercom regularly, often beginning with “Your attention please. Important message”. Then someone turns the volume down and you are unable to here anything but the odd word here and there. This can be a little alarming when you’re not sure if you’re on the correct platform. So you look around you to see if anyone else is panicking and sort of go by the general feel of things.

Things actually went straightforwardly and we got back to Delhi at about 6.30am. I was, however, totally caught out by the monsoon. This is the first time I have actually experienced monsoon here, as last year it was late in arriving. It’s an apt description though – it’s really, really wet. Pahar Ganj (our neighbourhood) was up to about ankle height or so and all sorts of interesting things were floating in the water. I was trying to avoid these and keep at least my camera dry whilst refusing rickshaw wallahs who kept getting in my way, whilst Paul was up ahead somehow managing to look smug beneath his umbrella. And so, it’s Good Morning from Delhi.

I was totally soaked by the time we got to our room, but it sure was great to put the luggage down again, and it actually seemed cooler also, thank goodness. Over to next door for breakfast, I kept myself amused watching the water pouring down the inside of the walls right beside the light and fan switch panel. Thunder was crashing around us, etc, and when I pointed this out to Paul he just told me “you should see it at blah blah blah. This is nothing…”. Well, I’m always into going with the flow, so if he wasn’t going to worry about it, neither was I.

Then I went down to the street, admitted defeat and bought myself an umbrella. A bit of a dangerous item actually – you push the button on the handle a little bit and “whooomph”, one unfurled umbrella. “Heh – let’s see the monkeys attack me when armed with this”, I thought to myself.

All in all a pretty cruisy day. Big breakfast, big lunch, taking care of little details like swapping clothing around because tonight’s trip is to the south, which should be a darn sight hotter than the mountains.

Everything was going swimmingly until Paul’s tailor screwed things up yet again. Horrible little man. This time it was Paul’s turn to want to kill him. There’s just something about this guy that really gets ya. His work is good, but he is a purveyor of inexactitudes, and has you running round day after day working things in around him because he has lied or let you down once again. Grrr Grrr Grrrrr.

My tailor, however, is a very nice chap, with whom I had a very nice chai and he goes about wanting to satisfy his customers in the most wonderful way. I’ll keep him on!

And so, in spite of being totally organised, Paul’s tailor-made us late to the luggage room, late to the train station and generally killed an otherwise cruisy day. Fortunately our train was twenty minutes late, so much to our relief it all worked in the long run.

We hadn’t actually found out about the Mumbai bombings until the afternoon, so it was particularly interesting to find we were sharing our cubicle on the train with a bunch of Moslem men. One of them was trying to hang a small carry bag on a hook by the window, and each one of them frequently got up and down and went in and out. Paul and I both surreptitiously eyed the bag and I think we both had our fingers crossed that these were just innocent travellers like ourselves.

It was all good though, and we arrived in Jhansi safe and sound.

(By the way, the headline to this chapter is one that was in the Hindustan Times I think. We just love the way they play with English.)

On the second night we went and watched the puja at the village square. A great cacophony of bells all over the place and even a drum machine outside one of the temples. There are eighty-four temples in this square (some very small but still counted as temples). One of them was built in the 7th century! It has amazing wooden carving around it and inside, and many interlocking pieces. An absolute masterpiece of work.

Next morning we went for a walk up the slope to the helipad they have just built in Bharmour. On the way up a brightly dressed woman went past us, bells tinkling, etc. Then she tapped me on the shoulder and said in a deep man’s voice that the zip on my bag pocket was open. You see these men every now and again, but I have never spoken to one. I must say it was a bit of a surprise to hear that voice come out of a sari-clad woman. The helipad is huge. I’m not sure how many helicopters they are expecting, but they shouldn’t have a problem finding a park.

The view was great – many more slopes visible as well as tiny villages dotted all over them. We started to walk up even further via a backtrack found if you duck round behind the houses. We stopped and chatted with a few locals and took photos of them, them and us, their cows, the marijuana growing wild all over the place, etc, but it started to rain so we had to make our way back down again, stopping for chai and conversation by the helipad. Then a lazy afternoon on the veranda watching the monsoon do it’s thing. It was actually almost cold. So cool we had two layers on.

