Battle of the Bulls

So the Taj Mahal was impressive, very beautiful. I don't really know what to say, it's a lovely, lovely building... just, nice. Thought I'd be blown away, maybe cry a solitary tear of joy at its sheer perfection, but am afraid it was... nice. We did see some Taj Mahal chipmunks tho, that was cooel. But then we went and had tea and something happened which made me the Second Most Scared I've ever been in my entire life. We had tea on a roof to see the sun set over the Taj Mahal, which was beautiful too (apart from the public toilet just across the street, which we could see in to, with shit smeared all over the floor). Anyway, after tea we went to a bar on a roof, where we purchased beer that had to be drunk out of shot glasses and the bottle surreptitiously hidden under the table, incase the beer police came. Incidentally, we all agreed that furtively drinking when youre not s'posed to be actually improves not only the taste but the potency of the beer. Which may or may not have added to my hysteria when the bull came.

So we're drinking away, and the power keeps cutting out leaving us in near darkness. The power cuts for the third time, and out of the darkness we hear a bellowing, I don't think I'd be exaggerating to call it 'monstrously devilish'. Looking down into the street, just below our bar, is a behemoth of a black bull, having full on horn to horn combat with a smaller, not so shit-your-pants scary but seriously feisty and ballsy brown bull. They were charging at eachother, locking horns, and then and barging up and down the street - the street we had to walk down imminently - crashing into buildings, shaking the structure of them, and making horrific angry bull noises.

Now I always take my lead from the locals, no one seems bothered, and I think this must be a regular occurence. Until the climax of the fight, where they nearly destroy a telephone pole, a tuk tuk drives off, men run away, and a shop keeper pulls down his shutters and runs upstairs. Feck. I resolve to beg the bar man to let me sleep on the bar floor, and state that under no circumstances what so ever, will I walk into that street until absolutely certain the black beast has gone. So they go at it for a bit more, and then two men come with big sticks and start hitting them and shouting at them. I don't know how this is supposed to alleviate the situation, and I thought cows and bulls were sacred, and I don't think you're supposed to hit sacred things with big sticks are you? It's quite rude. Anyway in the end the brown one gives up and bows and scrapes and limps away, leaving the big black mother trucker still bellowing masculinely away, really pleased with himself. Walking home after this, in the absolute pitch dark, (no street lamps) him still bellowing triumphantly in the distance, was unnerving to say the least, lots of glancing over the shoulder and mentally allocating a tree suitable to climb up incase he comes charging down the street at us. Then Adam trod in bull shit and got it all over his feet. Brilliant.

India Part One

Well, we're here, we're hot, and it stinks... I loves it.

We landed in Delhi on Monday, and one of the first sights we were greeted with on the taxi drive from the airport to the Ajanti hotel, was a woman shoving her baby's blistered and pustulous arse through the taxi window asking for money. Being jet-lagged and a wee bit hungover, and cashless, this left us slightly traumatised. Arriving at the hotel was better, though the constant road works outside, apparently 'improving ' the roads for the Commonweath games, would have been an iritation if not for the titanium reinforced ear plugs I had the foresight to pack. We wandered around Delhi for a bit, went to the red fort, then slept for 16 hours.

Woke up to our first Indian breakfast, yum, spicy pancake type stuff, and a Lassi, milkshake / gone off yoghurt type stuff. So far so good for the Delhi bellie. After wandering the streets for a bit, playing frogger on the roads, which was MUCH fun, and taking in the pungent but not repulsive scent of Delhi, similar to Thailand; that heady mix of open sewerage, fried pancakes, sweet, slightly rotten fruit, and fried cat, we went to New Delhi station to book train tickets to Agra. On stepping through the 'local' section of the station, crammed with locals squatting, sitting, laying in the blistering heat and covered in flies, we climbed the stairs (stepping past the young man who was clearly smoking some sort of crack / heroin based pipe) to the 'western' kiosk (air conditioned, comfy chaired, and orgnanised), and booked tickets to Agra.

The train ride to Agra was amazing, they have seats, which fold up to beds, and we slept in a 3 tier system for 2 and a half hours. It was lush, laying there reet comfy, listening to the rain on the roof.

Yeh, talking of the weather, I doubt I'm gonna be the tanned, brown, sun-kissed, sun bunny I thought I'd be. It was overcast when we arrived, bit brighter the next day, today has been sporadic rain and sunshine. Plus I'm covering up to avoid the stares, which isn't really working, especially wandering down Arakashan road central Delhi with 2 bottles of beer in me arms. What a filthy western beer fuelled head hair flaunting hooer. It's wierd having EVERY man who passes you stare at you. I mean, obviously I get that loads in Britain, being dead fit an' everything... but not EVERY man, ALL the time. It's funny when you make eye contact as well, they do that thing where you lift your eyebrows up and down and give a cheeky grin, which does make I chuckle.

Anyway, today we arrived in Agra and went to the Taj Mahal. More of that later, the electricity's just cut out in the internet cafe...