Mumbai

I didn't know that Mumbai/Bombay is the second largest city in the world. If I had I wouldn't have been so surprised that it took over three hours to get from the outskirts into its center and a further hour to get to my accommodation. Mumbai is insanely big.

I stayed with the Salvation Army. No, things hadn't got so bad that I had needed the support of a charity. Rather it represented pretty much the only cheap accommodation in Mumbai. It also turned out to be a superb place to meet lots of old and new friends. It wasn't the Taj hotel, but it was next door!

If India is to project itself as a future world power then it needs to pin all of its hopes on Mumbai. Quite simply, stick it in continental Europe and it wouldn't look out of place. Rickshaws are banned in the south of the city, instead they are replaced by funky and even metered taxis!!! Garbage trucks exist as do wheelie bins and there is a distinct lack of cows and the mess they bring. I even saw a man walking a dog with a lead and a harness. Mumbai doesn't just feel continental it looks it too. Tall skyscrapers shape the skyline and people wander the streets in much more western attire. Speaking to people who's first stop in India was Mumbai it felt to them as manic and chaotic as any other arrival to India. Compared to the North however, for me, it felt like a home from home.

It was a city you just wandered around. There are so many beautifully crafted buildings that you just keep tripping over. The Gateway to India, the Taj Hotel, the University, the Victorian train station and the High Court were all incredibly impressive. Inside the High Court was also fascinating however we predictably found ourselves in the most boring courtroom in the world where the prosecutor openly admitted that he was quoting selectively from sentences. There was paper and bureaucracy everywhere. That part was typically Indian. From the different green areas you could admire all of these buildings whilst watching tons of overlapping cricket games. How they knew who was playing which game was mind boggling!



My enduring memory of Mumbai however will be courtesy of its central asset...Bollywood. It happened by chance. Jamie, who I had met in the dorm rooms had heard of an opportunity and knew they were on the search for others. I picked up the phone and rang. From the moment the man on the other end introduced himself as "my name is Sanjay and I...I am from Bollywood!" I knew it would be a memorable experience. After a chat, Mr Bollywod said he would send a car at 8am sharp to take us to the film set.

8am came and went. As it turns out the bus had arrived at 7:30. But Mr Bollywod needed his stars and sent a car with tinted windows and leather seats to pick us up. Inside was already seated Henry, an Aussie, who had also missed the bus. From here we were whisked away to a shopping center. Unsurprisingly it took ages having to navigate gridlocked traffic.

The set was TGI Friday's. I got dressed into a low cut top with more glitter on it than any man should ever be allowed to wear. I then had make up applied and gel was poured into my hair and stylised into an eccentric style. I was apparently trendy. We hung around for an hour laughing and speculating as to our role. Actors built like brickhouses and pristine actresses shared the same room as us. They all lived out of a mirror. Finally it was our time. We were guided into the diner and people were dispatched to tables. Food that was on the tables had been there for days. They showed golf rather than cricket on the TV's. Except for the Indian actor and actress, everything was Western. Despite the build-up it was not to be my time. In a crushing blow the director removed everyone sporting white shirts. Gutted five of us sat depressed in the communal area as the shoot took place. Resigned to missing out we got changed. We were pleased to be getting 500 rupees but disappointed not to have got a shot at the big time.

As it turned out we were only on that set because some of the other extras had walked out after a long shift and little food. Life as an extra can be cruel. In a change of fortunes we were to be paid not only for doing nothing on that set but we would also be heading further North where we would get a new opportunity with what we hoped would be a less cruel film set.

This film set was situated near the airport so it yet again required an agonising journey. The only high point was that it continued in the flash car. Eventually we arrived at a small building, hidden away in the suburbs. The resident dogs body explained that the general outline of the film was that we were filming the part of where the two lead characters were under arrest. The taller extras would play Spanish policemen. They got full uniforms, guns and had to have a full shave. Rather pleasingly myself and the German Jonus were also identified as having a good look for the shoot. It later turned out that it was a good look for a Spanish criminal. Yet again hair and make-up was done but this time in the producers coach and by a team of stylists. Like any Bollywood star, I had taken a knock, but there I was, rising from the ashes, ready to prove my white shirt haters wrong!

