The most common question I have been asked by people after returning home is, “which was your favourite country to visit?” For Cesca and I it has to be the majestic New Zealand. Not because it is terribly exotic. as everything is familiar (especially the road names), but rather because it is so much like you wish England could be. The lakes, the mountains, the rivers, the beaches. New Zealand has everything. The people have a real “get up and go” attitude that is infectious. They love their country, they also appear to know who they are and what they want. Living in such a culture is, and I hesitate to write this, idyllic.

Shame I don’t live there then!

Cesca and I have written many articles on the subject of New Zealand and also made a “love letter” of a short-film celebrating the country (found under “films” in the navigation bar). However, I have always wanted to do more to speak of our time driving around these islands.

Well, our wish has come true.

About a two weeks ago I was approached by a company working for Air New Zealand. They wanted to license all our content on New Zealand for use in the official Air New Zealand iPhone app!

On the go and in the air, Air New Zealand’s free Spot-On Travel Guide App Series help you make the most of your visit — even offline.

Browse hand-picked activities, events and destinations by region, then save them for quick retrieval upon arrival. Handy travel tools and social network integration make finding and sharing amazing spots a cinch.

Be a tourist without looking like one.

It’s the Kiwi in us – Air New Zealand.

We jumped at the chance of being involved because we loved our time in New Zealand and the idea of that being celebrated “officially” made us very happy. It gives us another way to share our experiences and give something back. Hopefully, this will have a positive effect on the places we experienced and make sure that people visiting the country for the first time don’t miss out.

I cut down the articles to 150 word long chunks with one picture per chunk. I then uploaded them to a custom CMS provided by my contact. A few days ago they were approved and went live on the app!

We uploaded articles on the following topics:

• See the splendour of Pahia and the Bay Of Islands
• Walk endless sands of 90 Mile Beach
• Be blown away on the cliffs of Cape Reinga
• Walk to the falls of Waitonga
• Cycle up Mount John.
• Walk the Hooker Valley for a view of Mount Cook
• Visit the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre
• See the wild waters of Hokianga harbour.
• Wonder at the Giant Kauri Trees
• Brave the unpaved roads to Waikawau Bay
• Get washed up in Cathedral Cove
• Bath in Mud at Hell’s Gate
• Dip in the Polynesian Spa at Lake Rotorua.
• Wander around the history of Rotorua museum.
• Early morning at Lake Rerewhakaaitu
• See the wondrous colour palette of Wai-O-Tapu
• See the huge Lake Taupo
• Walk the Queen Charlotte track
• Visit and stay at Furneaux Lodge
• Dig your own spa at Hot Water Beach
• Wonder at the strange Moeraki Boulders
• Get wet at Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks
• See whales by helicopter in Kaikoura

I have created a special “landing page” for use in the iPhone in-built browser. This can be found here: www.outsidecontext.com/new-zealand

If you are thinking of, or planning, a visit to the best country on the far-side of the world, then get this app and read up on some of the above. We did so much in New Zealand. In two months we travelled one end to the other taking in mountains, beaches, volcanoes, islands, cities and vineyards. We walked on its glaciers, jumped off its bridges, worked on its farms and skydived over its mountains. We didn’t want to leave.

So, get this app and then you too can fall in love with New Zealand.

Just like me.

Download from here

Basho.

PS. If you do get the app, and you like it, then please leave us a comment here to let us know – it would mean a lot to us to hear of your visits to NZ.

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When I was considering taking a year off, I started looking around for a computer that I could take with me on my travels around the world; a laptop. I started with the tiny and cheap eeePC, the first of the netbooks, and I was happy with it. That is until I tried to run my camcorder software, which stubbornly refused to work with such a low end graphics card. So I turned to a Samsung Q45. The provided me with a machine that covered my travelling bases. However, since returning from Japan, I have been getting tired of it. I need a new machine. I need a (little) monster that can do everything.

Requirements.

So, I need a new laptop, one that covers all my specific bases. What those bases are has an influence on what I think of the machine in this review so I list them here.

1. It must be portable. This is the most important thing in a laptop. The machine must be light enough for me to be able to carry it to work every day. I have an 80 minute journey on the intercity train into London from Ipswich so a laptop cannot be too large in size or I will not be able to fit it in the small space afforded. Sometimes I see a person with a 17inch Macbook on the train. If someone sitting next to them wanted to use a laptop as well, they can forget it. Fur will fly before you manage to squeeze two machines into that space. Then, I have a 1.5 mile walk from Liverpool Street to London Bridge. So any machine of mine must be light enough to not hurt my shoulder after this distance. These are the portability tests I will be using. They are a little more “real world” than just weighing the machine, as would some other reviewers, but that it how we roll on the OC.

2. It must be powerful. My passion is being creative in my spare time. I write, I paint, I make films, etc. My current laptop runs Office just fine, but it struggles when rendering films in Sony Vegas. In fact I often have to leave it overnight to complete a high quality version of a film and it crashes with alarming regularity. So, my new purchase must be able to power through rendering in Vegas and in my new suite of Adobe Premiere. The other aspect to this is that I used to be a gamer, a big gamer. As raid master of the Hooded Nomads guild I ran a high end rig to support operations in Star Wars Galaxies, Crysis and Eve. I need those FPS! My current machine, as fine as the processor is, cannot even run Mount and Blade. I want something that will nail both requirements.

3. It must have a long lasting battery. My Samsung has a good battery, but nothing to write home about. I can squeeze out something like 3 hours in Windows 7 (which is excellent at battery management compared to Vista). However, Cesca –my wife– can make her Macbook Pro last all damn day. Any machine I buy will have to outperform the Samsung and give a £2000 Macbook a run for its money.  A tall order.

4. It must output to a TV. While small screen gaming is sweet on the go and on the lap, I want to be able to run this baby by a bigger screen for when at home. I have a LG 26 inch 1080p LCD TV, so we shall see what picture we can get up.

5. It must be good value for money. Cheap, like the budgie, is the motto. I don’t want to spend £2000 on a laptop, I don’t want to buy anything that expensive that could be dropped! The price/performance ratio is a vital metric.

So with those 5 requirements in mind, what to buy?

Dell and Alienware.

I have been flirting with many machines in the last few months, then I saw this:

And this:

Dell was a supplier of choice when I was an IT manager of a London Investment Bank. I bought hundreds of Dell machines. I also had a classic IT policy regarding laptops; IT got them first. If someone wanted a laptop, I would buy a new one and give them mine. This had real business benefits (honest!) in that we would be able to learn the laptop before trying to support it. The upshot was that I changed my laptop for a new model every 4 months or so. I have had HPs, IBMs (new and old ones), even a massive and ugly as sin Sony. But it was to the Dells that I returned, and not to just the business models. At one point Dell gave the XPS range a free deskside support contract, so I had one of those. I know a good laptop when I use one.

A few years ago Dell bought out the custom PC maker, Alienware. Before Dell got involved Alienware was a bit of a rich-kids brand. All that high-end hacker/gamer bullshit. I have no doubt that half the high end guilds rocked Alienware’s. They cost a fortune. Since Dell have owned them, they have come down in price. This is mainly because Dell have leveraged their better production model to be able to produce the machines at a lower price. All the better for us. At the moment, we stand in a cross roads for the brand. Dell’s own XPS gaming laptop is standing in direct competition to the Alienware brand, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Dell dropped one or the other. If they keep Alienware as they stand, I would also expect the branding to be toned down a little as well. Not all of us are 15 year olds (lucky you if you are!) and I personally don’t fancy sitting on the train with a “loud” machine saying in no uncertain terms that I am a punk bitch.

With the announcement of the m11x I grew excited. I have held the Alienware 17 inch model and it is the size of a bus. Definitely not something that I would want to carry, so the idea of an actually portable Alienware laptop was enticing. Also enticing was the price. An amazing £750 starting price is not to be sniffed at.

Ordering and Options.

I logged on and started to order.

Dell’s ordering website is quite good. It has all the features you would want. For the Alienware’s you can usually setup the machine in many different configurations, so that a 17incher can start at £1200 and soon be up to £4000 with all the trimmings. So, I was surprised to find that the M11x had little in the way of upgrade options. You could change the version of Windows, upgrade the RAM – but not too much – to 8GB, you had two processor choices and three harddrive ones. Sounds like a lot, but most Alienware models allow for thousands of possible combinations, rather and just hundreds. Perhaps they are coming soon. I didn’t mind, being an early adopter is fun and if it is a lemon, well it’s my loss not yours.

There are a few options to select:

Processor Options Intel® Pentium® Processor SU4100 (2M Cache, 1.30 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo SU7300 (1.3GHz, 800 MHz, 3 MB) Chipset Mobile Intel® GS45 Chipset Operating System Options Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Dimensions & Weight Height: 32.7mm (1.29 inches) Width: 285.7mm (11.25 inches) Depth: 233.3mm (9.19 inches) Preliminary Weight: Start at 1.99kg (4.39 lbs) Keyboard AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard – Exclusive Design Audio Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound Audio Network Adapter Options a/b/g/n 2x2 MIMO Internal WWAN Mobile Broadband

Memory Options 2GB, 4GB, 8GB DDR3 - 800MHz Display Options 11.6-inch WideHD 1366x768 (720p) LCD Hard Drive Options 160GB 5,400RPM 250GB, 320GB, 500GB - 7,200RPM 256GB - Solid State Drive Bluetooth Internal Wireless Bluetooth 2.1 Video Card Options 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 335M Battery 8 Cell Prismatic (64 whr) – Primary Ports IEEE 1394a (4-pin) port Integrated Ethernet RJ-45 (100 Mbps) 3 Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports DP / HDMI — Video Output 3-in-1 Media Card Reader 2 Audio Out Connectors Audio In / Microphone Jack (retaskable for 5.1 audio) Two Built-In Front Speakers

I took the upgraded processor, 4GB of RAM and the 320GB hard drive.

The final total was a respectable £868 including VAT and delivery. Lucky, I had a Christmas bonus then!

Just before the date the laptop was due, I received a call from Dell. It was an automated message asking me if I want to change the delivery date. A nice touch.

Unboxing.

The box the laptop comes in is very tightly made and nicely presented, if you are giving this machine as a gift: you will impress them. The standard Dell layout has been customised with a Alienware shaped bits and pieces box that neatly fits into the larger case. The laptop is presented in a nice soft bag/cover. Impressive.

Looks.

OMG this is a good looking machine. A hard and metallic outer shell makes it as sturdy as a rock, what I would expect from a gaming rig, but it also adds to the allure. It is light years better looking than my Samsung and gives Cesca’s MacBook Pro a run for its money.The screen hinge opens to a 140 degree angle and does not roll flat. Being a wide screen, the frame has a thick besel of unused real estate around the screen, but this is not deal breaker. Alienware have toned down the styling a little, and I don’t think I will have any issues with using this on the train in the morning.

Speaking of the screen, is is pleasantly thin with no thick back plate. This is a bonus for use in confined areas.

Stacking up against other machines.

The Alienware is small and dainty for something so powerful. Here it is against my work laptop (A Dell Latitude 7700):

And against my 11inch Samsung:

As you can see, while the M11x has still got the classic Alienware lines, it has been gently toned down and has lost a lot of weight. The laptop weighs no more than the Samsung, even with all that metal.

Powering Up & First Use.

On first use the Alienware immediately starts to impress. The entire keyboard lights up and the logo under the screen glows bright. The first boot is swift and running through the microsoft nonsense is thankfully quick as well. After the desktop appears, the system then runs the Alienware facial recognition software that records a picture of your face to act as your password into the desktop, removing the need to type a password. A gimmick, but a nice one that actually works.

After years typing on my Samsung keyboard, there was an adjustment period to the layout of the Alienware. The keys are flat, even perhaps  shade concave if they have any raised sections at all. They are punchy and responsive, but small. It will definitely take a little while to learn this layout, so at the moment I am looking at the keyboard to type. The font of the keys is a semi-scifi, StarTrek style. This is not problem, but a little strange. The gamers keys “wasd” have another symbol on them under the letters, which looks like Klingon to me.

