A couple of things about Thai people...

A couple of brief points I forgot to write last time about Thai people:

• I had a couple of minor slips and bumps witnessed by local people... who laughed at me! Thankfully I'd already read in the Traveller's Bible, sorry I mean Lonely Planet, that this is not in any way mocking or uncharitable behaviour. In Thai society the concept of "saving face" is extremely important; when you embarrass yourself in public like this, making levity out of it, laughing 'with you', is considered the best way to help you save face.

• Thai people consider pale skin more attractive than tanned skin, and they find it very odd that Westerners believe the opposite. For this reason (i.e. forget any moral/religious considerations), they will tend to stay more covered up than we would expect in sunny weather. I was also astounded to see in a local Superdrug-style store that the vast majority of the men's skincare products, including the Nivea and Loreal, supposedly had a 'lightening' or 'whitening' effect...

Elephant kisses and monk chat in Northern Thailand

Many people head from Bangkok straight to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second city and travellers' magnet, directly by plane or overnight sleeper service, but I decided to break the journey with an overnight stop and morning in Sukhothai. The attraction there is the historical park encompassing the ruins of the capital of the Sukhothai kingdom in the 13th and 14th Centuries. There is a large number of temples there, all ruined to a greater or lesser extent, but assorted impressive tall spires remain in tact. Covering quite a wide area (you need to hire a bike and give yourself a couple of days to cover the entire park, but you can do the centre in a couple of hours) and quite tranquil thanks to the space and relative lack of visitors, it's a stop-over I'd recommend if you have time. 

 Sukhothai

Everybody, but everybody, who's been to Thailand told me that Chiang Mai is amazing. I figure there are three reasons for this:

• the assortment of temples (which are beautiful, but in truth there's nothing much to add to my comments from Bangkok); 
• the amazing range of things to do outside the city - in particular the area seems to be one of the best backpacker playgrounds on the planet, with almost every outdoorsy activity you could possibly think of available (e.g. whitewater rafting, skylining, trekking, rock climbing etc etc);
• the shopping - all sorts of high-quality artisan shops and a remarkable weekend night market.

At the risk of being slightly heretical, I couldn't really work out what there was about the city itself other than the temples and the shopping which was very appealing, but maybe all the hype I'd heard had just lifted my expectations a little too high. Also, counter-intuitively there seemed to be more hassle here, primarily from tuk-tuk drivers, than in Bangkok - perhaps because tourists are a much higher proportion of the population on the streets.


While I'm not the outdoorsy adventurer type to take up all the exciting activities I listed, I did have a lot of fun on several ventures out of town:

• to a hill tribe village, albeit not a terribly 'untouched' or 'authentic' one, where I bought some nice hand-crafted knick-knacks, got a photo taken with 'locals' in traditional dress (inverted commas because I'm unsure of the authenticity!), and admired some spectacular rain-forested hill scenery; and then to the famous and rather beautiful Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep temple up in the mountains (after climbing some 306 steps), also offering some impressive views which countered the risk of becoming a little templed-out! 

 

At the hill tribe village - not necessarily 100% authentic, but pretty cool nonetheless

• to Chiang Mai Night Safari - the concept of "night safari" appears quite common in this part of the world. In this case at least this is basically a zoo, but a drive-through one rather than a walk-through one, which (as far as I could tell) means the animals are kept in much less confined and more open/natural conditions. The collection of animals I saw was exceptional... highlights included [deep breath] lions, cheetahs, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, hyenas, antelopes, buffalo, wolves, bears, tigers (including Bengal whites) and pumas!
• to the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary set in national parkland for over 30 elephants (aged from 1 to over 80) who have been rescued from assorted forms of mistreatment. Just in case you were in any doubt: elephants are amazing and utterly adorable! A day trip there offers the opportunity to feed elephants, help to bathe them in the river, get up close and personal with babies, and, er, get kissed by one! The amount they eat is incredible - the size of the basket that each one of them gets through in just one mealtime is enormous, and they put it away at an incredible speed. And other than the youngsters, they eat their bananas unpeeled - yum! It is possible to volunteer at the park for a longer period and get to do much more with them, something I kind of wish I'd had time to do as the day was a real highlight of my trip.

 

Being kissed by an elephant!

The day at the elephant park also included being made well aware of why its existence is necessary. A century ago there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand; now it is no more than 5,000. This is due to habitat loss for wild elephants as rampant deforestation has occurred; and when this practice was finally banned, many working elephants used in logging became redundant and were abandoned with no means of survival. Among the population that survives, there are a number of elephants made to walk the streets of Thai cities (including Bangkok and Chiang Mai) to beg for money from tourists; this is quite incredibly cruel to the elephants because it is so far away from their natural habitat and lifestyle. In particular, the traffic noise and vibrations put tremendous stress on them, since their feet detect every slight tremour - necessary for their self-defence in the wild, but unbearable in the concrete jungle. We saw footage of one street elephant rocking back and forth as a stress response. They are also often not fed enough by their owners.

One of the female elephants at the park is profoundly blind in both eyes. She used to be a working elephant; she was carrying a baby which she miscarried. Grieving for her loss, she started refusing to work; her owners therefore fired slingshots from point-blank range into first one eye then the other to try to cajole her into getting back to work. And having blinded her, they continued to force her to work on the grounds she was still young and otherwise fit. The sanctuary managed to buy her from the owners, as it has had to do with many of its other elephants. 


