If you like the experience you’re about to encounter, I’d really appreciate your feedback in the comment thread, or via the contact form.

Colour Vision: 9999FF is a post from Trail of Ants.

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This week’s LISTENup travelcast takes you into the A&E department of a south Indian hospital. I’m induced with a cocktail of drugs, and set free upon an unforgettable journey through the Keralan backwaters, and through the water parks of the Western Ghats.

Complete with faux-Indian accents and my fumbled pronunciation of ‘th’ – “I can fink of free reasons your feory is flawed” – this is one podcast, you won’t want to miss.

005 LISTENup: Heartbreak Hotel is a post from Trail of Ants.

Consider visiting my travel blog to explore a wide variety of travel related articles, and score yourself a 7% discount on your next travel insurance policy with my World Nomads promotional code.

This weeks Reprint is disgusting, and funny. Disgustingly funny, one might say. It’s about that global addiction that rears its butt in so many ways – smoking.

I’ve been quitting smoking for nigh on twelve years. I mostly just quit buying them, and smoke everyone else’s. Especially when I’ve been drinking. I suspect my fable of excuses, mirrors that of many readers. So, this weeks image brings you my ever-present girlfriend, Reb – a veritable twenty-a-day chimney pot.

In order to give this post some sort of credibility, I’ll bring to the forefront the painstakingly obvious fact, that it’s incredibly hard to quit smoking while travelling in Asia. I believe the percentage of smokers among travellers in Asia is far higher than that of the Western trails, and it comes down to one thing: money. A packet of cigarettes in India (where this shot was taken) costs around 70Rs (£0.90), and that’s relatively expensive.

Therefore all the smokers on the fringes of quitting – or even those that have recently achieved purity – come out of the woodwork. Coupled with the low price of alcohol, and the beautiful and frequent stabs of panic, you create a smoggy paradise smokers. And why not, you conclude, you’re ‘on holiday’.

(Please don’t lynch me about the cost of cigarettes. We all know the real cost.)

Reprint: Non-Smoker is a post from Trail of Ants.

Consider visiting my travel blog to explore a wide variety of travel related articles, and score yourself a 7% discount on your next travel insurance policy with my World Nomads promotional code.

I stare at the newspaper. It wasn’t me. I gawp at the television. It wasn’t me. I trawl through the internet. It wasn’t me! I listen to the radio, podcasts, and conversations on the bus. It WASN’T me! At least — I hope it wasn’t me?

I didn’t know much about Asia before I scribbled over her ancient lanes. I thought it was a factory to stock my English necessities. Indeed, my local fish and chip shop, newsagent, petrol station, pizza shop and Chinese takeaway were all owned and operated by cheery Asians.

It’s only now, as I’m sat in as-safe-as-safe-can-be New Zealand, that it’s sunk in. I’ve left a trail of destruction in Asia. I tell myself every day it wasn’t me, but there’s a residual inkling; that it was.

I believe in the butterfly effect — that a butterfly can fart in Blackpool and lift the skirt of a Cornish virgin. So could it actually be possible, that I inadvertently contributed to some of the most iconic headlines of the past two years?

Perhaps the day I fell asleep in Moscow’s Gorky Park, I missed the chance to quell the August 2008 invasion of Georgia? I’ll never know, I’d quickly fallen asleep on a round-city recce because Moscow had swiftly bored me. However it’s not just the invasion of gritty Georgia that has me looking over my shoulder.

In July 2007 I arrived in Mongolia. The Mongols were in full on party mode; it was the annual Nadaam Festival and everywhere I looked small horses jerked fancy young jockeys around the beaten green Gobi. Gers sprang up; a hundred pickpockets tried their luck; I was cruelly threatened in a local nightclub; and I heard of one backpacker being kidnapped, and another who was raped.

