A dubious pilgrimage

Some would prostrate themselves across entire mountains for it, many would give an eye, or even a leg, but us, we had to travel along the world’s highest motorable road in a flimsy people carrier, sold to us as a four-wheel drive jeep, encountering one failed brake, three flat tyres and five days of being stranded in the Nubra Valley with a somewhat less than harmonious group of people.





But some might say it was worth it to come face-to-face with the Dalai Lama. Yes, His Actual Holiness the Dalai Lama. Who, from this point onwards, will be known as the cute little red turtle.



Ah that is dedication, you might say. But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. We didn’t even know it was going to happen. If the brakes on our stupid espace hadn’t failed on the morning of our departure - and each subsequent day - we never would have known how it would feel to sit mere inches away from His Holiness’s cute little red shoes and socks, gazing lovingly at his cute little turtle face, while he spoke to a ‘select’ group of tourists.

His message was clear: Don’t forget Tibet, keep the mind healthy and the body will follow, learn to forgive, concentrate on inner beauty, suppress the ego and practice selflessness. Hear hear.

All of this was eagerly swallowed by my fellow tourists, as they pinched, fought and kicked their way to the front of the group, lethal hands outstretched for a touch of HH’s cute little red dress and a once in a lifetime photo opportunity.



Our elation was quickly dashed as we realised we would be stranded in the valley for yet another evening, after the agency sent the wrong car part from Leh, which is about a 5-hour drive away but had somehow already managed to take 24 hours.

So after a final evening of beer, whiskey and more tension than during the entire series of Big Brother Five, we finally set off for Leh… but, oh no, hang on a minute, what’s that noise?

After brief investigation at a rather dubious looking garage, we discover a large chunk missing from the front tyre.

The mechanic assured us it was “No problem” and sent us on our argumentative way. But three hours later, while navigating a rocky waterfall 17,500ft up the side of a mountain, we hear a disturbing crunching noise and, hang on a second, is the car stuck? Yes it is.

No, no problem at all. After an evacuation of the car and some deft removal of rocks, the car finally jolts forwards to reveal a completely flat tyre. The driver inexplicably wants to continue driving and no amount of persuasion will convince him otherwise so on we go… but, hang on a second, what’s that hissing noise? Oh, that will be the opposite tyre, which is also as flat as a pancake. No, no problem at all.

So there we were, driving across the world’s highest motorable road with an incompetent driver who couldn‘t speak English, two flat tyres, dubious brakes and only one spare tyre, which was bald and had been fixed the previous day with some kind of stick and glue montage, by the mechanic at aforementioned dubious garage.

It’s a miracle we made it back alive.

Don't tell everyone, they'll all want one

Today I experienced a delicacy rarely found outside of India. Plain rice and yellow lentil dal infused with the delicate aromas of coriander and cigarette butt.

It’s like the Indian version of “Who can find the penny in the Christmas pudding?” except it’s “Who can find the cigarette butt carefully placed by the cook into the pot of dal?”

And guess who won?

Yes, indeed it was I. Who else?

I was most overjoyed when on my eighth mouthful of the tasty dal and rice I discovered a black and rotting cigarette butt in my mouth, filling it with the succulent tang of tobacco and ash. Never have I tasted a plate of food so good! And so rare!

They should market it abroad and everything! Like kobi beef! And I hear the lucky butt recipient gets good luck and a lung cancer-free life.

Of course, the manager asked me to keep it quiet for fear of everybody wanting one.

Actually what he really said was: “Because sometimes the cook is smoking while he cooks, you know?”

Ah, well that explains it then.

And to top it all off, the impossible has happened. Merely one day after enthusiastically telling Aaron that, “It rains less than in the Sahara desert in Leh during summer, you know.”

It is now raining. Raining in a mountain desert during summer. Whoever heard such a thing. I wring my hands of this rain thing.

The paradoxes of India

If India were a person, it would certainly be schizophrenic and possibly a complete psychopath.

