Update

So after 3 months of immersion in Indian boarding school we're out. Into the wide world to do our own thing. It's been cracking fun and a really special experience, something I guess, that not many people have. And hopefully something constructive will come out of it and this new connection between BCS and Marlborough breeds a brand new generation of holistically minded, global students. Bearing in mind Xander is going to Marlborough in September...

Anyway we left the school on Saturday evening, proper backpacker style, rucksacks on back and front and caught the overnight bus to Manali, the so called adventure town of India. Its actually just a massive hippy town, dreadlocks and marijuana the staples. Ill post a picture soon to assure you that I haven't grown dreadlocks.

From here we go to Daramsala and Macleod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government before completing our northern loop with Amritsar and then going back to Shimla to pick up our suits. From there its south, retracing footsteps to Delhi and then onto Mumbai. Ill keep you all up to date and will catch up on all the extravaganzas from Shimla.
Max

Assam

What is Assam? Who is Assam? Where is Assam? All valid questions. And in response to them: It is one of the so called 'north-east states', which funnily enough are in the north-east of India, in the bit that is only faintly connected to the rest of the country by the narrow strip of land (17km at its narrowest) in between Bangladesh and Bhutan. The whole north-east region doesn't have a great rep, its far too close to Burma for that, its always been known as a bit of a terrorist hideout, big on crime, lacking in development. Imagine, if you will, most of Africa.

These days however, according to Mark Tully and others, it is making some progress. It has decent natural resources, mostly minerals and tea gardens, and importantly they are being utilised, unlike nearby Bihar which has enough of the former but is doing very little of the latter.

However I'm not here to do a study on democracy or development, I'm here because of India's other great passion, (the one they are actually quite good at); cricket. Invitational Cricket Tournaments are a big thing among the top schools here and after performing rather abjectly in their own tournament, Bishop Cotton School accepted the tour to Assam as a shot at redemption.

The boys lining up at BCS to say farewells

 It's a bit of a slog to get to the school from anywhere, for us it was 8 hours on a coach down to Delhi, a two hour flight with cracking views of Mt Everest and then a sweaty, bumpy ride in a cramped bus to Assam Valley School.

 The lads at Delhi airport

The campus is beautiful, privately owned, funded by the surrounding expanse of tea gardens, it is twice as big as Marlborough with sports pitches and courts of all varieties sprawled across the 250 acres. The buildings are modern, with differing levels of aesthetic beauty, from Communist era concrete blocks to fancy, arty designs.

Rory and I were housed in the infirmary with the boys in a boarding house and Mr Roach the cricket coach in the guest house, about 15 minutes walk away. Our role on the tour was unspecified, keeping bus banter levels up initially seemed crucial so we got stuck into that but then found a new, absolutely essential daily task once at the school. Now sense of direction has never been my strong point, it took me three years to work out the 5 minute route from home to school, but I was nothing compared to Mr Roach. He took it to a new level. We were called up five or six times a day with: Hey Max, hey Rory, come pick me up!'. We obliged, not quite sure whether he was winding us up but when he demanded I walk him home in the pouring rain while QPR's relegation from the Premier League was at stake on the tele I dug my heels in. I begged and pleaded and offered a map but in the end he won and I got wet.

So feeling it was time to branch out I made myself fitness coach/physio/medical coach. Stretching bowlers backs, applying arnica to bruised hands and taking warm ups were my thing while Rory took fielding practice, which involved him hitting a small piece of leather very hard at boys who don't really like small hard pieces of leather being hit very hard at them but catch it anyway. Because they don't have much of a choice.

Mr Roach

I also became the statistician, drawing up wagon wheels and bowling stats on my computer. Unfortunately their batting figures were very small and their bowling stats were very high; ie they lost. Badly. So we thought bugger this and got a rugby ball out. This proved far more popular, and we found a good range of players. The Biharis, who live off buffalo milk were big on bosh, hand-eye co-ords, not so much. The Punjabis ditto while the Delhi boys are small and nippy, probably due to ancestors who made a living pinching from sahib's pocket, and would make good wingers. However the cream of the crop was the 14 year old Nepali wicket-keeper who was rapid, could actually catch and despite just tipping 5 foot promptly beat one of the Biharis in a wrestling match to show he wasn't a wimp.

Our last cricket match, which the lads had to dominate to have any chance of qualifying for the semi-finals was dire. Morale was sky high after bowling them out for 67 but despite a rapid 31 from afore-mentioned Nepali they wimpered out on 60, having lost all their matches and finishing rock-bottom in the group.

'An absolute disgrace!' assessed Mr Roach. Whether he was talking about my map or the cricket I'm not sure. It meant that we had two days to brush up their rugby and for the boys to chase after the girls. Unfortunately they were even less successful at that than the cricket.

Rory and I on the other hand joined all the other coaches for a bit of a piss-up in the guesthouse. It was hilarious, normally very stiff, lots of 'yes sirs' to men their own age; the coaches dropped the facade and turned into complete jokers. Mr Roach took a lot of abuse for his team being so bad but gave as good as he got and made sure everyone was well refreshed.

Our bus back to Guwhati airport was shared with the tournament winners and their massive trophy which didn't do much to cheer up the boys. Once in Delhi we loitered until it was time to catch the bus home to Simla. Unfortunately the bus didn't realise that it was time and we waited on a Delhi pavement for 3 and a half hours while Roachy tried to find out where his bus had gone! No biggie for experienced India travellers such as myself of course but I have had comfier three hour waits.

Manners and Mangers in Guwhati

It did finally arrive, to the chagrin of two members of the cricket team who suffer terribly from motion sickness and had to make emergency sick bags to contend with an uprising of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the windy mountain roads of Himachal Pradesh. Our arrival back at school wasn't glorious but it was nice to be back at a school with proper views and where you don't sweat away more weight than you put on while eating.