The default backdrop and programs is as follows:

The famous Alienware Alien FX Control Panel software enables you to change the lights to any colour you could possibly want. I leave mine on blue and turn it off to play DVD’s.

As far as Crud Software goes, I only saw MacAfee, which I ripped off immediately.

Film Making and Rendering.

Making films is perhaps not the classic use for a laptop, but for me has become a real pleasurable experience. I make two types, films of my world travels and films of my airsofting. For this test I am going to make a film of one of my recent airsoft games and render it on my old and new machines. This will give us a real world test of the power of these boxes. I am not hoping for too much difference between the reference Samsung and the Alienware as the processor is not too ahead, but let us see!

Premiere Pro is a professional, real-time, timeline based video editing software application by Adobe. It was the software that rendered the Academy Award winning film, No Country for Old Men. A serious application!

Note. I only have the 32 bit version of this software, but the latest version is enhanced for 64bit, so if you have that, expect even more.

Both systems rendered a 2.40 minute clip in 1080p high def. The final file size was around 600Mb.

The Alienware did it in: 13:05 minutes.

The Samsung did it in: 14:27 minutes.

Victory to the Alienware!

Film Watching.

This system does not come with an internal CD/DVD or Blu Ray drive, but I have a Blu Ray external drive I use for backup. With the combination of this, a HDMI cable and a HD TV I am able to test high definition video playback.

It looks glorious!

However, on playing I suddenly got a bit of stuttering in the Blue Ray. A quick check online found that the system comes with the Dell Backup Manager installed, once I removed that, the system worked flawlessly. The picture was brilliant.

To even improve it further I installed the CoreCodec program that pushes all the video through the GPU and things really started to fly! I was able to play a full Blu Ray and download from Steam at the same time.

Sure enough, this machine can be easily used as a multimedia platform!

Gaming!

Rock on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2!

OMG, I have missed gaming on the PC. There is something just not quite right about gaming on a console. I just don’t get on with using a controller. I am a keyboard and mouse man and proud of it!  Well, for my £800 do I get something that can compete with all the PS3 and XBoxes in the world? You damn well bet your balls to a barn dance I do!

For many people, the gaming applications on the Alienware are the point of getting it in the first place. So, I can report that I subjected myself to many hours of hardcore gaming just for you. It was a real struggle I can tell you.  To put the system into gaming mode, simply hold down FN and push F6, this boots the Hybrid Graphics into, what I like to call, ‘Whoop Ass mode!”

You get one of the following pop ups to let you know it has happened:

My wife would come in and say, “please take out the rubbish, darling,”

I would shake my head sadly and say, “Sorry sweetpea, I have to finish this review,” and continue playing on for hours. It was funny at the time, but she is making me suffer for it now!

I got 45FPS on COD4:MW2 and 70(!)FPS on MAX SETTINGS in Left for Dead 2!

Playing games on this laptop, either through the HDMI or on the small but fast screen, is bliss. Pure and simple. From the point of view of gaming, this laptop is a new generation of size/price/performance.

Dell videos on the subject:

RAW Power Matrix.

Numbers mean everything to some and nothing to others. Nevertheless I did run all the standard tests on this rig.

CPU Rating:

The basic Windows 7 Experience Index runs a number of tests on the system that enables 5 metrics to be judged. Knowing Microsoft, this tool will not be the whole story, but I ran it anyway. The Alienware was run through twice, once with the integrated graphics card and once with the gaming card enabled. I also include the score from our reference system to show a comparison.

First, Samsung:

Then the Alienware with the Whoop Ass button off and on

Then I booted up the more in depth testing software PCMarks Vantage. This was again run through twice.

With the Whoop Ass button off the final score was 2884:

With all things set to maximum, the score was a much more impressive 3209:

Over-clocking

Over-clocking the machine is a simple BIOS option on bootup. With this on I reran the Windows Experience Index and came up with:

Noise

While it was putting the machine through its paces, I had a decibel meter sitting by the fan, to check the noise coming out during high stress. It registered a respectable 70 decibels, which is not too loud for anyone. You can definitely hear the fan, but it is not the Hoover-with-a-full-bag noise that I was expecting. When watching a film, you cannot notice it and while gaming I don’t notice anything but the action.

Battery.

Windows claims 6 hours in discrete mode, which is an enormous number considering the system is on “balanced”. I was able to get 6 hours with no problems when discrete graphics was on, and 4 hours in the high power mode. When playing games I got about 2.5 hours. Really good!

Real World Portability.

I cannot stress enough what a game changer this little monster really is. This is true potable gaming. In size, bulk and weight this bad boy is no better or worse than my Samsung and I carried that every day for a year on my journey around the world. I am very impressed in this respect. I slid the Alienware into my neoprene sleeve and went to work us usual. Brilliant. It raises no eyebrows on the train, and that is a bonus in such packed environs.

Wrapping up.

So, before reaching some sort of conclusion, there a number of bad things you need to consider:

For some bizarre reason SD cards stick out when in use. For those of us who would like a high speed card to sit in the machine to provide Readyboost, this is a real pain in the ass.

Also, the screen. While I am a fan of glossy screens for watching films, it is not a good idea for outside use. I mean, I know gamers will be in unlit basements mainly, but still!

Conclusion.

So, with those little niggles out of the way, let us consider this laptop:

It has amazing build quality.

It has stonkingly fast graphics.

It is a joy to write on.

It is fantastic to watch Blu Ray’s on.

It is great to create semi-pro films on.

It is small and truly portable.

It has outstanding battery life.

It doesn’t make you feel like a dork.

It gives a Macbook Pro a run for its money on the catwalk.

It is a dream of a laptop.

An incredible 9/10.

If you want a Dell Alienware M11x, I have a couple of link for you to follow. If you don’t want to buy a Dell Alienware M11x, then I also have a link…

… for a good Psychiatrist!

I have some Dell DEALS for you!
These are automatically updated by DELL to always give you the best deal.

(Please note our Recommendations & affiliates policy in the sidebar)

So, if you are interested in getting a Alienware M11x, please click one of the following:

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For most martial artists, being mugged in broad daylight is an unlikely occurrence. Fit, aware and confident looking people do not make inviting targets. However, in modern society criminals are more brazen than ever and how we react to such violence is the measure of us. We need to stay on the correct side of the law and control our reactions but, as the old-question asks, “is it better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6?”

There follows a true story of a situation that took place in the street, but equally could have been straight out of a dojo training session. It is interesting because it highlights many things: the dangers of being “switched off”, the speed of the trained man’s reactions, the attitude of the police and the judgement of others. It also highlights a part of conflict that is often missed and shows that in the end the most harsh judge is in fact yourself.

This story is true and happened in late 2009, I repeat it here as it was told to me with permission of the person involved.

Raymond was walking through his local town of Brixton, London. As he walked down a quiet street near the park, three large men approached him from the front. Raymond didn’t totally ignore them and walk straight into the situation, but he was not instantly aware of the danger either. They closed on him and formed a semicircle that blocked the street ahead. Raymond looked up to see the man in the middle pulled out what he later described as, “the biggest knife I have ever seen”. The knife came up threateningly and moved towards his midriff. It looked as though these guys were going to mug another helpless victim and escape into the park. However, this time they had made a huge mistake because Raymond is a professional martial arts instructor.

“As soon as I saw the knife, I just started moving. It was instinctive,” he told me. “It was like a sudden shock and my body took over, it was so fast.”

Indeed the entire episode was over seconds later. Raymond turned his body so the knife passed by his stomach. He then covered over the knife arm with his hands and slammed his hip against the man’s elbow. The move was textbook perfect and the knife man’s arm was dislocated instantly. The second man moved in to strike Raymond. Without letting go of the first man’s arm, Raymond kicked out with the classic downward sidekick to the knee. This missed its intended target and his heavy shoes crashed into the second man’s shins, braking through his leg with a sound Raymond described as, “a sickening crunch”. As the second man fell down, Raymond pulled the first man’s arm around and disarmed the knife by pushing it towards the man’s face making him let go of the blade that passed into Raymond’s hand. Another textbook technique, except as Raymond was describing this to me I saw a look on his face; a look of self-reproach.

“You moved the knife towards his face?” I asked.

“Yes, it was the technique,” he replied to me, “when it is taught in class, the end of the technique is to have the knife against the opponents neck. I have taught it for years; take the knife and use it against them.” He shook his head and looked down.

“And did you?”

“I was about to. My body was just doing the technique automatically and the blade was moving towards this guys neck. I realised that this was going to kill him. I screamed at myself inside my head, trying to stop the action from completing. I was like, ‘what the hell are you doing?!’ to myself. At the last moment I turned the blade away.”

As the blade moved in front of the first man’s face the last man moved in to grab Raymond’s hands.

“What did you do then?”

“I stepped forwards into him and struck the last guy with an upper rising elbow to the collarbone. It broke and he went down.”

“A stepping upper rising elbow?” I asked, “that’s a strange technique choice.”

“With the knife in my hand I didn’t want to stab him, it was just instinct,” shrugged Raymond.

With the three men disabled and rolling around on the floor in pain, Raymond did what any good citizen would do in these circumstances; he called them an ambulance. Then the police arrived and promptly arrested Raymond.

“They arrested you?”

“Yes, they spoke to a bystander who had been on the other side of the street and he said I had been excessive and over the top,” he said.

“Really, there was three of them. Did the bystander not see the knife?”

“No, I showed him it on the ground and he said that I had still been too violent. I couldn’t believe it, I was like, ‘can you not see the size of this thing?’”

Raymond was telling me this story the next day along with some friends. To them, it was exciting and macho. They replayed it again and again amongst themselves, shouting and whooping and saying how they would have dealt with the situation. The only person not smiling was Raymond.

“What do you think the police will do?” he asked me. Luckily, one of the friends present was an off-duty Metropolitan police officer.

“What did you say at the station?” the policeman friend asked.

“The truth. That they pulled that knife and I was defending myself. That they were coming for me and I was in fear of my life.”

“Don’t worry,” the policeman friend said, “you appear to have acted correctly. You waited and phoned the ambulance too that shows a lot. They will probably give you a medal.”

Raymond looked across to me, “what do you think Basho?”

“How long have you been teaching Raymond?” I asked him.

“18 years.”

“Mate, you will have hundreds of students willing to give you a character statement. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” said the policeman friend, “I will give you one too, just get them to call me. You have my number.”

“Yeah,” broke in one of our other friends, laughing, “and if you need one from a bricklayer, let me know!”

We all laughed, except Raymond. The others went back to describing the event to each other excitedly. Raymond remained quiet.

“Look,” I said, “I know how you feel. Guilty, right?”

“I was so close to killing him. Maybe I was excessive.” He sounded unsure of himself.

“Take your time,” I said, “you just need to work through this.”

Raymond’s reaction to the event was not unusual. Where one might expect him to be happy, elated and empowered by single headedly defeating three muggers, in fact he was badly shaken by it. The huge amount of danger he had been exposed to had put his mind into shock. What if he had lost the fight? Would he have been stabbed to death? These things were running through his mind again and again, playing over different outcomes, a mental state the French call, L’esprit de l’escalier” or in English, “the spirit of the staircase.” Such feelings are very common after a violent situation. At the moment Raymond saw the knife, and his reactions took over, his brain ordered his glands to dump all sorts of chemicals into the blood. These chemicals made him stronger, faster and narrowed his vision. It also made his blood coagulate quicker and his mind process faster so that the entire event seemed to be happening in slow motion.

One side effect of such a body reaction is the feeling of either terror or rage. The ‘beast’ inside is unleashed and takes over the body. For martial artists, this is channelled through our training. By the endless repetition of techniques, basics and kata we have conditioned ourselves to act in a certain way under pressure. The downside is trying to control that rage with ‘the beast unleashed’. Our civilised brains, the part of us that doesn’t want to hurt anyone, fights for control. For some, like Raymond, it succeeds. For others, the beast wins and tragedy happens; someone gets killed.

