MRP inflation

Much of India's economy is based on 'buying and selling'. The game is simple: buy low, sell high. And high can be as high as you want. Even though merchants add very little value, with bartered prices they can make an enormous margin on goods sold to unwary customers. The manufacturers don't want this slice of the pie taken from them, and so most packaged foods and many goods come with a Maximum Retail Price (MRP) printed on the item. (Akin to RRP in the UK).

For a while this worked, but unfortunately in this game the merchants work against the customer. Why should they stock their store with an item where the margin was very small. Instead the temptation is to stock brands with the lowest purchase price but the highest MRP. In theory a savvy user should be able to shop around and find a better deal, but in practise the small shops in India will all be stocked with the same brands. Even if the price is the same, quality is driven down.

The result is two fold, firstly many packaged goods cost more in India than in European countries, and secondly that you can no longer trust the MRP on some items, as it is grossly inflated. You pay Rs350 for olive oil with a printed MRP of Rs650. You pay Rs40 for toilet paper with a printed MRP of Rs80. You pay half the labeled MRP on imported China made shoes (you can guarantee the price on the customs slip is 10% of the MRP). For other items the price is revealed when an honest merchant sells below MRP.

With bottled water the game is subtly different. Bottled water is typically Rs20/litre, which is actually quite a high price. It's comparable to Greece, and more expensive than in Nepal (which imports it's oil and has even worse infrastructure). It's possible to market the same product with a retail price of Rs15 (Rail neer, common at railway stations). In fact, it's very popular and profitable for the state owned IRCTC. But why would you stock a product with the lower sale price, there isn't any incentive!

The game of Kabul

Kabul is a card game based on the game with many names, which I described here:

the-game-of-cabo-cambio-tamul-kabo-cabu

There are many possible variations of the game and everyone has their own idea on how it should be played! This set of rules is the one I use and makes for an exciting and balanced game.

A note on names:

Suit = (clubs ♣, hearts ♡, spades ♠, diamonds ♢)

Face up = the card has the suit and number showing

Face down = the card is turned over. The back of the card is showing

Shuffle = mix the cards

Deck = the shuffled cards not used yet

Discard = throw away
Round(s) = playing one set of 4 cards until someone calls Kabul.
Dealer = person who shuffles and gives out the cards

The game progresses in rounds, in each round you want to get the lowest score.
After the round you need to add your score to your total (best have paper and pen).
The game ends when the highest scoring player has a score bigger than a limit you choose at the start, Eg. When the first player reaches over 100.
At the end of the game the player with the lowest total score wins.
The score at the end of a round is determined by the sum of the value of your face down cards, with scores as follows:
Jokers = 0 points
A = 1 point
2 to 10 = the number on the cards
J,Q = 10 points
Black kings = 10 points
Red kings = -1 point (negative!)
The objective is to finish a round with only a small number of low value cards (such as jokers, aces, 2s, red kings) in order to get a low score.

Setting up a round:
Shuffle the cards.
Deal 4 cards to each player, face down, arranged in a square.
Place the deck face down in the centre of the table.

Each player can now look at the two of their cards on the bottom row of the square (nearest the player). Be careful not to let other players see the card, and put it back in the square. You can only look once!
Even if you forget before the game begins, you can't look again! If you catch someone looking twice they get a penalty card. Take an extra card and place it face down next to their square.

To decide who goes first:
The dealer turns over the top card of the deck, and places it face up on the discard pile (next to the deck).
If any player has the same card they can turn this over and put it face up on the top of the discard pile.
If no player has the same card turn over another card, continue until someone can put their card on top.
The player who placed their card on the top has already had their turn, and the player on their left begins the first normal turn. For this game play clockwise, the next player is the player on your left.

Turning over one of your 4 face down cards and placing it face up on the discard pile is called a smash.
You can smash at any point in the game, even if it's not your turn. This is good because fewer cards is fewer points.
Only one player can smash on a card. If two players have the same card only the fastest player gets to smash. The slower player must take it back to the original position in their square.
If you make a mistake and smash an incorrect card you must take it back. You then get an extra card from the deck added face down next to your square. This is treated like the other 4 cards in your square.
You can also smash the cards of other players! This can be done during the course of the game if you know one of their cards and have faster reactions. If you smash someone else's cards you give them one of your cards to replace it (it's a benefit to you).

On your turn:
Take a card from either the deck or the top card of the discard pile.
If the deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile and this becomes the new deck.
Depending on the card you may choose one of three options:
- throw the card away, face up on the discard pile
- replace one of your face down cards with this card, also face down. Quickly turn over the replaced card by rotating it away from you so it is revealed fairly to all players and place it on the discard pile quickly. You are not allowed to pick up the replaced card, have a look and then show it to the other players.
- perform the action associated with the card, by placing it face up on the discard pile and then doing the action set by the number.
7 or 8 = peek at one of your face down cards
9 or 10 = peek at one of someone else's face down cards. Do not reveal this to other players.
J or Q = swap one of your face down cards with the face down card of another player. You are not allowed to look at either of the cards (you must already know them).
Black kings = you can pick up one of your cards and one of someone else's cards, of your choosing, and look at them both. You can then decide to swap if you want, you must say this out loud. Now return the chosen cards face down to the squares.

Each turn involves throwing a card onto the discard pile at the end of the turn. At this moment anyone can smash, as described above, but only the first player to react. In the event of a tie the winner is the one whose card is below touching the discard pile, unless a third player rules they have slid the card in unfairly from the side. Smashing does not count as part of your turn, you can smash and then immediately take your turn if you are next.

As the game progresses you aim to know more of your cards (by using the action of 7s and 8s, or by replacing unknown cards with known cards). Known cards can be smashed if the right card is discarded, reducing the score of the cards in front of you. You can aim to replace high cards with low cards such as joker, ace or red king to reduce your score.

If at the start of your turn you think you have the lowest score you can choose to call Kabul instead of taking your turn. The game continues until each other player has had one more turn, and then all cards are revealed to count the score. Only one player may call Kabul.
If a player has no cards remaining at the start of their turn they must call Kabul (unless someone else already has).

The player calling Kabul must have the lowest score. If they do not have the lowest (for example a tie, or worse) they get a penalty. A minor penalty is to start the next round with 5 face down cards instead of 4. If this is too weak a score penalty can be introduced instead.

Lunch with a stick

Lunch at the roadside café-shack is served together with a stick. A sturdy one metre bamboo rod is provided with the meal, "for the monkeys", the owner explains.

The combination of clueless tourists and food has attracted a particularly fearless troop of monkeys, who hassle unsuspecting lunchers. They sit in a tree and watch the people come and go. When a tourist arrives and stops to buy a snack they spring into action. He doesn't get far after leaving the café on the far side of the road. He is holding a pack of biscuits. Two of the group have arranged an ambush and trap him in the middle of the road. It doesn't take an overt threat, he just opens the pack and throws them to the monkey. The café owner is less pleased, he just has to step outside, and the monkeys are off to the tree.

My companions feed the dogs who join us at the table, we recognise the trio from the beach some 5km before. Like most of the dogs in this town they are good natured and delighted by all of the attention they receive from foreign tourists. The monkeys start to get jealous of the food provided, and creep closer along the ground. As my friends note they've done a pretty good hungry act beforehand, staring into the empty paper plates by the road. The dogs are having none of this, and in a flash the monkeys are driven back up the tree. Man's best friend will dies monkey who is boss. After the dogs lose interest a cow wanders over to try and stick it's nose into our table. I tap the cane on the ground, and the nose is withdrawn.

A car full of Indian tourists is jumped on by monkeys, who they feed through slightly opened windows. It's not right, but nobody seems to know that, except me, and the provider of the stick.

The game of Cabo/ Cambio/ Tamul/ Kabo/ Cabu/ Caboo/ Kabul/ Hampi/ Badouk/ Babadouk

I'm going to describe an addictive and popular game played among backpacking travellers. As with many traveller games it has more names and rule variations than you can shake a stick at. I will cover both my preferred rules and some of the variations I have encountered. The key point is to make sure that everyone is playing by the same rules at the start of the game!

The history of the game is one of evolution. The game as originally invented may have been 'Cabo', a memory game invented in 2010 by Melissa Limes, but with different rules. Many of the rules are preserved from the original game, which is described here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabo_(game)
The game was subsequently crossed with snap, and an Israeli game called 'Yanif', to produce the fast paced game.

A detailed description of possible rule variations is in a numbered list at the end. Generally "see #"

For my preferred balanced set of rules see
the-game-of-kabul

The general description of the game is as follows:
Each player has 4 cards infront of them on the table, face down, arranged in a square. At the start of the game you may look at two cards, without showing them to the other players. The other two cards are initially unknown. (See 1)
The objective is to have the minimum score at the end of the round, the score is the sum of the value of the cards. For example, if at the end you have a 2, 5, 7 and 9, your score is 23. Some cards have special scores (See 2).
The general play of the game involves exchanging your cards for lower numbers, or getting rid of them entirely, using the rules described. To do this you must remember both your cards and any cards of other players.

