A Great Big South Indian Adventure 6

Stuffed into an open sided jeep, emitting fumes even more noxious than the Bullet Boys, we set off for the danceathon. Will and I were at the back and as our petro-headaches started we stuck our heads out of the canvas sides of the bouncing vehicle and braved unseen insects, undergrowth, or other traffic. 
Alien objects failed to find us in the dusk and we arrived with only mild headaches from the carbon liberally liberated by the jeep's ancient motor.

Swarms of happy schoolfaces ran up with infectious enthusiasm to claim each adult by the hand. In among the dusk darkened melee were shiny smiles and smatterings of Bollywood bright clothes. 

The small kids led us to the front of the auditorium. This was a temporary construction with school chairs neatly aligned in the open air and a large cloth held aloft by flimsy poles to protect us from the starlight, or more probably from the fickle mists of these uplands.

The radiant clothes seemed to be mainly tribal dresses kept for celebrations and special events. Given the extreme poverty of the area they showed the effort that the children and their families had put in, to show us their very best. And very best it was too.

The clothes came even more alive when strip lights were turned on near the stage. These showed us where we were, even if we had no control over where we were going. However the lights soon started to faintly flicker as the surrounding forest gave up its nocturnal insect life to join in the danceathon.

One surprise was the mix of faces. The kids were happy, curious and curiously well behaved. Given the relative uniformity of faces we had met so far it was curious that some people were African or Asian looking. 

The Asian looking kids probably had families from Nepal or India's Lost World, in the north-east, beyond Bangladesh and bordering Burma. This huge area is connected to the bulk of India by a narrow corridor that is only 23 km wide at one point, the Chicken Neck, but that is another story. 

We can only imagine the tales that brought these families here to the uplands of South India, refugees, migrant workers or ancient tiger hunters, however here were the children, completely integrated, dancing with the best of them.

There was no immediate explanation for the African looking children beyond the possible influence of the Portugese in the dark days of colonisation, maybe bringing slaves with them. 

Maybe it was just our imagination, trying to read too much into a region we did not comprehend. Whichever way, the joyous mix of looks and ages, energy levels and clothes reflected the vibrancy, the tolerance and the melting pot that is so typical of India.

The next small surprise was the lack of shoes, understandable on stage with the dancers, it was surprising to see quite a few unshod kids in the audience. Fritha said most would not wear shoes at home anyway, even with the snakes and jungle creatures.

But here we were with skinny kids, enjoying the dancing, the attention and the energy given out by a large gathering. The dancers whirled and strutted, gyrating and bouncing to brash beats. With the volume turned to 11. 

Schoolmasters masquerading as stagehands fiddled and tweaked the speakers and the cables, but the rhythms, melodies and chorus were overlaid by each band's overeager distortion player.

And the dancers danced. Lost in music, some looking nervously at their conspirators to refind the plot and then the tiny kids, as always, dancing enthusiastically but badly. The teenagers, slight and energetic, were ever moving and sparkling. 

Maybe dreaming of Bollywood, maybe just happy in the act. At the end of their performance, to huge applause, they slunk off the stage like shy teenagers the world over.

The dancing was interrupted by grown ups armed with microphones. In languages we could not understand they presumably extolled the virtues of everyone present. In among the white noise of tribal tongues were occasional smatterings of English such as 'uniform' and 'notebooks', which gave us a clue that they were talking about the support of Adventure Ashram.

The honouring continued as Fritha was crowbarred away from the host children surrounding her like the mound of cuddly toys inhabiting the bed of a six year old suburban princess. But this is an unfair analogy. Without the help of Adventure Ashram the tribal children growing up in a tiger reserve would not get to school.

Fritha was beaming on stage, comfortable in the happiness of everyone there. Happy to have the kids love her and cling to her and get an education.

There were honours for Fritha, for the new mayor, the old major and a lady who was probably the school principal. Then all us 'whities' were called up to accept accolades we could not comprehend and be adorned with large mayoral-like chains of beads and golden cardboard, like paper maharajahs.

Beaming we posed, most far more deserving than me, but we were there and it was a celebration and being praised feels good and the praisers were happy too.

When we sat back down we could see the number '95' on the back of the maharajah chains. 95 rupees is the daily wage for a lot of people in India. To spend that on, effectively, a trinket for us was indeed an honour.

During the next series of dances Michael was called up to give awards to some of the kids. Well deserving of the accolade, he looked in his element with a radiant smile and genuine pleasure in the kids happiness, in a team effort with the ever-beaming Fritha.

The dances then became beset with power cuts and more distortion and the magic wore off a bit. 
It perked up again when a young boy bursting with energy bounced and bounded to Indian rap, as if possessed, pouring his heart and soul into it. Chris shared his thoughts that it was an interpretive dance of me starting my bike. If so, it was a sterling effort and one I could only try to imitate though Tourette's was more likely.

Our feeding time passed and at 9 pm, Alex luckily picked up on the mildly mutinous mood and told Fritha that we had to leave. The power cuts and speeches were going to drag the evening on till well past our attention threshold.

The jeep driver was being very cautious in the dark, which surprised us, until we saw a wild elephant mother and baby. You don't bounce off a protective mummy elephant.

Supper was wolfed down and a campfire started while I failed to upload the blog yet again. So I eventually succumbed to the communal spirit of getting steadily pissed while listening to 80's music and talking gentle rubbish. Don't worry, be tipsy.

The next day was an early start for me, somewhere around 4 a.m. with the frustrations of internet connection driving me to write.

