We left Varanasi yesterday morning heading for Lucknow. 180 miles of driving along NH56 (National Highway 56). Mmmm, National Highway, 180 miles, 4 hours? Well that was our thinking but once again the Indian road system surprised us. The road was absolutely packed with pushbikes, motorbikes, taxi-vans, trucks and people. There were frequent stops at level crossings with long queues waiting for very slow trains. At one level crossing there was a work truck blocking our side at the entry to the crossing and another work truck blocking the oncoming lane at the exit. That would have been fine except that there was a team of workers (hence the work trucks) tarmacing our exit lane! The only way to exit the level crossing was to drive over the fresh tarmac!

Along the way we spotted some superb dung-piling:

I checked and India has only ever won one individual Olympic gold medal, I think they should be lobbying to get dung-piling included, they would definitely win another!

The NH56 is being upgraded at the entrance to Lucknow, a beautiful new flyover is being built. The problem is it is being built along the line of the old road so the old road is no more. The NH56 is now actually a dirt track through the woods alongside the unfinished flyover. So we took to the woods.

All of this was at times frustrating and at others hilarious, it took us 9 hours to cover the 180 miles but the final hundred metres to the hotel made it all worthwhile. There was a wedding celebration the same evening, here we are driving to reception through the red carpeted entranceway!

Today we visited Lucknow. Our first stop was the Residency. This once beautiful group of buildings housed a British garrison in the days of the Raj and is famous as the location of the siege of Lucknow in 1857 which signalled the beginning of the end of British rule in India. The British had been beaten in battle nearby and had retreated to the safety of the Residency. Here’s the brief story (click on the picture):

and a few shots around the grounds:

We were surprised to find that the obelisk above had been made from Cornish granite:

My Dad served with the DCLI in Bodmin! Bosahan quarry is near Falmouth, here’s a link to their website: http://constantinecornwall.com/bosahan/the-quarry/

The Residency also houses a cemetery containing the graves of some of those who died during the siege. The gravestones tell their own stories:

  a young wife

  a young boy

 a Mother and her two sons

Here is the gravestone of Sir Henry Lawrence who led the force which was routed at Chinhat and retreated to the Residency in disarray. Lawrence was wounded early in the siege and died of his wounds.

He tried to do his duty.

After the Residency we visited Bara Imambara, a huge tomb. The impressive bit is the array of corridors around the upper floors and the acoustics in the corridors, a bit like a whispering gallery. Here’s a view from the roof:

and down one of the corridors:

We finished the day of with a walk around the Aminabad area of the city, basically a maze of small streets and street sellers. We stopped for chai, made by this lady:

and consumed by this lady:

this was the view from our bench, not sure what they were discussing:

We walked some more and saw some goats in coats:

and a bejewelled goat:

On our way back to the hotel we saw yet another splendid building, there are so many in Lucknow, the city is an architectural and cultural joy:

And that was that. We loved Lucknow but tomorrow we will be on our way to Khajuraho, another Unesco world heritage site.

We reached Bodh Gaya early in the morning just in time to see the local police clearing the temple entrance of hordes of people who had been sleeping there. The main attraction in Bodh Gaya is the Maha Bodhi temple which is a Unesco world heritage site. The temple was erected at the site where Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment and is one of the four most important Buddhist sites around the world. This is the main temple:

The grounds were busy:

and there were plenty of people prostrating themselves, one guy had a counter on his wrist, probably aiming for his 10,000 prostrations a day, it was tiring watching them!

We drove from Bodh Gaya to Varanasi and navigated our way to the waterfront.

Varanasi is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and judging by the amount of rubbish lying around it probably is! We spent most of our time in the streets of the old town and along the waterfront by the “ghats” which are stepped sections of the waterfront each with it’s own character.

The waterfront can seem romantic:

Majestic:

Colourful:

Functional:

and sometimes challenging, two of the ghats are “burning ghats”, they are used day and night to burn the dead, one is for Hindus, the other for Muslims.

