The Last Post (for a while) plus A NEW WORLD RECORD

Ladies, gentlemen, chaps and chapatis,

Firstly, a few vital statistics about the completed escapade:

1. Total money spent on everything apart from the filming (train tickets, food, accommodation, en-route reading materials & all other transport): Rs13,411 (£200.16). Blimey O’Reilly! I am genuinely flabbergasted because I was planning to keep it under £20o and was sure I had gone quite a bit over. Shouldn’t have had those two extra cups of chai!

A bonkers footnote to this is that over 10% of the grand total was spent during my unprecedented 24hrs stop over in pricey Mumbai in which I spent more than £22 sterling (and coincidently lost a £22 mobile phone). Only 15p out of this £22 was spent on train journeys (local Mumbai trains to and from my hotel). Damn you Mumbai!

2. Weight loss / gain – None. I was expecting to lose a lot of weight, (as I seem to do when in India) but I actually stayed the same at around 62kg. Perhaps this was down to the continuous stream of deep fried snacks that were shoved under my nose when on Indian trains…

3. Amount of footage taken – 13 hours, 18 minutes, 40 seconds, plus 373 still photos. Mmm, lots of editing work ahead.

4. Money raised for FRANK Water so far – £425. I’m hugely grateful to all you kind hearted well-wishers who have given money to watering the thirsty people of rural India. Don’t let the end of my trip stop you donating though – you can help a lot more people by sending FRANK more funds. £1 is enough to provide 1 person with clean drinking water facilities for LIFE. Crazy but true.

Secondly, I’d like to bestow a thousand thank yous on Monisha from “Around India in 80 Trains”, and my arch-Indian-railway-adventurer-rival-cum-brother-in-arms, Mark from “The Great Circular Indian Railway Challenge”. Both have given great support and helpful words of wisdom before and during my escapade. I wish them good luck and God speed… Monisha with the writing of her book, (which I greatly look forward to), and Mark with his hair-brained scheme also to circumnavigate India’s rails, but in less time and with about thirty people in tow. If you haven’t been put off by my antics, there’s still plenty time to join him next February and help raise money for another ruddy good cause, Railway Children.

Around India in 80 Trains

The Great Circular Indian Railway Challenge

Finally, future plans… As any expeditioneer will tell you, twenty days of sitting on a train can really knock it out of you. Therefore in about a week I will be leaving the subcontinent for a leisurely jaunt around South East Asia.
A few months loafing on the coasts, rivers and jungles of Cambodia, Malaysia and Laos with a stiff drink is exactly what the doctor ordered. I will inevitably run out of pennies in October so I must return to Blighty and arrange for myself a new situation. More importantly I shall spend any spare time during the cold winter months sitting in a darkened room, editing thirteen hours of raw footage into an enthralling documentary about India’s railways…

Righty ho! Don’t go away forever, because I will be putting up more details about the documentary and uploading some video clips. However, for the time being, tally ho, jolly good show, spiffity doo-dah and crinkly bottoms to you all. Good evening and good night!

Jonathan R. Watson Lee Esq.

p.s. in the spirit of healthy rivalry I would like to declare that I have now set A NEW WORLD RECORD of 19 days and 6 hours for the fastest time taken to travel by train to the Northernmost, Southernmost, Easternmost, Westernmost, highest and lowest train stations in India, and will stop at NOTHING to sabotage anyone who tries to break it (and that means YOU, The Great Circular India Railway Challenge!). Watch out for the man sharing your train carriage with the fake glasses/nose/moustache combo, broadsheet newspaper with eye holes and brown faux leather briefcase. The briefcase is full of dastardly wacky races-esque plans to impede your progress. ho! ho!

Day 20 of the Escapade – homeward bound!

And so it came to pass. At 6.20am this morning the lone adventurer trundled into New Delhi Railway station, sweaty, filthy, hungry, tired but still in a single piece. My apologies for the lack of updates in the final week, but this is because I have been mobile phoneless, in internetless towns, and through some dark days of Delhi belly and monsoon fever….

