March 20, 2006

Crazy Taxi

The man sat opposite me at breakfast today said that I should avoid using the taxis that parked up outside the hotel. “They are a rip off”, he told me. “Walk down the street a hundred yards and hail one. They will be much cheaper”. “But the ones outside the hotel are cheap”, I protested. “Yesterday’s only cost me 25 rupees to the ground”. “The ones a hundred yards away will be cheaper”.

And so it was that we (my friend Olly and I) ignored the vacant taxi outside the hotel and walked a hundred yards down the road and hailed another one. We got in and asked to go to the ground. “50 rupees” he said, and so we got out. Really they should use the meter. We hailed another cab, and this one agreed to use the meter.

Five minutes down the road, Olly realised that he had left his ticket in the room, and asked if we go back to the hotel to get it. The driver dutifully performed a sort of W-turn and we returned to the hotel. “Do you need anything from the hotel?” asked Olly, as he got out. “Yes”, I said, “perhaps you could bring down a dunce’s hat for you to wear for the rest of the day.”

As I waited for the fool, our taxi with its open windows parked outside India’s most expensive hotel began to attract a crowd. A girl put her hand through the window, and ordered me to give her money. I said I would give her some when my friend came back, otherwise I’d be handing out money until he came back. The front passenger door opened and another man got in. He called himself a traveller and said that I would also need to give him some money, purely because he was a traveller you see, and that meant that in a way I sort of owed it to him. I told him to wait until Olly returned also, so that the car didn’t fill with other people that it turned out I owed money to.

The man peppered me with questions. What hotel was I staying at? What was my name? What was my friend’s name? I lied for every reply, hoping to fill in the time.

When Olly finally returned I gave the girl and the man a hundred rupees each. The girl immediately called a friend over who appeared at the window immediately. I now had no money left. The cab driver drove off again, but we still had our traveller friend in the front with us; our friend who also turned out to be a little economic with the actualité.

“Where are you going?” he wanted to know. “The ground”, we told him. And where was he going. Also to the ground, because our taxi driver turned out not to know where it was, and so our traveller friend was helpfully going to navigate for us, and all we had to do was remunerate him a little further. It sounded like an excellent deal, although he was already earning more than the cab driver who had had nothing to do with any of the discussions up until this point.

Suddenly they were deep in discussion. The traveller turned round and asked us how many rupees to the pound there are. “I don’t know” I lied. “Seventy five” he said, “and so what is two pounds?” I told him it would be one hundred and fifty. “So what would four pounds be?” Three hundred. “Yes”, he said, “that is how much the driver says this journey will cost you”. We told him that that was not going to happen, and they accepted this philosophically. (They were from the shruggist school, so they just shrugged).

“I was a New York taxi driver for two years” the traveller told us, although without specifying in which life. I asked him if he had ever driven to the Statue Of Liberty. “Are you crazy?” he asked. “I was there for two years. I must have driven to it about a million times”. I found it delightful that even within the context of a lie he found room for exaggeration. “New York taxi drivers must be magical” I said. “Oh we were” he said. “Not like the ones here in Mumbai. They just try and rip everybody off!”. He laughed loudly at this. Olly and I laughed loudly at this. It was explained to the cab driver and he also laughed loudly.

So there we all were, strangers laughing together about lies we had told each other. A traveller who had never been anywhere was giving directions to a man who already knew the way.

Acording to the meter and the conversion chart we owed fifty rupees. The whole journey did in fact cost three hundred rupees once we had paid our fare, the waiting charge, travellers tips and money that other people deserved more. The cab driver had in fact been spot on in his prediction. And the man opposite me at breakfast had been the biggest liar of all.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 2:02 PM | TrackBack

March 18, 2006

An exceedingly good camp

Kipling Camp is one of the most amazing places that I have ever visited, and a world away from the bustling cities and air-conditioned hotels where I have so far been staying.
It consists of a number of huts built around a covered bar and eating area called the Shamiana where the staff, volunteers and guests all eat and drink together and discuss the day’s sightings.

It is also home to Tara, a fifty year old elephant with whom nearly every visitor to the camp falls in love. In the afternoons we would follow Tara down to the river where she and her Mahout would play together before she would lie down on one side and a crowd of us would gather round and help scrub her skin with stones.