First the bodies are washed in the Ganges and water is poured into their mouths so that their final drink is from the river:

Then they are cremated. There can be as many as ten funeral pyres burning, the process is very raw and certainly more transparent than a western cremation:

We were told that everyone can be cremated except for five groups, children, pregnant women, holy men, people who have died of a cobra bite and lepers.The first four they don’t cremate because their bodies are considered to be pure, the lepers don’t get cremated because they would smell too much – very pragmatic!

So that was Varanasi, off today to Lucknow.

So we left Chennai last Wednesday morning (November 27th) and decided to crack on for a few days. Our plan was to drive, sleep and drive again until we made the 2,200kms to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Getting out of Chennai was interesting, we reached the bypass only for it to completely disappear and be replaced by a country lane. Eventually we found a road going north and for the next four days we enjoyed (and some times endured) the wonders of the Indian road network.

Some times we were driving on reasonable dual carriageways, at others on the worst roads we have ever driven on, strangely the transition from one to the other would happen within a few hundred metres. Here is a little gallery of things we were to see constantly along the way:

Here we are driving along a dual carriageway and a motorbike is coming the other way down the outside lane.

Trucks do the same thing.

So do cows, these were being herded down the equivalent of a national motorway!

and some times the traffic ahead is moving just a little slowly:

or not at all:

but then you do see some very quaint sights:

and some startling ones, at one point we passed probably a hundred young men pushing old bikes loaded with coal:

We were passing these bikes for miles, definitely young man’s work!

After Balasore we turned north-west and within a few miles our average speed dropped to around 10mph. The roads were absolutely terrible (this was a major road):

and became worse:

and worse, this steel cable had fallen off the truck parked to the side:

Eventually we made it to Varanasi with a few new Indian “Rules of the Road”:

1) Trucks can go anywhere. 2) Bikes can go anywhere. 3) Tuk-tuks can go anywhere. 4) Anyone can drive the wrong way down the road if it shortens their route. 5) Anyone can herd their livestock down the road. 6) The vehicle in front has priority, there is no requirement to use your mirrors. 7) Everything is acceptable.

Along the way we were often on toll roads (Goodness knows what they spend the tolls on, it certainly isn’t the roads!). There are toll stations every few miles with huge queues, when you get to the front you realise that the queues are caused by the fact that it seems compulsory for the person working in the booth to have a chat, enter the vehicle number in a computer(!!!), have another chat, chat to all their friends, get someone to walk to the front of the vehicle to check the vehicle number, take your 500 rupee note, insist they want something smaller, eventually accept the 500 rupee note, have another chat, give you your change. Around about the second chat the vehicle behind starts to deliver multiple blasts on its invariably impressive air horns. Blasts which the toll booth operator is conditioned to ignore. Made me think it would never work on the Tamar bridge!

Not sure this would work in England either:

Imagine a massive sign (this one was probably 20 feet high) on the M40 toll road saying that David Cameron was exempt!

Each of the four nights we had to find a place to sleep, we were quickly to discover there are no places to sleep, you just need to pull over somewhere and hope it will be peaceful. It never was!

The first night we pulled off the road and drove down a track into a quarried area, it was almost dark and looked beautiful:

Wherever we parked we attracted a crowd, even in places that looked absolutely deserted. The people just appear from nowhere. They also have a different sense of “personal space”, more like “communal space”. Often I would get out of the vehicle and there would be people almost pushing past me to look into it! It’s actually quite amusing and never threatening.

In the morning after our quarry night a lovely lady was standing outside and invited us to her home. She lived on a small chicken farm next to the quarry. We went along with her and had a super breakfast, curried chicken and chapatis! This was her, her sister and her daughter:

and this is the daughter (Anushka) preparing the chapatis:

and this was their kitchen:

As we were driving away we spotted these guys up on the rock side, another example of how tough the work is:

The second night we parked in an industrial estate, it proved to be a very industrial estate, we were woken earlier than we might have liked by the workers music presumably pepping everyone up for the day ahead.

