Oh Ship!

Just last week Jimmy handled a big shipment for the US troops going to Afghanistan. The blue, ochre, green and white “boxes” (containers to you and me) surrounding him contain all the stuff we consume, on their way to and from being made and being used. Banal toothbrush holders and bed linen, cool digital cameras and iPads or quirky components who’s function is known only unto the consignee and a mystery to the common man. To Jimmy they are all just numbers, corresponding paperwork with locations and routings.

He’s the saviour of the day today. Most days the progress of the Biotruck requires a saviour. Yesterday it looked like the loading of the truck on to the container was going to cost $1500. That’s for me to drive it up a ramp onto a flat platform container (a Flatrack), and for 3 guys to strap it down with steel cable. You expect to get fleeced when you go through a port, but even by international standards of captive marketeering/racketeering, this was way high. Thanks to Jimmy from Taiwan working on the port operations team on a 4 year contract, who took a liking to the truck, and to us, I was able to get a price more commensurate with the standard level of arbitrary exorbitance associated with the phrase “port fees”. US$550.

I spent the morning following a very important customs officer around his office while he clutched my paperwork. Occasionally he would turn to me and gruffly bark “one minute” with a melt-your-heart smile, while he surveyed and signed triplicate copies agents deferentially begged his attention for. I knew he was important by the way officer and agents fawned at his passing, bowing deeply, and laughing excruciatingly hard at his jokes, most of which I assumed were at the expense of my height or at our inability to communicate. I’d been passed slowly up the chain of command from one officer to the next as each one admitted defeat at the confusion over the paperwork I had and how to dealt with it. I smiled a poor helpless man’s smile to help deflect their annoyance and expedite my file up the ranks. From the second floor, end of corridor I was passed to the first floor by the lifts, then just passed the toilets, and finally to the big glass office behind reception to the burly boss.

At each the of encounters, the men in charge called upon the women doing all the work around them to translate for me. I’ve been hopelessly in awe of women in Thailand. Not because of their drop-dead looks, uniform short skirts, silky legs and 6 inch stilettos. But because they are infinitely smarter than their wallflower demeanour implies to my western man’s mind. In fact they are infinitely smarter than my western man’s minds, full stop.

I listen in the hostel lobby to an American meathead jock, attempting to impress the stunningly attractive daughter of the owner about how cool travel is, and how he loves Thai culture, and meeting Thai people. She politely listens while smiling with sweet interest, slowly turning back to revising for her final year Pharmacy exams without giving any impression she is disinterested in the conversation. Desperate to make more of a mark on her, he changes tack and decides to show some interest in her curious little books. Over a series of questions he slides into the realisation that this little hottie is on a university scholarship at one of the most prestigious universities in Bangkok.
“How did you get that?” asks Meathead, intimidation starting to infuse his faux-charm, as he realises she’s not the bar girl he thought.
“I study for exams” She beams back, seemingly shrinking him to dwarf like stature.

Ann at Maersk is another example. Frighteningly competent, she takes on the job of co-ordinating every aspect of getting the truck, and me, on a boat to the US, and I realise how far from the day-to-day of Maersk’s business this project is. Containerisation was designed and took off in the 70s because it makes everything from doormats to paint dye to DVD players the same, standardised, and therefore easy to deal with. The Biotruck was built with the un-apologising side effect of being the complete opposite. Too wide, too tall and too long to fit in with the backstage props the movers of the world are used to. None-the-less Ann relentlessly tracks down solutions to problems before they appear on the horizon. Working in a non-native language she speaks, not just great English, but fluent office-speak too, a language that normally makes my skin crawl, but coming from her is poetry.

Not only am I adrift with Thai, but I can’t get the international language of shipping right either. I confuse “Stuffing”, with “Lashing”; the all important “Cut off” I keep referring to as “Clearing”; and I don’t know my “Cubes” or “High Cubes” from my “Platforms”, “Flatbeds” or “Flatracks”. Even though the truck in “in gauge”, all of my linguistic hesitancy slows progress but both Ann and Jimmy don’t flinch. I give up when the acronyms start around the table. “The WCRS is fine but I’m worried about the ISF”, Ann proclaims. I don’t know what ISF stands for but if Ann’s worried about it, I know it’s important. I wish Ann could organise every aspect of my life.

The fact that filling and emptying a container is referred to as “Stuffing” and “Unstuffing” doesn’t full me with confidence, but the confident manner with which the giant forklifts pick and stack cubes like momentous Lego blocks is reassuring. Their un-human scale requires a conscious effort to remember they are further away than you think.

Tomorrow morning, in the wake of the night out Jimmy is planning for us around Pattaya (gulp), the truck will be stuffed onto the flatrack, in time for the Saturday midday Cut Off. On Tuesday it sets sail for Honk Kong and a 3 day lay over. Assuming we’ve got the ISF sorted, it will then be Trans-shipped on another vessel (not ship or boat!) to Long Beach, Los Angeles, USA. Sadly I won’t be on the first leg of the journey as it’s not a Maersk vessel and the owners didn’t want some beardy eco-warrior on board. We’re waiting to hear back from the captain of the trans-pacific vessel that runs the 21 day route to America to find out if I can join the crew and avoid the massive flying leg. Choosing her words carefully Ann said she is “hopeful”. In that case, so am I.

Without Prejudiced Eyes

I’ve just bought my first pair of cheap US$2 sunglasses and I’m over the moon about it, despite the fact they’ve effectively cost me $1500.

I’ve been recognising faint hints of bigotry in myself and some foreigners that live in South East Asia towards “the Locals”. At one of the schools I visited the English teachers talked about their diligent student with disdain, forgetting what delinquents they probably taught back in the UK.

At the BTS metro I witness a couple of foreign girls lose their temper with the gentle Thai clerk who can only dispense change, not a ticket, and tries patiently to explain this to them in his broken English. Not too long before, I’d done the same thing in frustration at not understanding how to buy a ticket.

I hear an American girl frustrated by staff at the internet cafe’s inability to repair an interruption with her connection mutters “I need someone white”.

Allegedly and tourism breaks barriers by bringing people together. But the evidence suggests it frustrates and confuses people by bringing them close enough to see they don’t understand the other, and that they don't have much in common.

But more than the language barrier, there’s a condescension from Westerners about these diminutive foreigners and their funny accents, which smacks of imperialism. And perhaps it’s mirrored in the Thai psyche, who seem to play along, affording much more respect to Western visitors that we deserve.

The Thai economy is trouncing the West’s, the levels of professional pride and competence are doing the same and so is the quality of life. I’m struggling to see what Westerners have to feel superior about. The balance has shifted since the 1940s. The big cities of Thailand and Malaysia are far from 3rd world.

Tom, a psychologist friend, says everyone harbours racist sentiments.

So wrestling with my own imperialist tendencies I decided there was no reason why I shouldn’t trust my precious eyesight to Thailand’s health professionals and I signed up for LASIK corrective eye surgery. I first thought about it 5 years ago in South Africa, but spent the money on a microlight pilot license instead. Then again I wanted to do it in Iran but didn’t have enough time. I was almost thwarted this time too as the Thai-ger economy growth here means that my hard currency is worth a third of what it was last year, so cheap medical treatments are correspondingly more expensive. However, by a stroke of luck I found a hospital doing a promotion for the month of February which meant I could afford it.

But the price was so cheap, I imagined some dingy backstreet one room clinic with a flickering neon sign over the door, and a cockroach scuttling across the reception desk.

I’ve never been to a private hospital before, so I’ve never known a level of care and thoroughness like it. Endless nurses bowing with praying hands, every surface spotlessly clean and leisurely consultations giving me time for every question and explanation. Even biscuits in reception. Yes, when it comes to trusting someone to slice you up, a few custard creams all it really takes to win me over. I can’t even begin to compare this with the “care” the NHS dispenses along with the faint scent of urine and infection.

Downloaded from a US medical association website, I started to ask the Doctor 50 questions to assess the clinics ability. By question five I was supposed to ask the Doctor if they were drug or alcohol dependent, how many malpractice suits they’d had filed against them, and if they were a convicted felon. I looked up from the list of questions at the impeccable professional demeanour of the Doctor, another 2 pages still to read in my hand, and smiled embarrassed “This all seems fine”. I folded the papers away.

“The lady’s done over 800 operations using this machine” I told Chris, realising that if she’d been a man I would have said “The Doctor’s done...”. Another example of my subconscious bigotry no doubt? Her reassuring manner mixed diligence with the confidence of experience. I instantly felt comfortable. Zap me I decided. I signed the waiver.

In Pre-op the nurse handed me a sealed envelope with the results of my compulsory HIV test. Before I could open it she told me they’d all read it assured me it was fine. Checking my heart rate and pulse on the monitor she announced with a grave smile “No Mor Blood Pressure”. It must have been the stress causing failure I assumed, I prepared to feel the life drain from my body.
“Is it bad?” I said weakly, with my last gasp.
“No.” She grinned confused “It’s Nor-mor”
“Normal!” I repeated a little too loud feeling my grip on life returning.

The day before, the doctor had explained everything she would do and how it would feel, then reminded me of it again before I went into theatre, and then talked me through it again as she performed each part of the operation. Following her instructions from the previous day I’d been practising staring at a spot. In essence this is all I really had to do while the laser guided missiles melted the surface of my cornea. I hadn’t been that good at it in training but thankfully my performance on the day was drug enhanced with a weighty Vallium slipped to me before kick off, by the nurses.

The first part of the operation involved the machine pushing down on my eye with the force of a Sherman tank in order to position the blade and slice my eye into Papaya salad strips. Next a laser from a 1970’s sci-fi movie performed a scatological light show to the smell of roasting flesh, and I just had stare back. “Excellent, you did really well” the doctor congratulated me as I slowly sat up from under the laser, surprised to discover that I’m better than the average person at staring at a spot while my shredded eye burns. The fact she undoubtedly says this to everyone did nothing to undermine the reassuring effect.

For the rest of the day and night I slept off the Vallium, waking every now and again to the sensation of having opened my eyes face down in a golf bunker. What have I done? What if it hasn’t worked? What need was there?

Before the operation the doctor explained the risks; 5% chance you get less than 20/20 vision and need to do it again, a 1% chance you might never grow back the nerves that stimulate tears. And 1 in 10,000 you get an infection and go blind. As I lay there listening to my anxieties wrestle with the diminishing level of tranquillisers in my body, I was more concerned that it might not work than the thought that I might go blind.