It is apparently very little known, even in Thailand, how elephants are 'tamed' and 'domesticated' in order to be put to work in the first place. Well, at a young age, while still naturally totally dependent on its mother, the elephant is driven into a tiny pen where it is locked up for at least three days, up to a week if 'necessary'. It then has ropes tied round it, and a load placed on its back for the first time, and is pulled as if being led by a human owner. When of course the elephant refuses, or tries to shake off its load, it is constantly beaten day and night by a large team of villagers, poked with sticks with sharp nails on the end (resulting in horrid wounds), and deprived of food and sleep. At great length, after fighting and roaring defiantly against the brutality and enslavement, its spirit is finally totally broken; it submits to being pulled around without resisting and 'learns' that it has no option but to become submissive to human enslavement. This is considered entirely normal in outlying Thai villages and public concern is minimal. The footage was shocking and heartbreaking to watch.


Also in Chiang Mai I took up the opportunity to have a chat with a Buddhist monk - offered by a number of temples to spread understanding while allowing monks to practise their English. As well as discussing the worrying political situation with him, I learned that he gets up at 4am every day for chanting and only ever gets five hours sleep, but doesn't feel tired (I guess while the typical Westerner spend much more time in bed than this, the clutter in their mind compared to a Buddhist monk means that the quality of sleep is much lower...). If I understood correctly, they have to go knocking door-to-door every day to essentially beg for food, but this is an accepted practice in Thailand that ordinary people feel obliged to respond to. Having been a monk since the age of 10, he expects to need to give up soon to care for his elderly parents (no welfare state in Thailand to do any of it for you), and his only apparent regret about being a monk is that he doesn't have any money to travel the world! 


And to end this post on a thoroughly low tone, is it just me or is the low-slung way Buddhist monks wear their orange robes, leaving bare one shoulder and a fair amount of chest, strangely sexy? Ahem...

Temples, tat and terrorism in Thailand

I've been decidedly fortunate that Northern Europe hasn't featured in my region-hopping of late. En route by plane from Hong Kong to Bangkok, I met two separate travellers who were completely screwed by the aftermath of the Icelandic volcano. One needed to get from Hong Kong home to Germany, but was now flying via Sydney (Sydney!) in the hope that a flight to Europe would be available a little sooner from there; while the second had had her flight from Bangkok to Switzerland that day, 20th April, cancelled and been advised that the earliest flight she could be rebooked onto would be on... 15th May. Her German friend had called the German Embassy and been told matter-of-factly that they could offer no assistance whatsoever.

Anyway, Bangkok seems to be a place with a remarkably poor reputation. The advice I got from fellow tour group members in India was that I'd pretty much just want to pass through it, while when I told the traveller who was stranded in Bangkok that I planned to stay at least three nights but maybe more, she looked at me as if I was a little mad and said, "In Bangkok?" disbelievingly. Even the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand, astoundingly, gives the distinct impression of not really being very fond of it, with various snide comments. But actually, I kind of liked it and I ended up staying four nights; if it hadn't been for the security situation (more on that later) it might have been more.


I figure a lot of the negative reputation stems from the notoriously steamy climate. It's hot and very humid all year round; while I was there at one of the less desirable times of year climactically I believe the seasonal differences are relatively minor. It does make you physically tired for sure after walking around for a while. However, two things you have to say in its defence: (a) they do air conditioning exceptionally well just about everywhere (from branches of 7-Eleven upwards), so you pretty much just have to step inside to get some relief, and (b) just when the humidity was starting to become a really serious problem while I was there, there was a short thunderstorm which freshened things up substantially. And it was a lot more bearable than northern India in April, when it doesn't rain at all.


What I really hadn't realised is that large parts of Bangkok feel like a distinctly modern, Westernised metropolis; in addition to all the air conditioning, you have lots of gleaming towers, shiny shopping malls, and some very 21st Century public transport in the form of the Metro and Skytrain (albeit they're limited in geographical reach) and abundant cheap and relatively trustworthy modern taxis. This supplements the traditional but useful and pleasant boat services up and down the river. Road traffic also seems calm and sensible if heavy. Oh, and fans of 7-Eleven take note - they're absolutely everywhere. :)

However, there are a few basics that the authorities don't ever seem to have thought about. Perversely, despite the apparent safeness of the way people drive, I felt more endangered crossing the roads in Bangkok than anywhere else I've been. Why? Because main roads commonly have five lanes in each direction and - unbelievably - crossing lights for pedestrians are virtually never provided. So you just have to take your life in your hands whenever you guess that the traffic flow is at its most favourable. At major intersections it's not fun at all. I also didn't see a public litter bin anywhere in the city, nor anything like a bench. These are hardly insoluble problems, so maybe by the time anyone reading this plans a visit some of them might have been resolved (assuming there continues to be any functioning government in Thailand that is of course).

The main conventional sightseeing attraction in the city is its Buddhist temples, the best known of which is Wat Phra Kaew, also the site of a major royal palace. I'm happy to say that I've found Buddhist temples probably the most beautiful religious buildings I've seen, as well as the most peaceful and calming. (I will declare a bias there; while I'm an atheist I have practised a little bit of Buddhist meditation as a relaxation aid, and was very happy to have the opportunity to meditate just a little bit in the temples I visited; I'm also pretty sympathetic to Buddhism as a philosophy if not as a faith as such.) The prominent colour, amongst variegated precious stones, is usually gold. I am usually someone who finds gold vulgar in the extreme, and I would sooner die than wear it or allow it to furnish my home - but somehow in the temples that I visited it usually just seems to work and create an overall effect which is remarkably tasteful, even beautiful, as well as striking. Wat Phra Kaew itself, the most sacred site in Thailand, was probably a little overwhelming - there are an extraordinary number of monuments in a really very small space - at the same time as it was breathtaking. I was therefore pleased to also explore the much lesser visited (and much cheaper to get into) Wat Pho with its enormous and rather extraordinary Reclining Buddha, some 46m long and 15m high.

