Continuation of this trip.

Amsterdam, 26/05/2007. From here on this trip which i copy from scetch books i kept at the time, will be continued on my A FARANGS ODESSY BLOG during my time in Thailand.

Thai pleasures.

Bangkok, 31-05-1994. fianlly back in Thailand after quite some years. The country that i have allowed to steal my heart. Staying at my old favourite the Madame Guest House for 160 Baht a night, saying hello to the old woman who owns the place and i have known for many years. She looks older , almost like a scare crow now but her mind is still healthy as ever and her heart as warm as ever. Naturally after checking in my first stop was Kenny`s Place for a bottle of Mekong whiskey on the rocks and with cola, the way the locals drink this hard stuff, to celebrate my return to Thailand, a country full with willing women that attract single white males from all over the place. But also a place frife with prostition - the average thai male goes to a prostitude once aweek girlfriend or no grilfriend - lets not forget the cold beer that tastes so good in this local heat! Thai ladies are actually very beautifull and elegantly dressed with booming smiles that the country likes to advocate as a tourist attraction at which they do well, however these girls lack the big boobs while and black women have and that i am so keen on. Lets also not forget the thai cuisine with its numerous delicacies you can sample at absurd low prices at every street corner outside in the open air, the foodstalls are just as numerous as the varity of food dishes they serve.

No more Bhangladesh.

Bhangladesh, Dhaka, airport, 30-05-1994. Once again i am at The Dhaka Airport waiting for my conection flight to Thailand/Bangkok, waiting yet again for a flight to Bangkok, it almost sounds like a clicee. I really hate these over night flight that rob you of a good night`s sleep but they seem unavoidable. I have been outside the airport perimeters as well moving and travelling around in Bhangladesh but thanks be to all the gods existing in man`s imagination it is not Bhangladesh i gonna travel around in this time! OH NO, OH NO, OH NO, OH NO!!! Thanks to Jeffrey i found out ther is an airport bus from downtown Dehli to the airport which will save me one last discusion with some taxi wallah.

Thailand, here i come!

New Dehli, 29-05-94. I still enjoy wandering around the endless bazaars and old parts of Dehli where everybody seems to be involved in some sort of trade, desperately trying to raise these necesary few rupees to buy the daily cup of chai, the daily bowl of rice. I still enjoy sitting on the lawn of the park in the middle of Connaught Place watching the ground squirrels fight with these terrible crows that seem to eat everything but glass and steel, over the remnants of a chocolate ice-cream. Tonight, however, i will fly to Thailand - with a short stop-over in Bhangladesh - not exactly a new country in my life but surely with new impressions. Been to Thailand before but it will be fun to go back. Thailand will be more expensive but the heat will be less, the humidity higher though. Off course there will be girls - how could there not be in Thailand - but hopefully i will be able to avoid these notorious and in famous Thai whores and instead hook up with some western ladies on the look-out for a bloke like me.

precious stones and gems.

The other story i hear a lot is of travellers getting talked-pressured into buying so/called precious stones and gems. Yeah man, you buy cheap from me and sell with a profit back in your country. i have the address of my friend in your countr, he will have give good price for you, you come back to India and have more money, can stay longer. good for you. Needless to say, the story is crap and the stones fakes and glass. But the number of people who fall for this scam is amazingly big, greet takes over and makes them blind to all else, especially common sense!!! Big profits, yeah, yeah, just a matter of greet and stupidity on the part of the buyers and sweet talking and phycological warfare on the part of the sellers. I always stay well clear of anybody telling me stories that seem to good to be true. Nicely dressed loacal blokes - though i met travellers who are into this shit as well - with sweet talk who want to start a conversation with me with somewhere along the line a story about a brother or uncle who owns a gem shop will creep up. hahahaha.

sexual hassles.

