The British are staying out of this

So, Indian history is often incomplete, for example missing the last 65+ years. You can imagine the first thing many Indians bring up on meeting Germans, while I busy myself trying not to burst out with "Don't mention the war" in the manner of John Cleese. I have instead settled on "I'm staying out of this one" (like Switzerland)

A more awkward example, unfortunately directed at some German tourists too young to really understand, contains the following moments

"You are from Germany"
"German, You hate Jews?"
"Blonde Hair, you Aryans, light skin"
"Hitler, He's Germany leader... Good man, likes aryans"
Not even touching this one!

Loan words

As an English speaker with not a word of the Dravidian languages, I don't even try to follow local conversations. However, Indian languages borrow what they need, and often this comes from English. If anyone has been following the news (and inserting random sounds for Kannada) you can imagine the following otherwise unusual conversations -

deli dejani ginahu suga sabinar "gang rape" sabar kehu. Suchinea "gang rape" kari kaludi me bragee.

Other loan words and phrases seem to be "very strict" and "qualification". Yes I can imagine neither of these concepts existed before. (Very strict was in fact the norm)

Reasoning

It strikes me that India will have a problem reducing road deaths at a very basic level. After some thought the basic prerequisite for all safety measures is fear. Fear of death or serious injury, or perhaps failing all else the police. Rational reasoning can only go so far to convincing people to take precautions. Unfortunately, Indians don't seem to have this fear

'Fixing' things

Most Indian historical sites will display a notice informing people of the statutory protection for historical buildings in India. Damaging the sites is punishable, 'fixing' them however does not seem to be. How many beautiful rock-cut caves and temples are partially cemented over to make steps. Or where the stones crack, someone has helpfully filled it with bits of off-colour cement which I doubt adds a single structural benefit to the 1000 ton building. The sites cannot be damaged but railings and lighting can be added... in fact this kind of thing is included under the banner of 'tourist development'. How I longed to have seen the renovated temple in the forest in its 'overgrown' state...

Doubt, part 2

I have been obsessed with litter, its that nagging ever present problem in India. And then it struck me - what if it isn't a problem after all. Litter is visible, its bad to look at. Is that the real nature of the problem. Unless it is causing specific pollutants to be released into sensitive areas - why not?

Notes for pedants:
yes small animals can get stuck in certain waste items
some animals may swallow waste items believing them to be food
etc...

Turbo 10000

Who fancies an SNK 10000, or a Turbo 10000, or a Marden 5000 or whatever it is. I'm not sure where these large numbers come from, but the beer names don't inspire confidence. The quality isn't great as you can imagine. I have heard some people say the beer isn't cheap, but they clearly haven't read the label. For about Rs95 - Rs130 (GBP 1.50 ish) you get a 650ml bottle of 8% beer. That's about 4 regular strength 330ml bottles...

So the question is who is to blame for India's drinking problem, well lets see they seem to rate whiskey quite highly... oh dear. The lack of a drinking culture is often exaggerated. Sure some Indians walk into a bar, and leave 30 minutes later barely able to walk. There is also the problem of a quick beer where you are expected to drink as fast as you can. But I have also seen Indians drinking to celebrate a gathering (albeit quickly) or chatting over a drink, in Puduchery nobody has even drunkenly harassed me. (so far). I haven't got a picture yet but there is almost always a uniformed 'guard' outside a bar. I thought this was just to let you know that you were doing something seedy. Leave civilised society at this point. But here some of the guards are smarter...a new parallel is apparent... the uniform looks almost military. British officers clubs? (Or French as the case may be)

There is a worrying trend in the advertising, one of the interpretations of a whiskey called "royal challenge". Other adverts confirm that the message is 'are you man enough to drink this'. I prefer to be told that drinking beer will get me friends and get me laid. I suppose the marketing for a sophisticated tipple is common.

Doubt

Am I becoming inane? It would help if blogger had a vote but I don't trust small sample sizes

My neighbour's food is tastier

While we may associate India with Indian food, Indians seem quite keen on Chinese food. More expensive restaurants are keen to advertise their selection of 'Chinese' dishes. In fact this was the first boast of the chef I met in Krishnagiri. Bulk food shops have a wide selection of noodles, hey I don't know maybe there is some tradition of noodles in India. Of course I have also had an Indian explain that Manchurian is an Indian style... the food is kind of a hybrid. I feel I'm not quite getting the cultural experience when I fall back to my usual protein staple (egg fried rice with extra egg) - the standard condiment seems to be tomato ketchup.

The Food Situation, part...

So as is my custom which I stubbornly stick to, I tip at the nicer veg restaurants. It makes sense to me at least, as I'm starting to get boring and return to the same restaurant. Most Indians don't seem to tip, except for some strange custom regarding lodges. In Krishnagiri this worked well, I get perfect service and they even rotate the staff to keep it fair. (I'm easy to spot but there are probably only 2 or 3 westerners in town). Not working so well in Thiruvannamalai. I now get three waiters who all come to the table to fight over who takes my order. This is the trouble you cause if you leave a 12p tip.

