Mother India

Beautiful, tinkling, colourful, glittering glass bangles up to the elbow. Women with shining black hair to their waist. Nose rings, ear rings, toe rings, anklets. A sea of gorgeous fabrics; gold, greens, blues, reds, swirling all around you. Emerging from immigration after another awkward conversation about cricket, “Give ‘em a heave Lance Cairns!”, I am instantly entranced by these effortlessly elegant women, floating around us as we weave our bikes through the crowds of people waiting to see the closing of the border.

We entered India at Wagha Border, famous for its closing ceremony where the Indian and Pakistani guards try to outmarch and outshout each other every evening. Recently the guards were instructed to tone things down as so many were injuring themselves by kicking too high as they marched. We planned it all wrong though; in retrospect we should have gone to see it as a day trip from Lahore, as once there, we found there was nowhere safe to leave our bikes while we watched it. The hotels were all full, so we had no choice but to cycle to Amritsar before it got dark. Of course, we could also have done a day trip from Amritsar, as many others do, but Stuart is hard wired to always go forward, so this wasn’t an option.

In Armritsar, we stayed at the Golden Temple, the holiest pilgrimage site for the Sikh religion. It’s dome, made to resemble a Lotus Flower which symbolises the Sikh’s desire to live a pure life, is said to contain 750kg of pure gold. Food and accomodation is free, though a donation is appreciated. It was crowded when we arrived, but we were given a mattress on the floor. We ate in the incredible food hall, which runs all day and all night. As you enter you are given a plate, a bowl and a spoon. As you sit in rows on the floor, men walk up and down the aisles filling your plate with dhal, chappati and a sweet rice pudding. When you leave, you pass a chain of people who take your plates and spoon. By the time your plates and cutlery reach the enormous area where they are washed, the place is as noisy as a train station. There is a rhythmic clack, clack, clacking as the plates are banged on sides of huge cauldrons, washed, then stacked noisily onto racks to dry.

 Our first plan was to cycle north to Macleod Ganj to hear the Dalai Lamas teachings, and our friend Gerrite, the Dutch cyclist we met in Lahore was going to Nepal. We were able to find a route which meant we could cycle together for the first few days before needing to part ways. He was such a pleasure to cycle with; a wonderful conversationalist, and an inspiring traveller.

We reached Dharamsala after five days of cycling that had grown steadily hillier. From Dharamsala to Macleod Ganj, there was a choice of two roads. A very steep three kilometres or a gentler nine. Ever up for a challenge, we chose the shorter option. Of the entire trip, this was the steepest climb we’ve done. Adding to the pressure is the fact that the road is lined by guesthouses, restaurants laundromats and internet cafes. This made us so determined not to come off, particularly when people started clapping and cheering us on and waiting at corners to see if we’d make it up the next incline. How do the Tour de France cyclists stay so focussed? Tibetan monks would pass us laughing and smiling, one even gave me a push up a really hard section.

 Macleod Ganj is the home of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government in exile and many of the thousands of brave Tibetans who have escaped China walking over the Himalayas. We arrived two days before the Dalai Lama was to begin his teachings. We registered for our tickets and bought a small FM radio through which we could tune into the English translation. We spent Saturday at the Buddhist Temple and visited the immensely moving Tibet Museum. In the photography display there was a photo of a seven year old girl arriving in India and being treated for frostbitten toes. Another was a lonely photograph of a five year old girl and her father, holding hands in a vast landscape of white, crossing a 5,000m pass on their walk to India. We spent time with two Tibetans one evening, one had been in India for six years. He told us that a year had passed before he was able to make his first phonecall home. He said “I want to go home. Now my mother has white hair and lines on her face. But if I go back, I am worried they will put me in jail”. His friend had arrived in India only six months ago, and could not speak any English. While he was telling his friend things for him to translate to us, his hand made a cup shape, and he kept slamming it down on the table as he spoke about the Chinese in Tibet. He said he never wanted to go back.

Sunday was the first day of the teachings. When the Dalai Lama left his residence and entered the courtyard, the hundreds of people who had been sitting cross legged and suddenly standing made a whoosh sound that you could hear in your stomach; there was a collective intake of breath, then all was silent except for the tiny clickings of prayer beads. Some older Tibetans held their faces in their hands, and their eyes filled with tears. He walked through waving and smiling, drawn towards the young children and reaching out for their hands. It was a rare moment – even from where we were standing, 20 metres away, the goodness of this man was beaming from him and it was overwhelming.

