The Camel and my two humps.

Thor Desert, Jaisalmer, India

The Desert
An English explorer in the 1930s crossed the uninhabitable Rub Al Khali desert in Saudi Arabia. He concluded nothing prepared you for one thing: loneliness. Well let me tell you, nothing prepared me for the testicle crushing agony of camel riding. 30 minutes on board and I thought I'd lost them. Our camel train had set off from the desert's edge at 6AM and would not return until dusk the next day. It was going to be a long long 36 hours for me and my nads.

I thought I would be ok with a long time in the saddle, being right up there with Kylie in terms of pertness. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the best quality for long distance camel travel.

If I was unprepared for nad-crushing, I was equally unprepared for my first desert toilet stop. This small detail was not mentioned in any preamble. The complexities were not drawn to my attention at any stage and basic training not provided. When Captain Oats left saying "I may be some time", this was a brave, noble gesture. When I said it, I referred to what a complicated manoeuvre this was going to be. Where do you go for a start off? Which dune is the right one? How far away is far away? Then there is hole digging, positioning, the roasting desert heat, sweating, possible nether sun burning, sand blowing everywhere. And the ignominy of everyone in my party knowing exactly where I was and what I was doing, having watched me trudging off silhouetted against the horizon, bog roll flapping by my side.

The highlight of the trip was sleeping in the desert that evening. What can beat sleeping on the dunes, under the stars, listening to the camel herders repeatedly changing their mobile ring tones late into the night?

I did enjoy the camel's company and by day two, we had bonded. OK, they urinate down their own legs - we've all been there. So they shit while they eat, I'd love that. More room for dessert. Camels are dirty, smelly, graceless animals but they do posses a certain charm. I began to understand what Kate Moss saw in Pete Doherty.

Massage
I arranged an Ayurvedic massage the day after our return, to soothe what I rightly thought would be aching limbs. Ayurveda being an Indian massage and healing system, peddled everywhere tourists go and Jaisalmer is no exception.

Sadly, it was not the relaxing antidote to camel rides I had hoped for. Carrie and I were separated by a curtain, but I quickly felt very alone with my masseur. Firstly, I was butt naked. My man - a large rough handed gentlemen - then started with full length body strokes. A few testicle brushes, but nothing I couldn't handle. One willy slap that sent the old man spinning like an airplane propeller, but an accident I was sure.

Onto the front, please sir. I began to drift off. This was better. Down my right leg his hands went. Up my right leg his hands went. Hello! That went a bit far up the old bum crack! Oh well. Down my right leg. Up my right leg. Again! That is a bit famili - again!

What is going on? His hand is going right up where it shouldn't be. I had to do something, shut up shop. But how? How do you clench your bum cheeks, slowly, so as not to cause offence? This is something more than going to a friend's house you don't want to, just for an hour, so as not to cause offence. I mean, what if I trapped his hand? Get the timing wrong and suddenly we're in a very strange place. Me and a fat Indian man, in a dark room, down a small alley, inside the walls of Jaisalmer fort.

That explorer was right. I began to feel very lonely. Nothing had prepared me for this.

First time in Jodpurs

Jodphur, Rajasthan.
Rajasthan is full of forts because until the British came, everybody couldn't stop arguing with each other. The best fort we have seen is in Jodphur. I liked it for three reasons:


Sati
At the gates there are hand prints made by royal wives, princesses and concubines before they threw themselves on their husband's funeral pyres. This last happened in 1843 in Jodphur, but still goes on in India illegally today.

This is obviously terrible. I mean, if your wife throws herself on the funeral pyre, who cleans up the mess? No wonder there are still hand prints on the walls.

Not so much 'out of the frying pan into the fire' as 'put down the frying pan, into the fire'. Fortunately, it's not a concept I can see British women signing up to as they get married. "I pronounce you man and kindling" - just isn't going to work. "I'd like to propose some toast, I mean a toast". It just isn't going to catch on.

