A Tropical Paradise...

Arial View of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

I know this blog entry is about as late as Victoria Beckham's period, and for that I’m truly sorry...

Same excuse as always: mid week, I’ve been grafting like a beast at work ... at the weekends, I have been out and about soaking up as much of India as possible before my time here comes to a close...

Apologies and excuses over, it’s high time I gave you a run down on mine and Sandi's recent trip to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands...

Now, I’ll assume that not all of you know of the A & N islands as I sure as hell didn’t before coming to India!  Here is a brief history...

The A&N Islands are a tropical archipelago that sit at the far eastern extremity of the Bay of Bengal in, coincidentally enough, the Andaman Sea.  The islands are actually closer to Burma, Thailand and Indonesia than India.

Nicobari Tribesmen

Originally tribal territories, the islands have been inhabited for at least 2,500 years and were once home to several different tribes including;

The Great Andamanese
The Jarwa
The Nicobari
The Jangil
The Onge
The Sentinelese

About a thousand years or so ago, a great king of Tamil occupied the Islands to use as a base to launch an attack against the Hindu-Malay Empire of Sriwijaya who were operating out of Sumatra.

Since then, the Danes have had a stint at occupying them but failed due to repeated outbreaks of hard core malaria (pussies), after which they flogged the Islands to everyone’s favourite global pillagers’... the Brits...

We used the islands as a penal colony for a while before the Japs swiped them during WWII.  In the 1940's, they returned to Indian control and have remained part of India since...

There are still tribes living in A&N but in lesser numbers and tending to be on Islands which tourists are not allowed to go to... fair enough.

Havelock docks

Right, on with the story... and you will notice that the pictures are not necessarily related to the text next to which they are inserted in this week's blog... just go with it...

We are due to leave for the airport at 4am Saturday morning to take on a fairly sizable journey:

Leg 1 - Fly from Mumbai to Chennai
Leg 2 - Fly from Chennai to Port Blair (capital of the A&N)
Leg 3 - Get a boat from Port Blair to Havelock Island where we are staying

I’m in the office until late on the Friday evening, trying to get my work in order so that I can enjoy my week off...  Sandi spent much of the day getting our things ready to go so that we could go out for a few drinks in Mumbai when I finished work. 

When I finally finished work and got home about 10pm-ish, my mind was, as it often is at the end of a stressy week, utter cabbage.  My efforts to finish the packing that Sandi had so kindly done 90% of, were 'fair to shit' at best.

It was obvious that I wasn’t going out for drinks as I was unfit for public consumption.  I told Sandi to go out without me and meet her friends. 

Sandi rolls in at about 2-2:30am...leathered.  Nice one.

The alarm clock goes off about an hour and a half later and nob-end over here has to negotiate a less than pleasant Sandi out of the door for the Ricky ride to the airport.

We made the flight, during which Sand mostly slept with her head in my lap, occasionally waking up to say something unpleasant about the child sitting in front of us who was making too much noise.  To be fair, there was a particularly nasty moment when anonymous moisture flew over the back of the child’s chair in front and hit me, Sandi and the guy sitting next to us. 

The parents turn round and apologise ... I smell my arm ... I’m unsure as to what the moisture is ... my arm smells pretty bad, but then I had been on a sweaty Indian flight for a couple of hours so it was possible that the smell was just me.

I thought, at best we are talking about the lid coming off a water bottle and spraying us... at worst we are talking about a nappy change gone wrong and the liquid on my arm, on Sandi's face and in her ear ... is human feculence...

Sandi wakes up after a moment, for her ear is filled with liquid... She looks at me in a confused manner whilst she wipes her face and empties her ear... she says nothing for a moment, as it clear she hasn’t fully processed the situation... but it was only a matter of time... I needed to make a call on how this was going to play out...

1. Option A - tell her the substance came from the seat in front and there is a high probability its piss.  Sandi goes mental at both me (default) and potentially attacks the child and its mother and father (just for giving birth to it) at 30,000 feet.  This was risky as it may have well not been piss and in which case I’m the dick...
2. Option B - tell her it came from the chair in front but is just water.  Sandi could still kick off but would maybe refrain from shoving a Kingfisher Air complimentary Samosa up a one year old's arse...
3. Option C - take one for the team and act like you accidentally spilt water, apologise quickly and put her back to sleep whist she is still drowsy and confused.

Now, I’m not a pussy but I am pragmatic.  No one who has had an hour and a half sleep wants to wake up to the news that their ear is probably full of urine ...This situation clearly called for the path of least resistance so I went for option C, comforted her, wiped her face with a napkin and settled her back down to sleep.

I told her the full situation later on when she had woken up naturally and was in an altogether better frame of mind. 

Anyway, crisis averted, we finish our journey to Port Bair, get to the Jetty, buy our tickets and head for Havelock Island...

The approach to Havelock

BTW, it was fucking overcast...not impressed.  It’s very hot and very humid but without a glimmer of sunlight and I’m preparing for the fact that I may have whisked my darling dearest off to a tropical paradise during shit week...