Once the starting player is decided (see 3), the game progresses in turns, in the chosen direction of play (see 4). On your turn you take a card from the deck or discard pile (see 5). With this card you can either:
- Play it as an action, if the number is associated with an action (see 6)
- Swap it with one of your face down cards, revealing the old card fairly (see 7)
- Discard it (no effect)

Playing a card as an action allows you to do the action which corresponds to the number on the card. Actions typically include:
- looking at one of your cards
- looking at one of someone else's cards
- 'blind swap' - swapping a card of yours for one of someone else's without looking at them
- 'super swap' where you get to look at both cards and swap if you choose.
For which cards give which action (see 6). Generally you can only play the action when you draw the card from the deck (see 8).

Replacing one of your face-down cards with a card drawn from the deck is a typical move. The old card is then revealed fairly so all players can see this (see 7), and placed on the discard pile. The new card is placed face down in the same position, other players do not get to see this card. Generally the card discarded has no meaning, you don't play the action. Replacing a card allows you to know more of your cards, or simply reduce your score by exchanging high numbers for low ones.

The speed element comes from the ability to snap/smash cards:
When somebody (including yourself) discards a card, if you have a card with the same number face down you can take that card and 'smash it', by placing it face up on the discard pile. This can be done at any time, even if it's not your turn (see 11), but only if you are the first player to react to the discarded card. If two players have the same card only the faster player may smash, the slower player must take it back (see 9). If the card is incorrect (a different number) there is usually a penalty (see 10). Smashing is good because after this you have fewer cards, fewer cards usually means a lower score (good). In many rules you can also smash the cards of other players, and give them one of your cards instead (see 9c).

To decide when the round ends, on their turn one player will call out the name of the game (see 12b). Only the first player to say this has any special effect (see 12c). The game then proceeds so the other players each get one more turn, and then the cards are revealed and the score is counted. The calling player must have the lowest score (see 12d), or some penalty results (see 12e). If a player has no cards left they may be forced to end the game (see 12f).
The game consists of multiple rounds, with the score from each round added up. When the worst player crosses a score threshold, such as 100 points, the game ends. The player with the lowest total score wins. The game may be subject to scoring rules from Yanif (see 13).

There are a few general rules enforced throughout the game, see 14 and 15, which improves the gameplay. Essentially this is a game of memory not deception, and to avoid players physically blocking each other during a contested smash.

Playing a tactical game generally involves the following:
Knowing as many of your cards as possible by exchanging them with cards drawn from the deck, or using actions.
Knowing other people's cards by using actions, or watching any cards drawn or thrown to the discard pile.
Taking good cards from other players using actions.
Smashing cards whenever possible.
Calling the name of the game when you have a low score (generally below 2).

The list of rule details and variations:

1. At the start of the game you may check two cards. The most common rule is that these must be the two cards closest to you. Don't forget these cards! You are allowed to check only once, if you catch someone checking again this is usually a penalty.
Other rule variations allow for checking any 2 of the 4 cards, and other players must try and remember which of the cards you know.

2. Some of the cards have special scores.
Most cards are scored by their number value with aces low:
Ace=1 point
2 = 2 points
3 = 3 points etc.
Often one of the cards will have a negative score (-1). This card is beneficial to have in your hand, and can beat having 0 cards in your hand.
For special cards one example is:
  Jokers are 0 points
  JQK are 10 points, except for
  Red kings which are -1 points
Another common combination is:
  Jokers are -1 points
  JQK are 10 points, except
  Red kings are 0 points.
Other variations are:
If there are no Jokers in the deck the ace may be chosen as a 0 point card.
JQK cards may be 11,12 and 13 points.
Sometimes black kings are 20 points.

3. Choosing the starting player for the first round may be by simple luck (drawing the highest card), or by 'smash to start'.
With 'smash to start' the dealer flips the top card from the deck onto the discard pile and repeats until one of the players is able to smash a card. The next player in the circle after the player who smashed goes first (the smash counts as the first turn of the starting player).
For subsequent rounds the first player may either be: the player next to the dealer, or the player who called <game name>, or the loser, or the lowest scoring player, or the next player in the circle, or repeat smash to start each time.

4. Some countries choose to play card games in different directions. I've lost track of which prefer to go clockwise around the circle, and which anticlockwise. I have acknowledged the following: choose a direction, someone will repeatedly claim it is backwards for them. (Psst clockwise is best)

5. In most versions on your turn you can choose to take a card either from the deck or from the discard pile. Some rules only allow you to take from the deck.
Usually if you take a card from the discard pile you cannot play the action. This card can only be exchanged with one of your face-down cards.

6. Which cards give which action varies, but the actions are commonly
Look yours = look at one of your cards
Look others = look at one of someone else's cards (with care not to reveal this to others!)
Blind swap = swap one of your cards for someone else's without looking (see 6b)
Super swap = swap with looking (see 6c).
Which cards give which actions varies between rule sets, but my preferred rule set is as follows. This gives lots of action cards for a fast paced game!
7,8  = look yours
9, 10 = look others
J, Q = blind swap
Black Kings = super swap
Other variations on the action cards give only one card for each action. Such as 7 = look at yours, 8 = look at others, 9 = blind swap. The choice of number-action is fairly arbitrary, I have encountered different sets.

6b. Blind swap of two cards. You cannot look at either of the cards during the swap.
The general rule is that this must be a swap between one of your cards and another players cards. One variation of this rule allows swapping a card between two other players, thus potentially disadvantaging them both due to unknown cards.

6c. The super swap (usually black kings).
This allows you to swap one of your cards, with one of someone else's, but with the advantage of looking at one or both of them first. If you don't like what you see you can decline the swap (you must state this, it's a game of memory not deception and sleight of hand). In some rules you can look at both cards before deciding whether to make the swap. In other rules you may look at only the card belonging to the other player during the swap (you cannot see your own). A third variation is that if you do not like the card belonging to the other player you may complete the swap with a third unseen card of another player.

7. In the fast paced game all players can react to a discarded card and try and smash their own on top. If you block this card with your hand so that one of the players can't see it they may get rather upset! Take your hand away as fast as possible. This is especially important when discarding cards from your set of face-down cards. You must reveal it fairly to all players including yourself by flipping it away from you as fast as possible. It's not generally fair to pick the old card up, have a good look at it yourself, and then show it to others by discarding it.

8. Playing actions. In most rules you can only play the action if you draw that card directly from the deck, not the discard pile. You don't get to play the action when you throw away a face down card which was an action card.
However in some rule sets you do. In these games you can stock up actions by replacing them into your face-down cards and play the action when you discard it by replacement.

9. Smashing cards. If two people try and smash on the same card only the fastest player 'wins' and the slower player must take their card back. Usually it's clear who was faster because their card is the one underneath touching the discard pile, if the card may have slid underneath from the side an independent player must decide who was the faster. There is no penalty for being too slow, unlike choosing the wrong card (see 9b), but they have a disadvantage in that other players know their card. Occasional variations of the rules allow multiple players to smash on the same number, which removes the speed element from the game. It's a more relaxing but less exciting game.
Generally only one card can be smashed, but some rule sets allow that if one player has two cards of the same number they can smash both in one go.
There is an aggressive variation of the rules where the faster player can then go around the table and smash the same numbered cards of the slower players. This means a player with slightly faster reactions can nearly win in a single move. The excessive dominance of a fast player in this situation can greatly reduce the fun for everyone else, I wouldn't recommend it.

9b. Making a mistake with the smash.
If you smash a card but it's the wrong number you must take a penalty (see 10).
The smash occurs the moment the card is turned over and anyone can see the number, you can't take it back once it's flipped over. If you realise it's the wrong card while the front is still hidden you may be able to take it back.
Some rule sets allow you to try a different card after you have made a mistake with one card and taken the penalty. In other rules you only have one chance to smash the correct card. It also varies of other players can smash one of your cards after you have made a mistake.

9c. Smashing other people's cards.
A common rule is that if you know someone else's card and you see that number discarded you can smash their card. The advantage to this is that you then give them one of your cards (usually the worst). You will need fast reactions to beat someone to their own card though! It makes knowing other people's cards more valuable and leads to some real connection between the players. Having someone know your cards is suddenly dangerous.

10. Penalties. Mistakes in the game are usually penalised. The penalty is one extra face-down card taken from the deck and added to the players set. In some variations of the rules the penalty may be two extra unknown cards!
It's generally funny to penalise every mistake, common failures include:
Trying to smash the wrong number
Accidentally flipping a nearby card when you try and smash
Taking your go out of turn (it gets confusing when people smash out of sequence)
Doing the wrong action for your card (looking at a card you receive in a blind swap)
Looking at your initial two cards more than once.

11. Smashing just before your turn. Sometimes a rule is added so that if you smash a card immediately before your turn (on the card discarded before you by the previous player), this becomes your turn, and you are effectively skipped.

12. Calling the name of the game, Eg. Kabul
You call the name of the game when you think you have the lowest points of any player and you want the game to stop. Each other player then gets one more turn, the cards are revealed and the scores counted.

