Tulsi Row and other musings

My favourite part of each day is the short walk down Tulsi Row to get home. At the entrance to the dusty lane I nod to the 2 or 3 men sitting on plastic chairs on the pavement by the road. Some of them spend all day there, shaded by the overhanging branches of a tall tree. Just inside the entrance is a white-painted pill box, about 9 feet high, where the oldest of the men sleeps every night on a narrow ledge protruding from one wall. On the inside of this sentry box hang religious icons depicting jolly Ganesha and serene Krishna, and on the floor in a corner is a round earthenware pot of the kind commonly used to cool water for drinking. Walking down the lane the noise from the main road gradually fades and is replaced by the high pitched squeaks of stripy-backed squirrels, the soft hooting of wood pigeons and the animated chirps and calls from beady-eyed Jungle Babblers and Myna birds. On either side of the lane trees overshadow parking spaces and their branches droop down, shedding twigs and spent blossom onto the tarmac. The short side roads giving access to the bungalows allow glimpses of front yards adorned with pot plants. It is at most a minute from the entrance to the block of flats, where several tall trees cluster together and enclose the lane. Nearer the flat some plant gives off a feint but intoxicating perfume during the hours of dusk. At the intersection where the tall trees stand a group of young boys often plays, darting amongst the pillars of the parking space under the flats and hiding behind the cars. As I reach the flats I now expect to see them marching towards me en mass with hands outstretched and mouths working over time on 'Hello!' and 'How are you?!' It makes my day to come home like this, to handshakes, hellos and high fives.

Sometimes this group plays cricket in the society's garden opposite the flats. Dani and I have played badminton on this small patch of lawn a few times, knocking a shuttlecock back and forth without a net. Standing in this green space, surrounded by houses and apartment blocks on all sides, one has a good view of the small, incongruous brick hut that has sprung up on the roof of Tulsi Flats. The family that was living in one of the fourth floor apartments shifted out and built themselves their own little home on the roof terrace. Made of cheap brick and with a zinc roof, the hut boasts a separate toilet and low overheads because as far as I understand it the family are not paying for their electricity or water. Rent is also not a problem. Naturally the rest of the society object to this Do-It-Yourself approach to sharing the building, but the husband's brother is a mafia gang leader who is in prison but able to 'make things happen' from behind bars. This little hut on the roof of our building is not a particularly uncommon solution to a housing problem in India. Indeed much construction here is semi-legal, with land purchases and construction deals awash with black money. Apparently most land in India has a market price and a real price incorporating a huge black mark-up that has to be paid in cash. Obviously this is a real problem for anyone that wants to buy land; somehow they have to account for spending a huge sum of money, perhaps five or even ten times the official price, which they've handed over in cash under the table. As it turns out the whole of our block of flats is an illegal build. This explains why it stands out like a sore thumb amongst the neat rows of 2-story bungalows that surround it. The original developer had all three blocks built without getting permission. This is likely to have been done on the cheap: when the earthquake struck Gujarat in 2001 C-block (ours) collapsed and has since been re-built. The flats were not a welcome addition to the neighbourhood; at least not as far as the bungalow owners were concerned: they continue to refuse to incorporate the flats into their society. As a result the flat occupants and bungalow owners usually celebrate festivals separately, although during Holi this year families from both societies were out to watch the big bonfire being lit and take a turn sprinkling offerings around the pyre.

Into the Mountains - Part V (A week in Nepal)

When Dani and I arrived in Kathmandu in the middle of the night, our taxi dumping us hurriedly in a silent and deserted Durbar Square, we had been on the move for 32 hours. 13 hours had been spent in a bus or jeep. We were truly tired and to our horror when we saw ourselves in the mirror in our hotel room we had the appearance of zombies. We hadn’t washed in almost three days. My face was covered in grime from the road and dark circles hung under my eyes. We really needed a good night’s sleep. But unfortunately the very worst part of the journey was yet to come. After showering we quickly got into bed and were starting to feel comfortable and ready to doze off when I felt something soft fall onto my leg and roll off onto the mattress in the dark. I tentatively put out my hand to see what it was and felt something move under my outstretched fingers.

We jumped up and turned on the light to find that a fat little maggot had fallen onto me from the roof. We stared at it in horror for a few moments and then I went to rouse the hotel owner. The likeliest explanation was that a pigeon or some other bird had died in the roof space and was generating maggots that then fell through the spaces between the boards of the fake ceiling. He moved us to another room but needless to say we didn’t stay at this hotel for more than that one night. When we woke the next day to a sunny morning in Kathmandu we packed and left the hotel, making our way to Paknajol to the north of the tourist hub Thamel. Here we booked into a bright, spacious room in the Kathmandu Garden House and sat in the hotel garden, relieved to find somewhere to stay that was comfortable and apparently maggot-free.

