Sean's Travelogues

[MishaK]

California Criminal Defense Attorney, are you Sean's lawyer? 

And he can't write a grammatical sentence? WTF is this even supposed to mean?:

I agree that English has been good to be the open foundations!Thanks for sharing.

[Sean]

Two travelogues, this one from earlier this year and the one in blue from a couple of years back, including an introduction.

Arrived in Guwahati in Assam, east of Bangladesh- great to be back in India with its cultural strength, self-assurance and continental scale, a fourth visit for me; right away the clean lines of the old modernist airport buildings are a tonic, solid, mechanical, transparently functional. Good to see men in regular sensible shirt and trousers like mine even if everyone's dusty to greater or lesser extents- the culture has more outward stability than the merely dismissively, iconoclastically free Thais and their sometimes too casual Western clothes and ideas.

I get past the taxi men for the bus to town; no foreigners on the flight from Kolkata and I see only two or three on the streets out here, these states being the least visited with their location, separatism and border problems. Guwahati is a regular busy town with a buzz and intensity on the street and the usual rich scents of incense, cooking, diesel and humans. Big cockroaches in the room and persistent mosquitoes but fortunately not too hot so able to sleep under a thin blanket without bothering with my net: admirable creatures, unswattable clever anaesthetizing blood suckers.

Next day I get a shared jeep to Shillong in Meghalaya the next state south, a town at elevation with hills around: once out of the sunlight it's cool in the day with some thunder, lightning and rain, and cold at night. Plenty of tourists from West Bengal and other parts of India filling the hotels up and making me try half a dozen to find a cheap room. Happily they speak English as the lingua franca with the Assamese and Meghalayans and I have to admire the widespread bilingual abilities, even if the English is garbled and with strong accents and there's a tendency to speaking brainlessly fast, thinking they're proficient when they're virtually incomprehensible.

There's an awareness that India's slowly developing, standards not being quite as shocking as only a few years ago, if still with harsh living conditions and poverty in urban as much as rural areas; I walked past two very young children sleeping together under a plastic sheet on the kerb of a busy road outside a good shoe store, one of the workers there looking on- really horrendous. At least here though there are fewer obvious homeless than there were and people even spit in the gutter; rather than only stalls, enclosed shops are now also more frequent, but food and hotel prices have little increased.

There isn't the same hassle on the street as in much of the rest of India, the people less used to foreign travellers; still have to bargain and negotiate attempts at overcharging but no great problems or cause to be very harsh back to them: fixed prices for shared taxis and jeeps are normal. The girls are more visible, their beauty expressed in better clothes including Western styles; there also are more small Suzuki cars than rickshaws and not so many cows, but plenty of Hindu shrines about alongside Christian images. Shillong has the typical three or four storey buildings with narrow streets just a few metres wide of great aesthetic interest in the way they connect and branch off, seething with richness and detail.

I consider going east before north but decide on back to Guwahati for Tezpur northeast of there: the towns don't seem to lag behind the rest of India and lack much noticeable influence from the neighbouring countries here. It's rural enough travelling interstate though, with roadside villages of thatched roofed shacks and flimsy lath walls, buffaloes pulling ploughs and people getting by with next to nothing; by the fields are artificial rectangular ponds or tanks and the Himalayas fill the horizon. Driving is poor, overtaking approaching bends and brows of hills- I saw two tipped-over lorries on the roadside in ditches. Lorries often have tremendous character, plastered with contrasting colours, designs and religious symbolism and lettering, while pop music blaring away in the public buses has the same frenetic ongoing ceaseless quality as the people, and richly textured as the society.

Changed euros for a good rate at a bank while the armed guard there tries to convert me to Christianity, lost in its antagonistic dogma and prescriptions even though I tell him I know all about it; Hinduism's openness by contrast has the achievement of subsuming self-righteousness by positioning any version of god as one more of many possible expressions, giving people meaning without making them fight. Tezpur is smaller, more relaxed and warm, and again without people pestering or hard selling me; there's a nice lake at one end of town and I take a quick swim in the Brahmaputra river, firstly only me and one other bather then many. Notwithstanding the importance of development there's obvious contrast in the simplicity here and the West's endless material trappings and wasteful trash it wants to think is needed for a good life but isn't.

Bus it to the next town and then 20 minutes further holding onto the back a jeep, getting off at a track turning off the road in the middle of nowhere, hoping I'm in the right place for some accommodation for the national park nearby. I walk alone a couple of kilometres down with thick forest on each side to this safari-type lodging, cajoling them to find me a spare one of their fixed tents. Early next day I take a walk in the jungle with a German traveller and ostensibly an armed guide; this place is described in the idiot guidebook as for gentle walking and bird watching, the rhino and elephant park being much further away.

Our guide's blithe incompetence was soon evident, telling the German I'd gone with another group when I was sitting a few metres away and he'd just said good morning to me. Taking a little boat across a river we pass through an office building, that I'm later shown has walls damaged by elephant attack, to sign in: there were a few birds to see but then the fun started- we scared off a wild boar and disturbed large tree-jumping monkeys before the guide asked if we wanted to try another concrete view-tower a short way off the path. It was completely unsafe, the decaying columns and stairs only just held up by rusting steel within and bending when walked on, and there was no way I was going to climb it. Then he mumbles that we can carry on rather than return to the main path, which I knew was only indicative of a confused mind with no proper plan, changing the route on a whim and I shouldn't have gone along with it; by contrast earlier on he'd said there was no path when we wanted to continue, and finding there was.

Soon we're walking through deeper grass unable to see where you're putting your feet and then have to make our way back to the river through an area of thick bush in parts well over head height. I see an elephant about 100 metres away then another at about 50 metres which sees us, faces directly and flaps its ears; I've been on safaris before but the two fools I'm with have little concept of the danger and want to stop and take a photo instead of smoothly continuing to walk away, reacting to its presence as you should never do. Then a few minutes later there's a herd of buffalo at the top of a rise meaning we have to make a sudden appearance on them and who all again stop and look up at us: I'm arguing with the guide and trying to communicate with his rubbish English and to my disbelief the German and him then turn to the huge creatures and make sounds to get their attention, standard prohibited action.

The guide is no such thing, knows nothing whatever and no doubt his gun's fake, has no idea how to fire one and his brown uniform likely purloined from somewhere. I know India better than this and kick myself- of course there are no standards, only lies and garbage and all I'm thinking is how to get out of here: all the time as we walk there could be big game behind the next clump of bushes and if it's startled and sees us unawares or we inadvertently walk between it and young, it could attack and kill us. Elephants are resourceful with keen awareness of their environment, wild buffalo notoriously unpredictable and aggressive, and tigers are sighted in the area: I've rarely been so unsettled, constantly looking around.

The guide hadn't seen and wasn't even looking out for the animals, had no sense of risk or procedure and surely no licence; he also refused to talk to me in the bush and just walked on, stopping and thinking typically being beyond Indians- I really went nuts at him later, even though I felt sorry for him. It was a vehicle-only park but had no roads or trucks so to make money was being offered for walking tours. There are few times here when you can defer to wider authority- you must just think for yourself and insist on your own judgement, the society just not being that developed and offering much more limited a contract with the individual.

Tried to get a train from Balipara, a small town south of the national park: interesting walk to the station stuck out from the town but it turns out not to be on the main line and trains are infrequent, so back to Guwahati via Tezpur on a local bus and another cool off in the Brahmaputra, a second river in one day after the one in the park also. The rivers are immense but gentle with calm surfaces, in line with the rest of the meditative life-enhancing environment and peace in the chaos; the locals stare and stare, seven or eight standing on the banks looking directly- foreigners are as fascinating to them as them to us but individuality isn't so understood or respected. Couples in the park are proper and decorous, a product of Islamic and Christian imposition far from Hinduism's understanding of sexuality and the sacred, now sunk beneath the culture's surface. And they don't believe what they're doing themselves.

Tired but found a good budget hotel not too far from the station back in Guwahati after buying a cheap sleeper train ticket to Delhi, leaving in a couple of days. The Karmakhya temple outside the town is dedicated to Sati, consort of Shiva and an incarnation of Shakti the personal female Godhead, concerned with blood sacrificial offerings and menstruation: there are ongoing animal killings and goats tethered around, and the place smells of blood with blood up the walls inside- it's also painted in deep red colours. Not a large temple but very busy particularly with women and long queues to the sanctum; on the bus on the way a group of women sang hypnotic repetitive chants that I recognised as sourced by American minimalist and Indian music-influenced composer Philip Glass for one his operas.

The Delhi train takes 36 hours, more than two thirds of which taken on the first half of the distance; it left three hours late with no other Caucasians as far as I could see. Serious poverty from the window as it leaves town including filthy tents in vast areas of rubbish: India will continue to see this while there are always more people to absorb development- people have children instead of building on what they have.

As with almost all the restaurants in the towns the train serves nothing but sickly oily lukewarm dahl, a kind of weak curry, plus boiled dry white rice but I manage to get some eggs and bananas out of them; to my surprise the people on the train thin out west of Allahabad and Kanpur. The warm evening sunlight glows in beautiful gentle colours and fabulous mystical flat plains disappear off into the distance: other countries have similar plains with farmland and clotted trees but without the spirituality- hard to say where it comes from. The refined aesthetics of figures cycling in the distance are all of a piece with their environment and the immensity of Indian culture behind them.

Arrived 1am at the main Delhi traveller ghetto of Main Bazaar Paharganj, the street deserted and dark with most places locked up, shrugging off the touts and commission creeps. Touts seeing you with a bag guess you're looking for a hotel and approach and lie to you saying places are closed, full or with gangsters or rats or whatever, even as you walk up to and into them- to get you to a fraudulent and commission paying place. And the only time the average rickshaw driver would take you without difficulty to your hotel is when they know it's indeed closed, then feigning surprise and getting you to pay for that journey as well further ones: never give the name of a hotel to a driver anywhere in the developing world, only a place nearby. Travel's problem solving requirements involve a constant level of stress, with ongoing concerns about your money belt and bag next to you.

Trekked over to the Pakistan embassy in the morning and got my no-objection letter from the British embassy a short walk away, costing £65 for a few lines with a stamp on- they have a nice reciprocal racket going, just better-spoken on the British side. India ten years ago was a harsher experience with greater culture shock, intensity and aesthetic impact, its colossal soul more clearly presented, with travellers necessarily more sophisticated and worldly, tougher and with more character. Now there are more fake Caucasian Hindus smoking stuff with their predictable clothes and hair that only their little traveller identity-clique wear- my shirt, trousers and shoes at least are more Indian than their nonsense; package tourists are also seen coming for novelty value, bringing their phones and rubbish and getting roughed up.

The great far-out, relaxed rooftop restaurant meeting places of Paharganj are now more Westernized with more orderly systems, well dressed waiters and individually organized tables, and are hence less sociable with the tremendous sense of freedom and interaction replaced by a gaunt unhealthy quiet- the world changes fast. Indeed on Paharganj now there are shops for tourists rather than just traveller goods, drink stalls, cheap food places and immediate needs: it's less amenable and the loss is sinister but it seems Westernization is nonetheless being successfully subsumed, all as many past invaders' cultures have been.

And good things of course include in buildings and roads less grimy, transport less dilapidated, pollution in some places a degree less, people less desperate and better dressed, and queuing a touch more orderly such that you can leave a little more space without someone pushing in. The air pollution in Delhi is still severe though and gets you coughing, and its crushing living conditions and oppressive noisy character are stubborn; moreover the apathetic messy environment reflects the blurry, indistinct Hindi language. A Hindu procession of a band and a dozen floats of gods pulled by all-dressed up cows came through, augmenting the chaos and dangerously forcing the crowds together at the sides.

Go down the Pakistan embassy again and pay for the visa at a nearby bank- very expensive at £95 plus that dumb letter. Also a stupid interview where some insecure Muslim on an anti-Hindu tirade tries getting me into a religious argument- you can't reason with someone who's taken an arbitrary set of prescriptions as fundamental, heading off his and anyone else's critical space. It's only a rough and self-important check though that I'm who I appear to be, asking questions about my teaching in Korea. I have to return a third time for the visa after the weekend; a couple of genuine and interesting Western travellers there also applying the same.

The embassy foolishly makes me use one of these men outside on the pavement sitting at desks with Gandhi-era typewriters to type on the form for another 50 rupee (80 pence), thinking a typed form kind-of looks good regardless of the usual total Indian lack of accuracy: the typist confidently has no concept of attention to detail, the Dionysian culture without complement of linear focus of mind. He can neither read the basic details in the passport nor copy them, misspelling most of the details and typing my British nationality as Ireland: I tried spelling out loud for him but no matter how clearly I dictate, at no point does a concern for even hearing the names of the letters correctly occur to him. He has his pompous status, so any key typed will do just fine and I quickly stop correcting him; he doesn't understand English much anyway. Marvellous blitheness with no idea that accuracy and detail have relevance to the world.