12b. In most variations you can only call the game name, Eg. 'Kabul' when it is your turn. There may be special rules for situations where you have zero cards remaining, see 12f.
The two general options are that either calling Kabul is your entire turn, and you don't draw a card. This makes it more challenging to call Kabul, and has risk excitement.
Or that you take a turn as normal and call Kabul at the end of your turn.

12c. When you have called 'Kabul' or other name, there may be special rules which affect you. A common rule is that after you call Kabul, your cards are 'locked' and nobody can steal them with a blind swap. This is necessary to protect the player who calls the game, otherwise all other players attack them (and nobody wants to call Kabul). Whether the calling player can smash a card while their cards are 'locked' also varies between rules.

12d. The player who calls the name of the game must finish with the lowest score or pay a penalty. What to do in the event of a tie (same score) varies.
Generally if the cards are locked as per 12c then the player who called Kabul loses in the event of a tie. This balances with the protection of having locked cards.
Alternatively if their cards are not protected after calling Kabul then a tie may be considered a win (no penalty).

12e. The penalty for calling the name of the game and then not having the lowest score varies between rule sets. Common options are:
A score penalty of: +5/+10/+20/+50
50 points is a very serious price to pay!
Alternatively the penalty may be starting the next round with 5 cards instead of 4, which is a very minor effect.

12f. I don't think smashing cards was in the original game. How to handle the case where someone has smashed all 4 cards and now has zero cards has several possible options:

12f option 1 - the game stops instantly. I have played this a few times. It's unambiguous, which makes the rules clear, but it can be harsh on other players who are holding one high value card at the end.

12f option 2 - you must call <game name> on your next turn. In this case smashing will simply force you to call when next possible, but by smashing your last card you have taken a risk, someone with 0 or -1 may beat you. If you smash your last card just after your turn the other players effectively get to go twice more.

12f option 3 - you can continue playing and drawing cards. This is often combined with an unpleasant rule where even though you have zero cards, if you see a red king you can keep it (adding cards isn't otherwise a rule). In this variation the game continues until somebody gets a red king (or perpetually). Sometimes if you smash someone else's card with no cards of your own you give them a new card from the deck.

13. Often some scoring rules are borrowed from games such as Yanif.
If a player finishes a round and their total score becomes exactly 50 points the score goes back to 0. If someone finishes on exactly 100 their score goes back to 50.
This has an advantage in that it gives players who are losing a chance to get back into the game if they target exactly the needed score. On the other hand it can lead to perpetual games where scores loop between 0 and 50.

14. You can't change the position of your cards except for the rules described.
It's a game of memory and speed not deception and trickery. People need to eat, drink and smoke, not watch someone's fingers.
Anyone who subtly moves their cards has missed the point, don't play with them.

15. The one hand rule. It's more fun to play this game with the one hand rule. Sometimes this rule is the right hand, but that's a bit unfair on anyone who favours the left.
Using one hand reduces massive collisions when everyone goes for the same card and makes it more challenging for the current player to react to their own actions.

Tourism in Ladakh

Some countries choose to make tourism expensive in order to maximise the revenue without experiencing an adverse cultural impact. I'm thinking of Bhutan and the $250/day packages. But this is simple, I'm not the preferred customer, and I do not visit Bhutan. I do visit Ladakh, and there I get frustrated with the piecemeal attempts to make an extra dollar from tourism. Tourism in Ladakh has challenges, it has one of the shortest tourist seasons in India, which for local people makes earning a living a challenge. But within India it also has some special powers both as part of J&K state and under the Ladakh autonomous hill development council.

One of the more frustrating groups is the motorcycle rental mafia. The motorcycle renters union have decided they control the highways of Ladakh, created checkposts and stopped other businesses from operating on their turf. You need to show a union pass to get past these posts... and that's only the first level, at the checkposts they may ask for extra rupees. The union graciously permit outside riders to reach Leh before making them an offer they can't refuse. Hire some of the worst quality motorbikes in India at the highest prices in India. The price fixing doesn't seem to be secret, and it wasn't four years ago either. Even if most businesses undercut the union rate by a few hundred rupees, it's still expensive. So what if you refuse... well they have connections. There are several news stories about the mafia seizing motorcycles belonging to their rivals, the Manali bike renters union. If you accept all of this, the low quality of the bikes is still rather tedious, unless you are lucky and take a nearly new bike. You may be sent out with a dirty airfilter or spark plugs on your multi day journey which takes you a days walk from civilisation. The lack of power from the poorly maintained bikes can induce madness.

The taxis and tourist minibuses have their own union. You might be familiar with taxis having fixed rates, local government will do this as part of regulation. Here the taxis have the power, and their table of rates is about double what you would expect. If you want to go the 5km to the airport they will ram that rubber dong all the way up. This essentially means that budget travellers have to find a local bus, local shared taxi or hitchhike between towns. The tourist minibuses have fixed the price between Leh and Manali at Rs2000, and also seemingly the commission for selling a ticket at Rs200. A few agents in Manali do a lot of business, you can get the ticket for Rs2100, but it's harder in Leh. To give some perspective, typical ticket commissions might be Rs10-Rs100. Rs200 is steep even for the most difficult to obtain tatkal train tickets, let alone a 20 second call to book a bus. More budget travellers now take the two day local bus to avoid this cost.

The permits needed to visit the border areas are essentially tax payments, and the copies act as proof of payment. As with most taxes or tolls in Ladakh somehow adding the words 'environmental' or 'red cross charge' makes it all ok. (I helped push an ambulance over a 5000m pass, certainly no money was spent there). The system is revealed when only a few of the checkpoints near the border itself actually check the permits in both directions. Any system of tracking foreigners near an international border is falling a bit short if you don't know if people have left. But it doesn't stop there, you can't apply for the permit directly, you have to pay a local agent to go and get it for you. This may have originally made some sense, if tourists travelled as part of organised agency tours. But now tourists travel independently, and the requirement to go 'through an agency' is a little backhander between the council and the local businesses.

Tolls... Ladakh has some questionable trolls in the roads. These tolls only apply to tourists and generally involve a man with some tickets standing in a suspiciously remote location. Whether the municipal or village council does have the power to impose tolls on a national highway I don't know, but it can become rather frustrating.

The cyber cafes of Leh also have a price fixing union, but these guys will disappear soon enough. Tourists have been pushed into using them by the lack of mobile network data, and the ineffective WiFi at guest houses and restaurants. Next year a second government cable and rumours of Reliance's Jio coverage will change the game.

I don't object to the homestay price fixing within the national park quite so strongly. The price is fixed at Rs1000/night for sleeping, dinner, breakfast and packed lunch. It's easy to spend this much each day living in Leh, and ultimately the homestay is someone's private house. Previous fixed price schemes have been endorsed by the local government tourist development authority. The business owners are local people who make a very modest living in the season (not much grows in some locations). Each town has agreed to share the customers between the houses in the village, which sounds very reasonable. And you are free to vote with your feet, outside of the two most popular treks the going rate is still about Rs500/night for sleeping and food.

I love Ladakh, and the annoyances are ultimately small. In the end it is easier for my conscience when the local people do accept money from travellers like myself.

Coeliac in Ladakh

Ladakh is not kind to coeliacs. This mountain region at the far north of India, which borders Tibet, is too high to grow much rice. The local people grow barley as a staple food. The main meal you see is often based on white rice, but as I understand it this is distributed by the government.

The problems begin at breakfast, which in traditional food is almost always barley roti/chapati. In addition to the words for wheat flour (Hindi: maida, atta) you need to know the Ladakhi for barley meal (Tsampa). The only option I found in homestays was to bring my own rice flakes and crunch them as if a sullen donkey. Asking for an omelette without chapattis is risky and so one might appear above or below or otherwise contaminating the omelette.

Lunch and dinner can be treated as one, you have to avoid momos (wheat dumplings) which may be offered as a treat. But the staple dinner (rice, dal, vegetable) is not fully safe either. Dal (lentils) cost money and so this may be thickened with wheat or barley. I found this about half the time, especially in roadside cafes. On one occasion the dal was thickened with spaghetti/pasta/noodles which the local people called fin/phin. They were not aware these were made of anything else, and I was not aware to ask about this until I covered my rice in the dal and sat there in despair.

For some reason the tea is a risk. I'm not sure how it could be contaminated, (the old tradition is to add barley meal to a half drunk cup and eat this), but I suspect it is.

Going gluten free in Ladakh (outside of touristic Leh) is a choice between white rice and sickness (the usual Indian rules on contaminated spices apply). My advice is to buy Poha (beaten rice) and eat it dry. Crunchy and safe.

A packet full of lies

India's middle class are growing around the middle. People are starting to take action, and a market for diet and healthy foods has opened up. Unfortunately this market is partly filled with lies and misinformation.

The packet which offends me the most is 'Haldirams diet chiwda". For the benefit of non-Indians, Haldirams is one of India's biggest snacks and confectionary brands, and chiwda is a kind of crispy snack. The brand is generally well regarded for quality, but the snack in question is anything but a diet food. In fact, before concerns about gluten, I used this snack to gain weight. The justification for labelling this particular pack as diet is a fractional reduction in calories and fat compared to the non-diet version, but this doesn't match the claims.