What actually emerged was a long time sat outside, chatting and playing cards. The set itself was a hive of activity. People sat looking through Bollywood hopefuls portfolios, security guards patrolled the perimeter and all numbers of people did all numbers of jobs. There were so many people that it was hard to comprehend what 90% of them were actually doing. The only consistent thing was a call for silence every 3 or so minutes as they did another take inside the building. By far the biggest highpoint of the set was having a personal chef and three buffets over the course of the day. I can't put into words just how good the food was. Unlike Hollywood extras, we were treated very well and were always first to and last from the buffet table.

It was some four hours after arriving on set that my big chance came. I was grabbed by one of the dogs bodies and pulled into a so called Spanish police station. But as soon as I was in I suffered yet more heartbreak. They didn't need me. I went and sat back outside with the others. Two minutes later I was back inside again. However again I was rejected. This time terribly confused at the lack of any sort of plan from the director I was bundled into a side office. Finally I was then dragged back onto set, this time to stay. I was given a detailed run down of my role. I had to stand and look at a piece of paper being held by a polieman in the back office as a camera pans in on the lead characters. To be honest, I played my role perfectly. It did take two attempts but that was because the lead actor forgot his lines. At the end everyone applauded, I took the applause with grace. They announced it was lunch. All the extras on set applauded.

Bursting from lunch we all slumped in chairs, underneath the relentless sun. At 4pm we were told our job was done and we could go home six hours early. We collected another 500 rupees from the set and took part in another grueling trip back. It would have been quicker to get to Cornwall from Bristol I recon. The highlight however was the entertaining traffic jam sellers who would attempt to thrust everything and anything through the windows of cars convinced you wanted it. But I just didn't feel like a half broken plastic Santa.

In celebration of our upcoming fame we settled down to a number of beers around Mumbai. Leopalds was a terrible disappointment and after another bar we made use of a local off license and sat down on the steps over looking the Gateway to India. It was a great day and a great city.

Merry Christmas!

I can't lie. It's going to be a tough one not being there for Christmas and New Year. But I suppose I'm just going to have to struggle on through it.



Have a good'un!

Udaipur

The lonely planet describes the journey from Bundi to Udaipur as for sadists and masochists only. I thought they were being melodramatic but as it turns out they were right. Over the course of ten hours, I was smashed into a thousand pieces. On arrival I was slowly re-built and admired the huge lake that I looked upon from my hotel rooftop. It always amazes me how in India, the cheapest places have the best location and views.

The sight from the rooftop overlooking the lake and the City palace, made the journey worthwhile, which is lucky because the rest of the place flattered to deceive. Walking around the lake was near impossible and the shops were personally uninspiring. That said it is a rather spectacular place to look upon, just limiting in what you can do.

My enduring memory of Udaipur will be of the walk I took on my first day. It was a failure in the sense that I struggled to get to the waters edge and at one point hit a dead end. Rather than re-trace my tracks I took a side road. Immediately I was set upon by as close to a rabid dog as I have encountered to date. I was saved from needing a rabies jab by a passing motorcyclist who chased it away with his bike. A minute later I passed a temporary homeless camp where the parents, in unison, pointed at me and what felt like a thousand children ran towards me. Each one begged for a different thing. It was like I was in a zombie film. Luckily I've learnt that you can out walk any type or age of beggar. They have no stamina. Finally I turned the corner to find myself starring down an elephant. It was wondering on its own down the center of the road and causing all sorts of havoc. It was one of those moments that showed me why India is such an exciting and interesting place to be. Good or bad, it's just so unpredictable.

Bundi

Eat your heart out and move aside Jodhpur. Bundi really is quite blue!

I arrived at 3am and sat in the bus station surrounded by homeless people sleeping. Occasionally one would wake up, squint their eyes, decide the site of a white guy sat reading a book at that hour was too unusual and fall back to sleep. It was silent. Who needs the desert?