Regardless of the outcome, the chemicals burn the event into the memory and what Raymond was feeling was essentially survivors guilt. Guilt for having lived through a traumatic experience, prevailed against the odds and having almost killed in the defence of his life.

The part of British law that covers self-defence has been clearly written to take this mental state into account. The police arrested Raymond and made him make a statement very quickly after the event. At this point he was either still pumped full of adrenaline (making him more talkative) or coming down off the chemicals in his blood stream (making him feel down and possibly needing to “offload”). The police are trained to take advantage of this situation to get the truth out and down on paper. Therefore, your statement is the most important thing to get right. People acting in self-defence have still gone to prison because of what they put in their statement. Knowing not ‘what to say’, rather ‘how to say it’ is going to be the second ordeal you face on a day this happens to you. The law is available in clear and understandable terms at the following government web address: www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/self_defence/

The question of how to translate the mental part of combat into training is the primary challenge for instructors. Most doctrines teach that building muscle memory is the way to go, and it is often said that a thousand repetitions of a technique will embed it into instinct. While this appears to be true, there is a large question left outstanding; if we are not teaching people how to cope mentally, then are we teaching them to freeze up and fail at the vital moment. On the other hand, it is important to avoid fully automatic instant responses and end up battering someone honestly asking for directions. It is a balance that forms the hardest part of training and teaching. How many instructors inadvertently teach techniques that kill, sometimes tacked onto a disarming technique as an afterthought? Instructors spend all their lives teaching how to deal with the physical outcomes of conflict, but is it not equally important to understand and teach the mental aspects?

While objective answers to these questions may be impossible, it is surely vital that the class and the instructor considers the questions.

The next week I met up with Raymond again. He told me that he had re-visited the police station and been told that all three men were still in hospital. However, he was also told that the police were not going to press any charges against him. He looked most relieved. He was free of the event legally, I only hope that he is able to free his mind as well.

Basho has been in the martial arts for 18 years and holds a 1st Dan instructor grade in Taekwondo. He recently returned from a year touring the Far East and currently studies Goju Ryu Karate at DKK in London.

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Sandals.

I hadn’t worn shoes for 2 months. A new adult first, meaning that my feet were always dusty; the ever present Indian dirt and sand sticked to my toes. Every night I showered and a torrent of black washed off my feet. I turned onto my side and spied Cesca on the next sun lounger, she was taking in the sun by laying on her front, her bikini open at the back to allow a tan, but – since I had rubbed in some cream for her — no white line or burning. I reached to the table between us and took down my beer and my book. It was called The Master of Go, by Nobel Prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata.

Then my phone rang. It was my best friend Mark.

I thumbed the screen and the call connected, “Mark!” I exclaimed, genuinely please to hear from him, “It’s great to hear your voice. Where are you?” From over the connection I could hear what sounded like traffic and men talking; the sounds of London. The sounds of home.

“Heyya, I thought I would give you a call,” his voice was raised like he could not really hear me and was compensating by shouting; he must be at work on a building site, “I’m in a man hole at the moment sorting out foundations for a new tube station.”

“Wow,” I said, interested.

“Yeah, it’s for the Olympics and all that. Anyway, it’s cold, wet and horrible and I am down this smelly hole and I thought I could do with cheering up. Where are you?”

I could well imagine England in February and being stuck out in the legendary English wet winter could not be much fun. I looked at the majestic view around me. The beach stretched off to the right and ran into a high line of cliffs with chalets atop the jagged rocks. This had a path running down that ran right behind us giving access to the twenty or so beachfront guest houses. A sort of motley collection of flop houses that serviced the lower order of traveller and would only be reviewed in backpacker bibles such as the Lonely Planet. These ran past us to the left and on down the endless beach, which was also home to a couple of dozen bars of all levels of coolness, before rounding the headland in the hazy distance. The beach itself was dotted with people playing in the surf, lounging on beds like ours, doing yoga and drinking. Everyone looked like they were on a sort of the-morning-after-we-are-the-cool-kids vibe that only a night spent drinking, going to parties and getting laid can get you.

Sure enough, for a certain type of person Goa was a seductive paradise.

“Oh,” I said to Mark, who in my mind was struggling in the cold and wet down a big hole; traffic running all around, “I’m in Goa, India…”

“I see.”

“On the beach…”

“A-ha.”

“Drinking cool beer in the sunshine.

“Is it beautiful?”

“Most definitely. Wish you were mate,” I said honestly, “you would love it.”

“Thanks-“ he then shouted something to someone off the phone that ended in swearing, then he was back on, “Look. I have to go.”

“Sure. Hope the kids are well.”

“We are all looking forwards to you coming back. The lads too, we will all share a beer with you at Ground Zero.”

“Deal, can’t wait.”

“OK, bye!”

And then he was gone.

“Bye, buddy.” I suddenly realised that I was really missing him and the rest of my friends.

I looked at the sea again.

Like I said, a certain type of person would love Goa. Just not me.

A week previous we had left Ellora and headed back towards Mumbai, before jumping off at a junction in the middle of the night and catching the connecting train down into Goa.

Goa is split up into different parts. The area around Colva in the south is all family places. No drugs, no happy pizzas or topless girls and not much yoga. Then there is Manadrem, roughly in the middle, which is chock full of middle-class Indians. Then there is the wilder northern town of Arambol, which has been given over the travellers. Arambol is famous. Moon parties, drink, drugs and lots and lots of pizzas; happy and otherwise. We had started in the southern end as it was closer to the station and after buying a very expensive taxi ride had ended up in a family resort/guesthouse with beachfront  views. The idea was to chill out down here and then work our way back up to the north before heading inland towards Hampi and Mysore. It was good plan.

This guesthouse was fun, in a sensible sort of way, and the food was really nice. We chilled, read some books, had some fun and then made plans to find a good hotel for Valentine’s day.

Valentine’s day is big news in India, but not normally for the right reasons. The Indians have many customs that on the one hand might feel quite liberated and on the other are not. Public Displays of Affection (PDA’s), for example, are fine between men. That is between pals; what the British now call bro-mances. But, PDA’s are not fine between men and women. The highly sexed western valentine’s day, rubs Indians up the wrong way something chronic. Which is to say that it causes all sorts of tension and in India where there is tension, passion and public sexuality then there is violence. Goa is the worst flashpoint for this.

And it is all the westerners fault.

I am going to sound like a “granddad” now, so before I do let me say some things in my defence. I am a modern Londoner. I am confident sexually, comfortable with women and in every way a liberal minded person. This liberality has been the driving force that enabled me to find my religion of Daoism – that and my philosophy degree – and as such I am cool with people cutting loose. I can cut loose too and I like Mary J as much as the next Philosophy Graduate.

Right, so, as I said this is all the westerners fault.

There is a certain type of person looking for something in particular when they go travelling. Goa attracts these people like flies. Serious Ergophobics or, as Douglas Adams called them, “Fart Arounds”. They moved in around the late 70’s and never left. This influx has given rise to an entire enclosed culture that exists in the north of Goa. A culture that doesn’t exist anywhere else in India (that I saw). India is still a very closeted country when it comes to sex. White smooth-limbed western girls with their boobs out are a massive cocktease that the average gently-repressed Indian male finds hard to deal with. Goa is chock full of people that think two things. Firstly, that they can do what the hell they like and to hell with anyone else. Secondly, that India is the same as Thailand.

Believe me, it is not.

The only reason that the Indian government doesn’t roll out the riot police and throw the lot out, is that the tourists bring in a lot of money to a poor country. And that is the big thing for me. When I see westerners mistreating a culture and exploiting it through the power of their money I get angry in a little place inside. And if I feel it, the Indians definitely do. Those not too turned on to think straight.

While in Mumbai I read in a national newspaper about the “worry” regarding Valentine’s day in places such as Goa. That the licentiousness would cause flashes of violence.

It has done in the past.

It was reported that in 2007 a couple of European girls and their boyfriends had been beaten up outside a local bar where they had been drinking all day. The inference of the article was that the lady in question had been underdressed, was drunk and very abusive to the locals’ feelings. In India, you have to watch the public mood carefully. This event had shocked the west and been played down as local trouble, easily sorted, but I can almost guarantee that what happened was instigated by a locals reaction to their attire, their attitude, their rudeness, their drunkenness and probably all of the above.

We wanted none of that.

I never forgot that almost all the police in India have a sub-machine gun.

So we attempted to book a great hotel in the middle of Goa, used by the Indians themselves, so that we might avoid any unpleasantness. We did avoid it, but unfortunately we booked an absolute dive of a hotel that was extravagantly expensive and we hated every moment there that was not spent in our room. Take my advice, unless you want to spend your days eating bad food covered in flies with terrible service, high costs and a small beach then stay away from Mandrem.

After Valentine’s day we bit the bullet, caught a Taxi to the North, and got stuck in. The town of Arambol is basically three long roads leading down to the beach. Each road is absolutely lined with guest houses, bars and tourist shops all selling authentic crap to westerners and catering for the traveller crowd. Mile after mile of this leads finally to the beach and more bars and beach clubs before another spate of guesthouses. It was to one of these we made our way by trudging through the searing heat toward a large blue converted house inches away from another identical copy.

Our room was tiled like a bathroom and had whitewashed walls. Quite romantic in a down to earth kind of way. We unpacked our mosquito nets and made a bed tent to protect ourselves overnight.

We then went shopping and looking for beer and food.

As anyone who reads this blog must surely know, I am somewhat of a culture-vulture when on the road and, since Cesca does not partake of the magical herbs, this left me somewhat at a loss for something to do, until I managed to pull up some WIFI in a great cafe and get on with some writing, followed by browsing an excellent and well stocked second hand book store. Cesca was not in love with this idea. Indeed we only finally reached agreement when I put the laptop away and laid on the beach.

And melted.

On the flip side, the sea was great fun and we found a fantastic Italian restaurant just off the beach. It was near here that I saw my first Ahsram-Girl.

An ashram is a religious hermitage. Additionally, today the term ashram often denotes a locus of Indian cultural activity such as yoga, music study or religious instruction, the moral equivalent of a studio or dojo. WIKI

Ashram-Girl is a term I invented for the very white and thin western girls you occasionally see wandering around places in India. They are easy to spot as firstly, they are very thin after weeks/month/years spent in Ashrams. Secondly, they have that genuine beneficial smile of the believer in whatever it is the ashram teaches. Finally, they only wear Sari’s. I saw a number when I was in Goa and they all have something else about them too, they take your breath away. They are beautiful — In the way that only the content and happy can be. Radiant I guess you would call it. The first one I saw literally parted the crowd drawing bows, smiles, nudges and “wow” statements from all the male Indian shop keepers. She smiled like a painting of the Madonna and willowed her way to wherever she was going.

Whatever they are doing in those Ashrams, and some of them are all about sex to the point that you get a HIV test when you arrive, I don’t suppose they need to advertise. There are all sorts of legends regarding them, and all sorts of terrible tales as well. Abuse, rape, enforced drug taking, starvation and even death. There exists an entire trade in kidnapping these people back to their families and many Hollywood films on the subject too. I had known a true believer when I was in school (in her case a Christian) and while she wasn’t naturally beautiful, she was radiant in the same way that these girls were and I admit that it is a little scary. They look a little lost in another world. That they wear this one lightly. I could picture Cesca in such robes, lost to herself, her family, living a strange life in India, living some true spiritual life of yoga and I didn’t like the idea one bit, but I won’t deny that the part of her that would embrace that life is one of the many parts of her that I am attracted to.

Over the next few nights we partied, ate, drank, shopped and sat in the sun. I went through book after book from the shop until I came across one that would change my life.