Though shocking, none of this deterred me — I was in Mongolia. I was living a dream I’d dreamt for years. A year later — July 2008 — and Ulaanbaator became the stage to escalating violence as protestors rallied against suspected election fraud, and a year later a flood temporarily swallowed the capital. This was amazing; not least because Mongolia is one of the emptiest expanses of land I’ve ever seen. The devil had hit the bull’s-eye.

China’s also suffered. I spent three fascinating months there in late 2007 and ever since it’s been hailing horror. First of all, hundreds of thousands of my beloved Chinamen were affected by the worst snowstorms in decades. Then the warm up to the forthcoming Olympics became the catalyst to a massive anti-China uprising, resulting in my cherished Tibetan skies being splattered with the worst violence in Lhasa for twenty years. As if China hadn’t taken enough of a pounding in my absence, the Sichuan earthquake then culled tens of thousands and not to be outdone, the north-eastern Xinjiang region imploded in another round of ethnic violence. I won’t even mention their milk.

Brimming with innocence, I entered the Kingdom of Nepal. Word had already reached me of the Maoists — a terrorist group — demanding money off stoic foreign hikers in the mystical foothills of the Himalayas. Undeterred, I dodged my way around Kathmandu, spluttered down the river, clambered through bushes looking for tigers and rhino and snuck in and out of Buddha’s old place.

Other than a few spontaneous (yet peaceful) protests, I was confident things were running smoothly. Then I left — and a trio of bombs rippled the terai. Before I knew it the headlines told me the terrorists were in government and soon after they levered the monarchy permanently off their thrown. What had I done? The Kingdom had fallen.

India was never short of controversy during the four months I spent there — that’s one of the reasons I love it so. But nothing of the scale that happened after I left. First off, forty-nine people were slain by a series of bombs in Ahmedabad, and a few months later the sickening news came through that Mumbai had suffered a similar fate, with four times as many losing their lives to hereditary violence.

If all of this wasn’t bad enough, the next country I forayed into was Sri Lanka. I’m almost thankful that when I first stepped foot on the Venerable Island, it was already in the throes of civil war. It meant I couldn’t be the catalyst. The Sinhalese government pulled out of a six-year peace deal the week I arrived. I stayed for two months, fearlessly venturing to the war-torn east coast before looping around and back to India. Then the government accelerated its stance, fuelling the climax to a bloody feud. Maybe my many inquisitive questions were misplaced?

The next country I dared to step foot in, was tiny Singapore. Rumours were strife that a woman in her twenties was brutally cursed for crossing the road without being escorted by a little green man. And then, if that wasn’t shocking enough, I was told off for taking too long to order noodles. I’ve got my eye on Singapore, if only to see if anything interesting ever happens.

From Singa’ to the Indonesian archipelago. A two-month jolly around Sumatra, Java and bountiful Bali proved to be one of the most exhilarating periods of my life. I left full of admiration for a country of simple brilliance. Four months later the government executed the infamous Bali Bombers, which seemingly acted as little deterrent — eight months later, central Jakarta reverberated to the blasts of two of its iconic hotels.

A year in Australia ensued, for the most part I was safe in the haven of Melbourne sipping stubbies and perusing antipodean quirks. Then one Saturday I dropped Reb and her dad at Avalon airport, and the radio began to crackle through the news that became known as Black Saturday; bushfires left 173 dead and levelled lives in the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history.

All of the above lays in my wake. Battered and torn, broken and bruised. Lives inextricably twisted, love curtailed, and communities eternally altered.

Perhaps it’s true, that you only really know a country and its people once you’ve been there — once you’ve spent time laughing with its children. But perhaps it’s also true, that you only get to know a place, once you’ve left?

Trails of the Unexpected is a post from Trail of Ants.

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The nickname of Varanasi is carried on a hushed wind around those muttering it subconsciously at its entrances. Varanasty. This can be interpreted as slightly disrespectful, but I assure you for the benefit of my legal team I have an ingrained respect for the Hindi HQ.