 Wat Phra Kaew

The other real must-see, if you are in the city at the weekend, is Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the biggest markets in the world. It's definitely one of the best markets I've seen anywhere, selling just about everything you can possibly think of (from designer T-shirts and quality home decorations through to fish in plastic bags and er, used trainers). It's popular with tourists but not touristy, and also popular with locals. It was great to just wander round; I could only really stay a couple of hours but I'm certain I would have stayed amused all day if I'd had it to spare.


There is some hassle around the city from people who want to sell you things, but thankfully it doesn't seem to be in the (seemingly slightly reserved) Thai temperament to persist once you've said no once. What has stuck in my head is the call of "Thai massaaaaaaage!" whenever you walked past most of the many massage parlours, which often carried a rather comical (to a native English speaker) lingering high-pitched stress on the second 'a' of "massage" - no doubt because Thai is a tonal language whereas English is not. There are several well known cons tried on tourists too, but provided you're forewarned about them (just read the section in Lonely Planet) they seem easy enough to spot and avoid.

It almost goes without saying that there is plenty of sleaze as well. This is most notably in the form of go-go bars, as I understand it, basically a slightly sanitised access point for escorts and prostitutes, female or male (around the gay scene there were an entertaining number of balding, fat 50-something men parading young, lithe Thai boys). In addition to that on the infamous Khaosan Road amongst other places there are also plentiful stalls selling obviously pirated CDs and DVDs, and fake driving licences, degree certificates and so on (some of the ones on display were laughably poor quality fakes), as well as bars advertising their "very strong" cocktails (the tourist equivalent of a plastic bottle of cider from Asda?). Even amongst all of that though you can still find the odd tasteful chill-out bar, and great street food such as fresh mango with sticky rice and coconut milk which may, without exaggeration, have been the best dessert I've ever had. (Possibly the highlight of a very happy culinary time in Thailand - lots of lovely food, all very cheap too... And thankfully not a hint of a stomach upset either!)

I couldn't spend time sweltering in Bangkok without submitting myself to one of the aforementioned Thai massages. It was, er... a memorable experience. During a one-hour session which cost about £7, a typically small Thai lady yanked and shoved me in deeply unnatural directions, and gouged into areas of skin and muscle I barely knew existed, kneading them like dough. It was really pretty painful at times, and I was in not inconsiderable fear that some vital part of my body was going to be broken, ripped or dislocated. However, at the end of the session, I did feel remarkably fresh and relaxed! But to be honest, I think I'm going to stick to Swedish-style massages once back home! It could have been worse - I didn't have the appetite for the widely available "fish massage", which involves sticking your foot in a fishtank for the fish to literally eat the dead skin off between your toes and on the soles of your feet...


I've mentioned the gay scene which is reasonably extensive and impressive, albeit not quite as large or in-your-face as I'd imagined it could be. It's difficult not to observe the difference between this country whose principal religion, Buddhism, doesn't preach on sexual morals much beyond (if I've learnt correctly) 'treat people with respect', and other Asian countries where much more socially conservative religions hold sway. Bangkok's leading gay club DJ Station, set over three levels, mixes a mostly Western soundtrack with a distinctly Thai (and maybe slightly shy by Western standards) nightly drag show - quite good fun, and I can personally vouch for the fact that there are at least some genuine Thai guppies (gay professionals) who are neither go-go boys nor 'moneyboys'! 


It may not have escaped your attention, dear reader, that there has been some political instability in Bangkok of late. I'd had fairly limited time to research and fix where in the city I was going to stay, and I consequently managed unwittingly to pick the edge of the district, Silom, where the trouble is centred. Furthermore, the vast majority of Bangkok's gay scene is located pretty much just round the corner from Lumphini Park where the 'red shirts' were camped out. However, certainly for the majority of my stay, the atmosphere seemed really pretty normal, and the advice from the FCO (British Foreign & Commonwealth Office) at the time was just to avoid the immediate area around Lumphini Park which I tried to do. Yes, there was the small matter of large numbers of armed soldiers and riot police all around, and the odd barbed wire barricade to navigate round. I also saw a small counter-demonstration, clearly being encouraged by soldiers, of people waving yellow - not the greatest of signs for future stability. However, people were going about their business and trading of every kind (to locals and tourists) appeared to be continuing normally. Normality is a relative concept after all (something that travelling around Asia definitely heightens your awareness of), and there's been regular unrest in Bangkok to a greater or lesser extent for some years now, so it would be more surprising really if people weren't getting on with their lives.

 Red shirt demonstrations at a major traffic intersection, which closed down two major shopping malls

However, a series of bombings occurred during my stay - grenades launched from Lumphini Park, some of which landed substantially further away on Th Silom than I (or I think the FCO judging by its advice at that point) would have anticipated. If I'd been out on the gay scene that night, which I wasn't, I would have been walking through the area where it happened. 