At one point I got up and stared out of the window at a skyscraper across the way. Through the cracks in my protective eye shields and the darkness of night I could see it clearly. The rooms, the balconies, even the air conditioning vents on the roof, surprised to discover that this laser thing might have worked. I held up my specs in front of my eyes. Holy crap! The world blurred into an indecipherable fug. Is that what I’ve needed to see straight?

I like my specs, I think I look better with them on, but I hate being totally dependent on these crappy bits of plastic. Every morning I have a full on panic attack if they aren’t exactly where I thought I’d put them. If they take a knock, a scratch or a dent I’m in a state of panic. Without them I can do nothing. I can’t even find my way to an optician to make a new pair. I resent the dependency I have on them for everything I see.

This morning however, the nurse peeled off the protective shields and the first thing I saw in glorious Technicolor was her beaming smile, the wrinkles in her forehead, the hue of her teeth, the creases in her lipstick, streaks of blusher on her cheeks. I looked out at from the clinic 18th storey window over the skyline of Bangkok, and I could see it all. Every last detail of this enormous city. Like an eagle. In the optometry room I easily read the line of numbers next to the label “20/20 vision” and could partially make out the line below. 3, 9, something, 4, 6. “20/16 vision” it said alongside the line. I don’t know what that means but that’s better than 20/20.

Back in the waiting room I was almost high-five-ing the cardiologist who’d gone under the knife just before me. The day before we’d both reappeared from surgery beaten and traumatised to our loved ones and hadn’t said a word. But today elated by sight we shared every nuance of the experience.

The doctor says I’m not allowed to wash my face for a week. For a soap dodger like me it just gets better. And now I can buy all the $2 sunglasses and I'm no longer petrified I might lose or damage them.

I’ve not been to a hospital as clean or as caring before. The professionalism of the staff goes beyond pushing the buttons on the laser. It was the reassuring psychology they used throughout, recognising my concerns before I did. On the way out they stuck a little heart-shaped badge on me to wish me good health. They’ve been calling me every day to check if I’m having any problems putting the eye drops in. I’ll be back later in the week to get my teeth done, and am trying to develop complexes about other body parts just so I can get them fixed too.

I have grown one healthy inferiority complex in Thailand. I’ve always believed that (although everyone in the world is equal, and all that), essentially Western European is the best race to be. We had The Greeks, Romans, and the Renaissance, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the best cars, the best looking and cleverest people, the tastiest food, and the best economy. Lately I’ve been having a big rethink, and although it’s too late for me now, I wish I was a bit more Asian. They have the best manner. I can see that quite clearly now.

Hippy

I was asked if I was a hippy again yesterday and lately I’ve been proudly answering yes, but I still draw the line at tree-hugger.

The 60’s hippies that drove to India and that danced at Woodstock, were acting on a desire to escape the values and job-for-life destiny of their parent’s generation who, coming out of the austerity of the Second World War, were revelling in a period of prosperity and technology advances that were creating a consumptive society. Sparked by the Beat Generation’s rebellion against the norms of music and poetry, the hippies rejected the norms of lifestyle, and clumsily developed an alternative way, founded on turning to nature and community.

When I started planning this trip, just before the credit crisis, the UK had experienced a 10 year stint of unprecedented prosperity, and developed a credit fuelled appetite for consuming. So I like to think that my escape was an attempt to reject those values, but like the 60’s hippies I have to admit that it was funded by that same economic growth spurt which has given me the savings and freedom to temporarily escape my “career for life” destiny.

Like the hippies of the 60’s I am playing the system, earning my money with a laptop, the internet and corporate clients and spending with a hippy bus journey. It’s a mistake to think that the bus loads that drove to India were anti-capitalist. They were savvy globalising entrepreneurs, long before Thatcher or Reagan made it fashionable or acceptable to be so. Journeys were funded by trading, just like Marco Polo centuries before. Selling auto parts bought in Germany to the Turks, selling spare seats to passengers on the hippy trail, selling Afghan weed to Indian lads, and then stocking up on Indian fabrics and silver jewellery to sell on the beaches of the Adriatic during the return journey.

In some ways I feel that this is where I’m failing my hippy badge. For 12 years I took cars across the Sahara Desert to West Africa loaded with Europe’s junk; broken fridges, auto parts, bicycles, Walkmans, and mobile phones, all to be traded and sold to fund the journeys. This trip hasn’t had that element of trade-as-you-go and I miss it because it’s a sweet insight into what the countries you visit need and what they have to offer. And if you can pull it off it’s a sweet earner too.

The hippy movement made a kind of resurgence in the mid 90’s in the shape of “New Age Travellers”, living in old trucks, squatting on land, and largely migrating with agricultural work cycles; from hop picking in Kent to winkle picking in Scotland, and then down to Spain for the oranges. New Age Travellers sprang from the rave culture but it also grew out of a rejection of the Loadsamoney culture Thatcherism was creating, so along with copious drugs and music, was active protest about social issues, like the Battle for Twyford Down road building, the Poll Tax riots, and pretty much anything else the Tories did.

And both movements arguably left their mark on their societies before their demise. The hippies of the 60’s settled down to merge with their Baby Boomer generation instilling it with a hint of liberalism and social consciousness as their voice blended into society’s voice. The New Age Traveller movement was largely smashed by legislation and then co-opted under Blairism into the mainstream but left an appetite for great music but moreover angry protest in the UK which still keeps the police on its toes.

I’m not sure that the Biotruck will have much of a generational legacy, but the green movement, which like the hippy movement has an interest in bringing society closer to nature and away from consumption, better had. In the meantime I'm reclaiming the term Hippy.

Small Town Boy.

While I take all the credit for this exciting expedition’s success or failure, the truth is that it has much more to do with the people I meet who either help me or don’t.

Once again been reminded of the good will this colourful bus generates and the importance of that for making this trip a success. It’s not the first time. In Dorset, Adrian gave up his weekends to crawl around the mud fitting parts for the engine conversion system. In Iran, Sammy took me in, acted as my cultural and language translator, and with Hamid scoured Tehran to find a solution to my oil crisis. In India, Prateek, my lawyer put up with my petulant fits, patiently helping me fight the forces of law and disorder, while Avi and the community of paraglider pilots in Kamshet adopted me and soothed my anger with their friendship.

In Delhi, Gurjit hosted me in his home while his mechanics pimped the bus back to life and made it liveable. That’s not to mention the people that have donated fuel, and time to help fix the bus, or the countless people that have waved and cheered the bus along the road, perhaps recognising it from the newspapers or just buoyed by its lively paintjob.

The day after we arrived in Malayasia with the bus battered from its shipping ordeal, we limped up to a garage. Big and well run I was sure this workshop could fix the bus’ problems; A growling wheel bearing, seized callipers, engine, gearbox and diff oil overdue for a change, a dead battery, and a host of electrical problems caused by a rat/mouse that continues to chew through new wires every evening. But I was also pretty sure that it would be an expensive garage bill. Gone are the days of cheap Indian roadside mechanics that can rebuild engines for a few dollars, but hopefully gone also with them are the days of repairs that last only as far as the next mechanic.

I was resigned to bite the bullet on the repair costs, but within minutes of arriving they had the story out of me; driving around the world, living in the bus, built it myself with the help of friends, run it on vegetable oil. Soon word had gone up the management chain of command to the boss who decreed that the work on the bus would be free of charge.

The next morning a couple of journalists woke us with the news that we were to have traditional Birds Nest Soup hosted by a local politician. We dressed and just before the big arrival, Jason the kindly owner of the workshop introduced himself and insisted on whisking us away for breakfast. It took a while to realise that as well as running the garage Jason also ran the Bird’s Nest restaurant, and the penny dropped that he was the local politician. The busy restaurant was full of journalists he’d invited for the press conference he’d arranged, and without even trying we’d kick started our Malaysian publicity campaign. On hearing about Christina and me recently getting together, he showered us with pink champagne to celebrate and offered me cigars and pledged a big meal that evening.

Jason owns a number of business employing 2000 people in a village with a population of 10,000. As we ate piles of crab and shrimps that evening, he passed me a fold of notes, “To help you enjoy Malaysia” he explained as I looked down too bemused by the significant wad of cash to show my gratitude.

The work on the bus continued for 4 days, any spare part I wanted was ordered, delivered and professionally fitted. The workshop guys bought us lunches and we traded T-shirts like World Cup players. As the newspapers carried our story, more interested in the round-the-world adventure than the environmental aspect, customers at the garage recognised us and they too bought us more lunches. We posed for countless camera-phone pictures while hiding any hint of indigestion.

I thought it was a fair assumption that in the same way as Star Fruit isn’t really made of stars, Bird’s Nest soup got its name from looking a bit like a nest. On the second day we got a tour of one of Jason’s aviaries where they farm the nests, and the factory where they are picked clean with tweezers. On the final day we noticed on the menu that a bowl of the soup sells for US$20. 1kg of nest is worth two thousand dollars. Under Jason’s hospitality we’d been casually munching it down like cornflakes.

Jason sat back after his last mouthful. “I love this village” he beamed contentedly, his mother looking on from behind the restaurant counter, his brother busily texting on his iPhone across the table. To someone passing through it would be hard to see the charm of Gelang Patah, a little industrial village on the edge of Malaysia, 15 minutes from the Singapore border. But it has a village feel with an uncannily close knit community. A friend of one mechanic heard I had a bike on the back of the bus and turned up unannounced to service it, while another took a screwdriver to my amplifier tuning the equaliser of the solar disco after hearing it distort.

In the UK I guard my privacy jealously. But the further I get from Europe the more inappropriate it seems to try to mind my own business. People walk in and out of the truck to have a look as if it’s a bus stop, catching me in my pants or picking my nose. I’m asked personal questions about my finances, relationships, even how I shit. But I’ve grown to understand the value of sharing yourself with the strangers around you, especially in small towns. It lets me join the community albeit briefly.

One thing that Jason and all the other people who have helped me have in common is that they love their homes, and have no yearning to travel, yet seem to have this admiration for those that do. This contradiction has been a mystery to me, but perhaps I’m getting closer to understanding it. While I’m ambitiously trying to understand how the whole world is put together, they are on a similar quest to learn the intimacies of their local world. Astutely knowing their way around their community, these amazing hosts are able and enthusiastic to show them off in its best light to strangers.

Another trait which confused me was the disinterest in the gifts I’ve left as a thank you. And here again I’m getting even closer to understanding. Their help hasn’t been offered in exchange for gifts, business contacts, or the publicity the truck can bring them, but it’s offered for the opportunity to be part something exciting that’s come to their town, and above all for the exchange of friendship with the new exciting people that have stopped at their door. I’m lucky to have met these amazing friends and have this network dotted around the world. The only regret is that I the friendships are short lived. Our paths are unlikely to cross again once I leave their worlds. The only solution I can think of is that sooner or later I will settle into a little world of my own. Seeing Jason’s contented smile as he announced his love of Gelang Patah made me feel that perhaps I could really enjoy that same feeling too, and when I do, it will be my turn to host intriguing strangers with birds’ nests of my own.