My good luck with avoiding illness came to an end upon reaching the far West of India. Dwarka was a friendly pilgrimage town, and remote enough that it hasn’t become too much of a tourist attraction. Streets were lined with holy men and holy cows, and there was lots of singing, drumming and dancing in and around the amazing main temple. I got swept up in the religious fervour for a while, before ending up on the windy beach during a monsoon downpour. I took refuge with a couple of monks in a sheltered cove, but I was soaked through and could feel a fever and diahorrea coming on. I quickly got back to the hotel to unleash another monsoon onto my toilet.

I had been planning to visit Varvala (The official Westernmost railway station of India, less than 1 Km West of Dwarka), but due to my ailments and the trains going there being at unsociable times I had to give it a miss. This was a serious blow to the master plan, but I gave it a bally good shot, what? Also now this leaves it open for any other foolhardy train adventurers to succeed where, like the great failed Antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, I have stumbled.

I didn’t want to miss any trains so I powered on through the belly-barrier and got to Ahmedabad for a quick overnight stop before heading up North to Kashmir. I think I would have enjoyed the Gujarat a lot more if I had been well, but my memory of it is staring out of the window forlornly at unchanging rice paddy fields, feeling slightly ill and meeting no-one who could speak a word of English.

Things miraculously got better as we rolled into Rajasthan and the green fields turned into scrubby desert. I met a posse of ladz on tour (a fisherman, a soldier, a driver, a train-cleaning manager and a sociology student), who I hung out with in the corridor for much of the journey. They taught me the fine art of chewing tobacco and spitting it out in a fine stream (all Indians are masters at this). It was pretty disgusting but I got strangely high off it and we all enjoyed good japes until our emotional farewell in Jammu.

The winter capital of Kashmir was jam-packed with pilgrims and army soldiers. After wandering around eight or so fully-booked hotels, I hitched a ride on a gentleman’s moped back to the train station, preparing to join the platform sleepers for the night. However at the last minute I discovered a railway station dormitory for only 70 rupees – I spent the night there before my early train up to Udhampur, the Northernmost railway station of India.

The train was near-empty so I made the best of this by wandering up and down the train into carriages of different classes, noting their peculiarities and clientele. After a few too many ‘you’re not meant to be here’ looks (especially in the first class carriage, as I sat there in my filthy white shirt with battered old briefcase), I went back to my proper seat in sleeper class. The bridges and mountain scenery we passed through was incredible.

I had most of a day to kill in Udhampur… I was planning to visit the Chenab railway bridge construction site, (when complete it will be the tallest in the world), but realised this wasn’t possible after a pack of taunting jeep drivers said it would take two days and 4000 rupees. Instead I took a local bus up the death-defying windy roads into the mountains towards Srinagar. After a couple of hours I got off at some suitably majestic spot and wandered up into the forest for one final hurrah. I gazed out into the Himalayas, listening to the echoes as I blew on my conch shell (appropriately bought at the far Southern tip of India). I later emerged from the wild, back onto the main path to where man was standing with a horse, looking at me as if he’d just seen a ghost. A tiger had been spotted in the area I was just in only five minutes ago!

Back on the main road, a massive Sikh bundled me into his jeep for the return journey back down to Udhampur and before long I was sitting on the overnight train back to New Delhi. MISSION COMPLETED!

Right ho! That’s all for now, ladies and gents – I’ll post again in a couple of days with some more vital statistics such as how much money I’ve spent on this debacle, future plans and unforeseen long term side-effects. But for now I am enjoying copious amounts of sugarless tea, clean clothes, and looking out of the window to a stationary India.

Choo choo!
Chalo chalo!
Hare Om!

JONATHAN ROBERT WATSON LEE
oxoxox

Day 13 – Panic in Bombay

Ello ello ello!

