Hashtag Still Smug

At the half way point of the year I thought this was going to be my bloggiest year on this blog but since moving back from India I seem to have slowed down a bit. Almost like going to Aldi on a Monday night just isn't something I want to write about.

Anyway 2017. That's over. The world hasn't ended - although international politics has largely looked like a particularly tasteless joke - and there hasn't been the ridiculous level of celebrity deaths that 2016 saw. So that's a good thing.

So what were my highlights? In a year where I could have joined the Century Club, when I spent more time out of the UK than in it, it only seems right to start with the travels. 

Fave country? It doesn't have the glamour of Sri Lanka or the exclusivity of Bhutan but Kyrgyzstan eases this one. It gave me exactly what I needed - a clean, green dose of sanity in the mixed-metaphor swamp of craziness that was India.

Fave new city? Well it also begins with a K - a good year for the Ks at the Pete awards. So was it the spiritual, mysticism of Kandi? The topsy-turvy, colonial hotchpotch of Kolkata? The tropical weirdness of dolphins-before-breakfast Kochi? Nah. Kingston-upon-Hull. (And linked to this my fave music of the year was Chiedu Oraka, keeping it local. Keeping it N.H.E. 0148 tooooooo.)

Fave traveller cliche? Trying to compare the Musee d'Orsay with Sigiruya is just daft, so they can share the best sight award. Did I mention I swam with manta rays? And saw Everest?

What else? Watched a fair few box sets in Pig City - the silliest was GLOW. Saw a fair few films on the large amount of flights - Hacksaw Ridge and Hidden Figures are the only two that stick out. Didn't see all that much theatre but Ferryman was the best thing I saw, although I enjoyed Labour of Love a lot and I think that last week's supercheesey crowdpleaser of A Christmas Carol may just be symbolic of the new normal...

Anyway 2017. Another rubbish year for humanity. Another pretty good year for me. Hashtag still smug.

God Bless Us, Everyone

A tale of three plays:

Let's start with The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was a big ol' daft Shakespeare farce. Pretty silly, pretty fun. Nice idea making it a sixties juke box musical but ultimately that was... Who am I kidding? It was a terrible idea making it a sixties juke box musical. There isn't very much intersection on the rocknroll-Shakespeare Venn diagram, especially not if you throw a suburban am-dram circle into the graph.

I also saw Glengarry Glen Ross. When you see one of the big, shiny London shows with a big, shiny Hollywood star in the centre it does make you realise how spoilt you are. It also emphasises how bad the idea of staging an amateur, rocknroll shakespeare in a provincial market town is.

And then there's a Christmas Carol. Yeah, you know the story. No, it's not even a real play. But gee whizz was it feelgood. Snow, satsumas, sprouts, clapping, turkeys on ziplines - all the festive main ones. It even got my sleighbells jingling, and they don't jingle easy. I feel like it's limbered me right up for Christmas. Bring it.

Brum, They Told Me

Had to check up on the Second City last weekend. Don't worry, it's still there (which is a tenuous description for the train service - although "still there" might be apt for the train we were due to get) and it's got its Christmas on. The Birmingham Christmas markets are insane. Peoples and Christmases everywhere.

I'm finding it a bit weird that bands I like are doing twentieth anniversary sets as standard nowadays. It means that you have a crowd of tired looking 40-somethings punctuated by grinning idiots thinking they can hit the high notes of Lava. I was one of those. Silversun were ace. Sleeper were ace. And that's me sucked into a Britpop sinkhole.

Oh and as I'm feeling strangely festive and it's the season of goodwill, let's celebrate people trying to do something nice. Go and visit Counter Culture it's above Dark Side comics under Chelmsford Viaduct. Go and get your geek on. You know you want to.

The Hills Are Alive

Whilst I don't wholly subscribe to Eldad's ascetic ruling for counting the countries visited I do feel a bit bad counting a country when I've only been to one place, especially those bigger countries, and by bigger I don't mean size or population, I mean cultural influence.

My only experience of Austria was best part of fifteen years ago when I went to Vienna as part of an Eastern Europe trip. I spent the whole of the trip being a bit appalled at how expensive it was and spent more money in two days there than in the other two weeks. But fifteen years later and away from the grand buildings of the capital that would all be different, right?

Jeepers creepers Salzburg was expensive. It's not even the Euro exchange rate. I had the same breakfast I had last week in a swanky Parisien patisserie and it cost more than double. How comes people talk about Paris and London being expensive when these Alpine cities... Shiver.

Anyway. Salzburg is really pretty with all its cliffy views. But you knew that, right? You've seen Sound of Music. What you probably didn't know is that as soon as you leave the designated tourist zone and the year-round Christmas markets it becomes a ghost town. Absolutely silent.

All the guide things I'd read had said to make sure you see the Glockenspiel in the main square doing its thing at 6pm. I would humbly suggest not bothering. It isn't the clock in the town square in Prague. It's not even the clock in the Salar Jung Museum.

Paris When It Drizzles

I finally got to use the title. I had enough drizzly Paris to justify it. We managed some full on rain as well, but for the most part it was a not too unpleasant level of drizzly.

And finally got to the Musee d'Orsay. Crikey there's a lot of famous paintings in there. Is it because I know more paintings now than when I first went to the National or the Louvre or MoMA or is it that it just contains more famous paintings? So many famouses. And the building's not too shabby either with its Sacre-Coeur-view clocks.

Went up the Tour Montparnasse. Turns out that's a thing. And a thing with shorter queues than most of the other things. Champagne on the roof would be a thing but the drizzle had a bit of an edge to it by then so made the rooftop less romantic and more ridiculous.

Snails. Steak tartare. Red wine. Baguette. Camembert. Paris, consider your box ticked for a bit.

Lion City

So that's that. Indonesia: box ticked. I liked it. As predicted I barely scratched the surface.

Back in Singapore now and managed to get up close and personal with those robotrees - or Supertrees as it turns out they are actually called. They are pretty spectacular. Little tiny complaint: for an old door attraction in a humid city that prides itself on convenience (although the ridiculousness of passport control makes me question this) water was strangely hard to come by in the gardens. It was like a dehydration experience.

