Nashik 2

I've made a most unsettling discovery today. Things in India have become desperate. I'm not sure if I can go on. I've got 11 days left of my trip and only 2 Top Gear specials left to watch, Middle East and Vietnam. I've seen both a hundred times each and yet look forward to revisiting them again. In some small way I empathise with the crappy endeavour, although my hotels and support crew and way thinner than theirs. Once Top Gear is done, I'm going to have to fall back on my last unwatched box set, Babylon 5 Season 2, and I'm not looking forward to that one bit. In fact it could ruin my entire trip. Season 1 was an embarrassing shambles that I reluctantly struggled through the last time I was travelling. Hammy the Hamster could've done a better acting job than the resident B5 cast and the script was presumably put together by special needs children - 80's Sci-Fi doesn't come any worse. It was a mistake to invest in the first place. Flipping wanky Minbari's. 

I spoke to the hotel manager at some length today. I can't say I was really in the mood for pidgeon pleasantries but he'd been very good to me and I knew he only really wanted a selfie in the end, so I dug deep and revived my enthusiasm for cricket and the like. I happened to mention my long trek from Allahabad to Lucknow and he bowed very deeply and proclaimed that I was 'a very great man'. Praise indeed! He then added 'especially at your age' which took the shine off the compliment for me a touch. Cheeky bastard. I think he meant well. 

I'm going to make this the last blog entry for my trip. I think you'll agree that I've explored Indian history, culture, wildlife, and it's hotels and eateries quite fully, and to write any more would be gilding the lilly. Ive enjoyed being on the road again and I've enjoyed India. An early contributor to my online posts suggested that India is an 'unfiltered' experience. I'd endorse that view wholeheartedly. Sometimes you wish they'd just buy a fucking filter and make the place a bit more habitual - but then it wouldn't be India if they did. It is colourful and buzzy and loud and industrious. I hope my next destination, wherever that may be, proves as enriching. Namaste! 

I think this final picture from Goa sums up India for me; bright, multilayered, ancient, and a bit thrown together. 

Nashik 1

Flies. Now I know what you're thinking, this is going to be a ramble about how many flies there are in India. Well there ARE a great many flies in India, I won't deny it, but I'm not going to bang on about that today. In this case, I'm talking about the zips and fastenings that preserve a gentleman's modesty. I have in recent years, developed something of a reputation for leaving the house without having checked everything is in order down below. I have a particular habit for doing food shopping half cocked. I don't know why. Sensing a rogue breeze in Waitrose used to be accompanied by an embarrassed, huddled, fumble of repair and red face. Lately, it's has been more of a mild tut of recognition and flamboyant mid-stride flick of the wrist. I mention this, as my one and only pair of travelling shorts have slowly been falling apart. They have buttons rather than a zip. The French have a saying when a wine glass meets its end 'it is the fate of glass to break' usually accompanied by a Gallic shrug. In much the same way, buttons are fated to fall off unnoticed, never to be seen again. The last of my 4 fly buttons did that yesterday. Now I'm obviously an ambassador representing our great nation in a largely modest India, and I don't wish to cause a diplomatic incident from being over exposed. So notwithstanding my predisposition to generally ignore excessive aeration, I spent last night cannibalising my shorts and sewed a pocket button to fly using the hotel sewing kit. If I may say, I did a rather more robust job than the original garment manufacturers!

I visited the Sula Winery today and enjoyed it a lot. Hmmm. If I go too 'wine geek', I'm going to lose a lot of people. Ok, so I enjoyed it a lot ...and it was a big old place with lots and lots of wine. A tour and six tastings for about £4. I also had lunch on the balcony which was about as far away from my other holiday dining experiences as it is possible to be. 

I don't think the old guard has too much to worry about just yet, but India is clearly capable of producing a very drinkable drop. It will probably do very well against the other young guns on the block and some of its fare seems well made indeed. Nothing too refined or ageable, but well put together. I enjoyed the Tropical Brut very much, but particularly recommend the French oaked 2014 Rasa Shiraz. Punchy fruit, bold spice, and softer tannins than the American oaked cousin in the range. Well that's my view anyway. Not toooo painful was it? 