The curse
When the fort was built, a hermit had to be removed. He cursed the fort, saying it would always be short of water. Personally, as it's in the middle of the desert, I would have been relaxed about this, but management decided that for building to proceed, a human sacrifice was needed and a builder was buried alive in the foundations.

This makes today's planning regulations look relatively straightforward. All new developments are to include some affordable homes, low energy light bulbs oh and don't forget to bury one of the builders. I can see that advert in the Situations Vacant now. Sacrifice: No prior experience necessary. Ability to lie still for long periods preferred. Generous benefits, including free accommodation.

Opium
They give soldiers opium before fighting. They use it to celebrate births, deaths and marriages. They used it to celebrate ending feuds. Basically any excuse.

As this old man - complete with a gap in his beard for his opium pipe - told me this, I began to see how those involved in sati and sacrifice burying were persuaded (and have been introducing it to Carrie's chapatis ever since).

CSI Chennai

India v South Africa, Chepauk Cricket Stadium, Chennai.
The start of the match was brilliant. The noise was deafening: the crowd armed with a natural ability to shout, whistles and trumpets that sound like a duck if you kick it. Their stamina for making unintelligible noise is impressive - no wonder they took to call centres so well.

In the capacity crowd, there were no South African's at all. A reason to go again.

We were having a great time. Sehwag scored a record 319, Dravid passed 10,000 career runs and they were selling spicy stuff under the stand. Then: shit, where's my wallet? I had been pick pocketed.

I remember when it happened. A well organised trap at the gates, involving a spotter, 2 blockers and a pick pocket at least. Armed with this information, but more interested in an Insurance number, we left for the police station at lunch, eager to see how Indian crime solving would interpret my information and keep crime off Chennai's streets.

At the station
They sat me down, gave me a pen & paper and...dictated me a letter! I was to write to the District Superintendent and ask him to help look at my case. Awesome. It's not like we expected the sarge to thump the table, shout 'not on my manor!' and run down the road with his gun out, but write a letter? Brilliant. No need for a quick get away here then. Have you planned the get away? Yeah, I thought we'd watch a bit of the match, then go for a nice lunch somewhere...they've got some nice stuff in Top Shop I thought we could look at...

When I had finished copying the letter, the sarge drew himself up, looked me in the eye and I thought, ok here we go. The letter was just a starter.

"In your country", he asked, now leaning forward "how much is 1kg of cooking oil?" Where the fuck is this going? I dunno. 100 Rupees. He nodded sagely.

"In your country, do you eat tomato's?"
Yes.

"In your country, how much is 1kg of tomatoes?" You'll be wanting to know what Nectar points you get next,will you? 200 Rupees.

"Right" replied the Sergeant. Stamp stamp stamp with his rubber stamp on the letter and that was it, case closed. We were free to go!

It was like being in CSI Miami. Amazing. Sherlock Holmes eat your heart out. Mrs Marple, stand down. You're not needed for this one.

India, a country of contrasts.

That’s what our chocolate guide books says: a country of contrasts. Page one, second paragraph. Rich - poor, urban chic - desert shack. That kind of stuff. There are however several key contrasts it declines to mention. One: what the guidebook actually says and the Arctic sub zero reality I am suffering.

We are still in Ooty. We are still cold and damp. I went out wearing 2 T-shirts, a jumper, coat (hood up) and a Pashmina as a scarf (don’t worry I pulled it off) and was still cold. In our room – which has a lot of coal shed in its ancestry – we've been filling mineral water bottles with water from the shower and taking them to bed with us. For survival. Ray Mears wouldn’t stand for this.

Complaining about the weather to Reception does nothing. An unseasonable blip, they assure us, Global Warming. Well, Global Warming needs a new frickin’ name as far as I am concerned. Global Bollock Freezing would do it (I'd like to see Al Gore make a film about that). I have been reduced to drying matches with a hairdryer in order to get the little fuckers to spark, so I can light a candle to try and get warming of my own.