There is a certain underworld feeling flowing through the labyrinth of laneways. My arrival in Varanasi could easily have been the opening sequence of The Beach 2. Substitute Di Caprio for yours truly, pin me into the back of a rickshaw and engage me in a conversation with my Indian counterpart. As he weaved me on three-wheels through herds of cattle and taxis he began his string of warnings.

We left his chariot at the edge of the Ghats, stopping once to glue our backs to the wall and allow a relentless funeral procession make its way to the pyre for cremation. An unforgettable flash of Technicolored chaos. His last warning was that I shouldn’t leave my hotel at night, for ruthless knifemen roam the laneways.

This weeks Reprint shows the silhouettes of the Ganges boatmen. It’s the done thing to rise at the crack of dawn and drift along the shores of the Ganges, absorbing the colourful morning crescendo of Hindu life as they flock to the sacred river for various needs and deeds. To observe, was a privilege.

Has this weeks Reprint image hit a cord? Let me know about it via the comments panel, or for more imagery from along The Trail take yourself over to the stills gallery.

The Reprint: ‘Fading Memories’ is a post from Trail of Ants.

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Zoom in a bit, in a bit more, more, more, out a bit, a touch more. Now focus. Slowly does it. Breath. Easy on the trigger. Look around the frame. Zoom in a bit. In a bit. In a bit. Breath. And. Wait for it. Shoot! Snap? Click? Damn it. Turn it on. Refocus. Pan right a bit. Easy on the trigger. Breath in. Breath out. Perfect. Count down from three, two… get out of the way! Three, two, one. Snap. Click. Whirr. You beauty!

And so the beat goes on. Time after time after time. You’ve seen the Taj Mahal a thousand times. There are men who find employment at the Taj by walking you around the fifty or so most photographic angles. You follow them unknowingly. You take the photo. You’re pleased. You pay them. They’re not pleased. You pay them some more. Now their friends not pleased.

The Taj Mahal doesn’t have a bad angle. I don’t honestly believe you can go wrong. This particular shot was taken from a rooftop restaurant and is the epitome how you should view the photographic world – with your eyes wide open.

I should of shot a whole series from up there in hindsight, but my battery was waning and monkeys were gathering around my saag aloo. Man shouldn’t be made to make such decisions; get the shot, lose the food or eat the food then… wait a minute… get the shot? Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But there it is; a big fat clue, to just one unique view.

Has the marvel in marble wet your appetite for a meander through North India? Worry not young ranger, you’ll find a remedy of reminders in my album of imagery from this glorious region.

The Reprint: ‘Taj. You’re It.’ is a post from Trail of Ants.

Consider visiting my travel blog to explore a wide variety of travel related articles, and score yourself a 7% discount on your next travel insurance policy with my World Nomads promotional code.

I’d seen him from a short distance, twelve months previously, he travelled alone aboard a plane to Moscow. He wore a dark tracksuit top zipped over a light t-shirt, and loose pale green shorts covered the knees he cradled by his chest. His hair sprayed out in loose brown curls beneath a khaki cap, highlighted by scribbles of grey. His pale thin lips lined a shallow smile, and his early morning eyes seemed glazed with relief. As his homeland slipped beneath a thin veil of cloud, he lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, his lips parted just once to release his farewell thoughts: Let the journey begin, my friend. Today, he lay upright on the rippled white sheets of a double bed, in a simple, homely room on the island of Bali.

His hair was shorter, still a familiar fiesta of curls and slashed with new grey. His face was slimmer, his pale skin had darkened and his spirit was now windowed by black-framed glasses. His khaki cap lay upturned nearby, a tide of sweat had set a shade in the rim and it was filled with worn foreign coins. His loyal backpack leaned tiredly, resting its bruises and scars against a bamboo table. He lay shirtless, wearing chequered grey shorts between a half empty packet of Marlborough and a swollen blue notebook. Ambient music moulded around his quiet thoughts, and I watched in silence as his eyes circled the motionless ceiling fan. He lay in the path of a mirror, reflecting the figure of a proud and mortal curio. Though he sometimes heard me, I sensed he never saw me.