Because I was in fact nowhere near the area at the time, I didn't actually realise till the following afternoon exactly what had happened. The morning after I'd blithely hopped into a taxi and asked to be taken to Sala Daeng, the nearest pronouncable landmark to where I wanted to go next, but (I didn't yet realise) the exact focal point of the bombings - I didn't really understand why my taxi driver who spoke minimal English was getting quite so agitated in response! Oops. Suffice to say where I eventually got turfed out was a little distance away! Train stations in the area were closed in the aftermath as were most of the gay venues in the affected area the following night. (In hindsight I possibly shouldn't have gone looking, but it's harder than you might realise to assess these things when you're caught up in the middle of them... and I did have a good night at one of the few places that was open.) Also the FCO promptly changed its advice to warn against all non-essential travel to Bangkok. I took all of those as pretty good signs I was right to plan to leave the following morning. It did take me several slightly panic-stricken seconds to realise (from the comfort of my hostel lobby) that the start of a thunderstorm that morning wasn't something much worse!

A fellow traveller I met in Chiang Mai who had been in Thailand for seven months predicted that within a year the country will be in civil war. The Bangkok-born-and-bred friend I made said that it was freaking him out and making him wish he lived somewhere else. I've no idea how much credence should be given to either of those comments - let's hope againt hope they're both worrying needlessly - but just maybe from a travelling point of view (for however little that should actually matter in the grand scheme of things) I got to see this intriguing city just in time.

Welcome to communist China. Er...

Hong Kong in a sentence: one huge monument to capitalism.

It is easy to think of this as deeply ironic for a region of China, but in fairness to China it agreed in the run-up to the 1997 handover not to make any attempt to dismantle Hong Kong's capitalist system for at least 50 years, but instead to run a policy of "one country, two systems". And there is no doubt that this is what they are doing. Hey, I even stumbled across a modest but noisy political protest right outside the government offices against alleged police suppression, which the very modest presence of security staff was containing but clearly tolerating.
 
The number of high-rise towers in the city, many albeit far from all of them belonging to financial institutions (as high-rise living is also very common), is pretty staggering. This creates what is surely the most dramatic and stunning cityscape view in the world, as you look across the water from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island itself - I knew roughly what to expect but it was still a bona fide take-your-breath-away moment. Think of Canary Wharf in London but then literally multiply it by 10 or 15 while keeping the same concentration, and you get somewhere close. The weather was misty throughout my stay, apparently very common at this time of year (and not helped by the notoriously poor air quality), but this only detracted marginally from the effect. 

Misty, but truly stunning

 
Unlike London there is very little more traditional/historic architecture to balance this out, largely because pretty much anything in the way of 'progress' over the years has been ruthlessly demolished - an attitude entrenched under British rule and only continued by the Chinese. However the very modest St John's Cathedral and the Legislative Council building are two rare surviving notable examples of 19th or early 20th Century architecture.

Everyone would probably know that uncompromising high-rise is what you get in Hong Kong, but what I think is comparatively little realised is that it also has stunning natural scenery - beautiful turquoise waters with shorelines to match, and a substantial quality of forested hills. The bus ride into the city from the airport, which juxtaposes this natural scenery against the backdrop of various city centre towers, was without a doubt the most attention-grabbing and memorable I've experienced. Conversely, the cityscape view from Kowloon is made even more incredible by the presence of several forested hills in the background.


However, walk around a little further and the overall impression in my eyes is not entirely one of a livable city. While Kowloon is a breeze to navigate, I spent a long time lost on Hong Kong Island. Admittedly there are a few oases of very well tended green space left in the centre (one of which, Hong Kong Park, was apparently designed to look as artificial as possible - fitting in with its surroundings I suppose, although to be fair it's vastly more pleasant than that makes it sound), and of course the aforementioned forested hills further out as well as many square miles of outlying shoreline and sparsely populated areas. The Peak area, around the top of Hong Kong's highest hill, which is reached from the city centre by a remarkably steep funicular railway (so steep that my sense of parallel and perpendicular was pretty much lost as I watched the towers on the way up), has always been the most desirable area of the city to live; given the view over the city, it's not hard to see why. Another lower but still desirable area called the Mid Levels has been provided with the world's longest outdoor escalator (some 800m long) to make it more accessible from the city centre! However I'm not actually entirely clear why the city proper hasn't spilled out further and more generally than this, as I reckon if this was my city even I would be tempted to live a little out-of-town if the opportunity were there, given its apparent beauty compared to the OTT-ness of the centre.

In fairness, there were a couple of surprising elements of public accessibility amongst all the urban sprawl - the famous Bank of China Tower, which has a bizarrely striking design where the four 'sides' of the building all end at different heights (from above it is four triangular prisms moulded into a rectangle, but each of a differing length), has a public viewing gallery on the 43rd Floor which Reception and Security smilingly whisk you through to, offering fantastic views over much of the city. And the HSBC Tower, the most expensive building in the world when it was finished in 1985 and apparently the one which really set the tone for Hong Kong's development since, allows you to wander up unchecked to the third floor to gawp up from the remarkable glass atrium.


The other element of the rampant capitalism on display was the astonishing quantity of high-end shops spread over wide areas and, in particular, shopping malls virtually everywhere. I was reliably told that Hong Kong residents tend to consider shopping a major hobby and don't like to spend time in the city centre without buying something. For a city with a population about the same as London, I was just astounded at how it was all viable - although it's occurred to me since that London has various satellite and suburban 'town centres' which restrict footfall in Central London, whereas HK probably has very little of that, hence pretty much everyone shops in the centre. It was also very obvious that this part of the world has seen nothing resembling a recession, only (as I understand it) continuing runaway economic growth - I didn't spot a single empty shop. Although I only had time to scratch the surface, you have to add to this a considerable quantity of much more traditional street markets too which thankfully seem to preserve an element of traditional Chinese economic culture.