Kathmandu is part tourist circus, part patched together developing-world city, and is everywhere bustling streets and fumy traffic jams. In Thamel, the tourist centre, every other building is a trinket shop selling Buddhist prayer flags, incense, wooden Buddhas, metal Ganeshas, stone hash pipes and other bits and pieces for the throngs of Westerners just back from a trek or preparing to leave for one. Nestling amongst the trinket shops are a wide range of restaurants, from upmarket landmarks through overpriced tourist traps to budget establishments offering cheap but unexciting food. That mainstay of hippie-trail South Asia, the bakery and café, is also strongly represented. These cafes offer freshly baked muffins, chocolate cake, croissants and other goodies to accompany your coffee. After 8.00pm several sell their cakes at half price. We spent our first day in the city happily wandering down Thamel’s main street and side roads, stopping to check restaurant prices, marvelling at the high quality of the fake branded outdoor clothing, disappointing trinket-shop touts and sidestepping young Nepali men who leaned in towards us, whispering ‘wantsomehashmyfriend?’ We found ourselves shaking our heads at half the people we passed in the street: the whispering hash dealers, miniature violin players, cycle rickshaw wallahs. Everyone was keen to catch our eye and we were keen to do no more than window shop. As it was the start of the rainy season the sky was cloudy and the street wet with the night’s downpour. We soon got used to weaving in and out of the traffic; people, cars and rickshaws intermingling in the narrow, pavement-less roads. Most of the cars negotiating Thamel’s constrained streets are small taxis: the only big vehicle I saw threading its way down the lanes was a gleaming white 4x4, emblazoned with a blue UN on the bonnet and doors.

Having investigated a few restaurants we realised that rather a lot were outside our budget. One or two would have demanded the best of our daily spend for main courses alone. The Yak Café was more our kind of place. It was fairly cheap and served Nepali and Tibetan food, and so we ate there on the first evening. The café is a somewhat dingy place, poorly lit and low key, with a blue tinge to the air from cigarette smoke. When we arrived early in the evening several of the small tables were already taken and in high walled booths along one wall sat small groups of Nepalis and a couple of men sat on their own, staring into half-finished beer glasses, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. We took a table in the centre of the room and quickly ordered, choosing Buffalo momos, Chicken sekuwa and vegatbale Thukpa. Momos are steamed, ravioli-like dumplings filled with meat or vegetables, which are often served with a thin and very hot pepper sauce for dipping. When bitten the soft dough casing gives way deliciously to the juicy meat filling inside. We shared a plate of these and an Everest beer before moving on to the sekuwa (literally skewered chicken) and the rich, soupy Thukpa. Thukpa is a Tibetan staple and basically a broth with noodles, no doubt ideal for keeping up your energy in the mountains. After the meal we headed out into Thamel’s darkened streets, full up and perfectly contented.

On our second day in Kathmandu we were up at 7.00am in order to get a good spot in the queue at the Indian Embassy. This whole process of applying for a new six month visa was slow and tedious: along with Westerners of various nationalities and a few Nepalis we stood in the cold for an hour outside the Embassy’s blue gates and then waited for another 2 hours inside the compound. All this was just to get a form faxed to London to check there was no reason why Kathmandu shouldn’t grant us the visa. It felt good to finally escape the compound and its creaking bureaucracy but we knew we had to return in four days.

After an early and unmemorable lunch in a cheap café in one of the shaded alleys near our hotel we set off on a walking tour that would lead us to Durbar Square via a series of temples, interesting architectural features, communal squares and hidden courtyards. We wound our way South, following back-roads that linked squares and intersections in which there were often temples with the distinctive triple roof design common in Nepal. Each temple had brass bells hanging near the entrance to the sanctum, to be rung by devotees after prayer, and stone lingams stained with tikka and ghee set up outside. Many of these temples were grimy and sticky with black soot from the oil lamps fixed to their walls. There was a lot else to be seen in the backstreets, from Ganesha figures carved into house fronts to medieval looking buildings leaning out into the street, seemingly kept from collapse only by the mass of telephone and electricity wires that hang in multiple bunches across and between the buildings. After thirty minutes we found ourselves turning into narrower side-streets that must rarely have seen the sun, the buildings either side of us rising up high above the road. There was just enough room for two people to pass comfortably, but of course motorbikes came down too, the riders beeping their horns to clear a path. On either side of the narrow road were tiny shops, their doorways chest height to me, that were selling jewellery, watches and clocks, stationery, white goods stacked floor to ceiling, and brightly coloured saris and dupattas. There were general stores too, stocking goods from soap to sugar. Nearer to Durbar Square these narrow streets also sheltered tiny eating joints, their small doorways covered with curtains that only partially obscured the view of narrow tables, a low roof and in each case a bar topped with plates of cooked meat, soupy dal, subzis and fried delicacies. In between the shops and almost hidden eating places there were occasionally darkened passageways leading off at right angles. Intrigued, I led us down a few of these, having to stoop to get through the entrance. These passages brought us to hidden courtyards with dank floors, in which perhaps no more than a dog would be sitting yawning in a corner. They also led us to communal spaces from which several houses could be accessed and where a shrine or Buddha statue would stand. In one a few chickens picked at grass sprouting up between the bricks of the floor and as we emerged from the dark passage into the open a sitting group of four women looked up to see what we were doing. This open area was connected to another through an archway supported by wooden pillars. We followed the line of the wall round to the archway and stepped through to the next yard, only to beat a quick retreat at the sight of a women who was bathing, her bare back to us. We smiled at the other women and ducked back into the gloom of the passageway.