Eventually I gained the strength to wonder the streets. I found the lake and sat watching another wonderful sunset. I looked around me and remembered a conversation I had had with a Canadian doctor in Jodhpur. He had explained the looks and expressions he had received when he went out jogging one morning. I agreed that personal fitness seemed unheard of in India. Well maybe that is the case in the rest of India but Bundi has obviously been visited by some form of sports guru. Everywhere I looked people were doing stretches! On the slide, the ghats, on steps and seats, all ages and both sexes were stretching. By far the strangest site was seeing an elderly lady, dressed modestly including a coat and head scarf, doing star jumpes. There were tons of people doing each stretch and exercise entirely wrong. I am happy not to be a doctor in Bundi. The shortness of the exercises (averaging around three minutes), the time in the morning (6am) along with the sheer numbers of people (50 or so in an hour!) made for a very disorientating start to the day.

I spent the first day hanging after two hour sleep. I drank chai, chatted to fellow travelers and marveled at Bundi's kite wars. We wondered if they made the kites themselves or were there really kite shops? The day was relaxing and uneventful. I slept undisturbed for fifteen hours!

The next day I visited the Palace. The building is strikingly sat, perilously on the side of the hill. Its design is such that Peter Jackson could easily have filmed Lord of the Rings here. Some people like pristine and lovingly refurbished buildings. This palace would not be for them. Decaying and unloved it sits much as when its last inhabitants left. You wonder from room to room marvelling at untouched history. Paintings, centuries old, crumbled before my eyes. Standing on one of the royal balconies I looked out on the sea of blue. I felt like a King. With no information boards, this was site seeing at its most primative. To me it was thrilling. From so little it was amazing how easily history can come alive.

I wondered down into the old town and got lost in a chorus of hellos and namastes. People were even friendlier here. I came across a kite shop. Or to be more precise kite street. For references sake it's next to jar and bowl street, just after duvet street. I love how in India one man (I crossed out person because clearly in India it would be a man) will come up with an idea and then every other shop will copy him and sell exactly the same thing. No more was this shown than in Jodhpur where four different stalls, along a main road, in a very poor area, sold inflatable animals, meant for swimming pools! The entrepreneurial brain is lacking for majority India. That said at night it makes navigation easy and is a clear reason why they don't bother with street names.

In the evening I met a couple of Londoners (one who was born and brought up in Edmonton!) who I had previously met on the road. This happens a lot as everyone broadly follows the same route. We went walking around the streets and came across the wedding party that had earlier awoken me from my slumber. The older than normal groom sat authoritatively upon his horse. There were two karts at the front and back of the procession. With large speakers that blasted out different types of music. In the middle was a spotlight shining on the crowd and two marching bands each one playing different tunes and battling to be heard against the speakers. Essentially it all boiled down to creating as much noise as possible. The women walked at the back. Hundreds of men danced madly in the middle. At various points we were grabbed and pulled into the near mosh pit, much to the delight of the crowd. Large fire works were lit sending the crowd running back for cover. Then the speakers and band would start again and so would the dancing. It was highly entertaining.



For my final day I wondered a few km to where Rudyard Kipling wrote part of Kim. By the small palace was a huge lake. Surrounded by hills it was beautiful and yet typically Indian. A large array of bird life lived in amongst the litter that sat around the inner parts of the lake. Any attempts to get to the waters edge were near impossible. It's a common problem with India that so many of it's charms are in no way accessible for tourism.

Jodhpur

Jodhpur was nice. Not my favourite Indian city so far but it came close. It lacked the excitement and variety of Varanasi but provided an enjoyable almost relaxing stop. A strange occurrence in an Indian city.

I think that its niceness came from its ability to be as inoffensive and unintrusive as it could possibly be. Rickshaws crawled past but said nothing. Shop oweners chatted about their goods without trying the hard sell. In the old part of the city you didn't continuously fear of being crushed or stampeded to death.

And with that niceness essentially came an uneventful stop. The fort dominated the horizon and was good to walk around but aren't they always? The old city was a manageable hive of activity but nothing extraordinary. The people were lovely and helpful. Despite my mundane write up it is a place that I have thoroughly enjoyed visiting and would recommend it as an essential stop in Rajasthan. Fundamentally it was so refreshing to find a place that is well...nice!