There is clearly a substantial Westerner population within the city's 7 million overall residents, especially evident amongst the suited, booted businessmen I saw after the weekend. It's not hard to see why they are attracted, given the general Western feel of the place, with excellent English signage just about everywhere, English widely spoken, and the general sense of order and organisation (for example, the Metro is strikingly efficient and the airport may be the best I've ever used). Based on the very limited evidence of my short stay, I got the impression that there may be considerable social segregation between the Chinese and Western populations, at least in terms of venues they frequent. Certainly of the two gay venues I went to, the rather nice Kolours (which really felt like a generic European gay venue) was at least 70% Western, whereas the even nicer-looking but desperately over-crowded (albeit on a Saturday night) Zoo was overwhelmingly Chinese.


One by-product of the obviously astronomical real estate prices in the centre of the city is that budget accommodation is a little small and basic. For my last night I ended up in the infamous Chungking Mansions, which takes the concept of 'backpacker central' to a whole new level. This is a single delapidated 18-storey building which contains, at my count, no fewer than 67 separate hostels and guesthouses (honestly). There are only six lifts in the whole building, leading to regular long queues to get up and down - and it's better to queue because the stairs are not especially pleasant to say the least. You generally have to call a mobile phone to get reception service because the owners are typically away running other businesses, rooms are tiny (I think it was the closest I've ever come to feeling I was sleeping in a prison cell) and general cleanliness leaves quite a lot to be desired (and I was in one of the hostels there recommended by Lonely Planet) - but hey it was an experience and quite possibly a travelling rite of passage.

I'd only given myself three nights here before my next flight to Bangkok was booked - in hindsight this wasn't long enough, although especially so because I'd come down with quite a heavy cold (no doubt brought on by the physical rigours and the stress of my Indian tour) which reduced my energy for sightseeing. To explore the markets, temples and, particularly, the beautiful outlying countryside properly, as well as Macau (which sounds well worth a day but which I had no chance of getting to), you could easily spend a week here at your most energetic.

Indian summer

"We have now landed in Delhi. The local time is 3.45am and the temperature outside is 30 degrees celsius." If I hadn't already known what climactic conditions to expect in northern India in April, that announcement from the pilot of my flight in from Amman would have given me a bit of a clue. It's more or less impossible to do a substantial round-the-world trip and get favourable weather everywhere along the way - you just have to accept that and go with your plans anyway. However daytime temperatures consistently up around 42C, with sweltering humidity which diminishes only partially and very slowly in the evenings, have been a bit of a challenge. (October to February, or possibly March at a push, is the more hospitable time of year to go.) As if India wasn't a challenging enough travel destination to start with...

It's difficult to know where to start really writing about India. Even though this was my second fortnight-long visit (the first was early last year, with my partner at the time Matt, to Mumbai, a rural wedding outside Mumbai and then Goa) I'm still not sure I'm in a position to write any very coherent reflections or narrative about this extraordinary country, so this is likely to be more of a random brain-dump. I wrote some reflections on Facebook after my first visit and I won't attempt to cover all of the same ground this time, so if you are interested enough please read the two pieces in conjunction with one another.

The organised group tour I've been on with Intrepid Travel, titled "Classic Rajasthan", taking in Delhi, Agra and an assortment of destinations in the tourist hotspot state of Rajasthan, was definitely a very different way of travelling compared to the independent solo backpacking I'm doing everywhere else. Frankly I didn't realise how much I was valuing the independence and freedom of my travels until I temporarily lost much of it (this trip was always going to involve learning about myself as well as the world); but on the flipside I've experienced a number of memorable things (see below) which I couldn't have hoped to access on my own, generally been looked after and organised by our decidedly efficient local tour guide Lucky, and enjoyed the fellowship, camaraderie and banter of a lovely and diverse bunch of fellow travellers (6 other English, 2 Americans, 2 Australians and 1 New Zealander, ranging in ages from mid-twenties to fifties). From the time with the group I'll particularly remember the musical sing-alongs, strongly worded letters and silent cheers (probably best not to ask!), together with the wind-ups by Lucky - I was the sucker late one dark night getting slightly nervous at the insinuations that my room in the historic Castle Bijaipur was notoriously haunted, while a certain other group member was slowly but definitely persuaded that in India diamonds grow on trees! The other 11 group members included five couples; as the one other single traveller was female, Intrepid could only allocate me a single room throughout, which was a substantial bonus (especially when I was ill) as the trip is supposed to be based on everyone sharing twin or double rooms.

The tour started and ended in Delhi. Alongside the utter traffic chaos, the first thing that strikes you about this sprawling metropolis of a mere 12 million people is the woeful air quality; even in the middle of the night the polluted haze was immediately obvious to the eyes, the nose and the lungs. While as I wrote last year I really took a liking to Mumbai, I'm afraid it's difficult to say the same about Delhi, and I can't really recommend spending more than maybe one day here. I'd been sceptical about the warnings I'd received that Delhi is much more chaotic and stressful than Mumbai, as I doubted that was possible, but regrettably it's true. There are a handful of remarkable sights, topped by the truly beautiful Humayun's Tomb, a large and majestic 16th Century Mughal red-and-white construction set in stunning grounds, with Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, and the India Gate, commemorating the 90,000 Indian soldiers who perished in World War I, not far behind. Immensely claustrophobic though it is, the streets of Old Delhi are also fascinating, fun and full of surprises.