The Tao of Pooh and Te of Piglet (Wisdom of Pooh) is not a real Daoism book. It is not exactly well thought of in terms of intellectual Daoist studies, nor is it in line for any sort of prize for accuracy, understanding or factualness. Nevertheless as a starting point for a long mental journey it was perfect. The book is about the Chinese Religious Philosophy of Daoism. Or more accurately, it is about the Westernised version of the Chinese Religious Philosophy of Daoism. The writers claim that Winnie the Pooh is Daoist. It is a such a strong idea that millions of people have read and instantly understood – or thought they have – Daoism without reading anything else about the religion. For most that is the first time they receive “knowledge outside the scriptures” and as such most come away with a self satisfied sense of having “got it”. They then get back on with their own lives and that’s that.

Daosim. Sorted.

For a few others this leads down a rabbit hole and after a very long journey, into wonderland. I will have much more to say on this subject in a later Philosophy post, but suffice to say, that while I have listened and read Alan Watts for many years by this point, only the talk of Zen had really interested me. His common reference to Daoism had not, at that point, stirred me. This book, about a fictional bear with very little brain and his identification with an ancient Chinese Philosophy was the first time I really considered it.

Eventually Cesca and I booked a train ticket from the nearby town of Panjim and caught a taxi out of Amabol. I was finally feeling relaxed, and little sun burned. The atmosphere of the place made it impossible not to chill out. We arrived in Panjim and booked into a guest house called Park Lane Lodge.

The owner was very eccentric, and the guesthouse was basically a room in his large house. It was the only place I stayed that had a curfew and the room was not particular well cooled, so we walked around and found an ATM.

Panjim has a very nice feel of colonial architecture and a Portuguese vibe to it.

It was a nice place to wander around before tucking into a meal of grilled fish at the towns top hotel.

Then we walked back to the guesthouse and I started to feel thirsty. Like I really needed a cup of tea. We got back and tucked into bed.

Then a hole opened up and I fell into hell.

The first thing that happened is that I need to use the facilities about half an hour after turning in. As I sat on the seat I suddenly felt wrong and threw up. Then both ends of me threw up for about 5 minutes. I had Indian food poisoning. Bad. Feeling that the worst was over I showered and managed to make it back to bed.

But, only for ten minutes.

My body was then wracked with pain in the stomach and I had a terrible thirst. I tried to sleep but every ten minutes I was forced to drag myself to the loo in agony. I drank and drank our reserves of water to no avail. I eventually had to wake Cesca to go and get some more water from the guest house owner, who thankfully was very helpful and kind. After a very long night I was feeling even worse. I couldn’t get up in the morning, I couldn’t really see anything, nor keep anything down. I was drifting in and out of a nightmare dream that I remember well, it was of a vampire/devil character biting me and smiling a toothed grin. The super strong sun was now on the room’s roof and heat started to radiate into it.

It is fair to say that I suffered that day. I had drunk 8 litres of water through the night and I was starting to worry.

Cesca went out and bought me all the cold drinks she could, electrolyte powder and cokes. These kept my sugars up and replaced all the minerals I was losing rapidly.

I then decided to pop an antibiotic. We had brought with us a small collection of Ciprofloxacin, which is a strong antibiotic used for serious gut infections.

Ciprofloxacin (INN) is a synthetic chemotherapeutic antibiotic of the fluoroquinolone drug class.It is a second generation fluoroquinolone antibacterial. It kills bacteria by interfering with the enzymes that cause DNA to rewind after being copied, which stops DNA and protein synthesis.  WIKI

I couldn’t read the instructions but I knew what was the dose as I had taken them in Cambodia. It was 500mg for gut infection and 700mg for tuberculosis!

Though that day I was delirious and didn’t know myself or Cesca. I can remember being locked in a short repeating dream that was coming and going like a wave and constantly repeating itself.

The next day I felt a little better, but I was as weak as a day old lamb. Cesca took me to the famous Panjim church and we tried to climb the steps, but I couldn’t.

I was so weak. After a hour climbing steps that should take less than a minute we went back to the guest house and I tried to eat something.

I couldn’t. My appetite was ruined.

I made a promise then and there. Next time someone gets that ill, we are booking into a top hotel and getting air-conditioning and room service. It sucks to be ill in an Indian Guest House. It is the worst possible location short of the middle of the Indian jungle. It wasn’t until the next day that I felt well enough to travel. We waved goodbye to the guesthouse owner and passed out of Panjim towards the train station.

We clambered aboard a train and I considered our time in Goa. Beach holidays and laying in the sun was not the reason I left home. However, having said that, I think Goa has almost everything that a beach holiday could offer. Goa has a massive massive range of accommodation and beach styles and you are sure to find something that suits you, just keep moving if it doesn’t. As for Panjim, well I had been purged by Panjim, it was a very nice looking place, but I can never forgive it for trying to kill me.

Now we were heading to the one of the most memorable parts of our trip to India, indeed the world. We were going to the countryside for a rest cure in a UNESCO village on the banks of the river Ganges.

The train stopped, we had arrived in Hampi.

Regards,

Basho

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  This is a cross post written by Basho, originally posted on www.rohantime.com Why this train? …

One of the unique things about India, and one that you never quite come to terms with, is the trains. I would even go as far as to say that if you could understand Indian trains, then you might well lay claim to being truly at home in India. For almost everything that there is to experience in this wild and beautiful country is capable of being experienced by rail.

You see all sorts of things just by walking into a station. They are often grand buildings left over from the British age of iron and function as hotel for thousands of homeless travelers of all types. They have some of the best and very worst toilets in the world, and for some over the edge of the platform is preferred. They are often smelly, frequently dirty and occasionally horrid. But, for every bad thing there exists a good to balance it out. Stations are packed with families playing together, sleeping and eating together. There is the bustle and fizz of people meeting, people departing from loved ones and people wishing they were on their way. The best bookshops I found in India were operated out of mobile stores. Almost anything you could want is for sale on these strips of concrete, and after hours on a train you will eat almost anything (no matter where it has been). They are amazing places, a sort of nexus point and a melting pot of cultures. The gaps between the high and low fade away on these platforms. They are to India what blackcabs are to London. Almost, but not quite, romantic.

People sleeping at a Station.

India has invested heavily in its trains, a trick they learned from the Victorians, and something we back home should consider carefully. Short of flying, trains remain the quintessential method of transport around India. The tracks are everywhere. All the major cities are linked, and most of the minor ones. In fact, we never struggled to find a train going anywhere we wanted to go, from the high tech city of Bengaluru (Bangalore) to the deep desert city of Jaisalmer.

We just struggled to get on one or two.

They are not slow either. For while a journey, say from Varanasi to Agra, takes place over one night, a simple look out of the window shows how the train is hammering out the miles at mind-meltingly fast speeds. It’s just the country is massive. Eventually, train transport became a welcome break for us. We would even plan our journey around it and use it as a “free nights’ accommodation”. For seeing into a heart of India, trains are your choice.

And choice there is, bewildering choice. At the last count, we travelled in a total of 6 classes (there exists 8!). All different, all special. At the top is the Air Conditioned 1st Class (AC1). This is luxury travel, with your own carriage, bed, attendant and lunch thrown in. Depending on the train, this can be seriously high end, or basically AC2 with a lockable door. Below that is the amazingly good AC Executive chair class (2CC), which was my favourite. This was only ever on non-overnight trains (few and far between) such as regular commuter routes. 2CC is almost identical to being on a plane. Included is good food, service, a very comfy chair and even power sockets. Next comes Air-conditioned 2-tier (AC2), which is the standard class for travellers. This class is a bed/chair in a 2 man bunk resplendent with freshly laundered bedding and AC in the cabin. This is the class most businessmen travel and is a good way of meeting people. Of course, you have to watch your luggage, but we simply tied ours into mesh caging. At night, you get a little curtain to pull across your booth of 4 beds. After this is Air-conditioned 3-tier (AC3). This is exactly the same as 2nd AC but with older beds (noticeably less comfy) and 6 beds to a booth stacked 3 high. The top one is quite a climb. This is the class full of Indian families and often you will have to share your seat (the bottom bunk) with all of them before 8pm, when you can get the other bunks down. This is a great class to meet people in; basically you have no choice. All of these classes are booked very simply online or at a station. In stations in large cities, there may be a special tourists counter that can usually get you late tickets that are marked as sold out. The very high end online system will sell you a ticket to a train that is fully booked, by putting you on a waiting list and you have to turn up and see where (and if) you are going to be placed. This always worked fine in practice and even when the waiting list is 15 long. The seating arrangements are always printed out about an hour before the train is due and is also attached to the door of the train itself. So, you can always check, before getting onto a carriage, that this is your train and which seat you have. We never had to stand in three months when we used this system the way it wants to be used, and as long as we had a print out of the booking we never had a problem with an inspector. All in all a well run service, better than the UK and far cheaper.

After the AC classes there comes Unreserved 2nd class. This is a lot more down market and nasty rows of vinyl seats in fan-cooled packed carriages await you. This is often way over subscribed and standing here is common. Some people even slept in the luggage racks. This is not a pleasant way to travel in any way. If you are new to the country, not acclimatised to the weather, have more than two-pennys to rub together or in any way used to luxury transport then this is not for you.

The lowest class, Unreserved 2nd class with wooden seats, is the service that India is famous for. It is a scrum. In this class, you are not only travelling in space, but in time as the carriages are ancient and rattle very loudly. This is the class the locals all pack themselves into, the tickets are – for a westerner – exceedingly cheap and there is nothing, nothing approaching seat reservation.

“But, so what?” you ask.

In the UK, hardly anyone actually books a seat. You simply turn up and sit down. Not so in India. Every now and then I would see some poor hapless looking westerner imagine that the same applies to Indian trains. You could always tell them immediately. They were pale white, and wearing clothing that marked them out as newbies. Unreserved wooden 2nd is filled by 2 person wooden seats. Or at least, I guess Unreserved wooden 2nd is 2 person wooden seats, I never actually managed to see one because it was always taken up with 6 people.  That’s right, 6. And they would also have had to fight for that space against the horde, the true horde of people needing to get that train. The crush was something similar to what you imagine on the Tokyo metro line. Just without the white-gloved “pusher” to cram you in. Add three more things into this mix. Firstly, no one in 3rd will speak much English if any. Secondly, some of the men will have been munching on the obligatory chewable tobacco all morning and may be high (one girl I know, got seriously groped by stoned men all the time in this class). Thirdly, your average traveller will have a large amount of luggage compared with the possible space to put it.

Now, some people profess to me that they travelled the whole of India in Unreserved 2nd class with wooden seats. That this is the only way to “truly” see the country. I respect that level of masochism and good luck to you. But some even say that you can’t call yourself a true traveller without doing it this way.

Those people are idiots.

You can’t see shit from inside those carriages. You will spend up to and over 9 hours standing, wedged in like Tetris pieces, with all your bags being eyed up for theft and your body up for grabs. And grabbed it will be, especially if you are a female from somewhere like Sweden, which makes you the most exotic thing many will have ever seen. If that sounds fun to you, if that sounds authentic, then frankly you are welcome to it.

I would sit at the station awaiting my train and watch these “whitey’s” clamber into these carriages. Yep, they are keeping-it-real alright, real dumb. India is not like it was only 10 years ago. The population increase is simply stratospheric, and this has changed the country. It is richer, more sure of itself and has invested in public transport. Clearly, in this day and age when India has invested so much money into better train carriages, it is only the insane who travel anywhere in Unreserved 2nd class with wooden seats.

“Which class?” the man behind the ticket counter asked me. I looked at Cesca, who was flicking through her Lonely Planet.

“Unreserved 2nd baby, get the cheapest with wooden seats. We must save money and really experience India.” She said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I want the real experience.”

“OK then,” I turned back to the bored looking man, “2nd class please.”

He eyed us levelly. Paused and then punched out two tickets.

“Platform 10.”

We went to find the platform. This was a challenge. Twenty minutes before we arrived at the Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus VT station and tried to make our way inside.