The advantage of staying two nights in the same place is the opportunity to reorganise all the kit. The disadvantage is that this means getting everything out and trying to find it all again. But on this stop with the constant mist we needed more than a day to dry out our clothes. Will's professional experience and tardy advice led to Steve and I having a towel rack precariously balanced on the beds under a ceiling fan, which was on full blast. But even a day of generating global warming had failed to dry the thicker bike jeans and undershirts. Packing was simple enough with all the damp clothes in one smelly bag and the dry ones mildly creased into the other.

The usual tactic before a biking day was to cram in as much food as I could lay my hands on, in the knowledge that adrenaline consumes calories. A rest day was different though, it meant cramming food in because it was laid out in a buffet. But the fried eggs were really good at the Jungle Hut. And it was a biking day.

Before we set off the mist cleared enough to see huge hills looming over us, which explained the eerie feeling that inhabited the camp.

Chris had picked up a communist flag earlier so he could now elect his bike brother mayor and decorate it accordingly.

My bike for once decided not to be a 'mare but started, albeit a little nervously and we were off, riding 36 fun hairpins uphill. Steadily getting the balance and leaning back into the bends I was having a great time as we rode up through the mist and the forest to 'The Gods'. And there at the top of the hill was a town called Ooty.

Although billiards was invented here we didn't get the chance to go into town but happily stopped for chai and Alex's breakfast, a spicy roadside snack. We had to wait a while for Steve who came off on the first bend. Since he had not been on a bike for some 40 years this would hit his remaining confidence hard. So we all had lots of time for a second breakfast. Once Steve had arrived, quietly and calmly, Ian wanted to get going and started his engine. 

Alex wanted to have some fun and assert his leadership rights, so refused to do anything until Ian turned his engine off. Tony mediated by turning Ian's engine off for him. Peace was restored and another ribbing excuse started, so for the rest of the trip we could all check with Ian to see if he is OK for us to set off.

And set off we do, with me successfully starting the bike at the third attempt and being close behind Alex. The rest of the pack however are slow to leave. So I wait, just down the road, watching Alex disappear into the distance but wanting to see if Ian has taken revenge by getting everyone to wait until Alex returns to find out what is wrong. But no, no shenanigans, it is just a slow start and my suspicious mind.

The countryside is wonderful, tea plantations, waterfalls like lacerations in the forested mountainsides. Certainly the biking is more fun as we get more used to the Indian system of driving in villages and towns.

Chris described it as similar to a massive flock of starlings who seem to be chaotic at an individual level but in a large group they end up where they want to go.

An hour or so later there is a bad traffic jam but on the bikes it is easy to scoot up a kilometer or so up to the front where the holdup is for a fallen tree, with a telephone wire dangling threateningly across the road. 

We putter on through and at the next opportunity Alex declared roadside chow. He knows the cars will be a while.

But it was a good place to get peanut crunchy bars, good chai and photos of each other, places we've been and places we'd like to go.

The group in general was getting a lot more social. Generally one of us would volunteer to get roadside snacks, which is not so hard as buying the whole group tea and a bite costs about 200 rupees, or €2.50. But the gesture is very much appreciated. Besides we never seemed to have enough low denomination notes, let alone coins, to settle individually. There is a ten rupee note and lower denomination coins, but we normally leave a good tip and never accumulate the smaller denomination notes, holding coins was a very odd concept. 

One event I forgot about earlier was at the Golden Temple. I had paid for our group lunch, which was a superb spicy soupy thing and just what we needed, rounding up the bill with about a 100 rupee tip. After seeing the temple I was in urgent need of a pee, but the cost was three rupees, which I had to borrow off Lovely. This was highly embarrassing for me, but not for him because he is Lovely. I didn't sleep at all until I'd paid him back, which luckily was about 30 minutes later, wiht the lowest denomination note I could cadge off Chris.

Within the Bullet Boys, it was Chris who seemed to get over the macho thing first. He was always bringing over tea or coffee at the hotels. Something I was appalling at in my self absorbed rush for calories. Chris would also clean the wing mirrors on our bikes, which we never noticed until he told us. 

But it was easy to help the others out and to ask for help. Of course sometimes when someone was feeling taken for granted, or even not, they would give immediate and poignant feedback, normally in a well-known two word phrase or saying.

So we had our chai and bhajis, pronounced 'budgies', which initially caused some confusion. They were often fresh chillies fried in batter and rather budgie shaped. And at this chai stop they were very good. Steve arrived, then the cars which had finally got through the fallen tree jam.

They all grabbed a bite before we had a long descent to the plains, with languid sweeping curves, past cattle chewing the cud in the road, multitudes of monkeys and a town full of horses and a donkey, all put out to pasture on the road.

Everything promised by Alex has turned up. The traffic is only predictable in a Murphyan legal sense. You can never let your attention lapse. Sudden stops, turns with no signals, buses on the wrong side of the road, small vehicles overtaking on blind corners, cars and bikes cutting in and across and around but, luckily for us, not through.

On the plain we had a long run in relatively open traffic. That was interesting as the acceleration on the bikes is not fantastic so at higher speeds you have to time your run when overtaking. Speeding up before the on-coming car has passed, but giving yourself room for the vehicle in front to turn, left or right, or stop, or swerve to avoid a pothole, or a cow.

It was much more efficient undertaking in settlements when traffic was very slow or had stopped. Then we could use the inside, or as London cabbies call it, the sewerside (suicide - geddit?). But at low speeds you can stop for a car door opening or a pedestrian stepping out from between a rhino bus and an elephantine lorry, both of which are laying down effective smoke screens of thick black choking gas.

The procession into Coimbatore was fun. Alex said they had never been to this hotel, The Grand Regent, but he had an address. So in convoy in a busy town on a six lane highway Alex calmly led us past the hotel. Alex stopped to check the map with Michael Cooke and the Bullet Boys told them the hotel was about 1 km back. So the bikes turned round and, like ducklings, we followed Alex the wrong way down the highway, back to the hotel. A policeman saw us and, possibly because we were white, kindly, deliberately and obviously looked the other way.

