Holy cow

I'm pretty glad I didn't fly into Mumbai last night. Or stay at the Taj hotel.
Instead we arrived in Mysore just as the sun went down - and the power went off. Luckily for us we could only see our new flat by candlelight. We spent an entire evening blissfully unaware of our landlord's frisky interior design sense, strolled to a restaurant, ate some curry and finally passed out as a pack of stray dogs howled us to sleep. I think they were singing "welcome to India" in Hindi, doggy-style.
This morning, in the cold light of day, we discovered that our landlord Suresh has an unusually brave sense of colour. As you can see the walls are a stylish melange of vivid orange, candy pink, sunshine yellow with a flash of lime green cornicing. The furniture is wrapped in durable plastic sheets. The kitchen, he says, isn't ready yet - maybe tomorrow, or next day. This is because of “climate problem“. In other words: there was some light rain yesterday. Welcome to India!

A Higher State

I have finally reached a higher state: Himachal Pradesh. That doesn't mean that I have stopped laughing at the rent-a-hippies in grubby dhotis practicing “Mystical Belly Dancing” - but it does mean that I am physically, if not spiritually, higher than I was before.
But if you want to get high in India you have to start extremely low.
Low is arriving at Delhi Airport in stinking 42 degree heat when the breeze through the taxi window feels like someone blowing a hot hairdryer of smelly crotch and rotting vegetables in your face at 60km per hour. Low is a sleazy hotel room with a round bed, red light bulbs and a fan like a Messerschmidt keeping you awake all night while you wonder what is causing that itching between the sticky brown polyester sheets and whether the little red bumps on your arms and legs are serious. Low is 18 hours in a taxi with a creepy driver called “Ravi” who stops every 30 minutes to have a nap, a cup of chai, scratch his balls or buy inflatable toys by the side of the road and spills Lemon Fanta on the backseat and smiles while you desperately try not to blame him for his lack of essential chromosomes. Low is stopping at a dirty highway restaurant with coach loads of fat Indian tourists aggressively trying to make you the star of their home videos and bedragled roosters in display cages outside with labels like “White Silkie Cock” and “Dutch Booted Bantam Cock”. These lows were not pleasant, but necessary steps on my way to a higher state – something like the firey uncomfortable bit in purgatory before the angels playing harps and the pearly gates.
But now that I am finally here in a higher state, I am also trying to become a Much Better Person so that I don't stand out too much against everyone else. They are the people who do ten days of silent meditation for fun (not drinking beer) and take local buses (not taxis) and pay 50 Rupees per night for their guesthouse (not 300) and take Indian cooking lessons (rather than go to restaurants) and only have one pair of sandals (not four) and stopped washing their hair with chemicals in 1998 (never going to happen). But I have managed to make a couple of concessions to life up here in the mountains. I stopped looking in the mirror ten days ago (because there isn't one). I have also become much less scared of slugs (because there are about 60 enormous orange ones the size of my forearm sitting on the lawn every time I wake up). But the most disturbing change to date has been my purchase of a pair of immitation “Crocs” - those natty brightly coloured plastic clogs with holes in that make you look like you work as a cleaner in a swimming pool, or a morgue. Everyone here wears them because they are Practical. Predictably, the concept of “Practical Footwear” didn't really resonate with me until I slipped down a mountain and broke my pretty gold (highly Impractical) sandals, tried on a pair of Crocs “as a joke” and discovered the wonder of skipping down a mountain in pink rubber. And haven't looked back.
Crocs are also a great conversation point. I've noticed that Wearers exchange secret knowing glances when they see another Wearer trotting past, and sometimes we stop to chat to eachother about how comfortable our feet are, despite how ridiculous we may or may not look to other Non Wearers. I have even started teaming them with a pair of fluroescent handknitted Tibetan socks. They feel great, and I'm pretty sure they look great - although I haven't checked a mirror for the past ten days, so I couldn't tell you for certain.
But as with so many great love affairs, the infatuation was fleeting and tomorrow my fake Crocs and I are going our separate ways. They will remain here, while I will begin my descent from the mountains in a night bus, across the winding roads of Himachal and Uttar Pradesh and back down to the steaming crotch of New Delhi, until finally I arrive back in London on Saturday – where I am entirely sure that my Crocs will not be welcome.
So it is with a mixture of high and low that I come home this weekend. High because I get to have a hot bath, eat beef burgers and drink red wine with all my friends for the first time in six months (not all at the same time), and low because this is the end of the most incredible journey. From the Worst City in Either Hemisphere, to the yupppies in Bangalore, the volunteers in Mysore, the crusties in Goa, the Keralan backwaters, the windy valleys of the Nepalese Himalayas – and finally to the foothills of the Indian ones. But it's not just geographical. Over the past six months India has lifted me up with the contagious spirituality of its ancient temples, monasteries and mountain peaks and the kindness of strangers on trains with newspaper bags of greasy snacks and steaming cups of chai – and just as quickly it has slammed me back down like a gutful of bad curry in a gutter of rotting vegetable matter, festering leppers and feral dogs. But at least it really has been an awfully big adventure.