The third night we parked up by a small lake:

We were close to a village and most of the villagers seemed to turn up at one point or another during the evening to check out the foreigners.

In the morning we were again invited to one of the locals homes, this time a young man who was a fork truck driver and was living with his mother, grandmother, wife, sister and daughter. This was the family:

They had a lovely house with a temple in the garden:

The final night we changed tactics, we decided to drive into a small farm and ask if we could park in the farmyard, that way we would get all the inquisitive bits done up front and then we could sleep without fear of further visitors. It seemed to work very well at first, we made friends, parked Elsie, spent an hour showing the whole family our pictures on the laptop (they were totally engrossed) and then went to sleep.

Unfortunately before long the local police arrived and asked us what we were doing, we explained and went back to sleep. About an hour later another more senior group arrived with the first policeman in tow and told us that we were parked in an area prone to Naxalite terrorism and would have to leave! We were in Jharkhand state, you can read all about the Naxals here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite–Maoist_insurgency

So having said we wouldn’t drive at night in India we had to drive at night to “motorway” and find another rest place (not easy). Eventually we found somewhere in a truck stop and went off to sleep. It’s amazing how well you can sleep with trucks driving past and horns blaring all night! I was left mourning the vision I had created of an idyllic farmyard breakfast with fresh eggs and chai. Oh well, next time.

Finally yesterday we made it to Varanasi stopping on the way at Bodh Gaya (where Budha gained enlightenment, revered by Budhists the world over) – but that can wait for the next blog!

So finally after a month of delays tomorrow we will be leaving Chennai IN THE TRUCK!

We have been tested along the way – by the shipping line who decided not to ship the vehicle, by the vessel itself which arrived in Chennai a week behind the revised schedule, by the fascinating people in Indian customs who seem never to have seen a carnet document before (I could say more).

But pride of place (drum roll) has to go to the person(?) at Southampton docks who decided to get into the truck and rifle through our possessions stealing whatever took their fancy. Shirts, T-shirts, shorts, trousers, tracksuits, waterproofs, all Leishia’s cosmetics (that’s a lot!), a multimeter, various tools, our malaria prophylactics (useful in the UK), our penicillin and even a couple of dry towels. This piece of pond life even ripped out a wireless tyre monitoring gauge, took our locking wheel nut socket (both of which are of zero use to him) and unbelievably stole the two AA batteries from the winch remote! He also tried very hard to get into a locked compartment where our main tool kit was stored. Luckily in that endeavour he failed.

(We know it happened at Southampton because the ship’s crew secured the truck with strops which made it impossible to access the rear doors. The left-side strop wouldn’t come off on arrival so the crew left it in place and I took it off myself after the vehicle had cleared Chennai customs. Several of the stolen items were inside that left-side rear door which was inaccessible after the vehicle left Southampton).

So we are not the happiest little bunnies in the world right now. Leishia is much more accepting of of it than am I but it will definitely be good to get moving tomorrow!

…. And never again will I ship a vehicle Ro-Ro!

So our shipping saga continues. If you didn’t know we were in the midst of a shipping saga here is a brief recap – originally we planned to ship Elsie to Mumbai, we were to fly in on October 24th, she was to arrive on the 25th, couple of days to clear customs and we would have been heading off to the Pushkar camel fair. That all fell apart when the shipping company decided to cancel the Mumbai stop, consequently they didn’t load the vehicle and instead back scheduled her to the next vessel (one month later). Had they told us any of that before the ship sailed we would have asked them to load the vehicle anyway and to offload her in Chennai – but they didn’t. We didn’t want to have such a long delay so switched Elsie to the next Chennai vessel due to arrive on November 13th. A three week delay but that meant we would get to see a bit of South India by train hence our “Elsie-less” journey from Mumbai to Goa, Goa to Bangalore and finally Bangalore to Chennai. Unfortunately the 13th has been and gone but the vessel hasn’t. Latest news is it arrives tomorrow (Wednesday 20th) so we are hoping to be on the road on Friday but frankly we’re not holding our breath!