Indian Style

So everywhere is noisy in India, mostly due to the thunder of buses and trucks, before they even use their horn(s). Yes buses sometimes have more than one horn, which can be used separately or in combination depending on the situation. My present solution is to stay in the cheapest noisiest hotel room... and sleep wearing 27dB health and safety standard earplugs

Moving on

Throwers lead a Hindu funeral procession, throwing flowers onto the road, followed by a crowd of mourners. The ox-drawn cart carrying the body is also decorated with flowers, and behind this all is left a trail of flowers in the road. It makes me feel sentimental, its a beautiful and, even I must admit, moving sight. Also it fits well with my own personal desire to be burned on a pyre, so let this stand as a statement of my wishes! (I vaguely remember the UK government being forced to accept this form of dispatch for religious reasons)

[edit] as this could potentially be costly, I should qualify this with: only if my remaining funds cover this treatment for my remaining remains. Otherwise let whichever nation work out what to do!

Conversation starters

One time friends seem compelled to tell me that I am very handsome. In fact this happened twice shortly after my waterfall shower. I'm not sure what to say, all I can manage is 'Oh', or a mumbled 'don't get that back home'. It's not like this is deep into a conversation, its one of the first few lines... is that a normal introduction? Its flattering sure but I'm getting wary of compliments from men in India...

Made it

I think I've made it. There is an amazing sense of freedom and adventure each time I set out on what turns out to be a trek. I can't describe it well (obviously). Its almost always unplanned, I just see a hill and think, right I might climb that, I will see what happens. Or perhaps just reading about a fort nearby and finding it free of other tourists. Its what I didn't want to write...

There are moments - communicating with a local with no common language and getting directed to follow a goat herd. He leads the goats calling "Bah, grrr, bah bah" and they run after. I follow him over the rim of the hills that surround yelagiri, and on the other side he gives a gesture on how to reach the village. I try and follow but I am quickly lost among the goat trails on the hillside. Yelagiri is a hill station and the route is mostly descending, but becomes too difficult - clearly made by goats alone. Rather than backtrack I just pick my own route. Away from the forest reserves nobody seems to pay much attention to where you walk

The landscape is beautiful, not too dry and mostly green with the odd red rocky outcrop. As I descend I have to meander increasingly over the hillside to avoid steep drops. A goat appears from the bushes slightly above me. It bleats for a while, watching me, and then moves on. The thorns return, every plant in this country has thorns, thorns on the leaves, thorns on the stems, trunk. Occasionally a plant has spines instead just to throw you. Soon my skin is cut and clothes are tearing and I am again locked in another bitter battle with dehydration. 2.5 liters of fluid was not enough... when will I learn!

Despite my aimless wandering my phone has started beeping (insert standard nokia sound). It has picked up the signal from the town I am trying to reach (Indian cell towers helpfully broadcast the location). After another few hours of crawling, shifting and sliding down the hillside I emerge into a road at the bottom, its been some 8 hours walking and I have barely stopped to take a photo... I swore to myself I would take it easy.

I'm looking for a waterfall in this village so I ask some locals 'temple' and they point further along the road. As is the custom in India at any beautiful spot there will be a temple. The waterfall does not disappoint though is used by the locals as a free bath so is covered in soap wrappers and such. The water falls from a fair height and is a bit more vigorous than most showers, verging on painful. As I'm quite dehydrated I drink some of the water... tastes damn good

Eeyore

I feel the people and animals who sleep in the road in India do so in the vague hope they might not have to carry on living. I have seen the most miserable horses and donkeys so far. Even people sleep with their heads just a short distance from the wheels of buses thundering by. Today a donkey slowly ate a piece of green cloth. I can best describe it with the words my empathy places in its mouth. 'Maybe I'll swallow it, maybe I will chew it all day long, maybe it will kill me, maybe it wont'

The pigs on the other hand love it. Its almost as if India was designed for them, abundant open sewers filled with buckets of tasty tasty waste. They root through the rubbish only disturbed by the dogs guarding their patch. Of course if anyone is stupid enough to eat pig in India they can never truly be sure if they are eating one of these lucky animals...

The bin episode, part 99

Despite many attempts by my Indian guides I still haven't adopted the Indian custom of dropping litter where you stand. Yesterday I follow my usual routine to tip the staff and keep them on-side, showing the hotel keeper the full bin. He looks at me, picks up the bin and tips it over the edge of the balcony where we stand. I should have seen that coming.

I have tried to be the apologist on rubbish up til now, but I can't use this any more... when pressed some Indians seem to know its wrong (clearly my sample biased towards english speakers). It's done because nobody is going to stop them.

There isn't any consideration of impact, even in towns which depend on tourism. But why throw the rubbish on your own doorstep! Is this hotel more beautiful because of the surrounding ad-hoc waste dumps? Is beauty relative? To me it makes no sense. Why invest in concrete and then devalue the very spot on which you have built your expensive hotel. Will the smell finally reach your guests on a hot day

The economy problem

In India you will never be more than a few minutes walk from a general store. This is anything from a small hut to a unit sized shopfront, and sells a standard selection of prepackaged goods. The above is a perfect example, showing a typical pace of business. These are also known in Indian business circles as an example of an SME (Small and Medium Enterprises).