We reached the square after about an hour but to our dismay were unable to enter without each paying a 200 rupee fee. Small change of course in sterling, but imagine asking tourists to pay to enter Trafalgar Square! Durbar Square is a UNESCO world heritage site and an endangered one at that. It houses the ex-Royal Family’s old palace and several important temples. We decided we wouldn’t pay the fee out of principle and after a timid and unsuccessful attempt to sneak past the guard boxes we resigned ourselves to not seeing the buildings in the centre. We didn’t feel too bad. We had passed through one corner the morning before in a taxi and seen piles of rotting rubbish dumped at the brick base of several of the otherwise striking and majestic temples.

Fast Food

In Britain we're used to Indian fast food, the takeaway, arriving at our front door in tin foil boxes stacked on top of each other in a plastic bag. In India itself, fast food is a lot more than dishes from a restaurant menu delivered to your door. Indeed India has a deeply entrenched, all-pervasive culture of fast food, at the heart of which is a love for snacks which transcends cultural differences between states, social divisions of class and caste, and gaps between generations. Across the country, in the biggest metro city and the smallest rural town, a huge variety of instant and enticing cooked and uncooked food is served out of tiny shacks, off the back of wooden carts and from brightly painted mobile stalls. During my ride home each day the auto-rickshaw passes a Pani Puri seller whose cart is always, always, surrounded by four or five people standing in a loose group whose jaws will be furiously working on the overfilled Puri they've just gobbled up. As well as these cobbled together street food outlets, there are more formal roadside dhabbas, India's greasy spoon cafés, that serve quick eats and filling cheap dinners.

Whether eaten standing in front of a cart or sat in a plastic chair at a vaguely clean table, the fast food on offer can be deliciously appetizing. From Pao Bhaji, Pani, Bhel and Sev Puri, to Poha and Mumbai's Vada Pav, you are guaranteed spice, the tang of chopped coriander, the heat of green chillies or the crunch of crisp puris. A favourite of mine is Pao Bhaji, which combines a thick tomato sauce swimming in butter and garnished with fresh coriander and broken cashew nuts (the Bhaji) with small buns that are slit in half, toasted and buttered so that their rounded tops glisten with grease (the Pao). You dip the buttery Pao into the Bhaji or spoon the sauce onto the half buns. If you use up your Pao before finishing the Bhaji it is perfectly acceptable to order an extra round, at least in my company. We often get our Pao Bhaji fix from a simple roadside eatery near our flat in Ahmedabad. This place, 'Shivshakti Pao Bhaji Corner', has a lockup space on the end of a row of shops. The lockup is grimy with dirt and grease, but the food is cooked on a cart parked to one side. In front of the lockup is a space for tables and chairs, separated from a busy crossroads, and its traffic and fumes, by nothing more than a single line of parked scooters and motorbikes. Despite the fumes we love eating there.

Another of my favourites is Poha, a dish made from rice and flavoured with mustard seeds, green chillies, salt, curry leaves and sometimes sugar and peanuts. There must be some turmeric involved too because the rice is a rich yellow colour. Poha is commonly eaten for breakfast in Western and Northern India, and sometimes served with an accompanying spicy subzi or sauce. In Gujarat it often comes garnished with finely chopped onion, tomato and coriander, and this may be common in other states too. In Ahmedabad I've had Poha from a cart at the side of the road and worked my way through a plate of the stuff with zeal, before watching the seller prepare another batch from rice soaked in warm water. At first it looks a lot like wet, mushy newspaper, but once it's been added to a pan lined with hot oil it is transformed into a dish ready to be sold.

No discussion of fast food in India is complete without a detailed description of Pani Puri. It is impossible to walk down almost any busy street in an Indian city without seeing a Pani Puri stand with its glass front displaying piles of hollow, crisp puris waiting to be filled and eaten. To make Pani Puri, sprouted moong dal, small chickpeas and a spicy brown sauce are spooned into each of these puffed balls made from wheat flour. The Puri is then dunked into a tureen of green water, the pani, and handed to the eagerly waiting customer. When you put the puri in your mouth and chew, crisp crunch mingles with the firm moong and chickpeas, and is drowned by the sloshing pani that escapes as the puri is shattered. Pani Puri can be delicious, but because the pani may or may not be potable, it can also prove debilitating. Both Dani and I have spent several days in bed as a result of eating it and not only because we had not yet adjusted to the local common bacteria. Even locals can succumb, as a colleague of mine did after indulging his love for the food at the wrong stall in Delhi, and spend days struck by severe sickness. The snack clearly has something of a reputation for having this effect; there are branded Pani Puri stalls that advertise their product as 100% 'bac-free'.

On college campuses in Delhi, instant fast food has been taken to another level. Here you can buy plates of Maggi noodles, the packaged instant noodles beloved by bachelors and those studying for their bachelors that are available in every supermarket and general store. Somehow though there's something special about these particular noodles, something that makes them taste better than when they're made at home over a hob. Perhaps it's the effect of eating them outdoors. Or maybe they taste better because, as with other street food, there's a whole experience around buying and eating them. Part of street food's appeal is the speed and simplicity with which it's made while you wait and watch. And of course you get to eat delicious food without having to do any hard work.