He recalled how he’d left Moscow, slipping east through Siberia to the rhythmic beat of a Mongolia bound train. It was five days before he set foot in Ulaanbaatar. While he absorbed the strength of the mighty Mongol race, he followed the whispers through the kitsch of their annual games. He described the grace of wrestlers, the poetry of archers and the fear that pecked at the calmness of preteen jockeys. Asia mesmerised him instantaneously. He looked musingly at the ceiling fan, he found its will to spin tremendous. After a short time living with local nomads in their ger and exploding dust clouds with the hooves of horses, he journeyed onward to Beijing. The Mongolians, he declared have a degree in simplicity, their eyes hang like painted canvases in a dusty exhibit of Untold Beauty. His arrival in Beijing was infamous, he writhed in agony for three days. At moments he became so dehydrated he had to use his fingers to pry his swollen tongue from the inner of his cheek. China was kind after this initiation, and even in the cruellest moments he learned patience, compassion and conviction.

He recalled a southwest mountain village where he’d sat and eaten beside a loyal friend, whose name, when he spoke it, started the percussion in his eyes. Following a humble feast they shared cigarettes and baiju with a decade or more excitable locals, who later produced a segment of bee larvae. After a pregnant pause, he swallowed the first of the pale grubs, beginning a long evening of song and dance, laughter and merriment. It says a lot about the Chinese, they’re xenophobes who roll out their welcome mats with a courtesy offered to queens. He shuffled on the bed, and then I listened as he rolled his memory onto the Tibetan plateau. He visited Lhasa, spending two weeks watching the evolution of monks, and the perseverance of pilgrims. He thought highly of the Tibetans. Lhasa radiates beneath a sky so alive, so pure, so blue. It mainlines your veins, and suddenly you’re as wise as the ocean, as blameless as boys, and as boundless as her eyes. He left the Forbidden City in a failing van. He drifted in and around whitewashed monasteries and indigo lakes, vast pale dunes and rich red forts, sought all the while by scores of grubby faced youths. As the traveller’s tale ascended to the base camp of Mount Everest, I picked up the thrill in his tone. He told of being caught out in tumbling temperatures beneath a canopy of curious stars. After a slow 10km hike he recoiled and spent several hours shivering uncontrollably beneath a stack of blankets, his eyes still retained that frozen glaze.

The resilient city of Kathmandu became the stage to a fond farewell, to the girl whose name he chased around the orchards of his mind. He cast his eyes on his cigarettes before confessing it had taken many moons before he realised the feeling seeping from the Kathmandu shadows, was loneliness. The Kingdom of Nepal played stage to my coronation. The day I lost my queen preceded the month I found my Kingdom. It was there, in Nepal, that he first encountered Hinduism. He found sense in aspects of its tradition, Buddha had nudged him on an educational level, but Hinduism and all the myth and colour of its ways and words earned a place in his heart in ways he’d never permitted. He doesn’t believe in mortal gods, or the dictatorship he sees in other religions. The real Hindu takes strength from everything, and gives weakness to nothing. He looped around Nepal, taking to the rivers, roads and jungles before riding on the roofs of buses through the southern terai, stopping by the birthplace of the Indian Prince, Buddha before lowering himself over the border and into the heart of Hindustan, to India.

He smiled, as if trying to expel the gross history of this journey. His first night in India, he told me how drunk he’d gotten, attempting to forget the inward journey that choked him with anger, and drenched him in desperation and blood. I learned later that that aching anger would bind itself with love. He travelled the cities of the north with his parents. Together they took in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi; the glorious Mogul white cliffs of the Taj; the Golden Temple, home of the Sikhs; and the Buddha’s classroom of Sarnath. Between these, they fought with forts and took trains to temples before the three speared their way over rails to the southern, largely Christian city of Pondicherry. North India is crass and callous. You’re soul is robbed, your spirit burned and your destiny is devilishly realigned. Christmas was spent sowing seeds of kisses on that girl, she’d drifted on his whispers to bloom beneath the shadows of festivity and friends. He stopped his story for a moment to sip a sassy smile, though its cause would remain a private pleasure.