The hotel was good, big, clean and Marriott like, totally inappropriate for a bunch of dirty, sweaty, tired bikers. But we slowly dragged ourselves through the check-in procedure which involved forms and passports and staring into a computer camera, like airport immigration.

We dumped the bags in the rooms and set off for a beer. The hotel bar was as dimly lit as a girlie bar, which allegedly brought back some of the boys' memories of a dim and distant past and business entertainment. The bar just seemed what Michael described as a classic misinterpretation of Western Chic, but the beer was good and the banter bright.

We were too late for a ride to see Fritha's guru, who was apparently 40km away, or about 90 minutes. No one cried but after a well earned shower it was still only late afternoon, so we all went shopping with her instead at a wonderful store set up for export. I contained myself and left with some staggeringly good value Indian clothes and herbal tea. Michael gave Indian GDP another cardiac jolt and the ladies found their Indian clothes for the last night dinner, plus a few kilos of impulse buys!

Finally escaping the scrum at the till, Chris, Michael and I set off to recharge their phones, which were in my name as I had been the only one with a passport when we bought the Sim cards. We found a thoroughly modern phoneshop. It would be normal in London or Frankfurt, but the service seemed slick if not automated, compared to the bustling India we knew.

Despite asking lots of innocent passers-by we failed to find a bar and came back to the hotel by some seemingly strange, but efficient way. The tuc-tucs in this town prefer to charge by the metered rate, rather than watch us bargain badly. We liked this as ends up cheaper for us, until we add the tip!

Supper at the hotel was, as usual, a buffet, but delicious. Coriander fried fish, a very spicy chicken murgh, almond sugar and linen table napkins, all while sitting in a pagoda on a raised dais in the middle of the room. It felt a bit alien, being used to roadside grub.

The bar was unappealing, particularly as we had no idea what sort of night creatures may be prowling. So it was bed and the usual struggle with an internet connection, then rest, if not sleep, to get ready for the best bike run of the adventure, once I'd freed myself from bondage.....

A Great Big South Indian Adventure 5

Our rest day started at 7 with a wake up call for the paper delivery. Obviously the paper delivery boy has a job, which makes him more fortunate than many people in India. He must feel proud and responsible. Unfortunately he cannot resist the desire to show everyone the pride he takes in his work and the beaming smile he offers with his service, for the benefit of the guests.

None of the guests appreciated this gesture. Michael and Will were vocal in their feedback, mistakenly assuming it was a jape from their mates. The tips the guy got were not what he expected, but he may have increased his Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.

After a snooze and breakfast it took a mere four hours to get internet in the rooms. During which I snoozed some more and wrote and sat on the veranda that had a slim view of the narrow beach and a slither of sea, between the hotel lawn, the ramshackle plastic covered beach shack below, and the coconut tree foliage above. But the warmth and the sweet sweaty smell of the tropics was like aromatherapy.

The Boys met up for a lunch at the fish market Frotha had recommended. We were anticipating a reasonable restaurant and fish, safe-to-eat.

Chris had failed to find anything resembling a fish market during a walk along the beach so we decided it must be a drive away, especially in the humid heat.

The danger signs were clear and consistent and ignored. We asked how much it would be to go to the fish market and the tuc-tuc driver talked to the hotel security guard, then to the people at the beach shacks, then to the driver of the other tuc-tuc we'd hailed in the meanwhile. They ended up taking us into the market that guards the road to the beach, to a stall that sold fish. Lots of sign language later they took us to a restaurant on the main road, but although it was filled with local people we were not confident and opted for the safety of the hotel. 

Back to the hotel we ended up at the shack on the beach, where we found Abi and the support crew, so we knew the food would be good. It was excellent, much better than the food at the hotel.

In the state of Kerala the beer is very strong. We had found that a challenge the first night when the variety of Kingfisher we were offered was 8%. The lowest value beer on offer was Tuborg at 6%, which we opted for, but they probably bought the beer for some Danish tourists a couple of years ago. It tasted well past a sell by date that of course was not to be found.

We talked to the mechanics and Will had the bright idea of swapping beer for food recommendations with them. Once Abi saw us ordering western style he came over and halved what we had asked for, which left us with twice as much as we needed. 

Once reason for the over-ordering was probably five people ordering on behalf of five people. Their are lots of chiefs in our band of Bullet Boys.

Abi sat with us and gave us some local history about billiards being invented up in Ooty, where we were going next, and where he is from. 

There seems to be a curious mixture of feelings about the British ruling India in the dim and distant past. Whatever darker side there is was not shown to us, we were shown a broad appreciation for the colonialists leaving behind English as the language of trans-Indian communication.

The afternoon involved snoozing and writing, with a brief interlude for a swim. I found Tony and Sarah gently drifting on the small waves. Steve joined us and 10 minutes later the thunder was interspersed with lightning. So us Eurowimps got out and Steve the experienced Aussie-based hardman stayed in and enjoyed watching the storm pass inland.

Supper was obviously a buffet designed for delicate westerners, but we have always eaten well in India. Fritha had spent the day working, seeing the local ladies involved in the project and taken delivery of lots of pillows. So we were offered a Secret Pillows pop up shop in the dining area. The organisation

http://www.secretpillow.org.uk gives women in developing nations the opportunity to make some money and start a business, making blankets that fold into pillows. They are fun. I picked up the one I had ordered in the summer via Kickstarter and went back to the table where the whisky Chris had bought in Dubai was doing the rounds.