The saddest thing I’ve seen

The saddest thing I've seen I saw in the town of Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan. I was standing in the main street, near the bus station and at the intersection of several small roads with this big one. A friend and I had come out to buy some things from one of the general stores that line this busy street and we were standing just under the awning of one particular store on the corner of one of the small roads. In front of us were shelves of toothpaste, shampoo and soap; at our feet were Hessian bags filled with pulses, rice and dried red chillies. While we stood and waited for one of the shop boys to find what we had asked for, a group of four or five ragged, dishevelled boys and girls, all about six or seven years old, their hair matted and dirty, came wandering past. We had passed them earlier on the side road and they had been scavenging for rubbish: plastic bags, drinks bottles and other refuge. They were probably from a community of rag pickers. They didn't make much noise but were talking to one another in snatches of conversation as small children do, taking things off each other and generally going about what they were doing in a child-like way. When they had already passed the shop in front of which we stood, one of the shop boys, younger than the others working there, suddenly jumped into life and ran out onto the street to shout at them to come back. And around the corner they came, looking expectantly into the shadow under the awning to see what they were being given. The boy who had ran out to call the children back had gone into the depths of the store to fish something out and now reappeared with a cardboard box full of used packaging, plastic bags and clear plastic wrap. He held this aloft as he squeezed past us and the piled bags of dried goods on the floor, and stepped just beyond the awning's shadow to upend the box onto the floor. As the bags and wrapping fell and scattered onto the dusty ground the small group of children, whose eyes had lit up at the sight of the box overflowing with rubbish, tumbled forward in a scrambling dash to grab with both hands the unwanted packaging at their feet. As they did so the shop boy broke into a peal of laughter and his delight spread to the rest of the workers in the store, who peered past us with big grins to see the drama of desperation playing out on the ground in front of their shop. The boy, perhaps seven or eight years older than the children scrambling on the ground, looked back at his colleagues and cracked some comment to make them break into brief laughter too. The shop workers were not well off, but the simple fact of their having jobs meant they could find simple amusement in the misery of these children who were clearly in a much worse position. This was a snapshot of mankind's ugliness that left me feeling sick. I hope it's the saddest thing I ever see.

Into the Mountains – Part IV (Reaching Kathmandu)

We left Leh the day after visiting Thiksey and were sorry to leave: the week had been a satisfying mixture of relaxation and adventure. Returning to Delhi after the clean air of Ladakh was also hard. It was hot when we landed and it took us a while to find an auto wallah outside the airport willing to accept a reasonable price, so we were sweating by the time we started off towards Pahaganj. We were looking for somewhere to hole up for a few hours until it was time to catch the train East. To get to Nepal we had to travel across much of Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest and largest states. From Gorakhpur, on the state's Eastern side, we would travel to Sunauli on the Nepali border and then make our way to Kathmandu, even further to the East. There are no railways in Nepal; we would be travelling this last stretch of the journey by road.

Once back in Pahaganj we tried to get a room for just a few hours at Vivek Hotel but had our request to this effect bluntly refused. Instead we climbed a steep flight of stairs to reach 'Sam's Café', a rooftop restaurant of dubious quality, but a refuge nonetheless. This was a perfect spot to while away a few hours and after a cheap and not particularly nice breakfast of fried eggs, toast and greasy fried potatoes and onion, we ordered the occasional cup of chai to justify taking up a table. In hindsight we needn't have bothered doing this: the staff were not the sort to worry about table occupancy and in any case the place wasn't busy. We sat under an awning at a rickety table, cooled by wobbly ceiling fans suspended above us. The added benefit of Sam's Café was that we could walk to the station in ten minutes. Even this made us sweat profusely but we were spared the need to find an auto. Once safely on the train, with the sweat drying on us in the air conditioned compartment, I got talking to our neighbours, one an engineer with the Indian Air Force ("How well are aviation engineers paid in the UK?", he asked) , the other a telecom sales rep ("What is the telecom market like in the UK?").

After an uneventful overnight journey, the train pulled into Gorakhpur Junction at 4.30 in the morning and we bundled our full bags out onto the platform to find that the early morning was hot and heavy in UP. The vestiges of air conditioned sleep left us bit by bit as we struggled over the footbridge to the station exit. The platform smelt unclean and around the incandescent tube lights that lit up the night hoards of sticky insects bumped and wriggled. A long, black, flying earwig landed on the bag I was carrying. I shook it off with a horrified shudder. We walked out to the station entrance where litter clogged a cattle grid in the road and sleepy cycle rickshaw wallahs reclined on the open seats of their vehicles. We were a long way from safe, incense-tinged Ahmedabad and important, touristy Delhi. In front of us lay a very different India: mildewed, damp and reeking. A creeping rot seemed to be slowly taking over the town, with each building leeching paint from the ground up. Alongside the crumbling, potholed roads ran channels of stagnant water; discarded rubbish held in the water's black grip. This was the state where a former school teacher had created a political phenomenon by singularly satisfying the opposed political interests of high and low caste groups, and amassed a personal fortune of 'campaign donations' while Chief Minister.

