Mumbai

In lots of ways, Mumbai is identical to the rest of India. Morbid congestion infests the roads, hawkers harass on the footpaths, the number of people going about their daily lives is too large to comprehend, and the noise never ceases. In other, surprising ways, it is most un-Indian. The architecture has been lifted straight out of olde-England, with lots of big stone, big arches and statues. Red double-decker busses plod about streets with names like Henry Road and past buildings called Victoria Terminus (the busiest train station in Asia, which is really saying something).

Most of the younger women wear western clothes, and some even wear business suits. Men and women hang out (and talk) in restaurants and bars and everyone speaks English, even if they’re in a group made up entirely of locals. And there are comparatively obscene amounts of cash floating around. We saw plenty of people being driven around in expensive cars, and we were forced to pay over forty dollars for a hotel room, an amount that would have kept us bedded for a week in other parts of the country.

Most surprising of all – among the usual handkerchiefs, fake watches and sunglasses that are sold at stalls on the footpath, in Mumbai they sell sex toys, cunningly boxed as ‘massagers’.

Oi! We ‘ome yet, or what?!? Bali

Shirtless, beer-clutching mobs of over-muscled males; shoulderblade Southern Cross tattoos accessorising Australian flag boardshorts; pink, over-fed girls overflowing from spaghetti strap singlets; coagulated accents inflecting around a vocabulary consisting mainly of unspellable sounds - ‘aahhh’, ‘whhhoor’, ‘yahh – hahAAAH’, ‘Tay-LAH!!! Get BACK ovr’ere!’. It’s good to be home.


Oh no, wait. There’s a wedding on (Angie’s brother, Eric and his fiancé, Leah) in Bali, and that’s where we’ve just landed. Culture shock hit us hard; after India and its separation of the sexes, strange-uncle dress code and omnipresent air of devotion, it was a little confronting to find ourselves in Kuta amid a pre-drunken mass of holidaying Australiana; an alien, yet disturbingly familiar, uninhibited microcosm of home rarefied by Bintang and the Balinese sun… ya bastard!

We had two weeks leading up to the wedding booked in a nice hotel (with a hairdryer - a hairdryer!), a swish-ish way to cap off our nineteen months trippinballs. There was a week to wait before checking in, and rather than killing that week in Kuta amongst the shopping packs of braid-headed, flag swathed holiday makers and touchy-feely-grabby-and-ripoffy shopkeepers (plenty of time for that later), we went in search of something a little more serene.

Angie's Varanasi

People unimpressed by my vessel selection on the Ganges

Happy Tears

After buying some jewelery from a woman, we agreed to be taken by her son to his store, where he would show us some of his merchandise. As he led us through the streets, he turned to Angie and said:

‘I was talking to one man, and he said the saw you walking here and crying the other day.’

Angie replied that, yes, that was her, but before she had time to elaborate, he continued, with one of my favourite theories on the effects India can have on tourists.

‘All the time I am in Varanasi I see tourists here and they are crying. I think, maybe, these are happy tears?’

Angie explained that, probably no, they aren’t tears of happiness, and recounted the traumatic details of the particularly infuriating encounter with a travel agent that led to her storming the alleys in tears (a bemusing sight for the locals, which kept them talking for days, apparently.)

* * *

Morning on the ghats

Goat eating a schoolbook

After-school Job

Angie was walking around the streets, being harassed by hawkers, touts and guides, as is usual for any foreigner in Varanasi.

‘Miss, Miss!’ came the familiar call from a pre-adolescent kid.
‘No thankyou’, replied Angie, denying whatever was on offer before it was even proposed (again, usual for the foreigner.)
‘No, no, Miss, I am not a guide, I only wish to talk to you.’
‘Okay, but I don’t want to go to any silk shops or ghats. I only want to walk.’
‘Miss!’ came the melodramatically offended response, ‘I am not a guide! I am a student.’ He then proceeded to make chit-chat, asking all the usual questions about what country Angie was from, which city she was from (‘MCG or SCG?’ is how we sometimes get asked this) what she does in Australia, before getting down to brass tacks:

‘Perhaps you would like to come to my Uncle’s silk shop?’
‘You told me you were not a guide!’ said Angie exclaimed.
‘Oh, Madam!’ he cried indignantly, ‘I told you, I am not a guide! I am a student! In the mornings I go to school, and in the afternoon I work.’
‘And what is your job?’
Innocently, he explained: ‘I round up tourists and take them to the silk shop.’