From standing on the top of a mountain yesterday morning, surveying the distant mountains and thinking that this was perhaps my favourite place in the world…



… I then ventured into the old town, where, in chronological order I was:

a) Accosted by a disgusting, filthy man, who, after asking me most seductively, “You wan’ fuck?” and waggling his middle finger at me like a rabid worm, proceeded to follow me and touch himself while muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” under his breath;

c) Mere inches away from being attacked by a pack of wild dogs, after mistakenly attempting to navigate their rubbish dump. Fortunately, I do a mean dog impression so managed to scare them off with some authentic growls and woofs. (This makes me sound like Lara Croft - I should probably mention that I was also crying and shaking with fear at the same time);

c) Followed by at least twenty-nine different groups of Indian men, yelling “One photo with you, miss”, who all seemed equally unable to keep their eyes above my neck, and equally unable to take no for an answer. One group of which, after telling them in no uncertain terms that no, I was not going to pose for a photo with their stinky armpits on my shoulder, just followed me into this restaurant and are now sat opposite, staring at me like greedy mere cats.

(Please wait a second while I switch seats so I have my back to them…. )

I feel I should also mention here, purely for the basis of a fair analysis, that I also spent yesterday evening wandering around the old town, poking my head into crevices and whatnot and, after nosily poking my head into a doorway, a lively and slightly crazy Ladakhi lady appeared and invited me into her ancient mud and brick house for chai. And in two days’ time I’m back there for a traditional Ladakhi meal and dancing.

The country might be a psychopath but it certainly isn’t making it easy for me to hate it.

The land of high passes

Julay! I’m writing from Leh, in Ladakh, the land of the high passes. And very high it is too. At approximately 13,000ft high, up on the Tibetan plateau, it‘s inflicting a mild sort of attitude lethargy on me but, regardless of that, is a haven of Buddhist peace and tranquility in comparison to the heaving chaos that lies beneath the mountains.

You’ll also probably be interested to hear that what I just said to you means ‘hello‘. It also means ‘please‘. And ‘thank you‘. And also ‘you’re welcome‘. I’m basically nearly fluent in Ladakhi and I’ve only been here two nights.

The bus trip here was a 20-hour journey of epic proportions. We passed through mountains so giant they’re hard for the eye to comprehend - the highest pass being Taglang-la, which, at 17,500ft, is the second highest motorable road in the world. And didn’t my stomach know it.



I spent the best part of two hours trying not to empty its contents all over the side of the bus, followed by a weird sort of hallucinatory sleep that I kept trying to resist because I thought I was falling into a coma. Fortunately the descent was prompt, which saved me from almost certain death. Phew.

The bulk of the journey passed by in an ecstatic, juddering and sleepless stupor. Every twenty minutes the landscape changed so vastly it was if we were entering new worlds.



The alpine mountain scenery of Manali slowly morphed into rocky, jagged terrain as we ascended Rohtang-la, with snow-tipped peaks hanging above and furious rivers running through the valleys beneath the track.



From here we weaved our way towards the snowy tips - while navigating various unexpected and dangerous waterfall obstacles - into glacier territory, at which point most people were hanging out of the bus windows with cameras precariously attached to their hands.



Unfortunately we couldn’t convince the driver to do photography stops - we could barely even convince him to do toilet stops. “Toilet toilet toilet, all the time toilet,” he moaned, while furiously chewing paan and spitting out of the window, making angry red splotches on the winding track.

Gradually the frozen lakes and snow drifts metamorphosed into smooth, russet-coloured mountains, with blistering and dusty desert plateaus in between, which essentially is where I find myself now, lazily contemplating the daunting mountain in front of me, on the top of which is a “dazzling Buddhist stupa with stupendous views across Leh”, according to Lonely Planet.

Stuff the possibility of acute mountain sickness, who can resist that?

Blood, sex or money

I seem to spend my time in India being assaulted. If I’m not being pestered by rancid smells of faeces, it’s the begging children, screeching horns, bellowing voices, fighting dogs, perverted eyes and drunk saddhu drug dealers (I know! Let's import some, I'm sure they'd catch on like wildfire).

I also appear to be the sole benefactor to the Manali mosquito community. Every square inch of my body is covered in bites and they’re showing no signs of abating, with at least eight fresh ones acquired every evening. And nobody else seems to have a single one. As the nice man in the jewellery shop said while looking at my tits: “Mmmm you must have sweeeeet blood.”

Indeed. It’s just a good job there’s no malaria here or I would undoubtedly be in hospital by now.

On a less irritable note, the sun is shining and the road to Leh is now open again after a series of landslides, collapsing bridges and “some other natural disasters, madam”.

