Problems on re-entry

Is this it?

The end?

Did I adventure beyond the ultraworld?

Did I ever leave?




Ok, the answers are yes. No stolen credit cards, lost passports, hostage videos, crashes, arrests, bribes or druggings - but I did go round the world and I did make it back in one piece. I must've been doing something wrong.

And five days after touching down there's not been too many problems on re-entry. Save for a bit of jetlag and a couple of habits that I need to get back into (like wearing jeans, and clean underwear, and t-shirts that have been washed in a machine rather than with flaky soap in a guesthouse sink) things have been easy. And so my thoughts turn back to the ultraworld.

In some ways it doesn't feel like I ever left. Everything is more or less still where it was - my things, the South Downs, the government, the Albion. Just a few bits and pieces scattered around to remind me that it wasn't a dream. A painting from Australia, a poster of the Thai King, a hammock, some photos, a new Prime Minister, a new Boris Johnson... Or maybe it was a dream. Maybe I've not woken up.

I won't bore you with my profound thoughts on my last twelve months. Mainly cos I can't think of any. In 365 days I managed to cross 31 borders, sleep in 215 different places and burn over eight tonnes of carbon dioxide. And what do I have to show for it? A bit less hair, a broken finger, some photos, four filled journals and this blog.

In fact I've never re-read or proof read this site until today. I feel like going back and editing it but I guess that wouldn't be the point. So in the absence of any final thoughts, here's a few of the highlights from Mr Tony's Adventures. Ok it's just some links, but better than nothing. Probably. These were a few of my favourite things:

• Big things in the US of A
• Bear advice in Canada
• Being churlish in Cuba (I love it now...)
• Elections Guatemala style
• Making new friends in Nicaragua
• Tall tales
• Finding echoes of Bognor down under
• And a month in south east asia... Malaysia decides, scary buddhists, scooters and dictators...

One year in half a dozen easy links. Thanks for reading.

The Money Shot

And it was worth it. A 35km walk from a tiny village called Govindghat up to the Valley of Flowers (3,000m above the sea) and back again. Apparently from July the snow-filled valley that you can see is full of flowers. I take their word for it.

So I made it to the Himalayas and, after a total of 32 hours on buses and in jeeps from Punjab, I'm feeling quite smug. I'm not much looking forward to the next 17 hours back to Delhi though. Ho hum.

Some advice

If anyone asks if you've been here before, say "yes, many times". If they ask where you're from, say China.

It was good advice, from an eccentric German that I'd met in Varanasi a few weeks ago. In the last thirty years he'd been pretty much everywhere - to Macchu Pichu when you could get in for free, to Angkor Wat while the French were still excavating it, and to India, many times.

I was feeling pretty low, with the dicky tummy and the relentless hassle from touts. Twice in Varanasi I was literally chased down the streets by crazy people. But his advice worked - they only ask where you're from to work out how much money you've got (saying the UK or England or Britain is always met with a sage "ahh, rich country"), and ask if you've been here before to work out if you're a soft target. I don't usually say China. It seems a bit rude. I say New Zealand, which sounds pretty poor.

Needless to say I rarely tell people I'm a civil servant. They're held in high esteem here. Which is unusual cos they mostly seem to sit around making my life difficult. So I say I'm a student, or a spy.

Anyway I didn't have much cause to lie in Punjab cos most people seemed to have better cameras, clothes and phones than me. But back on the road the occasional untruth (or mis-remembering, as Clinton would have it) has come in handy. So in Corbett Tiger Reserve, about ten hours by ramshackle buses from Chandigarh, my New Zealand student who's been here many times got a half-day safari for about ten quid. Didn't see any tigers but who cares. I saw some indistinct footprints and some elephant poo.

And from there I finally made it up into the mountains - firstly to a hill station that could've been Scotland (right down to the funny smell), and now onto a mountain village where Ghandi hung out. I'm staying in a small place that probably used to be owned by a hobbit. But it's ok, the New Zealand student who's been here many times got a small discount.