“Glad to be able to help you on your way” said Jason’s SMS text message as we pulled away.

Fight

I’d never been in a punch up before I came to India, unless you count chinning Paul Morianni’s older brother Karl, when I was 13 at the Pool and Snooker Club. He kept moving the balls just as we were about to play our shots, he was goading us. All 3 of us got kicked out. I don’t know which one of us was more surprised when I landed one right on his jaw. Brawling in a pool hall aged 13 may seem like an auspicious start, but that was the last time for me. I didn’t like the shame of being a cast out, branded a thug, and, moreover, I was always afraid my glasses would get broken when the fists started flying.


But tonight was my fourth punch up since being in India. Something is let lose in me, perhaps because of latent anger over so many things, or maybe just because opticians are so cheap here.


The first one I was really a bystander that tried to protect the truck driver that had just almost killed me and his assailants, but that didn’t stop me taking a few good blows. Now hardened by Indian time, I look back with wonder at my naivety.


Then there was the time I parked by a water spring, on a narrow road and the truck immediately behind me curved round into the oncoming traffic, instead of pausing, and blocked everyone. Within minutes there were 80 cars in gridlock, but the truck driver was working it out. I in the meantime, somewhat arrogantly, decided that it was the truck drivers fault, and even if I moved the bus down the road the problem would just repeat there, further from the spring, so I was already filling my bottles quick as I could. Another motorist realised I was the bus’s driver and after exchanging a few angry words during which I antagonised him with my lethargic I’m-not-raising-my-tone-so-there’s-no-need-to-raise-yours-with-me tone. He grabbed my arm and yanked me towards the bus. In response I splashed him with the open half filled bottle in my hand. He slapped me around the head. I saw it coming, and took it with an acceptance that I’d been an arse and deserved it. But then seeing that I wasn’t going to respond he hit me again. Again I saw it coming but because I thought the first blow would have been an end to it, I wasn’t expecting it I reacted too slowly and got a second sting to my face.

I don’t want to hit this guy, but I want him to stop. How? He swung again and this time, expecting it, I used the ample time for his backswing to palm him off by pushing his face away sending him off balance. His stumpy arms flailed short of my face, while I poked a finger clumsily into one of his eye sockets. That was the end of it. The crowd dragged him off, and I moved the bus even though by then the truck had worked his way round so there was no more need.


Then there was the truck that was trying to overtake on a really dangerous section of night road. I didn’t want to let him past until there was a place that would be safe for him to pass without damaging me. The honking and flashing continued for a few kilometres until he eventually forced his way past me and to teach me a lesson he swerved to ram me off the road. I braked and because my bearing was already seizing, skidded sideways towards the verge, almost losing it into a ditch.


I was livid, but calm. He raced off. I took a moment to compose myself, angry but accepting. No harm done. Then up ahead a train crossing brought the traffic to a halt. He dived up the opposite side of the traffic, something which is infuriatingly common in India, and seeing a moment to set things even, work on some anger release, and give the guy pause for thought next time, I followed. As the driver stepped out of the truck I tapped him hard with the bumper as I pulled up. I then jumped out and calm as an arrow in flight, almost nonchalantly you could say, I punched him in the throat sending him stumbling backwards down the bank. As he came back up it was clear he was blind drunk, making me even more angry that he’d almost totalled my truck, my home and my life. I would have left it at that, but in the moment I re-evaluated what would be appropriate given he was now a drunk driver, rather than just a bad one. Simultaneously the realisation flashed in my eyes that I could get away with more tension relief, free of the risk of any dangerous retaliation. I slammed his head against his truck as he walked around me. And after he got inside the cab closing the door for protection I landed another neat one on his jaw from the road. Around me other drivers looked on with a confused dispassion. The barrier lifted, we all drove on. I let him go first so he wouldn’t have to overtake me again. I felt calm and just. And smug. With hindsight I should have thrown his keys into the dark bushes and let him sober up for an hour while he searched for them.


Tonight I finally got some attention from one of the long haired brown eyed Spanish girls. Clara had asked me from the next table to charge her IPod in my computer a couple of days ago and I’d stuck some more music on it and copied all of hers. Now we sparked up a conversation about bad girl rapper Maria La Mala Rodriguez and ended up flirting, maybe a little too overtly, in a roof top bar. Until a fat stumpy bespectacled Indian man in a shirt and tie took her to be a prostitute flirting for trade. Drunkenly he came over from his table for one, and asked her if she knew Tantra.

He held out a pack of cigarettes, “A present for the lady”, who’d misheard the initial approach, and it’s meaning. He tried to push it past me to her.

“We don’t want it” I grabbed it and sent it sailing over the balcony down to some street sleeper below. But he stood his ground in the face of my competitive client actions, and continued in Hindi, with guttural ludeness in his words listing things, positions or acts that she might perform, or reasons why he’d be a better client. I pushed him away and he circled back to his seat across the terrace.


I sat for a minute processing what he’d said and how inappropriately mildly I’d reacted. It welled up inside me. “Vamonos Clara” I said “No me gusta restar aqi.” I filled up a glass of water, and walked to the door via his table while Clara took the more direct route through the busy tables sensing my mood change or that I was plotting something.


“Hello friend,” he smiled broadly, the sexual fantasies reigniting in his eyes as he sensed my approach brought new opportunities that tingled from his body. Up to then he was just going to get water in his face.


“I’m not your friend,” The glass’s contents doused him and the mobile phone held to his ear, and as he flinched in his chair, my fist followed the water across the table into the bridge of his spectacles, “you cunt.” I didn’t raise my voice especially. The next table wouldn’t have made out more than mumbled drone before I calmly stepped past him towards the door and Clara, who was looking at me with controlled shock, rapidly piecing together what must have triggered my actions. We both walked unhurried out of the restaurant, calculatedly returning the cheery “Goodnight” of the waiter who’d not seen the punch.


It was more than he deserved from me, but he did deserve as much. I kept imagining him explain his cut nose to his concerned wife.


As we stepped into the slow elevator down from the 9th floor Clara went from shock that she could be judged so, to anger around the 8th floor, to a sincere and formal thank you mid way between the 7th and 6th, and then a considered action, she reached up to me and by the time we reached 5 we were kissing, a long wet kiss that lasted all the way to the ground.


Punch the bad guy, walk away cool as a Bollywood Hero, and kiss the girl. My walk-tall lasted through the foyer to the street. “My boyfriend arrives from Spain tomorrow Andy” she broke it to me on the pavement before there was any awkward embarrassment over where we were each spending the night. It was the moment to say ‘Goodnight Clara’ and ‘Goodnight Hero’ but the moment to say ‘Goodnight India’ can’t come soon enough. With it, I hope, will be a goodnight to this unwanted aggression so I can go back to being the specky geek that runs from a fight.

Into the City

Trucks jovially roll around over the rough surface of the Countryside road. Here the tarmac is part of the land, laid down over and through the fields, its edges merging into the earth, and it’s path crossed indiscriminately by livestock and the mud tracks they leave behind. There’s no reverence for the road here, it’s another feature of the landscape, wrapped in clouds and birds, the things of nature. Tractors U-turn unexpectedly, or thoughtlessly bottleneck the road with their slow moving overflowing trailers. Cyclist and motorbikes react too late to release the width of the lanes killing the momentum of the trucks that grumble to pick up their speed again.

The pace of the road is slow and lazy, dwarfed by the massive distances that make each immediate moment of the journey too inconsequential, too trivial to demand urgency, too overwhelming to sustain the aggression needed for fast driving. At roadstops, drivers take a pause from waiting for their destination to arrive. Local workers are preoccupied with their own stories and the passing customers are merely forgettable details of their rich day.

Bright greens, blues, and yellows, fill the windows; colours so vivid only nature could pass them off as natural.

Then slowly the City nears. The tarmac improves. Smoother. The painted lines are sharper. Slopes and verges, appear. Fences, barriers, banking, walls, Arco, kerbs, railings, distinguishing the road from the surroundings. Intermittently at first, then more frequently, imperceptibly they form a permanent and lasting separation from the countryside. This road is heading into the City now, and the countryside with its primitive practices and backwards outlook, can only stand and watch it leave, indifferent to the betrayal.

The roadstops are often branded in this transition time. The theatrics of their wipe-clean colours and logos with sharp lines seem alienating at first, but quickly become the anticipated norm. Drivers are busier during thier breaks, with purpose and pressure. They are too rushed to leave an imprint of their lives and the staff too are kept by their role, dictated by their tasks, they give no glimpses of personality. They offer only foil wrapped, bite sized, single serving, predictable sterility. There’s no space for the irregularly shaped country fare on their rectilinear shelves.

The driving quickens as local commuters join the flow, powered by their intimacy with the City’s urgency. Encouraged by them, arrivals from far away accelerate with anticipation of their destination. A factory, then three houses, then a row of shops, incrementally the City starts to appear in the fields. The increased traffic demands more than the relaxed concentration of easy hypnotic driving and distracts while grey urbanity builds up, until a traffic light, or a junction stops everyone for the first time in miles and hours. It’s the moment to notice the City is all around. The road has unmistakably finished, replaced by streets who exist solely to position the City around them. There’s a short lived confusion over where the countryside went, but that soon fades in its unimportance, escorted by the failing memory of the countryside’s openness and freedom.

On the Road Rage Again

After a few people sensing my despondency, and several attempts to motivate and revitalise me, it’s an unlikely contender that gets my thanks for giving me and this journey a sense of purpose again.

The pleasure I got from staying put is hard to overstate. Despite an engine rebuild the bus continued to leak water, and I was nervous about 100 problems that might manifest themselves at any time, so my subconscious brain didn’t want to drive anywhere and did a pretty good job of getting my conscious frontal cortex to come up with excuses why I shouldn’t.

But eventually after a week I was able to tear myself away from the comfort of good friends, the good flying and a familiar routine. The bus started second time, not an ominous sign, but not a good one either. Nothing about being on the road again seemed enjoyable. Even less so when I crossed back into the chaos of India. Traffic, incessant fucking horns, chronic potholed tarmac, kamikaze oncoming 17 tonne trucks, and an instant scrape to the low hanging exhaust on a speed bump which means it needs welding, again.