Bulleit Rye Frontier Whiskey, tastes as you would think. Rough and manly and inspirational for bad renditions of John Wayne and American Pie. Perfect.

I slept badly but mumbled around and got some more writing done, sitting on the veranda with a dawn cup of tea. I went back to bed, but woke from a nap to see the top of a ladder going past our first floor window.

It was a coconut guy who put the ladder against one tree then shimmied up the tree next to it! It was a fun experience.

Coming out of Kallicut, the traffic seemed lighter than on the way in. It was still the hectic side of busy and resembled a beehive with seemingly random acts actually being part of the organisation called India.

Our second stop of the day was a real treat. Beside the road is a long line of stalls which crush the juice out of sugar cane. Industrial revolution style spinning iron machines with rollers and wheels and cranks and levers, producing the most wonderfully refreshing juice.

We twisted up into the hills, which had big views and tea plantations before stopping high up, beside a small stream that was trying to be a waterfall.

It was an informal truck stop with the associated litter and unwelcome smells but people were hot, so at least I could show off the trick of putting your wrists or elbows into a stream. The veins are close to the skin so your blood cools fast. This survival tip came from an SAS sergeant during my days at Sandhurst, but that is another story.

My bike wouldn't start easily, yet again, and I ended up at the back of the group, then got stuck behind a big smelly truck for 5 minutes, so I lost the pack, but not the plot.

Then I ran out of petrol, luckily in a village near a petrol station. Abi stopped and said to get petrol, he was going to catch up with the others but the cars were following. The petrol station is not on the main road so by the time I had eventually filled up I had no idea if the cars were behind or in front. After the village the road rapidly deteriorates into a thin winding path between a kaleidoscope of potholes as we entered the tiger reserve.

So there I was, alone in the tiger reserve, and the heavy rain started.

There were a few cars so it didn't feel dangerous, but there's always that nagging doubt....

Coming off is always rider error.

The potholes got worse. I slowed down for yet another oncoming car. It swerved towards me to avoid some big potholes. I was going slowly but braked, picked a puddle at the side of the road, and there we were, in the undergrowth, bike drop.
The puddle was another deep pothole. At least it was a very low speed, and good protective gear from Michael meant only hurt pride.

Soaked through I picked the bike up, felt sorry for myself and stopped at the next place with habitation to start dialing for back up. While I was waiting for an answer Michael and Michelle drove up, so I asked them to stop and we waited for the other cars before carrying on.

10 minutes later I got to the petrol station where the group was waiting.

So I parked the bike and wandered off to the side for a smoke to collect the nerves and the thoughts.

All I wanted was tea and sympathy and I knew all I was going to get was a hard time, so a smoke was in order.

Post abuse and bike inspection we saddle up and on we go. And here we are at the Jungle Hut in Masinagudi. Very wet and tired. We hung our gear on the bamboo fencing around the main drinking area, where it looked like tribal sacrifices to the biker gods

After some hot chai, we got showered and met kids from a local school who sang songs and unwrapped presents. Adventure Ashram helps them get to school, without which they would not get an education.

I taught some of them "5 high, 5 low, in the middle - too slow" but a couple were too quick for me.

A spicy supper was followed by one of Michael's cubans and the bottle of JD Honey I'd got from Dubai duty free. That went down well with the group.

Well ahead of time I opted out of the safari the next day, being seen as a spoilsport, again. Heavy rain made the wildlife unlikely and the chance of sleeping in was very welcome.

Steve got up for the safari at 5, an hour after his phone started pinging with a message and 5 minutes after his alarm went off, but I was already awake.

At least I got a few naps in before tea with Fritha and Tony, some more tea with Sarah at 7 and breakfast at 8:30, using the time in between to write a lot of this.

The safari people come back having seen very few animals. Michael arrived having slept little due to his burning desire to throttle Will, who had been snoring all night.

We sat around and paralleled, looking up from our netted phones and tablets to share an Fb video or thought about the trip. Micheal learnt video editing and got his GoPro shots into very good montages with music and brilliant branding. He has the camera on his helmet and the resultant film shows a Bullet Boys helmet sticker on the left of every shot. Somehow processing his shots into 60 Mb clips needs 32 Gb of memory in his Macbook. A mystery to solved later.

The results though are no mystery, they are excellent.

I summoned the courage to ask if anyone wanted to read what I had written so far, which at that point was only up to the beginning of the Kallicut day. Chris, a sucker for pain and probably bored senseless by then, volunteered. He too used strange words, untested between us Bullet Boys before today, like excellent. Will said it was brilliant and Michael suggested I publish it. Warmed by pride and secretly grinning from ear to ear I beat Chris at table tennis, which was hard work as he is very, very good!

I spent the rest of the morning failing to upload the blog. Between power cuts, bandwidth dystrophy and unremembered passwords it was a Sisyphian task. And that sentence proves the compliments about my writing went straight to my head!

Lunch consisted of Michael starting debates, because he really wanted an argument, presumably to lance the boils of his unrequited homicidal desires towards Will. The debates started heating up as they ground in circles until we all realised that we roughly agreed on all sorts of issues like immigration and social services and the difficulties for Steve to know what a middle aged man should wear to an IT interview.

Needing time to continue my burgeoning writing career I left them at it and consistently failed to upload anything yet again.

Around 4:30 pm one of the hotel guys announced that he had restocked the gin supply which had been exhausted the previous night by a bunch of thirsty bikers. It seemed a little early. Half an hour later after Will returned from some unspecified mission and we mentioned this as a joke. He looked at us as if we were mad and ordered 5 GandTs immediately, which became 6 as Alex rolled up armed with a laptop.This was extremely good news as it was our only sustenance ahead of a marathon dance festival put on by the local centre representing 400 children from 7 villages in the area.
It was a big occassion for us and them. So big it will need a new post.