I also found two African embassies, having been thinking about taking a flight to see some more over there after I'm done in Asia- I have a map, information and expensive malaria tablets with me but DR Congo embassy after a long hike has closed or moved to some location I can't work out, and I eventually decide to leave it. Went over to the Akshadam temple now one of India's largest, out from the city centre- to the end of the new metro then two buses and a hitched bike, though found I a single bus back. The metro of course contrasts strongly with the street level disaster area and it's only the marginally more affluent using it, despite the low cost: they barge onto the trains somewhat but otherwise it's orderly enough. Metro rules given with the tickets include Do not travel on the roof of the train and Do not jump over the ticket barriers; the stations have Thai style concourses and Bangkok skytrain-type sections but elsewhere with pleasantly square and dated modernist lines and beams, happily preserving a 1970s feel and resisting postmodern anything-goes decadence. Many of the new road upgrades and shop layouts in the town though are also all Thai.

The Akshadam is recently completed but not so genuine and does Hinduism a disservice: it's architecturally fine and on impressive scale but made of fake stone material and featuring commissioned paintings, sculptures and designs of low artistic value, simplistic and with stylized and indeed offensive Victorian propriety and piety. The descriptions under them in trash unchecked English provide simple and entirely unconvincing messages, unlike usual subtle Hindu iconography and very complex Vedic texts. The presiding deity is a guru who died in 1830, deifying people being no problem though because we're all on the level of God and praying to another person who achieved some personal spiritual development is still praying to the same divine in yourself. The guru's been misrepresented but I said a prayer and gave a small donation; a lot of security here and I was questioned for journal writing notes while drinking soda at a table later, near the ridiculous food court with MacDonald's overtones. The place is even located near a huge motorway- it really doesn't add up and leaves a poor impression; a few other Westerners only.

I buy an inexpensive but quality leather belt from Paharganj and encounter more Indian inaccuracy when returning later to ask for holes to be punched where I'd carefully marked them to be. The vendor was entirely incapable of even looking where they were, keeping the hole central or at regular intervals, or showing any sense of making a neat job, and in moments he'd ruined it; the holes in belts in all the stalls are likewise bashed in by hand over the place, all that leather spoilt. They're fascinated by anything with detail and precision, such my journal's small handwriting or my adhesive taped-backed passport copy that I showed when buying train tickets: the amazed official said how people wouldn't have the patience for such a thing, even though it only took a few moments.

Moreover part of the demented mystification and consternation over Westerners' bags is the different small and detailed things they contain, Westerners' detailed activity, including even tying a shoelace or cleaning your glasses, bringing the same response. From my side I admire the self-containment and restraint of the average south-southeast Asian, their smaller bodies also meaning their movements are neater and less ungainly.

Buying stuff still involves dealing with manic shopkeepers who won't let you browse without pestering, bamboozling and rushing, trying to unsettle your judgement and prevent you from declining and walking on. They're anxious to make any sale and are consistently flurried and hyperactive, even though for those with much prudence of course their rusing has the opposite effect and you avoid the whole situation best you can. With the huge population and endless number of competitors in every line of business, individual urban tradesmen feel it's more in their interests just to defraud the present customer rather than try to establish a good reputation. The Delhi buses as usual have great character with popular music of frenzied screeching intensity and hypnotic fascination in the harmonies and instruments' rich singing quality, the roomy bare metal interiors providing a fine acoustic; stickers on the windscreen and fastened down pots of flowers and gods' statues on either side and the middle of the dashboard happily obscure the driver's view.

Seeing you approach the pre-paid auto rickshaw booth, the auto and cycle rickshaw and taxi drivers mob you and lie their heads off about prices to get you to go with them, even while you're at the counter- while no one including the booth staff thinks there's anything wrong with this practice, the idea being that if you're clueless enough to believe any of them then that's up to you. Indeed even the booth of course consistently tries not to give you your change or give the wrong change, but at least the booth exists now and there's a grey uniform for the prepaid drivers so you don't get diverted at the last moment. Getting angry though always seems wrong and they don't understand, and not least because you're a rich foreigner in a poor country and anyone might have to do the same: composure is important throughout the wider region and rightly so, you only raising your voice when you really have to.

Going to Pushkar for the weekend via Ajmer, finding what looked like a nicer company for a night bus. However it was still uncomfortably hot at first and I had to soak my shirt and put it back on to cool down, and sit in the cab for a bit with the driver, all while the oblivious locals pull blankets over them and close the windows; the seats were also uncomfortable and I wished I'd just gone to the main bus station. On many long distance buses though even where people are sitting down and can't move much it's a writhing mass of confused interaction and noise. Asians and Africans with dark skin have different physiology to Europeans, giving them much greater heat as well as sunlight toleration- they sit and chat happily, drinking hot tea in environments that would send Caucasian's body systems out of control and kill them; babies likewise do fine wrapped up in extreme conditions whereas white ones would be screaming.

Pushkar is a magical small isolated town with rugged mountains and hazy vast plains all around; its lake has a remarkable spiritual quality, from certain angles just one glance at it being a real experience, particularly in the evenings with the ravishing sunlight glittering on the surface and bringing out surrounding colours. Late afternoon past the worst heat I take a walk up one of the hilltop temples- great views with the vastness of India stretching beyond the town; India's deep peace and order just under the chaotic surface even realigns the body organs into place- very purifying.

I came this way in 97 when I saw only a handful of foreigners in five days here, the experience far more intense and powerful with rougher conditions, fewer locals, herds of animals, a few ruined stalls with bananas, roads in the town of impacted dried dung and almost silent with even little motorized traffic: today tourists crowd numerous hotels and streets of stalls sell silk, bags and souvenir rubbish, served by a noisy main road while diggers dredge the lake- even the former mangy scrawny cows and camels look more respectable. The atmosphere in Pushkar was completely unforgettable and indeed life-changing, yet is now no longer quite the same and indeed forgettable: Indian and developing world towns generally get more alike and the question is how far modernization can be put to cultures' advantage.

What will happen isn't yet clear but India's identity still looks too strong to be submerged, as others have been: if India can use development and it not use India, in the future it could culturally and spiritually lead and re-illuminate the world. Neon lights for example are immediately put to religious use for temples and aum signs rather than just advertising and trash culture. Poverty and the enriching experience for the Westerner of seeing it isn't integral to the culture, it's just that with less Westernization some of the culture's qualities are more easily manifest: poverty may give rise to intensity but not necessarily. Indeed part of the culture of course has been repressed since the medieval with the Muslim and Christian overlords but the Vedic core and its suffusion through society has persisted.

India's undeveloped and uncompartmentalized Dionysian interaction brings asking of potentially compromising personal questions such as concerning your job, income, the cost of your flight ticket, which hotel you're at or where you're going: it's often merely their idea of being sociable but you need to sidestep it regardless of offence it may cause or they profess it causes. Commonality is a fine thing but needs the right application, even with the alternative as in England for instance with its Apollonian articulation having gone so berserk the social norms take everything a stranger could say as basically unacceptable and wrong, people remaining in the same sorry cliques for years on end. I have a few hours in Ajmer and walk up to a major Islamic mosque pilgrimage site, the streets jammed with people but with some pretty lighting overhead: didn't go inside as too risky leaving my bag and shoes at keeper counters, particularly with these throngs. Some wild boars around.

Get a night train to Delhi with an upper class sleeper for a change, the same layout but everything nice and clean and only the sellers coming by being those working on the train, not grubby pedlars, wretched filthy Dalit floor cleaners wanting tips, blind singers, maimed crawling beggars and so on from the stations en route. The trains' exterior these days are painted, red and cream in the present case, instead of the uniform brown rusted metal a few years ago; I meet a couple of Israelis.

Back in Delhi I buy a cheap overnight rail ticket for Haridwar but the breakfast cheese tomato toast made me too sick and had to sleep at a hotel back in Paharganj, rooms only £2 with junkie types dazed all day: the hotel offers me some, not that I smoke at all; penalties for possession are steep. Your senses need to be as sharp looking for a place to eat, ideally one with many customers and a high turnover of hot food- you must be entirely ready to make your excuses and leave for elsewhere if there are bad practices or you sense them struggling. Special care is needed when you can't see the kitchen, as in most restaurants- Indians have dubious sense of particularity over kitchen cleanliness, indeed many restaurant kitchens you walk through to the washroom are simply blackened caves with floor, walls, ceilings and equipment covered in soot, contrasted only by the colour of the flames under the cauldrons. Street stalls are often best and in many places the only choice, even if with an even more limited range of food: they're still less than reliable of course and you must weigh them up from a distance very carefully. Even mothers buying for children may have to go to miserable stalls that aren't clean, using old oil and pitiful equipment- very sad.

At time it's as though Indians want to be poor and live in a dirty country- when people know only misery perhaps it becomes to a degree self-perpetuating: they get married and start having children by their mid-twenties, society arranging this for them and it's unheard of not to. If travellers aren't married they're asked why, with the whole idea of making such different life choices a disquieting mystery to them. Infant mortality rates are dropping while the attitudes about offspring to look after parents stay the same and contraception is still neither widely known nor in accord with the conservatism. There may be few pregnancies outside of marriage but after that there's no stopping them- the mores, as originating entirely from the foreign religious domination period, are failing atrociously and they're scarcely aware of the increasing possibility of mass famine or some other catastrophe the moment the supply chains blip. The infrastructure only just copes and the crowds are scary now- with a ridiculous 1.17 billion people things are on the edge and some draconian leadership on this is needed.

Street beggars and unfortunates have every kind of affliction and deformity, some even with the bloated misshapen legs from elephantiasis parasites, and those paralyzed shuffling along station platforms dragging and pushing what's left of their legs with them in the mess. The streets are always hazardous including vehicles passing with protruding edges or with no lights, exposed machinery on pavements, hot stoves and oil, electric cables, potholes and so forth: the environment hasn't been designed to protect you and you must adjust to thinking much more for yourself and your needs.

Sugar cane and fruit crushers are a good one- the stiff branches are passed through powered mangles several times providing a fine sweet drink, as long as you don't take your eyes of what he's doing to ensure what you get is what's just been crushed: if he catches a fingertip the rest with follow, destroying hand and arm no problem at all; children may play nearby. Begging is the only option for the maimed who can't work and many have missing hands, feet, arms, legs, eyes or whatever; on one bus I was on a man boarded unsteadily with both an arm and leg missing, his only free arm holding a crutch- these sights can be such a jolt your first reaction is to keep back rather than give them something.

Again stalls salesmen importune anyone who even glances in their direction and if taken in are prevented from choosing and thinking undistracted: they pick up something, anything and put it in front of your face, blocking your vision and describing it to you, for instance what a hat is and how it works. Rather than any sense of customer satisfaction there's just immature fussing and blather in the hope of your money: you curse the bastards and walk off but it doesn't register much above the useless praxis in place and lack of wealth-generating norms. They need more sense of risk, investment and vision to make things work: the West doesn't have all the answers but they need attitudes and values for creating standards and a better conception of where money comes from beyond the idea of deceiving the next person out of theirs.

[Sean]

Developing cultures lacking articulation or much ordering of reality and just being more naturally interconnected provide fewer specific answers to questions asked: it can be plain brainlessness but there's also often an interesting holism to their thinking. For example Do you know if there's a restaurant car on the train? is replied with Do you want to eat? not so much because they can't think straight but because they have no idea, as there's never much information of any kind available, and maybe there'll be something at some point in the journey, or not, or from some other source, and so on- everything's a haze and Westerners' questions are often incommensurate with the society's development and richly inarticulate, intuitive underlying cultural character.

I take an hour lying on the floor of New Delhi station in the dust with the other Indians, very relaxing, managing to find a corner to one side of the turmoil; guards intermittently come round tapping people's feet with sticks and moving them on. A night train to Jammu then an eight hour jeep to Srinagar in the far north in Jammu and Kashmir state- the driver was rough but didn't quite send us over the cliff, very stressful; for the last couple of hours though the mountains disappear again and it's back to flat farmland in the Kashmir valley. Armed soldiers at a few checkpoints and fortified road blocks stop us on the way and there's a heavy military presence here with lorries of troops and Western standard military vehicles and equipment of many types constantly moving around, a major and contemptibly wasteful undertaking. In Srinagar at altitude it's refreshingly cold for a change, and raining; I buy a wrap around blanket asking if it's 200 rupees and the man says it's a wholesale shop so the price is 150- a unique experience in India.