A rickshaw slips back into the side of me as I’m driving past and instantly shatters the toughened door glass. It’s a sound that makes you want to duck for cover and I need a few milliseconds to understand what’s happened and make sense of the spiders web of shards that remains in the door. The rickshaw driver has the nerve to start out expecting me to pay for his bent rain cover, until he sees the extent of the damage to the bus, and while I’m sweeping up the glass he makes a discrete exit.

Getting the glass repaired is the even more tortured than I imagine. The absence of any English speakers means I don’t realise the glazier only has offcuts of toughened glass to offer. Toughened glass can’t be cut, so the job requires 3 hours of sifting through piles of glass looking for a piece that will fit, give or take a few millimetres. I don’t know this as I’m waiting in the now unlockable bus and expecting him to return with a cut piece ready for fitting in no more than 20 minutes so after impatiently waiting 2 hours I flip out and my stroppy fit results in the search pace intensifying, and eventually a tinted piece which acceptably wide and only 10cm too short is found and fitted, with another smaller bit wedged into the gap.

“If you want to charge me a westerner’s price I expect a western quality job” I tell him in English knowing my words mean nothing. I hand over 60% of the price we’d agreed pointing to the smear of silicon filling the gap between the panes and he accepts.

The next day I give the bus a proper check. My usual daily routine is to check the oil and water, then spend 10 minutes staring at the engine to see what there is to see. It’s hard to do that while you have people hanging around waiting to see you off, so it didn’t get one in Pokhara.

The coolant is down by 4 litres. The whole system only takes about 7. This means the leak should be big enough to spot easily, so I crawl around and sure enough its part of my heat exchange system and quick but dirty to fix.

So as I set off I’m feeling pleased that that mystery of the water leak is finally solved and in my head I’m calculating how long before I reach Calcutta and thinking positively about how the windscreen and exhaust could be repaired when I get there.

But the funny thing with the brakes that started yesterday evening is un-ignorabley worse today, and because I’m low on fuel I might as well fix it sooner rather than later, so binding brakes don’t increase my fuel consumption.

I pull over and my good humour is evaporating fast. This part of India is one of the dirtiest I’ve seen, and I’m going to have to crawl around under the bus. I’ve not got much Indian cash, and it’s Sunday so I can’t change any money, but happily I know the brakes well and can save on mechanics a mechanics fee, so I find a good spot and peel off the wheels myself and try to free up the blocked drum, but it’s just not releasing. After almost fainting in the heat, I give up and call a mechanic from across the road. I shouldn’t need to spend any money on parts, just a well placed smack with a hammer. I can budget for a mechanic with what I have in my pocket. Again the language barrier means he doesn’t understand the problem even though by now I’ve developed a creditable skill for understanding foreign conversations, based on context, hand gestures, facial expressions and the occasional English word that pervades every language. It’s like a vague but reliable sixth sense. Frustratingly my hand actions, which to me are clear and obvious, just leaves him staring blankly back.

I’m sick of it and I’m thinking fuck this, fuck this fucking truck, fuck this fucking country, fuck vegetable oil, fuck driving around the fucking world, fuck every Indian truck driver that ran me off the fucking tarmac today, and fuck this mechanic that can’t even understand me.

Deep breath. “I’m here because I want to be” I resentfully mutter my mantra which has become wholly unconvincing since I’ve been in India, but the irony helps me keep sane. An hour later the drum is off and the brakes have been stripped and checked unnecessarily, because the problem is the wheel bearing. Almost certainly as a result of sitting in a damp field for 2 months, near the drain pipe for my acid wee, it is pitted and therefore is ceasing, behaving like a blocked brake, and worse, the side with the etched part number has been scratched off by the rubbing so there’s no easy way of tracking down another one.

A guy comes to my rescue in more ways than one. He speaks terrible English but can understand some of what I say. I’m so relieved to be understood. It feels great. On the way into town to look for a replacement bearing we have to ride by his house to pick up his license and helmet. As I arrive in the little tenement farm, I’m first stared at with a fear that might great an alien landing but then the sister urgently wipes down the newest of the 4 plastic chairs and places it in the middle of the room for me. My hero sits in the second best chair against the un-plastered mud brick wall, and starts to tell the family the story of this treasured find sitting before them. I follow the gist with my sixth sense.

"He’s driven from England to our village ... his bus is like a house inside ... the number on the bearing is worn off." No detail is spared and his excited pace makes time for pauses that build suspense as he eyes each of his siblings and parents gathered in the room and huddled out through the doorway. They listen intently, consuming and savouring every word. The mother pulls her veil over her mouth and gasps incredulously each time the intonation merits. His eldest sister’s wide dark eyes flit between the words coming from her brother’s mouth and me sitting on my plastic throne picking out the details in my clothes and dirty fingernails that illustrate the story. The youngest five siblings vie for position in a silent wrestle outside, eager not to let their fight drown out any of their brothers words. Then the father asks why my driver isn’t fixing the car. “He’s the driver, and he built the truck,” there’s a pause for more gasps “and he’s an engineer.” says my hero, and the father turns his gaze slowly up at me with the respect a beloved king or emperor might inspire, shaking his head slowly at the wonder of the world and what man can do in it.

I’m glowing at the thought of how the story is being retold and embellished by the family to the neighbours and on. I’m not suckered into believing I’m a legend, but it’s motivating and humbling to be adulated, even for just a few minutes. While I’m lost in the frustrating challenges of this journey it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Later, on the way into town, we crossed the River Ganges, the first time I’ve seen the river. The bus has made it (almost) to the Ganges. Not bad for a junk bus that started from Thornton Heath.

We didn’t find the bearing and it looks like it’s a rare size which might need special ordering while I’m forced to camp in a disused petrol station. None the less I’m honestly back to believing that “I’m here because I want to be.”

Beautiful Energy

True beauty only exists in nature. That’s my stance in an ongoing debate with Rachel, an Israeli in Nepal for Buddhist meditation. Being as she’s Israeli, it’s good that we have something other than politics to argue about. Our one foray down that road leads to the whole restaurant stopping to listen to what turns into an aggressive shouting match.

Our friendship survived, only to be jeopardised again when she had the nerve to tell me the bus needs more colour, and proceeded to give me interior design tips. The idea of beautifying the physical manifestation of my philosophy of non-consumption/waste-consumption, with a lick of paint or some wood stain is almost as odious to me as the unfolding news of the Flotilla murders.

Next she accuses me of being a reductionist, incapable of appreciating art. I don’t see that as bad things. The world could do with more reduction. And anyway, I do appreciate art, for the ideas it presents, but not for it’s pure aesthetic as Rachel thinks I should. Its visual beauty is a manmade construct designed to manipulate emotions, and as Magrite said, C’est ne pas une pipe (This is not a pipe, this is a picture of a pipe). The ideas and history of artists and their artwork can be beautiful but how can you find their visual emotional trickery beautiful. Interesting, thought-provoking, but not beautiful.

Mountains are beautiful, and I don’t get to say goodbye to Rachel because she’s gone before I make it back from a stunning mountain trek which, for 3 days, bombards me with beauty. Not just beautiful landscapes, but beautiful ideas that are totally new to me, and ways of living whose functionality is beautiful.

It’s physically draining. My muscles tremble unable to turn my calories into movement strong enough to lift me up the path, or catch me as I descend down it. The unforgiving futility of dropping 400m and having to climb it again to reach a village less than a mile away batters my mental forces, and still my legs step on, sometimes so slowly I wonder if they are taking me anywhere.

I’ve never known a remoteness like this. My concept of time and distance can’t adjust to the world not being flat. I look at my map, and although the next village is close it could be hours away. The journey could more usefully be measured in terms of exhaustion rather than time, or by how much daylight will be left when we arrive, or by how much rain or sun we’ll get along the way, or how many rests the route will demand.

The second day is 8 hours of trekking, about the same journey time from central Rome to the centre of Milan by car. Walking on flat land you might cover 40km in that time. We finish the day 10km from where we started. Our first stop for rest is an hour into the day. I regain my breath as the sweat grows cold on my back. This would be the outskirts of Rome, motorway driving from here on, time to settle back after the aggression of driving through Roman traffic, set the music up for the journey, maybe a moment to stop for a cup of coffee or coke to fondle and keep me company.

As the crow, and rescue helicopter, flies, we’re never far from “civilisation” but the only way to get there for me is time and energy. I watch the eagles hovering perfectly still in the blustery ridge lift searching out a mouse or gecko on the ground, and dream of how much easier it would be to climb and traverse with a paraglider. Our 8 hour day could be done in 30 minutes with the right winds and an area flat and big enough to land.

There are no areas big enough to land. The only horizontal surfaces are the terracing, but they are so steep that the fields are tiny, barely big enough to lay a wing out, let alone land it. The work to make the terraces, drag a plough around them and move the plough and ox to the next one screams at me through the landscapes graceful tranquillity.

There are no internal combustion machines. It would take more work to get the fuel to them, than whatever work they could do. I’ve been to remote places in the Sahara, places that take days to reach, places that aren’t on the way to anywhere else, places so isolated that people have been transfixed, by my white skin and, in turn afraid then reduced to fits of laughter by my hairy arms and legs. But the difference is that here the remoteness is created not by distance but by difficulty.

The inconvenience of Gandruk and Goripani has created an infrastructure dependent on human and animal power because none of the alternatives we’ve invented are of any use here. It’s an infrastructure that totally sidesteps the things I am familiar with, roads, petrol stations, supermarkets. And it’s really good. It really works. It’s not full of compromises or cop-outs like most alternatives to the industrialised world. The whole way along the route people seem content. I’m sure it’s not utopia, but people are happy.

I’m accustomed to work, effort and labouring being the enemy, and conditioned to work, effort and labour only as much as necessary in order to avoid more work, effort and labour. Along the trek I see everything in terms of the energy it took to create with horror filled eyes. The natural forces that formed these mountains are countered by the forces of men that carried and laid the stone slabs making this never ending path, or by the strength of the mules that carried up the cement for the houses.

My morning maize porridge stares back at me politely reminding me of the effort to plough a field, harvest maize, grind it into flour, then collect wood and chop it for the fire to boil it into porridge. It’s full of calories in so many ways. Slowly my horror turns to the sort of respect that demands emulation, but my body doesn’t yet acclimatise to the pace.

We all have a base level of how physical our lifestyles require us to be, and this must be one of the most demanding corners of the world, but just like anywhere else, the kids play jokes and run up and down the path after each other on the walk to and from school.

They have electricity in places, created locally by small hydro-electric generators, and distributed by steel cables hauled up the mountainside and strung from small but heavy pylons, before being tightened by hand. Occasionally I see small solar PV panels, big enough to charge a radio or torches.