Later on we went for dinner at a Nepalese restaurant where we had chow mein and momo. Momo are really yummy. Pastry with meat or vegetable inside, steamed or fried and then you dip them in chili sauce. Mmmmm.Then music on the veranda with the Israelis. Wonderful to have a guitar in the hands yet again. I am getting spoilt with that on this trip.

The next day the Israelis left on their motorbikes. We went down to the road to see them off – an unbelievable amount of luggage fitted on, around and all over the bikes. I felt a lot better about the 2 bags I lug round with me once I saw the performance they had to go through.

We then went for a walk in a different direction – actually DOWN a gentle slope for a change. I wanted to get hot enough to brave a cold shower – the hot tap being only a useless decoration in the bathroom. In Delhi, cold water is never cold enough, up here, cold water is actually pretty teeth chattering stuff. Not a particularly exciting walk, but pleasant all the same. Paul tried to hitch a lift with a guy on a steamroller thing, which was going all of 2 mph at top speed. Our casual ambling was much faster. The guy thought it was a great joke and it no doubt added interest to his day that was otherwise incredibly slow. Them’s very long roads at such a slow speed.

We saw a couple of schoolboys on our amble, stealing apples from an orchard. We watched them or a while being as surreptitious as they could, then walked past them and told them they were very naughty (in Hindi). They looked so guilty and a bit abashed that they had been sprung. Some things are the same the world over, huh.

That night we had a nice chat with Mrs Sharma then headed for the English Wine Shop (bottlestore). Paul found a hipflask of whiskey with “King Paul” on the label, so naturally he had to buy that, regardless of the quality, which was a little dubious upon tasting. I was making signs behind him about how his head would be so swollen now that he found a whiskey named after him and the guys in the shop were cracking up laughing. It’s nice that sign language works well globally.

Next morning we had to be on the bus at 7am. Mrs Sharma kindly woke us up with a knock on the door and two cups of chai. What a sweet thing to do. We were a bit sad to say goodbye.

We got seats behind the driver on the bus and the ride was reasonably sane. A bit of a shame that the driver’s windscreen wipers made horrible grinding noises and refused to go, but he just peered through the raindrops and carried on. I had the window seat this time, so I was able to take a movie or two when it wasn’t raining. They have amazing statues up there, like Hanuman the Monkey God and Shiva. They’re really big and either right in the river or on huge rocks in the river. Further down we saw some kind of monkeys that sat on the roadside barriers staring in amazement at the beings in the big vehicles going by. This was a funny turnaround from me watching the monkeys with great curiosity.

There were several landslides on the road, but all of them go-roundable. And on some of the houses they had waterspouts that spat rain right out onto the road. Quite spectacular to watch. My hand actually got sore from holding on when we went round the multitudes of corners on the road, and I won’t even mention the state of my backside.

We stopped in Chamba for a two hour lunch break, and I bought a woven shawl from a shop where you could watch a guy making them on a loom. Then finally, back to the train station, via the flatlands where the driver suddenly turned into a loon, playing chicken with large army trucks and weaving in and out of horses and carts. The mountain part actually seemed a lot safer in comparison! We had boiled eggs and bananas for dinner, then back on the train to Delhi.

Okay, the bus-up-the-mountain experience. What can I say? It’s steep, rugged and beautiful. After hearing so many scary bus ride stories, I had a great deal of trepidation about this journey. But I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of scariness once I got used to it. The roads are mostly tarsealed – apart from where the landslides have been – and there are many passing bays. And because we weren’t on the tourist route, the drivers in all vehicles were very careful and not prone to play chicken with one another due to fits of ego. For this I was most grateful.

We stopped many times for chai and snacks at roadside villages. We were only allowed about ten to fifteen minutes at a time, the driver keeping the element of surprise with this – as we found out when we nearly missed getting back on at Chumba. We kept a really good eye on the driver after that!

The villages are quite different looking from the ones further down – they use a mixture of stone and wood to build their houses, which is quite an attractive look. They also have a remarkable talent for building literally on the sides of cliffs. This must take an incredible amount of strongmindedness and tenacity. Just walking up small bits of paths in this place nearly killed me, leave along carrying a house up there bit by bit!

They have rather a good system with these buses. In each one is a driver, a conductor and of course, the mandatory crowds of locals hopping on and off. The bus stops are just wherever you want them to be. The conductor has a whistle and uses this when people indicate they want to get on or off. Also, if the driver has to back the bus up (the bit that DID give me the heebies near the landslides and narrow parts of the road), the conductor directs him with a series of whistles. It’s all quite cleverly done.