The sky was beginning to lighten and we made our way down a wet road to the bus station. Here we waited until 6.00, morose and gritty eyed with sleep. At about 5.30 it started to rain. Around us men in vests and dhotis squatted next to produce or a travel bag, either ignoring us or eyeing us up. A tail-less brown cow wondered in amongst the thin crowd and left a steaming cowpat smeared across the grubby floor before being chased out into the puddled yard. Finally we gave up on the municipal bus and went to find a private one, which, once we boarded, waited for another hour while the driver revved the engine and pretended to pull into the road to attract a few last passengers.

It took three hours to reach the cluster of shops known as Sunauli on the Indian side of the Nepali border. But it felt like longer. The bus was cramped and damp and ever more passengers seemed to crowd on to stand in the aisle. At Sunauli we exited onto muddy ground and headed up the single road towards where we assumed the border to be. India and Nepal have an agreement on an open border for their respective citizens, who can cross without obtaining visas, and settle and work without needing any paperwork. There is little to see at the border as a result. Two archways mark the boundaries between a meaningless no man's land that ends two hundred metres either side of the crossing point. Once our passports were stamped in an open fronted and sparse Indian immigration office squeezed into the line of shops, we picked our way across to the Nepali side. Two weeks earlier the Maoists led by 'Prachanda' had won an unexpected election victory in what was now no longer a Hindu Kingdom. Above the road the Nepali archway had been daubed with red lettering that spelt out 'Federal Republic of Nepal, CPN (Maoist)'.

We had our passports stamped and paid the visa fee in dollars, the only currency the laid-back officials would accept. This fee is presumably a not insignificant source of hard currency for the government, given how little Nepal exports. Nepal is a very poor country, in fact one of the poorest. A majority of the population live in rural areas and have largely missed out on development gains while corrupt politicians in Kathmandu have squabbled amongst themselves and squandered what national wealth there is (one key source of national income is hydroelectric power generation, which brings in cash from India where unmet electricity needs are massive). In the last twenty years the country has earned itself a reputation for political instability and violent rural conflict, the latter courtesy of the same Maoists now forming the government. On the day we arrived a bandh (strike) had been called in Belahiya, the Nepali name for the line of buildings and lock-up shops that straddles the border. About 200 metres from the arched border crossing a tire was burning slowly in the centre of the road and further on two buses were blocking traffic. The previous day the police, who now stood around in groups in their riot gear and distinctive blue and grey camouflage uniforms, had shot and killed two locals. The bandh was the local population's angry reaction.

We were exhausted after the night on the train and early morning bus ride, and not in the right frame of mind for added complications. Unfortunately the strike meant that no buses would be leaving for Kathmandu and we were forced to trudge here and there with our bags to find an alternative. Eventually we were guided to an agent who sold us two seats in a big Tata jeep that was leaving for the capital. These turned out to be the last two seats on the very back row of the nine seat vehicle and we squeezed in beside a German man called Johanas. He was from Heidelberg and had been studying at Delhi University's prestigious Delhi School of Economics. Now he was working for an NGO, making films about tribal people in Rajasthan. Like us he was heading to Kathmandu to apply for a new visa. With the highway blocked, our only option was to negotiate back roads, as vehicles trying to force their way through strikes are often stoned. So we took a side road out of Belahiya and were soon on dirt tracks snaking in between sunken fields and cutting through villages of wattle and thatch houses. With every bump and pothole we lurched about in the back of the jeep and occasionally my head was bashed hard against the metal roof. We spent about an hour splashing along muddy roads before gaining the metalled highway well clear of the strike. On several occasions we had come close to being stranded when the long wheel base jeep had failed to make it over the rutted, muddy ramps that covered concrete field drainage pipes running underneath the road.

Once onto the highway we could relax somewhat, although we were cramped and uncomfortable on our small seat in the back. The three people in front of us, a young Nepali man and an elderly Indian and his wife, slept solidly throughout most of the journey and eventually even we managed to doze off for short periods. It was a nine-hour drive to Kathmandu and the route took us from the flat farmland of the Terai plain up into the wooded hills of the interior. After about five hours we were well into the high hills and following the winding course of a wide and fast flowing river. The road we were on cut into the side of a wooded gorge that rose up either side of the muddy waters. As we twisted and turned with the road the view of the distant ridgelines and the river kept me wholly absorbed, enchanted by what I saw. On the opposite side of the valley the odd hut could be seen, surrounded by terraced farmland, and we passed several rope bridges strung across the empty wide space above the churning river. On the roadside were tea stalls and snack shops; little more than wooden shacks, perched on the tarmac's edge. Some stood on stilts out over the steep slope below the road. Their owners lead a constrained existence, the land rising steeply upwards from the road on one side and dropping away sharply on the other. There is nothing for them to do but follow the tarmac up or down.

