Pink Around the Edges

Rishikesh seemed a whole heap calmer this time round. Not certain whether it's because I'm a lot more used to the hooting pandemonium that is India or because it was genuinely a whole heap more calm with it not being Durga Pooja.

Had a pretty different experience this time round too. Way more sensible than last time's daft treks. We snuck in a safari to Rajaji National Park. Didn't see tiger / leopard / king cobra. Did see loads and loads of deer and peacocks. And a hyena, that's kind of cool, right? I didn't know they had hyena in India.

I'd been dismissive of the rafting last time I was here ("It won't be as good as the Zambezi. It won't be as good as the Nile. Look how much I've travelled, I'm so great." Idiot). Here are two very, very good reasons why you should go rafting in Rishikesh:
1. It is incredibly cheap.
2. The views of the Ganges winding its way through the Himalayan foothills are absolutely phenomenal. 

And, as a bonus, you get to see monkeys on rocks. Everyone loves monkeys on rocks.

I finally found a way to stop everyone asking for selfie-with-me at tourist attractions. Hang around with a white girl. It's like an invisibility cloak for selfies. Noone wants a picture of the angry looking white man when there's a smiley, female alternative that's still pink around the edges from Holi.

This cloaking device only works for selfies, it has the opposite effect for any kind of business transaction. Turns out if there is Man around it is compulsory for all questions and money to pass through Man. Everyday sexism to a ludicrous extent.

In other news, I finally made it to the Red Fort. I'd put off going as I'd only heard bad things, but it was alright. Yes it's not as good as Agra Fort and yes it looks like it could do with a cuddle; but it's a veritable oasis of calm in the madness that is Chandi Chowk, and for that alone it should be celebrated.

Festival of Colours

Now my romantic image of Holi was big piles of powder paint at the side of the road. People grabbing fistfuls of colour and throwing it in the air, everyone would then gambol about as the colour fluttered down. In slow motion. Maybe Purple Rain playing in the background.

The reality didn't quite hit this idyll: it was more strangers rubbing handfuls of paint and spit in your face; kids spraying bright blue insulating foam in your eyes; roaming gangs of increasingly feral men trying to grab whitegirl boobies with their painty, painty fingers. Happy Holi. I'd wondered why Holi was a dry day, given that without alcohol the whole city looked like Stabilo armageddon it was probably a good call.

We were in Mathura for Holi. Have you heard of Mathura? Of course not. It's one of those super-religious places - a bona fide pilgrimage site, with its ghats and its Krishna and its Arati - and it takes Holi pretty seriously. The night before Holi the town was full of peat pyres topped with plastic gods. Nothing says spiritual like toxic poo smoke and colouful groping.

I've revisited some of the big sites, this means we can reassess without anything being influenced by first impressions:

Qutb Minar: still ace. Who doesn't love squirrels on ruins?

Lotus Temple: amazing from far away. Inside it looks like a particularly soulless baptist church.

Taj Mahal: Like the Lotus Temple the vista is better than the reality, only dialled up on both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, it's real pretty from far away. But close up it's too big to see and inside it's dark and depressing. Added to that, wherever you are you're getting jostled by idiots and kettled by whistle-blowing Stazi, so the whole experience is just unpleasant. Given that it's at its best when it's far away, you may as well just look at a picture of it and save yourself the discomfort.

Agra Fort: A far more enjoyable experience than the Taj.

Akshardham: When I saw it the first time I thought it was the prettiest temple I'd ever seen. Now I'm far more jaded. Now I've seen a whole heap more temples all round India. Now I've read up about it and know that there's no real history to it. No other building that I've seen in India comes close.

Odisha

Odisha seems to be a bit different from everywhere else I've been in India. They have different food; it tastes of mustard rather than chilli. They have different gods; Jagannath is  Vishnu's Southpark incarnation. Gone are the marigolds; the offerings are all about cowri shells here. The buildings are more colourful. The police dress like cowboys.

I started in Konark which is famous for an enormo-temple decked out like a chariot. The temple is covered in hundreds of ornate carvings most of which fall into the NSFW category. And there was me thinking that Indians were conservative; they cover their tourist attractions with 800 year old smut.

Next stop was Puri, which is an absolute hotchpotch of a place. I stayed in the western end of town where it appeared to be a simple living beach community (wide beach; fishing boats; sandy roads, full of baby animals and basket weavers - the kind of place backpackers flock to so that they can feel a bit grimey).

But that's not all Puri is about, oh no. It's a super-holy pilgrimage town so the colourful streets in the centre are full of shells and streets and pilgrims heading to the temple (as an aside, the temple is walled and accessible only to Hindus; to see the architecture you have to climb into Miss Haversham's library to see over the wall, which doesn't detract from the overall weird).

But that's not all Puri is about, oh no, it's also a bona fide resort for Indian holiday makers. This was the bit that probably blew my mind the most. If you travel between the medieval temple city and a fishing village, you'll find yourself in Southend. It's got a promenade, a strip of generic, beachfront hotels and a load of shops selling tourist tat. The only real difference from a British resort was that there were camels to ride rather than donkeys.

When I was in Puri a lot of people asked me why Westerners stopped visiting twenty years ago. I suspect that the answer has a lotto do with everywhere expecting you to check out by 8am. Rather undermines the chilled out vibe that the city was going for.