We arrived in Chennai four days ago and are staying in a super hotel (the Ramada in Egmore). This particular Ramada is much like any other except that the staff are exceptional, nothing is too much trouble and they make these cute animals out of towels:

The front desk manager is a lovely lady called Sulekha who seems to solve problems as if she had a magic wand:

The facilities are great too which is fortunate because right now I’m spending about three hours a day in the gym. So as ever even this latest delay brings with it a silver lining, we seem to be the only people using the gym so we get exclusive use of excellent equipment and the steam room and I get a complimentary thirty minute stretch session every morning.

I took this little clip of the view from our window (with thanks to the Black Eyed Peas):

So what does Chennai have to offer? Well we decided to go to the eye hospital which was established in 1819 making it the second oldest in the world after Moorfields in London. There were some fabulous buildings and one operational ward with a few patients recovering from surgery. The ward was spartan to say the least:

We also went to the museum in the eye hospital but unfortunately the power was off so we couldn’t really see the exhibits. Also the curator seems to have stopped curating some time around 1947!

From there we made for the Government museum. Almost the first things we saw were this colony of fruit bats hanging in the trees in the grounds:

and this cannon:

Being a bit of an anorak I decided to look up “The fall of Tranquebar”. Turns out that all that happened to Tranquebar in 1845 was that the Danish sold it to the British so hardly a fall. But then I suppose if the sign had read “Cannon pinched during normal business transaction” it might not have been so interesting.

The most interesting exhibit in the museum seems to have been us – we were there at the same time as a huge party of school children most of whom plucked up the courage to come up to us and ask “What’s your name?” before running off amidst peals of laughter!

There was a small hall hidden away at the back of the grounds which we stumbled across. Inside was a photographic exhibition and all the photographs had been taken by a ten year old boy, Vishwak Shenon, who was there with his mother. Here he is:

We also went to the beach, I had heard it was several miles long so had high hopes that it might be good for running – sadly not, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere in Chennai that would be good for outdoor running. If you watched the recent Rick Stein India series this was the beach he came to to see the fishermen, it isn’t as glamorous as he managed to make it seem but it is interesting. The day we were there it was packed with people but there were solitary spots:

If you are a “Foreigner” the rickshaw drivers will always try to take you to a craft market or “government store” primarily because they get a small kickback for taking you and a big one if you buy something. Now and again we take the bait mostly because we quite enjoying cruising around the city in an open air rickshaw! We spent several hours one day tripping around and looking at Kashmiri carpets many of which seem to be a) massively overpriced and b) Chinese. Buying a carpet here is not for the faint hearted!

We also went to Fort St. George which was the original fortified base established around 1653 by the East India Company. The fort housed the best museum we’ve seen yet and this fascinating sign:

which pointed the way to this once grand house:

Today I went for a stroll around the local area. From outside it all looks pretty dire:

but once inside I soon realised that whilst some of the common areas are a bit grim the people keep their own little piece of the world as clean and tidy as they can. They are also all really friendly and want to talk to you, make you chai and have their picture taken! Here are a few shots I took:

 I love that spice grinder! satellite dish!

Anyway “moving on” here are a few signs we’ve spotted around Chennai:

A few days ago we reluctantly said goodbye to Palolem, took a TukTuk to the local train station and bought our tickets to Goa station. Our seats (ha) were in General Class and were great value, 45 rupees for a 45 minute journey – at that price Plymouth to London would cost about £3.50!

It wasn’t clear which platform the train was going from so we were reassured when we realised that there was only one platform. Reassured that is until people started to climb down from the platform and wander across the tracks to wait at the further track. Turns out they were catching the Cochin train from the other non-existent platform!