Here's a fact for you. One of the food stalls in China Town has a Michelin star, making it about the cheapest place to eat Michelin starred food in the world. How is this judged? It was not noticably better than any other streetfood that I've eaten in the last two weeks (and noticably less tasty than a fish I ate in Malang). I don't understand. Still another box ticked...

Batavia

I'm in one of the biggest cities in the world and Lonely Planet predicted that I would bump into a particular person. That's impressive, right? Made all the more impressive by how mediocre the information in Lonely Planet has been throughout the rest of Indonesia.

Anyway, I'm in Jakarta. A late switch from Bali in an attempt to reduce the risk of getting stuck in a Southeast Asian ash cloud.

Jakarta is so much more civilised than I thought it would be. Easily the friendliest of the megacities I've been to. The people are so nice. Truck drivers will stop motorbikes to allow you to cross the road - that doesn't happen anywhere. And the "Hello Mister" people that are shouting at you aren't trying to sell you anything, they are just saying hello.

The city itself is surprisingly pleasant, certainly more pleasant than we'd been led to believe ("Have you got any tips for Jakarta?" "Erm, go to Yogyakarta instead"). Kota, the old colonial centre with its brightly-coloured-bike art thing going on could be from any European city. Chinatown was adequately weird (live frog anyone?). And the newer "city centre" boasts the biggest mosque outside of Saudi (200,000 people in a mosque. Exclamation mark) opposite a cathedral with spires like I've never seen before (you'll have to Google it yourself, it was under scaffolding so my photo would be mediocre). As in right opposite, as a symbol of Indonesia (the world's most populous Muslim majority nation)'s tolerance between different faiths [insert your own Bill 62 comment here].

Jakarta is so pleasant I feel bad that the only pictures I have to illustrate this post are of the somewhat non-representative neighbourhood that we stumbled into whilst looking for (and not finding) the old harbour and a murky skyline through a dirty window. Still that's what you're getting.

Here Be Dragons

So when I last wrote to you I'd only been to one Indonesian island (Java - for those of you who weren't paying attention - the most populous island in the world, fact fans - if we're gonna geek about about populous island facts [and we are] Indonesia has ten in the Top 40; well I found that impressive anyway) and now I have (technically) been to five. In order of populousness here are the other four:

Padar
Gee whizz this island is pretty with its peaks and its three different coloured beaches and that photo that everybody takes. What noone seems to mention is that as you go behind it the sea goes nuts. I think it's where two currents meet: it's hard to explain, you'll have to go and see for yourself.

Komodo
With the benefit of hindsight my expectations for Komodo were ridiculous. I thought it would be a bit like looking for land iguanas in the Galapagos, where big lizards were out doing their lizard thing. It wasn't. Turns out komodo dragons don't like the sun so they spend their days in as shady a place as they can find, ie. where you can't see them.

Nearly all of the dragons we saw were semi-tame, living under the rangers houses which didn't seem all that natural, especially when the rangers started poking them for the tourist selfie. I've not been to Colchester Zoo recently but I suspect that you'll get a better komodo dragon experience there.

I managed to get my big Komodo animal kicks by swimming with manta rays and that was cool as. They are very big. And kinda floppy.

Flores
To say I've seen Flores is a bit like going to Pogradec and saying you've seen Albania (that was a self-indulgent reference even for me). I've been staying in Labuan Bajo for the last few days, a fishing village-cum-tourist centre on the western nose of the island. I've seen virtually nothing of one of the prettiest islands in the world. Which might just become a feature of this list...

Bali
And this is even more tenuous. I changed planes in Bali. Didn't leave the airport. Having barely seen any westerners for the first week being in Bali airport was a bit of a reality jolt. We were due to go back to Bali but this volcano thing still hasn't made up its mind...

Crocodile Vs Shark

After being a bit dismissive of Malang in the last post I ended up having a pretty good time. We found Jodipan, a run down, riverside district which had been turned into a tourist town by painting it bright colours. It had the affect of making it absurdly cheerful.

So, in celebration of that here's some bits of bonafide useful advice (and yes, I know I've warned you against listening to me for tourist advice but sometimes you've got to share the love, particularly when you've put in the legwork).

If you want a beer in the city centre your best bet is Bhaswara cafe on the northern side of Tugu Plaza. It's a garden cafe which may be a jazz club but only seemed to be playing metal.

The only other "bar" selling beer we found was The Library on Jl Guntur, two blocks east of the so called Millionaire's Row. The Library is primarily a coffee shop where the people in the big houses come for overpriced brunch. Which doesn't stop it from being about the coolest place we found.

I'm in Surabaya now. I only had a couple of hours to explore last night so don't think I saw all of the Second City's charms. Got to hope there's more than just a fish market and some rats. It was a good fish market though and the rats were kind of cute.

Weirdest thing consumed. Lawak coffee. Obviously it was only a matter of time. I'd been put off by the prospect of battery-farmed civets being force fed coffee beans, but found somewhere where they at least said that the civets were wild. So is coffee that has been pooped out by a cat noticably better than any other coffee? Not to my uncouth tastings.

Bananas for Bromo

"So we do a sunrise tour where we pick you up at midnight..."

Needless to say we didn't go to Mount Bromo for sunrise. With the benefit of hindsight I think we made a very wise decision. The whole Bromo experience was fairly inhospitable - a climb at altitude whilst the wind sticks sand to you, doing that in the dark after no sleep would have left me grumpy for days.

Bromo was pretty impressive. I've been to a few volcanos but don't remember any of them being that loud. It sounded as though someone was doing a helicopter tour inside.

Turns out Bromo is a holy site (unsurprising, given its power), so there are people with bananas and flowers as offerings. There were also people with pot noodles - I ate one and didn't share any with the volcano. Do volcanos even like pot noodles? Maybe I should have asked...

In Malang now. It's a student city in East Java and there doesn't appear to be a whole heap to do here. You can barely even buy beer. You can buy owls from the bird market, which I guess is a thing. Not sure what I'd do with an owl.