At the slightest sign of movement we would leap back and give her space to get up and then lie down again on her other side. I leapt back particularly far at these points, much to the derision of Tom, a volunteer at the camp. She weighs two tonnes, for goodness sake, but clearly in the wild it doesn’t do to show your fear.

After being scrubbed Tara would like to invest a little time blowing water at us all as we feebly attempted to splash her back. It seems that no matter how hard you try, you cannot beat an elephant in a water fight.

We were there for three nights and in that time saw an astonishing array of animals; langurs, samba, peacocks, wild boar, jungle cockerels, jackals, spotted deer, barking deer, barasingha, serpent eagles, kingfishers, and Indian bison.

But the highlight of the visit was our final morning. It was the third safari that we had ventured out on with our guides and naturalists Neil and Sidat. At about half seven we discovered that a tiger had been seen making a kill by a group of mahouts on their elephants, and so we set off to find it as quickly as possible.

There are 126 tigers in Khana national park, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will see one whenever you go out. No guest at the camp had seen one since we had been there, but at about half eight we met up with the mahouts and we climbed from the jeeps onto the elephants’ saddles so that they could lead us from the tracks and through the undergrowth. There we came across the tiger.

It was an astonishing sight. Not only was he an unbelievable size but he also looked so astonishingly calm and relaxed as he dozed in the sun. But then, what does a tiger have to worry about? Poaching and extinction in the wild, but in a national park he has no such fears. Just like Tara, he plays the camera beautifully.

Later in the morning we came across him again, when he crossed the track about two jeeps in front of us. A moving tiger is a different proposition altogether, and there was a real sense of fear when he appeared to be heading straight towards us. In the end, he changed his mind and headed off into the undergrowth and of sight to be a King in private, and leaving about ten tourists desperately hoping that their cameras had been working properly.

Thankfully they were. That would have been really annoying.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 2:07 PM | TrackBack

March 17, 2006

long day's journey into camp

I have had a phenomenally good break from the cricket at Kipling Camp. The camp is situated in the buffer zone of Kanha National Park in central India. But first I had to get there.

To do this I first had to fly to Nagpur again on an 05:55 flight. I had only had three hours sleep and had had to get up disgustingly early in order to wait for the plane that was delayed and turned out to be going via Raipur.

The man sat next to me on the plane was an Indian civil servant and was great fun, and explained to me the role that the English language plays in India – it is basically only used when people are giving instructions or when they are angry. He was also an enormous fan of Kenneth Williams, and indeed of all the stars of the Carry On films, and explained to me his favourite joke from Carry On Camping. It was slightly complicated and I got lost somewhere in the middle of it but it had something to do with Barbara Windsor and another girl trying to put up a tent with the help of two men and it all leading to some sort of horrendous sexual misunderstanding. Talking of which, he also told me I was handsome.

At Nagpur my luggage disappeared while I was in the loo, and I eventually tracked it down in a far flung office where a man told me that I needed to give him my boarding card to prove that the luggage was mine, but I could no longer find it. I showed him that the name on my passport matched the name on the luggage but he told me this was not good enough. I let a look of profound frustration flash across my face and he suddenly shrugged and relented, and handed me my suitcase with a “what’s a bit of luggage between friends anyway?” expression on his face.

Outside I found my driver, who was to drive me for the four hour journey to Kipling Camp. “How are you?” he asked. “Tired”, I told him. “Don’t worry, you can have a good sleep now” he told me, as he braked suddenly and frantically beeped the horn.

An hour outside Nagpur, I finally managed to fall asleep, but was awoken by the driver shouting. I looked up to see a lorry heading straight towards us as rounded a corner whilst overtaking a cart being pulled by a cow. I braced for impact, but my driver skilfully swerved off the road to let the lorry just squeeze past us, before he steered us to the right again and back onto the tarmac all in one smooth action. It was incredible stuff. He may even, although I could be wrong about this, have put his foot on the brake for a moment.

