RHS London Club | Alan Mitchell's World Tour

Al's World Tour - More of India

Good Day, Sporting-types.

that's my dead-pan greeting here in Cairns, Australia! "Are you bladdy taking the pees, mate?!"

When I last wrote, I was concerned about me bowels in Kerala - well, for the three weeks there I seem to have got away with it, so I can thoroughly recommend Kerala as a Ganesh'a Gut-free destination.

The thing to do in Kerala is cruise the backwaters, the wee rivers that wind their way up the coast, parallel to the sea. Very lush waters, surrounded with jungle greenery and loadsa wildlife. We decided to do it in style, chartering a houseboat for a coupla days with a crew of not one, but 4 smiling staff! The food was tops, and the scenery beautiful. We had a few stops on the way, to watch the crazy snake boat racing. 100 excitable locals stacked onto a massive long boat, which is paddled frantically a coupla miles up the river racing two other boats; quite a spectacle!

We also stopped to see one of India's few female gurus, Sri Matha Amrithanandarayi, also known as "the hugging mother" as her hugs are said to bestow great blessings on the recipients. She had her own temple, which was absolutely massive. The guru sat on an altar on a kinda stage, surrounded by hundreds of chanting acolytes, hugging a huge queue of devotees one by one. She reminded me of James Brown, spot lit on stage, sweating profusely and swaying with the choones - I expected her to suddenly sidle across stage with an "Owwww! Help me Vishnu!". Somehow we were ushered to the front and queued up on the stage, not quite knowing what was happening. I knelt down in front of Matha, who hugged me and murmered something into my ear, and it was a pretty emotional experience in the end! Just before I knelt down, I felt like I was about to bungee jump (heart racing, head swimming), and afterwards it felt like a big weight lifted from me! Woah! We sat to "meditate" for a while, as indicated by the honky stage director (he had a T-shirt saying "Stage Director" in big letters), before making our exit back to the boat. Big tick for the spiritual experience, man!

Next stop were the chilly hill stations of Kumale and Munnar. We caught the local cultural show, Kathakali. This consists of a massively fat geezer with a bright green face leaping around a stage to the beat of a drum and chink of finger bells whilst gesticulating wildly. Tick.

We took a rickshaw for a day and drove around the foothills of the tea country; our driver informed us that the estate owners were "Tata tee el-tee-dee"; took me ages to register "Tata Tea Ltd." and not some wee rhyme of his! We also went hunting for the elusive mountain goat, the Tahir. It absolutely pissed down as we sheltered in a tin hut chock full of soaked Indian tourists whilst the Tahir gamboled outside somewhere, no doubt doing some sort of circus performance safely shrouded by the mists. Bugger.

On to Vythiri, where we lived in a treehouse for a couple of nights. This was a massive two storey treehouse, 90ft up in the forest canopy. A wooden cage and clever pulley system hoisted us to the top, where the structure swayed gently in the breeze! The house was home to a number of creatures, including a massive hairy spider. It didn't help that we'd watched the awful "8 legged freaks" arachno-film a few days earlier. I ran around wailing like a girl as it scuttled around the bed, and we had to get the Germans downstairs to come up and remove the horrible beastie. Yeuch!

Another new-found horror were the leeches. With the rains and the altitude, the grass surrounding the houses were host to hundreds of leeches. Every time you walked down a path it was out with the torch to check yer boots and legs. Often we found them somehow wedged in our socks, gorged with blood. We had to flick em off and cover them in curry powder to watch them explode! Nice! The cuts wouldn't stop bleeding, as leeches thoughtfully inject an anti-coagulant when they bite, so the blood flows into their bodies like filling up a balloon. And I thought I was scared of spiders....!

We returned to Khozikode, where I bought the local Indian man-about- town gear, a "lungi". This is basically a bloke's dress, worn like a sarong, with the front tied up to your waist like a short skirt. Naturally I opted for the closest to tartan I could find, and whacked it on after a few beers with the added security of a large pink nappy pin to keep me from exposing me chuddies to the locals. I would have like the lungi-wearing to be a low-key affair, but an unfortunate chain of events led me to end up on a stage in the local sports centre, with the Mayor and Chief of Police, in front of 500 giggling Indian schoolchildren, presenting prizes at the town Sports Day!!! Let's just say it was one of the most embarassing days of me puff and leave it at that...

We left Kerala and arrived in Mumbai for three days. What a bloody change. I've been to a few Indian cities, and Mumbai is absolutely filthy. Enduring images are of a geezer squatting outside the bank with his head slumped down and a syringe hanging out of his finger, and kids submerging themselves and playing in a filthy sewage outlet pouring crap into the Arabian Sea at one end of Chowpatty Beach, as their parents sifted the rubbish and looked on.

Somewhere in the midsts of this, the biggest religious fest in India, the immersion of Ganesha (elephant-heeded god) was taking place. This consisted of hundreds of Hindus walking the streets in front of a truck holding a huge Ganesha statue lit by flashing disco lights. Drummers hammered out a mental tattoo, whilst dancers twisted and turned, throwing heaps of red powder around. Every now and then a MASSIVE home-made flash banger would go off, temporarily deafening everyone and causing me to override the Steadyshot on my video camera with a massive lurch and a "JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!" (probably not an appropriate thing to say at that point!).

We checked out the Prince of Wales museum. Most interesting exhibits were ancient gravestone-like objects, placed on the edges of landowners properties. On each stone was some sanskrit text, together with an inexplicable picture of a bloke getting it on with a donkey! The musuem curator casually explained that "bestiality was something all men were afraid of in those days, so this was the punishment threatened to trespassers". Can't quite see the cry in Dorset "Get orf moi laaaaand or Eeyor's having big love tonight!!!". And in Aberdeen it just wouldn't work - the idea is to keep people out rather than forming a queue!

On the subject of buggery, I read a pretty tragic story in the Hindu Times (yes Oasis - this exists!) about a Roman Catholic preist in a wee Indian village who was abusing some village boys. The parents were furious, and marched on the church, demanding that he be turned over to them. Another preist arrived on the scene, and quick thinking locked the offending preist in a toilet, called the police and confronted the crowd. All pretty dramatic stuff, and then the final paragraph read "Father Joseph was forced to do situps in front of the villagers until the authorities arrived to save him"!!! I pissed meself - this a serious article in a serious newspaper, with no hint that this was anything unusual!!! You can just see the villagers consulting the local book of crime/punishment lists to get that one!!!!

Our final day in Mumbai was spent at the excellent theme parks on the outskirts of the city, a water park and a rather dated ride park. I was mildly concerned as I sat in a car on a ride, and saw that it was made in "West Germany", with a sign confirming that the ride "complied to full Indian safety standards". Not terribly comforting!

Anyhow, onto Oztralia.... and you can imagine what a world of a difference sunny, clean Cairns is from Mumbai!!! And the pilchards have been officially cleared by Oz quarantine punters too.

Off diving on the Great Barrier Reef tommorrow, for 3 days, including 2 night dives, which I am dreading. Expect some awfie tales, unless Jaws's Grandson fancies a bit o Scotch!

28th August 2002

Alan Mitchell RHS 1984 - 1990
Wherever Alan goes he always carries a small tin of pilchards