To leave Jodhpur I went to the bus station . It's always a hectic way to end your stay in a place as people scramble for tickets or seats. I navigated my way to ticket counter number one which incredibly only had one person in line. It was there that I cracked. I'm normally very tolerant when it comes to getting tickets and can hold my own when I need to but I just couldn't bothered with elbows out. Instead as a middle aged man decided to push past and shout over everyone to buy a ticket I promptly informed him of the queue he had somehow not noticed. Confused, I showed him where to stand and what to do. Encouragingly he followed and filed in behind me. Ten seconds later he repeatedly tapped me on the shoulder and showed me the outstretched palm demonstrating unfairness. He mumbled in self pity. Two other men had pushed past and were barking out demands for tickets. Understanding the need for consistency I showed them too how to queue and returned to my place in the line. After a minute or so I turned around to see others joining a perfectly formed queue. Everyone was smiling, thoroughly chuffed with our accomplishments.

Finally it was my turn at the counter. It was at that point that I remembered that getting to it was only half of the problem:

"I'd like to buy a ticket to Bundi please"
"Wrong counter"
"But this is the ticket counter for buses in Rajasthan!"
"Yes but not for Bundi, you need that counter" (waves hand in an obscure and unhelpful way)

I looked around at the scrummages forming at the other counters and decided to find my own way onto the bus.

When finally departing we drove past an army base. There was a roundabout outside. In its center was a downed Pakistani plane. The more I am in India the more confused I am of their relationship. The triumphalism of this site was a little scary.

BIkaner

"So your going hours out of your way, to a grubby city which even the guidebooks struggle to find many positives about, which has a fort, but you've seen enough of those to last a life time and all to go another hour outside to visit a temple and you've declared how fed up you are of continuously seeing amazing temples! What has gotten into you?"

It was a question that I had been asked a surprising number of times and one that I could only offer the weakest of defenses. I had even begun to doubt my own rationale. None the less I made the trip to Bikaner arriving at 4am in the morning and comforted myself with Chai and an assortment of street food. One such food was a chili rapped in batter and complemented with a variety of spices. That was a surprising shock in the morning when I bit into that.

As it turns out the guidebooks were correct. Bikaner is a big Indian city without any sights. The Fort was nice, especially the interior but I have seen plenty of better forts since arriving in India. Other than that it is the traditional dirt filled, over congested, incredibly noisy city. If it had one thing going for it, it would be the friendliness of the population. There was no hassle and a barrage of people wanting to greet and talk without any motivation other than to be nice. It felt like a city which tourism had passed by. Everything was in Hindi and the people stared like no other place has starred so far. At one point I had around ten people crowded around my computer screen as I tried to read Facebook.

So why Bikaner? Well come the second day I was excited. I joined with a Canadian couple and we hopped onto a local bus to a place called Deshnok. Here there is a temple that looks like any other temple. You take your shoes off, admire the outside and the superb architecture and finally walk inside. There you find pictures of deities, beautiful carvings, places for donations and hundreds of disease infested rats. Yes for some inescapable reason Deshnok has built a temple dedicated to rats.



Within the walls rats are considered sacred. People come to leave food donations and pray that one will run over their feet as apparently, it brings good luck. It is considered auspicious to eat the food after the rats have finished. A maze of tunnels and holes in the walls leave hundreds of rats free to pop out throughout the different buildings. There is plenty of screaming and laughter as the rats jump out and catch people by surprise. However the thing that is most incredible about the temple is that it is an important pilgrimage sight. For us it was a place of humor and intrigue, for many it is a place of religious importance and part of their spiritual lives. I wasn't sold on it but seeing rats in the kitchen area, climbing over each other and out of pots and pans to drink milk out of a bowl is just one of the many sights in that temple that I am not going to forget easily.



We left and ate at a street kitchen directly opposite. It was probably the first restaurant where you could be sure that there were no rats in the kitchen. This was based on the fact that they were so well looked after in the temple, even with the doors wide open, none seemed willing to leave.