We get to Havelock and grab a Ricky to head to the beach resort/camp/cottages that we had planned to stay in.  The young Ricky driver, who for the record is an absolute legend, spoke fairly good English and we had some banter all the way to the place.  We get there, leave our bags in the Ricky and walk into the camp, led by the Ricky guy ... Sandi whispers to me 'bit of a shithole?!’... I whisper back 'damn straight, shall we fuck it off?' ...'hell yes'  ... we whisper-shout to the driver just before he gets to the reception.  He turns round and immediately signals back ... he knows the score and scampers back to us and we haul arse out of there.

So, what next?  We tell the lad what kind of place we want and our budget and ask him to take us to a few places.  He takes us to literally five or six different places, speaks with the owners, arranges a viewing of the cabins/rooms and even comes with us to view each of them.  Now you have to bear in mind that we were paying him 50 Rupees (70-80p) for the hotel transfer and he had spent the best part of an hour going round the whole island with us.  Top bloke!

Our cottage

We eventually settle on a place called, would you believe it, Holiday Inn.  Now this is not part of the global chain and is, quite frankly, about as far from a Holiday Inn hotel as humanly possible. 

The deal was that they had their own private stretch of the beach and some nice little one bedroom cottages with AC and bathroom.  The cottage we wanted however, would not be available until the next day so to secure the room, we had to do the first night in one of the budget bamboo shacks.  No problem though, as we have certainly stayed in worse accommodation and it was just for one night. 
In all fairness, we were secure in our mozzie net and the room proved to be no issue other than the occasional special forces Cockroach swinging from the roof and dropping onto the top of the mozzie net (btw, Andaman cockroaches and mozzies are fucking immense!!).  We even got a visit from a Gecko or two, and who doesn’t like Geckos?

We didn’t do much the first night, other than go for a meal with some guys we met on the boat and watch the cricket world cup final with some local boys on a 12 inch TV.  Despite the small crowd, the atmosphere was still electric and when India won, you could hear little pockets of cheering and the odd firecracker in the distance across the island...

Of course, if I had thought ahead, I might have stayed in Mumbai for the final and tried to get us tickets to the match (Avi got a VIP box ticket to the match and spent the whole day with Bollywood beauties - cock!) ... What the hell, we were in an (albeit muggy) tropical paradise.

Whilst we were watching the cricket, the resident holiday cock surfaced.  There is always one, it doesn’t matter where you stay or what country you go to, there is always a cock.  A man that talks as if he knows it all, he has seen it all, most things he says are fundamentally wrong, or bullshit ... everyone around knows but no one says anything.   It’s better to let them claim to have punched the CEO of Lloyds TSB in the face after the banking crisis.  It’s better to let them claim that they have sued the company you work for and have received a fifty grand back hand payout for a data breach that clearly never happened.... our cock, was Tony.

Tony was a mid fifties, English, grade A pillock.  He lived in Goa, worked as an online 'no win-no fee' lawyer and in his spare time, scuba dived (yes, ashamed to say he is one of us).

We had to endure Tony in small amounts each day for the entire week.  It was amazing though, as we found that him being such a dick united the camp.  We actually all bonded with each other through talking mostly, about how much of a nob Tony was...

Anyway, we hit the sack and I got up early in the morning to go and get some wheels for the week.  I thought I would surprise Sandi and get the bike and fuel sorted before she woke and whisk her off for the day after breakfast. 

The beach outside our cottage

BTW - I got up and it was sunny, sunny, sunny!!! The sea was glowing turquoise and air was fresh... This turned out to be the case for most of the trip, with only a few overcast spells and a couple of tropical downpours as the week went on

I walked all the way into the village and back, found the place that had the best looking bike.  Now when I say best looking, I’m not a mechanic and know nothing about bikes, I was looking for the most aesthetically pleasing set of wheels on the island... Even on a tropical island, image is everything and I couldn’t be seen riding round on a heap of shit!

I found a sexy little Activa (lets be honest, I can’t ride anything else) with blue, purple and yellow sticker on it.  A steal at 250 INR per day, so I paid the deposit and gave them Sandi's details as I do not own a license.  Despite this, they allowed me to fill up and ride off with her, back to the Holiday Inn which was about 30 feet away - Bad Ass...

Sandi woke, we ate a fairly shit breakfast at the Inn and hit the road, bound for Radhanagar Beach on the other side of the island (voted best beach in all of Asia by Time magazine btw).