And I couldn’t believe that we could drive into a place that was this remote and there are people everywhere! Some would get off the bus and you would look around at desolate cliffs and wonder where on earth they were going? Even a goat would have a hard time in some of these places. And talking about goats, frequently we squeezed past tribal women driving goats or sheep to goodness knows where. The mind boggles at what is actually hidden from view in these mountains. Some of the houses we saw were perched so far up impossible cliffs that I doubt Hollywood could replicate such a place and make it look believable.

So sometimes you are squished, sometimes you are not, you are hot, your backside hurts and it all adds up to a very, very long ride. About six hours from Pathankot (where we disembarked from the 12 hour train journey) to Chumba, then another four hours up to Bharmour. By the time we got to Bharmour, I was beyond exhaustion and starting to feel dizzy. And no, that wasn’t from altitude. The things you do for a bit of relaxation.

We stayed in a very nice guesthouse called Chamunda, run by Mr and Mrs Sharma who are a pleasant, welcoming couple. When we got to our room, we put down our stuff and lay on the bed. Oh darn. The bed was actually harder than the bus seat. By quite a bit. So hard it would make an effective chopping block for very gnarly firewood. I guess they don’t go too much for luxury mattresses round these parts – mind you, if I had to carry one up those mountainsides, I wouldn’t bother either. However, it was somewhere to stretch out and that was the main thing.

We finally staggered over to a dhaba for some dinner, where we ate mutton, roti (flatbread) rice and vegetables. A wonderful and welcome meal, with the added bonus that we did not have to get up straight afterwards and run whilst carrying several kilos of assorted luggage. Comparisons in life bring one appreciation, do they not?

Finally, off to bed for an experience in the art of sleeping on no-softness. Okay, I slept like a log out of exhaustion, but I woke up at dawn when the birds were making a cheerful racket (horrible little creatures), and then woke up again an hour or 2 later hearing kids downstairs somewhere playing some game which involved the little girl giving bloodcurdling screams at regular intervals of about one minute each. The longer this went on, the more I contemplated giving her really good reason to scream, until I had to get up and distract my mind from such cold-blooded and murderous intentions that I could actually feel my fingers curling around her neck. Now playing is one thing, but screaming so loudly for so long was just way over the top. I couldn’t believe that the parents would allow this to go on so close to paying guests. I don’t know who the parents were, but they were damned lucky they didn’t meet up with me that morning. I doubt they would have got a very good impression of New Zealanders if they had.

About three hours later I finally recovered enough humour to be able to talk to humans again and we went for breakfast UP the hill. What is it with India and putting everything upstairs or up a hill?

Admittedly it was worth it for the view. Wow. The Himalayas are big alright. And steep. And all around you are even bigger mountains. You gaze open-mouthed up at the slopes and wonder why on earth someone would want to climb the highest mountain in the world. This concept is completely beyond me. All due respect to Sir Edmund Hillary and cohorts, but are you completely nuts??!! It looks like such idiotically hard work that insanity must be a prerequisite to such a pastime.

Anyway, we mooched around the beautiful village square for a few lazy hours taking photos and drinking chai, then wandered back down some steps towards our level of the woods. On the way down we were welcomed into a house of a man Paul had met here a couple of weeks ago and took more chai on their veranda with Kalyan and his father, and took photos at their request of the father on the big hand-loom they had. Turns out that Kalyan had studied political science. Wow – the people you find in the mountains huh?

Later, back at the guesthouse, due to the smell coming out of the shared bathroom (not unusual in India but too much for me as I was still feeling weak), not to mention the large centipede Paul reckons was residing therein, we swapped rooms and got a bigger one with private bathroom. (This meant our own centipedes and a cold shower plus a hole in the floor all to ourselves. Luxury!) Here’s one of our own private bugs.

We took chai with Mrs Sharma, and then some motorbikers turned up and took over other rooms on our floor. So much for our private veranda. Three of them were Israelis and one from Yugoslavia. As it turned out they were a very cruisy lot so they ended up being good company. To my recollection, these were the only other white people we saw in the village, and much as I love interacting with the locals, this can be tiring (with my slim Hindi and their slim or no English), so it is nice to be able to speak English with people that totally understand what you say.