It's another busy town but this region is distinct from the rest of India with the people culturally closer to central Asia, their features squarer and wearing frock-type loose coats to keep the cold air off; Kashmiri is somewhat Russian sounding though Arabian script is seen and a distant mosque wails out dejectedly. You can see why some want their own state here and an element of bad feeling comes across. As so often there's little idea how to carry on with such an organized artefact as a hotel brought in from a foreign culture: when they've shown you the room or brought you something, even if you tip them they'll get confused and ask if you want them to go now, or knock at odd times to ask meaningless questions or try selling you stuff.

Found a good stall selling fresh fish chopped up and deep fried, as ever: generally nutritious hot and safe food is hard to come by and there's far too much fried food, many places having only the insipid curry sludge from vats brewed hours before and oily nan bread making you want to be sick- it's best to go hungry. For some reason perhaps just from tradition they tend not to use utensils at all for eating and only the right hand, though at least they understand about keeping your saliva to yourself and not letting a shared bottle touch their lips. Fruit such as apples and oranges from street stalls are also rarely fresh, though bananas and green melons when you can find them are okay: fruit skins must be intact.

Srinagar's fairly clean and without too much street hassle, apart from the lakefront with its boat trip men and purveyors of these rectangular houseboats for rent stacked in the water all down the one side. A boat ride might be okay if they had any level of organization with itineraries, times and prices transparent in some way, instead of nothing but bargaining, duplicity and not knowing if you're even safe: without the basics sometimes you don't bother. I was a bit too harsh when deliberately ignoring one boatman's petitioning while I was just trying to admire the lake and after declining a bunch of others right before, making him feel bad. There are good communicative norms here even if combined with issues of trade- they just need to augment life's ever-changing flow with some linear thinking and ideas of their being good reason for personal space and the taking of no for an answer. With the troubles in the state I lay eyes on only two other Westerners.

I pay the big mosque a visit- peaceful if just empty roomy buildings and little sense of the divine; also climb half up a hill with a Shiva temple at the top- too far for me but some nice views of the Himalayas. Next to one petrol station they set up a shop as in the West, its incongruity already making raising suspicious but from its limited choice I buy a drink and a Snickers bar. There's no price on the bar, as usually the case, but the till of course has no barcode reader and sales are just written in a book, causing the man gargantuan difficulty selling me it- he stares at it for several minutes, turning it over and over many times, looking hard at the ingredients, expiry date, bar code and whatever. Then despite me asking him what the hell he's doing and saying there's no price there, he gives it to two other people who look over it very carefully, just the same- I stab some money on the counter and manage to grab it off him.

The weather for the trip back to Jammu is clearer than on the way up, allowing some great mountain vistas while deciduous trees and cool air pleasantly feel a little European. I buy a ticket for Haridwar for tomorrow: at the station there are three parallel railings forming two walkways only a person wide up to the window, forcing the thuggish masses to queue, with the idea that there's one way for walking to and another away from the window. Of course though they're not orderly or self-controlled enough for that by half and just stupidly use both walkways for lines to the windows. There's then no escape once people are finished, apart from forcing their way back through the mass of bodies squirming and fighting for the window. Further back there's the usual absolutely manic staring ahead and constant bobbing of heads to see nothing in front except obviously some guy being served, surrounded by a furious bunch of others trying to shove him off: there's nothing you can do to prevent people mobbing you at the counter. Many Indians also have starey wide eyes to begin with, even allowing for the fraught nature of their lives, their culture intense and crazed as a reflection of a passionate and valuable inherent nature.

I had the guy behind me who sneaked in front when I wasn't watching put back, telling him loudly he know what he was doing, but there are simply no norms against this particularly with too many people for too few resources: queue jumping isn't a problem if you're not physically prevented, though if it's too obvious others will indeed complain. I also asked him what was he looking at so intently when there's nothing to see but he just stares at me for a moment instead and doesn't understand that the question makes any sense. I gave the ones near me a number for the order in which we were and told them to relax and calm down, which they did but after a few moments started fidgeting, jostling and squashing again, not trusting each other to keep their place. Though I'm used to it, it's unbelievable that so much useless stress and aggravation can be forced on something so simple; the socialized morons will try and push in front just the same even when there's only two or three in the queue.

There's neither much internalization of orderliness nor expectation of orderly behaviour in others so even in a queue of only a few people and even if they're evidently on good terms they'll stand only an inch or two from the next person, breathing all over them and with body heat making conditions yet hotter and filthier. Indians though avoid their feet touching those of others and if you bump someone's foot you're supposed to acknowledge this, so in a queue their feet point outwards with the next person's positioned in the same way right behind; they'll stand like this for long periods waiting for a bank or station counter to open.

The Raghunath temple in Jammu contains some high quality and memorable sculptures of well known deities including Ganesh, many of the main Vishnu incarnations, Krishna and Radha, and Rama and Sita, though with the best shrine rooms unfortunately to be viewed through bars. One Shiva shrine is of the kind comprising only an extended egg-shaped phallic lingam stone, sprayed in abhishekam offerings with milk, water, juice; also an amazing nataraja with immensely serious abstracted facial features- Shiva dancing within a circle of fire on a demon of ignorance is Hinduism's greatest symbol, encapsulating the psychological insight of the mind as contained within righteousness and yet complete freedom. Some great aesthetics and visual impact, alongside busy puja-giving Brahmin priests encouraging monetary donations. There's a real naturalness of identity between Indians and their religion, issuing out of the culture and its plurality and inwardness, many people showing an impressive level of knowledge of and commitment to complex philosophies and thought of kinds unusual to Westerners.

I arrive at the train station three hours early as requested to validate my ticket for whatever reason but they now tell me I should have come in the morning, asking me come back once again later: fortunately as I'm a tourist the ticket boss finds me a spare berth. No whites at the station or in town that I see. I make it to Rishikesh- the train went all the way, southeast to Haridwar but then an hour north: it's a smaller place on the upper Ganges with not so many people once away from the central area. It's relaxed although with many Westerners on uncertain spiritual searches, having little inner assurance or insight: I walk with a couple of clueless travellers down to a nice orphanage on the river and just socializing as politely and delicately as possible, wearing sensible not weak skimpy clothes, travelling light and being reserved- rather than talking trash or thinking in pop culture terms, is enough to terrify and alienate them deeply. Here though is a fantastic place for a swim in a river, clean, deep green, only 100 metres wide and very cold and refreshing like nothing else, washing my sins away; a dozen or so children fool around in the water with the two volunteers nearby.

Walk up to the large ashram where the Beatles met the seer Maharishi in 1969, now disused due to political reasons, located on a rise by a magical bend in the Ganges: the river glitters, quietly and endlessly disappearing off into India, magnificent and powerful yet peaceful. It's calm as a lake and hardly seems to move, though further down there are currents and rocky areas, and there's a nice breeze in the evening; there are also some of the country's best bookstores covering all sorts of titles in the Vedic or Hindu sacred philosophical tradition.

I can't get much more than bits of bony meat, dreary vegetable, rice and curry sauce out of the restaurants, though honey pancakes are okay. More cluelessness in terms of service- the waiter minces towards the table with great trepidation, gingerly bending his legs as he walks, slowly places stuff down concerned about how to position it, stares at the table and you unsure what to do next, and with great creepiness makes a retreat again: they just don't understand basic operations and all kinds of things can get a bit bizarre.

The Rishikesh crowd are some insecure clingers onto the Western traveller look, many with the exact same shaggy top and trousers, superfluous cloth shoulder bag and unkempt hair: they must watch each other so carefully while pretending they blend into India. They make for a slightly uncertain atmosphere here and the presence of some dodgy characters about remind me not to stray far from where I can be seen by others; was hoping to find some good company here and for all I know it might exist, but I crack on to Haridwar.

Indians use horns constantly to indicate their presence to others and for other vehicles and people to move to the side, there being far fewer road rules or principles followed; with the great aural traditions in sacred texts and music the sense of hearing also has priority over sight in some ways and people won't move to get out the way of an approaching vehicle until they hear its horn, even when they can see it perfectly clearly. You find yourself doing the same thing as well, the underlying chaos and flux making responses more pragmatic than calculated out: the sensory information of hearing is also less mediated in cognition.

Accordingly one new bad thing on Indian streets is that the Western cars they've started importing with their money have far louder horns than rickshaws' finger bells and scooters' buzzers, making the streets even noisier: a modern car horn going off next to you is horrendous, having being designed not so much for pedestrians and those in open vehicles as for getting through to drivers sealed off behind glass and sound-proofing in heavy Western traffic.

Most Indians manage to get the response in English to negative questions right, their languages seemingly having similar features. In many parts of the world it causes untold confusion as to show assent to questions or statements with not or no in them you say no back in a form of repetition, not yes- John likes soccer. Yes. But Susan doesn't like it. No. Also one marvellous thing in Indian languages is the placement of letter h's in the most curiously apt points in words and names, not where you'd expect but bringing uplifting effects.

I bus it back to Haridwar after fighting with lying rickshaw drivers trying to take me to the wrong bus station, getting out the first one without paying the bastard. Sit next to an older American guy who despite telling me about being seriously defrauded in bogus travel agencies thinks I'm wrong not using them and going instead direct to the stations- hasn't got his thinking sorted, confused by the outwardly Western appearance of some things. He further gets resentful of my bag's small size while he's carrying whatever useless junk his acquisitive culture tells people they need but don't in the least. Moreover I've seen younger travellers whether at agents or stations not persevering with the reservation system or really making things happen and accepting being on waiting lists. Improving your chances is likely impossible at agencies though, and which only want to do things in ways to their advantage; there's also an internet service but in this bedlam I don't see how it can be trusted over face to face.

With most Indian railway services booked up many weeks in advance with the huge demand, tourist and other quotas of tickets are held back for foreigners with the right visa- otherwise we'd never be able to travel. Even so the system barely copes and it's more difficult than it was ten years ago- increasing population puts pressure to sell off earlier the quotas that may not be needed; also there are now routinely several different people to see, offices to find, reconfirmations to sort out and queues to join.

Haridwar has strong spiritual feel and more Hindu significance than Rishikesh, though with far fewer tourists. There's a daily sunset ceremony on a small diversion of the Ganges near a giant white Shiva statue- it's very uneventful though and nothing really happens despite the crowds being ushered into place and sitting cross legged on the floor where they can't even see properly but are still attentive. All that happens sadly is men standing knee deep in the water sending candles on small trays of flowers or leaves down the river, accompanied by chanting: Indians aren't used to much entertainment and can't organize it for the pilgrims here.

I find out that Haridwar station keeps no quota at all, despite getting into the ticket office behind the windows for some persuasion, a painter working there letting me in: no generally isn't taken for an answer so much and if you politely wait and hang around they tend to notice and try and do something- show some persistence and they'll bend the system as nothing's much fixed anyway. On this occasion though they can only sell me a third class ticket, if hopefully from there I'll be allowed to wander into a second class sleeper carriage and at least mooch around for any sort of seat. Third class is sardine can style madness, the crush so horrendous you'll be lucky to be actually in the carriage and not hanging onto the rails out the door, as I've done in the past with my bag on my back. With the barred windows and arms hanging out it looks like something from the holocaust: even showing the ticket to station staff to try upgrading it raises smiles or brings stares at you as if you're mad. The station has monkeys in the rafters and the standard beefy rats down the tracks feeding on the rubbish.

On the train I ask about spare berths but there's no question of it and mostly everyone else on the floor has some kind of provision with a blanket or such to throw down to lie on- I complain but the officials don't care. I use my cagoule and get some sleep on the floor- my exposed hands and feet were attacked by midges swarming around on that level and had to put socks back on to stop the tiny biting and irritation. Interesting to feel like a lowly Indian, me the one without a seat and getting unfriendly looks for a change. Early morning someone gives me their bunk after they alight to sleep a bit more but before new passengers eject me I decide to get off at Lucknow: I'm heading back east to Kolkata to meet a friend but have a day or two spare. Travel's like this, you have to be slightly manic, ready to overcome any obstacles and striking out even when it doesn't work: getting on an Indian train without a proper ticket is asking for trouble but I did get my transport and did get to see Lucknow which I never planned. With a travel companion I might well still be stuck in boring Haridwar trying to agree something with them: with solo travel nothing has to be raised or discussed and no one has to be pleased, or have mistakes or learning explained to.