Well needless to say we didn’t make it to Radhanager beach on the first attempt.  As I saw it, this was down to a combination of three key factors:

1. My navigational skills were ever so slightly below par.  Which is surprising really as there are only two roads on the whole island.  One that goes down the length and one that goes across.  My theory was that if it’s just one road that goes to the beach then keep going down the road and eventually you will see the beach.  Not strictly true as there was a small fork about 2-3k down the road that I dismissed in an 'I know where I’m going' kind of way...
2. The roads were subprime (potholes, gravelly bits etc.).  In places, I would argue, you could not even describe them as roads
3. The bike was shit.

lost... on a shit bike

Ok, so I fucked up... the bike was an absolute nail.  After a fairly dangerous half an hour or so on the road with the beast, my amateur assessment of the issues are as follows:

1. Brake - doesn’t work
2. Steering - no problem as long as you are turning right
3. Back wheel - makes a sound I would associate with a cat with a megaphone being raped

After a while, navigating around the vast crevices that seemed to emerge every 30 seconds became almost impossible.  Our steering was as close to the right as Margaret Thatcher... we slowed to about half a mile an hour and continued on, leaning left in order to maintain a straight line.... after a while, the road disappeared and we were riding down a dirt track... I was convinced that at the end of the track we would find the beach... we were fucking miles away it turns out.

When we arrived in a farmer’s field, we realised it was a lost cause.  After being chastised for renting such a shit bike, I turned us around and we made our way, very slowly, back to base...

Sexy Bitches - Sandi and The Pleasure

We got back to base and realised that the beach camp we were staying at rented brand new scooters for the same price.  I had actually walked past them on my way to get a scooter in the morning... twat.

So we rented a new scooter 'the pleasure'.  The next task was to get the fuel from our old bike before we took it back.  I had a word with the guys from reception and they grabbed some hose, newspaper and a bottle...

Anything you can do....

Sandi had not witnessed siphoning of petrol before, which surprised me as she is from Coventry.  I had witnessed it in my youf in the Nock but never actually done it before. The reception guy got it going and did the first few bottles... Sandi was impressed... so it was only a matter of time before Billy Big Bollocks over here decided to step up the plate and give it a bash...

I can do more dangerously

All in all, I did a pretty good job...only I didn’t realise that after blowing into the fuel tank, you are not supposed to suck back before removing your mouth... I took a blast of what I would affectionately describe as warm fumes, which burned like a motherfucker but delivered a surprisingly decent high...

We finished siphoning the fuel and took the piece of shit excuse for a vehicle that I had rented, back to the shop and we were ready for round two....

Radhanagar Beach

This time, we had a decent bike and the navigational learning’s from our previous attempt and things went much better.  We got to the beach and headed to Rohit's cafe for a Samosa. 

A good Samosa to be fair but the reason we loved the place and returned there most days for the rest of the week was not the Samosas.  Nor was it, the vigilante mosquitoes that chewed on our calves as we ate... no, it was actually the incredible level of service that the owner, this littile old chap (that I thought looked like Ghandi with a bit more hair and no glasses) delivered. We walked in and ordered two samosas, he delivered the two samosas and followed it up with initially 2 x free bananas.... after 10 minutes he came back with 2 x free butterscotch sweets.... about another 10 minutes he returned, this time with 2 x free Beedie (wierd cigarette type things...)

I think the entire bill came to about 30p which is a fair price to pay for the samosas.   We dropped him a small tip at the end and he even attempted to give us the money back.  There was no rip off to be had here, this guy genuinely loved running his little skanky cafe and making sure everyone was happy ... there are not enough people in the world like Rohit. We repeated this experience more or less daily for the rest of the week.

Whilst we were in Rohits' we got talking to a couple of guys that we recognised from our camp.  I’m pretty sure the conversation started off about Tony the cock but moved on to the jungle trek they did and they showed us the machete they had bought.  They showed us a photo they had taken that morning of a King Cobra win the forest.  Sold, 100%, it was on ... the macho male thing kicked in and I immediately started fantasising about the machete.  I had to get one, it had to be bigger than his.

 

We left the guys, went to a bar for a couple of beers and then to the beach which was incredible..

The beach was huge, with white sand, gorgeous warm water and big waves.  There were hardly any other people there so we more or less had the place to ourselves...

Sandi and I, being fundamentally child like, spent most of the afternoon in the sea, essentially throwing ourselves and each other into the crashing waves to see if we could stay on our feet... It was easily the most fun I'd had in ages...

In the evening, we went to Island Vinnie’s, a diving camp with an awesome restaurant called the Full Moon Cafe.  The food was probably cost no more than in Mumbai but utterly amazing and sooo fresh...  Vinnie’s became our place to eat almost every night of the trip thereafter... only downside was that they didn’t serve any booze as they had lost their license at the time... no biggie though.

I can’t actually recall in what order the next couple of days went but we did one day of jungle trekking and a day of scuba diving.

Shirley

We took the advice of the guys from Rohit's and decided to take on the jungle trek to Elephant beach which is a private beach you can only get to by going through the jungle.

First, I needed some weaponry so the night before, we went to the village market and I bought myself a real beast ...  I called her Shirley.