He then told me of the month of Janus, who opened a door to new beginnings on the isle of Sri Lanka. The surf and sands of southern Ceylon bore him the fruit of countless new friends, each was true, each loyal and distinct. One day, he fell upon the tragedy of two Sri Lankan brothers, whose family business, a turtle farm was destroyed “the day the sea is coming”, along with almost their entire family. I didn’t have to hear Nimal and Ruwan’s tragedy, I could see it in their eyes and feel it in my heart, and without words I knew she felt the same, we had to help. I listened to his thoughts on Sri Lanka, the gaps he left I figured were small parts of his self that he left in the sands to recover another day. The tea plantations, national parks and holy pilgrimages he spoke so sweetly of, sat beside his firsthand accounts of an island in turmoil, at war.

His return to India was more instinct than desire. He tore himself away from an island he loved and threw himself at the mercy of her southern states. He found shanti the day he rented an Enfield Bullet motorcycle, and found comfort from the loving arms wrapped around his waist. He described the thirty day journey in magnificent stages, from the temple strewn lands of Tamils, up and over the Western Ghats before descending their coats of grit and grim into the green glory of Kerala. All along their way they sipped hot sweet chai and snacked on wadis with a hundred, no a thousand locals. They pinched rice and sweet, spicy curries with their fingers from banana leaves and when their clocks chimed for their ‘hour of need’ it took just a shy passerby, or a hidden onlooker to attract a gaggle of intrigue and set them on their way once more. To thread a passage through India in this way, sweetened bitterness with bliss and spliced cruel with kind. Our path was scribed with poetries of passion, and slow ballads of awe and brilliance. The conclusion however, also brought a sequel to the Toodle-oo of Kathmandu, to his pillion, his equal and his muse. This time born of logic, laced with tears but remembered in gratitude.

He paused, then silently walked barefoot to his porch, as he sat down he drew his knees to his bare chest and lit a cigarette. The plumes of smoke moved thinly through the still, warm air of our Bali night. He stared up into the dim porch light, watching in wonder his self-made spectacle of careless wisps. He extinguished the cigarette slowly, drew a deep breath and continued his memoires, carrying his thoughts over the moss-covered rocks that surrounded a small hidden lawn. He recalled the three weeks of long days that followed her departure when he’d ventured into the state of Andhra Pradesh, going nowhere fast while thinking things over slowly. I knew it was time to leave India, when I was denied entry to a night train. My bribes fell on hollow ears, my begging fell on careless eyes and my will was spirited away on a feather, to a passive plateau. I’d lost the will to fight; I knew right there, right then that my time – for now – was up.

He took to Singapore, a city he knew was a contrast to India, the homeland of humble heroes and fantastic villains. He drank and shopped and laughed and sighed, he ate and walked and talked. Singapore – for the visitor at least – is as neutral as Asia gets with the West. She’s loyal, where others are scheming, and she’s tender where others are tough. He stopped to watch an ant, struggle under a prized crumb of toast, and then from nowhere there were two, then three, and then four to help carry their loot awkwardly away. Touché. He continued, explaining how he flew to Sumatra, an island of Indonesia and one he discovered to be inlaid with treasures. He mounted volcanoes, dipped his weary body in lakes and his finale was attended by the fire-red, pendulous orang-utans. He took an onward flight to Jakarta, capital of the neighbouring island, Java, and en route he lost his prized possessions; his passport, and wallet of critical cards. Corruption in Indonesia was not beautiful, nor welcome. It’s a crime of the coward. If this nation weren’t so soft and sweet in other ways, I’d instil you with its sour side and stench. He spoke of other islands ringed with golden beaches, and cultures descended through lineages of lore.