I was wide awake for the rest of the journey.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 2:05 PM | TrackBack

March 16, 2006

A chance meeting

As soon as the second Test finished I got packed as quickly as possible and waited in the hotel lobby for my lift to the train station in Chandigarh. There was some delay as three hotel staff engaged in a prolonged and heated debate that had something to do with my bill. The argument lasted about five minutes, and was conducted entirely in Hindi. It could only be resolved, it turned out, by me putting my signature on huge swathes of official looking documents which I did obediently and hurriedly. I still have no idea what the argument was about, nor what I was signing, so I may well get home to discover I have handed over everything I own to a syndicate of hotel receptionists whose names I may never know and for whom I might have to cook and clean until I’m eighty.

I also had to wait for my travel agent, Barry, to confirm the details of my journey and introduce me to the man driving me to the station. “You’ve got the same driver we used yesterday” he told me, “he hit a motorbike, actually, so he might drive a bit slower than usual”. Comforting words.

Embarrassingly, it was only at Chandigarh station that I was left entirely to my own devices for the first time on the trip. Travelling with the press corps we go around as a large group, and every time we pass through a gateway or check-in, a man appears with a little sign telling us where to go. Here I was all alone, getting in everybody’s way as I wheeled my suitcase around trying to find a sign whose instructions I could understand, or someone that might help. In the end I just allowed myself to be swept up in the general mayhem and seeing where it led me, a technique that I have found myself using with surprising success on this trip.

Once I got into the right carriage and found my seat I realised that there was no space for my luggage, but about ten other passengers got up and all moved theirs along to make space for mine. I can’t imagine that happening on GNER. Nor, for that matter, could I imagine the stranger sitting next to me explaining their conversion to Christianity in quite such vivid and excited terms. Hey ho.

At one stop a huge number of photographers got on and crammed into the next carriage, all snapping away furiously at something or someone. When the scrum had calmed down and they had all got off I asked a passing passenger what the excitement was. It turned out that Kumble and Dravid were travelling on the train, and were happy to pose for photographs with any old idiot, so I trotted through to get a picture taken with them.

They couldn’t have been nicer. I congratulated Kumble on his 500th Test wicket and chatted briefly with Dravid about Scotland, where he played two summers ago. I then sat down with them and had a photo taken. Rather cleverly, you will notice, I have somehow made it look as if they had asked to have their photo taken with me.

They were clearly both thrilled.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 2:02 PM | TrackBack

March 15, 2006

They're not dolphins

I’m going to take a break from cricket between the second and third Tests. Before going to Mumbai I’m heading off to a place called Kipling Camp in Kjana to meet a friend from university. Olly has been longing to go to the camp ever since he read a book by Mark Shand called Travels On My Elephant. The elephant in question is called Tara, and after Shand’s travels he left her to live at Kipling camp where she is well looked after and is something of a visitor attraction.

Olly has been obsessed with elephants since he was in an incubator it would seem, but Tara has become a source of particular fascination for him, and our visit seems to be taking on the feel of a pilgrimage. It’s taken a great deal of planning to organise the trip, although not by me. I’ve left all the graft to Olly and my travel agent, Barry. We’re travelling separately and both have to get planes, trains and lengthy lifts along what promise to be rather bumpy roads.

Once we arrive and I’ve left Olly and Tara alone together for a few minutes, we are going to spend three days looking for tigers, leopards and the like. I’m sure Olly said something to me about swimming with elephants and this sounded like fun. I was talking about it briefly with David Gower who is very keen on conservation and first visited Kipling Camp twenty five years ago. I said I was particularly looking forward to the bit where I’d get to swim with elephants. “They’re not dolphins” he said.

It turns out that what I can actually expect to do is have a bath with an elephant. All I insist is that it gets the end with the taps.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:28 AM | TrackBack

March 13, 2006

You can be whoever you are in Chandigarh

My time in Chandigarh will shortly be coming to and end, but apart from he result in the Test match it’s been a fun place to be. It’s a lot cooler here and our hotel is located on a street that you can actually walk down, which wasn’t the case in Nagpur where we were on a major road. In Chandigarh this problem is avoided because every road is a major one and so you don’t really notice it.

I went for a walk near the hotel when we first arrived and I found it very pleasant place to amble and shop, despite the fact that there are more things buzzing around and biting you than would be considered ideal.