Primark Dundee

The next day, we took The Pleasure as far as she could go, to where the dirt track went up into the trees and no vehicle could reach.  We started hiking and eventually came across some swap like terrain that we had to cross... for the record, we were wearing this season's Crocs that Sandi has bought us for the trip.  Yes, that’s right - his and hers matching Crocs (different colours of course, we’re not that sad...) We ambled over the swamp and up to the edge of the thick forest where we started to pick up Elephant tracks.... we followed the tracks through the trees in the general direction of Elephant beach.

The jungle was a real feast for the senses... It was hot, humid and surprisingly loud... there were so many sounds, it was almost impossible to pick them out.  There were definitely snakes out there but I had my machete and fancied my chances of bagging us a King Cobra for dinner...

Gordon Gecko

I would occasionally throw the machete into a tree to show Sandi how manly I was and demonstrate the technique by which I intended to despatch any would-be woodland predators...she wasn’t impressed but I didn’t care, I was Havelock’s very own Mick Dundee...

Bud Fox

Well needless to say, two hours later we had made it all the way to Elephant beach and back without seeing a single deadly animal or even an Elephant!!  I was a little gutted but not to worry, we did see shit loads of Geckos (including Gordon and Bud Fox featured here) and a few other random lizards ... the whole thing was still an amazing experience!

Jonathan and Sandi

Our scuba day was also incredible.  We didn’t think we would be able to dive together on the same boat as the dive centre wanted to me to go with the qualified divers and Sandi with a separate group... We eventually sorted it so that Sandi would join a class of three other beginners who were going out with the instructors to do introductory dives and they let me tag along to dive with them.

T minus 3 seconds...

The dive boats were brilliant - slim wooden Balinese style boats that you roll backwards off into the water... really cool but the downside is that there is no shelter from the sun and I burned pretty badly over the course of the day...

Now Sandi has dived a few times before so was easily the most experienced out of the class.  Having said that, she did her shit herself a bit for the first 20 mins -  whilst at waist height!! 

 

 

 I may have played a small part in that by pissing about whith the jellyfish and talking about the saltwater crocodile attack that happened a year or so ago on the island... 

 As soon as we got under though, all the way down to 12 meters, she didn’t bat an eyelid and loved every minute... the other beginners bottled the second dive and didn’t go in so it was just me and Sand with the instructor Jonathan ...I swear I will convince her to do the course and travel the world diving with me one day...

There was plenty of marine life, although the coral was pretty damaged from bleaching which was a shame... 
 

We saw loads of Groupers, Angelfish etc.. The cool stuff included; Ghost Pipefish, a baby Wrasse, an awesome Lionfish and of course, there is always a few obligatory clownfish. 

My underwater photography skills on the day left a bit to be desired as far as the big stuff but I did manage to bag a few decent shots.

Strangely enough, my favourite of the entire day was actually taken when we were swimming through a shoal of pink jellyfish... unlike the ones that used to fuck up our childhood holidays, these ones don’t sting at all and are so beautiful to watch gliding through the water....

We pretty much spent the rest of our time on Havelock relaxing to the absolute maximum and living what i would call 'island life' ....

To be honest, some of the days it felt like we were shooting an advert for Lilt or Malibu or something... (i know what your thinking - sexy bastard... you're right of course)

We rode The Pleasure all over the island, through sunshine and torrential tropical downpours.  

Down every dirt track we seemd to find incredible deserted beaches and we lay around under the palm trees for hours on end... 

Sunset over Havelock

There was also an abundance of tropical fruit everywhere on the island...We feasted on juicy mangos and bananas and drank the milk of coconuts that had fallen from trees near our very own private beaches....

Put simply, complete and utter paradise!... the best place I have ever been to.

Flob watch - She was getting more Indian by the day

Ruined only by Sandi getting a bit local about things..


So to wrap things up this week, I'll leave you with the second most memorable story from our trip to Andaman and Nicobar... (there were one or two other events of note but you will have to wait a little for those..)

I’m not sure which night it was but I recall that I was sunburned from the daytime. In Sandi's eyes the burn was pretty bad, in my eyes it was just an off-tan colour and was more like brown than red.  In hindsight, I may have been a little burnt as my subsequent actions had all the hallmarks of sunstroke...

Bronzed Adonis or Jackie Stallone?

I disappeared into the bathroom with Sandi's makeup kit, convinced that I could use her Mac foundation to blend my 'off-tan' colour into a full blown bronzed Adonis look... I'll let you guys be the judges of the end result.  Sandi was not feeling the new look and so I removed the slap and we decided to stay in and chill and just go and grab some quick food later in the evening...

It was about 10pm-ish when we finally decided to grab The Pleasure and head out to pick up food.  On the way out of the lane onto the island road, we bumped into a few of our friends from the camp who were with Tony the Cock and his son, also called Tony and about our age...  This was actually the last time that we would refer to Tony (snr) as a cock, for something was about to happen that etched Tony into the holiday history books forever, as something entirely different....