The camera, however, has still not arrived but I’ve decided to bite the bullet and go to Leh tonight anyway, leaving it in the safe hands of Manali post office.

I’m sure when the post master shrugged and did a careful Indian head wobble in response to my question of whether it will be safe, he actually meant to say: “Yes madam, of course.”

So I’ll take his word for it.

Here, have some pictures, of which the first is merely the view from my balcony of an evening:







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Let sleeping dogs lie...

Life has slowed down to a pace almost beyond imaginable. I’m currently top of the improvers’ list in a course named How To Relax And Amuse Oneself For Hours.

This mainly consists of reading books (from start to finish, no less!), café hopping, rain dodging and watching India go by in its amusing way while waiting for the arrival of my intrepid camera.

(Which, by the way, is now unnecessary as the other one has had amiraculous recovery.)

Still no dreadlocks though, I’m happy to report.

The most difficult decision I’m facing each day is what to eat. Chinese, Tibetan, Israeli, Mexican, Continental, Italian, South Indian, North Indian, English - the array of cuisines is simply dazzling, but the end result probably more similar than the locals care to admit.



This morning I opted for an English Breakfast, Madam - toast, beans, eggs and hash brown. Sound familiar? Well it wasn’t. Cumin, turmeric, peppers, onions and chilli all made an appearance in one form or another and, while I certainly enjoy boiled potatoes, yes sir I do, I probably wouldn‘t eat them on toast for breakfast.

I ate all this while watching a particularly amusing game of Indian road roulette, whereby hoards of creaking tuk-tuks chug painfully to the top of the hill, before switching off the engines and juddering down the other side like out-of-control runaway trains, horns screeching as all manner of animals and people scatter into roadside ditches like confused ants.



Apart from the sleeping dogs, of course, which usually just continue snoring in the middle of the road as the vehicles slalom dangerously between them.

Nothing wakes the dogs. Every few metres there’s another one: mangy and flea-bitten, dozing in a doorway; napping on a rock next to the roaring river; asleep on a pillar in the middle of a construction site.



They only awake at night, whereupon they gather underneath my bedroom window and conduct howling wrestling matches.

Talking of strange animals, there appears to be a glut of them in Manali. So far I’ve encountered two absurdly decorated yaks, a sheep that wakes me up each morning with a ’Laaauuura’ sounding baa; and a crazy myxomatosis-eyed rabbit giant.

And when I say giant, I mean giant: as big and as white as a polar bear - or perhaps just a little smaller.

For the meagre sum of 20 rupees the equally-as-crazy-eyed owner will let you hold him. Personally I would pay 20 pounds to never even have to see it again.

Impotent in Manali

All you impotent men out there: I have new-found sympathy. I now know how it feels to have an impressive looking bit of equipment that‘s about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

But would an impotent men ever go to a whore house? No sir, no he wouldn‘t, because that would be hell, wouldn't it?

Well that’s basically where I am right now. Sat in Manali, watching the River Beas tumble down the mountain through jagged, snow-covered peaks and evergreen firs, meandering through traditional wood and stone houses, with a stupid black box that looks like a camera, talks like a camera, but acts like an ornament.

If I was anywhere near Adana, I would take the stupid black box back to Murat the Mullah with his stupid pointy fingers and nose, and demand he fix it for free, and that he does it properly this time. But I’m not. So instead I have to wait here for a week while my trusty replacement crosses oceans and mountains to be with me, before I undertake the mammoth and teeth-shattering 18-hour bus trip to Leh.

It’s not so bad. I have a £2-a-night bedroom with clean, white sheets and a balcony, a myriad of relaxing riverside cafes and even some riverside entertainment. Although by entertainment I actually mean Manali’s form of child cruelty, which comprises equipping your child with a small metal hoop, a hat with a metre-long tassle on the top, a burlap sack and a begging bowl and making it do insane tricks in front of tourists, like a circus monkey.

If this is what they do with double-jointed kids, I’m very glad I wasn’t born in Manali.

Getting up close and personal with Buddhism

So now I must write about the journey and not the destination because, as Gandhi says, this is the bit that matters.

So there I was, on the bus from Dharamsala to Manali, with a friendly American to the left of me and a monk in front of me. I must have paid my penance in dreadful bus journeys, I thought to myself, this is like bliss!