It was here on Bali that I heard these nibs of his enchanting year in Asia. I listened for over an hour, in awe. I thought I knew the definition of my emotions, I thought I’d felt them all. Though the depths of those in Asia almost reduced my prior sentiments, to mere essence. Even in the shaves of silence I heard the enigmatic echo of his epic. I see his friendships in the constellations of his ebony eyes; I feel his compassion in the warmth of his palms; I feel his excitement in the nape of his neck; I see his astonishment in the furrows of his brow; I sense his caution in the flare of his nostrils; and I’ve heard his story, a thousand glorious times. A thousand glorious times.

A Thousand Glorious Times is a post from Trail of Ants.

Consider visiting my travel blog to explore a wide variety of travel related articles, and score yourself a 7% discount on your next travel insurance policy with my World Nomads promotional code.

As I sit and write, I am alone. Reb, the girl I’ve coined ‘my muse‘, my ‘garrulous pillion‘, my ‘ubiquitous sidekick‘, but never the truth – for literary mystery – my girlfriend, is gone. She sits in Singapore. I sit in India. Eight months prior, in China, we exchanged our preconceived views on those who fell into a relationship versus our destiny of travelling solo. We agreed they were foolish, that our trips were first and foremost and if we were to meet anyone they would have to fit like stray islands to our stubborn coastlines. We laughed, before taking a solitary moment to look at our reflections in the night bus window, to try and convince ourselves it’s how we really felt. The next three months, the kisses and telltale looks were under ‘Mission Secret Squirrel’, we cloaked the unthinkable from everyone – that we’d fallen for each other. After a six week goodbye, we accidentally-on-purpose found ourselves sharing Christmas together and the squirrel was demoted. We were a couple. We laughed at our Chinese prophecies, and I proudly held her hand in front of friends and family alike. Four months later I held the same hands, as they trembled. I kissed the moist, swollen pink lids of her eyes and broke my final promise. I looked back.

It’s an idyllic situation. You’re single. She’s single. You’re in a foreign land where your mates can’t show you up and hers can’t steal the show. You automatically have something in common, it’s easy. It’s more than a holiday romance, it’s less than a shared bank account. Before you’re even aware, you’re living together. Not in a two-up-two-down in a picturesque village with it’s own cricket committee and a pub dripping pale pints of ale, but in the ragged hotels of the East. You wake together, breakfast, lunch and dinner together, see the sights and conquer frights. Together, in sickness and in health. Once again, it’s an idyllic situation. Unless. One of you decides to review their life and suddenly the other is dragged by the nostrils to the sacrificial fires. ‘Get rid of it, I can’t think straight, just get rid of it!’ At home, you would ring your mate to share too many warm pints of ale, meanwhile she would cut her hair and snog your best mate. But travelling, you’re both denied. You’re both alone. Very much, alone, and suddenly you have two things in common.

I’m at the stage where everything I see, touch, smell or hear somehow comes back to Reb; the girl whose heart I tore. The reasons and all The Little Things will forever be kept in the forbidden cache of my wayward mind. All that’s to say, is our relationship wasn’t at the expense of bad reasons, the lady is innocent. In the embers of the fire that separated our blameless blend, I will forge the finest reasons for forgiveness. Reb gave me this chance. It’s not the first time a relationship has fallen to the might of travel, nor indeed the second. Three vixens lay victim to an urge within me to rebel, and follow the hazy horizon. Only, for Reb, the theory is somewhat inverted. When I find what it is I’m looking for, I hope I’m lucky enough to find someone with as much passion, verve and magnificence as the girl I just glanced back at.