The last hour of the walk back to Birethanti is along 3km of roadworks. They are carving a road into the mountain. We time our run past a JCB on the cliff overhead to avoid the falling rocks and shale. Last month a local man was killed here. Carving a road through any landscape is an environmental holocaust; and in this landscape the destruction per mile is so much higher. It’s a thought that keeps me entertained when I am bouncing the bus over some shitty track, cursing the corrupt politicians for not having built a road yet.

It’s easy to be judgemental about road building, but roads bring healthcare, cheaper supplies and better profits for rural farmers. You can’t begrudge remote communities that. My magnanimity is made easier safe in the knowledge that there is no way man will ever be able to construct a road to Gandruk or Goripani. A thought, which along with the mountains that surround them, and the way of life there, is beautiful.

End of Season

Slowly everyone is leaving. Patrick takes the bus tomorrow, Charlie left before the weekend. Pero is planning his return to Macedonia, maybe with Peter, but now it looks like Pete may head to Austria instead. Brad is just waiting for his visa to Pakistan to come through, and Tom’s going back to India in 2 weeks. The only foreign tandem pilot left will be “Kite” but he’s a self-medicated weirdo with some unfathomable mental health issues and an involuntary shoulder spasm which means he shouldn’t be put in charge of a shopping trolley let alone flying tandems.

I’ve only been here 2 weeks but I’m so at home that when I sit on the balcony to use the wifi, not more than five minutes goes by without someone I know passing by and stopping for a chat. Evan the tiny Swiss solo pilot, Wally the Romanian, Bhupal the owner of Frontiers Paragliding...

My day begins when the sun wakes me around 7h30. I check the sky from bed. If it’s clear then I’m up and ready for the 9am jeep up the mountain, a bowl of low-rent cornflakes and buffalo milk sitting uneasily in my stomach. All the pilots sit in the back and we talk over the day’s flights and conditions. I love it. Really feel part of the team, even though as a beginner solo pilot I am in primary school compared to these university professors.

Depending on the lift I fly til midday. The conditions can be anything from totally still air to 15km/h winds, and the thermal lift fluctuates from none, to smooth, to leaf-in-a-tornado. My flights have ranged from 10minutes to over 2 hours including several visits to the cloud base, and I flew briefly inside the cloud. Total whiteout. The cloud base is quite low, which means doing any cross country flights is quite hard, so I am focusing on practicing finding and coring the thermals (circling in the strongest part of the rising warm column of air) and flying in formation with other thermaling gliders.

As I’m turning in a thermal I’m trying to feel if there is more lift to the left or right and making minor adjustments to the brakes to help me find it. After a few minutes of spiralling up, listening to the vario beeping contentedly, and eagerly watching the other gliders in the thermal I realise that while being totally focused I’m also zoned out. Suddenly wisps of cloud I’m heading into snap me out of the climb hypnosis. Coring the thermal is a chance for my brain to relax from the concentration of searching for lift, and as soon as it has an easier repetitive task it’s no wonder it spaces out.
On the contours of the hill, the shadow of the other wings rising round the same column of air form a swirl of ovals which gives you the satisfaction of knowing you’re probably in the best place for lift, as well as a glow of knowing your mates are there with you.

John, a retired ex-paratrooper from the UK and owner of the Safari Garden hotel leant me his vario/gps. Flicking through the logs stored in its memory, the longest flight is 2hours 17minutes. I’m trying to beat the best score on the instrument before I give it back. It’s become like an arcade game obsession for me. 2hours and 14 minutes so far. Three minutes short!

After I’ve flown and walked back into town with my wing on my back, I’ve got such a sweat on, I cycle round the lake to a place where I can swim and wash. Because of the rains, the level has climbed and the water feels smooth and soft. There’s still the occasional buffalo turd floating out there, but where I go now is much better than the dam outlet pool downstream of the lake. I’ve tried collecting rain water running off the bus so I can shower inside, and it worked really well at first, but I tried it again today and the bus is so grubby that the water I collected is brown.

On the last no-fly day Tom, Pero and I cycled 10km up the valley to swim in some rock pools which we never found, so we made do with the river and pretended it was where we meant to go.

For lunch I’m off to the “Cathouse”, the nickname Tom and I have for the restaurant where Catwoman holds court (see previous post Dharam-wit) although I think she might have left now, and I miss her. The place is like X-Idol without Piers Cowell. Over apple pie, Tom and I share our post-match analysis about the morning flights. Today we discussed coring theory. It’s like a cult meeting where we feel uninhibited to geek out about our thoughts on tandem spreaders, practical rights of way, pros and cons of using speed bar and how long it takes to clean puke out of a tandem harness.

After a nap, I check my emails, try to make some skype calls on the atrocious broadband connection, and finally it’s time for the nightlife, which mainly consists of sitting in one of two bars with Pete and Pero wondering if the girls they flew during the day are going to turn up. Statistically the (100%) safe money is on them not showing up, and my faith in these guys’ ability to pull more than a glider into the air, means and I’m currently down 100Rs.

I can’t imagine this being of any interest to anyone else, but I’m loving every minute of it.

The Reality of Dreams and Packaging Accomplishment

I was browsing the net looking at a long distance rowers’ website recently. They are currently embarked on the final stage of a 3 part journey across the pacific. Over the 3 stages the stated public aim of the journey seems to have shifted, from raising awareness of environmental issues to encouraging others to achieve their personal potential.

I’m always hugely cynical of projects which excuse themselves by “raising awareness of climate change”. Especially ones that require massive CO2 emissions to carry out this awareness raising. It’s a pretty rare corner of the world where people aren’t “aware”. However the media love this simplistic purpose and if you want the sponsors you have to play to the media’s tune.

My journeys have changed their stated purpose too over time. The chocolate powered lorry expedition was “the first ever carbon neutral expedition”. I’ve since come to hate the term carbon neutral with a passion. Short of sitting in a cold dark room holding your breath it’s pretty hard to do anything that’s carbon neutral. Every activity has some energy and CO2 or other Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission associated with it in some way. Don't get me started on the smoke and mirrors, and ethical subterfuge which goes by the name of offsetting. The planets systems can cope with some GHG’s so the aim is not to be carbon neutral, it’s to emit only as much as the planet can cope with. As it turns out that isn’t much but it is more than zero or neutrality.

Carping on about carbon neutrality is really unhelpful, because it’s an unachievable and unnecessary goal, like a five year old wanting to count to infinity. Count to a million, that’s enough.

A journalist friend of mine shared his theory on why the British respect these endurance athletes that perform these essentially unnecessary challenges in the name of saving the planet/inspiring others/any other equally pious reason. According to him, it’s down to the private school system which developed during the empire to create administrators that could go to the far reaches of Britannia, and endure the hardship. Getting a ruddy good hiding, wearing shorts through winter, single sex segregation, makes one into a jolly good chap. And these values have remained important to the British, and are at the heart of why rowers, polar explorers, mountaineers, jungle craft experts, the WWF Ambassador that just swam through lake Everest this week (to raise awareness for Climate change – Really, is it changing?) e.t.c. are so revered.

Playing up to this persona also lands you the cushy corporate speaking gigs, of which I’ve done a few myself, and let me tell you it’s the easiest money I’ve ever made. You talk for 20-40 minutes about what you’ve done and package it in a way that makes it relevant to your audience. I enjoy researching the crowd, and finding a way to make it relevant, but apart from that, the hardest part of the job is finding the venues with the appalling directions they invariably give you. (“Well you are an explorer, I’m sure you can find it”, Yes but I’m not a mind reader.) I really enjoy it, and I’m pretty good at it. I’ve had standing ovations, and I’ve had sober, intelligent adults ask me for my autograph!

High profile explorers charge “Ellen McArthur Money” as I once heard it described. £10-15,000 for an inspirational talk, but even those on “Andy Pag money” can get £1000 for 30minutes work. So there is an interest in managing your media profile to fit in with Britannia cliché of the explorer because it gets you on to the books with the agents. Maybe the Andy Pag money will go up now that I’ve been in prison. People love to hear about that. Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to package that experience into a few pithy anecdotes just yet. It’s still way too raw. There’s a process of sanitation, and post rationalisation that needs to happen between the adventure and the inspiring tale.

With this in mind I tuned into the rower’s YouTube promo video for their corporate speaking, ready to cynically pick them apart, but instead I was really inspired, and got a better understanding of why I want to be here on this journey, based on their retrospective musings and what they’d learnt.

A few things they said really hit home; firstly forgiving themselves for mistakes early in the challenge, because the person that made those mistakes didn’t know any better, and that person didn’t exist anymore, having grown into the new better person as a result of those mistakes. Also when things went wrong they came to think of it as a success, because they’d set out to leave their comfort zone and things going wrong meant they’d achieved that.

I can really relate to that. Part of my survivalist Britannia mentality is to see exactly how deep of a shitpile I can climb out of and still smell of roses, because being able to do that gives me the confidence to deal with any life choice I make, and therefore the freedom to choose any life I want.

Meanwhile I’m hanging out with the tandem pilots at Frontiers Paragliding, and the more I speak with them the more I realise these guys are literally among the best pilots in the world. They include the altitude record holder, an ace aerial photographer and the team that attempted the trans-Himalayan Odyssey. It’s the most exciting and adventurous end of the sport. These guys are the Top Gun of paragliding. They live the sort of free life, travelling to fly and work, that would inspire so many that don’t have the courage to break from the familiar.

But the most inspiring part of their life for me, is seeing that their day to day reality is just as full of shit as anyone else’s. They get all pissy about the working conditions, and the people they have to work with. They are continuously skint, spending as fast as they earn, they bitch that they haven’t had a break in months and are sick of eating this foreign food. But deep down they know they are living a charmed life. Importantly it’s a charmed life which no one has handed them on a plate, it’s a life they’ve chosen to take for themselves, putting up with all the discomforts along the way. Those discomforts may by now have been transformed into pithy anecdotes, but at the time they were thankless moments of hardship.

Their inspirational life stories are available for the price of a beer, and a plane ticket to Pokhara.

Dharma-Wit

Until now on this journey I’ve managed to avoid much contact with the freaks and geeks that make up the India-Nepal backpacker circuit, but here in Pokhara, the restaurants I regularly eat at is a big draw for them as well as me, so over meal times I get to hear the profound discoveries about the world they share with each other.

Most of the discussion tends to focus around how much they have paid for things, or “been ripped off” to use common parlance. There seems to be a genuinely held feeling that the whole country exists to service the needs of this naive flotsam with bulging wallets that do nothing but plead poverty.