We didn't pull over on the road but instead stopped in a larger settlement for a late lunch/early dinner of dal baat, the Nepali national dish of rice, dal, subzi and rotis. This cheap meal was not appetizing: the dal flavourless, the rotis dry. Then when we went to get back into the jeep we found two men sat on the middle and back rows. It turned out the driver was greedy and wanted to squeeze these two in with us for the last three hours to Kathmandu. Our German companion frowned but didn't use his Hindi to ask the two men to get out, so I stepped forward and used international sign language for 'get out now'. I was pretty annoyed; it was cramped enough with three people on the back seats. Four was a joke. Thankfully there was no argument and we left the interlopers on the pavement when we finally drove off.

It was dark by the time we at last started to descend into Kathmandu from the surrounding hills. We followed an empty dark road that bent this way and that, affording us glimpses between buildings of the city laid out on the valley floor. It was before midnight but everywhere seemed still and quiet. The city was dark; only the odd light picked out a building in the night. We were stopped at a police roadblock on the outskirts of the city but quickly waved on. To our dismay the jeep didn't take us beyond the outskirts, instead stopping off an empty road that was soon flooded by half a dozen predatory taxis. We had no choice but to take one and paid over the odds for the privilege of a five minute journey to Durbar Square in the city's centre. Johanas knew a hotel off Freak Street, the old central drag of the hippie era, so being new to the city we followed his lead.

Exploring the heart of the Subcontinent - Part II

On the third day in Maharashtra my colleague and I were more adventurous than we had been previously, taking a bus north into Warora and Bhadrawati blocks. We hoped to have enough time to meet with officials from both blocks in one day. Warora is a tribal block but similar to Chandrapur (and to Bhadrawati) in being relatively urban, though urban here means simply a concentration of buildings rather than any real ‘developed’ built space. Some of the roads outside the towns (where the state government pays for maintenance) were in much better condition than those under the town council’s jurisdiction, which says something either about the comparative administrative abilities of local government in India or the comparative levels of budget skimming between state and local authorities. In Warora we met with an administrative officer who had a single desk in a hall-like room in the town council offices that smelt strongly of urine from the toilet next door. Thankfully this meeting lasted only a few minutes before the official took us to meet the Chief Officer of the block. This man’s office, like those of all the block head officers we met, was much fancier than those of his subordinates. For one thing it was carpeted and the walls were painted in bright colours. His desk was also very clean and the name stand placed on top of it was made of metal rather than wood.

Actually the government offices we visited were usually very similar. All contained a variety of different desks and chairs, none of which matched, that would be squeezed in together so that there was almost no spare room to move about in. Only in the most senior officials’ offices were computers visible and on the occasions that we visited none were ever switched on. The same was true of telephones, which were completely absent apart from in the offices of the block chief officers, although of course everyone had mobiles. I saw one printer in the dozen or so offices we visited: it was covered with a towel. The government offices themselves were a mishmash of buildings, often with wooden and concrete huts built as extensions onto larger buildings. Sometimes corridors would exit outside before you entered the room you were looking for. But apart from the obviously difficult (though perhaps only difficult in my eyes and not in theirs) conditions that the officials worked in, to a man (and almost all of them were men) they were polite, welcoming and willing to talk and listen. Some were even downright friendly. We were offered chai or coffee everywhere and asked twice on several occasions.

Having spent most of the day in Warora and Bhadrawati we returned to Chandrapur at around 5.00 and made our way to the district council. Here we met an Education Extension officer who was very helpful and made us wait to meet his boss, the district Chief Education officer for primary education. I had thought this man might be pompous, but although he was dressed in a white shirt and trousers to denote his rank, he was patient and affable. Like his juniors he gave us chai in small china cups. His desk was big and glass topped, and in front of it were three rows of three chairs, the first row of which we sat in. On top of the desk were piled stacks of folders, each with a hard cardboard back and thick string tied across the front. There was no computer in the office, but there was a phone positioned on a stool off to one side of the desk. On the wall to the CEO’s left was a map of Maharashtra and one of the district. As Nandita talked (and I smiled and nodded) staff brought paperwork in for the CEO to sign, their coming and going through the flowery curtain that hung in the doorway behind us noiseless.

On our last day in Chandrapur we discovered that each second Saturday in the month is a government holiday and all offices would be shut. So we decided to travel to Mul and Saoli, two blocks East of Chandrapur city. This proved to be easy to do and we spent a fairly comfortable hour on the bus, passing soaked woods of Eucalyptus and other trees, interspaced with tall clumps of bamboo and lush undergrowth. The road was well paved and straight for much of the way. In both Mul and Saoli we found there was little to do. We spent half an hour speaking to a headmaster in a school in Mul, but it was closing at 11.00 along with all others. I experienced a rather awkward moment here: as we sat in the school’s corridor talking to the headmaster and a couple of teachers, the children in the three classes nearest to us started to sing the national anthem. As the first lines sounded (a little tunelessly) the headmaster stood up while continuing to talk, but, not realizing that she had stood up because of the singing, I remained in my seat. Then Nandita stood up as well, but I still failed to link this with the singing and so remained where I was. After a few seconds more I realized that the teachers sitting slightly behind me were also standing and it quickly dawned on me that everyone was formally standing for the anthem. I should have just sprung up then as well, but by this time the children were well into the song and I assumed that they wouldn’t continue for much long, so I didn’t move, thinking that to leap to my feet as the singing stopped would seem odd. Unfortunately they did continue, for what seemed like an eternity, while I sat in my chair and the others stood to attention round me, no doubt thinking how rude and disrespectful this foreigner was.