* * *

Naptime at the Nepali Temple

Cow with a sense of humour

Varanasi Boat Ride

Sleepy time on the river

‘The Quintessential Varanasi Experience’ is how our guidebook talks about a dawn rowboat ride on the Ganges in Varanasi. So, one morning in the still-hot pre-dawn we hauled ourselves out of bed and through the concrete warren of the city towards the river. Halfway there, a boatman spotted us and led us down through unlit tunnels to the water’s edge, where we negotiated a price.


We’d been warned that at the moment, the price would be higher than usual; the monsoon rains swell the river and create strong currents, meaning two or three men are needed to row the boat, rather than the usual solo oarsman. As expected, the boatman made a big deal of how many people were needed to row the boat at this time, but we agreed on a price and boarded the boat. Our ‘boatman’ promptly disappeared back into the dark maze of the city’s alleys, leaving us alone on board with a small boy of around twelve and a man straddling middle and old age. Just how these two were going to power this rather hefty vessel up the river was puzzling.



The solution to the problem of powering such a craft upriver became immediately clear as the young boy reached into a compartment, pumped furiously on a lever inside and a clunky diesel engine grumbled into high-volume life. We were on our way, the vibrations of the engine shaking us from our seats.

‘How nice is this?!’ I yelled at Angie as the orange sphere of the sun began to rise through distant clouds.
‘What?’ she screamed back, leaning into my ear.
‘I said it’s nice!’
‘I told you we should’ve found another boat!’



We chugged upriver, past dramatic riverside buildings, the ghats (steps leading into the water) filled with bathing locals, and boats filled with tourists being rowed by two men with another on the rudder. We vibrated past them at a comparatively breakneck clip, the chug and splutter of the vessel’s mid-mounted tractor engine announcing our presence to all.




The looks we were getting from other tourists out for their Quintessential Varanasi Experience were less than appreciative. Angie felt the grimaces and scowls were because these other tourists felt we were making too much noise. ‘Why would you choose that horrible smoke-and-noise-belching monstrosity for a pleasant morning boat ride?’ their scrunched faces seemed to say. I choose to believe that it was actually jealousy that they were feeling; our superior machine would cover at least twenty percent more water than them, in the process adding to horrid pollution that gives the Ganges it’s distinctive, decidedly unhealthy appearance.

On the left is a man having his morning bath. On the left, stuck in the archway, is a corpse.

Not that the Ganges needs much help in this department; we passed two dead bodies in an hour on the river, one floating freely amongst the garbage and floral offerings, the other wedged in the arch of a semi-submerged temple. Those alive on the shore were more of a spectacle. People bathe, wash clothes and perform ceremonies at the water’s edge, creating a enchanting environment of colour and sound. They also cremate bodies at the ‘burning ghats’ which may explain why the clothes I sent to be washed came back smelling of smoke.

The Bookshop Trick

Me walking

We went for a walk one day to Connaught Place, which is an important site for tourists who wish to look at things (such as a circular park, a bunch of imported chain stores and an unnatural thickness of honking vehicles) and is thus a magnet for touts and scammers. On the way we were accosted by one such fellow, whose game was to act as your highly-paid tour guide, whether you want a highly-paid tour guide or not.

‘Don’t you want to see the India Gate, sir?’
‘Yeah, yeah I do but I’ll find it, thanks.’
‘But the Red Fort? Don’t you want to see the Red Fort, sir?’
‘Uh, I don’t know. Yeah, but I’ve got a book, we’ll find it.’
‘Why not sir? Why do you not want to see the Red Fort?’
‘Uh, I do, but…’
‘Okay I will show you the Red Fort, sir’
‘Nah, that’s okay. I’ll be able to find it’
‘No sir, I will come with you. We go.’