Along the pavements people sit in groups chatting and smoking together, and every few yards there is a little stove on which sweet-looking coffee might be bubbling away, or samosas being kept hot.

Chandigarh is a planned city, like Milton Keyes or Stevenage, and the whole thing operates on a grid system. There are a huge number of shops in the area around the hotel and not just on the ground floor. All of the buildings are a uniform three storeys high and there are shops on each level. Bizarrely, most of the shops are either mobile phone stores or places to go and have your photos developed, although quite what everyone is taking so many photos of is anybody’s guess. Maybe they take photos of their mobile phones.

There’s also a chain of fashion stores called “Virus Clothing”. This is a great name for a shop that goes on to be a chain. When then they first started opening a few more of them I bet some of the local wags probably said “Ah. Virus seems to be spreading”. Or maybe not. I’ve no whether the pun works in Hindi or any of the seventeen other languages recognised by the constitution. I suppose all over the world there must be millions of puns that go completely unnoticed for this very reason. Maybe that could be a quest for someone; to travel the world looking for and rescuing al puns that would otherwise be wasted.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:20 AM | TrackBack

March 10, 2006

Spice is the variety or something

One of the many considerable advantages that Chandigarh holds over Nagpur for the traveller is that there’s a much greater choice of restaurants here. I’m sure that Nagpur holds many secrets that we were unable to discover from our location right by the airport, but in Chandigarh we have more right on the doorstep.

From that you might construe from that we are not necessarily a particularly adventurous group, and you would probably be right. But then people are here to work, not on holiday. After long days spent in the cramped environs of the press box making copious detailed notes and competing in elaborate cricketing trivia jousts with colleagues and competitors, it is unsurprising that peoples’ collective curiosity is somewhat dulled by the end of a day’s play.

Or it was in Nagpur. Here, the end of the day’s play has tended to be quite early owing to adverse weather and people’s sense of curiosity is pondering the question “when is it going to stop raining?” and trying to find out where to go in Chandigarh on a rainy day. Delhi, possibly.

Here we have a considerable choice of cuisine just in the hotel. There’s Punjabi, Oriental and, down in the basement, an Italian restaurant that could be practically anywhere in the world with the possible exception of Italy. The food there is great although the music is a little loud and there only seems to be about seven songs on the CD they have permanently on shuffle, including cover versions of Meat Loaf’s “I will do anything for love but I won’t do that” and Elton John’s “Your song”.

I now know both of those songs extremely well, although not as well as I know “love lift us up where we belong” which yesterday was played three times in the time it took me to consume a minestrone.

In the Lonely Planet guide to India they recommend nine different restaurants in Chandigarh compared to just one in Nagpur. Despite that we had a choice of two in our hotel there. One was up on the roof - or the fourth floor as it was called - and was really very good, although it offered no protection from the elements or insects. When it rained puddles developed on the landing of the third floor, so I’ve no idea how soaking the restaurant must have been.

The other was downstairs and was drier, but it was far too confined a space for there to be a nightly live band whose efforts were passed through two enormous amplifiers. The night I was in there Ian Botham was sat right next to one of them and looked a little pained, not least during their seven minute version of “Happy Birthday”, which may well be something of a record. I’m not saying that they weren’t talented, it’s just that they were deafening. The keyboardist was particularly impressive, managing to play all the notes with one hand whilst sending text messages with the other. They were probably little notes to his friends saying “You’ll never guess whose ear drums I’ve just perforated”.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 11:59 AM | TrackBack

March 8, 2006

Welcome to paradise

Prior to travelling out to India I said good bye to my loved ones in the belief that I was heading off for a month of sheer luxury and indulgent pampering. All the publicity material for my hotels had informed that this would be the case. Since my arrival in Nagpur I have been forced to come to terms with an altogether more stark reality.

If there is an award on offer for the most inaccurate accommodation website anywhere in the world – and there may well be – then I would undoubtedly nominate the website of the hotel where we were staying in Nagpur. To say that it is a little misleading would be like saying that oil had caused one or two problems in recent years: it would be an understatement of epic proportions. It is a staggering tissue of lies, a web(site) of conceit. Amongst other attractions it promises wireless internet access, a health club and a swimming pool.