From the front of the packet it's bold:
"Diet"
"Snac Lite!"
"Sensible snacking"
"Mild taste" (ok I'll agree with this one)

The imagery follows up the words; the packet is mostly green (the colour of healthy) with thin vertical stripes... even the packet needs a slimming effect. The detail is not subtle, an image of a tape measure wrapped around the pack. The tape measure continues on the back of the pack, with little but a repetition of the same claim "healthy namkeen" (snack). Apparently this is part of a series of healthy snacks.

The problems begin at the nutrition label... it's not actually healthy. It has 516 calories per 100g (774 calories per bag) of which most come from white rice and palm oil. This is about as far as you can get from healthy, bar the non diet version of the same snack, or foods flavoured with lead, arsenic, maybe a little mercury? It gets worse, it's not just the high calorie density from nutritionally poor foods, it's the "mild taste". If you're a bit greedy like me you can easily finish an entire pack in one sitting, that's a meals worth of calories (1/3 of daily intake). This combination makes it, to my mind, one of the most dangerously misleading foods available.

There are many other high calorie density foods available, what catches my attention here is also the low quality of the food. Cashew nuts at 550 calories per 100g are high, but pro rata match your RDA of protein, iron, magnesium, and nearly vitamin B6 and potassium. This product doesn't contain cashews. It's white rice, which as I have covered before, doesn't have much to offer beyond starch. A big chunk of the energy comes from fat, 28% by weight. The fat is palm oil, which is one of the least healthy and most environmentally destructive oils available. The rainforests of Indonesia will be destroyed and replaced by a barren monoculture thanks to this oil. Of the remaining ingredients only the 15% gram flour (chickpea) offers some salvation. Chickpea has a reasonable protein content for a starchy food, and is digested slightly more slowly. The remaining macro ingredients are starch and sugar, as if this product needed added sugar on top of it's ills.

The most frustrating part, this labelling actually works. I met one person keen to stay in shape that ate this food believing that it was a healthy alternative snack. The lies work.

Tell me sweet little lies

This time around I am rarely concerned with the honesty of the tourist industry, but lies which aim to mislead locals have caught my attention. I will skip over the spread of homeopathic medicine, or the newspaper adverts for BrainoX, for exam performance, or the pyramid schemes... their time will come. My first concern is food.

Food is an issue in India, and many people are malnourished, stunted by diets reliant on cheap white rice. Anyone who can afford it seems to have the opposite problem and gains weight. There are various pieces of local wisdom on the cause, quite often cooking oil is blamed for the rise in obesity. If instead you take a 'post low fat' look at the Indian diet, a big chunk of the calories come from rice or wheat. Sugar, the new food evil, is also consumed in large quantities. Given these influences it would be helpful if the debate was informed by reliable sources.

The bag of milled rice flakes known as poha catch my attention. The bold claims are as follows:

"Low calori" - the front of the pack makes this claim, but the nutrition label shows the standard figure for dry white rice. It's true white rice has significantly fewer calories than vegetable oil for example, but it's not exceptionally low. At 365kcal/ 100g it's between white bread and sugar... I would consider this a lie.

"Healthy and fresh" - Two separate claims. I would argue that as a long-life dried food poha is in fact the very opposite of fresh. It's probably a good candidate for stocking up a survival shelter. When a nutritionist mentions eating more fresh food I doubt this is what they have in mind. Here I'm being facetious, I know India has repurposed the word fresh to mean anything that isn't fried in vegetable oil. As vegetable oil is the popular cause of all ills this food must therefore be healthy. I'm leaning towards a lie.

For your healthy life - meaningless, and deceptive. If you eat this you will be healthy, which is a lie. Note how guarded the UK brands are when they state their processed foods "can be part of a balanced diet".

High minerals & dietary fiber - I will define an easy threshold for high in X to be "if you ate your daily calories entirely of this food, you would meet your RDA in nutrient X". This is of course a flat lie, white rice is neither high in minerals or high in dietary fiber. If you ate 2000 calories of rice you would receive only:
27% of your dietary fiber
22% of your iron
11% of the calcium RDA
33% of magnesium
16% of potassium

Export quality - but is it? And what does this mean, perhaps the absence of twigs and small stones? I'll call this one smoke.

This pack could just be a bad apple, another brand has none of the misleading statements. In fact it's one of the quaint things I love about India, the little nostalgic touches.
"Victory Poha", in a dark military green pack. Established 1947.

On my porch

I strung the long-carried hammock across my porch with the help of a friendly young Australian. It's travelled hundreds of kilometers on my back without use, but now justifies it's weight. I'm wallowing low with my feet pointing to the sky, a clear blue evening sky. The heat has faded now, but it's effect lingers, I am the melted chocolate hanging from the roof. The monsoon is almost overdue, but the rain and clouds which harassed tourists in the dry season are missing. The village is still, there is no wind, the children are not still. First they crowd around the shack of the alcoholic next door. He does the jester routine, they sing. I'm up next, the crowd gathers around my house, laughing squabbling chasing talking. I smile and wait until the "hello" chorus dies down and they scream on.

It's nearly time to leave this paradise. The rain will come, one day. The flow of western tourists has fallen to a trickle, lucky souls enjoying the last borrowed days of sun. I'm not sure I will find this again, I know I have been lucky; renting a house in a roadless jungle village for less than a pint of beer. I have been here two months now, there wasn't much risk of me leaving. The locals have stopped asking how long I stay.

In the town at the top of the hill the shopkeepers recognise me, the journey to the every 8th-day market has become a familiar routine. It punctuates time, which otherwise slips away. A market which would fall on a Sunday is held on the Saturday, as you learn. Market day means fresh fruit, but with the heat and the chaos it will be the cheaper ripe fruit and instantly require eating. There is a fruit frenzy, if I can recruit a friend to share in it. A kilo of mangoes, half a kilo of lychee, grapes, bananas. Can't speak eating mango, in two days it's gone. The fallback is the jackfruit, a giant studded monster that is just so palatable that it is eaten, but not often eaten. You have to plan days ahead for the fruit to ripen, face the adhesive white latex, and a faint rotting smell to get at the flesh. It's somewhere between a mango and a banana, generally quite pleasant.

It's impossible to know where the time goes. I make excuses, perhaps a day or two was spent collecting firewood, laundry, making tea, cooking a little food, if you can call it that. I just about stretch to boiling lentils, adding salt and calling it a dal. The hours may be spent walking, swimming, sunbathing, playing cards. Everyone has their own pet project. I adopted a dog of sorts, not that she shows much loyalty. I get a wagging tail, but she will follow anyone about the village. In the way dogs do she wont eat medicine, but plays the passive aggressive swallowing game without showing a tooth. Nobody wants a female dog. Some nights she sleeps on the porch, I guess when someone finds where she snuck into and drives her off.

It's time to leave, 'just one more day'. It's the refrain.

Textbook failures

When the short but useful learners guide has mistakes you see how a whole state can start asking for your good name.

Here it's "keep quite, wait me, and if you see a mouse don't shrick"

A public announcement

*Feedback noise*

Hello, hello, hello (tentatively spoken)

*Tap tap tap*

Hello, hello

*Squeal*

Information

(Talking in Mizo)

The daily public announcement for the village.

Lifts

I get a lift in the back of a truck. It's definitely one of my favourite ways to travel, I enjoy the road over the roof of the cab, and inhale the refreshing diesel exhaust. After a while I'm the only cargo and I am invited into the cab for the 25km journey. It's just me, the driver (27) and his brothers, age 13 and 15. After a while the driver stops for a drink... The alcoholic kind, a bag of local rice spirit. He asks if I want to drive, I think about it, but reply that I don't know how. I'm not sure I can remember how to drive a car, let alone a truck. His drunk hands are probably the safer bet on the mountain roads.
The journey is tortuously slow. I feel the kilometre stones are mocking me, as the truck bounces along seeming to progress nowhere. It takes two and a half hours to cover the distance, the average speed is below 10km/h, you could run it faster. It's no fault of the driver, Mizoram really does have some of the worst roads I have seen. It's not that rural roads are exceptionally bad, it's that all the roads are bad. Local people lament the increasing duration of journeys, it's getting worse... and everything I have seen is before the monsoon. Day turns into night, at least one of the headlights works!

Journeys

Rules of travelling no. 7

Before any long journey you will suddenly get sick. This coordinated assault by virus, bacteria, amoeba or protozoa inevitably leads to one conclusion. Loperamide hydrochloride, or as I like to say 'the password to India'. In my puritanical manner of travel this effect can be boosted by ceasing to eat or drink for the duration of the journey.

If you're a forward thinking person you can also pick up some dulcolax (guess)

Welcome to Mizoram

You'll never leave

Your best hope of escape is to book a return flight with no changes permitted.