Our train came in on time and alongside the platform so no need for Leishia to manage a five foot drop in a pencil skirt! We boarded the train and I was immediately befriended by an old chap who proudly told me that he was seventy five and only had three teeth!

 Quite a moustache!

From Goa we were catching the overnight sleeper to Bangalore; last time we took a sleeper we were in class 2AC which I concluded must stand for “twice as cold”. This time we were in the same class but although the AC was running the fan wasn’t which made for a very pleasant journey.

We only had three days in Bangalore and they were pretty full. The first evening we met up with a local couple, Tautik and Rohini, who had travelled all around India in 2007. We first made contact a couple of years ago after I saw their slideshow, here it is:

Tautik and Rohini were a truly vibrant couple with a real love of travel. We spent a super evening together talking about their trip and our plans and I think by the end of the evening they were ready to get their rucksacks out and get on the road again. Quite late on in the conversation Tautik casually mentioned that he was a runner and had run a 75k ultra the day before! We talked about running then!

On Monday we went to the Bangalore office of our shipping agent. We spent a couple of hours finalising the import documentation for Elsie, hopefully everything is now in place for a smooth process in Chennai. We shall see.

Tuesday was fun, Murthy one of my old work colleagues now lives in Bangalore (his home town) and I had told him several years ago that one day we would make it to Bangalore. Murthy collected us from our apartment and we spent the afternoon and evening at his house. His wife Sandie cooked some spectacular dishes and we sat around all day chatting. Strangely enough the last time we saw them was at their apartment in Chicago when we did much the same thing!

 Leishia and Sandie

 Leishia and Murthy – smoking!

After dinner Sandie presented Leishia with a beautiful sari, picture quality is poor but there will be others during the trip for sure:

I felt as if I were going home with a different wife!

The rest of our time in Bangalore was all about sight seeing, first port of call was Bangalore Palace (the old Maharajah still lives there):

It’s a fascinating old building in the middle of the city but is in need of a huge dose of TLC as witnessed by what was once a wonderful conservatory:

and this beautiful lodge:

The best part of the visit was undoubtedly the audio tour, it’s just a shame that the place is in such bad repair, the original furniture is nowhere to be seen and the estate has been encroached on by badly built eyesores.

After the palace we took a TukTuk to Lalbagh botanical gardens, along the way we passed this happy chap:

Lalbagh is a real oasis in what has become an increasingly crowded city.

We were on our way out of the park when we came across this little gem:

What I want to know is what they do with it when it’s full!

And on the subject of strange sights, it seems you can buy anything in India:

Time to stop I think!

Well who would have thought a week by an idyllic beach could fly by so quickly?

This was our little piece of paradise:

 Ours was the hut with the white curtains

The beach is wonderful but one morning I counted forty-seven dogs and thirteen cows on it. I wondered how the cows found food on the beach then one evening we discovered that they don’t, they go to the local restaurants. This one visits this particular establishment three times a day – and they feed him three times a day!

As expected we have done very little apart from read and run. Some time towards the end of the week Leishia actually took to waking up early and running along the beach, she said she wanted to get her heart rate up, I said I knew other ways she might achieve that!

Apart from reading and running we spent the week supporting the local economy, we took a short boat trip, two crew and two of us, here’s the crew:

supposedly to see dolphins which I am assured these were:

somewhat distant but there were a lot of them, just very difficult to photograph with my Box Brownie. We also saw a couple of monkeys (not swimming though), this is going to be a bit like the “cat in the scrapyard” picture but trust me they really are there:

We frequented the local laundry, very different to the one we saw in Mumbai:

 Baldo and Area

and the local restaurants, Larry the lobster probably wishes we hadn’t:

 Larry looking worried

 Larry and lemon rice

We found a very kind tailor who turned the collar on my favourite shirt which means it should last me another twenty years. He also made Leishia a couple of dresses. For a moment I thought we were back in China.