We are standing chatting with them all for a few minutes when suddenly, a young local boy, about maybe 6 years old, comes running out of one of the workers huts, stark bollock naked other than a silver coloured necklace around his waist... He runs straight up to Tony, grabs his hand and starts shouting 'Mr. Tony, Mr. Tony!!'... Tony goes as white as a sheet and tries to walk away but the kid is dancing around him, hanging onto him and gleefully shouting his name over and over...

We all look at the boy, we look at Tony, we look at each other.... what the fuck..?  How could this boy know Tony’s name?  Why was he naked?  What the hell was the S&M chain around his waist? ..

It was obvious we were all thinking the same thing... utter nonce.

Now the next thing that happened, given the gravitas of the situation, shows the all round maturity of the group, myself and Sandi included... we all (possibly with the exception of his son who was clearly, and understandably embarassed at the suggestion that his dad was a kiddie fiddler) started pissing ourselves and pointing!



Tony starts getting angry as it’s fairly obvious that everyone thinks he’s a sex tourist... he picks up the pace and scarpers off sheepishly... I don’t think we actually saw Tony again on the trip but from that point forward, he was universally referred to as Tony the Tourist.

So I was out in Delhi over the weekend doing some sightseeing with Dan Casey.  We were astounded to see a child out for the day with his family wearing an anti-paedo T-shirt.  It seems that Tony’s reputation precedes him (or they knew Casey was in town for the weekend) ... either way, absolute gold...

I'll try and do another blog entry later this week to fill you in on all the other tales from our Bank Holiday trip to Delhi and Agra...

Until then, remember, NO MEANS NO!!!

Speak soon,

Gray

The 4 C's: Colours, Cows, Cops and Coconuts

Hello, good evening and welcome to what surely has to be the most action packed blog entry so far ... its actually going to be difficult to put into words all of the things that have happened since we last convened...

As i wrote most of this before going away last week, and to throttle the release of my mindless tales, I'm going to cover everything since last time, excluding the last week, which I'll wrap up with this coming week in the next entry.  if that makes any fucking sense whatsoever then you hopefully catch my drift... which many of the locals have been, for ye shits hath returneth in recent times.....

Worry not though, for this week I bring you everything from mass paint related celebrations, Sandi's pissed off related arrival in the motherland, a long weekend in Goa featuring scooter related mayhem, a coconut related car accident, a smoking related police reprimand and a sacred goan goring for the goreh ... I'm sure as I'm typing, other recollections of randomness with spring into my head so, as always, bear with me if i go off down the occasional side road...

***Holi Holi Holi***

Im calling the RSPCA

What a day! What an unbelievable day ... seriously, I have never before in my life seen so many people covered in paint.  Well, to be accurate, its not really paint but a range of substances ranging from brightly coloured chalk dust to natural colours based on Turmeric and other spices...

Avi ... coconut oil? My arse!!

We kicked off the day by convening at Avi's place.  There was Avi (obviously) Ujayan and myself, armed with a bottle of lube.  Before your minds stray into macabre territory, the lube was specifically coconut oil.  According to Avi, you have to grease up your entire body and hair so that the colour does not stick to your skin and stain you. Which, for the record, is 100%, grade A guff... its been nearly two weeks now and I still have pink toenails and pink hair, really fucking professional for the office...

We trekked to Worli in a cab, sporting our shittest of clothes (I went a bit Shoreditch and modelled my own customised/sawn off white business shirt), armed with supersoakers from the local shop and oily as sin ... In hindsight, we looked a bit like 80s Mafia Dons... that is of course, if said Dons were effectively piss poor, shot people with water pistols and soaked themselves in Malibu each morning...

BTW, I also happened to have my trusty diving camera in my suitcase just in case I did a little impromptu scuba whilst out here... didn’t think it would come in handy for a giant paint and water fight but its was absolutely invaluable and is the sole reason you are able to see the pics of the day ..

Ujayan takes a cheeky eyeful of the red 
off a local youth - unlucky my friend

All the way there, you could see random colour parties going off in almost every street.. Everyone and I mean everyone was covered in colour... I even saw the occasional cow that had just been doused in Technicolor, just swaggering down the road clearly bemused by the situation ... I also clocked a phenomenal guerrilla colouring of a bloke who was just walking down the street, minding his own when some kids stepped out and pimp slapped him in the face with florescent yellow... it was kind of like the yobbish world of London youth happy slapping meets fear and loathing in Las Vegas!!

We arrived at the party about 10am and there was time to kill before it all kicked off so we went looking for water to charge up the supersoakers.  I have to admit, when we couldn't find a tap anywhere, I got a bit Cannock about it and proposed a movement to fill them with piss in the absence of water.  Unfortunately the boys weren’t with me so we continued our search.  We eventually found some kids with water bombs filled with coloured water and after taking a few obligatory bombs to the head, they took us to their source and we filled up.

Moment A - me with the ladies

The actual party space was an outdoor car park and people were starting to arrive and big sacks of colour were being stacked up ... there was also a big frame set up over the whole car park with loads of hosing and sprinkler heads set up... I didn’t really understand that part but it all became clear before long.  The DJ had a soundsystem rigged up playing a blend of what I would probably describe as masala flavoured europop with the odd bit of Justin ‘where’s my self respect?’ Bieber.,..