Death by hospitality

Sometimes the hospitality can be a little overbearing. I stay four days with one family, two parents and their five children. We can't communicate except by smiles and the occasional word. The wife does almost all of the housework, and seems to be my host, the husband runs the shop. As well as looking after the children, I'm provided with food and tea as a special guest. I mention I'm leaving for the forest, and a packed lunch appears. I try and wash my clothes and I am distracted with a cup of tea, which I can't refuse, and the clothes are washed. The meals are elaborate, much richer than I'm used to, and even one day meat in my honour.
It's slightly unnerving, that in amongst the hustle and bustle of a 3-day wake, a traveling doctors clinic, and the daily toil, this undeserving tourist is the honoured guest. True I seem to have found a village where no foreigner has ever visited before, but who am I.
I could get used to it, a cup of red (black) tea appearing whenever I step in the house (uncanny), a smile, warm water bucket showers... but I am a big white Cuckoo. I'm the 6th child, I'm a year older than the unstoppably energetic wife. I have to leave, but leave too soon, curse my nature, and walk on racked by British awkwardness.

The rice game

The paite hosts in the villages have a special game. Does anyone remember the 'East meets West, local knowledge' adverts from HSBC? The unfortunate banker finishes plate after plate of sushi while the host feels his generosity is being questioned and provides increasingly large fish. In Mizoram they play both parts, it's British wartime mindset meets overbearing hospitality. I've seen pained reactions on the faces of other local people in two different houses that confirm it is in fact a game of sorts.

The rules are as follows:
The host places some rice on your plate
You must finish your plate
The host may add more rice at any time, unless physically blocked by a ready hand, or intercepted by a correctly timed word. When local people feel that the host has fouled by placing rice in violation of these rules they can return the rice to the pot (it's big lumps of sticky rice) with their hand. Unfortunately this breaks my cultural hygiene rules and so I am denied this escape.

The objective is limiting the quantity of rice on your plate. To look away is to lose, especially towards the latter stages of the meal when you might be feeling distracted. If you need to leave the table for example to fetch a napkin you must accept that this will have a high rice penalty of anything up to a filled plate. It's not just looking away, you need to keep the hand ready, reaction time is a factor. If looking down at the plate keep your peripheral vision trained to spot any approaching scoop of rice.

To say it is a rice based diet is an understatement. The people eat rice, and rice. In the case of the poorer families the rice is only topped with the most sparing green leaf, or vegetable water. Often vegetables will be cooked with rice to bulk them out a bit, and then a small quantity of rice and vegetable is spooned onto the rice. If any meat is present, which isn't every meal, it's often cooked with rice. In general you start with rice, and add small spoonfuls of the 'curries' as you go (if they are curries imagine a hipster deconstructed curry, the blandest vegetables Britain never boiled and in one pot, and in another inedibly hot chilli chutney). Dal is quite common, it's mixed with the rice, but lentils cost about 8 times as much as rice by the kilo so go easy. Much as with the rice game, you must follow the rules. Never take too much curry, or fill your plate at the start, and don't take too little. Curries too can leap into an unattended mountain of rice.

A little privacy

Mizo traditional houses are constructed from wood, on stilts over the sloping hillside. The design is centered around a large room with partition walls for the toilet and sleeping area. There is also a small square of concrete for the open fireplace, which is the center of evening activities. The bathroom is often awkwardly close to the kitchen or fireplace, and after a long days trek this is one of the first places I have in mind to visit. Foreigners are not common in this region (less than one a year) and a small crowd has often gathered by the time I have found a house to sleep in. This audience makes the whole squatting experience distinctly uncomfortable. I'm not sure what the locals make of my bid for privacy, but you may hear the rolling stones.

It's a funny old world

In Mizoram they eat snails and bees.

It's too friendly there. Half an hour of pleasantries later and you still haven't made your way out of a 1km long village. It's rather awkward turning down offers of places to sleep and eat without being able to communicate.

In Mizoram English is not widely spoken. The British did however give one parting gift, which you will hear when something is dropped. The words 'sorry' and 'excuse me'. Perhaps it was slightly shorter than 'min ngaidam roh' (formal: please forgive me) or 'ka tihpailh'. It's not just the word, it's apologising for everything which makes it.

Mizo people use feet and inches, at least for height. Maybe the USA and traditional Brits are not quite so alone. Myanmar (still Burma here) is or was also stuck in this ancient system. I'm six feet which makes me a certified giant. People take souvenir photos.

My friend tells me "if you're in the forest by yourself, best to keep murmuring. So many hunters, so many mistakes".

The wildlife sanctuary is the place people go hunting, no eyebrows are raised. Nobody quite understands why I don't want my guide to bring his gun. Unfortunately I am the one in danger of irony, for the first wildlife sanctuaries in India were created by the British... to preserve animals for hunting.

Mobile phone signal is a bit patchy in the villages, one man leads me to the signal point, the top of a hillock among the houses. On this side airtel, on the other side aircel. There is a wooden mobile phone stand on the airtel side, calls are best placed hands free.

Khawnge I kaldawn (where are you going). You must learn this, it's the question of Mizoram, from one mizo to another. These are the most frequent words you will hear.

About 5 years previously they finally demolished the town's inspection bungalow. I'm not sure quite why India kept these relics so long, some 60 years just in case the British came back? I can't say for sure if this was a colonial era inspection bungalow or something more modern. If anything now Mizoram is part of the Indian empire. It's one of my regrets that when I visited just a few years before I didn't get to stay in one of these bungalows. To drink tea and then opine to my heart's content about just how the country should be run.

Mizoram is a small state to have its own language, not much more than a million people. But of course, that's only the state language. I end up in a region where the people are paitae, who just about recognise the Mizo words I have been learning... as if it wasn't small enough. These 'Zomi' (hill people) assure me that the language has little in common with Mizo (people of the hills).

Mr. drinking problem, the hotel staff, suggests I try the local alcohol. Grape wine? I ask. No grape wine bad for health, rice wine. Stay tuned for more alcoholic words of wisdom.

In a first for India, the 'wine shop' has wine. It's filled with three local varieties of red wine, not a whiskey in sight!

Coeliac India survival guide part II

I'm not sure how any coeliac tourists have survived India, contamination with gluten is rife. Perhaps the blogs I read before I travelled were from the gluten intolerant or elective gluten free perspective. I can only assume the authors were either less sensitive to gluten or ate in well staffed tourist restaurants.

Both in the south and in the mountains of Northeast India gluten is everywhere. After a relatively successful period avoiding gluten with a wonderful host, I haven't stopped wheezing and rasping since. The local curries, thin and unlikely to be thickened, contain gluten. I can only assume it is mixed in with one of the spices as a bulking or anti-clumping agent. In the mountains of Meghalaya and Mizoram it's somewhere in every meal of local food. After enough time getting frustrated at the lack of quality control in India which is letting this contamination happen, it's time to think about survival.

One of the things backpackers and travellers do is eat the local food. I now realise the truth, I can't do this anymore (I wasn't always coeliac). I will not be able to eat in restaurants or share a meal with a host. Eating is now about surviving, and any risk of gluten contamination must be avoided. The mathematics are simple, if there is only a 10% risk of gluten contamination per meal I may get sick every 4 days (several meals per day). It takes me 5 days to fully recover, which leaves me in a permanent state of fatigue and reduced absorption. In reality, the contamination risk per meal is over 50%, it's just too high. The best description of a glutening I read from another blogger is this: you feel like a cockroach and someone steps on you and your insides spill out over the street.

I now eat chocolate. It's gluten free, dense and provides a decent number of calories for the dollar. Fresh fruit is of course a perfect gluten free food, but it's hard to take in enough to make a dent on your daily calorie requirements. Dried fruit is unsafe, certain evil powdered grains can be used to stop it sticking. If it's possible to communicate the idea, a plate of plain white rice is often safe (the rice cooker is dedicated). However rice plate generally means rice-meal/dahl bat/dinner, which will come with a whole selection of dishes. The ultimate survival food is the boiled egg, it keeps for a day, and sitting inside its shell is safely protected from any floury pestilence. Eggs are a crucial source of protein, as it is the Dahl can't be trusted. In my case desert is a calcium tablet to ensure my bones remain healthy.

I find a pricey alternative food, a nutritionally complete food powder, suitable for end-of-life care and tube feeding. The label boldly states it is both gluten and lactose free (I'm both). Just add water... I take as many tins as I can carry.

Revised list of safe gluten free foods
Fruit
Boiled eggs
Chocolate
Coca cola
White rice (with care)
Nutritionally balanced powdered food

All quiet in paradise

I haven't written a word in weeks, it's the effect of sitting around on my backside down in paradise. The village of Nongriat in Meghalaya still has its charm, despite my initial doubts, and what else is there to speak of. I even picked up a sack and cleared the litter from my favourite point without so much as a tweet. This was my line in the sand for India's garbage problem, this place was mine. But even all the heat and frustration from picking up the strewn bottles and food packets evaporated away before it reached the internet. The adventure began again when I left, asked me what I was looking at and smacked me in the face.

I've often entertained a sort of nostalgia for the quaint British touches in Meghalaya. I put the genocides of the British empire to one side and let myself believe the occasional comment that things were better under the British. It's unlikely to be first hand anymore, anyone who remembers the empire themselves would be in their late 70s. Instead it's the stories of parents and late relatives compared against the Indian empire of today, as locals see it. The fondness for Britain is a rejection of Hindi India's dominance over their homeland. Welsh missionaries first made their mark and bound the countries through religion and schools named after famous Joneses. English officials bound the two nations through football, drinking tea, and being socially reserved. Unfortunately the poor Khasi people are now left to follow the fate of the England football team at world cup events, whereas some of their Mizo neighbours have sagely defected to Germany. I've chuckled before at the traditional Khasi, *cough* mock Tudor, house. Even the Khasi rebellion against the Indian empire couldn't be more British. It consists largely of grumbling in private, with direct action in the form of slow and reluctant service of Indian customers.