Well it’s been a  dramatic couple of days on and off the old choo-choos once again. First of all, on the 29 hr train from Trivandrum in the far South, and Mumbai, I very nearly missed the train and put a swift end to this whole ridiculous affair…

At about 2.15pm on Saturday afternoon I got off at Ernakulam junction for a gentle saunter around the platform as I tend to do sometimes – stretch the old pegs and the like. However, I became particularly engrossed in a fascinating map of the local area, so much so that when I turned around, the train was no longer behind me! It was about a hundred yards away and quickly picking up speed! I sprinted along the platform after it, terrifying thoughts going through my head of “it’s all over”, and desperate contingency plans being formulated. Most of my belongings were still on there chained to a bed, so I would most likely not see them again. It would also upset the rest of the trains I had planned to catch after this, putting the whole trip into doubt. People on the platform were egging me on, shouting “RUN! RUN!” and ’YOU CAN CATCH IT!”. I ran as fast as I’ve ever run before, and just before the end of the platform I managed to cling on for dear life to the very last carriage.
Embarassingly it was the ladies-only carriage, and there were nervous giggles all round, but I was relieved to be back on the train (well, hanging off it at least until the next stop where I could walk back down to my own carriage). It’s a shame that I didn’t manage to get it on film – the only photo I have is of me holding onto the door of the ladies carriage after looking rather sheepish. THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

The rest of the journey was a pleasant ride through the stunning scenery of the Western Ghats, passing through massive hills and  valleys, over backwaters, rivers and through the longest tunnel in India. I also managed to wangle a tour of the pantry carriage which provides an endless stream of meals, tea, coffee, and greasey deep-fried curios for the duration of the 29 hour journey. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me take photos or film (I think because the whole place was absolutely filthy) A young cook kept assuring me “we will clean in fifteen minutes. Five minutes!”

There was to be another bit of bovva when i reached Mumbai. Shortly after arriving, I realised that (not for the first time) I had somehow lost all my information about the city including maps, things too see and so on. Then came the violent scrummage which is the Mumbai local train. After being pushed, shoved crushed and squished for half-an-hour on my journey into central Mumbai, I discovered that my mobile phone had been pilfered by some vagabond! Also not good. I went to an internet cafe to try and book a different train for my trip out to the Gujarat, as I had made a bit of an error in train scheduling (I’d planned not to spend the night in Mumbai, but instead get an evening train straight to the far West and spend the night there.
However, days were mixed up, and so as it stood I would have 3 hours at the Westernmost station, and nearly 30 hrs in Mumbai). I had no luck in booking a better ticket, so I wandered phoneless, ticketless, sweaty, stinky, knackered and starving to a tiny, windowless 700 rupee hovel of a hotel room (after my 15 rupee palace from two nights ago!) However, after a shower and an emotional conversation with my camera things started to seem not so bad. It would have been far worse to lose camera, passport or tickets, and 700 poopees is still only a bit more than a tenner. Also I had the consolation of now being able to watch the world cup final!

Frugal lifestyle now thrown out of the window (temporarily), I made my way to a super swanky shisha bar to watch the match with Mumbai’s hip, young beautiful people,  idulging in over-priced pizza and a chocolate brownie. To top it off I concluded the day  with another chocolate brownie – my first solid poop in four days.

Hoorah! Back on!
Lord Jontgomery of Essex

p.s. more good news – this morning I managed to buy a ticket for a different onward train that gives me a whole 15 hours in the Westernmost station of India – whoop whoop! If your interested, it’s the 9005 Saurashtra Mail, leaving Mumbai tonight at 8.20pm, arriving at Dwarka at 3.07pm tomorrow. Also I’ve now put photos onto the previous entry… check it!

Day eleven of the escapade…

Hoorah!

Morning all – I’ve made it to Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent! After seven solid nights sleeping on trains (and several more not-so-solid excrements), tonight I shall finally sleep in a bed firmly attached to mother earth. At the bargainous price of 15 rupees (20p) for a bed, locker and shared outdoor bathroom, I’ve never been so excited about such a prospect.