Djogdja

So how do some places brand themselves as a "thing to do for sunrise? I've been to a few around the world and they pretty much always disappoint. The latest was Borobudur. Don't get me wrong the temple was nice enough but there really wasn't a reason to see it at 5am. All that does is tinker with your jetlag. And jeepers creepers was it expensive. In a country where most things are super cheap the cost of this made me do a sick in my mouth. And I was done before 6.30am. That's bananas.

Whilst we're talking about overpriced temples let's not forget Prambanan. I mean, at least I'd heard of Borobudur. At least Borobudur is a thing. Prambanan is just a heap of pointy Indian temples set amidst a herd of children saying "can I practice my English with you?" And it costs more than twice as much as the Taj Mahal.

We tried to climb a volcano. We'd heard that Gunung Merapi was the most volcanic volcano in Indonesia so thought we should pay it a visit. What we hadn't heard is that the only reason anyone goes there is to go offroading, this meant our quiet walk was not quite as peaceful as imagined.

Anyway, back in Yogyakarta / Yogya / Jogja / Djogdja I've learned the very important lesson that my carefully honed Indian spice tolerance counts for nothing.  There every time I didn't opt for the spiciest option I regretted it. Here the spiciest option may kill you.

Weirdest thing eaten: gudeg. The "Can I practice English with you" brigade raved about Gudeg, saying "the colour is burnt and the taste is sweet" which more than summed it up. Rarely has a local speciality looked less appetising but cripes was it sweet. It was a bona fide egg but with the sweetness of a Creme Egg. It made me pull this face (you're gonna have to imagine it because I didn't take a picture. I'm not that guy).

Where to Start?

Seventeen thousand islands stretching basically the length of Russia. I've always been a bit intimidated by Indonesia and really haven't known where to start. I mean it's the fourth most populated country and they speak like 300 languages. That's a continent rather than a country. Where do you start?

Yogyakarta seemed as good a place as any. And so far I have found that:
1. Beer is not easy to come by.
2. The food here is spicy. The sambal with lunch was spicier than any streetfood I ate in India.

If we are being pedantic I actually started in Singapore. I wanted to see those robo tree things. I did but only from a distance. A smug sunrise-in-a-hot-tub distance, but a distance nonetheless.

Too Essexy For My Shirt

Figured I ought to slow down the gallivanting and appreciate what's around me, because Essex is looking particularly handsome this Autumn with its new yellowy orange coat on. Castle Park, Marks Hall, even Essex Regiment Way all have a certain golden dignity about them.

So let's talk Essex:

Coggeshall
When I heard Baumann's had closed I was sad. But I went there and it's still the same. Apparently the old Head Chef has taken over, so aside from it being called Ranfield's (which is much easier to spell) it is the same. You should go. The food is awesome.

Fingringhoe
I saw a kingfisher. That makes the UK my third kingfisher country of the year. Fairly sure that's never happened before.

Colchester
I've been dabbling in Street Hunt. It is super geeky. Thought it would be right up my leafy boulevard but frankly, my knowledge of suburban Tendring is nowhere near good enough. Street Hunt, you have defeated me. 

Chelmsford
And this is the biggy. A bina fide box tick: I went to the horse racing. I didn't understand it. It just seemed to be people getting drunk and making decisions which resulted in them losing money. My complete lack of knowledge of (or interest in) horses probably didn't help. Still, box ticked.

Industrial Drinking

Another trip to South Wales and another opportunity to drink beer in industrial premises. It's starting to become a thing...

Bloomin' love Pontypridd. Gonna keep the blogging about it short because everything I did - rugby, faggots and peas in Ponty market, drink craft beer on an industrial estate - I've mentioned at some point before. But still, ace.

Also ace was The Ferryman. Everyone else has already told you to see it. They're correct. That is all.

Highway to Hull

"Pottsy, you're from North Hull mate. You're acting like you're from Swanland."

I went to Hull and it was ace. I went because of the Capital of Culture thing. That and the fact it's the biggest city in the UK that I've not been to. It was a whole heap better than I was expecting. 

Two main reasons for this:

1. We stayed at the Inkerman Tavern. A heavily muralled pub on the middle of an industrial estate, which was absolutely heaving on a Friday and Saturday night - it had a Duke of Sussex (Rest in Peace) vibe going on, and there's nothing wrong with that.

2. The Freedom Festival. The whole city came to life with a cross-art festival. There was modern dance, tight rope melodrama, Peruvian folk and child hairdressers - all of the main ones, right? And I saw Chiedu Oraka, leading light of the Hull hiphop scene - I now feel Hull enough to pass for an 01482head.

So yeah, I liked Kingston Upon Hull a lot, with its white phone boxes and its blue Fanta. With its enormous moths and its lack of cash points. The journey though, not so much.

Heading up on a Friday night was always going to be a bit rubbish but I was hoping that the journey back on a Sunday would be better. But we went to Grimsby for breakfast. Nothing against Grimsby itself but it's not pumping on a Sunday. And not many of the tyre shops are open on a Sunday. And there is a limited choice of breakfast on Grimsby industrial estates. And let's just leave it at that. Fair to say, could have been far worse.

The New Normal

So I've been back a month now and, frankly, I'm quite enjoying pottering around Essex doing Essexy things. Keeping it local. I took the foot ferry from Brightlingsea to East Mersea. How Essex is that?

It's been weird seeing what's changed and what hasn't. I was aware of some of the big changes (Bond Street) but it's the smaller changes that have perhaps been more surprising. I mean Baroosh has gone, that is a surprise. What happened? It was perpetually busy and overpriced, surely that's the dream combination for a successful business.

What else? The UB is a gin and real ale bar. The Snip is flat. The Saharan restaurant is now a Turkish restauant and the Co-op is about to be a turkish restaurant - who knew there was that much demand for souvlaki? Oh and a new Co-op has popped up to feed the student market.

I have had a sneaky London sneak too. Had to get my culture on - drinking craft IPA at the Bottle Bureau wasn't quite culture enough. Went to the Sir John Soane Museum. I hadn't even heard of that. And yet it:
A. was quirky enough to be right up my boulevard.
B. Had a Marc Quinn exhibition on. And
C. Had The Rake's Progress hidden in a cupboard. That's a proper famous painting. Hidden. In an obscure museum. How does that happen?