 Nasir, dressmaker to the Gods

We also had a massage. I am used to deep tissue massages and I quite like them. For some reason we were talked into an Ayurvedic massage which, based on a sample size of one, I don’t like. I will definitely try it again just in case my first experience was an extreme outlier but being repeatedly smacked with a wet cloth drenched in old cooking oil didn’t do much for me!

On the subject of massages I frequented the local barber (which seems to be the only business in Palolem with an operational AC unit). The barber did a good job for the princely sum of 150 rupees (about £1.50) and then offered a head massage for another 150 rupees. Well I had the time and the money and some previous experience of such things so I accepted. It turned out to be a very odd head massage. He basically strapped a 240 volt motor to the back of his hand and with a big pad on the front of his hand proceeded to shake my teeth out. At one point he stopped shaking my teeth out and stuck his finger in my ear, deep in my ear! Then he did the same thing with the other ear. Then he shook my teeth a bit more. Then it was over. I think it was actually a jaw realignment process.

Not content with new collars, dresses, haircuts and massages Leishia booked us in for a pedicure (I swear we have kept the economy running here entirely with our own efforts this week). The pedicure was fine right up to the point when Leishia decided I should have my ears threaded. Wonderful. The girl who did the threading was the sweetest little thing but didn’t seem to have any problem at all inflicting what is basically a medieval torture technique. Anyway I survived and now I have babies ears.

We were lucky enough to be here during the Diwali celebrations, the primary celebration on the beach seemed to be blessing the boats. each family blesses their own boat in a small ceremony, they light candles and if you happen to be around at the right moment they give you a sweet 🙂

 The boat was named after the little boy

There were as ever a couple of hilarious incidents this week. The first was when one of the local beach dogs took a shine to Leishia. After a short courtship ritual the dog, clearly thinking he had made a sufficient impression, decided to mark his territory. Leishia avoided the waterfall with just inches to spare.

The second was also furnished by Leishia. We were walking along the beach and I said “They’re playing cricket over there”. She responded “Yes, there are two games”. “Where’s the second?” I asked. Proudly she pointed at the second set of stumps and said “There!”. Kept me amused for the rest of the day!

So that was this week. This evening we are taking the sleeper train to Bangalore, we are in class 2AC, the same class we were in on the sleeper down from Mumbai. There are six beds arranged as bunks with strategically placed curtains. Each little cabin has aircon and a fan the combination of which is ferocious. I concluded that 2AC stands for “Twice as cold”. The cold actually kept us awake which didn’t really matter because the chai sellers did a fair job of keeping us awake too! What joy 🙂

So if you are wondering about the lack of updates the reason is that choosing between blogging and reading hasn’t been taxing! We are in Palolem in southern Goa and the beach is terrific, I have a video of it but the internet here is as slow as the pace of life so that will have to wait.

We’ve been lazing around since we arrived in fact the most exciting event of the last few days has been today’s cricket match so that shows how unexciting everything else has been!  That said Leishia did meet some of the locals last night on our way to dinner:

which was terrific, prawns and crab:

and by the time we left the tide was in so the last few steps on to the beach were fun:

This morning we met a few more locals:

and chanced upon probably the best house in the village:

(The swastika is very common here as a Hindu symbol of good luck, rather than what it came to represent after the Austrian corporal hijacked it in the Summer of 1920). 

I spent the rest of the day watching India beat Australia to win the series 3-2 which the locals took as a Diwali gift. Fantastic match. Leishia had chai and cake, that girl knows how to spoil herself!

The chai and cake girl is insisting that I put something in this blog about me losing our room keys on the beach – so now I have!

Oh, and my questionable boat trip negotiating skills.

But I’m not going to say anything about her paying ten times more than she thought for my new shirt. Those pesky decimal points. Not such a bargain after all then!

Yesterday was an interesting day. We spent the morning at the High Court admiring the building and listening in on a few cases. We wanted to fly the flag for the aphorism  “Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done” (Lord Hewart CJ, 1924 apparently) so we went to court to see it “being done”!

