India is more easily represented by images, or read about, because it does have rather amazing, colorful history.
I have been there four times and they all blur into one eventually, other than some of the changes there such as how Goa changed so quickly, that even the locals forgot to change the languages on their menus.
(more…)My last day in India has been spent around the Jangli Maharaj Road or Revenue Colony area of Pune. It’s a student area full of colleges, it has an old sunken temple carved from stone as if it were scraped from the very ground, there are vegetarian restaurants nestling across the road from McDonald’s where the students are getting a taste for Silicon Valley cuisine, the usual haphazard Indian streets where motorcycle seats are re-covered, sugar cane juice is sold and men stand chewing kat talking tough about Pakistan, how India is a tiger and the future is bright.
(more…)I arrived in Pune after a night bus journey from Goa to be met by the information that The German Bakery had been blown up. Some Swiss people on the bus had arranged to meet friends in there, a taxi driver told them that the Bakery isn’t really there anymore.
(more…)What can I say, incredible fun with one of the craziest french guys I ever met, Manu.
Firstly we drove through the Goan hills on roads that became ever increasingly appalling, then we threw ourselves down a canyon in leaps of up to 13 metres, abseils and slithers that left me knackered and a little bloody, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
(more…)It’s been a while since I have been in Goa and it has changed less than I thought it would in some ways, more in ways I perhaps cannot see. But I am a little wiser and am enjoying the bits I am seeing more and am willing to travel a little farther afield to see them.
(more…)I got approached whilst walking the streets to see if I wanted to be a Bollywood extra and I said yes, I was sure they would see my star potential and ask me to do something a little more Satjiat ray in the future, but for now it was to be 500 rupees for a day, breakfast, lunch and the chance to see how Bollywood does things.
(more…)I’m not sure if I like this place or not, but I get the idea that I’d love it if I stayed here for a year. I’m a bit of a sucker for old colonial houses, I’d have to get one of those – and a posse full of those locals that speak English in such a flowery way, using too many words because it’s fashionable, that use Nay instead of saying no. I’m not being sarcastic there either, I love it.
(more…)I went out and got drunk with my daughter and her friends at the MUWCI or the Mahindra United World College, but now it’s time to move on and leave her to get on with becoming an architect. She is on her path, am so very, very proud of her. (more…)