My Buddhist pilgrimage continued after leaving Macleod Ganj, as I had an appointment to meet Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a western buddhist nun who became reluctantly famous after spending twelve years in a remote cave in the Himalayas. To raise funds to build a nunnery, she now travels the world and gives talks on Buddhism. The fact that she’s from the west, means she can explain things in a way that’s easily absorbed by the western psyche. She’s clever, funny and tough as anything. The night before my meeting we stayed in the nearby monastery of Tashi Jong. We arrived just as the gong was sounding for tea, and were led into a kitchen overlooking the valley and the fields of freshly cut grass. We ate chickpea burgers for ten rupees each down by the river that night, where Stuart was tormented by the sight of about 500 resident mahseer swimming below the bridge. All considered holy, all unable to be caught.

Meeting Tenzin Palmo was wonderful, I was very nervous, and managed to burst into tears when I first saw her. I had a long list of things I wanted to ask her, but we ended up talking about the bike ride for most of the time I was there. She told me that the bike ride is the perfect opportunity for me to practise mindfulness, which is one of the fundamentals of Buddhism – simply being in your present and practising awareness, as the present is all we really have. That evening we had dinner in a restaurant at the monastery, along with about twenty young monks, all drinking tea in their saffron robes and watching Bad Boys 2 on TV.

While I was at the nunnery, Stuart rode off with his fishing rod, trying to find a section of river where the mahseer weren’t considered quite so holy. He was unable to find such a place. If the fish weren’t holy, they also weren’t there. He stopped off for tea at a small village shop, and was soon surrounded by children wanting to ride his bike. He said yes to one of the older boys, who within seconds of riding down the hill, went flying over the handlebars. Stuart was horrified for the boy, but the shop keeper took it the other way and cursed the boy for damaging the bike.

Our route through the back roads of Himachel Pradesh and Uttarakhand over the next ten days gave us a long, slow look at rural India. The steep, mountainous landscape was sculpted like wedding cakes, terraces for rice and vegetables were carved into the hillsides. Unsurprisingly, as we were in the foothills of the Himalayas, the roads were the most challenging on the trip. We met our match on one mountain pass and had to accept a lift. Stuart has lost his first, second and third gears, and it was the first time I’ve ever seen him push his bike up a hill. A dark moment indeed.

The following day was seven hours of constant climbing. But we were permanently humbled by the women we would cycle past every day; hay bales of perhaps 30kgs balanced on their heads or strapped to their backs with rough rope, walking slowly, slowly up hill. We passed one woman in her seventies carrying a pile of wood the length of a railway sleeper across her back. The hillsides were filled with people with tiny machetes, cutting long grasses for their cattle. Once we stopped for lunch and watched a group of people making concrete. There were two women in the group, wearing gorgeous sky blue saris. It looked as if they’d been on their way for a lunch date but decided to stop and mix cement on the way. Their job was to walk backwards and forwards over a three metre patch; at one end they would have the large basket on their head filled with sand, they would then walk this to the cement mixer and tip the sand in. They did this the whole time we had our break. When we rode past, only one woman was working. As we cycled a bit further, we saw the other woman under a tree, breastfeeding her tiny baby.

We kept to the back roads as much as we could, but the times that we had to ride on the main roads were quite simply hell on earth. Let it be said that there is no beast less predictable than an Indian bus, no driver less cognizant of the fact that it would hurt if he hit you than an Indian bus driver. After six months of cycling and almost ten thousand kilometres, India has been the first country where we felt unsafe riding on the same road as other road users. We had many close calls with vehicles overtaking us and even a time when a lorry clipped Stuart’s handle bars causing him to put a foot down. Though it sounds minor, there was only an inch or two between that and causing serious inury.

Another contributing factor to the challenge of cycling here, is horns. To say, “They beep their horns alot”, though correct, is too benign a statement and makes the mental state I was reduced to seem entirely disproportionate to the offending action. Words like deploying klaxons come a bit closer to conveying the violence inflicted on the eardrums and nerves. Every single scooter, motorcycle, car, lorry and bus (oh, how they especially love it), lets go with a honk at your right ear every time they pass or come towards you, necessary or not.