Britain seems to have exported other things to the 'Scotland' of the east. Women here are liberated, with roots in traditional Khasi culture. Among other things, they can drink! In fact on the day I leave I encounter a group taking full advantage of this on a Saturday afternoon. I first get encouraged onto a hired public bus by one group of daytrippers. Then I'm offered a drink of clear spirit from a white bottle, and I start to notice, it's barely the afternoon and they are plastered. One of the girls stumbles and falls on the road outside, another is busy throwing up on the bus beside me. A short distance away on the grass another girl is also beyond walking. The guys aren't in a much better state, the same invitation to party back in Shillong (the capital) is repeated a dozen times. This drunken mess could be any English Saturday night... The locals look on in disgust.

The same café in Cherunpunji ignores me for as long as they can, before finally serving me food, and I suspect charging over the odds. I'm a glutton for punishment, they were just as keen on foreign customers 3 years before.

Shillong is uneventful, I arrive and within 2 hours I leave on the state bus for Mizoram.(I've been lucky, there are 3 per week).

You could not step twice into the same river

I am not the same man, and the river has continued to flow. I think perhaps it was a mistake to come back to the greatest place of my travels, but I had no choice, the memory of it drove me here like a compulsion. Fatigued and exhausted from 6 days of frenzied journey I burst into Nongriat early in the morning, with only nagging fears in my mind. From this moment nothing sat right with me. The guesthouse was the same, the same friendly talented host, and the same adventurous travelers who have made the walk with their bags. But I could not feel the spark I felt on first arriving in paradise.

My rejection of change must be irrational, after all it is the only constant. But why did more tourists have to come to the place, why is the thrown rubbish greater, why did new buildings have to be built, why did the winding stone path clinging to the valley side need concrete steps, why did the betelnut plantation need to grow into the forest, is the frontier atmosphere less now? I can't put my finger on any one important thing that has changed, apart from it not being my fictional memory of itself.

The first time I arrived I may have been at the peak of myself. Strong after many days on the beach, restless but fulfilled by my travels, and seeing everything new. That time as now I stopped first in the guesthouse 'at the top', in a town called Sohra (British/tourist name Cherunpunji). It has a dormitory which helps to throw travelers together. Meeting one or two others I heard some details about Nongriat, but still had not quite constructed a mental image. Only the basic landmarks were filled in from the stories: some large number of steps into a deep stoney valley, and a guest house beside a root bridge in an otherwise vast blackness of unconstructed backdrop.

To reach the village you have to descend quite a few steps (thousands) down the side of the valley. The old and less-used stone path begins from the plateau where Sohra is located, at Mawmaluh which is 7km down the road, noteworthy for it's cement plant. The views of the valley are something on the way down. About half way you reach Tyrna which is where many people begin the walk, at the cost of a taxi. From here the steps are concrete, a product of the Mahatma Gandhi rural employment scheme or other government program. The concrete is no bad thing, aside from the small size of the steps it's a very steep descent through the forest.

To reach Nongriat you have to cross the bottom of the valley. Two rivers are spanned by distinctly rusted cable bridges, formed of fresh cables and disintegrating cables held together by twisted bits of wire and bamboo. The bridges are around 40m in length and up to 10m above the valley floor, failure isn't a pleasant idea. After a couple of rises on the far side you reach the village, camouflaged by betelnut trees and surrounded by forest. There are many places to stay where there were once two, with the most popular foreign tourist spot right at the start of the village. The owner speaks good English, which makes things simple.

Within a few kilometers of stone (now concrete) paths in each direction are beautiful waterfalls, emerald pools, other villages. The guidebook attraction is the two storey 'living root bridge' which made the place famous. The temperature is pleasant, ranging on hot and humid in the late season.

If I try to describe what makes this place special it all stems from the absence of a road. The locals are hardy, and the tourists adventurous. There is no traffic problem here, and no pollution to speak of. The limited volume of tourist traffic keeps rubbish down. In essence nothing has changed. I realise my memory was a moment in time with a small group of people so in awe of the place we regressed to an almost childlike state. Everything was new. I remember painting with torches on slow camera exposures of the bridge, exploring the valley, accompanying a trip to the village to buy a local machete, riding on the roof of the Jeep, swimming, diving, sunbathing. The euphoria is gone, with just enough visitors now it's no longer a private party.

Naturally the tourist department wants to destroy this one thing that makes the place special. Despite the fact that Indian tourists do visit this place, and make the trek down the valley as part of their holiday... What would really improve this place is clearly a road, and a parking lot for hundreds of white tourist jeeps. This is the view of the people with money, the hotel developers of Sohra who want to turn the place into a government approved tourist site for government approved tourist vehicles to stop at for five minutes, throw their rubbish, and move on. I hope they never achieve this, but fear it is inevitable.

The journey: part 3-5

Part 3-5 of the journey, 1000km to 3820km.

At some point I stop forming new memories. Train sleep isn't real sleep, the occasional station stop, bright lights, beggars. Let alone the fact that always the 'ticket only' coach has about 16 people in the 8 bed compartment. I'd call second class sleeper a form of mild torture, and the train, a rolling cess-pit. This is heightened by the fact the sinks and toilets frequently run out of water.

The other guys in the compartment are all going to Assam bar one, and seem friendly enough. But they are from poor backgrounds, from the size of them they look like perpetual boys, and they don't speak a word of English. We bond a little over the 3 days, and they help me in a little of the negotiation for buying a gamcha. (Some sort of shoulder scarf which holds the head scarf in place). I wanted it to insulate myself from the dirtier parts of my seat-bed.

I don't remember much else from the middle days of the journey. Identical looking station platforms, identical drying cowpats on the walls. In the 56 hours it covers 2988km.

It's a chilly morning in Assam, it's much further north than when I started the journey. I stumble off the train at 7.15am. After 4 nights of train sleep everything is a little hazy, but I'm lucky. I've only lost my lucky charm on the journey. Right outside the station I stumble into a government bus to Shillong, and a very friendly man from one of the northeastern states directs me to a ticket counter. Within 15 minutes I'm already moving towards Shillong. On this bus I'm sat next to a local going to the same town (Sohra/Cherunpunji), and we wait for a shared sumo (Jeep) together. And it's done, I manage not to vomit on the Jeep and I'm there, sort of.

The journey: day 2

Part 2 of the journey, about 700km in

I arrive at Bangalore by 7.15am, almost on-time. It looks like the ticket counters don't open till 8 so I mill around the station. Bangalore city station is fairly developed: working electronic sign boards, some electronic ticket machines.

I pull off my second same-day booking with only a minor hitch. It is possible to book foreign tourist quota tickets from Bengaluru. It's not advertised, but the "senior and physically handicapped"* counter in the main station building can book this overlooked quota of tickets. (Looking at the weekly schedule for my train nobody else has). For the second time I have a train ticket for a service leaving the same day (technically), in about 16 hours. The foreign tourist quota is tiny, just 2 beds of the thousand on the train. But there is a catch, it's a lower bunk. The lower classes of Indian trains have a 3-level bunk, and in the daytime the middle bed folds away to make the seating on the lower bunk. The upper bunk allows 24 hour sleeping, and a little added security. The lower bunk prevents my usual strategy of sleeping in an almost vegetative state for the duration of the journey. It's going to be tough, I'll be on the train for the next 3 nights.

I waste 16 hours in Bengaluru until the train departs near midnight.

*India is at various points in the euphemism treadmill simultaneously. Disabled is the most common, followed by differently abled and occasionally handicapped.

The journey: day 1

Part 1 of a 5 day, 3820km overland journey.

I left the room at 10 slightly ill, this forced my hand, I was to take the AC train to Bengaluru... it also has toilets. I paid the hotel owner and sat down at a ticket booking office next door. I asked for a ticket to Bangalore, today, and much to his surprise there were still 5 AC tickets available (it's more expensive than the AC bus). It's pretty rare to book a sleeper train the same day in India.

This small step solved I then have to get to the start point of the train. While just 60km by road this is no mean feat by the buses of Goa, and will take over 3 hours. I race to the first bus stop in town and catch the bus to Mapusa at 10.45. I've been lucky, I have a seat, and can enjoy the countryside to the rhythm of the thumping complementary Hindi music. I get my money's worth of free music, the bus takes the round the houses route to Mapusa. Pink, green, blue, white with red trim, cream, purple, pink and green. It's easy to forget how bright the Indian houses are after so long in the country. These houses dot a Goa landscape of black rock, dusty red soil and yellow grass. The trees are a mix of palms, bananas, and the broad leaved species.