I doubled down on culture with that Tin Roof play. Didn't get it. It seemed too long and nothing happened. All the powerful character bits were undermined as I just didn't care about the characters. M'eh.

Sell Out

Number eight and it kinda feels like the sparkle has faded. That the magic has gone.

It wasn't the mud. It wasn't the rain on fancy dress day. It wasn't even the organised crime that led half the Slaves moshpit to have their phones stolen.

It was the toilets.

In previous years the toilets at Standon Calling have been straight-up good. This year you would have to qualify that as "good toilets for a festival" by which I mean the toilets weren't very good at all.

So, thanks for the memories, Standon, thanks for the memories.

Bye Bye Pig City

So ten months, that's a long old time, especially in this crazy country. Demonetisation, smog, earthquakes, weird bites, a teeny-tiny malaria scare, tribulations of a thieving maid and a couple of monkey attacks.

Twenty-six cities across sixteen states. Five hundred kilometres on the prison gym treadmills. Forty-odd novels read (including some biggies). Far, far too many hours of Netflix.

So what will I miss?

The colours. You'll be hard pushed to see someone wearing grey here.

The trees. They are like normal trees, but bonkers.

The curries. It's not just acceptable to eat three curries a day, it's encouraged. Back home if I have two curries in a week I feel decadent.

The Clocktower. My token bit of quasi-normality, quasi-routine - it's sort of an English-themed microbrewery (turns out I am that person). The routine goes like this: get a beer taster, order an American IPA (Clocktower lager for Marius), discuss why we get a beer taster when we order the same thing every time, eat a club sandwich, listen to Mona by Craig McLachlan.

The animals. The squirrel-cum-chipmunks that they do here are adorable and it's still a treat when I see an elephant or a monkey.

The pigs. How can it not bring a smile to your face when you see a particularly dishevelled pig walking down the road. Or sitting in a puddle on a hot day.

So goodbye India, these are your best bits:

Temples:
Best: Sun Temple, Konark
Weirdest: Temple of the Divine Madman, Panaka (yes, yes, I know, but none of the temple-weird that India offered came close. I see your chariot of filth and I raise you two children playing with phallus-a-like human femurs. If you're gonna insist on an Indian weirdest temple then) The Monkey Temple in Jaipur, although the weird was more whatever it was that was going on there, rather than the temple itself.

Lassi:
Tastiest: saffron lassi, Jodhpur
Weirdest: cashew/chocolate/pistachio/glacé cherries/whatever-else-is-around lassi, Konark

City: Varanasi with Jodhpur hot on its heels.

Curries:
Tastiest: anything on the menu, Varangula, Navi Mumbai - this is an interesting cultural case study. A lot of the Brits I know that have been there (correctly) rate it as their favourite Indian curry; all the Indians I know that have been there think it's average.

Weirdest: brain curry, Karims, Old Delhi

Beach: I'm not telling you, I feel I must keep it a secret otherwise you'll only go and spoil it. So go to Puri instead, that needs some visitors.

Food:
Spiciest: Naga chutney, NagaCuisine, Guwahati
Tastiest: Chaat, Kashi Chaat Bhandhar, Varanasi

Animal? Viva Pig City

Introducing the Bandh

So a bandh is a shutdown strike. And a shutdown strike is exactly what it sounds like.

Pondicherry (yes, I know it's Puducherry now, but it just doesn't sound right, does it? It's weird how some cities have taken to the new names and others just haven't) is a former French colony. Streets full of balconies and bougainvillea. A wide seafront promenade. A nice romantic place for a saunter, or if you are going solo then a place to bounce between coffee shops and drink reportedly the best coffee in India.

Or at least it would be if there wasn't the bandh. As it was I spent five hours sweating around the streets before heading back to the "ashram" I was staying in to nap in front of the fan until the strike passed. After bandh o' clock the streets were buzzing and Pondy seemed properly alive, I guess I was just unlucky with timings. Not the first time (Leh, Shimla) and not the last. Not even the last of the weekend...

I was flying out of Chennai (see that one is easy, I never feel the need to say Madras. Is it something to do with how different the name is?), so left Pondy on the early bus to try and see what the Capital of the South was like. The Capital of the South was closed.

I made the mistake of starting on Marina Beach (I say mistake, it was sort of necessity, no one understood my accent for anything else: "Fort St George?" "You want go 'institute'?"). Let's double-down on that, mistake seems unfair, it's a pretty impressive beach. When people talk of good city beaches they don't mention Chennai (Rio, Nice, Tel Aviv, Muscat maybe, but never Chennai - not even Madras). I'd say Marine Beach is bigger than Copacabana and Ipanema combined. And the waves were insane. Proper waves, like you would draw, rather than the little lappy twinkles that you usually get.

By the time I was off the beach Chennai was in siesta mode, so I spent the afternoon looking at the outside of closed temples. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have just sat and watched the waves all day (although I suspect the selfie-with-me requests would have got wearing). Still some of the temple gates were pretty...

Food fact. Curries from Madras are not as hot as Madras curries.

As an aside, I'd just like to say how nice it is to have a pun for the post title. Feels like it's been ages. I was in Powai the other day. There was nearly a post called I've Got The Powai despite me not having anything to say. I'd have had to contrive something out of going to restaurants that sound like they should be in Shoreditch (Fatty Bao, Madeira & Mime, sodabottleopenerwala - well Hoxton) and it being the start of my week-long imperial tour of the colonial Capitals: Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras - How very imperial...

The Open Hand

Given that the Open Hand Monument is the symbol of the city - and all the liberality that an opan hand implies - I did find it strange that I twice had my intentions questioned by men with guns...

Chandigarh, The City of the (not too) Open Hand. Or should I say Chandigharlow, given that it's basically Harlow but on a grand scale. I stayed in Sector 17, which may sound dystopian but it is the pedestrian paradise, the beating heart of the city (they have lazer fountains in the evening, nothing says beating heart of a city like a green Elvis gyrating in the water).  It reminded me of Basildon in the eighties. Only bigger.