Moment B - me getting lynched and
lightly tangoed by Harshil 

 

And finally, we were off ... the happy slaps were coming thick and fast and each one bringing with it a new and interesting colour.  Its strangely liberating to walk over to people you don’t know with a hand full of coloured powder and rub it in their faces, man woman or child, it didn’t matter ... actually some of the kids had better supersoakers than us, the ones with backpacks ... little bastards.

At one point a Run DMC style break dancing contest kicked off between one of the ex-pat western girls and a local guy who I'm sure was a ladies hairdresser...

Ladies hairdresser part 1

Ladies hairdresser part 2

Then the water truck arrived....... imagine a petrol lorry but filled with water.  It hooked itself into a huge inlet at the side of the sprinkler frame and all of a sudden water started flying at us from every angle , it was like the vampire club scene from the start of blade... absolute carnage but truly incredible..

The sprinklers fire up

After a while, all of the different colours had mixed with the water and everyone was starting to go a kind red-purple stained colour and bottles of Bhang were popping up left right and centre... I was told that Bhang is a traditional drink, usually yogurt based that is made up at times of celebration and has over the years become the sort of official drink of Holi...  apparently it is supposed to enhance the celebrations so of course we all got stuck in... to be honest I thought it tasted a bit like poor mans Yop but it hit the spot. 

Colours are flowing, and so is the weed
biopot (guy on the left  with the bottle

Now, check out the complete definition of Bhang

Bhang is a traditional preparation from the leaves and flowers (buds) of the female cannabis plant, smoked or consumed as a beverage in the Indian subcontinent.

Honestly, it was hilarious...literally everyone, even the little kids with their water pistols and the police/security down the end of the street, were getting involved... no wonder its one of the worlds biggest and most joyous celebrations, everyone is covered in dulux and stoned off their trumpet ...

Me just before leaving for the airport - not sure
who this bloke is or why i was talking to him
but i found this photo amusing

With out doubt this was one of the best things I have ever been to and anyone that ever gets the chance should do it, what a fucking event!!!

 

So at about 11:45ish, I had to depart the party to go and meet Sandi at the airport...

To bring you up to speed, Sandi missed her flight out of Heathrow, slept overnight in the airport, then couldn’t get on the next flight so stayed the whole day and evening, finally catching the flight exactly 24 hours after the one she missed.  24 hours on the floor of terminal 5 and a 9 hour flight to India, I bet she couldn’t wait to finally arrive and be in my arms once again... yeah right!

Getting to the airport to pick her up was something of a challenge though, as when you are soaked through to the bone and stained red, even Indian cabs wont take you.. fortunately I brought some nice ‘meeting the girlfriend’ clothes in bag so went searching for a place to change.  As most bars etc were closed, there were not many options so eventually I found a petrol station with a hose pipe out back and I covertly scampered  past the security, hid behind a van and got naked.  After a damn good hosing, it was clear that resistance was futile, the shit does not come off and short of tracking down a hardware store and picking up some turps, there were no real options.  I dried off, put the fresh clothes on, dived in a taxi and hauled ass to the airport to meet my darling dearest...

.... when she saw me running towards her with open arms to  welcome her, finally, to India... she went fucking mental !!!  Seriously, she was brewing ... for I looked a bit like an umpa lumpa crossed with the devil off balls of steel, modelling this season's Tommy Hilfiger... Don't worry, she did finally calm down (about 8 hours later to be precise) ...  but it was great to see her and I know, in her own special way, she was pleased to see me..

So into Sandi’s first week in Mumbai, no real carnage of note from my end, other than easing her into this chaotic city with the help of many rickshaws and many bottles of the Old Monk ... She did go off and find her own bizarreness one day which basically consisted of accosting a young shoe shiner boy off the street and convincing him to be her personal guide to Bandra for the day... as you would expect, he was playing the long game, trying to get her to shell out 1200 rupees (about £18) for a ‘new shoe shine box’.. I give you 10 to 1 it was for a crystal meth.. anyway at the end of the day, she dropped him the nominal fee of £1.80 for his services .. he would have arguably made more money if he had just carried on shining shoes for the day but a shrewd deal on the part of Sandi!

Oh I nearly forgot, I drafted Sandi in for a bit of my regular and slightly weird hobby of crow watching.. and here are a couple of gems for you:

***Crow Bistro***

Crow vs. Teachers Scotch part 1
He shoots...

This one would make the old man proud, tucking in to some of the foulest blended scotch ever produced...

Crow vs. Teachers Scotch part 2 -
He scores!!!

  

 ***Goa***

So this brings me to Sandi's first proper weekend in India.  Having been knee deep in Mumbai all week, we decide to take a cheeky flight over the border to Goa for a few days.