At first glance it is a rather convenient way to run things, you don't worry about having supplies as you will never be far from a shop selling branded goods. It is also, from my non-economic background, an example of so many Indian problems combined into one. So basically another misguided and ill-informed rant coming up.

To begin with there is no barrier to entry as the owner of a general store. I think the minimum requirement is a few planks of wood and 10 rupees to buy your first strip of goods. 'Strip' because the manufacturers provide the goods in a single continuous tear off strip of about 10 packages, for exactly these shops. This is where the problems begin, everyone can and has opened a general store. General stores open next to general stores, opposite general stores, in towns with almost as many general stores as people. (I remember hearing on my last trip that India has 1 business for every 7? people) The goods are almost always prepackaged, and identical. You will see the same selection of goods in each shop, if the largest doesn't have what you want, a few 7up or sprite variations aside, then none will. Note that there are variations, grocers who are also general stores, and medical stores which are also fancy stores.

The competition either does not occur to the owner, or is ignored because every Rupee earned buys food. The pace of business is consequently slow, especially at more remote locations that wait for a particular bus. The barrier to entry goes back even further, there are no wages. If it is your family that runs the shop the minimum threshold is enough food to eat, or if it is supplemental income then even less. The climate is such that there are no other real requirements, its warm enough to sleep with a sheet and people will sleep on the ground. Food is cheap, and firewood can be gathered. (I'm not sure quite how long until the environmental consequences of a densely populated country depending on firewood catch up). The forest department in this town seems to be concerned with firewood.

The smaller stores are sometimes poor, and their customers are poor. The consequence is the packages of goods get smaller. Enter the world of 18g bags of nuts, or 12g bags of pulses and so on. Perhaps a 20ml pack of toothpaste. This leads to two further problems, efficiency and waste. The efficiency is poor, the 18g nuts are more expensive per weight than in the UK, where nuts are sold in typically 100g-200g weights by supermarkets. To put this into perspective most food expenses are between 5 and 10 times cheaper than the UK. Everything is individually packaged, and in India that means another piece of plastic waste discarded somewhere in the countryside. This extends to cosmetics, a distinctly condom-like single serving packet of shampoo for example... perhaps Rs2. Even the standard sizes of water are too large, this is now sold in bags, which unlike the bottles are probably never recycled.

I'm not sure to what extent this is a trap, and to what extent this is necessary, its not like I'm an economist. I have now met some people for whom this is a side job for the wife looking after the children. As such its just a bit of extra cash and can be ignored. For others I wonder whether they see it as a way out of poverty, and how much they sink into stock and expanding their business. Either way I wouldn't call half the storekeepers employed

It's not just general stores, these were just the first to catch my attention. The next repeated store is 'medical shops', lowering the barrier to non prescription medications. In Hyderabad you might encounter furniture village, an entire section of the city dedicated to furniture shops. If you were going to open a furniture shop wouldn't you do it right next to the 100 other furniture shops. The quantity of stock is huge, which is useful because the staff will need somewhere to sit all day long. I have encountered the lowest 'pay' so far in India among the staff of these shops, one claimed about Rs50 per day (1 USD). (Livable standard salaries are Rs150 - Rs400 per day). You might wonder how so many furniture shops can each survive with the competition. The answer is that I saw very few listed prices - try and compare prices when you have to barter with each store in turn. How many could you possibly barter with. The answer can only be that each store has to charge more to account for the slow pace of business, and that bartering is part of the reason this remains so. Don't get me wrong, I've seen the flaws with an efficiency model. But I don't think this is the solution...

Tea Closed

I slept in, thinking I wasn't doing anything until 2pm. As it is 2pm turned out to be 3pm, 4pm, 4.30pm ish, so I needn't have bothered getting up. Indian time keeping is a whole different system. You can detect the first hints of this when you are supposed to both call up and meet at the same time...

Anyhow, 11am is a bad time to try and get breakfast. "Tea (chai) closed".

I'm in shock so I ask again "Tea closed"

How can you not be serving tea now? Just try that in England...

Keeping the lights on

Tamil Nadu has a tiny power problem: "with electricity demand touching 11,500MW and generation remaining at 7,500 MW, the state is reeling under acute power shortage"

This is resolved by a kind of ad hoc power rationing. "At present, he said, power cuts had increased to 14 hours a day"
Enter a state run off UPS and generators. The internet cafe has UPS, but you still have to shit in the dark...

Episode 2

My body language clearly screams 'I'm gay'. There is no other explanation. You can imagine the rest...

Smiles

Ok, not just Kerala then. Unless there is something in the water in this village Tamil Nadu has more smiles

Buses

I was in shock, how can there be only one bus to Krishnagiri. So time to laugh at myself, when I arrived at the stop I noticed a large number of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation buses. Often abbreviated KSRTC this could potentially be confused with KSRTC (Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation). The states are neighbours so its not like anyone could have seen this coming.

Food Hygiene

Your food may be cooked, but its not ready until they have handled it a bit for you