I get to Mapusa (eventually) and jump on a bus to Panaji which leaves a minute later. The saving grace of the trundling bus service is it's frequency. From Panjim I take a government shuttle bus (they still exist) and reach Vasco (De Gamma) by 1.45. I'm my usual fashionable self as I march around Vasco searching for an ATM which accepts international MasterCard, has Rs500 notes, doesn't charge credit cards, and can give a receipt. Sadly I don't find a machine with all of the above, and go without the receipt. In case you can't picture the British idiot abroad: dark grey baseball cap covering a shiny tanned face with a weeks stubble. Khaki green t-shirt, black rucksack, black backpack over the shoulder. Black shorts, thick grey socks and chunky walking shoes.

The train station has no electronic information boards, but it's pretty standard fare. A multitude of different offices for tickets, catering, waiting rooms, station masters, ticket officers, battery rooms, guards offices, railway protection offices and so on. After a brief panic, that I can't find the train, a helpful ticketing officer directs me to the end of the Delhi train. The last 3 coaches tacked on the end are a separate designation, the train will separate layer. At 15.10 it starts moving, and for at least a minute the vast train (20 something coaches) creeps out of Vasco. I'll save recounting the atmosphere of an Indian train for another day. After 50 minutes the train halts at Madgaon (railway)/Margao (everything else). You have to remember the railway name when dealing with the trains, most places have two names, thanks to the British/ French/ Portuguese. This is the transport hub for Goa and is on the coastal Cancona railway. It's also the home of a crumbling stretch of a 'sky-rail' mass-transit system of the future that wasn't. A few more people board. 6 hours into the journey and I can't be more then 70km from where I started. The edge of Goa is a beautiful hilly nature reserve, the train gives occasional views as it climbs through the hills.

In India the train changes around you. At Londa the three coaches destined for Bangalore are shunted out and back into another perform. They look slightly isolated standing at the platform on their own, a short distance behind another stray coach. At some point we are joined onto the back of the Kolhapur Bengaluru train.

The journey: a preview

I can't charge my phone on the 55 hour train to Guwahati, the blog will have to wait.

In the mean time I'll have to amuse myself, perhaps I could take advantage of the hourly at-seat Rubik's cube service.

Coeliac India survival guide

You try to eat gluten free, you get sick. You eat packaged food with listed ingredients, you get sick. After this you get frustrated, I'm only eating damn white rice and boiled eggs, then you find a Magi (wheat) noodle at the bottom of your bowl of rice. You get sick. I'm starting to think Indian-born coeliacs just die.

Apparently this isn't always the case, see BMJ article, but awareness is recent and the spread of information is limited. It could take a generation of doctors and patients before knowledge about coeliac spreads. Much like Italy in Europe, the first awareness is in the wheat centric regions of northern India. I'm guilty of the same mistakes mentioned in the article, I became coeliac in India and moved from doctor to doctor suspecting recurrent infections. It was only the UK blood test which revealed excess ttg gluten antibody levels, a food intolerance hadn't crossed my mind until this point.

The problem with staying gluten free in India is contamination and the hidden sources of gluten. Gluten can literally be hiding in your bowl of rice, with one careless stray wheat noodle. Simply having a rice based food, or ingredients list which doesn't include flour, is not enough. The worst culprit is 'hing'/asafoetida, which as a spice is ground with wheat flour. This is added to various curries, chutneys and pickles even in otherwise rice-based south India. After 7 days healthy on the beach it was my immune system which detected the hing. The telltale rasping breath, then the fatigue. I didn't know what it was, all I had done was add a bit of chili-lime pickle to spice up my daily veg-curry rice. It was googling a food blogger's work that revealed the hing, and lo and behold when I had a look in the kitchen, the chili pickle listed asafoetida. The same process repeated with the Indian snack containing fried gram flour noodles, which turn out to be not so pure gram (chickpea/lentil). The masala omelette (some masala mixes may contain wheat to prevent clumping/unscrupulous bulking). The stray noodle hiding in my bowl of rice was just to remind me that butch has nowhere to hide.

Fried food is a perpetual risk for coeliacs, this source of contamination isn't worth touching. As is the Indian love of Chinese flavours: fried rice, Manchurian and so on, which may include gluten-rich soy sauce.

There are then the regional traditions, tourist places will add bread to your omelette unless you ask otherwise. Unpalatable sweetened bread to suit the Indian market at that. The only option is to excise a safety zone of omelette which may have touched the bread and hope for the best. If you ask for an omelette without bread, you'll see the same omelette again. The only saving grace so far is that the local train catering has been serving the omelette and bread separately. The local variation on iced tea seems to be adding barley water, which is nice for non-coeliacs. I'll give credit to the local Starbucks which did give me a heads up on this tradition before the 'café coffee day' Apple refresher smacked me in the face.

For a summarised list of foods which are safe for coeliacs in India:
Coca cola
Fruit with skins
Boiled eggs with shell

May be safe, roll a dice, if less than 6 you survive:
White rice
Simple veg curry
Idli/dosage/masala dosa - usually safe but depends on the chutneys (asafoetida) or contamination
Papadum - unless it contains any flour or asafoetida

May be unsafe:
Chapati, roti, naan, pouri, samosa...
Chutneys/pickle. May be unsafe, asafoetida ground with wheat
Fried rice - soy sauce, gluten
Manchurian - soy sauce, gluten
Biryani: may have crispy breadcrumbs added for texture
Ice tea/local soft drinks: may contain barley water
Packaged crispy snacks with gram flour noodles - suspect wheat content (not listed)
Any fried/battered food: contaminated oil or flour.
Rava dosa - one reference for sometimes adding wheat flour.
Any powdered spices/spice mixes/masala (spice)
Masala omelette

Dear Mr Modi

If you want to increase the tax-paying economy without causing pain, the secret is incentives. India faces the same problems which affected Greece, but on a much larger scale. Businesses are paid in cash, and do not declare their earnings or pay appropriate tax. The solution in Europe was to require receipts for each purchase, but this law was often ignored. What was used instead was a temporary incentive, if a person collects receipts for everything they buy, they can get an income tax discount. The government loses some tax revenue in the short term, but gains visibility of payments to tax other businesses and individuals.
Collecting receipts is an enormous task, and I do not recommend this. India does not have the infrastructure for tax-system receipts, and even in Greece it was a labour intensive system. As the Indian government has recognised, cashless is the answer, providing visibility of transactions with no additional paper documents.
Unfortunately I believe India has taken the wrong approach to achieving a cashless economy, using the stick not the carrot, cancelling people's money, using threats. It can actually cost businesses more to use card payments, and I read that it can cost more to buy petrol with card. After the introduction of GST (goods and services tax) this difference will be even higher. It is the opposite of an incentive, it's a disincentive, this is a punishment for using card payment. The temporary reduction in fees at petrol stations is insufficient, barely 2 months? What you need is to make using card the cheaper way to pay, and usage will quickly increase. To do this provide an incentive for card use.
For each income-tax paying consumer, refund 20% of the tax paid for each rupee paid by card or electronic method. For example this would reduce an effective tax rate of 30% to 24%, but only for traceable money. I believe in India the tax on the lowest bracket has been lowered from 10% to 5%, but without any condition of cashless spending!
If cashless does increase the money lost in any incentive will come back to the government anyway. Each business will need to prove it's outgoings to avoid tax on profit becoming tax on revenue, and so it will need to pay people and suppliers electronically. This means more people now have traceable payments. More people will want to pay by card. This will make consumers really demand (not forced) card payment to each business. The tax discount will give consumers the feeling of a benefit, more money in the pocket, while vastly increasing the tax revenue.
I am an engineer, I see a system, and I try to fix the system using the minimum effort.

Losing my religion

I lie on the bed gazing at the spinning ceiling fan.
Goa... Still only in Goa.
Every time I wake up I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle... When I was home all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.
I'm here a week now... waiting for a train... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. Each time I look around the walls moved in a little tighter.
Intro: cue 'the doors'.

Arambol (Saigon/ Goa) is a shock to the senses. Scooters and motorbikes are everywhere, filling the streets, almost nobody walks. The motorbikes are mostly premium Royal Enfield bikes, considered classic in India. These bikes have larger capacity engines 350cc-500cc, and some produce the irritating crack-crack-crack sound that makes bikers such a popular group. The driving feels reckless for the nearly pedestrian town center.

This place is not my native habitat, I end up in a slightly more expensive room (£8/night) that is the height of luxury after my beach life. Attached bathroom, running fresh water, no less than 3 sinks, mirror, food area with a knife, and not a rat in sight. This must truly be a place for a king.

The culture of Goa isn't me, I'm not one for yoga, tantra, massage, drinking or partying. The 150+ restaurants, cafes and bars have little to offer me. With a shaved head I'll never quite fit in with the white dreads, and don't have the appetite to cover myself in beads and tattoos. Give me a thick layer of mud or dust any day.

The trinket sellers are everywhere. In the afternoons there is a hippie market, with an endless row of tat sellers along the beach. Each has claimed a metre or two of sand and laid their collection of beads, jewellery and shiny things on a cloth. The wares are all the same, each stand more identical than the last. At night every seller has a lamp to illuminate their spread of tat. I recognise the sight from lamp fishermen on the shores of Kerala... Fishing for hippie rupees.