What they mean by the term “wireless internet access” is actually a slightly complex system whereby a member of staff comes to your room with a connection lead and fixes one end in your laptop and the other in the back of the phone. Then nothing whatsoever happens until another member of staff is summoned who fiddles around with the computer a bit, shakes his head, admits defeat and leaves, taking the other guy with him. It is not “wireless internet access”, nor is it straightforward, old-fashioned “internet access”. Instead it would be correctly referred to as “internet-less internet access”.

If the health club exists then it isn’t in any physical or tangible form. There is not a place where you can go to lift weights, cross train, have a Jacuzzi or even use the coffee vending machine. There’s nothing. What I suppose there could be is a group of people who stay at the hotel and who aren’t currently ill who collectively refer to themselves as “the health club”. But even if that’s the case it would be an odd thing to put on the website.

As for the pool, that is not a total lie. Architecturally speaking there is a swimming pool. It’s just that it only ever contains water if it rains and even then it wouldn’t exclusively contain water. At some point, possibly in the name of diversification, the hotel managers have made the somewhat odd decision to rent out the pool as a landfill site and so it is now filled with what looks like the construction rubbish left behind after a hotel refurbishment (a different hotel, one assumes).

Should I meet anyone on my travels who is looking for at least two dozen ripped out toilets, possibly for use in a bathroom-themed garden display, then I will definitely point them in the direction of the Hotel Paradiso.

p.s. this is the pool

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 7, 2006

A ride in the rain

The clouds which had been threatening to break all afternoon at Negpur finally stared to shower gently just as Paul Collingwood’s evening press conference came to an end. There is supposed to be a bus laid on by our hotel everyday to ferry us to and from the ground but their timing tends to slightly erratic, as does their size and quality. On the first morning there were fourteen journalists crammed into something the size of a camper van, whereas the day after just Simon Hughes and I shared something more akin to a train carriage from the Titfield Thunderbolt.

There was no bus waiting when I emerged from the ground, just a rainy street with the odd bicycle skidding by in either direction. “Taxi?” I said to a security guard, who laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “It is raining” he added helpfully, with a cheery smile.

I stood in the light rain for a few minutes not knowing what to do. I didn’t even know where the hotel was. After a while a lone motorised rickshaw emerged from the gloom without any lights on, and I hopped aboard, giving him the name of the hotel.

The rain became heavier and it was now quite dark as we weaved our way into the heavier traffic away from the ground. The driver turned round to check the name of the hotel again. “Airport?” he asked, as if I’d rather go there.

The laws of traffic in India seem to favour whoever honks loudest, whether you’re at what would normally be a level crossing or a busy set of crossroads complete with sets of entirely arbitrary traffic lights. This enables vehicles of all manners to compete, both undertaking and overtaking, in one huge and terrifying fury.

My driver stopped very suddenly without warning and got out, leaving me feeling a little vulnerable in the right hand lane. Then he reappeared on the other side of the windscreen, mopping it and waving at me. He jumped back, checked the name of the hotel once more and screeched off with just the faintest hint of a skid. Something then started flashing and he rounded a corner and stopped to queue for petrol at a reasonable 50 rupees a litre. By now it was pouring very heavily and he honked the horn loudly at someone about two metres from us who may or may not have been thinking about queue-jumping. The attendant pumped in the petrol and we roared off again as the driver turned back to shout something at me. It sounded like “airport”.

The further we drove the heavier the rain became and I started to get splashed by passing cars and motorbikes and dripped on by rain which was now beginning to trickle through the roof onto my shoulders. I pulled my sun hat as firmly onto my head as I could and clung to my laptop. All I could see now was rain and blurred lights as we dodged more collisions and sped across flyovers. There are many signs up by the sides of roads advising of the dangers of speedy driving: “life is more valuable than speed” reads one. They’d have to place an unbelievably high value on life if that is true.

It occurred to me that I might be worth taking some pictures with my digital camera to see if anything good came out in the incredible conditions. I hung on to my laptop with one arm and snapped away. We were forced to make a stop at one point and a motorbike pulled alongside driven by a soaking man with an equally drenched lady clinging on behind. They grinned at me in my rickshaw so I asked if I could take a photo. They smiled beautifully for me, and I took a photo with the flash. As they revved off, I checked the photo on the camera. It was a beautiful photo of two Indians on a motorbike in a downpour with delightful smiles cosying up with my thumb.