I arrived in at the cape shortly before 5am this morning. As I was so completely knackered from the last couple of nights of not much sleep, I was still in dreamland after everyone had left the train. It took a man with a big stick hitting my bunk to wake me up. I made my way down to the beach (the meeting point of three seas – the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian sea and the Indian ocean), and watched an impressive sunrise with hundreds of fellow pilgrims. This evening I’ll watch the sun set over the opposite side…

My faithfull reporter, Lady Katherine of Delhi has kept you well informed on previous occurances, but I shall elaborate on a few details… My few days in Assam have been the most sureal to date – first there was the young lad who took me to watch the ritual slaughter of two goats. It was all over within a couple of minutes. The heads were chopped off, the bodies skinned, de-bowelled and any good bits of meat thrown into the plastic bag of a lucky by-stander. It was made weirder because there was a very young boy running around giggling, shoving two live pigeons in my face. This was a normal day for him. Later that day in the park I was asked by a film crew to take part in their music video. My scene seemed to be written and inserted on the spot by an over-excited film director. I was quickly made-up and then told to walk around hand-in-hand with the heroine, as her jealous lover watched us with a look of pure evil. I got a member of crew to film a ‘behind the scenes’ piece with my camera.

The next day, after reaching Ledo in far east Assam, I fear that I narrowly escaped a kidnap attempt! I lunched in a dingy local restaurant with a couple of other chaps, who were consuming a lot of the locally bottled whisky. I joined them for a peg, before enquiring which was the best way to the coal mines (the only thing of note in this tiny village). Before I knew it I was in a autorickshaw with both rummy fellows heading in the opposite direction to which I understood the mines were located. About 20 seconds into the trip I realised two terrible things at once - one was that I’d bumblingly given them my UK address during lunch, and two was that Assam is notorious for kidnappings. I made a split second decision to leap out of the moving vehicle and run back to the village, much to their bafflement.
Potential kidnappers or just nice gents offering to show me the mines – I’m glad I jumped out. Later on I walked to the coal mine and it was closed due to landslide, so I couldn’t see it anyway… Yes I have my freedom, but damnit at what expense. I ruddy love coal mines!

I’ve had mostly pleasant times on train journeys so far, and have been exceedingly lucky with not missing any connections. The most delayed train to date was Guwahati to Howrah, which was delayed by a whopping seven hours due to a nationwide fuel price strike – the train kept stopping for an hour in the middle of nowhere. Luckily I was in a carriage with a ecstatically happy twenty-person family on their way to a wedding. They made the best of the delay, chanting religious songs, sharing delicious home-cooked food, and performing re-enactments of famous Bollywood scenes for my camera. They were sad that I wouldn’t be able to come to the wedding, but wished me the best for the rest of my trip.
Upon reaching Kolkata, I had a quick two hours (in a non-stop monsoon downpour), to stuff myself with some delicious Bengal river fish curry and oodles of Kolkata sweets before jumping aboard the next train heading South. So much for a soap-shower and sightseeing!

In Rameshwaram I crossed the magestic Pamban sea bridge, and visited their main temple which contains the longest corridor in the world… oh yes. Worship there involves walking around twenty-two wells where a man promptly brings up a bucket of water and tips it onto your noggin. I paid a confused  elderly gentleman to film me being drenched every single time. He even managed to get me into the ‘Hindus only’ inner sanctum by saying a prayer, and painting my forehead. “Now you are Hindu so can go in temple” he proclaimed. In the afternoon I attempted to walk along the beach at the far tip of Rameswaram, which used to form a land bridge with Sri Lanka. Alas, after 45 minutes walking in the blistering heat I could walk no more (I was also worried about missing my evening train). In despair I held a simple ceremony. This involved pouring some precious drinking water onto the beach, before casting my current book into the ocean. (If you’re interested it was The Religion of Man by India’s Nobel prise winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore). I later found out that all my information about Kanyakumari was also tucked into said book – whoopsy daisy.

Yowsers! After all this I was completely and utterly knackered – probably the most tired I have ever been… Not to mention filthy, sweaty and physically drained after a major bout of Delhi belly. I got an early night on my overnight journey from Rameswaram to Kanyakumari, sitting next to some friendly pilgrims who I had met earlier that day, and arrived this morning at my present location. Forget the twenty two buckets of holy water – my shower this morning was the real spiritual experience!

OK that’s all for now ladies and gents… I’ve only gone and forgotten the camera cable, so maybe I’ll put some snaps up later. After that, I’ll probably blog next in Ahmedabad in a few days time, assuming my luck continues with the crucial trains being on time. Until then, farewell! Chalo! Hootenanny!