Although we could certainly “see” justice being done we couldn’t actually hear much of it. The courts were incredibly busy, people going in and out all the time, lots of standing up, huddling and sitting down again and to make matters worse the judges and barristers generally spoke too quietly for us to hear. Shame really because some of the judges comments we did catch were quite memorable. “Look, I’ve ruled, you’ve lost, learn from it”, “You come here ill prepared, you fail to make your point and you attempt to make another point instead. This is not the first time I have seen you act this way in this court. Case dismissed!”, “This is not advocacy, this is not nice, I will not continue this discussion.” Almost made me wish I was a Judge!

In the afternoon Leishia went for a sleep (something to do with those G and T’s perhaps?) so I went for a three hour walk around the back streets of the city. Luckily it was a sunny day so I mostly knew which way to go. These are some of the sights I saw along the way…

(click on a picture to blow it up)

  ornate facade

  more people than windows

 fantastic old building lucky it was dry!  more meat! the local kite shop  and more meat! mostly bananas  great carts  the local car breakers  could you fix this Kev?  the girl is washing pans, the guy laundry  look at that trolley, fantastic! I’ve got a bike just like this!

 smiley little lad 🙂

The last picture above is another of the pigeon feeding stations. Apparently they are  “Kabutar Khana” which translates as “Pigeon shelf”, the belief is that pigeons are unable to take care of themselves without human intervention and so to feed them creates good karma. I might spoil my own karma now but it seems to me these Indian pigeons must be a lot less self-reliant than hardy European pigeons!

The building in the background of the picture is the local maternity home!

Well that was Tuesday. Today (Wednesday) we are leaving Mumbai on the night sleeper and heading to South Goa for nine days where I suspect we will do very little to blog about, at most I foresee a story about me running along the beach or Leishia lying on it.

So this could be the start of ten days radio silence!

So Monday proved to be another fun packed day in Mumbai. Fun like meeting our shipping agent and our vehicle insurance agent that is.

Our inbound shipping agent is Yatin Ganatra (end2endglobal.com). His office is barely 50 metres from our hotel which was helpful, as was Yatin. He helped us organise the inbound process and even arranged our accommodation in Bangalore and Chennai! He was very excited when we met him because Diwali is coming up (Sunday Nov 3rd) and he has ordered a new car which he collects on the Sunday.

We arranged our vehicle insurance through the West India Automobile Association whose offices are also a short walk away. Abdul Kahn was our contact, he was very thorough and made sure we left with exactly what we needed. Here’s a picture of an unusually serious looking Abdul:

The afternoon was given over to watching cricket, there is a huge cricket area in the central city area and there seem to be two or three games going on whenever we walk by.

I should probably wax lyrical now of the satisfying thud of leather on willow and of ladies preparing cucumber sandwiches for tea but since neither of us qualifies as a cricketing aficionado I’ll resist (Leishia doesn’t know how many balls make up an over and I don’t know my gully from my silly mid off!).

One of the teams playing was from the Kishinch Chellaram College and as we were waiting for the cricket to progress (not the most dynamic of games!) we read through an examination paper the students happened to have with them. I thought my English was OK but what about this for a question (number 20 if you care):

“The world won’t care about your old defeats”. The figure of speech used here is a) Simile b) Metaphor c) Metonymy or d) Synecdoche.

I’ve looked it up and I’m still not sure what the answer is, thank goodness I’m not eighteen!

So after the English lesson we trundled off to dinner and shared quite simply the best Indian starter either of us had ever tasted, special prawns. Look at these little lovelies:

followed by a very acceptable mixed vegetable dish:

and a very colourful finale:

all washed down with a bottle of Kingfisher. Well, truth be told, Leishia enjoyed one too many G&T’s (i.e. two!) so she was on form for the rest of the evening.

And that was that, shipping, insurance, cricket and dinner!