The stunning Humayun's Tomb

Back street in Old Delhi

However, unlike Mumbai, these sights are pretty scattered amongst a mostly undistinguished and fairly illegible, unliveable (to my eyes and senses) and filthy sprawl, and the hassle quotient from hawkers and scammers pushes towards intolerable (to be fair, mixed with some local people who just genuinely seem to want to help and/or say hello - but if you can reliably tell the one from the other, you're doing a lot better than me). It doesn't help that the city centre, Connaught Place, is a building site at present to an extraordinary degree (without anything like cordons or alternative road crossings to help keep you safe), partially in connection with the forthcoming Commonwealth Games and extensions of the (remarkably and incongruously shiny and impressive) city metro. In a few years' time the area could conceivably be impressive and almost pleasant, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Welcome to Delhi, the world's largest building site

Without a doubt the most optimistic slogan I've ever seen anywhere...

After Delhi came Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. This is one attraction which really does live up to the hype, despite the inevitable crowds - it is just incredible, incomparable and a real take-your-breath-away moment. It isn't just the utterly extraordinary building itself but the beautiful, perfect grounds which generate the whole unforgettable experience. It says a lot about the potential power of the human emotions of love and grief that one man was inspired to commission something like it solely for his dead wife. I believe it is regularly voted the best building in the world, and really I would take a lot of persuading that it doesn't fully deserve this accolade; I am pretty sure it was my best sightseeing experience ever. If you ever get a chance to go, you really must.

A large part of what Intrepid Travel seek to offer with their tours is authentic grass-roots local experiences, and I can only give them full credit for fully succeeding. These included: 

• Seeing a working high-end carpet factory in Agra where virtually everything is done, painstakingly and incredibly repetitively, by hand, with beautiful results;
• Staying in a rural fort and then in a converted palace, with traditional Indian music and hospitality.
• Seeing several of the forts and palaces for which Rajasthan is most famous - the best of these was Udaipur City Palace, apparently the setting for the James Bond movie Octopussy (really not my thing I'm afraid so I wouldn't know). The scale, opulence and attention to detail (seen in ways such as the engravings, interior decoraton and sometimes incredible miniature paintings) instituted by the different royal families in the region is certainly impressive, and if this is really your thing you could probably base a whole holiday around touring the many such sites.
• Going on safari in Ranthambore National Park - the chief attraction is tigers which unfortunately we didn't see (only pawprints) despite lengthy waiting around, but we did see deer, lots of monkeys and a couple of crocodiles, all in a beautiful setting.
• Seeing genuine rural Indian life including family homes - fascinating, humbling and possibly a little bit perspective-changing for good. Seeing families living in one room (complete with mini-temple and grain store), collecting water from a communal pump and bringing it home in pots on their heads, sorting through grain, and just chewing the fat and watching the world go by with the strength of family and community ties self-evident, somehow makes the ridiculous 'pressures' of modern Western life (domestic, financial, career etc) seem a little bit less essential and all-consuming.
• Seeing a traditional Indian show of music, dancing and puppetry, with the by-now familiar panache, skill and riot of colour - including what came surprisingly close to a gender-bending and camp element, and the incredible sight of a woman performing tricks as she balanced water pots on her head, starting with one pot but building up to a scarcely believable and breathtaking ten pots.
• Going camel riding in the desert - particularly good fun once you get over the initial moment or two of terror, and not quite as uncomfortable as you might think. I would have preferred that my guide hadn't randomly decided to get the camel jogging for several hundred metres without bothering to consult me first, but I didn't come as close as all that to falling off. I found camels strangely lovable despite the dubious noises they're inclined to make and the quantity of poo they randomly produce.
• Eating home-cooked dinner on the rooftop of a local family home, off big silver plates while sitting only on mats.

A partially unintentional (I suspect) local experience came when we travelled by train in what I think was third class without reserved seating. Firstly my tour guide had to have strong words with a local guy who was unwilling to uncurl himself from sleeping across a row of three seats so that I could sit in one of them; a little later he came back and unceremoniously shifted my rucksack across to the other luggage rack to clear the one above me so he could curl up and sleep there instead! When we got off the train, the stop was so short that several of our group hadn't disembarked when the train started moving again; everyone just about scrambled off but our tour guide was visibly annoyed. It took me a few moments to clock that he was annoyed not with the train driver for pulling away so quickly, but with members of the group for not grasping the seriousness of his warning that we really needed to be ready to all get off the moment the train stopped!

I can't really tell you anything about the city of Jaipur, because our time there coincided with a very unpleasant burst of 'Delhi belly'; I was out of action for around 48 hours, including 24 where I couldn't hold in any fluids - the ensuing dehydration was not fun in the ferocious heat. A doctor came to see me and two similarly affected other members of the group, and the treatment comprised of a cocktail of pills and an injection in the bum - nice. But maybe the total detox did me some good somehow.

As well as the ferocious heat and humidity limiting how much sightseeing you can do in a day without contracting heatstroke, a couple of our destinations, Udaipur (supposedly Rajasthan's most romantic city) and Pushkar (a major pilgrimage site due to its Brahma temple, one of only a few in the world, although really nothing to write home about from a tourist point of view) were not looking their best because their famous lakes have mostly dried up - the monsoon is due in a couple of months and it was poor last year. A bit of imagination does wonders - but there may well be a message here for anyone reading this about choosing your time of year carefully for visiting India.

I've mentioned how trying it becomes when you are constantly hassled by local people wanting your money in some way or other. Predictably the best way to get away from this and to encounter (somewhat) reliably genuine warmth from Indian people is to get off the beaten tourist track. We did this at times; walking through the small town of Bundi was especially genuinely pleasant because people only wanted to say a genuine hello and to find out where I was from. While being driven in jeeps or a minibus through the countryside many, many people (often but not always children), clearly not used to seeing white people, waved at us enthusiastically and warmly. (By the way, the genuine warmth and delight in the faces of these many dozens of children totally exposes the insinuations of any moronic bigots that there is anything natural or innate about racism or xenophobia...)