In the spirit of going to things that are like other things but bigger, I went to the Rock Garden, Chandigharlow's foremost tourist attraction. Philly's Magic Gardens on an industrial scale. Where Isaiah Zagar seemed a loveable eccentric wanting to brighten up South Street, Nek Chand appears to be an obsessive compulsive hoarder. The world should breathe a sigh of cliché that he was trying to make Alton Towers out of broken bangles rather than anything more malevolent.

Monkey Menace

I think it's fair to say that this wasn't the most successful of my weekend breaks. I had mainly underestimated how many people would be going to Shimla on a bank holiday weekend and that this would turn the winding mountain road into a winding mountain traffic jam. But ho hum. Add that one to the lessons learned register.

Shimla is a weird old place. Half the roads are traffic free the other half are traffic full, which means that getting to anywhere that isn't the central pedestrianised core is deeply unpleasant. The central bit is nice enough, lots of ramshackle colonial buildings, looking like they might still house witches on the top of a hill. And, due to the pedestrianisation, minimal horn blowing. What's not to like? Apart from the food. As it's where everyone goes on holiday all the restaurants seem to be mediocre attempts at non-Indian food. Which is okay if floppy pizza is your thing.

Jakhu Temple is on a hill above Shimla, with a big old Hanuman statue surveying the town. Turns out the monkeys at this monkey temple are a bit more, erm, inquisitive than the average monkey. By the time the third stranger had told me to take off my glasses I figured that there was something in it. This meant that my temple experience was somewhat blurry. The chances of a monkey stealing my glasses were reduced; the chances of me stepping on a monkey were greatly increased. Still, nothing happens if you step on a monkey, right?

The North East

I knew that June wouldn't be the optimal time for a smash and grab of the North East States, the bit no one visits, but I wasn't anticipating last week's cyclone. It reduced my planned Assam / Meghalaya combo into a Guwahati city break. And no disrespect to Guwahati, but you can tell it's a gateway city that is more used to people passing through than staying.

But still, it offered a taster to the North East States. Here's what I found:

1. Despite the relatively low temperature, I spent a lot of time sweating. "What did you do for the weekend?" "Me? Mainly sweated."

2. The scenery goes from flood plain to hill-jungle with absolutely no transition. Makes the whole package seem proper tropical.

3. They have an impressive amount of squalor. Even by Indian standards. Saw more skinned animal remains in the street this weekend than in maybe forever.

4. They have a temple dedicated to Sati's yoni (look it up. Or just use your imagination - it probably is what you think it is you filthy tinker) where they celebrate the power of the yoni by cutting the heads off goats. Not sure how the two are linked. The goats there were strangely chilled.

As an aside I still find the whole taking your shoes off to go into a temple complex kinda weird. Nothing says religious experience like paddling barefoot through terrified goat wee.

5. The food is different. Although maybe not as different as it was billed - it was like Odishan food; all about the mustard. I did have my first pigeon curry - there's a reason it's not a thing. And, as this is likely to be the closest I get to Nagaland, had some Naga food. Pheweee. The chutneys were the spiciest thing I've eaten in India. Blew my cheeks right off.

Happy Bloom Day

So I finally read Ulysses.

By which I mean I read Ulysses so you don't have to. Seven hundred pages of thoroughly wasted time. 

I'd heard that Leopold Bloom was one of the most well-drawn characters in literature. Personally I found him entirely unbelievable. He speaks in cryptic crossword clues and doesn't have any answers. If we're taking modern references to Troy, I found Achilleus in The Enemy a way better drawn and far more believable character. "Heroes are usually dicks" indeed.

Now I was all ready for it to be incomprehensible, clever-clever bobbins - I'd heard that one of the "chapters" was musical and opened with Joyce "tuning up". Bring on the pretentious.

The main thing I knew about Ulysses was that it was a modernisation of the Odyssey set in 24 hours. That sounded brilliant. Much like Joyce, I've loved the story of the Odyssey since I were a whippersnapper (although unlike Joyce I read the Tony Robinson version, rather than the Charles Lamb) so I'd been looking forward to reading it, just waiting until I was grown up enough for all the modernist self-indulgence.

Given this, I had kind of assumed that there would be a plot. But there didn't seem to be. The whole thing was like one of those filler episodes on a long form TV show, where they spend the whole episode doing exposition just to get the episode count up. Only for the length of a box set (I'm aware I've just described the last series of The Walking Dead). I wanted a cyclops in Temple Bar and a whirlpool in the Liffey; I got a man eating a cheese sandwich and talking about Hamlet.

I'm half tempted to write the novel I wanted to read: Diss and his mates going out to a club - maybe to see a DJ called Troy - stop in a one-eyed cannibal's kebab shop after the club then take ages to get home, as they have to go via the underworld and pass a hydra and turn into pigs. Might need a bit of fine tuning but I'm sure I can work it out.

Inevitably I won't bother. I'd also be very surprised if I got round to trying Finnigans Wake.

Boulevards of Bishkek

And back in Bishkek to get another slug of Euro normality. I say normality, they sell sheep heads in the market and horse yoghurt at the side of the road, so not certain that it's fully Euro normal, but close enough.

You can see mountains from pretty much wherever you are in Bishkek. By wherever you are, really I mean whichever Soviet square you're standing in - and there are a lot. Say what you like about Communist Russia, but they did do a good Square.

Had a day out to them there mountains. I went to Ala-Archa Canyon to get a last fix of mountain greenery. Saw a tiny amount of wildlife. Saw some mountain goat things (which may or may not be saiga) and a very-ginger, fluffy-eared squirrel. Asia does do a good squirrel.

Yssyk-Kol

So Cholpon-Ata did the double on me. 

Everything I had heard about it had been a bit negative, a lot of things along the lines of "Cancun for Khazakhs." I was basically expecting Budva; I got was The Naze.  An attractive largely nature fronted beach. Yeah there was the opportunity to go paragliding but I didn't find any evidence of beach bar stupidity. So that was refreshing. And the whole lakeside setting was ridiculous. You could see the snow-capped mountains on both sides of Yssyk-Kol, just hanging out and doing their mountain thing.