New Dehli, 28-05-1994. Checking in yet agian at the Ringo Guest House after my return to Dehli 2 days ago i met Jeffrey who was after 6 months in India and Nepal, waiting for his flight home. Coincidence or not we enjoyed some beers together and exchanged some travel stories from the last 6 months and played chess again. He told me how he was in Madurai inside that huge temple compolex they have there, bending forward to read a text in the wall when he felt a finger gliding up his ass through the baggy shorts he was wearing, turning around in unpleasant amazement he saw three young indian males dressed in suits walking away all having a good laugh, the one in the middle showing off his middle finger in great pride. Yeah he was happy having anally touched a foreign tourist. Jeffrey set off in hot pursuit and kicked the culprit to the ground with a swooping low kick, a good kick in the face of the already prostrate indian for good measure before hastily leaving the scene. Now i have heard countless stories of european women getting sexually hassled by indian men and half grown up boys, getting their titties pinches and their asses touched but this was the first time i heard of something similar happening to an european man.

Toilet time for pink skins.

Agra, 25/05/1994. There is a whole string of restaurants and hotels around the Taj Mahal, all of them equally dirty and competing with each other for the favours of the foreign visitors to the Taj Mahal. Whole tour busses filled to the brim with camara toting colorfully dressed tourists, all recently arrived to India on organised tours enter these restaurants. Their local guides faces beaming with pleasure, no doubt thinking about the huge commission they will rake in. considering the dirty and unhycienic food they serve in these places i can only wonder how much time these pink skins will have to spend on the toilet tommorow. Having been to Agra before and being mostly here to kill time away from the hassles and polution of New Dehli i am in no rush to see all the sights at once and the hired bike keeps me mobile.

Torn money.

Agra, 24-05-1994. Over the last couple of days the heat has probably risen enough for the ink in my pen to melt which gives ugly smears when i use to write or draw in this travel journal. I wake up early also because of the heat but was is okay this morning because it enabled me to make an early excursion to the fort when there is still nobody around but the ticket seller, when money is involved in this country you can be sure there will be at least some-one around! Trying to get rid of a torn 5 Rp. note i gave it to an icecream vendor and inmediately cycled away with the vendor in hot pursued 5 Rp. note in hand. When i took the torn note back and gave him the torn note in return he got mad as hell. These indian Rp. notes can have a hole in the middle you could probably push a baby head through / they staple there money here - and that is okay, their money is usually so dirty i feel like washing my hands evry time i touch it but that too is okay, however torn money is unacceptable here. The sights in Agra are so wide apart that i hired a bicycle.

Old- and New Dehli.

Agra, 23-05-1994. There is this invisible line between Old- and New dehli. In New Dehli, for example, the streets are broad with better organised traffic - no cycle rickshaws, only three wheelers and Ambassedor taxies - more trees and vegetation, big houses with gardens and all the ambassies - no surprise there - are locatedcin New Dehli. In Old Dehli traffic is hectic, almost always jammed, streetsellers, beggars and richshaw wallahs fighting and screaming for a place and hassling you at every street corner. Houses are old and look ready to collapse or catch fire and burn down at any given moment. That rare tree is always used as a public toilet by men as well as women, not much in the way of open spaces and when you see an open space it is used by the homeless. Today i decided to leave all that weird shit behind for a while and spend some time in agra and see the Taj Mahal one more time. Agra`s rickshaw three- wheeler wallahs are terribly competetive and have a strong hotel-business-comission thing going, going by foot with a heavy backpack is totally unacceptable to them.

Finally getting the shits.

New Dehli, 20-05-1994. Like everything else in India getting things done can and usually is a major hassle, even more so when it is official stuff. Never mind the official stuff in this case entails a Thai visa. This is India and not Thailand and the employees at the embassy are local so something that should only take a day and a minium of paperwork takes at least two days and a lot of being pushed around and rubber stamp shit, forget about the paperwork, filling in that heap of shit was actually relaxing after all push-push and hush-hush - the hush-hush stands for the employees who told me "please sir, do not tell my boss that i want you to pay me some some baksheesh". Was it all this typical indian bureaucracy and the stress that comes with it or bad food, i know not but finally after all my time here i got the shits this morning! Amazing it hasn`t been there before, every tourist gets it and a lot of them all the time they are here.

His Holiness The Ambassedor himself.