Diary of Manjing Pun: The Secret Life of a Nepalese Trekking Porter

2 May 2008, Jomsom, Nepal

Dear Diary,
I woke up this morning face down on a wooden bench at the Namaste! trekking lodge in Jomsom with dry eyeballs and a mouth like a yak's arse after another night out with the boys on the Raksi. I felt terrible and realised that I'd lost all my money playing cards and missed a ten day trek up to Anapurna Base Camp with some rich Germans. I hate Germans but they walk fast and leave big tips - so all in all it was a pretty bad start to the day.
Luckily things started looking up after my first plate of dal baht when a trekking guide from Pokhara called Taklal, approached me and asked if I was free to carry a rucksack for a couple of English women on an eight day trek back to Pokhara. I knew this trek was the easiest in the whole of Nepal, so these English women would probably be lazy, fat or probably both (some Indian tourists are so fat that they have to fly up the mountain in a helicopter!) So I played my usual "humble yet determined" act with downcast eyes and shuffling feet, and said yes to the job. And to top it off they were paying almost 600 Rupees per day! They must be stupid too, I decided.
I packed my lucky fleece, one spare pair of pants, one spare pair of socks, a bar of soap and my toothbrush, and met the English pair half an hour later. They were at the Majestic Lodge finishing their breakfast – and they weren't too fat either. There was an old one called 'Cathy' who had hair like the wool of the mountain sheep we have in our village, who kept laughing and smiling at me and looking at my lucky sandals and asking if I had "waterproof clothing" or "proper walking boots". I kept quiet, as usual (its far better that trekkers don't know how much English I understand). There was also a younger one called 'Sarah', her daughter, who wears t-shirts that show her underwear. She seems to think she knows Nepali language and keeps saying things like "Tikcha?" and "Ramro cha!" to show off. I don't think she realises that I already have a wife in my village and two fine children.
Finally we set off at 9am, after the women put on their white cream (to protect from evil spirits) and started walking up through the valley, to the village of Kinga. We had to stop along the way because the young one liked to take pictures of baby goats, baby horses and baby cows and to eat chocolate. The older one had to keep stopping to find things inside her bag, like white cream, snack bars that tasted like dried goat dung, camera, hat, foot stickers and sun goggles. I very much liked the sun goggles, so when I began squinting my eyes against the sun, the older one stopped and looked inside her bag and gave me my very own sun goggles! She said it was no big deal, that they were only "two pairs for two pounds" from somewhere called "Tescos", but I was pretty pleased. It was the best gift I've had since my wife gave me "sex without children" for my birthday last March.
In the evening I ate dal baht in the kitchen with Taklal. The two women ate theirs in the dining room like Nepalese people with their hands. They looked like pigs, but they seemed happy.
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May 2008, Kagbeni, Nepal