The second thing was the petroglyph open air museum. I'd been pretty cynical about it expecting it just to be a handful of rocks with a handful of pictures. What you get is a giant boulder field, some of which have pictures, some don't. So you get to ungeek your inner Indiana and find your own exhibits, which makes it pretty unlike any museum I've been in before. Add to that you're up in the foothills with a ridiculous view of the lake and it all points to a big, fat thumbs up for Cholpon-Ata.

Leprosy Porridge

Hot springs are weird aren't they? One of those things where the idea of them is so much better than the reality. You're thinking "hmmm, nice warm bath" only to find there's a distracting sulphuric stench. And is that stuff floating on the surface part of the healing mineral stuff or is it part of the last person to use the last person to use the healing mineral stuff? I've been in several hot springs since I've been blogging but never seem to mention them. Almost as if I'm trying to pretend it never happened...

Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself.

Karakol was a bit of a shock to the system. After the boulevards and sculptures of Bishkek I had high expectations for Karakol. Instead it was a bit more soviet. Stray dogs and shipping containers. Mud tracks, dilapidated concrete buildings and dirty men growling at you in Russian. Almost like the Money wasn't making it out this far east.

The reason for coming to Karakol was as a base for exploring them there hills. Once again I'm about three weeks too early so the exploring is limited. But I walked up to Altyn Arashan and it was incredible. The view goes from green rolling hills to rockfalls-and-glacier river rapids to snow-capped Alpine Valley and all of it is ace. Just what I was hoping for from a Kyrgyzstan.

When you get to Altyn Arashan you find that there's just about nothing there. A few guesthouses, a handful of yurts and some hotsprings, which brings us back to the start.

I'm back in Karakol and it's sunny. Which means the roads aren't muddy, the stray men seem less like Bond Villains and somehow the shipping containers have been replaced by colourful mosques, gold-domed churches and gingerbread cottages against a snow-capped mountain backdrop.

Myfirzstan

I'm living in probably the world's most diverse country. It's a country the size of Europe with double the population and I've barely scratched the surface. I'm taking a week off so I should try and get to those hard to reach bits. I should go trekking in Sikkim. I should stay with the tribes in Nagaland. I should wander the temples in Tamil Nadu. I should swim with turtles in the Andamans. I don't even know where to start.

So I'm in Kyrgyzstan.

First evening, positively surprised at how western it seems. Not sure if it's the juxtaposition with India but Bishkek seems completely European. They have footways. They have traffic lights. They have beef. You can walk around. Don't get me wrong, you're unlikely to think you're in Provence - there's too much Cyrillic for that - but more European than Albania for sure.

And on the Sixth Day... (pt. 2)

Well Didsbury Mosque has been in the news this week. Did I tell you I used to live opposite Didsbury Mosque? Guess I wouldn't have mentioned it, no real reason to. It was before they had open days, so I never visited. Barely noticed it was there, apart from Fridays when the street was full of cars. The mosque was doing its Burton Road thing and I was doing mine.

Manchester is ace. I wasn't going to write anything for fear of seeming a grief jumper but I sort of couldn't not.

Once upon a time, I was travelling down the Oxford Road when the whole bus - both decks - spontaneously broke into Maggie May. That's the Manchester I remember, so seeing St Anne's Square spontaneously Oasisise, that made me feel warm and fuzzy. You can add to that the homeless heroes, the Sun boycott, Dan Hett's joke and the general cross-community pulling together that's being reported. It makes this grumpy, old cynic remember the wide-eyed twenty something that desperately wanted to be a part of that city.

Anyway...

Since I've been in Delhi, the Number 1 sight to see (according to Trip Advisor) has been Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. I found this odd as I hadn't heard of it - it doesn't have the international cache of a Red Fort or an India Gate. But then neither does Akshardham and Akshardham is brilliant with its garish, OTT, Disney vibe. Maybe noone has heard of it because the name is too long and my simple English speaking ears just can't comprehend all those syllables.

It was alright. If you stumbled across it you'd think it was ace with its golden ceiling and its domes and its cormorant doing its business in the holy water that people were drinking (some religious idiosyncrasies are weird, aren't they?). It would probably make my Delhi Top 20 but Number 1 is a whole heap more hype than it should have.

Whilst we're talking about religious places with overlong names, I also visited Hazrat Nizam-ud-din Dargah. That would probably feature higher up my recommendation list, although admittedly more for the uncomfortable, juxtaposed weird than the end spectacle. You go into a really local market, then walk barefoot through an intimidating, winding tunnel of beggars before it opens out into the flower-scented religious complex.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butlin's

So I went to Dharamshala. That's a bit of an overstatement. My exposure to Dharamshala was limited to ten minutes of traffic jam caused by someone being selfish / ignorant (standard Indian traffic jam). I actually went to McLeod-Ganj which is where people go when they say they're going to Dharamshala.

Even that's a bit of an overstatement. My McLeod-Ganj was limited to getting my Buddhist on. I went to the Dalai Lama's temple. I can't help but feel a bit let down, I was kinda expecting one of the most important buildings in Tibetan Buddhism to seem more spiritual and less like a cheap, sixties holiday camp (to be fair, most of McLeod-Ganj had a similar vibe. The only building which didn't scream sixties holiday camp was Chorten, a pretty Buddhist temple, outside which they were selling scream masks). Still, I got my pilgrim on, walked the Kora circuit, span a few prayer wheels, smiled at some monks and then headed higher up into the hills.

Where I actually ended up was Upper Bhagsu. A backpacker village creeping between the pine trees and into the mountains. It was so backpacker, with its Reiki healing and its tabla lessons and its stinky-dreadlocked-acousticguitars. Off the top of my head I can't think of anywhere more backpacker. It made San Pedro look like Copiapo (that's the second callback of the post; that's selfindulgent even by my standards).

But don't get confused and go to Bhagsu and expect the backpacker treatment. Hell no. It's like Puri, another one of those places where different tourists colonise different bits. One hundred metres downhill and Bhagsu is entirely for Indian tourists. By which I mean eighteen-thirties men who are away from home for the first time so have drunk a little bit too much Old Monk.

Upper Bhagsu; falafels and homeopathy. Lower Bhagsu; Szechuan noodles that have been toned down so they're not too spicy. Both are smelly in their own way, I recommend not leaving the Vashnu Mata Temple between the two. You get to walk up a lion mouth staircase - who doesn't love that?