The station was really busy, and under a very high security alert status. But that was not the biggest problem. We had to make it by the touts first. I wonder if everyone in India has read Shantaram, or it is just that once you have you see potential characters everywhere. Today I kept seeing touts offering city guides. It didn’t matter that we were walking into the station rather than out, it was perhaps our look of apprehension, our newbie’ness, that marked us out from the hordes. One tout in particular was very good at his job and it took many minutes before we were able to disengage ourselves from him, in fact it was only by promising to come back and hire him for the day that we managed it at all. This didn’t fool him for a nano-second, but it worked.

We made it to the upstairs tourists-only counter and after much form filling in, waiting, judging options and other such mundane and not exciting parts of travelling we found our train. Indian train tracks have digital readouts embedded into the station ceiling along the platform that signify which carriage will stop where. It is a very helpfull system and necessary as the trains don’t stop for more than a few minutes and are exceedingly long.

Our train awaited us already and we walked endlessly along its length, around the many food stalls, right to the back. As we neared the last few carriages, I could see that the Unreserved 2nd class with wooden seats was already slammed full of people, we were never getting in there. Indeed we could not even get in the door. Cesca looked along the windows at the large collection of faces looking back, hanging out of the windows and also buying food stuff from the vendors walking up and down under the window with trays piled high with samosas, pakoras and water.

I started to despair a little when suddenly one of the ultra efficient train guards came up and asked if he could help. He took one look at our tickets, one look at us and upgraded us to vinyl seats

Cue an eight hour train journey that taxed me mightily. For while it was great fun to see all the Indians and have them stare at us and to have their children practice their very good English with us (cute) it was hot as a mo-fo and sticky as treacle.

On the way we called ahead to book our hotel (Hotel Panchavati). Elorra is accessed from a few places nearby, the main one being the small city of Aurangabad. We called a hotel and booked a double room. Cesca was reading in the Lonely Planet that the best tour guide in the area was a guy called Ashoka (Tours and Travels — a_p_kadam@yahoo.co.in — http://www.freewebs.com/ashokatourandtravels/index.htm). The LP waxed lyrical about this guy’s prowess and how he was a fair trader. We decided that perhaps we would try and find him the next day.

Eventually the monster train pulled into Aurangabad and we dismounted. Immediately a taxi driver tout started to talk us into taking a ride to the hotel. I remember being so worn out that I relented and in triumph he led us through the throng towards the exit. It was then that, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a sign with my name on.

It was being held by a smart looking tall Indian man.

“Hold on baby, look.” I said to Cesca.

“Oh!”

I regarded the man, “Hello there, I am James Bell,” I said pointing to the sign. He broke into a massively infectious grin.

“Hello sir, welcome. I am Ashoka your hotel pickup.”

“Ashoka?”

“Yes sir.”

“The hotel sent you?”

“Yes sir,” he beamed.

“But, I didn’t book you.”

“I pick up all their guests sir, for free sir.”

“I see,” I turned to our taxi driver tout, “Sorry old boy, we won’t be needing a taxi after all.”

The man, who had been watching the conversation with what looked like a rising sense of dread, said, “But, you are mine, you said-“

He was cut off by a rattle of smooth Indian coming from Ashoka and fell quiet. He then left us immediately.

“Dont worry about him sir,” said Ashoka. He picked up Cesca’s bag and led us forth.

“Smooth operator,” I whispered to Cesca. “I wonder if he is the real Ashoka from the LP?”

“Bound to be,” she whispered back.

“Perhaps it’s a badge and they all take turns. That would be a great idea, have a legendary tout name in the LP. Kind of like the ending of Spartacus. No, I am Ashoka.”

He led us to a very clean Tuk Tuk and whisked us off into the night. During the journey, he spoke to us of the Ellora tour options he could do for us. They were actually quite reasonable, for a small fee we would get a driver for the day who would take us there and back and drive us around the large site.

We arrived at our hotel and Ashoka parked up and helped us in. Of all the hotels I have stayed in on this continent, this was one I will remember gladly. It was nothing special in English terms, but the staff, their attitude and the quality of the room was excellent. So was the food as long as you stayed with the Indian options. In fact they went that extra mile for us that really makes a difference.

Of course, it turned out that he was the “real” Ashoka – at least for today. I liked him more and more over the days we knew him. He was a very cleaver businessman, open to the opportunities dealt to him by the passing traveller trade. His price to us was not very profitable, but I guess the word of mouth alone is worth any price to him. He deserves it. Truly the best tout I have ever dealt with.

The next day we headed out to Ellora, 30 km (19 mi) from the city of Aurangabad.

Ellora caves are on my list for one of the wonders of the world . Massive and very impressive cave temples have been carved out of the very living rock in one piece groups.

Ellora represents the epitome of Indian rock-cut architecture. The 34 “caves” – actually structures excavated out of the vertical face of the Charanandri hills – being Buddhist, Hindu and Jain rock cut temples and monasteries, were built between the 5th century and 10th century.

WIKI

Huge complicated rooms with multiple levels, statues, stairs, chambers and complex pathways have been hammered out by hand.

The sheer ambition of it is amazing to behold.

Kailash Temple(Kailashnath Temple)… represents the epitome of Indian rock-cut architecture. It is designed to recall Mount Kailash, the abode of Lord Shiva. While it exhibits typical Dravidian features, it was carved out of one single rock. It was built in the 8th century by the Rashtrakuta kingKrishna I.

The Kailash Temple is notable for its vertical excavation — carvers started at the top of the original rock, and excavated downward, exhuming the temple out of the existing rock. The traditional methods were rigidly followed by the master architect which could not have been achieved by excavating from the front. The architects found to design this temple were from the southern Pallavakingdom.

It is estimated that about 200,000 tons of rocks was scooped out over hundreds of years to construct this monolithic structure.From the chisel marks on walls of this temple, archeologists could conclude that three types of chisels were used to carve this temple.

WIKI

The temples all run oldest to youngest up the side of a large cliff.

At one end you have some of the oldest Buddhist temples in the world, then you have a collection of Hindu temples of increasing complexity and finally you have a Jian temple of great splendour.

All are easy to see and, for someone interested in any of these fascinating religions, a must see. If, however, you are not into temples and don’t know your Jain Vardhamana from your Buddha, it could be a little samey by the end. For those who tire: the main Hindu temple is stuffed to the gills with topless female goddess statues with enormous breasts.

It is also full of Indian tour groups who are generally very friendly and interested in meeting foreigners.

There are also rooms full of bats.

“Come look in here, baby,” I said, immediately recognising the smell of bat droppings (an easy way to work out a colony is nearby.

“What’s in there? It’s pitch black!”

I grinned, “Yeah, and smell that.”

“Bats?”

“Yep! Wanna’ take a look?”

“OK, but I am not too in love with bats, unlike you.”

It is true that I like bats. I find them cute, like mice or hamsters with wings. They are also very skilful and generally harmless. I slipped on my head torch, but left it turned off and stepped into the room. All around I could hear fluttering.

Cesca came in next to me.

“OK look up,” I said and turned the torch on. Thousands of bats looked down on us from a large collection of rooms linked by a huge hole in a ceiling. The room seemed to hold it breath, as the bats no doubt were trying to work out what we were.

“They are not moving,” Cesca whispered.

“Not yet,” I replied and then let out a large Karate Kiai scream.

That got them moving.

It was bit like that scene in Batman Begins where he falls down the well. All the bats tried to move away at once in a cacophony of high pitched squeaking. They flowed around us like water and all curled up and out of the hole in the ceiling.

It was very cool, but I am not sure Cesca agreed. We decided to leave the poor little things alone and headed on.

Half way through the day, the driver took us to a roadside cafe and I met a new friend; Indian Thali.

Photo Souce: Wiki

This magical meal is now a staple part of my diet. It is a simple and honest food, a gift to the world of cuisine that this country can be justifiably proud of. For while it is essentially a philosophy more than a special taste, it is a clever balance of flavours and food groups served on one plate with the large papad (popadum to the English). I loved it. All around us was Indian diners, families with children, working men stopping by and only us. I looked to Cesca and we shared a smile. It was the first time in India that we didn’t feel like tourists, that is we didn’t feel like we were on a tour. There is a lot of fuss written about travellers versus tourists, and for me the arguments miss the point. Of course we don’t belong in the countries we visit, we remain outsiders, but often a special effort is made, a bubble created that separates us from the local by virtue of things being just for tourists. Tourist events, locations, restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels, transport and sights. This bubble travels with you and prevents you from having a real time. You struggle to remove it, to step outside it, to just be in with the locals. Losing the special treatment is the goal of almost all travellers and it is that which distinguishes them from tourists. Manage it, if only a little bit or for a little while, and your year away, your holiday, will find meaning.

Mine did.

We hunted for that feeling again and again. It was a fine balancing act,  but I think – when it mattered – we got out of the bubble. I shall tell you where so that you may too.

Anyway, after an amazing day in Ellora we returned to the hotel and my darling Cesca came down with a massive headache from the heat. At dinner that night she decided to have something simple. Often, Indian restaurants do three types of food: English, Indian (or tourist Indian) and Chinese.

90% of the time, stick to the Indian.

Cesca’s stir-fry was probably made by someone who had only seen Chinese cuisine in a picture book. It was noodles, etc, as normal, but the sauce was identical to wallpaper paste. Cesca’s headache was not satisfied by it!

Our next day was taken up with visiting Daulatabad Fort, meaning “City of Prosperity”.

This huge Medieval structure was once the capital of India and was founded in the 11th century by the Yadavas. The move from Delhi was in response to the Muslim incursions into the country that would eventually smash all defences and give over India to the Mughals. It is also one of the homes of Sufism with a medieval saint having lived here. We wandered around here and took in the impressive defensive sights.

Definitely worth the effort.

The next day we left the hotel and, after having tipped Ashoka, we clambered back onto the train towards Mumbai. We were on a tight schedule to catch our connecting train to Goa. It was Valentines day in a few days and we wanted to be on the beaches.

Goa was going to be a big experience. But, like most of India, not in the way we expected.

Regards,

Basho

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The November terrorist attacks on Mumbai was something we had worried about before landing in the city, but to look at the place it was as though they had never happened. In any city with such a varied and ethnic population, it had probably not fully been disseminated. Sometimes, I have wondered about the quick dissemination of news. Does it actually help or hinder? Is, in a very real sense, ignorance bliss? In India, of course, they are as used to terrorism as any Londoner. Terror was in at the birth of this nation, it was in the separation from Pakistan, it never leaves. I think perhaps that they have become numb to it.

This is what I thought as I sat at the table. Leopold’s cafe is a travellers legend. Not least of all because of the famous gangster novel, supposedly mostly true, called “Shantaram”. In that book, which I read in two days (a sure sign that I didn’t enjoy it), the main character is taken here by a local guide and it is here that he meets his friends for the first time. In my mind, I imagined something grander. Something with a “old empire” feel, like some of the journalist bars we had visited in places such as Cambodia. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. It is a cafe like a greasy spoon.

Albeit one with machine gun marks on the walls.

Sure enough, the terrorists struck here too. I wondered if a lick of paint would cover the damage. We ordered standard traveller fair, burgers with chips, ate and then left. Shantaram is a unique book, a special book. It changed a friends life, it opened the minds of many people fascinated by India and Mumbai.

It is a fantasy.

The reality, as always, requires that you come see for yourself. The reality is, even by the standards of Shantaram, richer and more complex. And at the same time, tragically run down and heart breaking. Everything you would want to see, and much that you would not followed by things you simply wouldn’t, is all over Mumbai.

Cesca had a plan for the day. The plan was to visit the museum (which I was really looking forwards to) and then to visit Fab India clothing store (which I must admit that I was not looking forwards to). She smiled at me and reminded me that we were going out on the tiles tonight, so I could relax. As we left, and for those who have read Shantaram: I promise you this really happened, a man came up to me. He was dark and Indian, but clearly used to Westerners and spoke excellent English,

“Hello sir,” he said.

I pulled back slightly, “Hi there.”

“Excuse me sir, I am an agent for a film studio. May I ask you, would you like to be in a Bollywood movie? We will pay you 1000 rupees.” He smiled genuinely, clearly this was a deal that would sell itself.