A Great Big South Indian Adventure 4

Breakfast in hotels is normally simple enough, buffet and maybe some form of eggs. The buffets for us also included Indian breakfast dishes which ranged from carbohydrate ballast to spicy pick-me-ups. A great part is always marsala omelette. Just a tinge of tang to get the biker juices flowing.

And breakfast was a continuation of the getting to know each other ritual. The complex mix of team and friends and wanting to be able to get on, while still taking the mickey, but not too much in case you hurt someone's feelings and trying not to get upset when your own wrong buttons get pressed and we're all very different people, despite being white, middle aged and happy to be on bikes.

It is of course made much easier by a similar attitude to swear words and adolescent humour, primarily involving bodily parts and fluids, impossible crude acts and so on. There may be swear words that do not involve either, but off the top of my head I can't think of any.

As predicted, it was a long day, probably a lot of fun and very, very tiring. We were warned about the different driving conditions with the traffic and other wildlife. We were warned about letting elephants cross the road, but if they were close to get out of their way, by turning around and speeding away if necessary. Elephants don't like people. They like roaming and eating. People get in the way. People shoot them and shout at them and take their babies away.

We were warned about the likelihood of meeting an overcrowded bus on the wrong side of the road, overtaking a lorry that was swerving to miss a cow, on a blind bend.

So stick to the outside of a curve to give yourself as long a line of sight as possible. Be ready to move left, fast, at any time.

Buses do not care about other road users, they are the kings of the highway. The drivers are paid little, but by the passenger mile. So the more passengers for the more miles, the more they earn.

We were not told the roads were full of potholes. It is hard to keep your eyes on the traffic, your mirrors and the road immediately ahead. Especially when you are behind a large lorry. Especially when you want to overtake. Especially in the noise of the road.

Although pre-warned, the buses were like meeting charging rhinos head on. Sometimes they were charging somewhere behind your right shoulder, sometimes they seemed to be charging at you. Overtaking them is an insult and they are a lot bigger than a bike.

On our trip out to the Golden Temple we had seen a car facing the wrong way down the opposite side of the dual carriageway, crushed against a lamppost with a bus parked where the passenger seat had been. The bus seemed undamaged.

Some bus drivers are like elephants, they don't like other people on the road.

Apparently a crowd, including the bus passengers, can attack a bus driver for malicious driving.

At the morning briefing we were clearly warned that beyond all this the bus drivers in Kallicut were the worst in India.

We were also told that we would need a refuelling stop, possibly before the tiger reserve.

Saddled up and in a swarm we managed to struggle out of Mysore. 

At a morning stop Tony and I caught up with Alex the Leader, at a petrol station, he indicated we should turn round. Of course the bike did not start for a while and when it did, I dashed back to catch up with him. Some way later Abi, the other tour bike rider, caught up with me and I turned round again. Luckily with someone to follow I arrived where the others had stopped, a couple of kilometres before the petrol station, I'd completely failed to notice them. 

At least the snacks were good and we re-hydrated while watching an interesting procession.

The ride got interesting and slightly less busy when we entered the tiger reserve.

Riding with the Bullet Boys I ran out of petrol. Unbeknownst to me, best beloved, mine was the one bike with no reserve tank to rely on. Knowing we had a back up jeep with the mechanics I waved the group on. And the following cars. The mechanics somehow knew it would be me, broken down in the tiger reserve. Having agreed I had no petrol they sought a solution, because they were not carrying any as back up. I got out the binoculars that were astutely packed in my tank bag and kept watch. The jungle was far too close for the binoculars to be of any use, so I hoped the merry chirping of the jungle creatures would continue.

The mechanics stopped a passing biker and siphoned petrol from his tank. The birds continued chirping and after a few failed attempts the bike started and we were on our merry, and very relieved way, happily spotting monkeys and deer beside the road.

Until the police stopped me.

Of course I was ahead of the mechanics and stumbled along with smiley English delaying the policeman long enough for Dharmendar and Lovely to rescue me, again, in the tiger reserve.

The Bullet Boys were waiting patiently just outside the reserve and we carried on to find the rest of the group at a roadside hut.

Full of adrenaline I was in full storytelling mode, far too loud and effusive, gesticulating and knocking over chairs. But people laughed and we all took the risk of roadside food and sanitised our hands, then got on with a delicious fried beef curry and hot bread that may be called paratha. Happy but nervous about the possible effects on the digestive tracts.

It was a long afternoon. More open roads took us up into the hills, through numerous settlements and strange sights such as abandoned cars, which is a weird idea as everything in India seems to be recycled.

We passed a neatly groomed hillside that turned out to be a tea plantation

There was a long descent in the damp mist by waterfalls and huge trees with bases like webbed feet. And those rhino buses lumbering uphill overtaking on hairpin bends....

Briefly stopping for ice cream we were mobbed by young Indians who wanted to chat and have photos taken with us. Even asking for our Facebook names...

Then downhill through village after village overtaking and being overtaken. Sometimes we ended up in a game of leap frog. One leapfrogger was a red scooter with a burkaed and unhelmeted wife as pillion. He was quite aggressive.

A few minutes later we were an a traffic jam that was more intractable than usual. Shuffling up as far as we could we were blocked by a tuc tuc, into which a semi conscious, burkaed wife was being hustlingly carried by four men. The red scooter lay tangled with a old battered moped. We wove our way around the wreckage and did not look back.

In one of the settlements Will was stopped for a shakedown by someone who looked like a policeman or some sort of official. The shakedown was stopped by four other Bullet Boys surrounding Will. Apparently the guy was trying to sell insurance.