So for about two hours we travelled along like this. The monk did not recline his seat an inch - so I sat there, ipod on, head on my special red fluffy pillow, and I had space for my legs and everything!

And while I sat there all comfortable and that, I got to thinking. The fact that this monk hadn’t reclined his chair an inch told me that he was a happy man. This Buddhism lark must really work! If I did Vipassana would I then be able to just sit there, all upright, and sleep like a baby - no insomnia - and be proud of the fact that I hadn’t reclined my seat and that the person behind me was also comfortable. What an admirable man!

(In India the bus seats recline so far that the person behind can no longer put their legs down, like a normal person, and can only sit in an upright foetal position - imagine someone giving birth and you are getting close)

So on the bus went, and on Damian Rice went, and on my philosophising went… until suddenly, BANG, and OUCH! The monk’s seat flew backwards and flew backwards and flew backwards, so far, until it almost hit the edge of my seat, where he stayed, more reclined than anyone else in the entire bus, and happily snoring away like a pig in shit until the end of the journey (which was about 15 hours).

So for 15 hours I had my legs either side of the seat, with his shaven Buddhist head between my legs.

There are so many lessons to be learnt here, I don't know where to start.

It's all about the journey is it, Gandhi?

It’s a funny old thing, this travelling lark. According to Gandhi it’s not the destination but the journey that counts.

Good job, really - if I wasn’t getting touched up on buses and scammed on rickshaws there wouldn’t be much to write about.

“So today I went to a café and read my book and then I ate some food and then I walked up a hill and then I skyped my boyfriend and then I sat on my own for a while, bored, and watched a cow take a shit in the road.”

Surely not! Surely it’s meant to go something like this: “So today I roamed exotic lands wearing Indian silk harem pants and incense-scented beads, and then I frolicked in the ocean with skin the colour of a brazil nut: fulfilled; enlightened; joyful; free!”

Only I’m nowhere near the ocean - I‘m in the Himalayas. And the only thing that’s en-lightened is my hair.

These serious travellers - y‘know, the ones with the dreadlocks and those blasé facial expressions - they must be pretty dedicated folk, highly practised in the art of How To Do Absolutely Nothing Except Stare At A Mountain For Days On End.



Perhaps that’s why they always end up festering in groups on a hill somewhere, near sacred monuments, spinning silly bits of wood with fire on top and trying to outdo each other with outlandish trousers and ginormous hair.

Fortunately for you I’m off on a 12-hour bus journey to Manali tomorrow, which will no doubt give me something more interesting to write. Maybe I’ll get touched up again! Or perhaps I’ll break my leg. I’ll be wearing sensible trousers though, don’t you worry.

It’s also the Dalai Lama’s birthday tomorrow - what this quite means I haven’t yet been able to figure out.

“Dalai Lama birthday tomorrow Madam so maybe big party in the town. But Dalai Lama maybe not here my friend, so if he not in McCleod then no party and we do nothing. We see. Shanti shanti.”

That’s that sorted then.

Monsoon, my old friend!

Hello monsoon, pleased to be acquainted with you once again. Thanks for marooning me in my favourite café, with nothing more to do than look out the window at you streaming down the road in great, fat clumps and sigh despairingly.



The roads, which are about as steep as roads get, have now turned into dangerous rivers. Clouds are floating past the café and jaunting off down the road, transforming the edge of the tarpaulin roof into Niagara Falls. Huge flashes of lightening are periodically illuminating the greyness, and the Gods are definitely moving house up there.

The music has been pumped up to top volume and you can still only just hear it and now there's talk of an apple wine monsoon party. BRING IT ON!

Faithful cloud which I am in, I salute you. No sarcasm intended, I’m genuinely thankful.

I no longer have a need to feel guilty for not walking through the forest, up a mountain, down a waterfall, or participating in some sort of mental beauty pageant (sorry Jannet Angel - this body aint getting out of this café for less than a million pounds).

Or here’s a thought - WE COULD WHITE-WATER RAFT DOWN THE ROAD? It must be at least grade 4. I might have to hire a dinghy just to get back to my room.

But for now my feet are up, I have coffee in one hand, a book in the other and no reason to be anywhere else for at least 5 weeks. It doesn't get much better than this.

Same same but different?