Once in Camping Mousafir, the bottleneck stop for any overlander heading down the west coast of Africa, an elderly new-age-traveller, Fred, overheard some Quebequois youngsters telling a beggar that they had no money. Now it’s fair to say that the Québec accent is enough to wind anyone up, but Fred tore into them with gusto. “If you don’t have any money then fuck off back to Canada. Don’t insult these people by telling them you have no money. If you’re too tight to share your wealth with people who have nothing at least give them the dignity of telling them you don’t want to share it with them.”

It’s a logic that’s hard to argue with and since then I’ve never dared to tell a beggar I don’t have any money.

I ask a girl from Elephant and Castle if she is in Pokhara on holiday, “No I’m travelling” she replies without a hint of irony. I immediately and involuntarily adopt the most Brit-abroad stance on everything, including an overdeveloped cockney accent, and the urge to call her “darlin’” or “swee’heart” at every opportunity. “Oh yeah, so you more into all the culture ‘n that? Oh yeah, that’s swee’ darlin’. I like the culture stuff too, but me, I’m jus’ on me ‘olidays. I come for the cheap beer really.” She can’t get away from be quick enough.

Nuttiest of the lot is Catwoman. She’s maybe 20, shaved head from Bologna Italy, with an effervescent personality and a penchant for delivering eulogies on the merits of various diets. Just last night I had to listen while the entire restaurant sat enthralled by one of her lectures on the health benefits of Tofu Ice cream. She mixes Italian words in with crap she talks in English, making her sound so much more authoritative and worldly. I call her Catwoman because she carries a tiny kitten around with her in bright pink plastic basket, who she has christened “Meaowmeaow”. Meaowmeaow should actually be called Meaowmeaow the second, as Meaowmeaow the first disappeared after one of the local stray dogs (Woofwoof?) got hold of it.

Catwoman is only beaten into second position on the freakometer by the Ethiopian, who wonders around town with half a tonne of fabric wrapped in a beehive turban, and barely the tiniest stitch covering the rest of his skinny shinny black body. Sometimes he also carries a carved 2m stick which no doubt has some ceremonial importance, but more practically helps him hobble barefoot over the sharp stones. Now he might actually carry off a shred of credibility if it wasn’t for his unmistakable heavy Chicago accent. The fact that he stays in a lovely little hotel also leads me to wonder how he’s paying for his endless Pokhara sejour? I bet he sold a successful car dealership before the crash, or owns the franchise to a couple of McDonalds back in the US.

He is also a lecturer in the important things in life. “The dog is happy because he is not enslaved by the need to work in an office”. The lounging stray looks back angrily as the Ethiopian points him out with a prod of his ornate walking stick. I pray that the dog bites him back, but it seems it too is cowed by the Ethiopian’s aura of profundity.

There’s a trio of English Cougars here too patiently sitting out their 2 month Indian visa exile in Pokhara before returning to their homes in Goa. It’s not really fair to call them cougars, as I haven’t seen them with any younger men, but I think the only thing holding them back is their British reserve. They met in the restaurant and all 3 are radiant 50-somethings with beautiful long blond greying hair, smooth soft tanned skin and peaceful smiles. Very attractive, if it wasn’t for the fact that they sit each day transfixed by the Ethiopian, like devotees at the Ashram, slowly nodding and gently moaning in agreement with each new insightful revelation. “The sun puts heat in our bodies and warmth in our hearts” he says on a particularly hot lunchtime. Sounds like the horny Chicago car salesman is on the pull!

Last night, as I sit for dinner, Catwoman hands me a stapled menu of films explaining to me in Italian that there is a French guy who has collected all the best, most inspirational films in the world, and he’s trying to get to India but has run out of money, so is now offering to burn the films of your choice onto DVDs for a small fee. I flick through looking for a Steve Martin film where he plays a fake evangelist preacher, but I can’t remember the title. I’m also in the mood to watch The Wages of Fear in preparation for the drive back down the mountain but needless to say the films on the list are all far more worthy than my shallow search for easy entertainment.

The Scouse lads at the next table are curious about the list and not having understood the Italian explanation ask me what it’s about.

“Some lazy French chancer is trying to make a bit of cash by selling pirated DVD’s” I stop short of delivering a full lecture of my own to the restaurant which would have gone something along the lines;

“Not only is this weasel stealing the intellectual property of the filmmakers, people who he professes to respect and admire, but worse, he’s also stealing business from the Pokhara DVD shop 3 doors down the road that also sells all these titles. In the process, he’s depriving genuinely poorer people of their source of income. If this Dharma-wit really doesn’t have the money to get to India, then in the wise words of my old friend Fred, he can fuck off back to France.”

Gulliver's Travels

A moment of self congratulations if you’ll allow me; I’ve taken a scrapyard bus and driven it from Croydon to the Himalayas on waste. Reason to be proud, for me and for the many people that have helped me along the way.

If you’ve never met me you wouldn’t know that I am almost two metres tall. Here in Nepal I feel like Gulliver arrived back in Lilliput.

Nepal is fantastic. Calm and clean. Compared with India, there’s no litter along the streets, and grassy meadows butt up to the road. It took me a while to realise the sound of incessant truck horns are missing from the air, and the two day drive from the border I’ve only been run off the road once by oncoming trucks. Believe me that’s very good stats.

I was told before I got there that Indian women were beautiful. I think they can be, but only on the rare occasion they smile. Here in Nepal the women are stunning and it’s the second happiest country after Bhutan, so they, and consequently I, have a lot to smile about here in the land of the little people.

It’s strange to think that from here to the North Pole, it’s all communist. The country is potentially only a few days away from civil war. A deadline for integrating Maoist militia into the army is about to pass, but seeing as only a few months back they were killing each other, it’s hard to see how they will reconcile their differences. If the deadline passes without an agreement there’s a chance the country will descend back into fighting.

Pokhara is a little removed from the troubles, at least I’m counting on the fact it will be. If it does go bad here in paradise, the Indians will take 10 days to issue a visa so I can exit. So once again I’ll be screwed by the pace of Indians doing their work so diligently.

I was in Niger in 1999, while the government was violently oppressing a student uprising. A couple of the friends I’d made there worked for the UN and together we’d gone for a drink at the local five star Hyatt hotel. Sitting by the pool we had a view down over the river, and on the opposite bank was the university campus. Leafy, green and lit up by the occasional thunder flash and the sound of Kalashnikovs.

We’d unwittingly got front row sun loungers to the end of the revolution, with the waiter bringing us gin a tonics to wash down the show. If the fighting does come to Pokhara I half think it will be comparable. I’m parked in the tourist suburb, and the fighting isn’t likely to spread to this end. Being 21st century Moaists, they don’t want to jeopardise the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner. And even though the season is at an end, it’s still busy.

From here you can take the Annapurna trail, and this is where the climb to Everest starts. The reason I’m here, is that it’s also a mecca for paragliders, renowned for being one of the best sites in the world. Today I had my first flight. Amazing. At one point, as I was in the air tightly circling up on a punchy thermal with 2 other pilots and an eagle, the clouds parted to reveal Annapurna, the towering snow peak camouflaged against the fluffy cumulus clouds below it.

The tandem pilots here are world champions and world record holders. They lead a romantic life moving around the world, following the seasons like migrant workers harvesting the winds. They fly tandems to earn money and then spend it on adventures to fly outrageous peaks or on competition entry fees. In my eyes they are the real giants of Pokhara alongside the mountains.

In the sky they are very professional, but the pre-flight preoccupation amongst them is who’s going to fly which girl. Patrik, a handsome French acro pilot who speaks like the shellfish in the dentist’s tank of Finding Nemo, charms some Spanish girls into his tandem harness to whirl them round the sky. I land after him and we cross paths as I am walking back to the bus in town. I’m short of breath and drenched in sweat. He’s all smiles and relaxed on his moped, with the cutest Spanish girl on the back riding out to show her a “leetle playce” only he knows. Surf-bums of the sky.

I hear myself muttering, “if I was 10 years younger” which is quite a scary thing to catch yourself thinking. But even quicker I’m wondering what happens to these guys when they turn 40? Are they still eeking out a living flying tandems, or do they end up in a job selling photocopier supplies?

Unlike 5-year-plans would have you believe, life’s options aren’t that polar. Pero, a Macedonian pilot is thinking of going back to finish his degree, but he’s worried about joining the rat race and giving up this life. Tom the oldest pilot on the hill, who retired from his career several years ago and can still pull the splits in his late 50s, has given Pero the sense that this life is something he can always come back to.

Like Pero, I’ve always been petrified of what the future holds, planning and working towards a goal and anxiously worrying that I won’t achieve them. But then in a revelatory moment a while back I realised that I’d been worrying about, and then successfully achieving, or failing in those goals since I was at school, and the only constants was the anxiety, and the unshakeable fact that things always work out OK in the end, even if the plan doesn’t.

It’s a philosophy at odds with my pessimism over the environment and this sustainably fuelled experiment I’m carrying out, but ironically if I was worried about my personal future I wouldn’t be here, and I’m sure that destiny will provide after this journey and something will work out.

The Great Unknown

I did my first solo flight today. Obviously I’ve flown solo before, but this was solo in the sense that there were no other pilots around. I assessed the valley all by myself, and decided it was flyable. A young lad showed me the way up to a tiny launch site, barely big enough to lay out he wing, and below I picked out a number of options for landing fields.

I took off full of nerves, repeating mantra like; better to be on the ground wanting to be in the sky, than in the sky wanting to be on the ground.

Gentle thermal lifted me straight of takeoff but they also dropped me and it was hard for me on my own, with my skill level and with no other wings in the air to show me the currents to really get lift, so I headed out into the valley and there found plenty of turbulent thermals, which pitched and turned me. I was expecting it, but it was stronger than I’d thought so I found an area without lift and headed down and landed in nil wind in the largest unploughed field, edged by low power lines.

All in all a good, brief flight, though there’s a catch-22 that I would have enjoyed this first solo flight more if I’d been with another pilot to share it with.

I used to hitch a lot and in Panchgani I discovered that cross country paragliding requires you to hitchhike in order to get back to where you started. I’m so happy to have rediscovered this old friend. Just like being in turbulent air, where you only have partial control and have to manipulate what the conditions give you, so hitch hiking requires the same relinquishing of control over route, schedule and comfort. I don’t know why I love that so much.

The Good, The Bad, and the Oily

India is 5h30 ahead of GMT. Not six hours, not five, but five and a half. It’s a classic example of Indian attitude to the rest of the world. What with a large part of the world living here, what need is there to follow the accepted international norms elsewhere. India can set its own norms.