I finished in the capital, Bhubaneswa, a city whose name I really have trouble spelling. Unlike my other two Odisha stops, Bhubaneswa is famous for its medieval temples. I managed about twelve before I was officially templed out and ran into the hills to look at caves.

So yeah, a smash and grab tour of Odisha's highlights, mainly on the local bus and it felt like I was backpacking again. By which I mean I found the transport uncomfortable, the accommodation unclean and felt sort of grimy for the whole weekend. I'm now slightly worried that I'm growing up.

Little England

You wait decades for a tea plantation to come along and then two come along at once...

I've mentioned how civilised Sri Lanka is, well Nuwara Eliya raises the game with its golf links and its low humidity and its race course and its country estates and its afternoon tea on the lawn. They've turned colonial guilt into a tourist attraction.

I've finished Sri Lanka at Negombo a fishing town sort of near Colombo. I say I'm in Negombo, I'm not, I'm near it. I paused in Negombo on the way here to have a smell of the fish market but didn't stay for long.

I've headed south to an unnecessarily plush eco-villa squished between a beach and a lagoon. So plush. It's got the biggest pool I've ever seen. So plush. Course number five (alone) of the six course a la carte dinner was substantially bigger than any other meal I've eaten in Sri Lanka. So plush. The en suite bathroom is bigger than most of the hotel rooms I've stayed in.

As an aside, the bathroom is also sort of outdoors, which allows for al fresco pooing. I assume that this is to give high-end travellers the full South Asia travel experience without the indignity of having to ask the driver to stop the bus.

Kandy Kingdom

I know it makes me a horrible person but I had real difficulties taking a place called Kandy seriousl. As soon as I realised I was staying in Cinnamon Citadel in Kandy Kingdom then the poor town had no chance.  It was like I was staying in a level of a computer game unfortunately that meant I treated everything with roughly that level of respect.

I went to Tooth Temple in Kandy Kingdom. As temples go it was pretty good, and it takes only very minor changes to the name to get a good alliterative, candy-related name to fit my video game nonsense. There were a lot of references to King Kandy throughout, which didn't help the seriousness. So when it came to the point where they shut down the city for ten days each summer to parade a tooth on the back of an elephant, well...

I saw some Ves dancing. Apparently that's a thing. Imagine if Ronald McDonald put on all his mum's jewellery and then improvised a dance show after spending too long on a crosstrainer.

I also went to Gobstopper Gardens. That's not their name but they were chock full of fruit bats so I wrang dry the pointless joke that has clearly run its course. I don't know, I go to the prettiest City in Sri Lanka - a Unesco-protected pilgrimage site - and all I do is make Wreck-it Ralph jokes. Hashtag Keeping it highbrow.

I hit up two more of the big Sri Lankan Unescos on the way to Kandy: Cave Temples of Dambulla (Some Buddhas in a hole - m'eh - It's like Pindaya only with worse caves and less Buddhas) and Sigiruya.

Had you heard of Sigiruya? I hadn't. Apparently it's known as the Eighth Wonder of the World (but then so was Andre the Giant). It's a big old rock in the middle of nowhere. All round the rock is the ruins of a fifth century fortress, which in itself is pretty cool. You climb (by which I mean queue) up the side of the rock past some frescoes (good) and some really old graffiti (erm...) before getting to the top of the rock where there is more ruined fortress up in the clouds. And that is all kinds of awesome.

How had I not heard of that?

Island of Dragons

The first thing you notice about Sri Lanka is how very civilised it is. People are considerate. Drivers obey traffic laws and let each other out. There's really not much rubbish. It's mighty refreshing.

The next thing I noticed was how big the cashew nuts are. They are like arthritic fingers. To be honest, I was too blown away by the sense of order to notice much else.

I landed in Colombo last night - too late to see anything - and left early this morning - too early to see anything - so basically fobbed off the largest city and not quite capital (come on, admit it, you thought Colombo was the capital rather than Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte) in favour of the countryside.

Travelled half way across the island today to Habarana to tick the freckled, ginger elephant box as soon as possible. Saw about a hundred of them (yay) but they had covered themselves in mud so you couldn't see their freckles (boo, elephants, boo).

Ukko's Dart

I think I'm the victim of institutional spicism. I feel certain that people are making my food deliberately unspicy to reduce the risk of me melting on them.

The alternative blows my mind - maybe Indian people don't eat their food that spicy.

Or maybe I bring it on myself a bit. If I'm ever asked "mild, medium, spicy?" I generally say medium even though I think the correct answer is probably going to be spicy. Just because the evidence shows differently (it's been five months since I've eaten something that I'd class as "too spicy"), does not mean that my preconceived ideas about Indian food (based on years of getting broken by Madrases in the UK) are in any way altered. I just assume that if I ask for it spicy I'm going to get spiked by an Ukko's dart and spend the rest of the evening gurgling hallucinations.

I'm aware that I've referenced dystopian fiction that you've not read. Here's some more:

Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler
So a reactionary, right-wing quasi-militant campaigns to be president on the basis of fear and xenophobia under the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again". Nope, this dystopian fiction is way too out there. Something like that would never happen.

The Last One - Alexandra Oliva
More apocalyptic than dystopian. Most I've enjoyed a book since at least Station Eleven. Read it. Read it now.