This town isn't India, the longer I stay the softer I get.

Kamat plus

A rambling list of trivia from a marathon bus journey, which almost retraces the steps of the Russian affair some 4 years previously. The route has many changes, starting at Om beach, via Gokarna, Ankola, Karwar, Margao, Panjim, Mapusa, Arambol to Arambol beach.

On the bus we pass a novel 'kamat plus' building. I'm used to kamat hotels (hotel meaning restaurant) which are a chain of south Indian restaurants. The 'Kamat plus' concept appears to be vegetarian restaurant plus hardware and paints. A true one stop shop!

This feels like progressive Karnataka, away from the dusty inland towns. A schoolgirl sits beside me, and so I make a comfortable gap, remembering the cultural rules of before. This gap is quickly seized by another schoolgirl. The bus is soon packed full anyway. I glance at the schoolwork of the boy on my left, and girl on my right. Both are studying in English. Despite what Google tries to tell me of the potential audience of 550m Hindi speakers, English is bigger. It's a valuable asset in the expanding state capital of Bengaluru.

We pass what might be a dead body by the side of the road. A man laying face down in the dirt by an incomplete lane of the highway, dressed in the almost ubiquitous check shirt and brown trousers. It's about 9am, and has been light for 3 hours. When I have seen Indian people sleep on the ground it's normally wrapped in a sheet, laid on the back or side, with the head towards the road. I did once find a man in a similar state in Nepal who turned out to be very, very drunk.

In Goa the road is briefly blocked as an oncoming car tries to overtake stationary traffic on a narrow bridge. The stalemate takes a minute to resolve, and then over the bridge it gets worse. A whole road of stationary traffic trying to overtake each other, blocking both directions. Me first.

I stop in Mapusa to get some spendable cash. Getting cash that businesses accept is a challenge post cash ban, the state bank ATM has a queue of 17 people. But I find the paydirt! A bank of Baroda ATM with no queue and a supply of Rs500 notes. If I withdraw over Rs2000 the money includes the stifling Rs2000 bank note, and so I withdraw Rs1500 at a time, again, and again, and again. After the frenzy is over I have a wallet stuffed with real money. I have been careful to choose a bank card with no per-withdrawal minimum fee, bank debit cards often come with a £3 charge for foreign ATMs which is punitive for small withdrawals.

Goa has the worst buses. For some reason it lacks the state-owned bus service which makes getting around south India so pleasant. Local bus operators play a game of sardines with locally-built overgrown minibuses, each about two thirds the size of an actual bus. I spend the agonising journey to Arambol as one of the 50 sardines packed onto a 30-something capacity bus. Standing pressed against the passengers on each side, with my neck painfully cocked due to the 175cm high ceiling. Any unanticipated speed bump thumps my head into the roof.

I arrive 10 hours and 6 buses after my start

An English episode

I'm sat opposite two English ladies, both 44. I start with these details because they are otherwise anonymous and have little else in common. The first lady, name omitted, though nothing unflattering is to be said, has traveled well. She first visited the beach 25 years previously and has returned to see how it has changed. Just about everything, as it turns out, but she isn't about to pass judgement. I'll call her the fairer English lady, and give an account of a meek character used to weathering criticism of her life choices. Living as a small scale vegetable farmer in Spain, and raising her son off the grid, after his childhood accompanying her world travels. She has the crowning jewel now to refute all parenting critics after her variously educated son studied and passed both GCSEs and A-levels within a year and a half, and now studies on one of the most prized university courses in the UK. I feel slightly ashamed when she is browbeaten by the resident Scotch-Dutch pseudoscience hippie. But not beyond recovery, and there is a joint recommendation that TED talks are worth a watch.
The second lady, to be called the fiery lady, made her introduction by demonstrating her exclusivity with the presence of the Scotch Dutch hippie. The near violent confrontation exposes teeth and bone on each side. The hippie disappears with such subtlety that I notice by the absence of his coffee. This fiery lady seems to be in a bit of a state. From what I gather between the "fucking mates" and the "fucking well proper" I try and pick out the truth. I could call her an unreserved character, but she puts it more succinctly "yes I know I'm a cunt". "Sorry sorry". But it's more than this, she isn't well, and may have been drinking. The events are distinctly public, as anyone present would have seen, but should be read without judgement.
Unfortunately at moments the other customers catch her attention. She loudly expresses a desire to lick the head of a par-bald Germanic-looking man. Later an unfortunate Indian troupe in silly hats catch her attention.
"Fucking knob head"
"You in the hat with the string"
"You look like a right knob head"
The Indian man speaks with the waiter in Kannada (local language)
"You know wot a prat you look like in that hat"
She is equally graceful on the phone, to what may be some kind of acquaintance.
"Send me money"
"I'm giving you fucking 24 hours right, or I will fucking burn your huts down"
Both the fiery lady and the psedoscience hippie have decided it's ok to criticise my body at various times. This is rather annoying! I am all too aware of the ugly vanity of the beach without these critics.

I fear some impending catastrophe in the guest house as the numbers of alcoholics, gorillas, mental health cases, doddering old fools, rats, cockroaches and hypocrites rise. Some kind of fireworks are due.

Time to leave

Half of my attempts to swim beyond the bay result in a whimpering retreat. The jellyfish have claimed the ocean, and they let me know it. My last refuge, where I could perform my slow and inefficient stroke in peace, is taken from me. Despite my fantasies of taking revenge on these lurking menaces with some kind of adapted mosquito net, I have accepted defeat. It is hard to call a further attempt anything other than masochism.

The story goes that overfishing has disrupted the food chain, which leads to jellyfish. The horizon is filled with fishing boats from dawn to dusk, it seems plausible.

Great Apes

Pete
Pete
Pete
Pete
The cry of the north European gorilla can be heard breaking the warm afternoon air. A brief slurred exchange, and it rises into shuffling lunging waddling motion. The shoulders hunched forward, and the arms held to the side forming part of a fixed wide circle around the belly. It stops at the beer fridge to forage, picking up a beer in each hand, held fixed at a 45 degree angle. Off to accost some unfortunates at the front of the guest house. "Hey, where you going" slurs one great ape. The speach is slow and often incomprehensible. Apparently they also have access to other drugs, but this nearly comatose state must be considered wakefulness. The bathing of the largest apes is a sight in itself, lunging and staggering in the shallows, eventually rising and spurting a column of salt water. Utterly majestic creatures.

Beach bum III

Back on Om beach Gokarna, idle, aimless. The same familiar faces are here, but something has changed. Everything is reflected in myself, as I am far from a neutral observer, it feels spent. The same tank-top wearing lads and lasses who behave so impeccably in Thailand, Laos, and Bali have added Gokarna to the end of a Goa trip. It was a gradual but inevitable shift, the travelers are fewer, and the Goa goers are more. Welcome to new Palolem.*

This week there are no motorbikes for hire, the rickshaw drivers have been on strike to demand this. The police have duly seized any hired bike with Karnataka plates. This will change with enough trips to Bengaluru, bikes with new rental approved numberplates are already appearing. Anything to appease the land mafia (the excessive headcount of rickshaw drivers) or the sea mafia (the extortionate cartel of boat owners controlling the water).

Without convenient motorbikes I resorted to other measures: pedal power, and the still bountiful state bus company. The state buses cost only pence, and serve just about every hamlet of the state. Most tourists seem unaware of this now, and travel exclusively by private "sleeper"** buses, like lambs to the police extortion post.

I explore to the north, and to the south, but could not find the beach of my mind. Still, it's about the journey isn't it. I make a trip to the beach known as paradise under my own steam, by sea***. I haven't seen people swimming often, it must have gone out of fashion. Instead the popular exercise seems to be a morning jog by the water. Paradise is a little cleaner than I remember, but a little busier than one might imagine.

*Palolem is a 2-week tourist town in south Goa, where the second hand book shops collect a history of whatever pulp was popular last year.

**Only very heavy sleepers have a chance of sleeping, though the low rumble of the engine is pleasing, the occasional horn blast or launch into the air keeps gentler souls awake.

***It turns out swimming beyond the bay is ill advised, jellyfish.

Rickety old government bus

This, it's my paranoia, fearing left behinds in Modi's prosperity ambitions. Such as the ATM guard who now protects a machine where the only note is several days of his pay. For the rich tourist the new Rs2000 bank note is also a bit of a pain, when your expenses are in the range Rs10 to Rs700, and change is not easily available. The game of change conservation begins afresh!

Actually this is something of an understatement, nobody who can avoid it wants to touch a Rs2000 note. It's a giant white elephant but it's all that is left in the ATMs. When the average Indian might be living on Rs400 per day what use is 5 days money in a note. The median income is far lower due to the high proportion of agricultural workers, below Rs200 per day. Imagine trying to spend a £250 note!

The same people were gently encouraged to deposit any money in a bank by the immediate cancellation of the old high value notes. Let's hope the pain is worth it.

An Indian couple in the street approach me and ask for change for a Rs2000 note. They look like tourists. The man stands looking slightly lost, rolling the note in his fingers. This is not how you hold money, it really is toxic.