I fell into a very dark cycling hole on some days, struggling to remember why I enjoyed riding my bike. I would smile bitterly as I remembered I was supposed to be practising mindfulness while cycling. The only thing that kept me sane was imagining a future or remembering a past that did not involve cycling in India. There is a writer called Diane Ackerman, who loves riding her bike, and she has a gorgeous line “When I go biking…I am mentally far from civilization.  The world is breaking someone elses heart” Oh, she had clearly never cycled in India. Throughout all this, Stuart managed to maintain a serious Pollyanna syndrome, playing the glad game all day long. I was the Hyde to his Jekyll.  I was the mad woman escaped from the attic. I’m normally the one who surrounds herself with school children, laughing gaily as I ask their names, not him. I usually call out the greetings in the local tongue, while letting butterflies play in my eyelashes as birds sing to me from my handlebars. Stuart would tell me just to block it out. I would rotate my head 360 degrees before roaring “TELL ME HOW!?!” from a frothy mouthful of green bile. I was devastated. Everyone else seems to come to India and have a spiritual experience; meditating in Ashrams, yoga on the banks of the Ganges, finding gurus. I’d also had a spiritual transformation; I needed an exorcism.

But, when the roads were good, they were truly divine. We had the sweetest of sweet four day stretch in Uttarakhand, where we literally turned off a busy road, (where I had a motorbike on my tail that wouldn’t pass, going beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep), and found ourselves on a thin back road that curved along a river, natural forest on either side, gorgeous Himalayan magpies with their long tails crisscrossing the road in front of us. We thought that maybe we’d been hit by a bus and had gone to heaven.

That evening we stayed in the small town of Mori. The town was packed, people filled the streets, music was coming from the fields. We were told there was a festival that night, and invited to go along at nine o’clock. When we walked into the marquee, an usher saw us and immediately led Stuart and I to the front of the audience to sit with the local dignitaries. A comedian was onstage when we arrived, doing an imaginary commentary on a cricket match between India and Pakistan – it was all in Hindi, but I think that Pakistan were losing.

Soon afterwards, the prizegiving ceremony for the afternoon’s athletics competition began. The man seated next to me whispered into my ear each time a girl went up to receive a prize,telling me which race she had won. Soon, this man’s name was called out and he went up to receive an award. When he returned to his seat I asked him if he’d come first in the 100 metres. No, he told me, I started this festival 23 years ago, and for this they have given me an award. He then asked me to write our names onto a piece of paper; we thought that it must have been a tactic for not forgetting our names. Some more prizes were given, and then suddenly we heard our own names read out. We walked to the stage amidst huge applause, received two trophies, thanked the crowd and returned to our seats with no idea what was going on. The man next to me whispered “We are so delighted that foreigners have come to share our festival. We know you have no idea what we are all saying, but the fact that you are here means the world to us”.

The good roads didn’t last much longer after Mori, and soon we found ourselves back on the main roads. The transition from quiet forest road to the crash of auto-rickshaws, honking trucks and swerving buses as we reached Rishikesh was pure trauma. It was a matter of being happy one second, and in hell the next. And this was us on our way to the yoga capital of the world! The place the Beatles found their guru! We’d arrived in town at the same time as an enormous festival in nearby Haridwar, and on this particular day, many of the pilgrims were visiting Rishikesh. The pedestrian bridge across the river to our guesthouse was so full of people that we had to wait three hours before we could cross with the bikes. This gave us time to compare ourselves to the other travellers. Regally they would glide past us, yoga mats peeking cheekily out of their hemp bags, beatific smiles on their faces. We sat at the side of the road, bikes leaning up against an old stand, ears ringing, gloves still on, fists clenched, looking for someone to punch.

We took a much needed yoga class the next day in a beautiful room overlooking the Ganges. We were told it was a drop in class, totally suitable for beginners. Needless to say, I had to hold onto hand rails when I descended stairs for the next week. The yoga teacher was very cool, possibly Australian, though we were never quite sure. We saw him often over the next week; usually as he’d just finished his morning class, sitting perfectly upright on his classic Indian bicycle, ringing his bell sprightly as he passed people.

It was impossible not to be affected by the Ganges, and the incredible sight of Hindu pilgrims performing their ritual cleansing in the river, which is considered a temple. Seen from the bridge, the women in the water with their saris floating around them, looked like beautiful smudges of colour on a painter’s palette. We went down early one morning for a swim. A friendly woman showed me how to block my nose and ears with my hands and then told me I was to go under five times. Her whole family clapped when I was finished.

Despite our bad luck with receiving post while travelling, we tried again in India, organising for a parcel to be sent to our guesthouse (thanks again and again and again to Muriel and Douglas!). We were tracking it online, but it still hadn’t arrived by the time we needed to leave for Stuart’s fishing trip. As we knew we would have to return to Rishikesh to pick up the post anyway, and with the double incentive of avoiding 6 days of life threatening cycling, we took a bus the 300kms to Ramnagar.