Apparently I'm in the foothills of the Himalayas too. But to be honest I can't see fuck-all. A combination of forest fires and heat haze. Just 25 miles from me is a range of peaks reaching 7,800 metres, but all that I can see is a fine, grey soup. It's a bit like standing on the south downs and not being able to see the Isle of Wight (if it was straight in front of you and about 6,000 metres taller).

So tomorrow I'm off again. My last few days of restfully watching the mountains have been replaced by a mad dash to get closer to the buggers. Which cos of the mountain roads will mean ten hours by bus and jeep.

Wish me luck.

It lives inside me

A week passes and I'm still not up in the mountains. I thought I was better. In fact I was so sure, I decided to make one last attempt at sight-seeing northern India. First up was Agra and the Taj Mahal (my camera broke), then Jaipur (crazy hot, with palaces and things) and then Bikaner (even hotter with extra camels - I was now in the Great Thar Desert, which sounds exciting).

Trouble is that I wasn't much better at all. So when I finally made it to relative civilisation in Chandigarh (India's only 'new town' - it's as if the Jetsons moved to Milton Keynes) I decided to visit a doctor. His verdict was amoebic gastroentiritis. Which sounds explosive. The poor amoeba and its family are dead now, but they had a good innings. And I'm reacquainting myself with regular bowel movements. Which is far better than acquanting myself with the toilets on Indian night trains.

Chandigarh is nice enough. Tons of open space and not a cow to be seen, but with a rigid geometry that borders on the fanatical. Its creator, Le Corbusier, was apparently a genius and is now lauded on the Swiss 10 Franc note. But I think he was surely a nut. As he put it,

"The curve is ruinous, difficult and dangerous, it is a paralysing thing. The straight line enters into all human history, into all human aim, into every human act."

Ok... He also named the new parliament building "The Hyperbolic-Paraboloid Dome of Assembly" and modelled it on a power station chimney that he saw in Hyderabad.

The main reason that I'm here though, is to watch some cricket. India has been caught by the Twenty-20 bug and most of the world's best are here to pocket Indians' hard-earned rupees. So I'm going to do my bit for poor cricketers and head for the Kings Select XI Punjab versus Mumbai Indians tonight. Very exciting. Maybe the most exciting thing to happen in my twelve months.

I was beginning to wonder what I was doing in India. But now I know - I'm here to watch the Little Wizard, Sachin Tendulkar. If he can just get himself fit...

Mr Tony, defeated

My train was cancelled by the Naxalites. It sounded like a cross between "leaves on the line" and Star Trek, but was apparently because of a low-level guerilla war being waged in Bihar state, India. It was a bad start to a pretty miserable few days. Luckily though, they had put on another train that would leave at the same time and go to the same destinations. I didn't ask them in what sense, then, my train had been "cancelled". There didn't seem much point - that's just how things work here.

Anyway I got on to my next stop, Varanasi, on time. Apparently Varanasi is the holiest city in Hinduism. But it wasn't what I expected - mostly just cows shitting in the streets, and me being followed around by touts, salesmen, boat drivers and drug dealers. Then I spent the next 36 hours in bed, spectacularly ill. It was now 40 degrees outside, 35 degrees in my room, and about 100 degrees in my pounding, spinning head.

So for only the second time this year (the first being when I got man flu in Santiago, Chile) I thought I'd rather be at home. There's no better place when your ill.

I've bucked out of that now, though. Today I started eating again and tonight I head for Agra, to endure the tourist madness of the Taj Mahal. But in one way I'm defeated. Indian touts and the weather have beaten me. I planned to spend most of my final few weeks on a sightseeing circuit of Rajastan and Punjab, but my new plan is to head for the hills. Find somewhere where I can put my feet up, walk a bit, drink tea and relax.

Yep, I'm pretty glad that I've lost.