Regards,
Jonathan
oxox

Day ten of the escapade

Hello!

Apologies for the lack of an update, the explorer was out of range for a few days as his phone didn’t work in Assam and the Delhi base camp has been invaded by some visiting family…

Jonathan is now half way through the grand trip and spirits are still high, though the dreaded delhi belly has struck once more. He has spent the morning in Rameswaram where he had 22 buckets of holy water poured over him. He then attempted, but alas failed, to walk to Sri Lanka.

He has been having many great adventures, i’m sure it will be best if he expands on these tales when he is able to connect with the outside world via the internet once more but to give you a little flavour.. Jonathan has acted in a music video as the hero’s love rival and he has been taken by a young lad to see two goats being beheaded.

And the lone wanderers adventure continues to Kanyakumari. The young man is still on track with his schedule , he has been remarkably lucky considering the whole of India decided to go on strike on Monday to protest about rising fuel prices.

Ahoy!

Katherine

Day 4 of the escapade…

Ahoy!

This is the first time I’ve managed to get to an internet cafe since the Overland Chapati Express set off on Tuesday night. I’m having a jolly good time, despite there being something wrong with every train I’ve got so far…

As you know, my 1st train from Delhi – New Jalpaiguri was 4 hours 45 mins late, so I missed my 2nd train up the hill to Darjeeling. I hastly hired a jeep to chase it down. Fortunately, we overtook my intended train and caught up with an even earlier one – the classic Darjeeling steam train. I hadn’t planned on getting this, so it was a welcome bonus. I spent so long admiring it, and filming myself being at Ghum (the highest railway station in India), that it started chugging off before I’d even got a ticket. A ‘Darjeeling Ltd’-style man vs train pursuit took place for a few hundred yards until I managed to jump aboard and made it the rest of the way up into the clouds.

Darjeeling was splendid as expected. It involved countless cups of tea, two showers, washed pants, a bed that didn’t move, and best of all – not being covered in my own sweat all day.

My 3rd train - the ride back down was also amazing. It had rained the previous night, and so views were spectacular. However, it suddenly stopped about an hour before reaching the plains and everyone got off. The rains had caused a landslide and this was as far as it was going . Ahh well – I’d had a good run. I crammed into a jeep again with 18 other people for a death-defying ride down the mountain road instead.

Other highlights so far include a head & upper body massage in the middle of the night on the first train to New Jalpaiguri. I became a spectacle for what felt like the entire coach as a wandering masseuse oiled, twisted, pummelled, clicked and pulled me in all kinds of wrong directions. (I never knew that my ears could click…) I felt very light at the end, and he only wanted 5 rupees which is less than 10p! I gave him 50.

Right! It’s been relatively easy until now – tonight begins an epic 7 nights sleeping aboard trains, and only one planned shower-stop in between. Also India has been predictably unpredictable so far, so it will be interesting to see if I even stay on schedule! For those interested, my Delhi-belly status is not good. Ironically I was fine when eating and drinking dodgey platform food and tap water, but when I tucked into the gourmet mountain food of Darjeeling, things have been a bit down hill. Let’s hope that train food will get my belly back on track ho! ho!

But for now I must eat a settling supper, before catching my next train at 21:50 into deepest Assam, the wet and jungly state of India… Cheerio!

JONATHAN

p.s. This is a shot of my ‘home’ when on overnight trains. The upper bunk of a sleeper class train. I actually shared this bunk with another fellow, sleeping tip-to-toe on the second night as he didn’t have a reserved berth, poor lad. Luckily his toes didn’t smell.

Day one of the escapade

Hello!

Chief Delhi Deputy, Katherine Short, reporting for duty. I’ll be blogging here sporadically over the next three weeks as I hear from the lone wanderer.

The journey began as it will probably continue with a delayed train. The last reported delay was 2 1/2 hours which puts him at risk of missing his connecting train.

Young Jonathan has also had his first shenanigan. Ten minutes into boarding his train at Old Delhi Station a ‘kindly looking old man’ tried to steal the camera he has rented to film his adventure.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Katherine