Lucknow is blinking hot, the sunlight coming down with tremendous clout and heating everything so you can't touch it- walls, seats, tables, buildings make you recoil; at least the roads are wide and breezy. Went to the place where the 1857 Indian mutiny started and a thousand people died when the British residency was attacked and sieged- you can see canon ball holes in the ruins indicative of a lot of animosity. A boy there with his family speaks to me, asking where I'm from: I didn't see this was all harmless and gave him the usual suspicious cold shoulder, answering only Where are you from?- should have been more careful. You have to distinguish the occasional genuine interaction from the hordes of creeps: it almost serves them right though- the crazy place needs sorting. Also called at the big Mogul-era mosque and tomb- very pleasant to walk round these places away from the town commotion; lovely colours in the evening here, perfectly blended yellows and reds, peaceful, spiritual and intoxicated in a sober way.

India could be a fantastic developed country if its population was slashed and some of its practices smartened up- it's full of sights, cultural interest and contrasting Hindu power and would provide a greater range of Western tourists with a fabulous alternative destination. There's something to be learnt from China's authoritarian politics over democratic liberalism that happens to be congruent with Hindu plurality and provinciality: India needs more guidance in modernizing but also overcoming the continuing disruption from 700 years of incompatible Abrahamic influence.

As elsewhere in the developing world people on the street you ask for directions will show overconfidence even when they don't know where it is or even exactly where you're asking for- the distinction between knowing and not knowing is less clear in an environment of confusion, change and opacity. Indeed people can get annoyed when you try to enquire about specific information that they seem to have indicated they know, and it's best to begin by regarding everyone including the evidently educated and more capable as thoroughly untrustworthy on a cultural if not moral level- and not just when money's involved.

There's more of the dubious contradictory replies and inability to think straight when asking questions assuming levels of regularity or exactitude not present in the society and culture. Indeed something like Excuse me, do you know where is Gandhi road? can disturb them so much they'll just mumble an excuse and walk off mortified: I'm afraid I don't know isn't an option as it's both too specific and negative. Do you know of an internet cafe on this road? produces flurries of vague exclamation and lying, them just getting uncomfortable and strenuously fabricating some vague equivocal garbage. They stay in the murky cultural imprecision and give an optimistic answer that the chaos will resolve itself in your favour, while no one really makes it so through delineation and rationalization. The society needs organizing not on arbitrary, baseless Western Apollonian principles subject to revision, cynicism and collapse but on norms that keep the Dionysian whole in sight- they have the stronger cultural ground and it just needs augmenting.

Severe heat on the train from Lucknow to Kolkata in a non-aircon carriage- the fans are on but only blow the hot air around; 5cm cockroaches run around the floor, happy in such conditions. Travelling through midday all the surfaces inside have conducted the heat, ceilings, walls, columns all too hot to touch and difficult to sit on even with the padding; you can't lean against the walls or put your feet on the floor if you've taken your shoes off to cool your feet, and the refrigerated bottle of water you bought is soon hot soup, like the tap water. However whereas I took off everything except a pair of shorts just to survive the journey, Indian physiology is still fine in several layers and thick sweaters. I'm going to stick to aircon carriages from now on, even if the setting isn't what Caucasians would have it and risking there being no breeze with the windows are sealed if it's not working properly: aircon is just a casual luxury for them not a matter of life and death as it can be at times for me. Coping with the conditions in the hot season here is a nuisance, the heat also making you ratty with people: murder rates are said to go up at this time.

You need a healthy dose of self-preservation, ensuring you're okay, clear about your own needs and constantly aware of how you're feeling- regardless of the locals and them giving you strange looks with you trying to keep cool for instance, never having met anyone with a serious problem with 45 degree heat, already eight degrees over body temperature. Often you don't get on a bus or train till it starts moving and the air flows through the windows to bring the temperature down; on minibuses or smaller vehicles you need to sit next to a window for the breeze and preventing locals choosing to shut it because it just seems a touch breezy or they can't hear each other talk quite so well, causing stress and mild panic: if you don't have the window you may have to refuse to get in and get the next transport. Most people have no better idea about different physiologies any more than different cultures; another good example is Asians naturally sitting cross legged with the legs flat and weight forward so they're comfortable, impossible for most Caucasians.

A small group of Westerners get on at Varanasi but not my carriage- you have to put up with a great deal of isolation while travelling: I go for a walk with my bag so far down the train but can't seem to find them. Get to monster Howrah train station in Kolkata- there's thousands of people who must eat but the 'food court' is the same uselessness I remember two years back, serving only unsafe rubbish and sweets made who knows when and left in the heat; I was hungry enough to try a miserable chow mein but it was bad, giving stomach problems. There are often grimy shower rooms at train stations for cooling off even though most of the time the cold water comes out nearly hot.

Kolkata is a divided and harsh city; shop staff are either zombified and couldn't care less or blissfully can-do when they cannot- as with other developing countries the concept of profit isn't properly associated with service. The customer wants something and the supplier wants their money so they just bargain and try out-doing each other, each concerned only that they get the best deal- there's never much friendliness. And despite the inability to focus on specifics you get conversations like A bottle of Pepsi please, the vendor responding No Pepsi and turning to the next customer when he has a fridge full of different soda to offer and I just need something to drink. I walk to a large national arts centre but it's apathetic and nothing much is going on: I haven't been able to hear any sitar music on this visit, uniquely expressive of Indian culture.

The city continues to improve with a rising middle class and slightly less poverty in the central area, though people still sleeping down the pavements even in streets with reasonable shops. Indeed the best restaurants on Sudder street in the traveller area have intermittent rats scurrying around, street stalls are particularly hovelly, hordes of crows feast on rubbish, and creeps will push anything on you- I really give them and the rickshaw drivers some hassle back and in fact feel I have to be careful they don't come after me maliciously; I have a good cheap haircut though, once I stop them strangling me with the sheet. Though it's been inconvenient for my itinerary I see a friend here in the evening who's on an organized tour- it's nice to speak English freely for a while.

I get a night train south to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh- the landscape changes with more palm trees in circular outline, greener fields and a greater range of hues. An appointed cleaner in the train comes by, unheard of a few years ago, giving the windows and mirror a quick once round the central areas of the glass, not bothering with the perimeters- no sense of finish or boundaries.

I find a hotel and get one of the continuous buses in the morning up Tirumala hill to the huge Venkateswara temple complex. Near where I live in central England a large Hindu temple opened a few years ago based on its deities and architecture so I was particularly interested to see it: it's among the most visited of Hindu pilgrimage sites with several thousand visitors or more daily, and one of the wealthiest of religious centres. With some effort I find the office for foreigners to buy a ticket for express queue-skipping access for a darshan or sighting of the main idol or presiding deity. However after relinquishing shoes to a keeper and walking through a system of metal caged corridors it ended with a mass of Indians trying to force past each other, the usual ridiculousness but the heat in the enclosure plus body heat from that lot made further progress impossible: the attendant said it would take at least an hour from that point and I'd have been dead by then. No Westerners to be seen.

As with India's other main languages Telugu here has its own script, all circular shapes and curves, resembling Myanmar's. I get the train to Chennai without a tourist quota ticket again even though I try for it over a day ahead of departure: I make my way to second class then find the audacity to nudge into the aircon carriage- the guard doesn't like it but acquiesces, vaguely understanding it's too hot for me and even dangerous. You have to be proactive to get what you want.

Chennai is very spread out with the usual excess of traffic and people but no central area with things more closely positioned- one part looks very like any other and you need to take transport: check your sliced out guidebook map, jump on a packed bus that seems to be heading in the right guidebook direction and take it from there. An obvious contrast with the northern cities is the greater foliage here, Chennai with huge trees arching over main roads along with more colourful buildings- not such a bad looking place and comes as quite a surprise.

I go over to the Sri Lankan airlines office where a ticket system for service is a pleasant find: Indians sit and don't know what to do with themselves in such orderliness, unable to fight and barge, though mostly more moneyed ones here of course. Many things in the south are up to marginally higher standards, even including a few small modern shopping malls here and against my better judgement I try a hamburger place in one of them. The staff make me ill at ease to begin with, lots of them just standing around trying to attend to me instead of the food preparation tasks they obviously don't at all understand: sickness and diarrhoea, a waste of money. Without the appropriate Caucasian management just copying a fast food restaurant's outward appearance is the pathetic best they can do. Beyond setting up the same layout, sales counter, laminated menu and getting hold of a set of tee-shirts and caps, such restaurants' integral needs for attention to detail and rationality are lost on them: you can see it in their faces, anxiously staring out with no idea, cows in a field. All that most people know here is going to the market and cooking their own food.

Trichy is a small city, fairly calm and with some delicate colours; surprisingly the train here had many empty seats. South India with its coast and sea air is cooler than the northern plains just moving hot air around from place to place: the tropic of cancer also runs through them and near the solstice in the south the sun's just inside the northern sky. The southern languages tend to be more articulated than Hindi and people's thinking has a little more focus and linearity- they dress with more Western styles and often from a distance you think you've found another traveller when it's just a marginally richer local; most of the men have moustaches.

The present hotel is nice, nearly mid-range but budget price- recuperated for much of the day, always needing to budget time for this; I bought a small bottle of whisky after 40 days' sobriety. You need to be aware when your awareness is suppressed, the main causes of this being tiredness, sickness and alcohol- and remember you're not as sharp and to recheck decisions and avoid activity. My laundry I do in the room that would take several days to dry in a cold country is dry in a couple of hours here. Get a bus downtown to a labyrinthine temple and a fort perched on a peculiar rocky hill, too late in the day to walk up though- India is packed with interesting sites; another psychotic bus and rickshaw back in the throngs. Even in this regular town there's a deep peace and self-referentiality, the culture embodying subject-subject more than subject-object or means to ends relations.

I fly from Trichy for a four day Sri Lankan sojourn, returning to notice again India's somehow reassuring feel, it's vastness and sense of scope and diversity: the unique calm moves stealthily, revealing an inner peace that was already there in you and captured in the Vedic texts at the heart of Indian culture, concerned with the self, humanity and God. The Indians here though also laugh and make jokes with each other more and in Trichy train station even use two rows of chairs as a queue, people getting up and down every few moments, very civilized, there being sufficient orderliness established down here for people to accept it. Again it wasn't easy sorting a ticket, seeing officials in various buildings then back later to enquiries, but got an aircon train to Madurai. Often you need to see through the outward semblance of systems and instead make things happen.

Madurai has the Sri Meenakshi temple, one of Hinduism's greatest; the town is nice enough though with the inevitable harassment- the assorted creeps, touts, beggars, vicious rickshaw and taxi drivers, and owners trying to get you in their place via promises of temple views from their roofs all need cleaning up. Also as in many places of interest in the developing world the town is allowed to continue up too close without a proper zone being maintained- the authorities don't often have the vision for such order nor the appropriate sense of respect or repose and the necessary compulsory purchase no doubt order would be expensive and unpopular; the Egyptian pyramids is another obvious example. This is a major destination in India but there are few Western tourists here in these hot months and only devotees inside.

You can see the temple from appropriate rooftop restaurants, comprising a vast compound with these imposing rectangular pyramidal towers intricately and ecstatic covered in sculptures of hundreds gods, goddesses and proliferating other divine beings: the towers have recently finished being repainted and are superb, the complex and subtle colour scheme obviously executed by people who indeed knew what they were doing. The lowest tiers though, as with some of the walls in the buildings inside, are yet to be done- the ceilings are finished and the project seems to be working its way downwards. It's a busy 16th century Shiva temple, the scale and exultation very impressive and one of India's finest architectural statements. Its blizzard of deities embodies the range of God's possible manifestation with the same Brahman behind them all and is a great testament to Hinduism's inclusivity, non-confrontational nature and belief in humanity's potential to rise to the divine.

Inside there's a great dark pillared corridor leading to a large nataraja and its profound understanding of central psychological issues of liberty and faith. I argue my way past officials trying to convince them I a indeed a Hindu to join a short queue for a sighting of one of the deity statues in its enclosure- a bit of a nuisance to be taken for an unserious photo snapping tourist just because of my skin colour: there's no ceremony to become a Hindu or a card to carry that says. A darshan is the central experience of Hindu worship where you see the idol for a few moments and it sees you, as it were, providing a self-referential loop emphasizing the subject-subject nature of consciousness and realigning your inner Self and its powers and reach in securing your goals. Visiting a temple is ultimately just praying to or exhorting yourself, finding that within you which goes beyond your rational life and material form, and given back to you by your reciprocal proliferating relations with the idol- it's an aid to personal development and self-realization or path to union with God and indeed with Brahman beyond God.