WARNING - Boring wine fact:

They harvest in the spring like Southern Hemisphere countries, even though they are Northern hemisphere and have autumn in the autumn, ...so you'd therefore think they'd harvest in the autumn, but they don't. They do it like the Aussies, who have got Autumn and Spring arse about face. A poor example to follow if you ask me, but they didn't. It's got something to do with 'the crop just grows like that you irritating know-it-all tourist'. I didn't quite understand the agronomy of it all but decided in the end not to press the point. 

Me being more or less civilised 

Lots of lovely lovely wine

Tailor made

Travelling northwards again 3

Upon arriving in Thane, and after several failed attempts to find a reasonable hotel, I stumbled across a grubby looking place that I'd walked by earlier and turned my nose up at. It was dark by the time I passed the place for the second time and somewhat desperate for a place to lay my head, I trudged in and asked if they had anything going. They did, and I tried to hide my relief while eagerly handing over my Matsercard. It turned out to be a very comfortable and not outrageously priced gem. A rare comfortable bed, staff that were desperate to please, hot water for showering with western loo, plus, four doors up from a place with a restaurant with rooftop bar. I was so pleased with my find, I stayed an extra night having explored all the nice things that Thane had to offer (a Starbucks and the big pond from my previously posted pic). As content as I'd been on my journey so far, I resolved to spend the additional evening sampling the exquisite (and by 'exquisite' I mean 'edible') delights of the elevated alcoporium. The early evening drifted into early night, and having drunk the two available 'light' beers that my chosen house of Bacchus had to offer by 7.30pm, I agreed to a bottle, in fact two bottles, of the 8% strong stuff. Carlsberg, in both its European, and newly enjoyed 'Indian strength' varieties has rarely been so readily glugged. I tottered back to my comfortable residence full of Danish joy, the tingle of a Chicken Bhuna still on my lips, and the promise of an early morning 300 degree ring piece, completely and utterly, lime pickled. 

Tender bowels or not, the following morning, it was time to leave for another trip northwards. 

I won't bang in about trains again but I did buy a 3rd class ticket today, then upgraded myself to a better class once the train had arrived as I could only fit into a 2nd class carriage. Hid under mucho luggage and managed to avoid two separate ticket checks in the process. I officially apologise to Indian Railways for bunking and the world at large for my errant moral compass. So I now find myself in Nashik, 4 hours northwest of Mumbai. Nashik is in Indian wine country, and the place I will be calling home for a bunch of days. Expect poncy wine talk in future posts!

Walked in off the street into my favourite hotel yet. Not only is it cheap, it's also worthy of the name 'hotel'. That it appears to have been cleaned at some point since construction is my clearest indicator, but the staff here are superb and worthy of mention. On discovering my Indian plug adapter was left at my previous hotel, they promptly went out and bought me a new one locally and handed it over gratis within an hour of arrival. It even looks like a hotel. Granted, it is in the middle of a field in possibly the remotest part of India I have found on my travels so far, but you can't have everything. 

Finger bowl or refreshing post-meal palate cleanser? I went for finger bowl, dipped pinkies, and got nothing more than an inconclusive raised eyebrow from the waiter in return.

I didn't fancy squeezing onto that carriage, so found another.  

Travelling northwards again 2

After a couple of days rest and recuperation, I caught my second train up to Mumbai. This time is was 400km and cost the princely sum of £1.50. There is no '3rd class' technically on Indian railways, it's '2nd class' and I won't go into all the details, but there are many different kinds of ticket one can buy for train travel, but 2nd class is basically bottom class, from a multitude of better classes, steerage if you will, and what we would commonly think of as 3rd Class. It is the only ticket you can realistically get on spec. Given that I was travelling to one of the most densely populated places on planet earth, Mumbai, it was also a bit busier - ok, I won't mince words, it was a LOT busier. Indians have no sense of personal body space, and good job too. For 6 hours, people were nuzzling my armpits, sniffing my crotch, and goosing my bottom. It felt more like a fully clothed orgy than a train ride. Top spot seems to be a horizontal lounge affair in the luggage rack, on top of the luggage. Sadly these tiny smudges of prime real estate had long since been claimed. Bad luck for me, I got to sniff and goose a rather large Indian gent who was in even worse sanitary condition than myself. All thoughts of orgies flickered and then died, mere moments after he inserted his armpit into my nose. Still and all, it was nothing more than a few percentage points worse than the daily commute to Blackfriars on Thameslink and I still rate the Indian railway system as the very best cheapest and deadly way to travel.