Oh and here's a bonafide travel tip. If you are in Bhagsu, don't eat in Nex Cafe. Worst food I've had in India. And that's coming from a man who once ate a Domino's.

Go Cricket!

I did the crickets. I thought I should see what all the fuss is about. It was one of those fancy IPL ones where all the teams have very silly names.

Turns out the crickets is mainly about sweating. It's definitely sweatier watching the crickets than it is playing.  Admittedly I have never played the crickets in 40+ heat, so I don't really have an appropriate control sample for my experiment.

Apparently some of the crickets that I saw were famous. Which is nice. I saw a Chrisgayle, which seems to be like a normal cricket but much bigger. A colossus amongst sparrows. And there was no doubting that the crowd love the Viratkohlis even more than they enjoy holding cardboard in the air and cheering at fanfares.

The whole experience was kinda experiencey. We were in the cheap seats which mainly means that: a. You spend the whole time sweating, and b. If you stand up, someone is standing on your seat next time you want to it down.

Judging by the crowd the Viratkohlis definitely won. The Crickets came second. Not sure who came third.

Centurian?

So with last weekend's trip I can claim membership to the Traveler's (sic) Century Club. For those of you that don't know this is a "club" for those people that have "been" to a hundred "countries". I don't know much more about it than that.

What I do know is that they have a broad definition of what going somewhere means - they accept changing planes - and an even broader definition of what constitutes a country - Balaerics anyone? From that and the way they spell "traveller" I'm prejudging that it's a club I don't want to be a member of.  

I've not been to a hundred countries. By my definition (it was a distinct visit to see something; the country is in Sporcle's "Countries of the World" quiz) I'm in the mid-eighties, which I don't think is too shabby. By the far more stringent Eldad rules (two full weeks, including two days in the capital city; the country is universally recognised as a country by all UN member states) I'm on the somewhat shabbier sixteen.

Leh Lady Leh

So Ladakh left me breathless. Not so much the scenery (although them there Himalayas are pretty spectacular), more the altitude. Every other time I've been somewhere so high I've travelled by road so had some time to acclimatise, flying into high places makes the altitude thing a bit more pronounced. Climbing a flight of stairs leaves you puffed. With this in mind you're supposed to spend your first Leh day resting; I waited a full two hours before climbing the biggest hill in town.

Leh is kinda weird. It's real touristy, but not that in-your-face about it. And once you're off the main drag there are winding lanes full of local people doing local things: baking shirmal in underground ovens, or - in the case of the cynical sheep - being a cynical sheep.

I timed my visit wrong. I was a couple of months early. The passes connecting Leh to the rest of the world had only just opened (as I was leaving they were celebrating the arrival of the first onions of the season, fresh off the Srinigar lorry) so the tourist industry hadn't really kicked off - maybe that's why it wasn't so in-your-face.

On the second day I got out of town and had a bit of an explore of the Indus Valley. They love a monastery here. I went to monasteries at Hemis, tucked away in the mountains at the top of a ridiculously picturesque road, and Thiksey, a maze of Tibetan buildings sprawling across a big, old rock. Well prayerflag.

As an aside, what is it with German bakeries? There were at least three in Leh and I've seen one in most towns across India. I've no problem with them, I just didn't really appreciate that German bakeries were a thing. Maybe it's just that any time I've been to Germany I've only eaten pork and had no real need for pastry products.

Horses for Gorses

Rolling countryside, fresh air and farms. Long walks and cycle rides. Cheese, beef, ale and sausages. A big, old dose of all the things that India isn't great at providing.

It wasn't completely dissimilar though. That there New Forest is a fan of the street animal: cows and donkeys all over the road. We squeezed in the Golden Triangle, at least that's what I'm calling the cycle to Burley and Brockenhurst. Rather than starting at a bustling metropolis, we started at the rather less bustling Fritham (in a wooden caravan filled with meat in a pub beer garden, I know, right?); the Pink City and Taj Mahal were replaced with cream tea and cider. So a very English India.

Still, Bombay Sapphire is Indian, right? Don't answer that.

The Rock Tower

Yay politics. But much like last time I'm not going to talk about current affairs in the mainstream news, even though there's a fair amount to talk about. I mean I'm definitely not going to ask how the White House can't find someone better at the press than Sean "it's okay to use chemical weapons for ethnic cleansing" Spicer.

I'm going to talk about crazy Indian politics. In an attempt to cut down on drink driving they have introduced a rule whereby noone can serve alcohol within so many metres of the National Highway. This sort of makes sense, you can see a logic at any rate. Unfortunately the whole Gurugram economy is based on the easy access to the highway (and in turn the airport). This means that all the high-end hotels and all the bars / restaurants set up for the Big Four crowd fall within this restriction.

For the record they introduced this rule on April 1st. The old double bluff, everyone assumed it was a joke until they couldn't buy a beer.

I can't help but notice a correlation between this coming into effect and how very busy my local (which is outside the restriction) was on a Tuesday night. Absolutely heaving, it was. You  could tell it was banging by the way they played Ice Ice Baby and Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. The Clock Tower? The Rock Tower more like.

Oh and if anyone actually uses this for useful travel information (more fool you, this is the idiosyncratic warblings of an idiot - go and use a real website), India has removed a stupid rule too - it's like a one-out-one-in policy policy. You now no longer need to get a baggage tag stamped when you go through airport security. This saves about a minute per journey and a veritable forest of baggage tags. Hoorah for coming into line with every other country.

_____________

Shout out to Jaffa, now that it's gone okay I can make an inappropriate reference to your old nickname.

Clock watching

I'm in Salar Jung Museum and it's coming up for the hour. Everyone is heading towards the musical clock. There's an auditorium set up. Some people have snacks - they've been here a while. Three o'clock arrives. There's maybe 300 people watching. Waiting. I can't bear the excitement... WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN? This is gonna be epic.

The clock played one bar of music then did three bongs.

I'm not saying that that's a metaphor for my time in Hyderabad, but it had been perhaps a little too hyped. All that talk of it being the spiciest food in India, it was inevitable that I'd find it beige.