Continuing villages and dust and traffic and mad charging buses getting denser and heavier and more and more people.

Stalling at a t-junction was no fun as the bike had heated up and become even harder to start. The Bullet Boys surrounded me like maternal mammals protecting a vulnerable toddler as I pushed the bike across the busy junction and went through the lengthy process of starting it.

Will and Michael went on and I dropped back to pick up Chris and Steve for the long ride into Kallicut. I had to remind myself to be alert. Taking small, seemingly calculated risks because I was very tired.

The bridge into town became a single track, which meant there was a tailback which I skipped a lot of, on the inside, but ended up waiting on the far side for the others. At least I was not sitting behind a vehicle producing copious quantities of noxious fumes, however I had the uncertain pleasure of being stared and honked at while waiting for Chris and Steve to emerge from the tangled knot of traffic.

The sidetrack to the hotel was marked only by Abi, Alex's number two. Junction marker, guide and as we shall later learn, Bike Whisperer.

The turn off would have been impossible to spot with a map as it was a tiny gap between two stalls and wound through market stalls towards the Arabian Sea.

Weaving along a single track trail bordered by hedges and fences on either side, inhabited by a smaller but no less pushy species of rhino bus, and after lots of twists and toots we came to a t-junction where our doubts about the correct route evaporated as we saw the rest of the group coming from the left. They had gone the wrong way.

Lots of adrenaline fueled tales of the road followed as soon as we stopped at the hotel and while we waited for Vidyha, who had the check-in details.

I think Alex well understands the effects of the road and delayed our stampede for beer while some of the fight or flight chemicals dissipated through our broad smiles.

About half an hour later we were led to the trough and a couple of beers were followed by a very welcome shower and a buffet supper. A couple of the boys, who had coincidentally stayed for an extra beer, went for a swim in the warm Arabian Sea. Their lack of dysentery the next morning would bode well for the rest of us giving it a go after a good nights sleep. So we wearily wended our way to bed to prepare for a morning of unknown adventures.

A Great Big South Indian Adventure 3

It was an easy start, with a big breakfast of fresh fruit, spicy tidbits and lots of tea. Then the team meeting.
Alex introduced us to the team. Abi as expert biker and the mechanics, Dharmendar, who helps me on numerous occasions, every day and Lovely, who is.
They are busy maintaining the bikes which are Royal Enfield Bullets. Designed in the 1950's they are stalwarts in India.
Of course my bike did not start properly, which means I still find it hard to start. The fuel mix was wrong or something and the mechanic had to fix it in the middle of the bustle of roadside India. So now I do not expect it to start and it fully lives up to expectations. Of course the standard method of teaching is 'watch me', which is pretty useless, especially when you are supposed to closely watch the kick and then find you should watch the throttle hand at the same time. Of course all the other bikes start up and you have no idea in the general noise of whether each bloody kick has worked. And if it doesn't you have to reprime the compression chamber, or something, then try again, but at the same time get the throttle right, just as the engine fires, which you can't hear with all the noise. So it is all rather stressful.

Sleep has been a real problem, so that doesn't help.
My roommate Steve has trouble sleeping, so I have tried to be extra quiet, but we have to have the air-con off and no lights and I worry about snoring, and and and...So I have taken a sleeping tablet most nights but unfortunately today we need to be up at 7 and I woke up at four. Since the tablets work for four hours I have to suffer the demons of the night. But after two hours of failing to sleep, at least I can write.
So now I am a bit sleep deprived and worried about too much; money, saying the wrong things, not thinking of other people, not being able to speak to my kids for a few days, lots of nots.

The plus side is being on the road where the fears are normally realised, you know that van will do a u-turn to come the wrong way up a dual carriageway, you know that bus will not give way and that man will leap in front of you, so you can plan for that stuff.

Plus there has been the emotion of seeing the children's homes. The particular nuclear topic of human trafficking is brought home when you visit these places. The boys home was a bit out in the boonies, but the new buildings are very clean and tidy and full of boys who were very happy to see us. Lots of beaming smiles and handshakes.


We were taken round the main building and the new dining hall that they now have the money to finish.

Behind is the new house that Adventure Ashram had paid for a couple of years ago.

Then we saw the old building, which would not be out of place as a run down farm outhouse.

Bare earth floor and a wiring system that you know would produce sparks in damp weather....but from that came our superb lunch, served on banana leaves as plates and lots of spicy dishes, some of which were hot.

A lunch which Will took seriously!.

We had arrived late as Steve had got lost in the chaos of getting out of Mysore, so we did not get to play cricket, which Chris was really looking forward to. The rest of us would probably have suffered the heat, but there was no time to test our lack of skill because there was no obvious cricket pitch.

Given our lack of knowledge of the charity it was a good idea to learn more but we did find it hard to stay awake during the talks. 

However important it was to know more about the people who are working so hard on this project I had not learnt the story behind it, so it was hard to feel connected or emotionally involved.
It was great that the huge amount of money raised especially by Michael, Will and Chris was so much appreciated.
There followed lots of photos and smiley faces,


and answering lots of questions about the bikes and hydration packs, and how things worked.



which were good to answer and the boys deserved more, but for me it was all going through the motions.

We had a list of very sensible requests on behaviour which meant any spontaneity was impossible, so it was easier to shut off the emotions and smile and get on with trying to ask the right questions and say the right things, because this meant an awful lot to people who were trying hard under a lot of pressure.