We've now left BCS, and I will fill all the massive gaps when I can but for now a slightly different blog with fairly dire pictures is all.

Max

Jaipur

Although Jaipur is part of the the Golden Triangle and one of the most visited parts of India we were fairly underwhelmed by it. It doesn't have the big city magic of Varanasi or Mumbai but is not as idyllic as Jodphur or Jaisalmer.

It did have two redeeming features though, the Amber Fort which was spectacular, and a very nice hotel, courtesy of Mr and Mrs Manley. They had meant to come out and meet us but unfortunately a small visa issue prevented that.

After checking in to our Sheraton we took full advantage of the luxury before hitting the town. It was filthy hot, really muggy but a thin cotton shirt and a bottle of water are brilliant in conditions like that so we manned up and went sight-seeing. Palaces and museums, camels and donkeys, it was all fairly fairytalesque but just didn't tickle our fancy for some reason. It was also far more touristy and we had people hassling us everywhere we went. It's all good fun and banter for a while but after 6 hours of 'Hey, were you from?' it loses a bit of its appeal.

The first afternoon was spent by the pool as we took a break from the rigours of a Gap Year, the evening spent at a lovely restaurant that served an excellent, if very spicy tikka masala. The meal had the added advantage of giving me some exercise as I dashed back to the hotel to use the loo.

Amber Fort (silent b) is the highlight of Jaipur and we finally succumbed to an exceptionally persistent tuk-tuk driver who offered to do the whole 3 hour, 40km round trip for 250 rupees (about 3 quid), on the condition that we 'look' at some shops on the back. So we took him up on it. He was a real keen bean who claimed that customer satisfaction was his primary aim. He even pulled out a book of comments from all his previous customers which varied from the Germans: 'he should trim his moustache more' to the Italians: 'very safe but must drive faster'. He showed us a beautiful palace surrounded by a lake before dropping us at the entrance to the Amber Fort. As big and as magnificent as the one at Jodphur, it was perched on a hill, with huge walls surrounding it and gorgeous gardens in the valley below.

The elephants weren't available so we tackled the climb on foot, fighting off murderous hat sellers and chaps who offered to give us a guided tour in Taiwanese. Finally at the summit we disappeared in the throng of tourists, wound up some stairs and emerged on a parapet with fantastic views of the rest of the fort and the surrounding countryside. We wandered amongst the massive stone walls, towers and temples built inside the wall before flagging slightly and stopping at the cafe to have a coke with a view.

We managed to not buy anything in the shops on the way home and unfortunately I think this meant that our tuk-tuk bloke didn't get his commission as he tried to double the price once we got back to the hotel. Cheeky bugger.

We then had another quick swim, grabbed our bags, grabbed some chicken nuggets at Maccy D's and then headed to the bus station where we hopped on our ride home.

Jaisalmer

Sorry for taking so long in all this, I've been fairly useless on the whole writing front but will fill everyone in on the shenanigans of the last few weeks soonish.

When dad went to Jaisalmer 25 years ago it was a two day jeep ride from the nearest town. Luckily Indian infrastructure is 8 times better now so it only takes 6 hours by bus from Jodphur through Rajasthani scrub desert, we were picked up by our camel operator and taken to the hotel that he ran. He then sorted us a bus ticket to Jaipur for the next day, ushered us up to the restaurant and then gave us internet. Bit of a legend.

After munching an epic curry we jumped in a little Mahindra and headed for the desert. Our guy stopped at a little village which was the closest thing to Disneyland I've seen in India. It looked almost exactly as a Rajasthani village would've done 100 years ago, it was just a shame about the busy main road and three telephone masts right next to it. There were the usual spattering of Japanese tourists with camera lenses bigger than their... forearms, and a gaggle of children asking for money for photos.

 The expression of the kid on the left really cracks

me up!

So we laughed at them and gave them 10 rupees before jumping back into the car, acknowledging the cold beers that had been bought for us and going desertwards.

Our next stop was at an actual ancient village that was being excavated. It was apparently inhabited by the Brahmin caste before a dispute involving one of their young ladies and the maharaja ended badly for the village.

 

Then it was taken over by the desert. I persuaded the guy to let me drive the car from there (it was designed for Indians and even if I was 5' 2” I doubt it would have been comfortable to drive). Even so it was good fun and felt proper chiller to cruise through the desert, sporting the Wayfarers and a linen shirt of course.

The excitement didn't stop there, half an hour later we pulled up next to a couple of camels and their blokes, grabbed the beers, mounted our camels and the desert safari began.

 

Camel back riding is really good fun for the first 10 minutes. Then you begin to realise that camels are very bony, have a similar gait to a fourteen year old boy and make the same noises and smells as the average foreigner after an Indian curry. Nevertheless they are quite endearing and the experience after dismounting was magical. We watched the sun go down behind the dunes while our guides cooked us authentic Rajasthani food, then we shared notes with them about life, future plans and opinions on politics and philosophy. About as Gap Yah as it gets! 

 

Then just before we fell asleep under the stars a little desert fox appeared and routed around the camp a bit, picking up the scraps of food we'd left behind, then disappeared into the dunes.

The next morning we rode back, I'd worked out the seating position this time so it was less uncomfortable but we were still glad to see the jeep that took us back to Jaisalmer. There we looked around the fort, amazed by how easily the town had grown up inside the fort and now was living and breathing inside the walls.

Then we had another epic curry and made our way to the bus station. I got chatting to a fruit vendor while we waited for our bus, he was very proud of his little moped and seemed happy to let me have a little potter around town on it, good practice if we end up biking over the Rotang Pass as I'm very keen to do.

The bus arrived soon after that and we hopped on, found some space and bedded down for the night.