Hyderabad wasn't without its good points - the city does a nice line in boulders; the Persian influence means it looks different to the other Metrocities; Qutb Shahi was incredible; I had a proper tasty breakfast dosa - they just didn't entirely outweigh the heat, the smell or the failed hype.

For the record, after the bongs the other 299 people watching the clock went nuts. There was cheering and whooping. It was just me being an underwhelmed, been-there-done-that curmudgeon.

These guys better not go to Eastgates; SavaCentre will see a rush on clean underwear when Cat's Cradle Pussywillow III tips to the o'clock. Is SavaCentre still there? I hope so, although it's largely irrelevant to this post. And fade to grey.

The Tiger's Nest

"Let's get some drinks, I know a great spot for a party." And that's why I spent my last night in Bhutan drinking 8 percent beer on the side of a road by Paro airport, an appropriately weird way to end a weird couple of days in a weird country.

Until then Day Three had been relatively light on weird with its tried and tested temple-dzong-hill combo. But it was juxtaposed with Day Two where the penis-coated sightseeing was followed up by watching a terrible dance show in a delusional nightclub. So my weirdometer may have been off kilter.

We went to the Tiger's Nest, a temple in a cave half way up a cliff, so called because when Guru Rinpoche came here to meditate he came by tiger (it's the only way to travel). Whilst he was meditating the tiger hung out in a narrow cave beneath the main cave, which you can now get to by climbing down some rickety planks in the dark.

We had a picnic lunch (cheesey fiddlehead ferns, yum) in the woods underneath the Tiger's Nest. This sounds more idyllic than it was. We were joined by a pack of stray dogs, which added a frisson of excitement to the proceedings.

So, Bhutan, you big openair museum. Thanks for the fresh air and the sensible temperatures. Thanks for the genuinely spicy food. And, most of all, thanks for the weird.

Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom

This was what Bhutan was supposed to be about. As nice as pottering about Thimphu was it wasn't what I was looking for in my Bhutan. There's a time and a place for paper factories and textile museums but that time was not now.

Now was for temples and flags and three storey brown roofed buildings scattered across hills. Dochula Pass delivered on that. One hundred and eight stupas on the top of a mountain, what's not to like?

The main Dzong in Punakha, the old capital, was pretty incredible. To be fair most things about Punakha were pretty incredible. It was all temples and rice terraces and swing bridges. Again what's not to like?

I think it's fair to say that The Temple of the Divine Madman didn't let me down when it came to delivering weird. Drukpa Kunley, the aforementioned Divine Madman, had a reputation for banishing demons using his, erm, Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom. The temple has a reputation for fertility which all the local traders have exploited by painting fertility symbols across their shops. I could have called this blog post "Dongs and Dzongs".

And what of the temple itself? With that kind of introduction you don't go in expecting entry-level weird. Which is lucky, as otherwise the sight of two seven-year-old monklets playing trumpets whittled from human femurs would probably be seen as excessive.

The Land of the Thunder Dragon

So Bhutan knows how to make an entrance. The Drukair plane does a handbrake turn around a mountain that you can reach out and touch, before coming into land sideways. Never had a landing like that before.

And then once you land, you're in this bucolic, medieval theme park of a country. All the buildings are traditional. The air is fresh. There's no noise. All the people are wearing traditional dress. The air is fresh. The temperature is mild. Everywhere you look there are mountains and flags. It's like the backdrop to a Samurai film. And coming straight fro Delhi it doesn't really seem real.

The overall sense of weird was added to by the sleep deprivation:
A. 5am is a rubbish time to fly, especially given the unpredictable queues at Delhi's passport control.
B. Knowing that you're gonna pass Everest isn't conducive to sleeping on the plane.

But mainly things seem weird because they are weird. Here's some weird:

Weird One
The national animal is a takin. They say it came about because an old God (or maybe a King) put the head of a goat on a cow.

Weird Two
Archery is the national sport. Now you're thinking of Olympic archery, aren't you? You're thinking "That's not that weird." Aside from a bow and arrow there's not too much in common with Olympic Archery.

Start off by making the target a quarter of the size. Then double the length of the pitch. You can't even see the target at that distance. So far so ridiculous? I've not even started. There's a target at both ends. Both ends! In archery! From what I could work out there are two teams of eleven bowman who stand at either end of the pitch firing arrows at each other to try and hit the impossible to hit target. If on the offchance they do, they get rewarded by the other team dancing for them. Assuming they've not been skewered.

Weird Three
They treat chillies as a vegetable. This means cheesey chillies is a thing. What's not to like about that? It goes well with a nice cup of butter tea. Hmmm. Butter tea.

And we haven't even got onto the fact that one of the most famous people in Bhutanese history is known as The Divine Madman. I'm going to his monastery tomorrow. I have high hopes for more weird.

Dolphins for Breakfast

They love a backwater in Kerala. I thought they were gonna be this super exclusive thing, but nope, they have backwaters everywhere. Even in the middle of the city. Those backwaters are a bit stinky though, not exactly the picture postcard houseboats-and-Chinese-fishing-nets backwaters that they advertise.

Talking of which. First bit of picturesque Keralan waters and there were dolphins, just hanging out. Doing the dolphin thing. In Kochi Harbour. By the Chinese fishing nets. You don't get dolphins in the city centre back in Blighty; Chelmsford needs to up its game.

I snuck out of the city to Cherai Beach, an out-of-season resort town on a superlong stretch of sand where everyone was just lazing - as I guess you do on a beach when there are no tourists. I ate my first Keralan fish thali in about the least restauranty restaurant I've ever seen; a battered patio table beside an old man's house. The food in Kerala is a bit different to the North. You get rice and poppadoms (like a proper British curry) rather than the bread you get in the North. And they love a banana leaf - fish cooked in banana leaf, curry served on a banana leaf, banana served without the banana leaf. The food is still not spicy though, even when they even promised to make it "Indian spicy".

I spent the last day cruising the backwaters (box ticked). The nice ones, not the stinky ones. You could tell they were nice, they were full of water snakes and kingfishers: if there's one thing I know about water snakes and kingfishers, it's that they are very particular about their accommodation.