New Dehli, 18-05-1994. My train to New Dehli was at 07.00 h. p.m. and arrived at Dehli at 04.00 h. in the morning so i had to walk through darkened New Dehli to the Ringo Guesthouse. Not that this proposed some sort of proplem. I was just once more reminded of how many people in the huge country occupy the streets camping, whole families living and sleeping peacefully together on the pavement. The rickshaw wallahs sleep on top of their vehicle. At least that way nobody will steal your source of income!!! Today i went to the dutch embassy to read newspapers and got hassled by his Holiness The Ambassedor himself. By god what a slime he was!!! He even wanted me to stand up while he was talking to me and shaking hands was completely out of the question. Like i had some sort of disease and would contaminate him by my touch or something. The heat in New Dehli is oppressive after all my time in the hills and the north of India and Kashmir.

Watching darshan.

Amritsar, 17-05-1994. I spent most of today inside The Golden Temple watchinh hindus, muslims and sikhs alike making darshan. There are small niches on the first floor from which i could watch the going-ons on the ground floor. There is always religious music being played which is not unpleasant to the ear. In the afternoon the tiled floor of the temple complex outside was so unbearable hot by the never ending pounding of the sun - you can only get inside the complex on bare feet and with head covering - Loads of volunteers were busy filling up buckets with water from the lake - The Golden Temple is located in the middle of a big lake - and throwing them out on steaming tiles. Amritsar has a nice old city but i only saw a small part of it. The rickshaw wallahs in Amritsar don`t seem as persistent as in other parts of India.

Watching darshan.

Amritsar, 17-05-1994. I spent most of today inside The Golden Temple watchinh hindus, muslims and sikhs alike making darshan. There are small niches on the first floor from which i could watch the going-ons on the ground floor. There is always religious music being played which is not unpleasant to the ear. In the afternoon the tiled floor of the temple complex outside was so unbearable hot by the never ending pounding of the sun - you can only get inside the complex on bare feet and with head covering - Loads of volunteers were busy filling up buckets with water from the lake - The Golden Temple is located in the middle of a big lake - and throwing them out on steaming tiles. Amritsar has a nice old city but i only saw a small part of it. The rickshaw wallahs in Amritsar don`t seem as persistent as in other parts of India.

The Golden Temple.

Amritsar, 16-05-1994. There are more sikhs in Amritsar as i have seen anywhere else in India but then Amritsar is the capital of their home state The Punjab and the place of The Golden Temple, Theit main Gurdwara. These guys all seem to be big and dapper, successful in life - never have i seen a sikh beggar in India - and they are rumoured to be great mecanics, to name but a few of their qualities. To do seem to develop a beer belly once they pass the age of 30/35 years of age, though. Their proud and manly bearing singles them out from the average hindu or muslim indian, also their women seem more feminine and beautiful. They are the most properous ethnic group in India and like i said, i have to as yet see a sikh beggar!!! I spent most of the day around The Golden Temple - free admittance for everyone - making sketches for my travel journals.

A hash pipe and a scam.

Amritsar, 15-05-1994. An uneventful bus ride from Jammu to Amritsar apart from the buffalo that suddenly crossed the road and almost got knocked down by our bus. Probably nothing special in India where there is so much stray cattle around. Some crazy bloke from California with a tibetan wife i met in the street outside my hotel, explained how one can make a shit load of money when going to Pakistan. Now i have no desire to go to Pakistan nor any interest in making money in a most likely illegal way but i enjoyed the free hashish in a hash pipe that went around while he exitedly told me the scam in the room of his hotel.

Bahu Fort.

An easy two and a half km. stroll got me from the hectic centre of Jammu to the relative quietBahu Fort which is on top of a hill and has good views over the city. With most of the inside of the fort being occupied by a temple, i had to take my shoes off. The brick ground of the court yard was so heat - heated up by the sun - that it almost burned the skin of my soles. Tommorow i will be off to Amritsar, the golden temple.

Raghunat Temple.

Jammu, 14-05-1994. The Raghunath Temple in Jammu is actually a whole complex of temples, each dedicated to one Hindu god or another. One of these gods looks a bit like Gog Jaghunath together with sister and brother. Some temples were dedicated to Hanuman the monkey god. Naturally Lord Shiva was also present, symbolised by his representation as a lingam. Whole chambers of this massive complex were dedicated to Lord Shiva with steps of lingams and around the temples were niches with steps with lingams.

Heavy machine gun fire and a loud explosion.

