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*

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.

A room for Pythagoras

Ridiculous hotel number two: Near the clock tower, Aleppo, Syria. I would tell its name but I’m not sure it has one. Let’s call it Triangle Hotel for posterity’s sake.

We found it as one usually finds things in Syria, through a combination of sign language, phrasebook prodding and meeting a man who knows a man who knows a man who knows a man.

“Cheap otel? Nice otel?” we say, in an attempt to stray from the Lonely Planet trail.

“Oh yes, yes, nice otel, cheap otel. I give you good price, but you no see because room full at moment. Check out 12. I show you other room. Same same but different.” We approve of the room and the deal is done.

So after a hard day of wandering the back streets of Aleppo, we ambled back to the otel for a siesta.

But to our surprise, we found the room in a state of much confusion. This room didn’t have four walls like a normal room, oh no. It was a triangle room. A TRIANGLE. Not only a triangle, but an extremely tiny isosceles triangle.

To give you an idea of precisely how angular it was, we couldn’t even close the curtains due to the ceiling fan rhythmically slapping them into a whirling red frenzy.



Add into the mix some truly gaudy orange seventies wallpaper, polyester leopard-print bed sheets, shutters containing centuries worth of dust, and a fan that sounded like a harem of sparrows being strangled, and sleep is not your friend.