Made-up Indian jokes #4

Q: What's the best hair-of-the-dog Indian beverage?
A: Lassi.

Look, I warned you, all right?

India part 18a: Amritsar

Oops. Sikhs holy city Amritsar seemed like a foreign country, perhaps because the combination of cold and fog had everyone shuffling around draped in blankets like turbaned Clint Eastwoods. I'm slightly concerned the thing I'll remember about this part of the trip will be a minibus journey during which I sat in the front between Sarah and the dead-behind-the-eyes driver, with one leg either side of the gearstick, hoping the latter wasn't feeling frisky. Hopefully these pictures of the Golden Temple will crush that particular memory.

Incredible place, sincere respect to the Sikhs.

[More Amritsar pics here.]

Made-up Indian joke #3

Q: Where's the best place to vomit up potato curry?
A: Aloo.

India part 17: Delhi

I do like my doors.

It was cold in Delhi, which was a bit of a shock for me because I had one pair of socks, no trainers and no coat. Keen to avoid the hotels of Paharganj, which we both remembered as awful and overpriced, we instead stayed at Ringo's Guest House near Connaught Place, which was awful and overpriced. On one hand, our room didn't have any beetles, but it did have holes in the wall, what looked like blood on Sarah's bedsheet, a deeply weird poster of a Thai boy wishing us happy birthday, and a dirty bathroom floor. We asked to have it cleaned, and the man who obliged also kindly dragged the wet, dirty rag across the floor of the room on his way out, smiling at us as he did it, and I'm sure genuinely thinking he was doing us a favour.

Going to visit our friends Eleanor and Charlie at their hotel possibly didn't help matters: they were staying at Claridges. Still, we had beer and fun on two consecutive nights, even if illness from both teams prevented us staying out until the clock struck 2011. Connaught Place was not exactly the party place to be, in fact it was completely empty save for the hundreds of cold, bored policemen hanging about, apparently expecting millions of people to turn up and overthrow the government, as often happens these days.

I don't remember much about how we spent the first day of the new year, but we did pay a visit to the Sikh temple, Bangla Sahib.

Oh, and apparently we also went to the grotty but charming India Coffee House. Says my diary:

I just had a plate of chips. Twelve, to be precise.

And that's it. You ain't shit, Pepys. The next day, though, we went to Humayan's Tomb, where I saw lots of people clearly wondering: "Are you Humayan, or are you dancer?"

Splendid stuff. On the way there - we walked - we were forced to cross a very busy road. There was a man standing next to it doing absolutely nothing and holding a "Delhi traffic safety week" sign. We asked him if he could help us cross, or if there was a subway or bridge or something. He muttered just one word: "Tip?" So we ran across seven lanes of traffic as he watched. What an absolute benchod. Please look at this picture of Paharganj while I fume inwardly for a bit.

Made-up Indian joke #2

"Waiter, waiter, why has this sweet bread put me in a daze?"
"You must be having kulcha shock, sir."


DO YOU SEE.

Signs I have seen #192

"The food was delicious, but the presentation was poor."

Made-up Indian joke #1

Here's the first in a daily series of genuinely groan-worthy gags I've been "working on". I hope you're ready. At this rate, I reckon I could get a high-paid job as a cracker joke writer. I don't think they have crackers in the Subcontinent, so I may just jump off a cliff instead. Anyway, here you go.

Q: What was the name of the Hindu god's Star Wars-related one-man show?
A: Hanuman Solo.

India part 16: Navsari

In summary, Navsari was all amazing hospitality, children's birthday parties, weddings, and strange beaches that your feet sank into. The Mahatma, who trod some of these beaches during his salt march, probably had more important things on his mind than weird sand.

And it wasn't a very Christmassy Boxing Day, but it was a very Indian Boxing Day.