Jammu, 13-05-1994. Heavy machine gun fire and a loud explosion were the last of my impressions of Kashmir last night waking me up twice. Today was okay spending most of the day in the bus back to Jammu where i took the same hotel as roughly two weeks ago before leaving for Kashmir.The Tami Hotel is on top of the bottom-end hotel list in Lonely Planet and the management seems to have no qualms abusing that advantage trying to get guests who stay overnight before gonig to Scrinagar to reserve house boats with them at inflated prices. I have no doubt these house boats are as dubious as the one they got me, Mo and Lisa on. You are supposed to spend, spend, spend and spend even more!!!

another invader.

Scrinagar-city, 12-05-1994. At night Scrinagar is pretty much dead as a walk around the boulevard and Dal Gate proved. Many Kashmiris have blank eyes with the only thing visible in them, the horrors and fear of the ongoing war. Mo and Lisa left the boat as well this morning planning a trip into the mountains around Scrinagar. I took a small hotel in the old part of Scrinagar town near Dal Gate. The locals in the hotel`s bar told me some gruesome stories of toture thecnics by the indian soldiers on p.o.w.s and how the Kashmiris want independence. If they ever do manage to boot the indian army out the pakistanis will march right in and they will have another - probably - even worse invader to deal with. I spent most of the day walking up to Shankaracharya Hill where there is a templewith a nice lingam symbol and lots of very nervous and trigger happy indian soldiers camping around it in tents. Amazingly most of Shankaracharya Hill was covered in thick vegetation with lots of birdlife. I even saw a weasel attacking a bulbul. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me however. My presence probably saved the little bulbul bird`s life.The views from the hill over Dal Lake and Nagin Lake were worth the struggle of hiking up. Absolutely beautiful!

Dal Lake.

Nagin Lake, Scrinagar, 11-05-1994. Against better judgement i decided to stay another day. The sun was out today so the day was just perfect for one last time out with the Shikara. We went to Dal Lake where a friend of Mo and Lisa stays on a house boat. we had a nice day on the roof of his boat with tea and bisquits and the inevitable charras smoking session. Dal Lake is an amazing intricate with all its waterways, channels and canals, everywhere i saw floating grass islands with low bushes and small trees on them, waterplants aplenty and lotus flowers in full bloom. These floating islands can be very confusing when trying to navigate your way around the lake.

War in the streets of Scrinagar.

Nagin Lake, Scrinagar, 10-05-1994. Life on a house boat relaxing and all that is starting to pall i will move into a hotel in Scrinagar town and prepare the trip back to "India". The only thing on this great house boat is the english chandelier, i keep banging my head against it because the bloody thing is hanging so goddamned low. Renting a bike at 20 Rp. a day, i cycled a the way around Dal Lake and along Nagin lake to the old town. The Jami Mashid mosque had a colorful market around its sqaure perimeter and lots of people running away because of a shoot-out, naturally i ran with them!!! !5 min. later and back on my bike but not too far from the Jami Mashid mosque, i first saw a cop making some sort of movement with his lathi presumably warning me to go back, a little bit father out a Kasmiri woman shouted at me to go back immidiately. Only 50 m. further on i saw a big armoured personel carrier with a very big and mean looking gun on top of it pointing straight at me, strategically placed in the middle of the road. I definitely did not need any more warnings and left the area in a rael hurry pedalling faster as ever before in my life!!! Only a few blocks away from the war scene life was normal like nothing was happening so short a distance away.

A bad season.

Nagin Lake, Scrinagar, 09-05-1994. I am slowly getting the hang of these Shikaras navigating the lakes all day while Mo and Lisa spend their days smoking charras and being lazy. did fall into the water yesterday though. I paddled by myself all around Nagin Lake to find out exactly how many boats were having foreign visitors, i would guess that their are about a hundert boats on Nagin Lake of which only 5 have guests ours included. Talking about a bad season!!!

Nagin Lake, scrinagar, 08-05-1994. Life on a house boat on Dal Lake - or in our case on Nagin Lake - is definitely relaxing with only "minor" disturbance of the occasional seller of typical tourist junk who sort of accidently wanders into your house boat`s living room. These sellers are absolutely desperate to sell at least something now with hardly any tourists around because of the war. Our house boat is absolutely A-class delux with our own personal man servant and three meals a day - we are talking wholesome and tasty food - twice a day tea and bisquits and a hot water bottle discretely place the sheets of your bed before you retire to sleep and the free use of the boat`s Shikara etc etc. All of that for the absurt price of a 100 Rp. a day!!! Before the war one paid for all this 38 american bucks a double or 28 a single, talking about desperate people. Of course the chocolat wallah is irresistable with his assortment of sweets, cookies and chocolates with their walnut, honey or whatever exotic concoction you might like.