So I'm in Mumbai, well kind of. I'm actually in a place a shade north of Mumbai proper, Thane. Thane is pronounced 'Tar-ney' as in 'chilli con Tar-ney' and not as I thought 'Thayn' as in 'Hail Macbeth, Thayn of Cawdor'. That caused all sorts of grief at the railways ticket office yesterday. It's a city in its own right but is basically being gobbled up as Mumbai itself oozes outwards, ever growing. It is now essentially a large suburb of the super conurbation. A bit like Widnes, is to Liverpool, or Stockport to Manchester. It serves no real purpose in its own right besides providing a ready pool of labour for its bigger and on the whole more prosperous brother. That's not offensive, surely? Possibly, I know nothing about those places. Alright it's like Winnersh to Reading. Mostly pointless but with a train station. You get the idea. I need the train station here to carry me further north. It has obviously crossed my mind to travel into the heart of Mumbai as I'm here, but the place is absolutely vast, I can see it stretching out, dominating the horizon, and I know what I'll find when I get there; even more madness, even more people and even more noise. Thane has a surplus of all these qualities already, so I'm fine for now. Mumbai is permanently covered in a thick beige miasma, a poisonous airborne soup of fumes and pollution. A candy floss of carcinogens if you will. I honestly don't think it can be terribly good for the 20-ish million Mumbandians who have to live with it. 

Me avoiding the very nexus of all this foul atmosphere means that I'll miss out on a few tourist pics and taking a tour of the famous slums but not much else I reckon. Having seen, having lived, in several slums now, I don't believe I'm missing out on anything new. Besides, they are a tourist attraction now and I don't feel highly motivated to join other westerners, holding their noses, while photographing the less fortunate and generally getting in the way of people while they're fighting for their very survival. I'll stay in Thane and wait for my train. 

A seemingly tranquil Thane. It's not, but there you go. 

The best surreptitious shot of train armpits I could manage. 

The Mumbai miasma. I LOVE the smell of carbon monoxide in the morning....

Travelling northwards again 1

 caught a train yesterday from Goa to Ratnagiri. There is no reason why anyone should've heard of Ratnagiri, it's a locals town, but it happened to be a way-station on my path to Mumbai. I travelled 3rd class for the first time and it cost me 65p for the 200km journey. People make a big fuss over traveling 3rd class on Indian trains and I'm here to tell you that it's no big deal. I can't say it was terribly luxurious, but neither was it all caged chickens and carriage top clinging. It was fine and if you need to get somewhere in India and only have 65p in your pocket, then I'd say 'crack on'. If one is brave enough to sample the abundant drinks and snacks from en-route vendors, then I salute your courage. I had some chai and left it at that. 

Feeling particularly ballsy from my successful economy travel, I threw caution to the wind and had a much safer I thought, chicken tikka lunch in an economy cafe at my destination. Half way through my post lunch beverage, my body told me I'd made a horrific error of judgement and punished me by imprisoning me in the bathroom for several hours on the trot (if you get my meaning). A considerably slimmer and paler me emerged, rueing my gung-ho approach to roadside dining. I then padded lightly on the balls of my feet for a few hundred yards, before booking into the nearest guest house that promised a western loo. I'm afraid my written reading material has been sacrificed page by page for the greater good, and to ensure personal hygiene standards have been maintained. I mourn the loss of my John Grisham, but my review of his upcycled prose can be summed up as 'a touch abrasive, yet satisfyingly absorbing'. 

Interesting fact. Beer, although only found if painstakingly sought outside of tourist areas, comes in two varieties; 'normal' and 'light'. Kingfisher, Tuborg, Bud, Carlsberg and others are available and one is generally offered 'normal'. I've made the mistake to accept the offer more than once, at the cost of many many brain cells. 'Normal' is 8%. There are wines that come up that strong. After a couple of large bottles of super strength lager, one is almost always ready for bed soon after. Always go 'light' at 5% is my advice. When taken alongside volcanic MacDonalds, and cheese puffs that contain nothing resembling cheese but lots that resembles chilli, Indian food and drink should be regarded on the whole as highly flavoursome and almost as highly, lethal.

Indian railways also run a breakdown recovery service, and business is booming. 

Ratnagiri captured in a rare shot with minimal rubbish on show.