The route back was a bumbling affair only broken by the fun of seeing Alex having to skirt around a van that started a u-turn. That would have been fine but I was next in line and its u-turn meant it was coming towards me, the wrong way up a dual carriageway. Luckily my bike training was in Italy so I am used to unusual manoeuvres on the roads. 
The evening was relatively sedate though we had en early supper so we could go to see the famous illuminated palace of Mysore.
Having heard several different opinions on when the 100,000 lights would be turned on this Sunday we went with Alex's advice and got there for lighting up time at 7pm, they had been turned off 10 minutes before.
Oh well back to the hotel in the same tuc-tuc. Driving in Mysore seemed almost sedate compared to the first night in Bengaluru, only a few near misses and we were back in the bar.


The next day ago was different. We had a fairly full run out on the bikes, some 80 kms to visit the Golden Temple, site of the largest Tibetan community outside Tibet. Lots of weaving in traffic and open roads and coconut milk and spicy soup for lunch, with a return journey of weaving in traffic and open roads and chai!

Our visit to the temple involved leaving our big boy sized biker boots at a stall designed for the job, with large laundry baskets for us foreigners. We admired the massive Buddhas and then took silly selfies, but we had to leave this holy place early as we kept laughing. 

At least we got out before being thrown out. Going back to the boots was a Hansel and Gretal type trail of footprints, considerately left by Chris who had liberally doused his boots with talcum powder to reduce the pungent effects of heat and feet.

The return journey was a lot more fun as we got to know the bikes better. One surprise was how good chai is, even on a hot afternoon. The other surprise was seeing a family of three on a moped with the unhelmeted wife breast feeding her baby.

There was a bit of a group debate about seeing the other Odenadi home, where they raise girls they have rescued form human trafficking. Luckily the others were happy enough to go so I manned up and went along.
It was good to get a tuc-tuc with Fritha, who is the only full time employee of Adventure Ashram, that way I could understand more of the people and the projects. The two inspirations of the project and the guys who very much run it were journalists. A couple of decades ago they interviewed prostitutes in Mysore for an article. Apparently one of them told the guys that she was effectively a slave and begged them to do something about it.
They had a serious think and ended up giving up the staid paid job and entering the labyrinth of crime and pain and downright evil.

And so we got to the girls home where the greetings were again full on smiles and lots of bustle but we sat in a semi circle of chairs in front of the house for the introductions. We passed pleasantries while the girls settled themselves on the porch which doubled as a stage.


And there they were, smiling and shuffling like kids do and I was hit by an emotional shock wave. I had to fight back the tears and look away.

So many of these girls, the victims of human trafficking, were 5 or 6 years old.
Kindergarten or primary school age.
To think of the evil that they had seen and suffered.
And they could be playing with dolls, or handpainting or dancing badly.

But we heard the introductions and got led around the house to see the learning rooms and library, the sewing room, the TV room' the accounts and the 24 hour social carer, the main office for Stanley and Parashu and the 24 hour surveillance.
Footage from the four cameras are recorded. The external cameras are for the safety of the girls and the internal in the main office for the safety of the managers. They are questioned by the government and often sued, so they have taken the precaution of recording all meetings.
How awful to face the physical threats of criminal gangs and then legal threats as well.
But it is hard to imagine any government happy to accept that human trafficking is going on in their country and impossible to see any sanctioning efforts to combat it. Maybe, beyond the charities, the churches of the world that talk of good and evil, could help.

We saw the building they want to turn into a bakery management training centre. They see a gap in the market for high end bread, selling it to the growing number of high end hotels in Mysore and they want to train girls and paying students in baking.
After the tour we were offered cake, biscuits and coffee then displays of yoga and tae kwon do.
We listened to Stanley and Parashu speaking about the happy side of their work. They have such happy smiles. They must need a consistent positive outlook to lock out the evil they see and look at the good they do.

An interesting taxi ride back was a scrummage of opinions on charity, mainly the good of Adventure Ashram but it rapidly degenerated into the bigger picture of people and a lack of money and attitudes to charity in general.
There was a highly respected book to help people give up smoking where the author broke down the reasons for smoking and excuses to not give up. There must be room for a book breaking down the defenses to giving.

It is quite hard for me because everyone comes from completely different backgrounds and everyone has different views of what is most important. Despite (or maybe because of) their noble motives and sincere desires, I have never been entirely comfortable with charity people.
There is something about stridency for a cause and making me feel guilty about not doing enough, about letting bad things continue to happen that of course makes me feel uncomfortable, and comfort is a rare commodity for me. But they make a living from it so you can easily justify not giving for them to make a living, but that makes you feel guilty about not helping the underlying cause and that makes it complicated. So for me these people have been best avoided.
But we are here and the cause is noble and worth getting to know about and Fritha explained it well.

I'm not sure what I can do to help as I have a truckload of other priorities, which may be a convenient excuse and may be true. But someone will always be unhappy you don't do enough.

Back at the hotel the evening rounds of beers were interrupted by the need to buy some traditional Indian garb for a final dinner at the end of the trip. Since the shops in Mysore were close to the hotel it seemed logical to suffer the least pain by interrupting our beer drinking while we were there.

Since the Boys' decision making process was not firing on all cylinders and we were not looking forward to the prospect of shopping in India, I took the opportunity to go with two other adventurers, Ian and Marguerite. We popped out and dodged the traffic to the nearby shopping street and found a shop very quickly. 15 minutes later I had my smart gear and, abandoning the other two, got back to the hotel feeling proud of being back within 30 minutes. Of course the boys turned up 5 minutes later having done the dirty deed in 10 minutes!

There are complex dynamics involved in a group of middle aged men getting to know each other. Verbal jostles, insecurities within jokes and jibes and japes. Luckily the others are not nearly as sensitive as I am.
We have all been brought together by Michael Hobbs, who knows us well individually but we did not know each other. I had met Chris and Steve briefly during the summer as Michael was still marketing the adventure, but only Michael had not met Will before Dubai. And they had known each other since school, back in the 70's.
So each evening was a delicate manly dance of getting to know each other, knowing we would probably be friends: We just had to establish our masculine territory and get some respect and figure what we could and couldn't do without getting into too much hassle.