For now, amid the hurt, the guilt, the self-hate and all the other Heartbreaker Commandments I feel a sense of relief. A release. The hardest thing I’ve had to do on The Trail, is done. Like it, or lump it. I can exhale, wipe my eyes and look forward. With the sun setting not just on times of blinding se… excellence, mother, and pillows plagued with pleasure, but also on the stage of the ‘Coward’s Kiss’, on India. Four of the last six months have been in this blighted beauty. Am I done with Mother India? In the off-the-beaten-track towns and cities of recent times, I’ve been relishing Indian cuisine like I suspect Worzel relished matches. I’ve become passive where I was once irate. I’m taking up to six showers a day to escape the heat, and maybe subconsciously the stares. I’m reading about cricket and when affirming questions I say ‘ahh‘ and wobble my head around the axle of my nose. I’ve stopped getting sunburned and my tan has faded with my memories of Sri Lanka. I consider a good hotel room, to be one with a light switch above my headboard and I never pass a rupee until Gandhi’s wise old eyes are facing upwards. This country has consumed me, she is the dirt beneath my nails and the conductress of my emotions. So, am I done with Mother India? Drag her to the sacrificial fires boy, I can’t bloody think straight!

My Muse is a post from Trail of Ants.

Consider visiting my travel blog to explore a wide variety of travel related articles, and score yourself a 7% discount on your next travel insurance policy with my World Nomads promotional code.

One minute I turned the Enfield’s engine off to add to the silence of the moment an elephant and it’s baby heaved their shadows across the road, less than an hour later I was surrounded by a bus load of gibbering Indians, while to my side Reb lay on the dusty outer edge of a hairpin bend next to the spinning rear wheel of our stricken bike. One minute I was discussing Calvin Klein and Davidoff with a young Muslim, less than an hour later, without warning I was attacked from behind by a gibbering old man. One minute I’m flagged down by an ego-driven cop, less than an hour later I’m gibbering exaggerated scenarios at Reb, and we’re on the run. All this, in less than twenty-four hours. And twenty-fours before this? One minute I was staring Gandhi in the eyes, and less than an hour later I was discovering ancient hill tribes.

The delightfully nicknamed town of Ooty also bears the title, ‘Queen of the Hills’ and like all the other hill stations in this fascinating region, it owes it’s existence to us perfectly lovable Brits as a cool retreat from the formidable heat of the Indian summer. With the Enfield safely tucked away, Miss Reb and I took a whirlwind tour, with the first stop being the original reason for our visit. The Thread Garden of Ooty was etched on my pillions wish-list as far back as Christmas. If you hadn’t guessed, it’s a garden. Made of thread. So convincing are the tiny handwoven flowers, that wandering the length of the marquee began to remind me of when my parents used to drag me and Tetris down to the garden centre on a Sunday morning.

Another example of art imitating life was found at the other side of town, where to our surprise – and disappointment – Wax World had brilliantly recreated Bapu (Gandhi) himself, along with various other only-famous-to-Indians with the piece de resistance being a man slumped between his crumpled scooter and a bottle of beer, clutching his severed arm. He looked armless to me. Get it! Armless, harmless! Umm, yeah. Gandhi was pretty good. After a quick hug with the unnecessary hairy green mascot we sped off to the Tribal Research Museum for a fascinating insight into the various hill tribes of the Nilgiris.

Some of the tribes appeared almost African in appearance, and their primitive tools and living quarters could of easily convinced me they were. Despite everything, it’s the taxidermist that gets my vote, for giving me the sheer comedy that Wax World denied me. The sellotaped python was priceless. The day ended with a stop at the most impressive botanical gardens to date, a 160 year old beauty dappled in saris and families enjoying the bloom, and an anticlimactic 20 million year old fossil tree.