Some engine parts you can find the world over. I chose a merc for this journey because you can find Mercedes everywhere. Not in India. The dealership quoted me 10 days and €2000 for a set of pistons (a more usual price might be €200). I’d visited Mercedes when I was in Pune, to ask for sponsorship. Their big enthusiasm quickly waned into unanswered calls, and I did think at the time, that the understated sign that said “Mercedes-Benz, India” in that familiar reassuring font and colours, should really say “Mercedes-Benz, but India”.

A merc oil filter is, in most countries, like a dollar bill. Maybe not commonplace, but seek and you shall find. Not in India. They don’t have mercs, they have Tata’s. You want a Tata filter and you have a choice from original (made by Tata), branded aftermarket (made by someone else who knows what their doing), or non-branded (made by neanderthals with a big stick). None of them fit.

By complete coincidence Tata licensed the rights to my OM364 engine from Mercedes years ago, modified it slightly and stuck it in the most common vehicle on the road in Northern India. The 407.

Helpful to a degree, but the modifications affected the parts I needed (like the oil filter) so back to square one. It looked like the only option was to cut down a similar piston so it would fit.
Eventually the speculation about weather cutting pistons down would work was put to bed when Amitoj from Paulco Autoparts located the right pistons (albeit non-branded neanderthal ones) in Agra. The casting quality was terrible, the anodising looks like it’s been done by primary school kids, but they are undoubtedly the right size. Criticism aside, it’s worth praising Amitoj for achieving what in 3 days no other spare parts shop managed, and believe me they tried.

So with pistons in hand the story passes to Deshanka and Sanjay, my mechanics. By this stage I’d already been living in the side street next to their workshop/cupboard for 5 days with no engine in my bus, and jacked up so the shower wouldn’t drain.

Deshanka was feeling the pressure of the other mechanics who all told me he wasn’t up to the job of rebuilding my engine. This need to prove himself made him rush and bodge the rebuild at times, so I watchfully checked almost every bolt he put back in. Good mechanics aren’t the ones that know how to rebuild an engine, they all know that. They are the ones that take their time to think things through, look at the parts and bolts and be assured that they are putting back together according to a design and reason.

Sure enough the timing was 180degrees out and it wouldn’t start. The pump came off, we turned the crank and put it back on. Fired first time. All good. For now. Time will reveal any other rushed jobs Deshanka has done as they work lose, and bring me to a halt. On balance I think probably none.

Deshanka is 27 and Sanjay his apprentice is 22, both from the north of India, migrants to Delhi in search of work. I saw their poverty first hand. No money to put fuel in the borrowed motorbike, only 2 sets of clothes, they didn’t wash before eating and the whole neighbourhood had a cough which I too now have. They slept in their workshop and when the bench was full of my engine parts they slept on the floor with the mice. As soon as they got any cash they got wasted.

When I paid them $100 for 4 days work, they were ecstatic, and promptly spent a fair portion of it on food and beer, for us all, smuggling me into their workshop where the other mechanics couldn’t see us getting blind drunk.

Once again I’ve discovered yet another India. Within the borders of this country is an arrogant nuclear super power, a third world agricultural nation, a paralysing bureaucracy, a corrupt police state, a massive military machine, a bi-polar tourist industry, a hyper-materialistic middle class, a nation criminalised by their poverty and under-education, and an alcoholic urban slum. It’s hard to like or dislike India because all these countries are India. And strangely each one is largely oblivious to the other countries living superimposed over it. The only thing these India’s have in common is the kindness and generosity of their citizens.

I ask a foreign journalist here what the government does to help people. There are schemes to provide the super-poor with work and cheap rice, but on the whole the most an average indian can hope to get from the government is that it leaves them well alone.

I’ve got my passport now, and I’m off. Delhi is less than 400km away from the Nepalese border. One day's drive. But I have to wait till the end of the week to set off. Even a totalitarian Maoist regime seems attractive after 5 months here. Thanks India, it’s been real. After everything you’ve done, there is no way I will ever love you, but somehow, even though I should, I can’t quite bring myself to hate you.

Engine Failure

The engine temperature is slightly high, and the oil pressure is also high. Normally a warm engine would thin the oil and drop the pressure, and I’m low on power. With hindsight its obvious what’s happening. The oil has thickened to the point where it’s resisting the engine from working.

But at the time I don’t know so it could be anything. I stop and change the radiator coolant. No effect. I stop and remove the exhaust filter which might be blocked. No effect.

The temperature is rising and settles just under 100C. I remove the thermostat and clean the outside of the radiator. No effect. I check the connections to the gauges. No effect.

We stop for dinner, and when I drive off again, the oil pressure drops to zero. That’s bad, really bad.

I check the dip stick to see if there is any oil left. It’s there, but it’s turned to a rubbery tar, and is stuck to the dipstick like silicon or chewing gum. I drive on to the next filling station which thankfully sells oil, open the sump and nothing comes out. It’s all gone solid.

Finally it all makes sense. Engine oil reacts with vegetable oil, and somewhere in my engine there is a leak. It’s one of the reasons I check the oil every morning for level and thickness. I’d been worried about it thinning as it mixed in with fuel, but over the last few days I’d been reassured that it looked thicker, and put the thinness down to the variability in morning temperature.

I’ve been changing the oil every 6000km but this time decided to leave it til 10000km as I’m using an engine oil which is supposed to avoid this problem. After 8000km it polymerised. It’s hard to imagine what a mess polymerised engine oil is. It’s heat resistant and rubbery, and it sticks to metal like silicone sealant.

That night I managed to flush enough of it out with diesel. It will dissolve a bit in diesel. I then ran the engine with a mix of new oil and diesel to try to dissolve the rest, but after 500km arriving in Delhi the engine was still full of it, and, at some point it had already caused one of the pistons to cease.

So here in Delhi I’ve had no choice but to do a complete engine rebuild, with new pistons and cylinders. It’s major surgery. You can’t strip the engine back any further than this.

Thankfully it turns out that this engine was copied by Tata and is very popular here, but they copied it with a few modifications so not all the parts are the same. The big problem has been the pistons. The Tata pistons are a little taller than the Mercedes ones.

Pistons aren’t cylindrical. They are very slightly oval. They are cut on an OCUMA (Ovality Cutting Machine). It’s like a lathe, but as they spin the cutting tool vibrates slightly in and out creating an ovality which when in the engine means that that the piston deforms into a cylinder when forces of the exploding fuel act on it.

So unlike most things in India, you can’t get a backstreet mechanic to make a new one. But I can get the machine shop to modify one that is almost the right size.

Shaving 2mm off the top of the Tata piston will create a piston that will fit, but the risk combustion bowl in the top of the piston. When the piston is at the top of it’s cycle all the air is squeezed into the small bowl cut into the top of the piston. The volume of the bowl is critical because it dictates the compression ratio. The cylinder is one litre, and the bowl is about the size of a shot glass, so all that air is compressed down into that space before the fuel is added and for the engine to work properly the compressed air has to be the right pressure.

It’s hard to measure these things accurately but the bowls are almost the same size, however worryingly the new bowl, in the Tata piston, when cut down will be about 5ml smaller, which means the pressure increase will be a bit higher. This might affect the engine in a number of ways. Firstly the Injector pump might not have enough force to overcome the increase in pressure, so it won’t push any fuel into the engine. Secondly compressing air like that creates heat so the extra compression might mean the engine runs hotter than usual. Finally it might be too much pressure for the bearings or the crankshaft to take, and either might crack under the strain.

On my phone's calculator I estimate that with the original pistons the air is compressed about 24 times, so the pressure is 24 times atmospheric pressure. With the cut down Tata pistons it will be about 27 times. I’d really like a syringe to measure the volume properly.

To my mind this difference from 24 to 27 is nothing, and if anything will make the engine run a bit more efficiently, but the mechanics are petrified that it won’t work, and it can’t be tested other than by reassembling the engine which is a day’s work.

The guy in the parts shop looks at me horrified when I tell him what I plan to do. “Modifying pistons is not recommended” he tells me. No shit, Sherlock? Is that right? At first I’m stuck for words. Then I start to think of all the things I’m doing which aren’t recommended. Crawling around under my bus on some dirty street isn’t recommended, riding across Delhi in the back of a scooter without a helmet isn’t recommended, not taking anything for the cough I’ve caught off my mechanic isn’t recommended, and that's just this morning. Driving to India in a 21 year old shitty bus, dragged out of a scrap yard, and fuelled by all sorts of crap I’ve scavenged along the way is not recommended. I think increasing the working pressure of the engine from 24 bar to 27 is probably the least of it.

I think it will be fine, but I’ve got enough people filling me with fear it’s really put the doubt in my mind. So now I want to do it just to see if it will work.

The engine will either not run, not run for long, or I’ll spend the next 6 months being highly suspicious of every characteristic of the way it runs, then forget about it, then in 2 years time I’ll remember the pistons and realise it was all Ok.

Pene al Pesto

I order Pene al Pesto in a restaurant and for the time between placing my order and receiving the food I am in heaven, tasting the delicious familiar flavours and textures in my head, and delighting in the satisfying feeling that follows the completion of the heavy carb dish.

Of course when the food comes there’s a rude awakening from my dreams, It’s hard to screw up Pene al Pesto, but the restaurant kitchen must be running a masterclass on just how many ways it can be done; floating in oil, cold and dried-out pasta, half peeled garlic cloves...

After 4 months here in India, I’m not expecting anything less. I only ordered Italian food so I could live the brief dream. I didn’t for a minute expect it to be fulfilled.

In so many ways India dashes my hopes and expectations, and screws up my plans and schedules. The endless court case delays and the spiralling legal fees, the tandem paragliding lessons which never really happened. Paying extra for the bus that doesn’t go as far, getting delivered to the wrong side of town by the rickshaw driver that speaks no English, removing the oil filter which can’t be found in India.

Three times I’ve visited Pushkar for the final time, only to find I have to return. My next final visit will be to collect my passport which will have my exit visa in it. I’m not currently allowed to leave the country. I had planned to collect the paperwork I needed from Ajmer and take it all back to Delhi and get the exit visa there. Instead they kept my passport and told me it won’t take more than a week. My brilliantly thought out plans shattered, I will now have to take the 18 hour return train journey to collect my passport and once again visit Pushkar.

But this time I was pretty quick to accept my fate. I tried to argue my corner but these guys were adamant, and I had the sense that they’d done it before, so a voice in my head (I think it was my sister’s) said just go with it.