We fly on Friday evening and with the flight being about 45 minutes, we land and cover the 1 hour transfer (via the off license to pick up a half litre of the Old Monk) and arrive in Anjuna at the Orchid guest house before sunset.

We drop bags, take a walk down the beach and grab a big bottle of kingfisher from a nice little beach bar.  BTW, beer is seriously cheap in Goa... about 60-70 rupees (less than a quid) for a 650ml bottle in most bars - happy days!!

we ended up at a place at the end of the beach where a band were setting up their kit for a gig.  we settled in and ordered a curry, half a tandoori chicken and another bottle of the king.  The music was great and probably the most bizarre I have ever heard... the band consisted of:

• 1 X drummer - a shady looking east London type that resembled a pre 'online wanking-gate' lesley grantham
• 1 X bass player - a local Indian guy I think
• 1 X tabla player/percussionist, again Indian I think
• 1 X didgeridoo player - a bald Israeli chap who had just finished chonging a spliff with the guy sitting next to us
• 1 X electric sitar player/lead singer - french-Israeli I think as the songs seemed to vary in language as the set went on

Now the music had the aboriginal drone of the didgy, the rhythm of a Jamaican reggae band, with Indian Sitar riffs and a blend of french vocals and Hebrew chanting - fucking ace!! I'm sure one of the songs only had a single word in it, but repeated constantly to the sound of Bob Marley and Ravi Shankar spit roasting Rolf Harris, it worked...

The Orchid and erroneous bovine

On the Saturday, I got up and went to find the local shop and a place to hire transport of some ilk.  I was initially presented with an erroneous bovine, parked right outside the guest house with a kind of 'whassup bitch?!' look on its face.  Unusual maybe, but then again, this is India and bovine is as bovine does....  

I continue a further ten feet and come across another sacred moo, rubbing itself against a post and looking pleased with life.  I stop to take a couple of snaps of the cheerful beast, as you do in these situations. 

Goran, the other sacred moo

T minus 0.5 seconds to impact

After the first couple, she stopped what she was doing and came walking over to say hello.  'sound' I thought to myself, and got the camera ready for a few shots of me stroking the holy beef (which I'm aware could also be a euphemism for masturbation).  

Just then, she picks up pace and charges forward... my appalling reflexes kick in and instead of moving out of the way, I remained still and pressed the button on the camera - twat.  So what I actually ended up with was this photo of her about half a second before I was gored into a fence.  Cheeky fucking cow!

Easy rider ... 

Anyway,  I got over my minor winding, and we finally rented out a Honda Activa who shall be known as Marilyn, or Maz to her friends... a quality little runner, professionally hired with no helmet, deposit or requirement to see a license, which was good as I dont have one.  In fact, having informed the guy that we had no experience with a bike whatsoever, he still didn't seem phased and loaned Maz to us for the nominal fee of 200 rupees (about three quid) per day...

I want one of these

We filled her up and hit the country lanes of Anjuna... absolutely class day and not a single RTA, despite running into some of the more unusual Goan road traffic 

Our stilted retreats

 

We found a couple of beach bars (one called five five and the other was called something to do with Buddha but I cant recall the exact name). They had stilted boudoirs where you could sit out and watch the world go by whilst boys scale the ladders with food and beer - perfect.

where do I start with this one ... ?

To be fair, our lofty perches, despite swaying in a pretty concerning manner, actually turned out to be a phenomenal location to spot an array of Goan strangeness without ever having to move.

un-fucking-necessary

These are just a few of my favourites taken from up there.  Oh, and the title pic from the top of this blog entry was also taken up there...

Mary... she has always dreamt of
being a horse.....go on Mary!
(queue REO Speedwagon...)

So we stayed and watched the sun set from our bamboo acropolis before heading back and changing ready for the night. 

In the evening, we went to the 'Saturday night market' which is supposed to be a pretty famous place in Goa where locals and hippies go and peddle their wares.  To be fair, there were some decent things there but the prices were inflated and the whole thing was a bit touristy if I'm honest.

The highlight of the evening however, presented itself before we even got into the market. Having negotiated my first scooter ride in the dark and found the place, we ditched Maz in a street about ten minutes walk from the market.  We strolled to the market and I fired up a Marlborough Light for the walk, as I assumed it might not be cool to smoke inside the market area.

Suddenly, I hear shouting ... I turn and see a police booth, manned by three or four officers.  They were unimpressed by my antisocial behaviour and proceeded to demand a fine from both of us.  Without waiting to find out how much the fine was, Sandi went to war with them (Good girl!).  it started with 'show me where the signs are saying its illegal to smoke on this street..!' and when the response was 'its the law of Goa and we don't need a sign' she followed up with 'go on then, tell me where, EXACTLY WHERE in your legal code, what section and paragraph it says that smoking on this street'  his response?: 'dont you raise your voice with me, I can make big problem for you'... the others start gathering around and things are hotting up so Sandi, clearly recognising that things are getting out of hand, tries to calm the situation with 'WHAT? WHAT EXACTLY CAN YOU DO?? HUH? GO ON, TELL ME, WHAT BIG PROBLEM IS IT YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE FOR US IF WE DON'T PAY?'... great, just fucking marvelous...  