A lot of things went through my mind. Firstly, my natural sense of danger wondered about being lure somewhere and then subjected to an attempted mugging, then I wondered about being able to tell people that I had been in a Bollywood movie, then I wondered about missing the museum, and then I remembered the bollywood films that I had seen in my life.

Bollywood films all have the same theme. It doesn’t matter what is going on in the rest of the movie, what the characters names are or the look is, it doesn’t even matter if the story is set in the past, present or future, they all follow the following template:

Firstly, there is a son. He is a good son, and his mother loves him. He is a little boisterous, perhaps too easy going and a little bit of a fool, but he has a big heart. He comes form a good family. Then there is a girl. She is the perfect women for this boy, she is kind, beautiful, sweet and tender. I would normally add that she could sing, but then so can everyone else in the film. The only problem is that she is from “The wrong side of the tracks” and thus their love cannot be for societal reasons. Love blossoms, but the parents try and stop the lovers. Then son gives her up because he loves his mum (This part is a reference to the Elephant God Gnesha – who never married as he couldn’t find a women to match his mum. Mind you his mum was a goddess, so…) Then in comes the villain. He fancies the girl and nominates her for his bride. He can do this because he is a man, but also he is rich and/or powerful. The son finds out, makes the choice and rescues her. He then stands up to his parents who seeing the love in his eyes, let him have his bride. Then everyone starts singing and dancing. A dance representing the cycle of life and love. Thus it is a story that touches all the potential audience, the mums love dutiful sons, the fathers love the bitter sweetness of children growing up and marrying, the girls love a romantic male lead, and the guys love sexy ladies in skimpy tops body-popping to big musical numbers.

And this is the only story in bollywood.

Sure they may play with the format, they may change around the actors, and the setting. An elephant is often involved, or other love rivals, but the story remains the classic template of a thousand movies. Suddenly, I realised that I knew my answer,

“No,” I told the man. “I have already seen this film.”

He was astonished, “bwaa? But, but sir, we will pay you 1000 rupees.”

I smiled at him. Obviously he has never had someone turn him down like this and also I guess he saw his commission disappear. I continued and said, “I really don’t want to miss the museum, sorry.”

The look on his face made it very clear that this was not, in his opinion, the sanest thing he had ever heard. Perhaps he had not met a history geek before. He was hovering in front of me, wondering what to say next, he had obviously chosen me based on two characteristics: firstly, I am a tall, white and British – in other words exotic to India. Secondly, I was coming out of the tourist hotspot of Leopold’s.

Unfortunately for him, I didn’t like Shantaram. I have had many books change my outlook on life, so I suppose it was up against stiff competition, but frankly it was terrible.

We walked around the area and around the Mumbai hotel that had been the target for the attacks. The terrorists choice of this hotel was obvious, it is right opposite the enormous Gateway to India. At the time, I wondered at the motives of the terrorists, but now I know better. We walked out of the area and caught a cab to the Museum.

The Mumbai museum is housed in one of those classic British buildings that we simply don’t make any more. It is huge and chunky, lined with pillars and exuding imperial power. It is wonderful. All over the world, I had come across such massive structures, so purposely built, so unique and immediately known they were the work of my countrymen. Why we no longer build like this I don’t know. Simply building a few of these would sort out the “who are we question” the British are asking themselves.

The grounds were littered with statues and Cesca and I wandered around for half an hour before buying an audio tour and proceeding inside.

Audio tours are a commonality in British museums back home. So, I am not easy to impress in this regard, but the audio tours in major Indian sites – all over the country – are of an excellence that is equal or better to anything I have ever heard.

I learned so much about India, about the past of this country – vital to knowing its soul – about the effect of the unifiers, the destroyers and the Gods that my understanding was blown wide open. Yes, it was that good.

After four hours of learning and wonder, we left for Fab India.

This bastion of Indian clothing is a firmly placed to serve the middle classes. It is very similar to many British institutions such as Hobbs or M&S. The place was heaving, full to the brim with sari’s and sari wearing women. Cesca immediately loved it. She rushed in, gasped in joy and started pulling out top after top of all colours and patterns.

With the sari its cut, its cloth and its colours are all vitally important. It relays a message to the viewer, a message in code.

Some colours mean that the women is a new bride, or a new mother. Some colours mean that she is a widow, some mean that she is available. Where the sari is from is equally important. Rich, modern fabrics are the order of the day, unless it is a special occasion. Most Indian women will have a collection of special sari’s that she has carefully sourced. These ones may even be quite plain, but they will be immediately noticed as special. They would come with a story, something about a “little village” and “traditional weaving”. All crafted to be worn when trying to be “ethnic” and “eco”. The lady will turn up in such a sari and her friends may say,

“Oh, what is that?”

Onto which she will pounce and be able to brush off the rare, special and authentic nature of the sari by saying the Indian equivalent of, “What this old thing?” before rattling off a story probably involving an old blind lady in a village in the mountains who is the final inheritant of ancient sari making techniques. Probably with a gauche wave of her hand, saying, “Oh, you simply must get one. When you have the means,” followed by a beneficent smile.

It is the Indian version of Habitat driftwood tables.

Into this bewildering world we dived. I tried on many different Indian male tops but, although some of them fitted me, I felt that I looked like a pirate and so passed on purchasing. Cesca, on the other hand, looked like a million dollars. So I bought her some tops and scarves for our dinner with Anaheeta and he husband that evening.

After all that shopping I needed a drink. The day before, Anaheeta had recommended a hotel bar over the other side of the city and we repaired to it. this part of the city has money, lots of money. In fact, the hotel turned out to be five star luxury. Immediately upon entering I knew this was a place out of our league financially. Cesca however, was suddenly feeling at home. She hugged my arm and, tidying myself up a little, we entered. We firstly had some drinks in the lobby bar — very good — and then entered the lift to the roof bar. It was open plan and had an incredible view of the sea.

We sat in peace for a good few hours, talking and making plans and holding hands as the sun dipped down. Above us buzzards tracked and dived for the pigeons and Cesca was soon snapping away at them with her camera. However, all this richness, this exalted position, was making me think about the gap between rich and poor that is very noticeable in India.

I felt I was on the wrong side of this gap. I suddenly felt privileged to have been born in my country and to my family, for while we were poor for British, we were very rich for India. And not just in money, opportunity as well. I sipped my drink, the cost of which would probably feed a family of 5 for a day in the slums, If not more. Around me, rich Indians and Westerners experienced India. I no not raise myself above them or look down at them from a moral high ground, I would only hope that these people, on their air-conditioned car tours, their 5-day Indian “adventures”, actually manage to peel some of the layers away from their eyes and see what is actually going on here beyond five-star. Over the next few months, we would meet many people who were unable to let India challenge them, who were only here to indulge themselves. We would also meet some, who despite their – in some cases immense – riches were on a spiritual journey to the heart of this country and through to the heart of themselves.

We left and walked the streets. All around me hundreds of people watched and walked too. The locals of Mumbai love the beach front as the sunset is amazing. As we crossed back towards our area of town, the bright lights dimmed, the shops became mom and pop stores and sidewalk stands. The clothes became dirtier and the streets piled high with burned litter and wild animals feeding in the gutters. Children pulled at my arms begging for food, for money, for anything. I have never been one to differentiate between so called high and low on the basis of finances. To me, it is all just life. I have little pride in that respect. But, Mumbai was the first city since San Francisco to make me examine that feeling. To look at it anew. Sure, life is life, whatever its circumstances, but I was to see things in India that would make me – if I had the power – start the world again. There is one particular vision I will never be able to remove form my mind. But, that experience was a month away and on the other side of this country. The children on the streets of Mumbai were here now and they followed us asking for money and, strangely, a “school pen”.

I don’t suppose that they have ever been to school.

We made it back to the hotel and got changed to go out. Cesca really did look amazing in her top with a large Indian scarf around her neck. We didn’t want Aneeta to realise the state of our room and so we waited in the street for her and her husband.

Soon they arrived and we jumped in their car. They took us to their club, built around the cricket ground, and we had a very nice dinner. They then took us for a drive around town and showed us the area from some of the vantage points. Then we went to Chapatti beach and tried Indian Kulfi Ice-cream, which was simply divine. They were really friendly, really nice and treated us with a warm welcome. I hope one day to be able to return the favour. The dynamic of the married relationship here is very different than in Britain, but we all made a good effort to get along and ignore it.

As we got back to the hotel that night, we made our plan for moving out of the city. We had another day to go (see the Gandhi entry a few before this one) and one more night, which I will talk about next time. Then, our adventure was going to begin for real, for we were heading into the wilds of India to visit the famous Elorra caves…

… by third class rail!

Regards,

Basho

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Dear all,

A couple of weeks, Cesca and I went to a very strange cafe. It was a cafe where not only do they serve food, but also ceramics!

The supplied ceramics were all unpainted and the task was to adorn the item before it was fired. Here is my attempt at a Coffee Cup, which I have given to my mum.

Before firing:

After firing:

Regards,

Basho

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In 2009 Cesca and I visited the amazing slopes of Wudang Mountain. The mountain is located roughly in northwestern part of Hubei Province of China.  This peak is part of the larger Wudang Shan mountain range that runs through the area, but it is this particular peak that is the most famous. This is due to its very long and interesting history. The mountain is littered with Daoist temples and monasteries, including the famous Golden Hall, Nanyan Temple and the Purple Cloud Temple. The history of the area goes back over 2000 years, but it is the period of the Ming Dynasty (1388 — 1644 CE) that had the greatest impact.

During this time, the Mongol led precursors to the Ming had collapsed and China was about to enter its most fascinating historical age. It was an age of intellectual flowering, towering social and political achievements and immense scientific progress. During all of this, Chinese Daoism was again forming into something new. The almost shamanistic practices of external alchemy were giving ground to a new practice of internal alchemy. Internal alchemy was the search for “immortality” through the development of magic powers inside oneself. This is a syncretic idea heavily influenced by both Confucianism and indeed the movements of Buddhism, which after all is all about internal realisations, forming ideas that are readily recognisable for their influence on the west.

I am talking about internal kung fu.

One of the leading thinkers of Daoism at the time was the legendary Chang San-Feng, who wandered up Mount Wudang and made it the base of his Daoist sect. Legend has it that, in one of the temples up the mountain, he formed his magical exercises into Tai Chi after watching a snake and bird fighting. After the Yongle Emperor decreed Wudang to be “The Grand Mountain” its place in history was assured. Fast foward in time and the monasteries and buildings were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The palaces and temples in Wudang contain Taoist art and icons from as early as the 7th century. It represents the highest standards of Chinese art and architecture over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

Of course, the true nature of Daoist history is as slippery as the core texts. I will have more to say about the veracity of this “history” later.

So what is it like to visit? Walking the 20,000 steps (!) up the mountain is one of the most spiritual things I have ever done, but not perhaps in the way that you might imagine. We came to Wudang half way through our journey in China and before our journey into Japan. Since we were basically on a spiritual journey around the world in general, and Buddhist journey in particular, the effect of Wudang took a long time to settle into my bones. However, my muscles ached like hell the very next day! Also, this was still China in 2009 and Daoism is a very strange and illusive beast to get a grasp on. So what the hell happened? This is something I will have to go into far more depth about at a later time, but essentially the contrast between this strange and very foreign way of life gave me the space to consider my own thrown into sharp relief. When you meet people and visit places that are so different to your experiences and your life, then you have two choices. You scoff. Or you stop and think. Mount Wudang is one of the best places I have ever visited for making time to stop and think. To, in fact, go beyond thinking and be able to sublime the nature of your existence. It is a fair thing to say that I walked down Wudang a different person than when I walked up, but that I didn’t realise it until much later.

So, here is the (small) film about that day. I hope that I managed to, at least a little, capture some of the feeling of the place and time.

Vimeo version:

Wudang Mountain, the Heart of China from Basho Matsuo on Vimeo.

You Tube version:

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As with my first article expounding my political thoughts, philosophical views and religious methods, a reader has kindly taken the time to compose a question and view point long enough to require 3000 words to answer!