I had to put the camera away shortly after that as I needed a spare hand to cling to the side of the rickshaw with. Rainwater was now liberally splashing down on the driver and me and the traffic was becoming more panicked. The driver pulled over and leapt into the back with me not for his own comfort but for mine: he was pulling down the rolled up plastic drapes that are to help keep the rain out. We both struggled with them in the soaking wet but our efforts finally paid off and we got them fixed down. Now I was just as wet but I couldn’t see anything I realised as we set off. I was terrified, I just didn’t know what of.

At one point I peeped out to see where we were only to find that we were riding between some flimsy railings on a bridge on one side and a bus on the other. I couldn’t look anymore so I just had to sit back. At one point there was a cacophony of horns and screeching and we swerved violently before ploughing on. The driver looked back, not to check the name of the hotel this time, but to see if I was actually still there. I gave him the thumbs up to show that I was alright. “It is raining” he shouted back.

I realised that I still wasn’t exactly sure whether or not the driver knew precisely where I wanted to go. He knew roughly where it was but I still felt I’d need to keep a look out. I couldn’t see from the back, so I leant forward in to the driver’s part for a better view. He seemed surprised by this. “Are we there?” he asked, as if he were the passenger. “I’m just looking out for the hotel” I replied. “We are not near it yet” he said. Looking out, I saw my hotel whizzing past. “That was it” I shouted. He stopped and point at my hotel. “Here?” He seemed surprised by my decision, but executed the necessary U-turn and then turned up the hotel’s drive and parked neatly before helping me out. “How much is this by the way?”. “A thousand”, he replied. “A thousand?” I asked, as this was twice more than I was told anyone had paid previously. “Five hundred?” he offered. I agreed. “One hundred?”. It was his final offer. I handed him a thousand and squelched into the hotel bar, where an incredibly clean and dry looking Sky commentary team were sharing a bottle of wine. I knew my place.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 11:06 AM | Comments (2)

March 4, 2006

we are all ambassadors

The local paper here is carrying a somewhat embarrassing tale about one of the England fans who made it down to Nagpur. According to the paper, the Brit Abroad in question (who was named in that publication but won’t be here) went to a local restaurant in the evening and got nicely drunk.

He then staggered back to his hotel (or he might have got a taxi, I don’t know. Maybe someone carried him? The paper’s a bit sketchy on this sort of detail if I’m honest). Once there he realised he no longer had his camera with him and so returned to the restaurant to find it (by rickshaw perhaps? Again, it doesn’t say). It was not where he thought he’d left it and so he accused two staff members of staff of stealing it and called in the police before once again returning to his hotel (Bus? Not sure).

Fast forward two days and the man in question happened upon his missing camera in, as the paper tells us, “the pocket of his bermuda”. By this time the two restaurant staff had been arrested and taken to court, so the man had to get there as soon as possible (motorbike? It’s a possibility).

At court he signed an affidavit saying that the two restaurant staff definitely hadn’t stolen his camera , and they were granted bail. In a further twist the man’s camera was then confiscated for further investigation, although quite how much further it could go is anyone’s guess.

As for the Brit, I’ve no idea how he’ll feel by the time he gets home but I do know that’ll probably have got there by plane.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:10 AM

March 1, 2006

About Miles

Twenty six year-old Miles Jupp (RHB, OB) would be playing for England now if it wasn't for the fact that he is unathletic, with poor hand-eye co-ordination and suffers from a very serious addiction to beef (medium rare).

Instead he is in India in the company of the press corps watching England, sampling the snacks and attempting a bit of light journalism.

He has been interested in cricket since the early nineties, although he never managed to convert his enthusiasm into many runs or wickets. He has converted his enthusiasm as a writer performer more successfully, appearing in his own Radio 4 series and also playing Archie the Inventor in all 453,987 episodes of the Bafta winning "Balamory". (He doesn't keep the award, some producer usually gets those)

He is finding India a bit hot.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:48 AM | Comments (3)