As well as the physiological differences between Asians and Caucasians of darker skin to cope with higher temperatures and exposure to and strength of sunlight, and flexible joints for cross legged sitting, Asians are shorter hence building lower doorways, have a lower centres of gravity hence building steeper paths and steps, and have both tougher skin on their soles and their feet carrying less weight than heavier Caucasians, hence able to walk over hot and rubbly surfaces. At the temple I'm the subject of uncomprehending jokes by a group of boys as to why I'm walking holding a bottle of soda- I try to get it across to them that my brow was wet while theirs was dry and that they don't even sweat in this tropical heat. But the thing getting me literally hopping mad was that shoes had to be removed at main entrances before you got to the inner wall and doors, without even socks allowed, though which you wouldn't use as they'd be terminally dirtied, yet at midday the stone and concrete in the sun was way too hot to walk on for Caucasians.

And as well as Indian skin's natural characteristics it's hardened from routine barefoot walking and most have filthy feet with cracked and damaged skin, and happy with it in their filthy environment: I saw a few children running with pain but no others. They happily stroll and chat over burning surfaces you could almost cook an egg on, and with construction work around there was rubble and dust that stuck to your feet, digging into the flesh as you walked- again the locals not even bothering to look down to avoid it. I complained to whoever would listen but as usual people just look at you with this glazed disbelief, never having met anyone with such odd problems. I could accept the standard shoes removal inside the temple buildings, even with the grime from other people's feet to tread on, but not so much in the wider area when there was nothing to be respectful towards or keep clean. I just managed to run from shadow to shadow but it was pretty crazy and could have got some proper skin damage.

Shoe-keeper places of course are also a risk you often choose not to take: your shoes are the best made and most irreplaceable given to them to keep, Indians' shoes and sandals being almost uniformly worthless, ruined and easily replaceable, rubbish worth a pittance or nothing. My high performance lightweight leather walking shoes would be a disaster to go missing and likewise with bag keepers, which I use yet more occasionally.
 
I arrive early morning at Ernakulam on the west coast and take a ferry across to Kochi, a nice relaxing place with few people and some of the most chilled and hassle free of all Indian; some Westerners around looking for a break from the rest of the subcontinent's angst. It's an old Portuguese and Dutch trading and fishing place noted for these Chinese-type great spidery bamboo contraptions on the seafront that lower nets into the water; there are many churches and a scatterbrained Christian iconography museum. Many hotels are at higher standards but small and often homestay-types and still some good deals.
 
Genuine friendship exists with people of the developed world but is much less common than most Western tourists at first understand or want to understand with their limited awareness of the often unspeakable poverty, and what seems like harmless talk is likely to slide into requests for money or persuasion to take you to various commission paying places or visit their shop. In most cases you have to refuse to speak or reply at all to the zillions of street scum and develop skills for being extremely upfront and harsh, taking no nonsense whatsoever and questioning everything.

In developed societies with regulation of so much of social activity fewer of the relations between people are subject to such levels of duplicity. Hence you see and meet endless travellers getting defrauded, many however also having too much difficulty with reorganizing their outlook to cope well with the different conditions and preferring to deal with them in their own inadequate cultural terms; developing world travel guidebooks are well aware of this and only mention the low life and the degree of deception with great caution, most people just not wanting to know reality or indeed that they might have to act all as the Indians if they were as poor. As the regular horde with little critical distance yet now with wealth becomes the greater proportion of travellers, guidebooks today are packs of lies downplaying terrible material standards and privation and pandering to processes of reconciliation of other cultures from particular stupid narrow Western angles on life.

Ferry it back to the mainland and try and fail to get an aircon sleeper ticket for Goa, the manager claiming that everything's booked up because of holidays: I get the feeling they don't particularly care for helping some rich tourist when the system's already creaking with demand. So I buy a £70 flight to Goa, checking in for tonight at a hotel in busy Ernakulam: workmen outside in the blazing heat are trying to demolish the next building, standing barefoot on the remains of the walls two stories up, no gloves, no hard hats, no scaffolding and hitting the wall beneath their feet with a sledge hammer, trying to keep their balance at the same time.

The small propeller plane encounters plenty of turbulence and makes two other stops en route up the coast, all very stressful. Bus it to Panaji, quite interesting with its windy European street layout and Catholic churches, a product of the Portugese period. Another short ride to Vargator on a small peninsula known for its party scene; fewer Indians around, nice hotels down quiet lanes, cooler in the evenings and Westerners on beach holidays riding motorbikes.

I go to the main bar-nightclub place, a big outdoor dance area on the ground slowly filling up with Westerners and younger locals; the atmosphere is poor and the whole area in long term decline: the dreary monotonous trance music constantly played for some reason doesn't help but India just isn't the place for Western-style recreation. No wonder nightclubs don't work for young people- noise, alcohol, inhibition, self-consciousness, you have to be proactive to meet someone but these places provide poor parallels in normative behaviour and values. People don't talk to each other, there's no community or inclusion, little personal development and no effective matching of young men and women: it's affected and false with the disc jockey up a tall tower in the dance floor elevated like a deity, the noise-maker over any common sense or reflection on what's going on. Turn the damn music off, put the lights on and sort a system of introductions.

A short swim in the sea here but not really worth it- too warm to cool you down, the water brown with pollution and full of sand, and nuisance beach salesmen. A tangle of buses and a local train gets me to the larger southern Goan town of Madgao where the heat is a real battle- you know it's too hot when the breeze from standing in the train doorway at top speed has no cooling effect and is just throwing hot air at you. The station's authorized prepaid rickshaw booth was corrupt, the guidebook map showing the town centre less than a kilometre away but them wanting to charge four times a price for that: I ranted for a while then got a motorbike for the right price, still pouring contempt on them as we drove off. It's Sunday and with many shops shut especially with the Christian influence here there's a respite from the crowds; drivers have Christian trinity rather than Hindu trimurti deities on dashboards.

With the notions of interconnection over individuality vendors serve multiple people simultaneously and respond to people shouting at them over dealing with you. On two occasions at annoying platform stalls I asked for and was given several items but then left there without taking the money while serving someone else- I just walked off, and felt good about it: their lateral thought needs better grounding.

I got the sole remaining aircon berth on a night train north to Mumbai, now getting more developed and clean- the rows of families living in a few square meters each down the pavements are slowly disappearing and even those there are in more colourful shabby rags; in many weeks in India in 99 Mumbai had the only digital sign, now they're everywhere. It's the most expensive of Indian cities and in its sophistication there are even zones down some roads prohibiting unnecessary use of horns, encouraging the understanding that systems are in place to organize traffic and the stupefied desire to move forward by personally encouraging obstacles to get the hell out the way isn't the only concern: traffic ahead will stop due to good reasons not just due to an unfathomable sea of confusion.

Mumbaians want to be feel cosmopolitan and on almost equal terms with the West and the place is trying to get its act together: in the central area most people are businessmen of some sort who ignore you and whose thinking when you speak to them is more transparent and understandable. The city is very London like, the way the roads bend and traffic moves, yet even here providing the sense of peace coming from within you, percolating through whatever chaos and foreign influence, Indian culture intimately aligned to the spiritual. Still rubbish around including great longstanding quantities in the water in the bay and noisy big ugly crows everywhere; grubby tea stands are nice to stop at when you're frazzled and hurried: don't just do something, sit there- and things always get clearer.

Overnight train ride to the small town of Aurangabad east of Mumbai, from where I set off for the Ellora cave complex: the slimy rickshaw drivers at the bus station tell me it's closed today, trying to sell me other trips, but I recheck what's left of my guidebook and it looks like they're right. I call back at the train station to alter my return ticket to Mumbai to give me an extra day, skipping the queues and sliding into the office behind the glass, waiting a while in the corner to try showing some respect- someone eventually comes over and luckily get the ticket altered right there; I'm half mystified though how anyone can live for long let alone work in the muggy heat.

Outside Aurangabad in quiet and barren landscape is the Bibi-qa-Macbara, a tomb for the wife of Shah Jahan's son, an ironical affair as he had his father imprisoned for profligacy in building the Taj Mahal: also his tomb has quite self-consciously the same architectural design and layout, if somewhat smaller in scale. The main domed building has congestion and inelegance rather than the Taj's curious deep balance and satisfaction but it's yet another site in India of an exceptional interest and which if tended to properly and smartened up with the proper painting and gardening and so on would be another major tourist draw, not to mention the colossal spiritual peace again across these extraordinary plains shimming away to infinity. If only the stupid country could sort itself out and standards weren't so bad- it's visionless. Up the hill next to the tomb are some Hindu-Buddhist cave temples proffering sensual and suggestive sculpture if in poor condition, with a huge beehive hanging down off the rock face; I meet a trio of insecure travellers, sharing a rickshaw with back down.

The next day Ellora is 40km from Aurangabad by sardine bus to a village from where you walk to this escarpment with caves made into temples and rooms with friezes and sculptures; the central roofless cave was excavated such that the statues were caved as the floor was lowered. Not that special really but fine mid-medieval understanding of sexuality and the sacred- voluptuous, full breasted, swung hips, tilted heads and erotic overtones, as so much of Indian art; the Buddhist and Jain caves are similar, all under the same sway. Very hot and I fell asleep in one cave with bats upside down and flying around; a few foreigners but mostly Indians.

Back in the town I watch a young child sent out begging, doing her best to be happy- so much tragedy. At the station people walk en masse across the tracks to get to the opposite platform, climbing down, over and under electric cables and back up, a fine mix of foreign rail technology and an undeveloped society's awareness of safety. In Mumbai I get some rest before flying to Amritsar via Delhi airport, really roasting on the tarmac there; the flights again are a miserable experience with the propeller planes seriously thrown about along with some dodgy procedures such as the plane pausing on the runway after it lands for no explained reason, and suspect food on board. I have to move an embarrassed Indian who decides to take my seat, having little conception of keeping to instructions.

Amritsar is dusty, low rise and in poor shape with much poverty though the turbaned Sikhs with a good religious moral code and their own cultural atmosphere. Downtown I visit the 1919 massacre site where British commanded troops fired on demonstrators causing 1500 casualties; in the garden there are several giant bee hive congregations on tree branches, ignored by everyone walking around below.

Then to the Sikh Golden Temple, a large walled compound containing a great square pool and a small gold covered ornate building; a group at one end continuously wails out the Sikh holy book, the unrelenting funereal monotony getting on your nerves after a while. The place is full of pilgrims and seemingly no foreigners; shoes are off and the hot marble has thick mats to walk on, but which have rough surfaces that dig into Caucasians' feet supporting more weight.

[Sean]

India-Bangladesh, winter 07

India's sacred philosophical tradition provides it with a backcloth of unmatched richness and makes it the cultural centre of the world. Its contrasting norms and values and confident identity provide an intoxicating experience with many thought provoking observations for the Westerner, putting one's understanding of life through a different lens. As with many places though it's being subject to processes of change- its development is far behind China's but does indeed seem to be modernizing in a similar way; it's had many invaders across many centuries but subsumed them under its own identity, and the issue is how far it can do this again. Hopefully a distinction can be made between material development and the excesses and corrosive effects of Western mass culture.

I also made trips to India eight and ten years ago and everywhere retains the involving flux of characteristic scenes and activity, varied religious expression and the sense of a refined gauze across everything despite the bedlam. Streets still see numerous animals- cows, buffaloes, camels, elephants, horses, goats, pigs, sheep, chickens, monkeys, dogs, cats, rats and birds: herds progress downs streets in the thick of rickshaws, bikes, cars and throngs of people. The sunlight is ravishing and mellow, particularly in winter, bathing all in a gold glow and gently illuminating and enhancing pale colours; the fields, plains and sky shimmer in the heat and stillness. There's a connection between the climate and the Indian temperament- the spiritual haze has a parallel in the lack of articulation and disinclination even to say 'yes' and instead the marvellous sideward head movement meaning something like only 'I acknowledge you'. Reality indeed isn't comprised of delineated components with particular attributes to find the truth about but indeed merges holistically together.

Increasing wealth is enriching rather than detracting from the culture in people being better and more colourfully dressed in Indian rather than Western clothes, especially the women and their saris, and less dust means the cities are even more a seething blaze of sights, the drabness lessened as buildings are painted in characteristic styles- a slight increase in standards have allowed the delicate rainbow that was always there to be better brought out. However the travel experience has been softened with more roadworthy vehicles, street lights, illuminated signs, painted instead of rusted trains, fresh banknotes, phones, internet, menus with more than curry, and things generally not in quite such a terrible state- there's even less dung and rubbish: it's as though there was something associated with the harsher realities that had cultural value. India's intensity and strength has at least on the surface slipped slightly, the sophistication bevelled in parallel with the worst of the living conditions.