Super was late and we stayed in the dining room late enough that they stopped serving booze. Alex then had to have a nose to nose discussion with the barman to get him to keep the bar open after 11.

We had a long day ahead of us the next day, involving tigers, mad bus drivers and a finish on the Arabian Sea. So, looking forward to this with trepidation, we voluntarily curtailed the evening revelry sometime in the early hours...typical.

A Great Big South Indian Adventure 2

Michael and I flew from Rome. I had three seats to myself and lots of smiles from the stewardesses which made the flight a lot easier and meant I could catch up on some of the sleep missed. Isn't it strange that whenever you go on a big trip and need lots of extra energy, you rarely sleep well the night before.

Michael was stuck with just one seat, but apparently his folded into a bed and his meal came with a selection of wines, so I did not feel too sorry for him.
In Dubai he went on a personal mission to boost the UAE GDP PDQ. Trailing him was like being part of an entourage. I managed to limit myself to whisky, talcum powder, gatorade and a bar of cognac XO flavoured chocolate, for Michael, since getting him a bottle of the stuff was a decimal place above my pay grade.
We met up with Chris and Will over a very expensive set of beers and indeterminate wi-fi. Travelling on to Bangalore was a standard bustle then folded into a small seat deep in cattle class with only The Economist to stave off the impatience between cramped naps.
The group kindly waited while my baggage was third last off the plane, then we mumbled our disheveled way to the hotel car and struggled into town over the next an hour. The traffic looked a little chaotic but Bengaluru is a boom town.
Air-conditioned comfort shielded us from reality.

Our hotel was superb. More and better and friendlier than we expected. Lunch was a buffet of exotic tastes. Evening involved a wander through the streets in search of SIM cards and beer.
It was wonderful and the bars could be anywhere in the western world. Young people out having fun.
La Biere club served very good beer that was probably brewed on the premises and we slaughtered a large plate of mixed everything. Being on the streets meant keeping a constant eye on the missing slabs covering the drains, various items of biological waste and the traffic, the interminable, voluble, indeterminable and unpredictable traffic. Still we made it, no injuries, no near misses and the thrill of a tuc-tuc ride under our belts.

We sensibly chose to take a train ride the next day to Mysore, booking a cab to take our luggage. Luckily that worked well. My photos of the cab and the luggage were meant to be a precautionary measure in case anything went missing along the way. But in trying to disguise them as typical tourist shots they ended up as typical tourist shots of four hotel guys and Chris standing round the back of a cab with probably some suitcases in it, somewhere.

Steve and I decided to get the flavour of the town by walking. The others chose a tuc-tuc adrenalin rush. We were the only white people walking in the town that morning, which caused some bemusement and a lot of amusement. Still we got to dodge the traffic and smell the smells and Steve got to show off his bush hat.


Planning to catch the advertised train at 13:50 we got to the station at 13:30. Calling each other on the cell phones was fairly useless as you could never hear them ring with the din of the town. But we finally got through to Michael who told us to run to Platform 8 as the train was pulling in. Of course we had no idea where platform 8 could be but Steve found a walkway which led us, rushing and perspiring to the desired platform where we failed to spot the other Bullet Boys among the thousands of bustling passengers. A screen showing the Mysore train was leaving from Platform 10 gyrated my nerve endings but again luckily Steve had seen Michael some way down the track in the place he told us to go to, but I hadn't heard in the roar of the crowd. So we met up and carefully guarded the two doors next to the loos in third class. Nice one.

Taking the train in India was a great decision. It should be on every school curriculum. One of life's essential experiences. The people were wonderful and friendly, but I was wary and keeping my essential possessions close. Lots of people in India just want to meet you and talk. It is so different from when I was in Sri Lanka or Pakistan decades ago where everyone was asking for money. It took a while to realise you could have a conversation without being tapped.
The dining facilities moved up and down the train and we took lots of photos and films, but since all the food was handmade, we passed.
We learned from kids who would wait till everyone was on the train then sit in the open doorways, with their legs dangling out. More space and more fresh air that way.Railways cut through the towns revealing the seamy side supporting the new.

So we took it in turns to sit at the open doors and watch the countryside rush past, which was nervy, but superb.
Then the countryside,


revealing an eclectic mix of oddities, seemingly abandoned.



I love this next picture, to me it encapsulates the cauldron that is India. On a chunky old iron and rivet train, with thick paint covering the rusty bits in an open doorway, with the countryside rushing past, sits a teenager absorbed in his smartphone.


Eventually we thankfully got some seats as four hours on the feet for middle aged men is taxing.
Mysore was mayhem. So many people. It is wonderful that India does not feel threatening, just a jolly bustle of multitudes going many different ways. A couple of tuc-tucs took us to the Regaalia Hotel where we met with Alex, Fritha and a few Kingfishers.

Alex runs Nomadic Knights, and organises these fantastic bike tours of India. A rugged Scot with a lust for life and love of bikes he, very capably, gets a group together and tries to get them to have fun as well as doing some serious biking. None of us mentioned, for a full hour, that his company dot com could look a little confusing, especially to our puerile humour, but nomadicknights.com it remains.
Fritha is here as the only employee of Adventure Ashram with the unenviable task of getting us to give more of a hoot about projects dear to her heart.
So we got to know each other and the rest of the group over the evening.... And what a bunch of jollies we were retiring to bed calm, just the mildly nervous side of serene ahead of our first day on the bikes.

If only we had known...