Black Hole/ On the trail of Lord Buddha

Um. I can't decide whether to write about Buddha or Calcutta. I suppose that I should say something about Calcutta first. It's huge. Until Friday, London was the busiest city that I have ever visited (narrowly beating Lagos, Nigeria). But Calcutta trumps both. I've never seen so many people in all my life. It's crazy. It's like every minute of every day is the Strand at lunchtime. But instead of suits rushing to and from Pret a Manger, it's rickshaws being pulled on foot, hustlers, beggars, shoeshines, hawkers, barbers...

I'd not really thought much of going to Calcutta. I'd even forgotten the "of Calcutta" bit of Mother Teresa. To be honest it was just the cheapest way to get from Bangkok to India. A few people had told me that it'd be depressing, or intimidating, or scary, or heart-rending. The worst introduction to India. But apart from a few scrapes (like wandering into a slum and then being followed by a few hoodlums - I was saved by a chap called Mohammad Akhbar, who kindly offered to walked me to his mosque) I found it ok. I guess that the Strand and Nigeria stood me in good stead. As did Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua...

So from Calcutta I started my hunt for Lord Buddha. It hadn't crossed my mind to go hunting for a 2,600 year old deity until a chance encounter at the national museum in Singapore. There a special exhibition told me all about Nalanda, a sixth-century Buddhist university (at one time the biggest in the world) in northern India. That led me on to Bodhgaya, the place where Buddha became Buddha, attaining enlightenment under a nearby Bodhi tree, and a convenient six hours by train from Calcutta. Which is where I find myself today.

Things have changed a lot since Buddha's time. This is now the poorest state in India - all dust roads and beggars and (again) huge families - and not really the place for a Buddhist family holiday. But nonetheless, the international Buddhist community has done their very best to make you feel at home. The city is full of national temples - from Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan. Mostly Tibetan though, as Bodhgaya doubles up as the winter (November to March) retreat for sun-seeking Tibetans. Not so many are around this month unfortunately - with temperatures nudging 40 I can't blame them.

Sadly my hunt for Buddha ends here. I had planned to visit Nalanda itself, but (as I'm finding) as with all travel in India it's not straightforward. So tomorrow I move on, with a train at stupid o'clock to a place called Varanasi. Apparently it's that town where they cremate people next to the Ganges then go for a swim. Apparently here the Ganges is technically septic, too (it has no dissolved oxygen and therefore virtually no life). Best stay out of the water.

Anyway India is proving good fun. It's a land of cricket, curry and tea so I feel almost at home. Apart from the incredible heat, obviously. And the dust, and the millions of people, and the squat toilets and cold showers. So not much like home at all then...

Goodnight Moses

I see Charlton Heston is dead. Maybe now we can take the gun from his cold, dead, hands. As he so memorably put it after the Columbine massacre.

Plenty of guns here in Cambodia too, although you don't see them. And they don't justify them with an anachronistic read of something written 250 years ago - more to do with all the wars and things. It's hard to imagine that peace broke out less than twenty years ago and that the UN only handed over the reins in 1993. Unlike Laos and Vietnam (but a lot like Thailand) Cambodia is now a fully functioning, nepotistic, corrupt democracy. In Phnom Penh you can see the new elite, the untouchables, with their minders and cars without number plates.

So far, so Bangkok (for more on where Thailand's gone then check this out - I was on a bus on the same street a few weeks ago....)

And like Thailand ten years ago, it's a land where tourists can do anything. (Including, apparently, machine-gunning cows - though I must be staying in the wrong hostels as I've not seen this yet.)

But if you look past the bad bits, or just choose not to look at them, then Cambodia's a pretty amazing place. Incredible ruins, lively cities, genuine people, great food. I've spent three days at the Angkor temples and after Latin America was determined not to like them. But they're incredible - like nothing else that I've ever seen. Kind of Transformers meets brick spaceships. Today I spent ten hours on a boat down a muddy river and enjoyed all but hours nine and ten.

So it'll be a shame to leave in a few days. But I have to. I now have less than one month to go on my little jolly and so it's time to get on to my last stop, India. All I need now is a visa...