Traditional battered wooden rickshaws of tremendous character and unity with their environment are now seen alongside quality Western vehicles, almost nowhere to be found in the 1990s, the aesthetic power and inwardness giving way to squeaky clean, soullessly manufactured curves of glass and metal; dung dumping cows and bulls with their sacred imperturbability and virility are threatened with removal from the streets; and more and more train station platforms have caretakers, in shifts governed by whatever rational schemata, and are being upgraded into the Western neurotic cleanliness and anonymity. When public spaces are never swept or cleaned there's no worry about keeping them so and no-one bothers you at unspecified moments, pushing you out the way with a broom- the attention and focus have a little less stress and interruption: Quentin Crisp's insight that 'after the first four years the dust doesn't get any worse' is being lost.

Rural scenes may still be compared with the refined impressions of Turner paintings but at least in the larger and tourist trail towns things are changing. It's disheartening to see insensitive fearful foreign tourists peering through the tinted windows of safe Western standard aircon coaches, whereas before you could walk around the same sites alone in a much harsher and more culture-shocking environment. Alongside this, guidebooks were tremendous things to read once, alluding to other worlds and appealing to a necessary open mindedness toward the new, whereas now most are offensive rubbish, putting the travel experience on the surface in childish jokey terms for those who really just want to bring their own culture with them and appealing to the cliquiness of sameness. A culture is enriched by less development and individuals getting less support from society in as far as in order to look after yourself and deal with life the attention tends to be focussed inwards more rather than remaining on the surface.

The concern is what has happened to Thailand for instance is happening here- in the mid '90s Bangkok had far more foliage and much of it quiet, refined and powerfully sophisticated in a way it simply no longer is: if you hadn't been there you could just never know what it had over the present metropolis, and Delhi's refurbished roads, market areas and neon marketing lights are looking distinctly Thai. Indian culture runs deeper though and it sometimes seems that the West's excesses must always have an antipode, perhaps in a way similar to the wind's inability to blow everywhere on a sphere but necessarily having points of rest and reference. There are over 600 000 visitors annually now, an enormous increase from only a few years ago, but the smaller and less visited places remain largely untouched by Westernisation and the tourist horde: even on the train to Jhansi south of Agra I was the only Caucasian.

India's being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century but needs to avoid a levelling of the character of its society down to the simplistic desires of the largest, democratic tier of society at the base: Hindu political culture is liberal, having allowed great seers over many centuries to emerge from the wider spiritual base but who then also strengthen it from above. Westernization by contrast as lead by the moronic masses means the maximum of uncritical thought, passive television, celebrities, junk food and the rest of pop culture's white noise and rubbish all transformed into official culture. And surely even the masses don't really want this, but instead something to believe in and feel part of, something not just determined by them or such limits. The south-southeast Asians retain a confidence though which can come as a surprise- there's a self-assurance and spring in their step you don't quite see in the West.

Unfortunately, if understandably with the wealth difference, most Indians who speak to foreigners do so with a view to getting money out of them and have little compunction about deception; the idea is that if your attention's focussed only on life's surface you can rightly be deceived, and certainly you'll be wanting to kick yourself as much as them. It's a place where good personal organisation is a constant need and where small mistakes will count against you, possibly drastically: you need to think all the time just to survive, and which somewhat justifies the disapproval towards alcohol.

I only use budget hotels and wouldn't use expensive ones even with a lot of money to spend, and indeed in most places they don't exist: you want to be as close to the local way of life as possible without compromising safety or cleanliness too much, and without having to address moral questions about high expenses in a place of such poverty; Indian ones are around £3 a night. Occasionally there may be the company of rodents, ants, spiders or cockroaches, ten inches once, but they also tend to be secure with plenty of staff around. You don't let your guard down- at one place I asked for a bucket of hot water and they gave me the exposed element of an old immersion heater with wires coming out the top, to plug in and place in the water myself, suspended by a piece of wood across the top: absolutely lethal. At least in the northern half of the country in the winter months there are few mosquitoes and a net isn't needed, the days pleasant but nights much cooler.

The developed world has not only useful if over-prioritized norms of goal-directed rationality and articulation, providing division of labour, efficiency, attention to detail, customer service and so on essential for profit, investment and raising standards, but along with this good norms of personal space and respect for individuals' particular concerns and their own business. Developing world peoples think nothing of squashing up to the next person, endlessly engaging and interfering with them, pointing out the ridiculous obvious, repeating themselves and assuming no structured knowledge in them: society provides less support in terms of rules and organized ways in which to make sense of the world that people can rely on others having internalized.

There's little queuing for instance, just a mass of squabbling people around ticket counters, and even when there is the few at the front of the line don't have the control to keep to their place and instead form a little bunch to either side of the person trying to get served: a moment's hesitation in the conversation between them and the counter and they'll interrupt to try to get what they want from the official- who will serve them. Throughout the whole process there's incessant straining, barging, mistrust of others and intense and anxious staring ahead to see what's happening, even though it's nothing to do with anyone else and there's nothing they can do about it.

Where there's a line and you leave more than a person's body width so that someone pushes in front, they don't really understand if you complain because there are no rules they're breaking and are just happy about you being stupid enough not physically keeping them out. It's stressful and exhausting just trying to keep your place- instead of accepted procedures it's an every-man-for-himself society; also stall vendors serve several customers at once rather than finishing with one at a time. Of course though, most Westerners similarly don't keep to their position because of a moral awareness of fairness towards others but because of rules or norms and the peer pressure from them.

Touts, beggars and creeps rarely take no for an answer: even with the strongest put-down that no Westerner would bother with again they return a few moments later, senselessly asking you again to their shop, rickshaw, shine shoes, to follow you or whatever. You have to say no several times then really shout, then restate it all again, then just think about getting away from them: their idea seems to be that you might always change your mind, a thought perhaps not without interest and contrasting with linear American thinking where an answer may be listened to closely and accepted immediately. The cohesion between people, cheerfully chaotic interrelations and constant freshness of the moment is a tonic, especially coming from poor English norms of communication between people new to each other: Western modernity's Apollonian individuation increasingly replaces Dionysian community, the smoothly operating joints making us materially rich hiding the unity of life underneath for barriers and disjunctions to arise where there aren't any. Of course though Indians' ready interpersonal relations are also used to gain advantage over many travellers and one becomes increasingly harsh with them in response, anticipating their manipulative lies and shifts: you need a chip of ice in your heart to survive the place yourself.

The Taj Mahal at Agra is a mausoleum built by the Muslim Mogul ruler Shah Jahan, over 20 years in the early 17th century in memory of his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal who died young- it's a quite profound statement of eternal love and very moving, with the solemnity, strength and passion of great art. The building's proportions are unexpected but have fabulous unity and rhythm, as though reverberating within themselves, and indeed the interior under the massive dome provides an appropriately strange echo; there's also a Hindu lightness, sense of play and range of colours as the sun moves. He was distraught by his loss and spared no expense ensuring she'd wouldn't be forgotten- numerous precious stones and materials were imported from many countries and worked by artisans in fine detail, all at immense cost: very touching.

Lengthy train and bus rides get you to Khajuarho, a small town famous for its erotic Shiva temple complex from 950-1050, set in peaceful lawned grounds. The sculptures are mostly base relief, the most interesting being among those covering the outside and all still in fine condition; it's a grand statement of the unity of sacred and sensuous, completely undermining Western notions of an antithesis. Interesting to see immense numbers of all-over bright green birds here swarming around a few trees on the edge of the town, making a tremendous racket, deafening to walking past.

I made it to Puri in Orissa on the east coast after shuffling across two or three towns for the right rail network- they had no entries in the guidebook but were quite interesting urban India, vibrant, mean and unclean. Puri's a town with a famous large temple to Jaganath, a more abstract form of Krishna; certain gods are popular in certain areas and little known in others. It's one of four key religious sites in the country's points of compass but unfortunately non-Hindus aren't allowed inside: I didn't bother arguing that I've studied Hinduism and visit a large local temple in England.

At pilgrim towns like this there's added religious symbolism with many minor temples around, a larger bovine contingent and extra beggars and other unfortunates pestering you for good favour, as well as the usual touts and scammers. There's plenty of accommodation and lots of Westerners and Japanese, but drowned by the devoted throngs and you can still go all day in town without seeing any; there's also a pleasant and extensive beach.

There are far fewer auto than cycle rickshaws here- harder on the driver but at least a green and quiet vehicle, coming with retractable rain/ sun roofs and cost about the same. There seems to be a connection between the bad aesthetics and alienation of petrol engines' mass production and their running on a polluting, irreplaceable and unearned resource: despite their advantages they issue from a less balanced approach to the world.

Cows by the dozen are found around the temple entrance, in the crowds, the stalls and side alleys, sometimes pursuing you for bananas if they see you holding any- throw the skins down for them; vendors hit them with sticks to push them off but they don't go far. Trying to relate their sacred status to providing milk or labour in the fields or Krishna being a cowherd and so on really misses the point about these creatures- this is the sort of explanatory perspective of Western rationale that doesn't apply here: they embody qualities of the divine as do no other creatures, noted also by the Egyptian and Mesopotamian ancients for instance- they're singularly calm and peaceful, with the bulls exuding a head-in-the-air masculinity and inner strength.

Street food is good if you see it cooked and served immediately, and sells for a pittance: popular things include pakora- a potato/ vegetable paste, varna- a battered potato or maize, jeluvie- a sweet made from a sugar cream solidifying when poured into hot oil, and vegetable samosa. Tea or chai, served with milk and sugar in little glasses without handles is popular all over and sometimes there's black or white Nescafe. Food stalls are preferable to many restaurants because you can get a good look at the preparation and cooking, and it matters little if the equipment is horrendous; join a group already standing around for vendors with a good reputation.

As in nearby Buddhist countries Hinduism provides a powerfully contrasting set of norms for understanding sexuality, key expressions of this being the temples at Khajuraho and Konark near Puri, a temple to the sun god Surya, an aspect of both Shiva and Vishnu featuring in the Mahabharata. Both are World Heritage sites and feature sculptures of sexual activity and a diverse array of sensuous forms; they're made of different stone with the Khajuraho complex the better preserved- both would have been phenomenal sights in their original polished state in what was clearly a liberated medieval India. Other examples of Hindu religious and sexual unity include a few works in the early Ellora and Ajanta caves in Maharashtra to the west, as well as the ubiquitous phallic Shiva lingam in temples and images of mortals in sexual congress with Brahma. These of course contrast fundamentally with Muslim and Christian denial and consequently sexuality's position in the Hindu worldview became more theoretical: although they visit in large numbers, today's Indians show immaturity and repression in finding such images embarrassing or humorous, as indeed Asians of nearby countries don't.

The Surya temple dates from 1250, before India came under the sexually conservative sway of its Abrahamic religious rulers, first the Islamic Delhi sultanate and Moguls from 13-17th centuries then the Christian British to the 20th. Abrahamic religions are interested in sex from a moral perspective that goes far beyond the fact that it can result in children someone has then to look after: their main concern is the Dionysian character of the sensation and sense of abandonment, loss of restraint and negation of Apollonian principle. Carnality is then further troubling as out of this it provides a powerful transcendent experience where corporal and spiritual, subject and object, lust and love, desire and beauty are dissolved, suggesting there's something wrong with their understanding.

The Abrahamics accept sex has to be central to life but harbour deep uncertainties if not repressed contempt for this core level of humanity, and have problems with fornication, homosexuality and a range of practices: obviously it's the religions and the nature of the wider culture that's at fault, not our natural, God-given state. Dharmic Hinduism however isn't such a principle-based castle-in-the-sky doctrinal religion asking to be debunked and acknowledges sexuality as an interface with the divine: the sculptured figures at these sites are not only human but semi-divine and divine, expressing the unity of God and us through sexual transcendence. Shiva's intercourse with his consort Parvati is a focus of the Khajuraho complex and there are gods with gods, gods with mortals and mortals with mortals, all finding the same unity. Needless to say the idea of any of the Abrahamians' Gods having sex is anathema to them.

The temples' celebration of love-making is both riotous and movingly sensuous; they display a complete and unselfconscious continuity between ordinary life, where the attention is focussed outward and things related to each other, and sexual activity where it returns on itself and makes reference to nothing else- beyond worldly relativity and hence absolute and divine. Everywhere sexual fullness is matched by refined and measured intelligence: there's no loss of control, due not to Apollonian denial but to the opulence paralleled by an inner order. The deities at the centres of assemblages of amorous couples are themselves very sensual and at one with the ravishment all around.

At Khajuraho only around a tenth of the sculptures are obviously erotic but all are arousing and curvaceous, embodying sexuality's combination of detached beauty and intense desire. At Konark however almost all are erotic, thousands of couples having sex in endless positions in deep bas-relief: amongst them are images of oral sex, sixty-nine, chains of three and group sex, masturbation, homosexuality including monks giving oral sex, even sex with animals.