The first I ever heard of this fish was when I was ten or eleven, back in 1989, when as a fanatical young angler I watched a documentary called ‘Casting For Gold’. John Bailey and Paul Boote were fishing on the upper reaches of the River Ganges at the end of the monsoon season. It was a superb watch and I think they both ended up with fish over 50lbs.

I’m not going to say that ever since then it has been a dream, but the show for me certainly played a part in our decision to head down through Pakistan and India, rather than across China. Mahseer are inhabitants of submontane Himalayan rivers, found from Pakistan all the way around to Thailand and into part of China. They are said to be related to somewhere between the Carp and the Barbel family of fish. Golden mahseer possess the largest scales of any fresh water species and have been known to grow in excess of 100lb. As far as the angler is concerned, they are incredibly spooky with a highly developed lateral line (this detects vibrations in water). It has been said that the mahseer is the permit(a saltwater fish that is notoriously hard to catch) of freshwater fish.

As Heather may have already alluded, India is pretty hard going on a bicycle. I could have opted for traipsing round the countryside trying to catch a mahseer unassisted, but I think I would be a single guy by now or Heather a widow on the run. So the decision was made to hire a fishing guide for a couple of days. Misty Dillon is the only man to talk to about this, he runs a company called Himalayan Outback and also holds the world record for the largest Mahseer caught on the fly at a stunning 33lbs. He is one of only two qualified fly fishing instructors in the whole of India. I told him my objective of catching a fish on the fly in each country we cycled through, and that having a shot at a mahseer on the fly would be a real highlight as they are not that commonly targeted on fly fishing gear.

Himalayan Outback has access to many rivers across India. Without hesitation, Misty immediately advised that I gave the Ramganga river a try. The beat was situated in the Tiger reserve within the Corbett National Park and the opening days of the beat were available. This beat only sees anglers about five weeks of the year. I jumped at the chance.

We had three weeks in India between booking the fishing and the actual fishing dates, so lots of time to get excited. We had decided to push the boat out a little and stay a night in the fishing lodge. Guides and 4x4s were also arranged, mainly because we were in the Tiger reserve. I have only used a guide once before and that was a week’s salmon fishing in Iceland. Although I have managed with out one on the trip so far, I felt with a country the size of India along with its population of 1.2 billion, trying to find good Mahseer fishing would be a little like trying finding a needle in two haystacks.

So you can imagine our crushing disappointment when three days before the fishing, we both succumbed to some sort of illness. We don’t know quite what it was, but it left us both feeling uncomfortable and exhausted. An eight hour bus jounrney to Ramnagar added to the misery. I am sure Heather has already vented this fact, but the bus drivers all drive like they have just stolen it. Both of us were completely wiped the day after the bus journey, spending the whole day watching Hollywood block busters in the hotel.

At 0430 the following day we were picked up to go fishing, still feeling pretty grim. Heather had a day at the lodge, blogs to write, books to read and sleep to catch up on, so she would have a relaxing day. I was straight down to the river with Bobby, my guide. Seen from the river, the reserve was a beautiful place, jungle surrounded us, covering the undulating hills. We saw elephants away in the distance down by the water’s edge and had spotted three species of deer before even reaching the river.

The first pool we fished was Bobby’s favourite, so expectations were running high. I was fishing my Hardy Demon 9 foot #8 with a clear intermediate line. A 9 foot leader tapering down to 10lb monofilament with an olive fry pattern designed for mahseer. The flies are tied using a trailing stinger hook. Within three casts I was into a fish that took me in the fast water, a great fight ensued with the result a simply stunning looking bar of gold around 3lbs. Customary snaps taken and the fish was away like a shot. Another smaller fish came to hand on the same pool before we moved on downstream.

We covered around 10kms of water that day, never fishing the same pool twice. On quieter pools I could see where the mahseer got their reputation for being so spooky; one unseen fish could bolt from under you and set the mood for the rest of the resident mahseer. As you can tell the river is crystal clear, at times you think you can see every fish in the pool. You see the fly being stripped past them, and them totally ignoring it. I thought how similar this fishing was to Atlantic Salmon fishing, where you are covering fish but they are just not up for it. You just have to keep covering water, looking for a taking fish.

A lot of the pools had some very big fish in them, one pool we estimated a fish of over 35lb to be cruising about. In a relatively small river it was quite a sight. For some reason that I still don’t have the answer to, these big fish don’t seem to be taken on the fly in this river. Bobby told me a 10lb fish is the largest he has seen caught on the fly here. Fish in excess of 40lb have been taken on spinning gear though, which I can’t quite work out in this gin clear water. Anyway, it was great to see such a healthy natural population of mahseer.