As I've mentioned before, constant financially motivated hassle in any given place inevitably leaves you less open to anybody offering a genuine welcome - one of my sadder experiences was being greeted on the street by a local guy in Jaipur who simply asked me balefully (with no ulterior motive I could discern) why European travellers were so closed off against approaches on the street by local people. I did my best to explain tactfully and I think he sort of got it, reluctantly. Also I can only assume that Only Fools and Horses is popular on Indian TV, because my answer of London to the frequent "Where are you from?" questions frequently elicited a smiling response of "Lovely jubbly!" 

The huge polarisation of Indian society hits you frequently, particularly in cities, where you see the likes of adverts for exciting financial investment opportunities one moment, and shocking destitution and poverty the next. (I wrote about the poverty last time; although it's difficult to know what new there is to say about it, it doesn't stop affecting you deeply.) Even in the countryside we were shown a community which for historical reasons of religion and culture eke out a rudimentary, traveller-style living outside and very separate from the relatively well-to-do village itself. And although it's less visible to foreign tourists, you don't have to read or listen much to be reminded that the effects of the Hindu caste system are still alive and well.

It's fair to say that I'm ready to move on now (there's an obvious but rather true joke that after travelling in India you need a holiday), but as I've hopefully started to document here the experiences and memories count for my two weeks here has been very considerable. I have an overnight flight tonight from Delhi to Hong Kong, which one way and another I expect to be a pretty different proposition...

Southern Jordan

I really didn't want to leave Tel Aviv, but with the driver of Israel being about to completely shut down for two days for the start of Passover, I reluctantly did so on Monday.

After a stopover in the pleasant but unremarkable Jordanian coastal town of Aqaba, where I started to recover from the considerable excesses of Tel Aviv, I headed to Wadi Rum. This is the former stomping ground of the famous Lawrence of Arabia, and the piece of the 'proper' Jordanian desert with sufficient infrastructure (including water) for visits by foreign tourists. I arranged to stay overnight in a remote camp run by local Bedouin people, to which I was taken by Jeep. The drive was breathtaking - the desert is remarkably beautiful, with its cliff faces of varying colours (sandy yellow, through reddish to dark brown... apparently if I'd had the time and budget to be driven around some more, I could have seen white cliffs too), set against the most radiant blue sky you'll ever see. There were also surprisingly plentiful patches of rough green vegetation and some sort of lavender plant too, as the desert had apparently recently had its best rainfall for 13 years. When you're dropped in the middle of nowhere, you're immediately hit by the total stillness - no creatures of any description to be heard. All there was to do was wander around (although not too far, as soft sand is tiring to walk through), finding the best spot to watch the beautiful sunset, and later admire the amazingly bright light, thanks I guess to zero light pollution, provided by the full moon. 

In the desert

Our hosts cooked us a lovely dinner the traditional Bedouin way, which involves digging a hole for an oven out of the sandy ground, and told us stories over the campfire. I was shocked to hear that a camel is capable of deliberately killing a human that has mistreated it, by throwing the human off its back, jumping on them and smothering them with its stomach - five years ago in the desert an old man who was getting too severe with his whip suffered this fate, while another man escaped an attempt that took place when he lay down to sleep five days after he had last mistreated his camel.

Early the next morning it was time to head to Petra, a large preserved ancient city in a stunning desert setting, and Jordan's number one tourist attraction. It was originally Nabatean in the 6th Century BC, and added to later by the Romans. I understand that part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here and it's easy to see why. Most stunning of all is the 1.2km-long path called the siq, literally just an earthquake-induced crack a couple of metres wide down the middle of a sheer cliff face, which brings you into the city. Most of the city's surviving buildings are not free-standing but carved out of other clay-red cliff faces, notably the Roman Treasury at the end of the siq. The city has been badly damaged by two major earthquakes (overall it's nowhere near as well preserved as Jerash), and you have to work out what you want to get out of your visit to avoid just milling around disappointing piles of rubble along with the tourist herds - but after the siq and the Treasury it comes into its own again if you get slightly off the beaten track and start hiking up one of the many hills. The view that most took my breath away, invoked the Indiana Jones spirit and really set my imagination flowing as to what it might have been like in ancient times, was on the way up to the High Place of Sacrifice. It had really helped that I'd got myself out of bed early the next morning and got there while it was still really quiet - by persevering with this trail (with thanks to Lonely Planet for the excellent coverage) I found the bonus of coming upon a small but very well preserved Roman temple without another soul in sight, and in other parts I only had goats and the occasional genuine local farmer for company. In the end I didn't want to leave as I could probably have spent another couple of full days hiking around - another one for the "maybe I can come back sometime" list. I always said I'd rather leave places wanting more than get bored with them, and I'm sticking to that line for the time being. :) 

Petra

I've now flown to India - it may be a while before my next blog post as later today I'm joining a pretty intensive organised group tour for a fortnight around Rajasthan run by Intrepid Travel. But I'm very excited about seeing lots more of India, and quite grateful to have guaranteed company for a fortnight and someone else doing most of the organising for a while. Watch this space.

Tremendous Tel Aviv

There are some cities where you just feel totally comfortable, embraced and almost 'at home' virtually as soon as you first arrive. You can't necessarily put your finger on why, but since life is always shaped by emotional responses it doesn't really matter. My list of these cities has been topped by Stockholm (surprise surprise), Amsterdam and Helsinki, but you can now add a high new entry - Tel Aviv.