The question is this:

Here we go!

Dear Mr Owl,

Firstly, don’t worry about using a nom de plume, just be careful you don’t end up as I; for sometimes it seems like more people now know me as Basho than as not. In fact, I have real life friends who don’t actually know my given name! After realising this was happening, I concluded that I actually quite liked it.

I now don’t know if I am Basho dreaming I am being James or James dreaming he is Basho.

After all, Basho is a “silly name” that sounds great in English, but, and I always keep this in mind, means “Banana Plant” in Japanese. A good and funny name for a Daoist!

Anyway, thanks, once again, for lending your obviously well thought out comments to this article and its conclusions.

I think my original point was covered in the term, “Temporary” Insanity and that being no good defence, but I too have been thinking about it, and it deserves a larger answer. Your answer shows you know something of legal moral logic, the kind of logic that my first article came out against; was that what prompted you to reply? Nevertheless, I think I can clearly say something about what I mean now.

In my ideal society, a sort of Basho’s Republic I have started to call, ‘new society’, life is lived according to a new set of values. What are these? I suppose the nearest Western approximation, and no Western idea covers half of it, would be either Anarchism or Anarcho-Syndicalism.

I say it doesn’t cover the half of it,and that is mainly because in the west we deconstruct everything.

We can’t help it I suppose. It is the nature of our science that before we can believe something we must explain it in scientific terms. That is we must measure it, for all science is about finding out ways of measuring things. Then we use those measurements to build conceptual frameworks from which future judgements, predictions, can be made. This is a very successful method of doing things in terms of building cars, computers and space stations. But, it leaves a whole aspect, a important aspect, of human nature outside in the cold. In the largest of the societies arranged this way, such as the US, they have married their science, which they all know is not the whole deal, with religion. Here in the UK, we used to have a sense of the “English condition.” It was formed by many things, such as: cricket, football, beer, Jane Austin novels and the second biggest empire of all time. It gave us our sense of spiritual identity. Recently that has been replaced, or at least degraded, and the English identity is now some sort of uber-selfishness fostered by uncapped capitalism.

That aside, one other growth from this attitude of “frameworks” is the legal code. Now, everyone knows that no western legal code is “perfect,” but we rarely ask why. It is like an itch we can’t properly scratch, but it is still there, just out of reach of our understanding. Despite this we hold our laws near and dear. Indeed, we scoff at legal codes other than our own. For example, the US legal code is the victim in many crime dramas, the very idea of the Sharia legal code of the Taliban and other extremist Muslims is abhorrent to many. I don’t know why, since I think very few actually know what it comprises of, I suppose it is the simple foreignness, the difference between it and ours. I expect that if I was to propose we ran the country by the Law Code of King Hammurabi, then my mother (often the example I pull out of the hat when it comes to a certain Pro-British view point) would dismiss it out of hand, possibly with anger. Not that she knows what it is; simply that she hates any foreign influence and fears the further loss of her “national identity.” However, when watching the news of the two boys who tortured another boy because they were bored (something that highlights my last post’s point horribly well), then she is the first to call for them to suffer in the same way. This is “an eye for an eye,” the idea of which was fist invented by an Egyptian king called Hammurabi.

The point is that much of what we take for granted as the legal inventions of our society, which is of course a society of well thought out and well intentioned laws, is actually a hangover from the ancient times. Much fun is made of the supposed common law that Welsh people can be shot by a long bow if they are on London Bridge, or the legal right of those in receipt of a “Key to the City of London” to drive their sheep about the centre of town. These common laws make up much of the fabric that our edifice of legal code is built upon, and some of them are ancient in the extreme. They come from a time when what was right and wrong was not dependant of a legal framework. People didn’t need to be told, they knew.

While that may sound romantic, and even perhaps a sort of primitivism, I would posit that actually nothing has changed. The reason that we “know” the legal system is not perfect is because we know right and wrong naturally to some extent. If we listen to ourselves, then we can touch it inside. The legal code of our country is an attempt to give that feeling an expression. Where the code differs from the feeling, is where the knowledge of the imperfection of the legal code comes from.

Where there is a large and intractable problem is the dehumanising nature of such a legal code. It reduces people to concepts; neat boxes that we stack like crates in a warehouse.

So, while I don’t want to attack your position too much in this (we are dancing around each other quite well), I am going to point out a few things. You wish to council me from suggesting a framework that would lead to potential disastrous societal judging, and that is a commendable kindness, however, after this you do the very same thing yourself. You warn of moving to a point where any “deviation from popular and societal norms may be considered unacceptable” and yet the “permanently insane” are to be kept in imprisonment to prevent them from “harming others.”

Is that not the same thing? For what is it to be “permanently” insane unless it also includes a serious deviation from societal norms. It must be so, or you would not be able to judge it as such. It seems that it is ok to judge someone as an outcast of sorts, as long as it is done in a legal framework that “protects society.” Laws like this are less and less about justice, and I men justice in the pure sense that Hammurabi advocated. Laws, as you express them, are to do with protecting society. What I think you mean is the structure of society; the fabric of our public will. These insane people are outside of that structure, a threat to it, and thus must be kept locked up lest they run amok in public, pulling down society’s sense of self and crossing norm boundaries at will.

How terrible these insane people must be to deserve such treatment?

Moral majority you call this. Really, it is a majority that doesn’t want to see things they don’t want to see. Who don’t want to deal with the insane, only protect themselves from them? Indeed, no doubt, once judged insane they are no longer people at all.

In fact the only time you do deal with them is when you have temporarily medicated them to normality. Then you are willing to try them in court. I don’t suppose in that case that they could have been “permanently” insane could they? More a sort of, “un-medicatedly-insane.”

I would suggest that the term “insane” is supposed to be a medical one, but that it currently isn’t. It is a legal one. Once legally “insane”, a person is stripped of their freedom and controlled. This is not because they have done something, but rather that they might.

Indeed, they might. Then again they might not. There is not exactly a shortage of “non insane” people doing “bad” things is there?

What I would advocate is simple: Insanity is removed from the legal books.

Insanity has nothing to do with a defence or a charge of killing. Again, we are talking about killing, as this is at least the clearest cut of the examples. Those who are medically judged to be permanently insane, such the elderly with extreme dementia (the horror of all horrors and a good example as they are sometimes very violent) actually make up a few small percentile of those who are “mentally challenged,” as New Labour would say. I know a person who has spent time in a mental institute and apart from her being amazing at poker, due to her ability to bluff out anyone because she unpredictable, I don’t think her problems, treatment and ability to stand trial for something is in any way diminished or indeed even similar to the elderly dementia sufferer. She represents the middle end of that spectrum.

At the shallow-end of this crazy pool is the rest of us?

Are you sure? For, I think we all go a little insane in our lives at some point, as Ferris Bueller said, “Sooner or later we all go to the zoo.” If that is the case, where is this line to be drawn for an excuse for ones actions?

Take my friend; if she went back into a home, escaped and killed someone (say with her car), she would be able to claim that she is absolved from the act due to her “temporary insanity.” Should she be so absolved? I don’t think so.

In fact, people should not be judged on what they thought what mind they had and what angered them (consider the ridiculous Twinkie Defence). They should only be judged on what they have done. The action speaks loud and clear. The reason that insanity and such like are currently the focus is due to intention. We differentiate between killing (manslaughter?) and murder. The Insanity plea is an attempt to present a case that the defendant is not guilty of murder or attempted murder because he was “temporarily insane” and thus “did not have murder in his heart.”

Indeed a case I know personally comes very close to this. Many years ago, Cesca and I witnessed an attempted murder. We went to court to give evidence for the prosecution and sure enough, the defence claimed that the defendants “went a little too far” and “didn’t want to kill the victim.” They “lost control” and “were not responsible for their actions.” So what? Believe me, I could clearly see they went too far as they stabbed the victim 50 times in 30 seconds. Should they be able to use this as an excuse the fact that they went “too extreme”? Is it that the more extreme the crime, the less the responsibility for it?

How to judge a person’s intentions is such a maze that it is almost certainly a folly. To try to do so is to miss the essential nature of what it is that they have actually done. By focussing on that actual act rather than the intention of the actee, we come to a place where insanity is irrelevant. You stand and fall on your actions. It is fair, balanced and blind all the things the legal code should be. Therefore, I present the idea that intentions should not be so important when judging an action. The reason this is a change is that at the moment a court judges the public safety and the intentions as the vital thing. Guilty is the verdict, “You are guilty” is the format.

Slightly silly really, as most criminals do not feel “guilt.”

Quite the opposite. Killing in the form we know as murder is often an “elated experience.” A good book I really recommend in order to get inside the head of a violent career criminal is the self defence tome, “Dead or Alive” by Geoff Thompson, who interviews a horde of muggers serving time.

However, how to judge right and wrong without intention? The only real objection to this idea that I can think of is the problem of accidental actions. That an action was accidental should be, to my mind, the only defence under the law. Not only that, but we should not be so ready to put people into boxes. That is reducing them to the status of things, concepts to be moved around and stacked. Insanity is such a large and intractable grey area that it is a very slippery slope for abuse. I advocate a freer society.

But, what of the risks? You may ask, what about letting dangerous potential killers run lose?

Last week, a boy went into his school with a science project. The security guards spotted the project in the boy’s bag during a random inspection and set off the terrorist alarm. They closed the school, called the parents of all the children, alerted the FBI, Homeland, and the Press. This boy was dragged through hours of hassle. When they realised that the boy had done nothing wrong, they demanded he apologise for the trouble he had apparently caused. When he said, the innocent have nothing to apologise for, the school then demanded he go to “counselling,” to bring his abhorrent, and outside the norm, behaviour back into line.

When stupid things like this happen in a country, I do not think my ideas are the things that generate fear. However, none the less, the answer to the questions above is the same in both the case of me and the boy.

Society’s structure is to blame here. In the case of the boy, the stupid law that children can have access to firearms, leads to a “fear overload” A knee jerk reaction that only makes sense in the terms of the framework in play. Similarly fearing “crazy” people is a result of the society we live in. We have bred insane people who are violent. Of course, a small percentage would be regardless, but our society encourages such comfortable numbness in its people. Take those two boys mentioned in the first example who tortured a boy in England. Their reason was?

“We was bored”

The sorts of punishments these two deserve are not the point. The sort of punishments the country deserves is. I am saying that in a new society, that does not raise such psychotic shitheads as those two, we wouldn’t need to be so afraid. We need a spiritual revolution, a liberal revolution and a total countrywide project to learn to relax.

We need to learn that science is not the be all and end all. Nor is religion. Some sort of sense of spiritual upbringing, a new deal with the citizenship and a new justice system is just the start, but it is a long way to making this life and this country know itself again.

And justice be real.

Regards,

Basho

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I flipped out my phone and called the hotel. We were waiting outside the Mumbai airport, it was late, dark and the pickup area was badly lit by the low lightbulbs common all over the country. There was a long line of waiting taxi drivers all holding placards, but none with my name on. They stood all silent, like the crowd in a Greek tragedy, watching our every move. As if, suddenly, we were about to remember who we really were and claim the name on one of their boards.

The phone connected and rang.

“Hello?” Came a voice, its strong India accent being the very first I had heard since landing.

“Hello, there. Basho here, I booked a pickup. Tell me, has our driver arrived at the airport?”

“Yes, he is there,” assured the voice.

“Great,” I looked around at the horde of drivers. “Whereabouts? I can’t see him.”

“15 minutes he will get there, he’s leaving now.”

15 minutes? I asked myself, “You said he was already here. Is he here?”

“Yes. He is there.”

“Where?”

“15 minutes, he will leave in a moment.”

I was beginning to get confused. “Leave? The hotel? But, is here actually here or not?”

“Yes, he is there.”

I must admit that a little incredulity crept into my voice, “So, you say he is here already, but he hasn’t left yet and will be here in 15 minutes?”

“Yes I call him and tell him to leave to come pick you up.”