The largest fish of the trip was caught that day and was estimated around 7lbs and had me down to the backing, I can only imagine what big fish would be like on the larger rivers the outfitters operate in. The day ended with seven fish including an Indian Trout; troutlike in shape but without an adipose fin and possessing a large mouth for its size. Troops of monkeys and a gang of wild boar provided eye candy whilst fishing, with the pug mark of a leopard left in the soft sand on the last pool reminding me whose house I was visiting.

It was pitch dark by the time we made it to the lodge after a surprisingly long walk from the jeep. Heather was made to feel most at home; the lap top set up on the desk, the keys still smoking. A tiger had been seen the week before from the lodge so as you can picture, Heather’s imagination was on the rampage. The hospitality here was fantastic. Although I was not there for very long we were very well catered for. I was utterly exhausted and still feeling pretty shit, so was sound asleep by about nine o’clock only for us both to be woken at four thirty the following morning to get to the to reserve for six.

Heather joined us the second day to see inside the Tiger reserve for herself. Unfortuately we were both still a little under the weather, so may have not got the most out of it. Always last in the group, she said she felt like the weak antelope that always gets taken in the nature documentaries. However, it was another great days fishing, with five mahseer to the fly up to 6lbs. Heather had a shot with a spinning rod in some of the more suitable pools but with no interest from the fish, which was a shame as I would have loved her to get a hold of one of these lovely looking fish.

The fish I caught over the two days had a good size range, from 1lb through to 7lb. I was always amazed at each fishes initial take. They were absolutely solid and you could mistake even the smallest fish for being monsters. Pound for pound mahseer are consistently the hardest fighting freshwater fish I have caught, every one fighting out of its scales. Certainly the fast water at the head of the pools where they hang out and their oversized paddle-like fins make them the perfect sport fish.

Thanks to Misty for organising our trip and dealing with the constant phone calls and questions I had before the trip, and to both Bobby our guide and David the camp manager for a great stay.

No tigers were spotted in the reserve but we fluked a lift with a couple of really nice guys back to Rishikesh, where they took a back road. This was so much more enjoyable than an eight hour white knuckle ride in a bus. Even more rewarding though was a leopard that crossed our path about 100 meters in front of us. A fantastic end to our two days away.

Back in Rishikesh, our post had arrived and we booked a train to Kolkata. We admitted defeat, Indian roads had broken us. I had so many plans before we got here, I’d pictured us riding to the Taj Mahal, our bikes making a bulky silhouette against the gleaming white marble. But all those things will be left for another trip, without bikes. We’d run out of back roads by this stage and we didn’t do this trip to be putting the bikes on and off buses and trains to avoid busy sections. We love riding our bikes, camping and covering distance under our own steam. India is incredible, but it changed our trip totally. So we thought we’d go to Kolkata, take a boat to the Andaman Islands, and attempt the impossible and see if we could find a boat to take us further east.

There was an hour of subdued but rising panic after arriving at Howrah station, when we couldn’t find our bikes. It’s enormous, seeing a million passengers in and out each day. We were sent to each and every corner by railway workers and policemen until finally finding the bikes sitting by themselves at our train’s second cargo carriage that we didn’t know about. We loaded up, and rode across Howrah Bridge into the city, my newly bent back wheel and slipping gears hinting at a rough time on the train. At some traffic lights, we saw another cycle tourist talking to a policemen across the road. We rode over and met Oonjan, an inspiring 59 year old cycling from Malaysia to the London Olympics, rasing money for the Malaysian Aids Foundation. We went for breakfast, and over coffee and omelettes from a street stall he told us that after stopping smoking at 49 and putting on weight, he decided to get fit.  So he ran the Sahara marathon which is just a mere 7 marathons in 7 days. After breakfast we all rode off to Sudder Street, each of us almost getting taken out by a bus, and found rooms at Hotel Paragon.

We braced ourselves for Kolkata, and were surprised by how much we loved it. It is a place where you definitely tell yourself that you can truly never, ever complain about anything again. But there is also a lot of happiness in this city and the Kolkatans are friendly and laidback.

Stuart woke me on our second day there with the words that every girl wants to hear at 5:30 in the morning. “Do you want to get up now and go to the fish market?” Why of course my dear, what else would I rather do? I replied leaping from my bed, putting on some lipstick and heading for the door.