After we had left the school we walked around for a bit and Nandita stopped to ask a few passersby about their children’s schooling. Few had much to say to us; the education of their children was clearly not something they thought about much. Whenever we stopped and talked to someone we drew a crowd of fifteen or more people, mainly men, who stood around us listening to the questions Nandita asked. My presence there clearly had something to do with their interest in us. I stood out anyway obviously, but had unintentionally made myself extra conspicuous by wearing a Kurtha (a traditional knee-length shirt). I have more sympathy for Gandhi in his white flannels at Southampton now. I drew stares from just about everyone, wherever we went.

In Saoli we found even less to do than in Mul, because now all the schools were closed. But after being in the town for only a few minutes we were stopped by two men on a motorbike. They turned out to be policemen and asked us to come to their office, a dreary, dank-looking building standing in its own grounds that had apparently only just been built. We were introduced to their boss, a Sub-Inspector of police, who was eager to sit and chat with us, presumably because there was not much else for him or his staff to do. He told us about the Naxalite activity in the block, which included attacks with AK-47s and explosives, allegedly smuggled in from Nepal. He claimed the bandits had support from the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers) and the ISI (the Pakistan intelligence service). He also told us about a tiger that was plaguing a nearby village: it had recently killed two villagers. I asked him if he enjoyed the posting and he said no, because the locals were too concerned with surviving through farming to be interested in cultural events, sports competitions or other outreach events the police elsewhere obviously undertake. His wife and children were also 700km away. We took our leave of the police after 30 minutes or so and from in front of their grim office caught a private bus back to Chandrapur. This subjected me to a video compilation of the dance segments of Shah Rukh Khan movies, set on loop. SRK, as he is known, is one of the biggest of big Bollywood stars and graces shop signs and billboards across North India, from the smallest village to the biggest metropolis. Once back in Chandrapur we had a late lunch and I unintentionally ordered the oddest naan bread imaginable: it was covered in cashews, cherries, apple and silver leaf!

We left Chandrapur for Ahmedabad late that evening, reaching the subdued train station in the dark and quiet of the Indian night. The Navajeevan Express was delayed, leaving us two hours to kill on a windswept but tolerably cool and virtually deserted station platform. As I made progress with Gandhi’s autobiography, small brown-bellied bats buzzed the far platform-edge where some spilt tea made a small puddle and male frogs croaked impatiently in the dark wasteland further off beyond the railway tracks. At last the train arrived and on we jumped before our two minutes were up. Unfortunately we found ourselves stuck in the dirty, reeking Sleeper compartments, with our access to the 3AC carriages blocked by a metal shutter and the inability of the young railway policeman to help us: no-one on the other side of the shutter had a radio as he did. Eventually we dashed out onto a dark platform in the pouring rain when the train made another two-minute stop. By pounding on the glass window of a 3AC carriage door we were able to get someone’s attention and gain entry to the cooled compartments where our berths were. It was 4.00 in the morning by the time we finally found our places and could think about sleeping. We arrived in Ahmedabad at 8.00 in the evening the next day.

Exploring the heart of the Subcontinent - Part I

My trip to Chandrapur district in Eastern Maharashtra, in the centre of the subcontinent, started with an auto ride through a beautifully quiet, pre-dawn Ahmedabad. From Kalupur station a colleague and I caught the 6.30am Navajeevan (‘New life’) Express. The 20-coach train pulled in just as we came down the stairs from the footbridge to the crowded platform and we found our AC coach easily. I clambered up to one of the top bunks as soon as the train started off and as it picked up speed I dozed off, gently being shaken by the rolling motion of the carriage.

The Navajeevan Express goes to Chennai in Tamil Nadu: a grueling two day, non-stop journey. We were only having to endure eighteen hours and managed well enough. In that time I devoured two hundred pages of M.K. Gandhi’s autobiography and two rounds of dal, subzi, rice and rotis, eaten from plastic trays. I also drank umpteen small cups of very sweet chai. As usual on trains in India there were crying babies around and one or two of our neighbours became interested in who I was, where I was from and what I was doing in India. Where this train was unusual was the number of cockroaches it supported: I counted five in total and, worst of all, two on my bunk. We also spotted a mouse, although this was not the first time I’d seen one on an Indian Railways train. I managed five or six hours sleep in all and the other twelve hours flew by thanks to the Mahatma. The train pulled into Chandrapur twenty minutes late at half past midnight.

Chandrapur feels more like a town than a city, though it has a population of 250,000 people (making it approximately the same size as Leeds). It was at one point a walled city and a few imposing gateways, sections of wall and an Indo-Islamic styled fort remain intact, but the current urban sprawl is not confined to the medieval town limits that these remains mark. There is generally a provincial feel to Chandrapur: the roads are pitted and broken in places, the autos are old, spluttering diesels, and donkeys and goats wander the streets along with the ubiquitous cows. However, the hotel we stayed in was the nicest I’ve seen in India, apart from the Oriental Guest House, and for just Rs.300 my room had air conditioning and satellite TV.

