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.