On reflection it saves me from 2 days wrestling with the immigration officers mofos at Jaisalmere House and the FFRO office in Delhi. And I quite like the Indian trains, they’re cheap and I can write my blogs and eat the variety of low rent restaurant offerings.

After the trial I felt things were far from over, and getting congratulations from everyone about how well I’d coped with it all was an extra frustration. Now 3 weeks on, I’ve raised the money back which I spent, the journey can continue, I’ve got my bail money back and in a few days I’ll get my passport too (they say).

So now, I’m reflecting on how I’ve behaved in my moments of stress. People are fascinated when I tell them I was in a Rajasthani prison, Indians and foreigners alike. I think they are curious to know what it was like maybe because they’d like to muse about how they would cope. I’d thought about ending up in a foreign prison before and always imagined I’d keep my cool. When it happened, I didn’t. With hindsight I’ve got a better idea of who the good guys were and who the bad ones were, and I often directed my anger at people who were helping me and on my side. It’s a testament to them and the Indian character that they put up with me.

But even the “bad guys”, SP Tak and Capn Jatinder of the Military Intelligence, were scared by the events, scared of criticism and jeopardising their positions. None the less, through their fear they stayed courteous (if not dispassionate) which is more than I managed. I’m not particularly proud of the hissy fits I’ve thrown along the way.

In my defence this journey was motivated in part by my anti-establishment desire to escape authority in all its forms, and in India I’ve singularly failed to do that. So I suppose the moral of the story is, if you do end up in a Rajasthan prison through nothing more than bad luck, remember just because it’s not your fault, it’s not everybody else’s either and if you want good Pene al Pesto, go to Italy not India.

Dialogue and Brake Lights

"Grumpy John", my travelling companion in the chocolate powered lorry we drove to Timbuktu, introduced me to a great car game. Road Kill Bingo. Everyone chooses an animal and each time you see a dead one in the road you get a point. I didn’t know that John had been conducting a little survey before we started playing and by going for donkeys I had no chance of beating him with camels or cows in West Africa.

In Rajasthan stray dogs would be the game winner for sure.

The back of trucks are emblazoned with the phrase “Use Dipper at Night” and various other safety instruction to following motorists, but few truck have working rear lights, and those that do are largely obscured by ornate metalwork grids to protect them. In traffic it’s a rare but relaxing bonus if the truck in front has working brake lights, otherwise full concentration is required to check for the unpredictable stops it might make.

The Pune blast in the German Bakery 2 months ago claimed 16 lives, all tragic and unnecessary losses of course, but I bet more than that die each week in avoidable road traffic accidents on the 200km Mumbia-Pune Expressway.

The terrorism fear though is so that every move Pakistan makes is diligently documented in the Indian press, to the point where I know more about what Pakistani ministers are doing, than Indian ones are (embezzling the IPL cricket money). The average Indian is more likely to be the victim of a fatal car accident that a terrorist attack, yet the newspapers aren’t full of campaigns against bad drivers, or poorly maintained vehicles, which cause avoidable deaths.

I share this idea, that the anger and venom reserved for Pakistan would be better directed at erratic drivers with Chetan, a fellow paraglider and retired media sales executive. He launches into one about Pakistan’s malevolent intentions, and how they manipulate the tap of terror to obtain political concessions. All the more reason not to give shoddy stunts like the Pune bomb the credibility it doesn’t deserve.

Technically speaking (from a military point of view) it was a lousy attack, a small blast, a soft target, probably carried out by 2 or 3 village kids from some backwater hicksville, too dumb to recognise the indoctrination and perversion of Islam their handlers have given them.

By responding with the derision it deserves the media could undermine the political influence of such an attack. Instead they launch into it and propagate it with outraged stories of a Muslim Indian tennis player marrying a Pakistani cricketer, decried as betrayal instead of heralded as a symbol of the potential for unity.

Dialogue with Pakistan will yield peace, just as antagonism will yield more attacks, but working brake lights would prevent even more deaths than Indo-Pak talks.

Not Long Enough to Drink the Water

The Union Carbide plant isn’t hard to find, everyone in Bhopal I ask for direction knows where it is. From the entrance it could be the entrance to a rundown city park. Four police officers lounge by the gate and explain that without a permit I can’t enter. Ten minutes later I’ve put 200Rs in an officer’s hand (at his suggestion), he’s pulled on a shirt and he’s doctoring the date on an old permit as we walk into the restricted area.

We pass functional low rise office blocks now abandoned with broken windows and a film of grey city dirt engrained in the plaster. Then, above the thin tree growth I can see the rusting scaffold of a chemical plant being reclaimed by nature, slowly strangled by lianas, trees and bushels.

When arriving in the city I’d half expected there to be an operating plant on the site, with a visitors centre and a PR department extolling the virtues of how safe the plant is now, and how the cleanup has been a big success. A sign of how I misjudged the scale of what happened here in 1984 and the anger that still exists at the injustice that persists. It’s well documented but it’s worth repeating the details lest they get forgotten.

Due to lazy maintenance, and miserly cost cutting, the plant erupted, as a series of easily avoidable equipment failures compounded to release enormous volumes of the active ingredient used in the pesticides that were being made there. The people of Bhopal were “treated” like a plague of locusts.

Union Carbide shirked full responsibility and the court cases continue to this day in the US and in India 25 years later. UC was sold to Dow Chemicals who have denied ongoing liability. Some compensation has been paid but nothing compared to the medical or socio-economic damage the accident caused.

As an engineer I felt it was important to see the mechanics of how the accident happened. The refinery was ravaged by fire and now a quarter of a century later the metal work is rusting and starting to collapse in places. There's little evidence left to how it all started.

The 3 tanks that contained the toxic gas that was emitted each sit not far from where they exploded. The first calmly rests on the ground 20 metres away from its original placement, it’s exposed flanges of shinny stainless steel are unaffected by the fire or the passage of time. The second tank has been housed in a makeshift hanger; presumably to avoid exposing it to rain that might washout the final traces of toxic sludge. The hanger doesn’t look as if it’s seen any maintenance since the clean up in 1985. It’s sagging and cracked.

The final tank was deemed to contain such a volume and concentration of toxins that it was decided that rather than transport it away or chemically treat it in place, the safest option was to bury it next to the hanger in a concrete coffin.

However after 25 monsoons, the poison from the disaster has still not been washed away, and in fact the moving earth caused by the rains around the concrete bunker is giving life to the deadly poison again. The concrete casing is clearly falling apart above the surface, and any civil engineer will tell you the same thing is likely to be happening below it. Forces strong enough to break concrete can bend, fold and crack the steel tank encased in it. In the rainy season, water will leach through the cracks washing the poison down into the water table 200m below.

Less than 100m away from where the 3 tanks sit, is a shanty town butting up against the 2 metre walls of the abandoned complex. The land slopes, and the water table runs, in the direction of the shanty, and the inhabitants have few options but to drink the water from ground wells.

Its little surprise then that even today the Sambhavna clinic, run exclusively for patients with ailments relating to disaster, and funded by charitable donations from the UK and US, still sees 150 patients a day, and have over 24,000 registered. Respiratory problems, caused by the release of the gas now rival eye, skin, liver and kidney damage caused by the affected water supply. The clinic also deals with, diabetes, cancer and children born with birth defects, all of which are at a much higher incidence in Bhopal than elsewhere in India.

The local government now delivers water from outside the affected area to bauwsers on the streets, but they aren’t replenished rapidly enough. Inhabitants jockey to fill cans as soon as the water trucks have passed, but are also forced to resort to the ground water pumps that should have been shut off.

In a city of 1 million, over half have had compensation claims accepted. The amount paid out is trifling compared to the impact. Victims have received between US$500 to €2000 for the most severely affected. A figure described as “Plenty good for an Indian” by a US executive of the company.

Goats, cows and wild boar graze on the site, and kids step through the cracked brick wall to play cricket in the clearings. The government say the site is clean and want to open it as a tourist attraction.

But there's no independent monitoring of the cleanup operation conducted by the Indian government with a one time payment made by UC and seemingly no maintenance of the cleanup. A report in December '09 by the Indian Centre for Science and Environment’s Pollution Monitoring Laboratory found 38 times the normal level of pesticide in the ground water 3km away from the plant. In the site itself they found pesticide concentrations in the soil is 9,866ppm. That means 1% of the chemical composition of the soil is pesticide.

Activists from the Bhopal Group for Information and Actions (BGIA) are in Delhi this week to lobby the government to stand by its commitment made in 2008 to set up the Empower Commission, to be run by an established victims group. The Commission is due to manage a budget of US$400m over 30 years. All six relevant government departments have agreed the plan, the only stumbling block is the local Madhya Pradesh government who see an opportunity in distributing the funds and want to manage it themselves, but, say the BGIA, have shown little in the way of track record of supporting the victims over the last 25 years.

In amongst all this wrangling to spend government money it’s easy to get distracted from the fact this was an accident caused by negligence, with massive consequences. As individuals, it’s too easy to be negligent, and most of the time it causes little or no repercussions, but as a corporation Union Carbide, now Dow, had an obligation to put systems in place to forcibly prevent negligence. More than reminding employees to keep on their toes, they should have had a management system and technical systems that made negligence impossible. The courts are deciding if they did enough in this respect.

Corporations working in the developing world are doing so because it’s cheaper. It’s cheaper because space and resources are cheaper, but the big saving is workforce and freer operating legislation. That’s MBA double-speak for lower skilled people working in less safe environments. Union Carbides' defence against negligence was that the Indian government didn't have sufficient safety standards. Standards which would have made it more expensive to opperate the plant. The lack of standards made the need for UC to negligence-proof thier opperation all the more important.

Dow, as with any quoted corporation, has a "responsibility to its shareholders". All those hardworking middle class savers and investors around the world, who knowingly or not have put their money and financial expectations in the portfolios and funds that contain Dow stock. Even if Dow were to put their hands up and pay out, (which ethically there is no doubt they should), it's the shareholders and not those who made the decisions that led to the negligence who'll be stumping up the corn.

Warren Anderson the American CEO of UC legged it to the US skipping $2000 bial, and has fought extradition to India ever since. After Enron and Madoff, the anger of America’s middle class 501 losers has encouraged the judiciary there to convict senior management to long prison terms for company crimes that they actively orchestrated. Corporate negligence is different from corporate corruption but the climate now exists to apportion blame the top management. Perhaps the fact the Bhopal trial has run so long, into this era where CEOs can't shirk their corporate responsibilities, will mean due punishment will be dispensed in the US to Warren Anderson, and the management team who allowed this negligence to take place. Or perhaps it will procrastinate further beyond the lifetimes of the survivors and the perpetrators.