Help. My inspiration is being strangled by stinky dreadlocks and squished by idendikit hippies.

Today I ventured into Upper Bhagsu - I’d been advised by the Finnish dreadlocker who had shared my bus that this was the place to be. Her exact words went something like this: “Is nice, you will like it. Is more Westerners than Indians and you can buy falafel and choclolate cake!”

On my way up there I bumped into said girl, alongside her friend. Or hang on a second, was it her friend or was it her twin - OR HAD SHE BEEN DUPLICATED?

Long blonde dreadlocks: check. Nose ring: check. Baggy trousers with elasticated bottom - like Aladdin‘s!: check. Vest top, anklet and obligatory blasé facial expression: check.

For the record, she almost completely ignored me, despite the fact I had spent hours chatting with her a few days previously.

“Namaste madam,” she said, in a mock Indian accent and carried on her dreadlocked way, no doubt heading down the hill to bang some bongos and smoke some weed.

Upper Bhagsu wasn‘t so great. More dreadlocks and facial hair than an entire family of overgrown and unshaven Mr Twits.

But much more importantly, an Indian lady called Jannet Angel - real name? perhaps not - just invited me to take part in the Miss World Traveller beauty pageant that's taking place in Bhagsu tomorrow. Going by her bright pink lipstick and illuminous red hair, it should be an interesting affair.

I said yes, of course. Watch this space.

You've been framed...

A selection of photographs that I shouldn't really have taken but did:

From Delhi to Dharamsala

Phew. Have now escaped the suffocating humidity of Delhi’s pre-Monsoon heat. It wasn’t an easy escape, mind.

I just spent 13 hours on a bus being periodically, and ever so covertly, touched up for the pleasure of this mountain air. Two tablets of valium and not a wink of sleep, due to a voracious wandering hand that kept ’accidentally’ falling off the armrest and onto my leg.

And it wasn’t even a dirty old man. It was a young university student from Pune, who had earlier been part of a conversation in which a Finnish girl and I were explaining in detail what we would like to do to men who can’t keep their hands to themselves.

Chop. Their. Dicks. Off.

Perhaps he misheard?

So now I’m in Dharamsala, the home of the great Dalai Lama. Also home to about a million travellers, a billion yoga and meditation centres, a thousand ayervedic health centres and a rapacious Tibetan-themed marketing ploy.

I’m staying in a place called Bhagsu, which is a few kilometres further north into the mountains, which is full of winding alleyways and crooked houses and cows in the most inappropriate places.

Have found a room with a big window and a view out into the Himalayas. Unfortunately I think it might also have bed bugs, if the string of red welts on my arm are anything to go by. But for £2 a night and some beautiful mountain views, who’s complaining?

The 'beautification' of Delhi

Delhi is, quite literally, falling down around me. It’s currently in the middle of a “beautification process madam”, which means most roads are demolition sites and contain ten times more dirt and rubble than normal - and that’s quite a lot of dirt and rubble for these gladiator sandals to navigate.

The demolitions mostly consist of some men with hammers knocking down houses while hanging from wooden ladders - all safely cordoned off though, of course, with five or six orange traffic cones.

Strangely the traffic cones don’t do much to protect passing heads from falling debris, as the unfortunate man walking in front of me found out yesterday.

After that close call I thought I would save my head (and my feet) and hailed a cycle rickshaw for a relaxing jaunt around the old city, making sure the carriage had a decently constructed roof.

I thought it might be a good chance to take some pictures. It wasn‘t. I spent the best part of an hour juddering along pot-holed roads, praying my teeth didn’t fall out and barely even got my camera out.

I also thought Syria had sharpened my haggling skills - mistaken once again.

“You now pay 200 rupee madam, this is 10km journey madam and there is big traffic,” he shouted back to me while navigating a surely death-ridden crossroad.

“No, it’s not, it’s 2km and we agreed 50 rupees when I got in,” I screamed, while clinging on to the sides for dear life.


Him: “Ah but madam this is loooonng journey, auto-rickshaw you pay 400 rupees.”

Me: “An air-conditioned taxi from the airport is only 310 rupees and that is 20km, why are you lying to me?”

Where upon he would laugh and wobble his head in that inimitable Indian way, which as far as I’m aware can mean yes, no, I don’t know or anything in between. And then round we would go again.