‘Snooty Ooty’ and the Nilgiris soon gave way to another Enfield epic. The journey towards Mysore found us swinging our gaze between the road signs hinting at tigers, deer and elephant and the shallow scorched scrublands of the region. The tiger looks set to elude me, if I have one Indian regret, it’s this. We were however stopped by the iconic gray show stoppers, an Indian elephant and it’s young kin blended for a mesmerising moment with the gray strip traversing the sanctuary. For us, and just two other vehicles it was a tremendous privilege. It was just outside the boundary to this sanctuary that a passenger bus asserted his assumed authority and clipped the back of our bike rack, luckily we were approaching the apex to a hairpin turn so the speed was minimal but the exhaust pipe painfully branded my once unblemished right shin. Thankfully, my dusty pillion flashed me a smile between yells of northern twang, at the predictable gathering of onlookers in the vain, unlikely hope that one of them would admit to being the oafish driver. After a festival of glares and head wobbles, and little harm done (other than to my manly pride), we turned our separate ways.

The day’s woes continued that evening after checking into a Mysore hotel we visited the cities Devaraja Market. The market is a blizzard of colour, as if daily life had been sucked into the narrow corridors lined with stalls peddling white jasmine, golden marigolds, royal green okra, spices, mounds of vibrant tika powder and the humble origin oils of your high streets most popular scents. My Eau de Backpacker was replaced by Davidoff Cool Water for just a fraction of the alcohol dilute version. The thing I least expected when we left through the exit archway was to lurch backwards into the flailing arms of a temper-ridden man in an over-sized, shaggy blue jumper. His yells were abusive, even in his native tongue and will remain a lifelong mystery to me, as no person dared come forward. I’ve since ruled a conclusion of mistaken identity and with condolences to his poorish existence, I forgive.

The night cap came when I tried to screech up Chamundi Hill but became lodged between the onward road and a foolish cop. He let me go under the proviso that I’d fetch my paperwork and illegitimate license – after he’d predictably tried to bribe me. However, there was no predicting your authors quick wit, and so it is, I have achieved a childhood ambition; I am, a fugitive. The savior for Mysore was the magnificent palace at it’s nucleus. It was impossible not to transport your thoughts to the role of the former Maharajah’s. The fine detail of the palace hallways spill out to a vast veranda overlooking a courtyard where his people would gather to hear the portly-one’s jubilant speeches. It was a building worthy of it’s palatial title and when seen within the radiant cityscape of a falling sun it ensured I left Mysore with beauty, not bitterness in mind.

The home straight of our 30 day tally saw us road weary and grime stained. The energy we mustered dropped us in the temples of Vellore and Tiruvannamalai before we mistakenly followed the LP’s glorification of the arts centre DakshinaChitra. A ghost town where soulless artisans sit idly within a potentially idyllic woodland setting; we were out of place, out of luck and the following day, out of time. The bike pulled up one last time, aside The Mechanic’s shack and after an hour of intense questioning and test rides we sheepishly grabbed the remainder of our bags and retreated to a poky hotel in Mamallapuram’s tourist quarters.

We ached from the loss of the Enfield, we ached from the journey and we also ached relief. To travel by bike was an unforgettable, all-access ticket to south India. It rammed open doors to dusty temple towns and lit up the faces of almost every charmer who crossed our path (except the old deaf man I nearly ran over at 60mph). At times it was hard, it was painful, it was a test of nerves and patience but it spliced brash with beauty, chaos with clarity and truth with the unknown. In that way, the Royal Enfield epitomises India in every possible way, and for that; I salute and, I forgive.

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Site News: The potentially baffling title to this post owes it’s existence to a slang term from home. A few years ago a good friend of mine, Nath, spent fifteen long minutes exposing me and two friends to the never-ending, utterly dull tale of a forklift driver at his workplace, who coincidentally, was described as wearing a blue jumper – like my elderly assailant. Hence, all pointless stories are subsequently coined ‘Blue Jumper Stories‘. In other news, the photos page is back in business, I still have a few more to upload but I’m sure there’s enough to keep you occupied.

Blue Jumper Story is a post from Trail of Ants.

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