There's no smoke without fine....

Not sure what was said next but Sandi somehow demanded to see all of the records they had for previous fines so that she could prove that all of those fined were foreign tourists that were being entrapped by the corrupt Goan police so they could make a quick buck.  She was, as always, 100% correct but there really was little point arguing as we didn't have badges, or moustaches.  Whilst Sandi was trawling through the police archives, I was able to note one key point - the fine we had been arguing about for 25 minutes was for 100 rupees (about one pound fifty) each... I raised the point to her but by this time, she was firmly glued to her soapbox and wouldn't step down without some form of moral victory.

So I found myself in between the police and Sandi, trying to negotiate a settlement that would appease everyone.  The deal we eventually shook on was 50% off the total fine.  Unbelievable really but we actually ended up haggling a police fine down to one pound fifty from three quid.  I would have happily paid the three quid just for the official reprimand!!!

Sunday was my final day in Goa as I was due to head back Monday morning to go to the office.  I like that btw - the fact is that I can comfortably leave a beach apartment in Anjuna at 6am, get a one hour cab to Goa airport for a 7.45 flight that gets me to Mumbai at  8.30 and a rickshaw straight to the office and at my desk by 8.50.

What we should have seen - Dudhsagar falls

Sunday's highlight was to be going to see an Dudhsagar waterfall about two and a half hours drive away.  Apparently its immense and you can bath in the waters at the bottom.  We decided to posh it up and hire a car rather than take Maz across the state.  Stanly the owner of the guest house had a friend that would lend us his new Maruti Suzuki Swift for the day for about twenty rats ... not a bad deal so we went for it.  He dropped the car off and we got packed up and headed out.

We first of all went to the petrol station to fill her up and then we were off ... AC on, the car owner's selection of tunes, mostly consisting of 'the very best of Akon' raging through the speakers... Today was going to be a good day....

...BANG!!!!.... whilst belting down the lane, the windscreen has imploded and I have small pieces of glass lodged in several orrifi!

what we actually saw - coconut falls

Sandi skillfully prevents us from crashing and brings the car to a halt.  What the fuck happened??!? there was a round indent in the windscreen right in front of my face that looked like a meteor had hit us... We are shaken but still very much alive and get out of the car.  There is a guy on a moped behind us, not really looking like he gave a shit.  I looked at him and pointed at the windscreen ... he raised an eyebrow and pointed at a coconut on the ground and then at a big ass coconut tree towering above the lane.  Great, just fucking brilliant ... a drive by nutting within one mile of the petrol station, how embarrassing.  I run over and fill Sandi in on the situation, by which time the guy on the moped, and indeed the offending coconut, had disappeared - the cheeky bastard nicked the coconut and fucked off without a word!

We call Stanly who comes and drives the car back for Sandi whilst I have the pleasure of following behind on his Activa.  We end up getting the whole thing straightened out with Stanly's mate for 1000 rupees (about thirteen quid) to cover his insurance claim.  He even said, 'keep the car for the day and drive it around if you like ...  oh yes mate, good call - the window has partially disintegrated and most of the missing glass is not lodged in my face but its still ok to drive... due diligence doesn't really come into the vehicle hire game in India from my experience.

In the end, we settled for a day with Maz, tearing up the streets of Goa on a Kingfisher fuelled tour of the local eateries and bars ...

***Flob watch***

I leave you this week with the glad tidings from the world of oral discharge....

This is truly huge even if i do say so myself...

it has taken eight weeks, hundreds of rickshaws, thousands of camera snaps, and literally millions of gallons of lung butter ... but i have finally bagged the money shot for you.

The scene:

1. its Thursday, I'm on my way home from work
2. I'm in a rickshaw, as usual, stuck in traffic
3. its fucking hot... too hot some would say... for the sweat was pouring from me like an extreme paedophile in an adventure playground

I sit and sweat for a few minutes before I see the first offering of a nearby rickshawian flemite.  now its tricky to preempt a hock usually and once notified to an ongoing hock, you will be pretty lucky to arm the camera by the time either the traffic moves or the hocking temporarily desists... but today, I'm feeling lucky..

I'm not sure what it was but I knew this guy still had more he wanted to get off his chest, but there simply wasn't time to get the camera.  I reached for the blackberry and fired her up ... the Ricky moved forward but got stuck again, there was no way out and I had him cold... I had just a second for the auto focus to set in before he unleashed this absolute beast... without trying to sound like a wannabe Jedi, I didn't even see it, I felt it just a split second before it happened and hit the button.  it wasn't til afterwards that I saw the snap and knew this was a gem.

Next weeks blog will be all about our week in the Andaman Islands and any other random crap that occurs in the mean time....

Laters,

Gray