Indiaaargh: Forceful Delhi and Rajahstan.

OK, I went further down through Kerala for a bit but it was pretty depressing. Varkala and Kovallam were typical resorts full of cockney Christmas tourists sitting in silence, and good looking 30 year old couples who wouldn't stop kissing. I was in a homestay in Varkala but the room was set well away from the owner's house - in some kind of tower so I felt a little bit like Quasimodo or Boo Radley (not the band)- and the family wouldn't speak to me for some reason. The days there were mostly spent sitting smoking fags on the beach and walking up and down trying not to look like the voyeur I am. I went to Thailand after that to escape the relentless romance and get lashed. This was achieved with aplomb, where the Standrings and I paid homage to the traditional UK festive experience by spending two weeks availing ourselves of vast quantities of alcohol and arguing over nothing of importance. After Thailand I limped back to India and essentially lay down on a roof in Calcutta for a couple of days before catching a 28 hour train to Delhi some days later. The train was just great. Delhi is interesting just to see the sheer madness of Indian cities in its most acute form. The thousands of drivers there are basically doing their utmost to recreate the chariot scene in Gladiator and running amidst it all there are all manner of cows and wild Resident Evil dogs that have massive udders that it's difficult not to be weirdly transfixed by. In my mind, Delhi's also noteworthy for having more touts and chancers than anywhere else I've ever been to. These guys won't leave you alone, and they'll try and sell you anything they can. A typical exchange. "Hey man where you from?" "England. You?" "Nice country. You married?" "No." "Why not?" "I don't know." "You want to come in my shop? I have nice pashmina." "No thanks." "Pashmina." "No I don't want a pashmina." "A shawl?" "No I don't wear shawls." "Maybe later." "Not later." "Maybe later." "No." This will all be undertaken whilst you are striding along giving the Kanye. Bless their perserverance, you leave them chuckling at the amazing bargain you've missed out on or looking like you've just kicked them in the balls. I no longer feel guilty about this though as it's often a tactic (unless it's NOT), and they cynically prey on your politeness to get you into some kind of transaction. No amount of blanking can help you in Delhi. Often you'll end up in the shop or a tourist info place or wherever, almost without realising, holding some trinket you won't buy or pointing at a map and pleasantly enduring the comments book whilst the guy insists he's not trying to sell you anything. You will almost always be given a business card as well, though what they expect you to do with this I don't know. After Delhi, Jack and I travelled around Rajahstan where there are many forts. We did a camel safari in Jaisalmer which was fun because you're on a camel and they're absolutely hilarious, doubly so when you realise how much they all look like Peter Hitchens, but the experience was incredibly forced. It was like being led like a toddler on a donkney along Fleetwood Beach, except there were more dunes and a one armed guy appeared from nowhere, perhaps some burrow, to flog us crisps and beer. After the short trek there was food and entertainment at the accommodation place we were staying at. After we ate there was music and dancing. Halfway through the performance the dancer started reaching down to urge one of the tourists to stand up. I quickly decamped to the toilet to pretend to have a piss in case the woman wanted a partner for the poor bastard to dance with, emerging a couple of minutes later and finding, to my dismay, that everyone was by that point standing in a circle and we were all expected to dance. I had no choice but to engage, and so as the instructor woman held her hand out I took it, dying inside as we all did an Indian version of the conga and the okey fucking cokey around the fire. They made us go to bed soon after that, literally: they refused to serve booze and more firewood and turned out the lights. We gamely stayed up for a while longer but eventually accepted defeat and slept. As I was going to bed I cut my ear open on the stick roofs of our mud huts. We generally smoked our way around various cool places ending in 'pur' over the next couple of weeks. On one of the days we did a big trek and got stoned with a monk on a mountain retreat where there was a fire that's been maintained for hundreds of years. One night after dinner in Udaipur we followed some music we heard up a street into what we (I) had thought was a club. It actually turned out to be a wedding do as it was the season for nuptials in Rajahstan at the time. They were very nice people there and they even offered us food, despite the fact we were clearly crashers and I was absolutely shitfaced, dancing brazenly in the middle of the dance floor with a forty odd year old man. The guys are all very close with one another here and they hold hands and stuff, and maybe they dance like that too - I don't know - but I'm sure my dance partner was gay. He kept steering it so we were close face to face and holding hands like we were playing scarecrow tig, and he kept our hips in time to one another. I won't say we grinded but it wasn't far off, and at times his moustache was inches from my face. We left pretty soon after that. We did loads of other stuff but I'll just put pictures up rather than bang on anymore.