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Monday 3rd
August
Drove to Delhi, arriving at the home of Dr
S's brother (a dentist)
about 2:00 p.m. His son, Anoop was in, and took some of us off
shopping. We wanted to buy a shock-absorber (didn't get one, but got
ours partly repaired) and I wanted to buy a sitar. I had originally
intended to go to Ricki Ran, where all the famous people buy their
sitars, but Anoop suggested a smaller place where I would not have to
pay for the name. I found out that one does not just go in and buy a
sitar – one chooses a blank instrument and then specifies
exactly what one wants in the way of decoration, colour etc.. Very
difficult to imagine what it will look like in the mind's eye, but I
hope mine will be fairly simple – and I can certainly say it
was made specially for me.
We had great discussions in the evening as
to what to do next. George
decided to go back and stay in Chandigarh and look round there with his
friends. The remaining five of us decided to go on to Kathmandu -
originally by train (because of wear on the van), but when we were told
(by the Indian AA) it was a very good fast road we decided to drive.
Tuesday
4th August
Spent the morning writing letters and
shopping. Had a small lunch, then
set off for Agra, reaching it about 6:00 p.m.. Naturally we drove
straight to the Taj Mahal. It was superb – photographs just
do not do it justice. The whole building is in marble, and it is much
bigger than we thought. Even the windows are carved lattice marble, and
the whole place is intricately carved inside and out, carvings which
don't reveal their complete pattern until you are only a few feet away.
The effect was also heightened by an incredible sunset to one side and
a thunderstorm to the other. Indian thunderstorms are quite something.
The thunder is much more frequent than in English storms, sounding more
like steady gunfire, and the lightening is like a slow stroboscope.
We spent the night on the veranda of the Taj Restaurant, and got very
bitten by mosquitoes (over 400 bites for me). We are getting used to
the
bites, however, and they don't itch nearly as much as they used to.
Wednesday
5th August
Set off on the road to Patna. It turned out
to be a very bad road, and
we didn't get to Kanpur until the afternoon. At this rate, Kathmandu
would have taken three or four days, which we didn't have. We
eventually decided to split up, with Mike and the two girls taking the
van back to Chandigarh and Malc and I going on to Kathmandu. We
eventually decided to fly from Benares, which meant taking a train from
Kanpur (dreadful town, used to be Cawnpore, impossible to find anywhere
in it) so we caught one that evening. It was incredible, straight out
of John Masters. We travelled 3rd class, naturally, but were lucky
enough to find a reserved compartment with two spare seats, which meant
we were not too crowded. Reached Benares about 4:00 a.m. and kipped
down on the platform (which was already covered in sleeping Indians, as
were all the platforms we saw).
Thursday
6th August
After about an hour's sleep I woke, so had a
cup of tea and wrote
journal until the others woke (Malc and I had bumped into some other
English people). The tea here is quite expensive, at least to
foreigners, about 3d a cup, but it's very handy on the train as
whenever it stopped people would walk the length of it outside selling
tea, bananas, cigarettes etc..
Took a rickshaw (tricycle type) to the
Indian Airlines office, to buy a
ticket straightaway, and found out that we did not have quite the right
papers for a 25% discount (50% for internal flights) – so
£10, which was annoying. Decided we didn't have time to look
round Benares, which was a pity, and went straight to the airport. An
hour's flight later we were in Kathmandu. Didn't get much of the famous
view of Kathmandu valley as it was too cloudy.
Went straight to the Tourist office, got
some maps, booked in at a
hotel (4/- a night each for a bedroom with private shower and loo) and
then looked round town. It's an odd place – magnificent wood
carvings on the houses, and full of temples, but everything is in a
rather
sorry state of neglect. We were a couple of hundred years too late.
We discovered that this is definitely the cloudy season, so we decided
not to go on to Pokhara, where we had planned to enjoy some of the best
views in Nepal. However, to partly make up for it we discovered that
hashish is legal here, and sold in shops, restaurants etc..
Friday 7th
August
Spent most of the day window-shopping and
eating. There's a very nice
café cum restaurant next door to our hotel that serves such
delicacies as a variety of pancakes, porridge etc.. We also found some
Tibetan beer, which is a pale milky fluid tasting of yeast.
Saturday
8th August
Spent the morning looking round
Swayambhunath, which is a large
Hindu-Buddhist temple a couple of miles outside the city on top of a
little hill. It is also called the Monkey Temple, for a lot of monkeys
live there. Apparently this temple is typical of the unique Nepalese
way of having Hindu and Buddhist deities side by side in one precinct.
The hill is covered with a marvellous open wood, which is full of
monkeys and statues.
Sunday 9th
August
Had a really lazy day, for it was raining
and Malc was spending the day
in bed with the runs – how grateful we were that we'd found
ourselves, accidently, in a hotel with private loo. I spent the day in
the café, eating and smoking – in fact getting
through the equivalent of 4 full meals. That’s what comes of
eating hash cakes and ganja tea – it just makes you hungry
all over again! Amongst other things I tried the "Buff Humbeger",
assuming it was a beef hamburger. It was a hamburger all right, but the
meat was water buffalo! It was fine.
Monday
10th August
Went up to the British Embassy and got Malc
and me certified to prove
that we were students. It didn't really, because an English guy, Jerry,
who had walked up there with me, got one, and he isn't a student. Jerry
was Jerry Desmonde, son of the Jerry Desmonde who was Norman Wisdom's
straight man. He was full of stories, for he had just spent a month
riding a horse round the Hindu Kush and another month walking around
the Chitral area.
Malc and I were planning to fly back, so
after finding out that Indian
Airways were full for the next 10 days I got a couple of tickets to
Delhi with the Royal Nepal Airlines. With the 25% student reduction and
some black-market Nepalese rupees the price dropped from £22
to £13 each.
Tuesday
11th August
Malc was feeling well enough to go out, so
he, Jerry and I spent most
of the day wandering around the Monkey Temple. Ate some mediocre
Chinese food in the evening.
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