This could have gone on for hours, but Angie stepped in with a few stern words (for both me and the ‘guide’)

‘You’ve just got to be tougher with them. Stand up to them a bit.‘ she told me. ‘No!’ she demonstrated, index finger gesticulating formidably ‘We just want to be alone and explore the city ourselves!’

Predictably, this had no effect whatsoever on our unwanted companion. For a while longer we tried the ‘just ignore him and he’ll go away’ tactic of getting rid of him, but Angie soon grew tired of that and started ordering him again to leave us alone!! (Her exclamation marks). Of course that didn’t work, and he began pointing out things that he thought we’d find interesting. He could tell we’d find them of interest because we were already looking at them by the time he’d worked out what they were. ‘Ah, yes’ he explained form behind. ‘This is Piccadelhi’ after he saw us scoffing at an unamusing row of English phone boxes with ‘Piccadelhi’ written on them outside some awful shop.

It all came undone in a nearby bookshop. ‘Ah, yes’, he intoned again from three steps behind, ‘This is the Jain Book Depot’ as we crossed the road towards the Jain Book Depot. We went inside, thinking we could somehow lose him in a small retail space. Perhaps the lights would confuse him. We looked at books for five minutes, every now and then surreptitiously glancing toward the door to see if he’d gone. Each time, he waved back, smiling.

A much more agreeable character we encountered near Connaught Place

We decided to make a run for it; maybe try another bookshop. As we were on our way out, Angie whispered to me: ‘I’m just going to say something to him as we leave’ I led the way, brushing nonchalantly past our companion and pushing open the door, then froze mid-stride as Angie’s clear voice boomed out from behind me, drowning out all other noise in the busy store.

‘DO. NOT. FOLLOW. US!’ (Her capitals, full stops and bold type).

‘Oh-kay’ he sing-songed nervously as all eyes bounced between his embarrassed face and this small white woman with an abnormally loud voice. Sure enough, it worked, and we never saw him again.

To the Shore! Atlantic City!!

The boardwalk

On the Eastern side of America, when you feel like some time at the beach, you don't go to the coast, you go to the shore. We went to the shore, to Atlantic City. Atlantic City is a beachside mini-Vegas with all the class and sophistication you would expect from a gambling town. The boardwalk is the heart of the city. It runs along the beach and is lined with huge casinos, malls, gaming parlours and an infinite number of souvenir shops selling some really, really nice stuff.

Some of the classier merchandise

Perhaps the most shocking revelation I've had in a while came while we were strolling along the boards. It turns out that the original game of Monopoly was not based on London, but actually based on the Atlantic City boardwalk! Egads! It took me a while to get over that.

Cold water

One mall had beach-themed resting areas set high above the waves

Globe of DEATH!!

We went to a restaurant that gave out free paper hats

Surfer

Philly Loves Rocky

Skip forward to the 1.50 mark to see the important bit

Apparently the Rocky character is based on someone real, and the Rocky tributes refer to both versions

Everyone in Philadelphia loves Rocky. The museum steps that Rocky runs up are probably the most important tourist attraction in the whole city, and this is the city where they signed the Declaration of Independence. At any one time, there is always at least one person skipping up the steps and jumping around at the top.

This is Angie and Stephie doing the famous run, but you'll notice that in the original, Rocky didn't run up the steps holding his best friend's hand.

Chloride. Lame.

There are a few genuine ghost towns littered about the Southwest, by-products of the earlier days of the mining industry. Chloride isn't one of them, but, supposedly, it's where you go to find out about them. Our informant in Chloride (a shopkeeper) pointed us to Cyanide City (located behind his shop), a lame 'reconstruction' of a ghost town, where they have shootouts every Saturday.


Fortunately, we missed the spectacle of fake dueling cowboys and the tourists who come to see them. Unfortunately, the roads to any real ghost towns were deemed impassable for Lafonda, and we saw no ghosts, no towns.