Why? Good question. It's distinctly provincial in some respects (with a population of a mere 400,000), expensive, and often quite shabby. At just over 100 years old, the contrast with Jerusalem could barely be any stronger. And there's not a huge amount of active sightseeing to be done here.

However, it also nonetheless has a real buzz and vibe about it, while at the same time feeling very livable and manageable. It was a planned city inspired by the model of the, er, English garden city (so next stop Welwyn or Letchworth... or maybe not) and the care given to public space is very obvious - most roads seem to be tree-lined and public benches are very commonplace (something which is actually pretty important as a tourist and certainly missing in many cities). It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being the "white city" with extensive 1930s Bauhaus architecture (not entirely different to art deco) - albeit that many of these buildings need renovation. The city also has some very plush boulevards and squares, and an impressive collection of cutting-edge modern towers which lend it a dynamic 'going places' air. 

 Rothschild Avenue, Tel Aviv's swankiest street

Oh, and last but not least, the extensive and impressive beaches are only two blocks from the city centre! One of the many beaches is unofficially gay, although also the surfer's beach and the only beach where dogs are allowed - thankfully I only counted one dog turd...

Beachside

Tel Aviv is very obviously the liberal capital of Israel, and from talking to some locals, their pride in this is obvious. The gay scene is extensive. Everywhere else in Israel shuts down completely every Friday night for Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath), but in Tel Aviv it's actually the biggest night of the week - meaning that partygoers from everywhere else in the country descend on Tel Aviv. Combine that with the fact that it was the build-up to the big holiday season of Pesach (Passover), and my Friday gay clubbing experience at superclub TLV was uncomfortably crowded to say the least, although still memorable (and not just because I'd paid 17 pounds - the most ever anywhere I think, ouch - to get in) as there is no doubt that people here know how to party! The night before I'd been to another gay club called Barzilay which was holding a Britney Spears party - an interesting concept to say the least (albeit one I hope won't be repeated everywhere...!)

Increasingly I'm finding that my experiences in any place are heavily shaped by who I meet, and in Tel Aviv I hit the jackpot on two fronts - firstly with my fantastic Couchsurfing hosts Kobi and Ilya. I've thanked them, paid tribute (and expressed my wish to meet again) in person and on Couchsurfing itself, but I'll just mention their fantastic and multicultural Jewish cooking. Oshpilau is a delicious (and very filling) spiced rice from Uzbekistan cooked with chicken and raisins; malawach is fried bread from Yemen; while malabi is a yummy desert made with cornflour and passion fruit.

Secondly, I had a pretty intense holiday romance with a beautiful Brazilian boy called Paulo - it was lovely (and to be honest it severely curtailed the amount of time I spent out and about in Tel Aviv!), albeit that it's unlikely our paths will now cross again. It was an interesting glimpse into what the next phase of my life might have looked like if I spoke any Portugese (which I don't) and felt able to consider moving to South America (which I definitely don't). I guess such occasional glimpses into parallel universes is another feature of going travelling.

On my last night Kobi and Ilya were kind enough to take me to Evita for their world-famous (well, at least amongst Eurovision fans) weekly Eurovision Sunday. It is best known for the incredible dancers who stand at the front and perform move-perfect dances to all the modern classics of Eurovision - while I'd heard plenty about it, they truly have to be seen to be believed! There was a great atmosphere and the largish venue (considerably larger than downstairs at Retro in London) was full to bursting for some time. For those who don't know, the original concept of the Eurovision Song Contest in the mid-1950s was to promote international peace and understanding through the medium of song, and I couldn't help but think to myself when this British boy was dancing like a loon with his Israeli hosts to Armenia's "Qele Qele", that Eurovision's creator Marcel Bezençon would probably have been proud. :) Oh, and for those sad enough to care, the two UK songs played during the night were "One Step Closer" and "I'm Never Giving Up"... and the half dozen or so Swedish songs included two by Alcazar, yay!

This is one of those cities that keeps very different hours for party-going to London. The monthly Eurovision theme night in London, Douze Points, finishes at 11pm, but the Sunday night at Evita (i.e. during the working week) doesn't start until 10.30pm and didn't finish until around 4am... I understand that people don't usually bother going out before about midnight.

On the cultural front I did go to the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, which was sort of interesting in showing the many achievements and travails of the Jewish people worldwide over the centuries, but hardly a must-see to be honest. More memorable was a post-Evita walk home with Ilya which featured walking along the beach under an almost full moon, with crashing waves and the old port of Jaffa illuminated in the distance. Ilya persuaded me it was a good idea to have a quick paddle in the sea at 4.30am - definitely one for the "things I don't usually do at home" file!

 A couple of things I won't miss about Israel are:

• the airport-style security checks to enter shopping malls and bus stations (however necessary they obviously are); at Jerusalem bus station I was asked if I was carrying a knife, when I think what they must have been looking at on their X-ray screen was my nail clippers... 
• the currency - garish banknotes, confusing coins (the smallest value coin, worth less than 2p, is the shiniest and one of the largest, and they soon pile up in your wallet) and an apparent culture of dislike for 'large' banknotes even though they're what ATMs dispense. I think Tel Aviv was the first place I've ever been flatly refused service, at two separate places in one day, for trying to make a small purchase with a largish banknote.

However, Tel Aviv has been a real highlight and I really, really hope to make it back there sometime, and perhaps see some more of this fascinating country called Israel (and maybe the West Bank also while I'm at it, which I didn't get to in the end) too.