Well rested in Ahmedabad...

My brain is working again today, it sort of went offline last night when A posted and we sorted through photos (I am uploading them now in the background :). Lots to say, though, so I will get on with it :)

Beggars....I have found something that I am (we are) comfortable with. We have talked to a lot of people and have been asked for just about everything from loads of different people. The resolution started in Mamallapuram - a woman was pestering me to buy some necklaces, I really didn't want a necklace, but I am not going to just handover cash either. She was carrying a small child and I am sure they were in need. Then she just said "rice". That was brilliant, I was more than happy to buy her some rice - that is the sort of direct action that I like. I asked her where I could get some rice and she led me to a shop. I only had 10 rupees on me, so I handed it over to the proprietor and asked for rice - he said rice is a kilo for 20 rupees so she got 500 grams, which is a decent amount! 10 rupees is about 12 pence or 25 cents (deal, eh?) The other thing I started in Mamallapuram is handing over bananas - I love them :) and they are nutritious for the kids (the usual recipients and it always brings a smile, which is well worth it to me :) better than biscuits/cookies or any other snack food. In Mamallapuram I bought 10 bananas on our way back to the hotel after dinner, a kid came up and I was feeling generous so I handed over 2 bananas (they were the small ones :) and that kid went and got his brother and brought him over (both we grinning) so I handed over 2 bananas to that kid (I want to be equal) and then there was an older woman begging and she saw me hand out bananas to the kids so she asked for a banana...I didn't have any left when I got back to the hotel! One last story to relate...A has been appeasing little urchins with her Ginger Altoids, so when we were walking to the beach through the scrub (we were on the scenic route - no tourists :) we were approached by a group of kids. We did the name exchange, where are you from, etc. and then they asked for rupees. A got her tin out and handed round one sweet each and they were very happy and went back to what they were doing. Then not a minute later they came running up and asked for another - for their father that was sitting at the base of a tree tending his goats - we were touched by their thoughtfulness.

Bicycles....I have been missing my bicycles and I know A is missing hers, too. All we see regularly here are the heavy city bikes which look very much like Dutch bikes from Amsterdam! But we have seen a few out of the ordinary...when I was on that ride with Koshy in Mamallapuram I saw some roadies out on a training ride (I was so surprized!) Koshy said there is a road club in Chennai and they ride on Sunday mornings - these were lycra-clad proper cyclists, at least one woman, and one of them was riding a recent Trek roadbike (I will be a geek and tell you that it was a 1500 - I recognized the paintjob :). We later saw a Trek ad (albeit a mountain bike ad) in the motorcycle magazine we picked up, so the market is there. When we were in Bijapur we saw another guy riding a road bike (with drop bars and most importantly gears :) with his "coach" riding next to him on a motorcycle as the rider powered into a headwind down on the drops....coach shouting in his ear something akin to "pedal harder!" :) I have seen a few other bikes with drop bars, but they are singlespeeds..and I did see one guy that was riding his singlespeed like it was a fixed gear (just like the couriers do, weaving in and out of traffic with a rapid cadence :) It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :) One other thing happened that makes you think that there is fate :) We arrived in Amhedabad very tired and frustrated with the traffic and the map and finding a decent hotel. But we ended up down this alley and A said "how about this one?" and pointed at a decent enough looking place. She proceeded to negotiate us a brilliant deal on a fabulous room (she is a star, that A :) and in the lobby as we were coming in we met 2 Belgian cyclists that had been riding for the last 7 months and they were checking out and on their way to the train back to Delhi to catch their flight out. We got chatting with them and they had ridden from Uzbekistan through China and Tibet and ON THE FRIENDSHIP HIGHWAY! How cool is that. They told us that about 600 of the 1000 kms are paved now and that Everest Basecamp is awesome (they also said it's not their favorite of the Tibetan roads). That was great to connect like that and it's a shame we didn't have more time to chat. Oh well, something is better than nothing, they gave us some very good information about food and water and the dogs we might encounter.