The Howrah fish market was well worth the early start. Enormous piles of fish; barracuda, stingrays, trevally, queenfish, barramundi, indo pacific tarpon, jewfish, tuna, pompano, carp, and catfish amongst others.

Fantastically strong men would wait by the scales with baskets on their heads, which would get heaped high with fish and they would skilfully walk these out of the market.

Sometimes the place would erupt in shouts and people would scatter, and you’d turn around in time to see a medieval looking wagon, with the most gruesone wheels crash through. The atmosphere was fun, all the men wanted to have their photos taken with their biggest fish. Selling techniques were direct, we saw one man grabbed by the neck and steered towards the right stall.

Upon leaving, we found by accident the famous Mullik Ghat flower market. It was on our list of places to visit, but we didn’t actually know how close we were. A sublime arena bursting with every imaginable colour and then some, crammed with small tents with men inside turning their flowers into art.

Sitting on the street, having breakfast after the markets, I remembered a story a friend told me about his grandmother. She had lived in India as part of the British raj, and after independence had moved to a suburb in western Sydney. He told me she would stand on the front steps of her new house in the suburbs and look at all the houses, with all of the people living their private lives inside, and she would ask “Where is all the life? Where is all the living being done?”. As we walked around Kolkata that day we saw a woman fold the top of her tent back to let the sun shine onto her things. She places a bright green chair under a tree that has colourful pictures of Shiva and Vishnu nailed onto it and begins drawing pictures into an exercise book. A woman further down props a small mirror on top of a gate and applies her makeup. A mother squats on the footpath next to a plate of flour and starts to make chappati, her babies at her feet. Foamy headed people are washing their hair, their clothes, their bodies under the tap in the street. Small children put on their best dresses and run around inside their tents. A woman stops in the street before a statue of a Hindu God, clasps her hands together and fervently prays. A sadhu stops at a small shop and replaces the dried flowers decorating the shelves with a fresh garland, blessing the shop before he moves on. A baby with no pants on crawls across a filthy pavement wetting itself, her toothless grandmother looks up and asks me for money. A hunchbacked beggar slumped forward face first onto a pillow does not even hear the coins being dropped into his tin. A five year old girl with tough, blackened feet runs out into the traffic, and you wonder how things will turn out for her with such a tough start. A beautiful young woman with burns on her neck and arms walks into a shop and lays her open hand on the counter and waits, and waits. I go and give her ten rupees and she looks at me in thanks and follows me down the street, “Aunty, Aunty…” asking for more. Families sift through reeking, damp rubbish, looking for treasures, something to sell. Tired, coughing rickshaw wallahs look exhausted as they walk their customers; some sleep under their rickshaws, one hand holding onto a wheel. We turn a corner to see a row of men at shiny black typewriters, their customers sitting next to them, earnestly dictating from the letters they hold in their hands. Teenaged boys run past them, playing music from their phones.

The next morning we went to the Shipping Corporation and bought our tickets for the Andaman Island ferry. A man with a rifle patrolled the queues, smiling as he told us to stand up, no sit down, come through here, no go back there. After this, because no visit to Kolkata is complete without a trip to the fishing shop, we spent two frustrating hours in the midday heat with an increasingly tired scrap of paper upon which was an address that noone could agree upon. We eventually found it after walking across a dark warehouse filled with makeshift houses. Stuart bought some line, then following the daylight, we found ourselves outside on a busy side street. Huge trucks were parked in the middle of the road, enormous baskets of vegetables were on the ground. These took eight men to lift them, and slowly, one by one, three men would leave the circle and stand under it and once confident they had the basket balanced, would walk through a dark doorway. We followed them in, and found the most beautiful fruit and vegetable market in the world! The whole warehouse was mood-lit. Each seller sat under a light bulb that had different colours of cellophane underneath it to catch and change the light.

Never has fresh produce been so seductive. Piles of tomatoes sparkled like a spill of rubies. Big bellied sellers watched possessively over their tumble of red onions. Who knew onions could be so tempting? It felt like stumbling upon a most fanstastic and sometimes dangerous secret. Shouts would come from all sides and we would turn in time to see a trio of desperate men with a tonne of cabbages on their head charging towards us, yelling at everyone to get out of their way. I was sometimes too late and would fall inelegantly backward into baskets of obscenely plump, well lit aubergines.

Our ferry left the following day, which felt a little too soon. There was so much more we wanted to see in Kolkata, but the M.V Nicobar was ready to take us a thousand miles southeast, to the Andaman Islands.