Orchha 27th April 2006

I met up with the chef and his friend this morning and we went for a swim in the river (Betwa), well he had a swim, a wash and cleaned his clothes at the same time; I had a paddle as although the river is meant to be the cleanest in India, it looked a bit stagnant and green to me. It was a great experience to be with locals and actually feel part of the goings on, rather than just turn up, take a photo and scoot off. The chef (I must try to remember his name!) asked me if he could have a go on my motorbike. I’ve never seen him ride a bike, but I remember how I used to like going on other peoples bikes when I was his age (22) and he told me he rode his bosses Enfield, so I gave him a go.

I freely admit that I did start to get a bit worried when he hadn’t returned after half an hour, as he said that he was only going around the town (five minutes at a stretch). I thought that he might have gone to his brothers house to show him my bike, but then I got the feeling that he had stalled the bike (not hard as it needed the service) and I had visions of him trying to kick start it and having no luck. Sure enough, I got a call from the guy in the roadside shop and he told me to “come, come”. When I got to the road I saw the chef wheeling my bike down the road, he nearly collapsed when I took the bike off him! He told me that it had cut out at the market (a good five minutes walk away, if you’re not pushing a heavy bike!) and that he had to push it up the hill and past the mechanic! I told him that he should have just dropped it off with the mechanic!

We called into the mechanic and I got my motorbike serviced, and then went back to his restaurant and had a couple of bottles of water and a good chat. I let him play a couple of the games on my ipod and I chilled out in front of a fan and listened to some Hindi music on the stereo. He asked me to show him some other bames on the ipod, and the only one I hadn’t shown him was Music Quiz. This game plays a snippet of one of the songs on the ipod and gives you a choice of four possible artists that it could be. I never showed him this one before because he wouldn’t have a clue who most of the artists are. But when I went to show him I got a message on the screen saying that there were no songs to pick. This was a bit worrying as I should have over 9,300 songs on there! I went to the main menu and checked the albums list and it was blank, as was the song list and genre list. This was bad news as I’d cleared all of the songs from my computer to free up space for my photos. I was a little bit shell shocked at this news as I’m now without any music for the next six months!

We gave the mechanic a good three hours before we went to see him; we should have given him four! When I got there I found my bike in several pieces and the mechanic trying to kick start it, I was worried! There is a knack to kick starting the bike, it used to be simple, but as it needs a service there are a couple of little “teases” that you have to do. I went up, got hold of the bike and started it second kick! At one stage I must have had half the town around the bike and I counted fifteen men standing around pointing, prodding and pondering – not a sign to instill confidence! Anyway to cut a long story short, the bike is fine and starts first kick again. I did get a bit worried when it came to paying the bill though. Lonely Planet says that it should cost between 10,000 and 15,000 Rupees to get a bike serviced (about £120 - £150 GBP), god knows where they came up with this figure. I had two of the mechanics and the owner around a piece of paper totting up the total, so I got a little bit concerned. I shouldn’t have worried, the bill came to 560 Rupees, which is about £7.00 GBP.

I went for a spin to check out the bike and ended up on the edge of some jungle, so I stopped there and took a couple of photos before heading back towards the town. I came across a sign for ByPass Road, this intrigued me as not that much traffic comes through the town and the big vehicles (i.e. tourist buses) go through the town to the forts and temples anyway. The by-pass road was excellent on a motorcycle as it was bendy and had lots of “ups and downs”, but it looked as though it was built when they found that they had some extra tarmac left over. It wasn’t very wide at all and if two vehicles met head on, one of them would have to go off road to get by. I did end up by Laxmi temple though, which is on the highest point of the town and had great views. I then went back to my guesthouse and connected my ipod to my laptop to see if I could see if I could find the missing songs. The songs were still on my ipod which was good news, but for some reason they I couldn’t access them unless I was plugged up to the computer. I’ll have to go on the internet when I get a chance and get instructions on how to reset my ipod and hopefully that’ll solve the problem. I did have my ipod connected to my laptap when the electricity went off the night before, so maybe there was a power surge that has done some damage?

I went back to the chef’s restaurant as he was bringing me to have lunch with his family in the evening. When I got there he was sitting with his boss and they offered me a beer. I politely declined as it was around 17:30 and I hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours. I asked the boss if the restaurant gets busy in high season, and he told me that he didn’t want customers! It turns out that his dad is the Chief of Police for the district and also the Forest Commissioner. He himself is the main distributor for Coca Cola, Lays crisps etc. etc. in the district and the only reason he bought the restaurant was that he and his friends could have somewhere to drink in the evenings! No other restaurant in the area sells alcohol and it’s a real cloak and dagger operation to buy from a shop. I’m probably the first customer that he’s had in months! He’s really happy about it though and can afford to pay his two staff to sit around and watch TV all day!

Me and the chef then went to a shop off the by-pass road and after twenty minutes of hanging around we managed to get five beers. On the way there we passed a group of elderly people and I noticed one guy walking with them using a cane. There was something about him seemed unusual, so I had another glance as I rode past him. The guy was bollock naked! The funny think is that no one batted an eyelid and he went about his business (what ever that maybe). I believe that he is a Sadhu, which is a very holy man and that there are loads like him in Varanassi and they have first call on bathing at the ghats, so maybe he was on his way down to the river to bathe – I’m just glad that I went there in the morning.

We then picked up his brother and went up to the Laxmi Temple and sat up there listening to music on my laptop and drinking beer looking down over the town. A pleasant way to spend an evening. We then went back to his house and I met his extended family, I lost count of the number of sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties and uncles that I met. I had a lovely chicken curry whilst everyone sat around and watch me eat it! I got the chance to take photos of his family and got some nice ones of the brothers with their mother, I’ll print them for them before I leave town (presuming I ever get away from here that is!).

I got back to the guesthouse at about 22:30 and found that I’d left the light on, not a good idea, as I discovered as soon as I opened the door. There were dozens of crickets in my room, they were everywhere, there were even more in the bathroom. I know that I ate loads of crickets and locust in Bangkok, but they were in soy sauce! I spent the best part of an hour killing them and more kept on appearing! I eventually hit on the idea of using my deodorant as a flame-thrower and held a lighter in front of the nozzle and sprayed. This did the trick and the smell of burning crickets filled the room! I was covered in sweat and finished the last of my water (there were no shops open on the way back to get some more), which wasn’t good. I had real problems getting to sleep due to the heat and my throat was dry and I was gasping for a drink. It got so bad that I had to resort to drinking some water from the bathroom taps, so I’ll probably get sick from that, but I really had no choice at the time. The bed sheet and pillow was drenched in sweat and even the thought of a Dire Straits song, couldn’t get me to sleep. At 07:00 I got up and went to see if I could find a shop that was open and luckily I found one. I bought three litres of water and a bottle of Sprite, I drank one litre of water in two gulps and finished off the Sprite, the other two litres are staying in my room just in case.