Some things we have seen make this place look post-apocolyptic!!!! Mumbai is a scary place when you think about the numbers - 20 million people in the greater Mumbai area and 60 percent live in the slums. That 60% more than likely don't have acess to water or sewer (the world is their toilet and they are not shy) and most don't have electricity, either. We saw a lot of slums on the train ride into town. We saw that one cement skeleton of a 4 or 5 story building had been taken over by people and they hung blue tarps where the walls would have been - people are very resourceful! Also on the post-apocolyptic theme - we also have seen some franken-bike chopper threewheelers that look right out of Mad Max!!! :)

Food...ah, glorious food :) Not that I want to give you all a bad impression of Hampi, but it was not a wonderful experience outside of the ruins and historical side of it. The tourist side of things is pretty terrible, in fact, and it's all our (as western tourists) own fault :( I think the Lonely Planet listings have had a negative effect - the places live on the notoriety but they have let the place go downhill. The rooms were way overpriced for what you get (the bathroom in Vikky's Guesthouse was pretty foul and the food upstairs - praised heavily by LP was equally foul) - the room in Bijapur the next night was like staying at the Savoy (comparitively) and it was only 100 rupees more (that is 1.25GBPs or about $2) and the food was excellent! The food in Hampi was all menu and no execution! We had one or two items that were decent (some steamed Tibetan bread comes to mind, and teh croissants at the German bakery were decent, if not really croissants :) and it wasn't until our last night there that we found a place that wasn't targeting westerners and we had a fabulous thali at the "Tourist Home" that was targeted to Indian tourists and pilgrims - we paid something like 25 rupees for an unlimited thali and fabulous (and very friendly) service! Last night we went to a local place here and had the most fabulous Gujarati thali...we liked it so much we went back for dinner tonight :) We also had breakfast there 2 days in a row - their masala dosas are also FAB! - so they are getting to know us quite well :) A thali, for those that don't know, is lots of little pots of things and some carbs. They vary depending on where they are from - Punjabi, Gujarati, South Indian, etc. They are different here to the ones we have eaten in London (and better here, IMHO :) and they come with rice and usually a popadum (or a papam, as they call it here) and chipatis. For Gujarati and South Indian it comes with a pot of Sambar (YUM!) some dal and some other veg - we have had some great cabbage. We put the rice in the middle and pour everything on top and eat it by scooping it up with the papam or the chapati (or a spoon :) The food we have had at the local places is - by far - much beter than any tourist place. We did eat some fab food at a couple of places in Mamalapuram, one was an Indian tourist hotel and the food was superb (but not cheap).

Road carnage....we were spoiled but the roads once we got out of Bangalore - all the loonies were on other roads and it was nice and easy riding all the way to Pune (that's Bangalore to Hampi to Bijapur to Pune) and then we found lots of idiots in our path and it has not abated. The ride from Karla to Ahmedabad was really hard work! The expressways do not allow 2-wheelers so we were confined to secondary roads...with all the traffic (car and truck) that do not want to pay the tolls. When we got to the northern suburbs of Mumbai it was just terrible! The roads are under construction and there is no signage - not even as you approach the major highways!!! We had to ask 6 or 7 people for directions and we were never really sure that we were on the right road until we finally found the NH-8...where we promptly stopped for a cold drink and a bite to eat as we recovered from the effort - we still had over 200kms to go and we were already beat. All along the roadways we saw trucks off the side, it looked mostly like falling asleep at the wheel and not the head on collisions that we saw in Madaya Pradesh. We saw one truck that was wrapped around a tree and another that had driven over the median, which was a deep gap just wide enough for the pair of truck tires of the back wheel - OUCH, it broke the front axel for the truck. We stopped at a roadside hotel and continued our journey to Amhedabad, leaving very early, but the traffic was quite heavy - we have been accustomed to having the road to ourselves before about 9am.

Tata buys Corus, by the numbers. We have been reading the papers here about the merger and the enormous cost. Tata spent a lot of cash to become a world leader, but how does it compare to what the Indian government spends? What Tata spent could more than cover the amount that India spends on education and health COMBINED! It would more than cover the salaries and travel expenses of all government employees for a year. It would cover about half of what India spends on defense.... this from a country that has a huge percentage of the population without proper drinking water and sanitation and a huge percentage that are illerate. The British government just gave India a huge amount for education....seems very strange to me.

The train journey on my next post!