On the way back to my hotel the conversation took another twist:

“You wan’ hotel madam, I know good hotel, only 500 rupees madam.”

Me: “I have a hotel, you saw me walk out of the door and met me outside, have you forgotten? I don’t need a hotel. Thanks."

Him: “Ah but this good hotel madam, good price. I take you there?”

Me: “I have a hotel already. I don’t need a hotel.”

A few minutes later: “Here is hotel madam, you look?”

AAAAAAAh *POP*

The innards and the outards

My first thought during the approach into Delhi airport was that the city looks much like the motherboard of my poor camera - an illogical union of square boxes and wiry roads, all piled together as if the world is running out of space.


Palatial houses and tower blocks jostle with corrugated iron and tarpaulin towns, the spaces between filled with bricks and dust and relics of life (or sanitiser in the case of my camera).

It’s like the city has been furiously shaken and replaced with its innards hanging out like a run-over dog, intestines spilling from rooftops and lingering in crevices.

I really knew I had arrived when I was greeted in the arrivals hall by a putrid smell of faeces (and for the first time in a week it had nothing to do with me YAY).

In my haste to escape the smells and the Eyes - ah, the Eyes! - I scrambled into a taxi forgetting I was wearing a rather large backpack and promptly tumbled straight back out again as it rebounded against the roof. Smooth as ever. The Eyes loved it.

Also have made dreadful error of all errors. During interminable boredom of five-hour wait at Abu Dhabi airport, I booked flights to Sri Lanka for 6 weeks’ time without taking into account the little footnote on my Indian visa, which says: “Cannot enter country within two months of last visit.”

Oops. So it looks like the decision has been made. I can't return to India. Can I feasibly call this fate or is it just pure stupidity?

And off to India we go...

Sat here eating my very last Middle Eastern breakfast of cucumber, tomato, cheese, olives, jam, egg and bread (it's getting hard to feign interest in it) right before I catch the metro to the airport for my solo flight to India.

There's many stories to tell from the past five days but quite a lot of them involve a toilet so I won't bother you with them. However, there is a great one about another ridiculous hotel - ridulously filthy - which I'll recount when I arrive in India.

Scared. Wish me luck. Weeeeeee.......

Fame, at last!

I’m not going to be a diva about it or anything, but I just thought you’d like to know that I have finally made it. Fame, at last! It’s been tough, but worth it.

I'd been in Damascus for two days, when some hip Damascene guy arrived at the hostel with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth looking for English movie stars (extras) to star (appear in the background briefly) in a film about the English invasion of Bedouin territory in the Gulf.

Naturally I was reticent in the beginning, but he let me eat my breakfast and made a promise to deliver champagne to my dressing room before I agreed to set off on the ‘twenty-minute’ journey.

One and a half hours later, and we’re still cruising the desert hunting for the mysterious ‘set’, with myself and my fellow act-tooors wondering whether instead of meeting fame we were about to meet our untimely deaths.

Fortunately this wasn’t the case.

I will prove this with some glorious photos of me sweating my tits off in the desert all in the name of art.

The film is called Gate of Clouds in English (or a load of squiggles in Arabic). Please hunt it out and take glory in my one moment in the limelight.

NB: The champagne never arrived, and for that matter neither did the dressing room. Sigh.

There's friendly, and then there's FRIENDLY

Syrians are such a friendly bunch. I mean, really friendly - I think I might have mentioned it before.

Even the unfriendly ones aren‘t that unfriendly. You wouldn’t even notice them if it wasn’t for the goggle-eyed stares at your breasts and occasional growling sounds.

One rung up from this there’s the moderately friendly ones: these tend to look politely at the breast area and then, when you catch their eye, smile and say “Well-come”. The meaning of this is always quite ambiguous.

Then you get the really friendly ones. These want to sit next to you, feed you countless cups of sugary tea and invite you home to meet the family.

These are the people who engage all their friends to help you find your way, until you have a Pied Piper throng of Arabs leading you through the city.

Sometimes they also like to put their arms around you and casually waft a hand across your bum cheeks on the way down.

But then there’s the one-eyed madman we met a few days ago - he was in a league of his own.

We first encountered him in a barber shop in Damascus. He beckoned Aaron in and, for reasons unbeknown to me, Aaron accepted the invitation and plonked himself down next to this heaving, one-eyed hunk of a man.