India part 15: Mumbai

The good thing about flying, apart from the substantial carbon emissions of course, was that it gave us the chance to meet a very strange man on the way. He was American, a Vietnam veteran who seemed to be having flashbacks while he regaled us with self-regarding stories and told us about his battle with cancer. He worked for General Motors and, it seemed, had been on more flights than we'd had hot curries.

Despite getting the Chennai-Mumbai hurdle out the way, we still had to sort out the train to Navsari in Gujurat, because we were planning on spending the festive season with our friend Rakesh and his family. This meant a few more early starts spent hunting for internet cafes. On the plus side, it also meant I got some fine early-morning photos of pigeons hanging out next to the Gateway to India, which lay just a few blocks from our hotel.

The place we were staying had the most genial manager of all time. It was almost painful how genial he was. He also loved to use your name and did so as frequently as possible. When Sarah complimented the Indian railways: "Thank you for saying that, Sarah, because some tourists say they are dirty, Sarah." The other great thing about the our hotel was its proximity to my favourite restaurant in Mumbai, the brilliantly-named Food Inn.

Visiting here gave me the perfect excuse to tell Sarah the joke I made up about the place eight years ago, though she'd heard it many times before.

Q: What does the sign above the toilets in the Food Inn say?
A: 'Food out.'

HAHA. On our last day in the city, as is tradition, we appeared in "a Bollywood movie". The Bollywood movie in this case was actually an Aids awareness advert for Unicef. Normally I don't like to talk about my work for charidee, but since I feature so prominently at 0.25 (one of the hands), 0.27 (the only one wearing a stupid stripey shirt), 0.28 (standing behind the Nigerian "I know" girl) and 0.34 (running a stall), I thought I'd better own up before I start getting recognised in the street.







I spent the wages I most certainly didn't receive what with being on a tourist visa and all that on a few books. Here's what I bought.

Just kidding.

India part 14: Chennai

"Beach is Marina Beach, M-A-R-I-N-A," the guide told us, as the tour bus made its way through Chennai. "Is biggest beach in the world, is number two ranking," he added confusingly. The man had more than one odd habit when doing his voiceovers, despite appearing normal in casual conversation (we also spoke informally about cricket, of course). He peppered his utterances with the word "sir", even when addressing a large group of both sexes: "On the left is old secretariat, sir..." And he'd pause in odd places, like a teacher who wants the class to chant the answer: "Secretariat is now using for the purpose of..." Pause, then firmly and clearly: "Library. Is now using for the purpose of library."

The tour stopped at this rather wondrous thing, which shall remain nameless because, um, I've forgotten its name.

And we dropped by the bustling Kapaleeshwarar Temple to leer at some more gopuras.

We also met a man from Mumbai with the most extraordinary toupee - the hair at the back was barely even touching his scalp - and a younger gentleman from North India who was very quiet and who wore a Bluetooth headset over his right ear for the five-hour duration, without receiving a single call. At his request, we both had our pictures taken with him.

We arrived at Marina Beach as the sun was setting, and strolling along, he promised to show us "something beautiful" and marched us across the sand. I wasn't holding out much hope; his claim was belied by the guidebook's description of the beach: "Its location just a little downstream from the port which belches out waste and smelly fumes, combined with its function as the toilet of the fishing community detracts somewhat from its natural beauty."

We walked anyway for at least 15 minutes, but the scenery remained similar and unremarkable: happy families frolicking, nagging beach urchin children each with their own monkey, a consistent trail of rubbish, and so on. We eventually got out of him that he was taking us to a fish market, but we couldn't really see it, even in the distance, though he insisted we were nearly there. I was worried the coach would leave without us, and then more worried when it crossed my mind that he was probably the kind of quiet guy who always minded his own business, kept himself to himself, and then turns out to be a serial killer, and furthermore that the pictures he'd taken of us would end up in some macabre basement collection. In his favour, however, he did seem genuinely surprised when we pointed out there was only 10 minutes left to return to the bus. As we hurried back, I saw a woman on the sand weeping into her hands, while the man she was with tried to comfort her, muttering under his breath.