india makes brixton market seem clean..

i must admit that our original plan of catching a train across india to darjeeling from delhi may have been inspired in some small way by a certain film...yeh that was well out of the window pretty quick. but i think i could get to enjoy the train travel. you just need to be relaxed, have a sense of humour and not be in a rush. otherwise your fucked.

we were constantly bombarded with other travellers who didn't think much of our two stop trip to darjeeling and jodhpur.  the usual went a bit liek ' so your not seeing the taj mahal'...'your not going to goa...oh'.  but i really enjoyed spending a little more time in a place...it made you feel relaxed enough to enjoy it.  the stress can sneak in pretty quick in india.

as the pictures describe the two places were pretty different....from lush moutain tops which dropped to minus temperatures as soon as the sun went down to arid deserts where i could barely sleep due t the heat....is a bit of a change . something that with the added pollution really worked the sniffling at times.

my favourite things....the food, the colours, the good smells, the weather, the size, the diversity, tuktuks, the people, the unnerving driving, chai, dal, that scarf, the train, the view, the history, saffron lassi, kashmiri dum aloo

and i didn't particularly enjoy...the taxis, delhi airport security, the (bad) smells, the facilities, the phone networks, the stray dogs, being a toursit, the trains, the delays, spicejet, people who have no idea what hand luggage is, being ill, dubai airport, bald tyres, the rubbish, the pollution, the poverty

twenty hours and counting...

so we booked a plane and got out of that mess and finally managed to pick up our next train in delhi to the wonderful town of jodhpur.

i cant put a picture here because this computer is made from rocks and i don't think it will do that.....i can tell you that the smells, sights and sounds of this wonderful place are fantastic and i am now over my dissapointing train wait.

there are still lots of dogs which i am keeping well clear of due to the 'leg' thing and more cows filling the ever smaller streets.....so when i am not walking around in amazement i am dodging cowpats, leeky drains and leftover dahl

rough tot up of the currys consumed so far.....15....nice....and the mango lassi....mmm

(i've added a pic of this lovely web cafe now....)

your train has been delayed by 12hrs....

i thought that was bad news until tom promptly arrived back at our pile of bags informing me that it would be thirteen hours meaning we could maybe catch our train at gone 2 in the morning....and no i do not need my shoes polished!

just into a week in india and tom and myself are stuck in siliguri which i have to disagree with the lonely planet on. it may be vibrant and a market town - but i'm really not in the market for fake sportswear, a cow or a shoe shine ( i mean i have suede boots for christsakes)

this probably isn't the best time to be writing a blog post but as i think of all the wonderous places in india i also think about how i am stuck in the corner of a strange internet cafe (pink crumbling walls-and i don't want to know who has used all these webcams over the years) which now has a copy of toms passport-poor tom.

anyways if we do make it up at 1am, and manage to get a taxi through the nighttime beeping, diesel fumes and past the roaming people/cows. and if our train does come, despite the fact i have no faith in it what so ever - we will be back in delhi and hopefully on to jodhpur. which is blue. the colour not the feeling.

and we have eaten a lot of curry.....and darjeeling was nice - and beautifulish...

i just been to wales

i love wales

once you have crossed the final frontier and payed the welsh fare of 10.60 (thats the van for you) you suddenly enter a world of proper welsh communities, the hate for the english, rain, more rain, sheep, good fish and chips, empty beaches and more rain and hate of the english.

still - you've got to love somewhere you can park the van up for a week - have a cuppa and no-one cares.

fixie..

i was informed the other day that my new fixed wheel bike was a bit last year according to the cool kids. despite what they think i'm not riding it for anyone to look at me - for a start i only know about 13 people in london (read 513 if i was on facebook). back to the bike - i do love it, although after my near death by scooter incident yesterday i see that front brake as more essential for emergencies than before. and before you ask - yes you can do stoppies.

when i'm not riding the bike at the moment i have mostly been selling my soul to the devil. only because they pay better - well actually they just pay - unlike everyone else. and yeh also a bird did a poo on my head head yesterday. nice.

the boys are back in town..

feeling sorry for me - tom and noah both dragged themselves to london to visit borough market. noah was a little confused and i remember clearly receiving a text stating 'london' as he arrived. yes that is where it is. tom cleverly coincided the trip with a "shoe type' event in clapham and noah, the lady of the hour (not noah - just the lady of the hour) and i bbq the evening away before attending a similar shoe based evening which was top drawer.no.it was rubbish.

then noah had breakfast with my girlfriend. terrible. didn't even get an invite.

back from the dead..

so this was my first foray back into the world of newspaper photojournalism after a few days of hospital food enabled me to stay in my bed for a little bit longer than i had expected.

infact it was only a few hours after writing the last post on here that I ended up in the a&e dept at the local hospital being told it would be a four hour wait before a doctor with obvious pain management issues would be stabbing at the back of my leg with a scalpel. an event that would then lead to me being holed up next to what can only be described as the most random selection of 'roomies' i have ever had. there was the guy that kept asking for the nurse to help him in a tone that resembled dying, mr noisy beeping noise, two guys with petrol generators for asthma nebulisers and then the guy who was handcuffed to his bed with a policeman at his side 24/7.

one thing that must be said for the first day back as i was snapping the latest la senza collection was that the commonising of the croissant on the english supermarket shelves only made my 'press breakfast' worse. because i don't think that a pack of high st faux french pastry can really be qualified as a breakfast....i mean you get better than that in the travelodge..