A bloody warzone!!!

Nagin Lake, Scrinagar, 07-05-1994. Taking the Shikara again this morning we were confronted with harsh raelity and the simple fact that the whole of Kashmir Valley is a bloody warzone when we saw a couple of locals in their civvies guarding a small floating island that had a small wooden shed on it half hidden among the long vegetation. Both locals had a very serious looking machine gun and were stategically placed on both corners of the island. They kinda waved at us so we gave them a friendly but nervous hand waving back, most locals gliding by in their Shikaras didn`t even give them as much as a second look. At night sitting on the balconey of our house boat we are every night reminded of Kashmir`s peculiar political situation when we can hear pretty heavy fire fights in the distance with lights flashing and the occasional beam of strong laser lights. Mo and Lisa have some friends staying opposite our former house boat had a chai stop - Kashmiri tae actually which is much better as the indian catpiss the hindus mistakenly call chai - at their house boat and a little charras party to round things of.

Trying a Shikara.

Nagin Lake, Scrinagar, 06-05-1994. Trying a Shikara is definitely not as easy as it might look like. Me in the front, Mo at the end and Lisa in the middle caused quite a bit of amuzement to the locals watching us trying to navigate our way through the lake. Mostly we were going around in circles before we figured out a way to go more or less in a straight line, more of a sig-sag course to be honest. The Hazratbal mosque was nice enough but the place was clowling with soldiers armed to the teeth and wearing bulletproof vests, most of them hiding in sandbag made bunkers surrounded with barbed wire. The area had a really war like feeling with burned out house to add to the scene.

Kashmiri house boats.

The Kashmiris have built up an amzing good and luxurious tourist accomodation system withn their house boats. Old english furniture with quite intricate woodwork all over, a dinning room, a living room and some sort of, what i presume is english, toilet on every boat, seperate bedrooms with attached bathrooms. You eat on the boat and the food is good and healthy and as much as you can eat served with tasty kashmiri tea. The Moghuls as well as the english colonisators definetely knew how to live it up when they came to Kashmir. Nowadays the boats are nearly desrted of tourists because of the independence struggle and only hippies, alternative types and marijuana smokers come here to live it up. The boat has got its own Shikara so i think i will be out today and explore the lake.

Nagin Lake.

Nagin Lake, Scrinagar, 05/05/1994. After changing house boats, too much hassle at the other boat, we spent the whole day being lazy and smoking our newly acquired hashish.

Lotus flowers and dirty dogs.

Apart from shikaras and house boats the lake is full with ltus flowers and water lillies. With summer approaching fast and the sun out in force, there are more of these beautiful water flowers appaering ev ery day, amazing. The lotus flowers open up early each morning when the sun comes up behind the horizon and close again at nightfall, a true wonder of nature!!! The kashmiris cultivate their vegetables on small floating gardens, collecting dead waterplants from the lake they use as fertiliser. In short, Dal Lake is really worth my coming here on this long overnight bus from Jammu. Scrinagar on the other hand is dirty, polluted, smelly and full with heavily armed indian soldiers referred to as ``dirty dogs`` by the kashmiris.

Life`s necesities.

Dal Lake, Scrinagar, 04-05-1994. Dal Lake is full with boats, shikaras as the local here call them. Some are loaded with life`s necesities like soap, shampoo, toilet paper bisquits and even hashish, handy for when you do your shopping, you never need to leave the house boat even the dope is there for the buying. Like floading supermarkets, something for the Edah or Albert Heyn to consider in the Amsterdam canals, sure they would make a bundle. Other boats have a paddle wallh and a well dressed business person aboard trying to sell jewelery to foreign tourist, not too many around of these nowadays. Old men is shikaras loaded with sweets and munchies come along side your own shikara and try to sell their wares at terribly inflated prices, usually twice the price asked ashore, i presume you have to pay for their paddling to your house boat or shikara. Naturally when you do buy your house boat owner rakes off a little commision.