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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Aleppo and a brand new baby

We’re now on day three of life in Aleppo, sat by the Sheraton swimming pool admiring the higgledy-piggledy city from the monolithic and hideous - but calm - walls of the hotel. It hasn’t all been like this.



Upon arrival we utilised our very smooth Arabic skills - “Salaam alaykooooom! Errrr, do you know errr cam-errr-ahhh shop? Can-non? We buy where?” (Yes. Our language skills are on fire) - and following an exhaustingly hot goose chase around town, we finally struck gold in an underground warren of shops stuffed wall-to-wall with spare car parts and tyres. Well, where else?



Sat behind a filthy desk, smeared in what I assumed to be oil, sat a rotund man who knew a man, who knew another man that owned a shop nearby in which sat a dusty and forlorn looking Canon digital camera.

After some equally smooth haggling, we took the replacement camera baby to explore the new city of Aleppo. I say new city, but what I actually mean is ‘newer city’.

Aleppo is reputedly one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the Al-Jdeida quarter was built during the Ottoman era, which makes it approximately 600 years old. Pretty old for a new guy.

So fuelled by a novel breakfast of fava bean soup and raw onions with flat bread, we set off down the crooked alleys to find an almost indecent abundance of photography opportunities.




It was a Friday so the streets were shuttered and peaceful; devoid of women, pavements dotted with turbaned and sleepy men languishing in the shade.