The figures smile across the centuries with the fantastic coordination of sexuality with serenity, embracing all of life through a knowingness transcending affected relations with it, whether sensory or intellectual: there is relative or sensory plus absolute or spiritual pure consciousness together: the two can't be separated in rational Apollonian terms, only from within the Dionysiac itself. This unity is lost in the Christian West, sexuality as fundamental indeed being the first thing that has to go.

Kolkata lives up to its reputation as defining some of India's extremes and immediately around the train station are scenes of severe poverty- there's a large underclass with virtually no possessions living hard and short lives; I'm not at all sure one filthy half-human looking wretch I walked past today wasn't dead. Some sources still call it by its colonial name Calcutta, one problem with the new name being it sounds too close to the original.

There are man-pulling rickshaws here, sad to see but just as deceitful and untrustworthy, and quite why cycle-rickshaws are beyond them I'm not sure: there aren't any in the town centre. The main travellers' hotel area is in a tangle of streets not far from road trying to get your vote for the most chaotic, polluted stretch of barely controlled mayhem in the country, a real rat race. Alternate clouds of petrol fumes and thick dust blow at you in the heat and killer sunlight as the touts, con-artists and beggars with every possible deformity run or crawl after you; drugs and whatever else is available, all in an ambience of skin-crawling grime. A couple of kilometres away though is a huge area of great street food stalls, stuffing you for a pittance; these streets absolutely seethe with people and activity.

There's quite a sharp social gradient upwards and a sizable relative middle class emerges, with well dressed businessmen and some good vehicles on the main roads; the atmosphere is fairly sophisticated and the hassle factor for the foreigner perhaps a little easier to deal with; being a newer city developed by the British the roads layout, as in Mumbai, vaguely resembles that of large English cities. The wrecked buses slow down rather than stop and have low windows only short Indians have any hope of seeing out of.

Photography is a moral issue in developing countries- you don't want to walk up to families living in little filthy tents on the roadside for instance, standing there composing a picture with your expensive camera, treating them as objects of curiosity to amuse others back in the land of plenty; many photos should only be taken quickly, from a distance or not at all.

One night there was a hairy spider in the room, showing impressive sensitivity to the vibrations from movement, shooting across the wall when I took a step; meanwhile on the television included for my £2.50 is news comprised of articles of conditioned drivel related to that in England. Also one taxi I was in, with no wing mirror, pulled sharply into traffic on a main road and smashed into an oncoming motorbike- fortunately the bike skidded so it hit side on and I think managed to stay upright: the taxi just drove off.

Went to the Indian Museum here- the usual scruffy assortment of dust covered junk with poor labelling and lighting, specialising in dreary rocks and the odd supposed meteorite. However the collection of first millennium Hindu and Buddhist sculptures are exuberant and sophisticated, ornamented voluptuous deities with tremendous headgear, with some Buddhas and bodhisattvas dated to 1st century. I also liked the fossils of extinct giant elephants and turtles, some quite bizarre: the hall's Aladdin's-cave gloom adds an aura, rather magical. Called in at the Victoria Memorial, very popular with the Indians though unsure why- just a large old imperial building with paintings of limited artistic merit of whatever bunch of stuffed shirts and street scenes- many of which have changed little. Victoria never even bothered to come to India, far from it, so it's all a bit mysterious and indeed many other such colonial places have been renamed or demolished.

[Sean]

However interesting similarities between English and Indian cultures include their class or caste societies, formality and decorous speech, a rich inwardness issuing from parsimony and empiricism, a confident disregard of other cultures, cautious pragmatism rather than theoretical planning, scepticism towards change and development, congested small scale approach to design, an overexcited rather childish and chaotic tone to urban activity, squabbling and pushing in of southeast England driving and Indian queuing, sexual repression and birth control problems, climatic conditions and languages with characteristics that return the attention back on itself, periods of delicate sunlight and haze, openness from English liberal politics and Hindu inclusiveness, an unassuming demeanour, and cricket as an expression of measured and pacifist psyche.

I secured a Bangladeshi visa from the embassy here- the terms are restricted, maximum 15 days single entry within a one month period with a land entry point east of here I'm supposed to use is noted down; part of it might be the state of emergency and curfew in the capital Dhaka imposed yesterday after resignation of the acting premier and various troubles approaching a planned election. There are a few other border crossings with India and I'm going to try to get in from the north, particularly as no one at the embassy had much reliable information regarding visa requirements, office hours, collection times or anything else- as of course nobody in south Asia does about anything. Generally speaking what people may say and how things actually are have only a vague and distant relationship; if you want to get the feel for something you ask at least three separate officials and take a cautious majority vote.

I took a train to Siliguri then a shared jeep for three hours up to Darjeeling, only £1 once past lying touts and taxi pushers: not much fun though, the driver was atrocious even on the flat and the endless bends up the hills had one guy vomiting on a regular basis out the window and turning most of the rest of us green- lucky I hadn't eaten. Fortunately the road has modest concrete barriers most of the way and isn't too narrow, otherwise the drops mean one mistake and it's certain death: signs read If you drive like hell you'll get where you're going sooner than you think and Take time in this life rather than adding more to eternity.

It's a town 2200m up in Himalayas just south of Sikkim, between Nepal and Bhutan: there are said to be great views of snow capped mountains here including the of world's third highest, but I couldn't make much out due to mist and cloud now in the low season. It's very cold in the day with your breath visible and it drops a lot lower at night: the hotel has enough blankets but are themselves so cold it takes a couple of hours before you feel enough to sleep; the infrastructure isn't really up to it with limited electricity and hot water causing great problems when you're trying to warm up.

People here speak English better than anywhere else in India I know, using it more than Nepali their first language; the Darjeelingites are surprisingly sophisticated and worldly, their personalities with a keen and Western edge. There's a Tibetan aspect to the population, flatter and sharper features and lighter skins, with Lhasa only a few hundred miles northeast. Buildings are stacked up on the mountainsides rising at the steepest angle with narrow walkways and small houses, similar to Andean countries; there are no food stalls so I eat in a restaurant for the first time in a couple of weeks. The place became a popular retreat with Victorian British and is known for fine tea- it contributes only 3% of Indian output but includes some of the world's most expensive grades. I'd like to stay an extra night and relax as it's certainly peaceful, but decide to leave the next day with the severe cold.

I made my way east to Jaigon still in West Bengal but not far from Assam, with the intention of spending a visa-free day in its neighbouring Bhutanese town of Pheuntsholing. There's no entry in the guidebook but I find a hotel, where I'm lucky to meet a group of English and Australian travellers in the town for the same reason- but they tell me that Bhutan changed the rules some time ago and the excursion is no longer possible without the full visa, and a requirement to spend £150 per day- some crazy policy to limit tourism to the top end. I have a walk down the road to the border and it checks out, so I just take a couple of photos of what I can see from the hotel roof of what looks like an orderly town with hills around. I meet another couple of travellers on the way back and they too were expecting to pass through- the guidebooks are out of date.

So I clear off again south to the Bangladesh border, hoping to persuade the officials to let me in despite the stupid note on my visa to use the entry east of Kolkata, which could well be there out of officiousness and self-importance at so many embassies, delighting in causing inconvenience. I have to take four buses, about 26 seaters in these parts though carrying about 50 and arrive late at this tiny village with little electricity or anything else called Chandrabangha- fortunately there's a dodgy hotel with a few rooms divided up by thin plywood. In the morning I walk to the small if chaotic border post and of course they query the visa: at first, after a bit of persuasion and waiting for the Bangladeshi side to think it over, they come and tell me I have permission.

However I go back to the Indians to stamp me out and they're still not too happy, even though it matters little to them as there are no exit restrictions and I have a multiple entry Indian visa to get back. So the man comes back to the Bangladeshis again and re-explains what they already understand but they then phone their boss from a few kilometers down the road: he arrives and of course he blinking won't let me in- pity as I was almost there. They know there's no real logic to any of this nonsense- there are plenty of Indians passing and they can see I'm a nobody tourist not an international terrorist, but they're just all a bit afraid for themselves of contravening any kind of officialese.

Anyway I head back to Siliguri for a train back down to Kolkata; I haven't been turned away at a border before but now it's happened twice in as many days. At least the bus rides out here were good- northeast India is more rural with much less rubbish or obvious poverty, and often beautiful if needless to say still a hard life for them here. There are vast flat fields often multicoloured with different crops, woodlands, palm trees, people washing in clean rivers, houses on stilts, well dressed women, and as usual the close proximity of animals, including sheep and chickens as well as the ubiquitous cows and goats.

Indian buses typically have a good 50% of the widescreen obscured variously by an idol of a deity fixed on the middle on the dashboard, two sizable pots of plastic flowers on either side, a frilly curtain hanging down from the top sometimes with gaudy flicking lights, and a string of little shiny glittery things placed up and down across the driver's whole field of vision: nothing like a gauze between you and the world, not taking it too seriously.

From there I got a two-hour local stations train to the border, standing for a couple of hours along with most of the rest of the passengers, dangerously full and frenzied as ever but great views from the side, the carriages with no doors and just sections of the walls missing. An all-painted up Vaishnavite or Vishnu follower on board spoke to me, showing strong grasp of the Hindu philosophy of unity of God in other religions, all people and things.

A shared auto-rickshaw gets you to the border where despite the usual creeps and consters coming from all directions is relatively hassle free: the officials seem actually to take steps to keep the self-appointed guides, money changers and transport spongers at bay, rather than being in cahoots. Borders can be a great experience with a lot to think about, crawling with skilled and assorted low-life preying on anyone feeling unsure: you must ignore everyone and believe no one- they'll all on the make and thinking up new ways to defraud you, trying to be your helper and giving you directions or obtaining or filling in forms for a fee, taking your passport if you're dumb enough to hand it over and overcharging for visas if you need them, claiming to be an official and giving false information, distracting and robbing you as you change currency, setting up taxi or rickshaw cartels, and so on and on. You have to sort transport there then find the appropriate people and buildings for money change, exit country immigration departures, customs, officials' checks, walk over border past more scum, visa if necessary, entry country immigration arrivals, customs, officials' checks, and transport away: there's every chance of officials lying about visa prices and exchange rates if you're unsure in advance and you need to know the bribes situation. Only a small minority of the passport-checkers can actually find or read much of your details page, visa, stamps or even the front cover.

I travelled from Benapol on the border to Jessore two hours away by bus with uncomfortable children-sized seats for small Asians for whom it's more natural to crouch, and to Khula, hoping to go a little further east and then south. I went to Barisal, east of the Sundarban mangrove swamp area in the southwest: views from the bus from Khulna are very pleasant, the flora becoming more southeast Asian and exotic with dense palm trees and rice fields, clean lush jungle with long stretches of road where trees arch over, simple villages and numerous waterways and bridges, along with one ferry getting vehicles across a larger river. Several rivers have estuaries to the south including the Brahmaputra, Padma, Jamuna and Trista, each of which merge, split and change names several times.

Bangladesh is more relaxed a place than India with less turbulent cities, hard-sell and vicious money-grabbing norms- a breath of fresh air, though alongside the usual gaunt repressive quiet of Islamic societies, interspersed with regular prayer calls from loudspeakers. There are few women on the streets but most only with headscarves and not veiled, or with no headwear, though perhaps those were the Hindu minority here. There's a sense that the place isn't at ease with itself but it's basically friendly and has a safe enough feel, despite poor street lighting and little English spoken; the cycle-rickshaws use pleasant bell rings rather than horns or manic buzzers and everything's a little gentler. Costs are half or less of Indian prices, and the bank notes begin at a value of two cents; the population is 160 million with half of the children underweight, 83% with less than £1 a day and literacy rates 50 and 30% for men and women.

The Bangladeshis see very few Caucasians and like the similarly isolated Chinese for instance, stare and stare in a mixture of blank horror and fascination while sometimes obviously making naive jokes about your appearance that you have to put up with. Six key phrases listed at the front of the guidebook are Hello, Thank you, Yes, No, I don't understand Bangla, and Please stop staring at me. There are obviously no norms at all against staring and it can be very patience-testing indeed: several at a time will walk up to you and stand face-on a meter away, looking intently but purposelessly and expressionlessly for minutes at a time unless you can shove them off. They find your simplest actions intensely fascinating- getting something from your bag or writing on a piece of paper seem to be among the most utterly amazing things they've ever seen.