It’s like being in the Blitz, it really is (although there everyone seemed happy and sang songs).

The Locals
The natives - in contrast - have taken everything in their stride. Gone are the men's knee length shirts, saris and sarongs. All replaced – don’t ask me from where – with knocked off Adidas and Nike gear. It's fabulous. It's like a TK Max wet dream. Overnight, the streets have turned into rivers of Polyester. And everything is gloriously the wrong size. It’s like a Primark exploded over the town.

Even the oldies are in on it, in their jumpers and cardies. Boom! There goes a Marks & Spencers.

Then it was sunny.
After 4 days of being sexually harassed by Jack Frost, we awoke to an extraordinary English summer’s day (as opposed to an ordinary one: tube strikes, traffic jams, work). With gay abandon (or as will become evident, brain abandon) we set off on a trek round a tea plantation.

The trek comprised a guide, us and 4 girls. Now I know what you’re thinking: 4 single girls and one stud? A lot of quality DVDs start like that (form an orderly queue ladies. In fact don’t. Dive in and grab what you can!). Sadly, from us to the horizon were rolling hills of tea bushes and someone asked what kind of tea it was. Black tea our guide informed us. ”Black Tea?” I said incredulously. “Who the fuck drinks black tea?” Only as I found myself saying “They want to grow white tea, that’s what everyone drinks" did I decide to spend some time examining my shoes.

Sadly, to make matters worse, as an Australian might put it: I had slipped and slopped, but I had not slapped and it was now blazing sunshine. I happily spent the day making perspicacious comments to atone for my tea question, then unhappily spent the next day bedridden, asking Carrie to go to the internet and look up the the symptoms of heat stroke.

This exposed one final contrast the guidebook neglected to mention: that between what a normal head looks like and my flaming orb. I was redder than Ronaldo at a motel check-out.

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

They say every cloud has a silver lining. Well, I was in this one for 5 hours and I didn't see it.

A 100 year old steam train clings to the mountainside 2500m above sea level, affording dramatic panoramic views? Sounds good. A track laid by the British for exactly this time of year to escape the searing heat of the plains? Sounds better. Think I'll have a bit of that. Breath taking, the guide book concluded.

Piss taking more like. We ascended in a rain cloud and we stayed in that cloud for 5 long hours. And all we could see from the carriage/cell for the entire journey was the inside of that rain cloud. I may as well have spent the time in my hotel room with a white sheet over my head, for all I saw.

Cloud Tourism Plus Points
It was supposed to be the exact time of year to do this journey. Nowhere in the guide book's opening pages could I find a caveat stating the book was written in a London office, by some chancers who had never so much as troubled Indian immigration. I began to conclude it was about as much use as a chocolate teapot - I say began to conclude as if one fancied some chocolate, such a teapot would doubtless be very useful.

However, being cocooned in a small space surrounded by white in every direction dulls the senses and does allow the mind to wander. Sadly, mine kept wandering to the American woman sat nearby who kept asking me questions.

The constant rain also meant the entire journey was accompanied by hundreds of spontaneous waterfalls down the mountainside. Close enough to put your hand in from the carriage window. Swollen rivers of orange mud swept down under us, bloated by the amount of hillside they took with them. Death would soon be upon us, I concluded. Great. We'd reserved a hotel and everything.

The engine pushed us from the back of the train and at the front a little man sat outside with some flags. What was his response? Wave the red flag? Stop the train? He just put up his umbrella. Awesome. This is what I love about India. We chugged straight on through regardless. The situation was so ridiculous, it became fantastic.

Fantastic right up until reaching a plateau, we stopped to refresh the engine. Stretching my legs I happened upon a plaque. It commemorated those who had lost their lives in the avalanche of mud and train caused by - you guessed it - torrential rain. Great news.

The plaque was perched on the ledge of an ominously sheer cliff. Given the weather, I couldn't see anything of how far it dropped. Every cloud, as they say.