Following what was an obviously engineered twist of fate, I then found myself sandwiched between his bulbous face and sweaty arm, while he repeated his splattering and unlikely statement of being a jockey.



Fast forward ten minutes and we were bemusedly trotting behind him, with absolutely no idea where we were heading, watching as the evening sun streaked through his dress, crisply outlining his black underpants.



He finally reached his destination and led us into what I assumed must be his house. He took us through a hallway, past a darkened room where veiled women lurked in shadows, and into what I can only describe as the most ridiculous room I ever saw in my life.

Lining the walls, neatly placed in order of size, were hundreds of glistening swords and guns.

Giant machetes and bulging sabres perched dangerously above our heads as he stood in the middle of the room, bellowing like a proud father: “You likeee? You likeee?”



Had we solved the mystery of the missing eye?

After showing us a priceless photo of him sat on a bow-legged donkey heralding some type of sword - a jockey, of course! - he then produced a box filled with Arabic clothes and began dressing us up, with his friend appointing himself official photographer.



(There’s also the part where his friend studied my legs a little too aggressively and had to place a cushion on his lap, but I’m not going to expand on that one.)

The next day while wandering through a completely different part of Damascus, we came across a shop that sold every type of sword under the sun.

While we marvelled at the shiny swords suspended from the ceiling, we heard a spluttering voice come from behind us: “My frienda! My frienda! Come and sit downa!”

Lo and behold. There he was. On a stool next to the sword shop, with the sun illuminating his full glory.

A room with a view and a pie with a face

Dining out in Syria is certainly not for the faint-hearted - or fussy.

Menus are mostly in Arabic - and that’s if they even exist - but if the stars are shining down on you and you happen across one in ‘English’, the meal takes on a life of its own.

We‘ve so far had the pleasure of discovering ‘Chicken Soap’ - or ‘Cream Soap’ if you would prefer? -‘Jam and Cheese Pancake’ and the most exotic-sounding pie known to man.

This particular menu - the product of an ambient rooftop restaurant overlooking Damascus’s famous mosque, Umayyad - was transcribed literally into the Roman alphabet so made little more sense than Arabic.

So we enlisted the help of the waiter, who, in a thick, gummy accent, provided us with this description:

“So firsta we mix the wheeat wid the water and place it around the chopped lamb meeeat. Then we put it into the grrrill to cook. We then rrremove it from the grrrill and rrrub pomegranate in its face.”

When the dish finally appeared, which was little more than a tasty doner meat pie, it was distinctly lacking any pomegranate and, more disappointingly, it had no face - so far as we could see.

But after earlier polishing off our millionth kebab, anything remotely different was a pleasure so we gobbled it with gusto and soaked up the views of the glowing mosque.

And as we were wandering down the steps back into the winding alleys of the souq, as a final parting gift of hysterical laughter, we heard the waiter’s lilting voice carry over the distant call to prayer:

“…we then rrremove it from the grrrill and rrrub pomegranate in its face.”

We heard no laughter from the table of Japanese tourists so I assume it was a case of really lost in translation.

Women: know your limits

This country is truly an anomaly.

It’s in George Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’, yet is among one of the most friendly and hospitable countries I‘ve ever visited. It’s fundamentally Islamic, yet alcohol is freely available. Women, when visible, wear full hijab or burqa, yet I haven’t once felt uncomfortable being significantly more obvious (and loud) and wearing considerably less.

Although a recent breakfast escapade to a street-side falafel store did result in a right kerfuffle.

So there I was, at the bar, innocently chomping away on a great mint and chilli falafel wrap, when I noticed a throng of veiled women outside having an animated discussion with the owner. There must have been five or six women with at least five or six children attached to them in a myriad of ways.

As I watched the scene unfold, it became increasingly clear they were talking about me. Illegible words were punctuated with raised eyebrows and baffled jabs and laughs in my direction. Arms were being thrown in the air in that inimitable Arabic way.

All eyes were on me as I happily stood among the falafel-snuffling men and stuffed the remains of the dripping yoghurty wrap into my mouth.

I couldn’t work out whether the eyes contained envy at the fact I was standing there mingling with the men, or disgust at my inability to eat the falafel with anything remotely resembling femininity.

The moral of the story: Women, know your limits. Laura, take a bib.