They're sociable, striking up conversation at any moment, even if it's a bit annoying when their English rarely goes beyond a couple of questions and they can tell I speak no local language- indeed many just haven't got the idea that some people in the world speak other languages. As in many places men who are friends may hold hands and put arms around shoulders with no romantic connotations: part of the ready interaction can be related to the limited conception of personal space and affairs of others, the culture instead retaining in everything a kind of Dionysian interconnectedness and innocent commonality.

One major advance on India is the serving of tea in cups with handles rather than a glass to burn your fingers- often there's even an accompanying saucer, frequently spilt in and later drunk from. And it isn't brewed with the milk already in, a sickly if sound solution for sterilizing it, but gets a couple of spoonfuls of sugar cream paste added afterwards, along with more sugar; tea stands as ever can be sociable. Men's shirt and trousers are also gradually replaced here by longes, a kind of narrow skirt worn throughout Myanmar next door.

The traveller faces far less deception in buying and selling to wade past here than in India, and even when it's annoying of course you need to pause and think that you might do the same faced with their situation, that in most cases it's a normative rather than consciously immoral behaviour all as more reliable Western trade is also only normatively moral, and that it's part of a wider system valuably contrasting with Western transparency and articulation. At one roadside shack restaurant for instance they had no menu of course, which meant they could try overcharging and arguing at the end when I didn't establish prices first- which smaller food stalls wouldn't have bothered doing; I realised it was coming though and paid them only a few more near-worthless notes before walking off.

The roads in the towns go very quiet at night and apart from Dhaka aren't too noisy in the day either with most vehicles being cycle-rickshaws. The town to town buses have a high accident rate- they're small with a high centre of gravity and permanently overcrowded with as many people stuffed down the aisle as possible; the roads also aren't usually wide enough for two large vehicles to pass and the verges they pull onto are often full of people or cycle traffic. Considering the chaos on the roads the drivers are quite good but the whole thing is definitely risky; they also don't do handbrakes- it's just put in gear with a roadside brick under a wheel or two. Like most things petrol is cheap at 40 cents a litre.

A long bus journey and five ferry crossings south of Barisal, ferries sinking every couple of months, is Kuataka, a jungly village on the coast of two or three roads lined with corrugated shacks and a few hotels. In such small places in developing countries it can be hard to find much decent food: everyone basically buys and cooks their own and what restaurants there are serve bits of bony chicken and plain rice with perhaps a little cold vegetable, very dubious. Stalls sell biscuits more than anything else, being long lasting, with a few potato chips, soda drinks or some bread if you're lucky; even bananas were hard to find.

There's a pleasant beach where even the brainlessly curious locals don't bother you too frequently; it's rather surreal and dreamlike with bright sunlight and haze emphasizing either the white of the sand or the darker colours of objects and their shadows. The few umbrellas seem like they don't belong there or as though they date from the distant past- it's like a scene from an enigmatic sci-fi film or a hallucinatory Seurat painting, all quite memorable. Despite being the Indian Ocean with a breeze in the air and the coast subject to cyclones that destroy the town, the sea is very still with gentle waves of just a few centimetres high; the water is nearly black with sediment from the nearby estuaries. Southeast of here is what is said to be the world's longest uninterrupted beach at 120km.

Back in Barisal, to get north to the capital Dhaka there's fortunately several large overnight ferry boats with cabins for a pittance- they're the highest statement of development in the country in my trip. Dhaka is an experience, a murky soup of partially burned hydrocarbons and construction dust you can feel as you breathe: in the day you wonder if your glasses have fogged up and at night it's visible in headlights, when vehicles have these, as though there's a thick snowstorm on. The English newspaper here is of surprising quality and despite Bangladeshis being well disposed to America, very critical with even conspiratorial columns on American foreign policy, way beyond what gets passed for printing in the conditioned British papers.

I found a KFC restaurant in Dhaka and I mistakenly thought I'd go inside for something familiar and relax for a while: a fast food restaurant is an artefact imported from a foreign culture and the kind of driven linear rationality and organization underlying its operation is alien to most non-Westerners; you can see them trying hard to think along these lines and make it work but it doesn't come naturally at all and as in similar ventures there's this unsure and concerned expression on their faces. The food made me badly sick, vomit plus a temperature for a couple of days: it may have just been the ice-cream I had at the end- it was selling well but anything not seen prepared and cooked before you should be avoided, with ice cream particularly notorious for having been thawed and refrozen, storing and not killing bacteria. You can never afford to be off your guard in developing countries.

I made it back to Kolkata for a flight for an excursion to Australia. On the way back I sat next to a lady in the Hare Krishna movement who was going with a group of mostly white Australians to a festival of some kind at a small town a few hours from the city; she suggested I come take a look with them and I provisionally agreed. They seemed really into it, most had Indian attire and had apparently changed their names to ones in the Vedic tradition; they were also a little defensive when I explained I practiced TM, based on a slightly different interpretation of the Vedic texts.

Of course something like this needs good organization and the fun started soon enough: it was 1am and the group's leader, in long pink robes, conversant in Bengali and citing the Bhagavad Gita at will to me in Sanskrit, went to get two taxis to take us to a cheap hotel not far from the airport- they'd had two flights from Brisbane, exhausted and jet lagged, 6am for them.

The taxi drivers didn't care either way for his language skills and smilingly saw the situation in an instant: they soon got out of him the group's travel plans to drive to this town in the morning, and were from then on going to do all they possibly could to take us there that night- they knew the passengers were disorientated, meek unworldly foreigners and there was no way they were going to let them regroup, get better taxis with roof racks for their over-packed baggage, consider taking a train, or of course sort the right price the next day.

I realized when I got the bus to the city the next day that they'd ignored from the start the instructions to go to the hotel he had in mind and just immediately began driving out of town: as the buildings thinned out and the roads darkened the chances of hotels passing would lessen and it'd seem the drivers were indeed right that there weren't many, or were all full or closed- the standard two excuses. The sight of dusty quiet roads lit by little fires in urban India looks more than a little sinister and scary if you're unused to it; they took us to two places they obviously knew, the first of which indeed shut or too dilapidated, and the second in collusion with the drivers to lie at length to the leader, saying they didn't have the required three rooms.

Throughout this I explained to him exactly what was happening and got out at the hotels to bounce around, look down the street for others and tell people, to the drivers' faces, that we were deliberately being taken to useless hotels and it was ridiculous suggesting there was no accommodation in the city- there would have been dozens of places between the airport and the centre, where there are then always rooms at the travellers area around Sudder street and indeed where I'd stayed at on two separate occasions in recent weeks. We could have told the drivers they had to take us or they wouldn't be paid, and get out and take it from there if they refused, but the group was already on the wrong footing and the leader just said he'd talk to them.

I'm not sure how much they asked for to drive to the town but it was enough to leave the leader pretty shocked and unsure, yet after the second hotel he asked the others again if they wanted to drive through the night. They decided on this, and of course at this point I parted company and stayed at the hotel, which had at least a dozen rooms inside; I had to pay R600 or £7 despite protestations and threats to walk off, instead of R200 what it was worth- but it could have been worse, and I hadn't paid the drivers anything.

The other passengers were too reticent and lamely sided with the majority and what seemed superficially to be right: it's quite interesting that on several occasions before this sort of thing's arisen with others they've also ignored me, even when they know I'm experienced and telling them in the most explicit terms what's going on- and instead going with the outward flow and propriety of things. Most people have great propensity to stay in a sheep-like majority-led position and to think it's the outsider who's crazy.

They'd have been in some trouble. Firstly driving at night is almost never to be attempted because of the accident rate with the road surface and poor or non-existent street and other vehicle lighting, and the risk of robbery, especially coming direct from the airport with cash, baggage and ridiculous computers- with of course possible complicity of the drivers in this, being 'surprised' running into an ambush. The two women were being poorly looked after- they'd had enough and like the rest had no refreshments or washroom break: they didn't need the leader to ask them if they wanted to try and find a hotel.

And it wouldn't stop when they got to their destination, they'd be faced with every possible piece of deception the drivers could think of to get them to another hotel for a commission, which would charge them as much as they'd be stupid and dazed enough to pay: it's hard to imagine the drivers agreeing to take them to their intended destination or admit they could find it, in the middle of the night in an unknown environment where they have little choice and a lot of pressure can be applied, and goodness knows what extra night travel charges, bogus travel agents, shops, and other scams there'd be.

There's an idea that if you can deceive a fool out of what they have then it becomes yours, and the Indians are 120% on this side of the argument. And frankly I agree with them- Westerners who want to can stay in their defensive clique huddled under their own cultural umbrella they bring with them. The way the bus to the city was R7, 15 cents, which I hailed after asking several bus doormen for their destinations all while taxi drivers next to me lied about there being no bus and wanting to charge R250 or more.

Varanasi is the holiest Hindu city with an intense and extraordinary atmosphere and a place where some try to come to live their last days, remarkable cremations on the Ganges being held throughout the day and night; it's built along one bank of the river with ghats or steps down to the water where the faithful bathe and wash clothes amongst the cows. The architecture stacked down the river front is chaotic and dilapidated of course but has immense passion, complimented by the beautiful haze, array of light colours and magical detail stretching off into the distance- there's more spiritual power here than any other city in the world. This is my second visit: the river in the winter now is only a third or less of its width after the rains- last time it was hard to make out the opposite shore beneath the jungle but now hundreds of meters of sanded plain stretch out; I took a short boat trip to see the buildings better with a couple of other travellers.

The dead are wrapped in gold, pink and red shrouds and carried through the streets and tangle of alleyways on stretchers in the air to one of two burning ghats, all accompanied by chanting. Huge piles of logs supply several bonfires, only large enough to consume the body on top and which can be overlooked from nearby, though photography of course is to be avoided; the skull is broken by a pole, and bones not reduced to ash thrown into the river. It's certainly one of the most alien of places, providing fine culture shock.

The sacred cows are in great numbers and strewn down the streets in the traffic, the alleys, sitting down inside open fronted shops, sleeping and eating whatever they can find on the street- how they eat enough I'm not sure: dung is everywhere. There are also a great many monkeys, sometimes aggressive and climbing all over the hotels regardless of height, along with dogs, one sick and rabid-looking one being chased past me by a group of men with sticks trying to kill it.

The town is perhaps marginally less filthy than I remember with occasional sweepers around, but there are surely even more people- India is truly clogged and overflowing and needs to take action to slow population growth and thence raise living standards. There are frequent accidents on the street and a high level of awareness is needed just to walk along, though large vehicles are barred from the central area, leaving cycle and auto-rickshaws.

In an internet cafe a young Oriental at the computer to my left passed out, falling into the street. I helped him along with others, but they sat him back up which I knew was the wrong thing and he soon passed out again, banging his head and knees badly, very nasty- I should have put him in the recovery position. He'd been taking too much bhang or whatever the stupid stuff's called and was coming out of him in all directions: I had sympathy for him, young and clueless in an alienated modern world but probably comes to India having at least something in him to look for meaning beyond mass material desires.

There are many travellers who come to India for the more spiritual atmosphere, many also attending ashrams for guidance from a guru; some take up entirely traditional Indian clothes and have a deeper understanding of what they're doing- Gandhi-style flowing peasant robes or beautiful saris, sandals or no footwear, long hair, stick and Shaivite/ Vaishnavite makeup, but most exude an air of lost identity and naivety. On the train from Varanasi for instance there were a couple of Japanese travellers, both with the usual contradictory acquisitive gigantic backpacks hindering them even walking down the aisle, a sight in itself, one learning Hindi and the other with great long hair and beard. One told me he'd got so sick in Varanasi he had to stay there for a month recovering, then got off the train at a local station platform to buy some food and drink, as I did, then got back on to find his passport and camera stolen, causing huge problems. This is completely crazy- of course you take your bag with you if you depart the train, the riskiest time being when it stops and there's movement of people: vigilance on it is essential at all times, chaining the bag up next to you when you sleep. But as with most travellers he was stupidly carrying heavy and multiple bags for all the goodness knows what material goods his society tells him he needs but doesn't at all, instead of a single small shoulder bag easy to keep with you.

West of Jaipur on the way to Jodhpur and Jaiselmer the landscape from the train window changes from green farmland to the dry brown Thar Desert, alternating between little weird bare trees and little weird bushes evenly spaced going off to the distance, further featuring gigantic flooded areas bordered with pink purple sand. This part of India is something of a transport dead-end and to my surprise the train becomes almost empty, a rarity where locals have to book up most routes months in advance. These two towns are similar with evocative and interesting hilltop forts: there was a festival on in Jodhpur making it difficult to explore the streets without coloured powder bombs being thrown at you, while Jaiselmer has a particularly magical and clean old town of tangled alleyways, some high standard budget accommodation and locals among the nicest in India- it attracts tourists looking for the more cushioned destinations.