“Thank you,” I said and I hung up.

Cesca came up to me, saw the confusion in my face and said, “Where is the driver?”

“He has yet to collapse as a waveform. He is both right here and yet also 15 minutes away.”

She furrowed her brow, Quantum jokes being lost on her, “What?”

“He has not yet achieved a Quantum state of 1.”

“Look, I’m tired, please make sense.”

I handed her the phone, “You will have to open this box yourself to collapse the waveform.” She took it and dialled, watching me like I was a crazy person who might explode at any moment.

“Hello,” she said into the phone, “Cesca Bell here, I booked a pickup to the hotel, is he here?”

I turned away and went to find buy a drink of water, behind me I could hear Cesca continue.

“What do you mean 15 minutes, you just said that he was here!”

Welcome to India, I thought.

And sure enough this was our first hour in India. At the time I couldn’t grasp something that later, after a month travelling, I took for granted: Indians hate to say “no”.

Hate it.

When presented with a question with a yes and no answer, Indian people will always say “yes”. Always. Quite how a country like this is going into space is beyond my understanding…

“Hello home base, this is Astronaut Choksi.”

“Reading you loud and clear Choksi, this is home base. Please advise your position, have you reached the moon yet?”

“Yes, home base.”

“Great, prep for landing.”

“15 minutes, home base.”

“Now listen here, stop playing silly buggers…”

Stranger still is the fact that after a while this behaviour starts to make sense; after you have lived amongst the locals you eventually get it. There is something about saying “no,” something about letting the person down with that word. Therefore, they simply never say it. As a visitor, you need to ask an indirect question to get anywhere with local people. So, “Is this the right way to the shops?” will always received the answer, “yes,” even if it clearly isn’t. You have to actually ask, “What is the way to the shops?” I have been in situations where I asked the first question and was told the requisite “yes” only to have the person grab my arm and steer me in the correct direction, and not the one he recommended. Sometimes, if the person likes you or is trying to be polite, they will use a little hand wiggle alongside their answer, a sort of raise of the arm to face height and a twisting motion; like they are trying to screw in a light bulb. Any time you see this, then the inference is that you should ignore everything coming out of their mouth. “Yes,” they are saying, “this IS the way to the shops… to a given value of ‘is’”

For a person from a country with very little left in the way of social values and customs. That is values in common to all, to come to country with so many can be quite a confusing experience. We coined a phrase to cover this feeling. When one of us was exasperated with an Indian custom, the other would try and defuse the situation by whispering, “TII” into their ear. TII means, “This Is India,” and it soon became a mantra for us on our whole journey through this massive country and its amazingly complex social customs.

I returned to Cesca and gave her a drink of water. Water is cheap here and the most plentiful thing to drink. There are literally hundreds of bottled-water companies, because the tap water is very unsafe to drink. We later met the American CEO of one such company. The cooling water was my first taste of the filtration levels common here. It has a slight tang quite unlike anything in the UK. There are bottled waters by such companies as Coke, Pepsi and even Kingfisher, but they all tasted the same. I didn’t care, as long as they were cold, and they were. She took the bottle and drank a deep draught.

“Well?” I asked.

She fixed me with an eye and simply handed my phone back. Eventually, after about 15 minutes, the driver arrived. We clambered into the taxi and it sped off into the night. Off into India. Into the heart of Mumbai. The roads winded through the city and I craned to see the buildings pass. I don’t know quite what I expected, but just saw thousands of people running shops by lamp light, hundreds of run down roads with buildings mixed in and large over-sized modern infrastructure that clash with all of it. It looked a mess. I remember being very nervous, but I can’t even now understand why. We sped through the night for quite a while before pulling into a parking space on the side of the road by a large flyover. To one side of this wide and busy road was our hotel.

We were glad to have made it.

The hotel was old and had much in common with other traveller hotels in India. The staff was brisk and unfriendly, seeming to be the members of a family, or at least a common people running the place. The cost was (in Indian terms) astronomical, but as this was our first night, we put up with it. They showed us into a very old and dangerous looking lift and up to our room. At first, I thought they had perhaps brought us to the broom cupboard, but no this tiny space was our “Two-bed Deluxe” room. Terrible. We were left and Cesca opened the window; it opened into the shared toilets so she closed it again. We sighed to each other and sat on the two ridiculous single beds that were for some reason end to end. I stood up to take off my top and immediately and painfully caught my hand on the ceiling fan. Crouching, I got undressed and prepared for bed. Cesca tried the TV, it was stuck on the “God Channel” showing the “Hour of Power” American evangelical broadcast. It was like the previous occupants were trying to send us a message, one I completely understood. I had only been in this room for ten minutes and already I felt like asking the Almighty for deliverance. I was feeling very tired and needed to sleep before even thinking about trying to see this city and get some idea of it. Cesca pulled out her silk sheet from her bag and froze as she unfolded it. Sitting atop it, clearly contrasted with the yellow of the sheet, was a bedbug. There was a moment of sheer frozen horror. Then Cesca killed it. This find necessitated the total emptying of her bag followed by a painful inch-by-inch check for further bedbugs. Only when fully satisfied that there were no more in her bag, did I lay back on my pillow. It was full of straw and about a comfortable as a house brick.

TII, I thought. This Is India. What have we let ourselves in for?

The next morning, it became clear.

After waking, I ventured into the shower. It was in the same room as the toilet. Well, I say toilet, because all it really comprised of was a hole in the ground with a dodgy showerhead above it. I washed, shaved and told myself that I was semi-used to this already (steeled by our months in SEA) and I had better just get on with it. Sure enough after a month I no longer missed a British bathroom. When we were both ready we went looking for food. The hotel staff recommended the place next door. It looked like a staff canteen open to the street, but we went and sat down anyway. The locals eyed us sourly. I wondered if this was our relative whiteness, but after a moment I realised that it was because Cesca was the only women in the joint. Seemingly, again, we had come up against a local custom and blundered right into it. Obviously, this was a male eating-place. Cesca was getting the sort of look a women might get in England if she went to a sports centre, entered the wrong changing room and got changed in front of a room full of men. We ordered toast. It was the only thing on the menu I had a clue what it might look like. It came quick, so we ate, paid and left.

Back in the street, we walked towards the city proper. We were clearly staying in an area that wasn’t actually the normal tourist part, but then this suited us mightily. I hate feeling like a tourist and, while tourist I am, I like to “muck in” and get local.

Over the coming months we would test that idea to extremes.

For now we had a short mission. At least, if should have been a short mission. We were going to pick up the Lonely Planet India that Cesca’s mother had posted to Mumbai for her to collect. Post Restante. It is an old word, but then this was an old city. The city sprawled out as we walked down the street packed with the unusual taxi’s they have here; an model from the stone-age.  It is a miracle that they still run, but they hang to them the way a Londoner would a black cab.

Crossing roads is another challenge. Cesca almost died on the first attempt. No joke. Only my pulling her back saved her from a Police Car running her down. It wasn’t her fault; the light was on red for stop, but in this city it was more of a recommendation than a commandment and doubly so to a Police Car. After my heart recovered, we found the post office. It was huge and ancient building, the sort of which would have been converted into either flats or chain-pubs in London. It had a wonderful and humbling frontage that reminded me of the old British Museum. Inside we found chaos. Hundreds of people queued for what seemed like over a dozen counters. Behind these a platoon of people wheeled large baskets, full to bursting with post, to and fro. It was like stepping back in time or watching an old movie. We tried to work out which of the counters we needed to find the post restante section, but it was hopeless. We tried to garner some help, but nobody either understood us, knew what the hell we were on about or both. Eventually, we realised we were in the wrong building. After coming out we rounded the corner and found another enormous building behind that post office. It was a maze of complicated rooms similar to a major English hospital. After wandering place to place, we found an office. Inside a couple of people listened, nodded and reached into a filing cabinet and pulled out Cesca’s package.

The whole thing had taken over two hours and couple of chewed fingernails.

Now, armed with the Lonely Planet; indispensible for its map if nothing else, we were free to explore the city.

“TII Baby” I said to Cesca and we set off with a purpose.

“I am hungry again, how about we go visit Landor (Cesca’s old employer) Mumbai and see if we can have lunch with my friends Lulu and Anaheeta?”

“Great idea.”

Half an hour and a few phone calls later we were in the north of the city on the roof of the Landor building. Lulu and Anaheeta are two ex London employees of Landor that Cesca knew well. We had arrived in their office and, after a short conversation and catch up, they invited us to lunch with them in their alfresco canteen on the roof.

The sun was high and we sought the shade of some tables with umbrellas and tucked into the amazing food. We dicussed our plans for travelling around India, and I got the idea of asking something,

“Can you teach me some local phrases?”

They both looked at each other, “How do you mean?” asked Lulu.

“Well,” I smiled, “we like to blend in a little more than most travellers, and so we have always learned basic phrases like ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’ wherever we go. It helps break the ice.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Oh…” I replied, unsure.

“No one outside the city would understand you.”

“Er, why?”

“Oh, how to explain,” Lulu began looking to Anaheeta for help.

“Try this, do you have an Indian note?” ask Anaheeta.

“Sure,” I said and pulled a 50 Rupies note from my wallet.

“Take a look at it.”

The notes in India are similar to those in England, which is not suprising given the heritage England has here. I took a look at it. The first thing that struck me was the picture of Gandhi on the front. Indeed, he is on the front of all Indian notes. No wonder, he is one of the most important and influential Indians that has ever lived. Perhaps, second in the all time stakes. Behind the Buddha, of course.

“See the lines of small text on the left?” Anaheeta asked.

“Yep,” I squinted to read the approximately 15 lines of small text stacked neatly on the left of the note.

“They are written, one line each, in the official languages of India.”

“Amazing, what do they say?”

“Each one is just the value of the note.”

“So, they print this for all the local dialects?”

“I don’t think you understand, you may call these local dialects, but they are all spoken by millions of people. Remember that there is over a billion people in India. It is a huge place. You need to realise that it has four times the number of people than even in the US.”

“Blimey.”

“Each state of India speaks a different dialect and won’t understand a dialect from the North. Your plan is to head south, you won’t be understood speaking the language of Mumbai.”

Suddenly, this sounded a lot harder than I expected. “OK, so, how should we make ourselves understood in these places?”

“It’s simple,” said Lulu, “The common thread between the various states is not an Indian dialect. It is English.”

“Yes,” continued Anaheeta, “If someone from Karnataka (the state in which Mumbai resides) wants to speak to someone from Kerala (in the far south) they speak English.”

Cesca smiled, “Cool!”

After the meal Lulu and Anaheeta had to get back to work. However, Anaheeta had an offer for us.

“My husband and I would like to take you for dinner,” she said.

Cesca was very happy, “Great! We would love to.”

So, it was set for the next evening.

“Where are you off to now,” Anaheeta asked.

“We are heading down to the museum areas.”

“If you want to try on Indian clothes, you should go to a store I know near there called FabIndia, it will be perfect for you if you want to dress like an Indian.”

“Perfect!” Cesca said brightly.

“Thank you Anaheeta,” I said, “we will see you tomorrow.”

I was glad when we left Landor; I had seen Cesca eyeing up the office. I wondered how she felt leaving all this, her old life. The office, the coffee’s, the work friends, the functional creativity on demand, the stress, the being passed over, the being made ill and the long recovery back to health.

“What do think about Landor now? Would you go back?” I asked as we walked hand in hand. I tried my best to keep my deep wishing for a certain answer out of my voice.

She turned and smiled up at me, “No baby, I’m free. I’m never going back.”

I smiled back, Cesca was truly cured.

And free we were.

Coming up: We visit the famous Leopolds cafe from the novel Shantaram (just recovered from its terrorist gunning), watch the Bollywood Super-film Slumdog Millionaire with the Mumbai locals, eat and drink in the city’s top hotel, try the best Kofi Ice-cream in the world and Basho gets offered a part in a Bollywood movie! All to come in the next week. Stay tuned.

Regards,

Basho

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