As my colleague Nandita was fasting, our first day in the district started with chai for both of us and powhar just for me. The fried potato and rice-like pulse was a filling breakfast, which was lucky because that was all that was on offer. After this nourishment and some time spent planning the week ahead, we headed out to find some government officials to interview. We had come to Chandrapur to investigate the local education system and the conditions in government primary schools, with the intention of making the district the third location for our leadership training programme for Headmasters. A major industrialist has a paper factory in one of the large towns in the district and the plan was to secure programme funding by emphasizing his long-established connection with the area. We had a very successful first day. We met with five officials from the central government’s flagship education improvement programme (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan), a lecturer at the teacher training institute and an officer in the District Council (Zilla Parishad). Although most of these meetings were in Hindi, at the teacher training institute we spoke in English and after the other meetings Nandita was able to translate the gist of the conversation for me. We had a fiery lunch of Tadka dal and paneer subzi, which I topped off with a huge, and delicious, mutton biriyani in my hotel room for dinner.

On our second day we caught a rickety state transport bus to Ballarpur block where we planned to meet more officials and see a tribal area. Chandrapur district borders northern Andhra Pradesh, an area largely inhabited by tribal groups (and the odd Naxalite group, more about them later), which for the most part exist outside of the already greatly segmented mainstream of Indian society. The bus journey cost almost nothing and gave us a chance to see the countryside. This part of Maharashtra is supposedly forest, but in India this is a bureaucratic term that has little to do with tree cover. Although there were trees, they were primarily clumped into small woods or formed small, forlorn islands in undulating scrubland soaked by heavy rain.

We arrived in Ballarshah, the block’s principal town, within an hour and as soon as we entered were sent reeling by a noxious smell akin to a combination of the fumes given off by bleach and the smell of boiling cauliflower. This repugnant stench was coming from the imposing BILT paper factory, whose smoke stacks rose into the sky to belch forth clouds of steam and who knows what else. I cannot understand how people live near this place: the smell was unbearable. As we passed the high walls surrounding the yellow buildings of the factory, we saw truck after truck lined up and loaded with timber ready for the mill.

Meeting local government officials in the town didn’t prove difficult: within only forty minutes of being in Ballarshah we had met one official and the chief officer of the town council (Nagar Samiti) and been swept up by Elizabeth (“Everyone calls me busy Lizzie”, She said.), the chairman of the block level education committee. Elizabeth showed us her house and gave us glasses of cold coke, before taking us to see two primary schools where the children stared open-mouthed or giggled at my height and skin colour. Neither school was in a good condition: in one the classrooms were situated around a sandy and dank sunken courtyard where the stench of urine hung in the air; in the other the classrooms were dark and sparse, which is what most, if not all, classrooms in government primary schools are like. After these visits we were taken to the Panchayat Samiti (Panchayats are village councils and form the lowest rung of decentralized local government in India) and met with a Block Education Officer and some other officials (including some Cluster Resource Coordinators). All of these public servants were welcoming, even giving us tea or coffee, and were very happy to discuss the education system and their own roles in it in detail.

At abut 3.00 in the afternoon the Block Education Officer organized an official jeep to take us on a trip into a rural, tribal area of the block, near the border with the impressively named Gondpimpari, an even more rural and tribal block further to the South. As we left the sprawl of Ballarshah and entered the countryside, which seemed to start all of a sudden after the last concrete house we passed, there were suddenly more cattle in the road along with groups of black buffalo driven by thin men wearing turbans, dhotties and shirts.

To the left and right of the road green fields stretched into the distance, with clumps of trees dotted here and there. The fields were separated from each other by low banks of earth and sometimes separated from the road by shrubs or a fence made from sticks. In the fields were either soyabean crops or wet rice paddies. In many of the latter women were stooped; their heads and backs covered with bright plastic sheeting to keep off the intermittent rain; their hands full of rice plants waiting to be submerged in the water. Every so often we passed a farmer or labourer driving two oxen before a wooden plough they were guiding though the sodden mud of a paddy. If the rain had let up, on a nearby bank would be the man’s black umbrella stuck point first into the mud. Across the plain these small upright shapes were stuck here and there, signaling from afar that in this field and that a man was at work. In the paddies, amongst the rice plants, the occasional bright white Stalk strutted, looking for food. In the villages we passed these long-legged birds could sometimes be seen perched on the wattle walls of farmyards. In these small settlements we also saw handmade carts constructed from timber that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an eighteenth century English rural setting.

Having seen three schools and missed lunch we headed back to Ballarshah in the rain, where Nandita and I went to catch a bus after thanking our hosts for the tour. Nandita was still fasting but I needed food. While we waited for the bus to Chandrapur I bought a samosa from one of the snack shops that are found at every bus and train station. It cost a few rupees and was handed across to me wrapped in a half sheet of inky newspaper. Eaten on an empty stomach it was heavenly: the pastry shell greasily crunchy; the potato filling soft and spicy.