Dear Diary,
I woke up at 5am this morning and ate dal baht for breakfast in the kitchen with the other porters. We were all sad to leave the Anapurna Lodge in the mountain village of Kagbeni. The foreign women liked the hot showers and the pancakes on the menu for breakfast; I liked the 32" colour telly, the 24 hour Hindi soap operas and the local women who are nationally renowned for their skill with woolen handicrafts, their rosy cheeks and magnificent breasts. So it was with a heavy heart that we set off down the path for the village of Marpha.
It was a pretty grey miserable day and after lunch it began to rain (why do the tourists insist on walking outside in the rainy season, like herds of drowned goats dressed coloured plastic?) I tried to walk fast to avoid getting wet, but the two women kept making us stop to
put on waterproof coats, hats, gloves, take off sun goggles, put on sun goggles and go to the toilet. Halfway through the day the young one made us stop in a lodge for tea because she was cold and to go to the toilet. When she came back from the toilet she seemed very upset and kept wiping her sun goggles with special antibacterial solution and saying something about "fucking Nepali fucking squat toilets and "shit all over my fucking glasses" and "they will never be the same". I think she dropped her goggles in the shit. It was very funny, especially when she put them on again and flies started gathering. Me and Taklal laughed a lot.
The evening ended happily with a plate of steaming dal baht in the Welcome! Guest House in Marpha. I was very tired, but before I went to bed the foreigners seemed eager for me to join them in the dining room for a glass of the local apple brandy and to teach me a card game called "shit head". They had joined up with two other foreigners and kept laughing at each other and shouting "shit head! shit head!" and getting very red in the face. I think it must have had something to do with the girl's sun goggles falling in the shit and going on the head. I wasn't sure, so I drank my apple brandy quickly, pretended not to understand English, smiled politely and went to bed.
____________________________________________________________________

6 May 2008, Tatopani, Nepal

Dear Diary,
I woke up this morning and ate dal baht in the kitchen of the International Guest House in Ghasa. The rice was cold and sat heavy in my stomach like stale buffalo's dung. Thankfully the walk from Ghasa to Tatopani was short. We walked mainly downhill through the river valley, famous for its holy fossils which are actually incarnations of the Hindu god Shiva. Even though the trekking was very easy (my six-year-old daughter could have done it barefoot carrying a full basket of firewood while herding the family buffalo), the younger one went very slowly and kept complaining about her feet hurting and saying things like, "fucking hell, my fucking ankles are fucking killing me". I didn't say anything of course, but thought to myself she could either do with a pair of lucky sandals (like mine) or a strong husband to discipline her. She swears a lot and seems very old to be unmarried and without children. Perhaps no one in her village will agree to marry her because of the swearing, drinking brandy and showing her underwear? Her mother must be very ashamed. Perhaps that's why they both drink so much?
Another reason that our walk was taking longer than usual was because we were stuck on a narrow path behind an elderly cow herder, who couldn't get his cow to move along. The cow was extremely stubborn, so Taklal and I found sticks and started shooing it along in the usual way. shouting "grooooouuuugh, ooogh oooogh" very loudly. When that didn't work, Taklal grabbed the base of the cow's tail and started roughly pulling it (a well-known technique). The two English women found this very amusing and began laughing a lot, especially when the cow opened its rear end and did goo-smell all over Taklal's hand. Cow fart on the hand is not extremely funny, but we laughed along to humor the foreigners and went on our way.
We arrived at Tatopani just after lunch. The village is famous for its volcanic hot springs, which the foreigners like to bathe in wearing only their underclothes; so many local people come and gather to see the pale skin ladies in bra and panties, and laugh. I went to hot springs nice and early before the foreigners got there, to wash my trousers, shirt, pants, socks and handkerchief. That evening I put on my clean clothes and ate dal baht in the kitchen with the other porters. After dinner I drank two glasses of Raksi – which my wife doesn't let me do at home because it usually makes me want to do the "sex without children" which always gives her a headache.
I went to bed at 10pm after having a small fight with two other porters, and tripping over a rock on the path to our dormitory room.
____________________________________________________________________

8 May 2008, Tikhedunga, Nepal

Dear Diary,

I woke up this morning and ate a good dal baht by the wood burning stove at the Snow View Lodge in Ghorapani. It was almost the size of Nilgiri Mountain, with fresh dal and a generous helping of curried potato. We set off at 9am and luckily the sun was shining on the walk downhill to Tikhedungha, unlike yesterday when the skies opened and hail stones the size of large eggs rained down on us. My favourite fleece got extremely wet, but the foreigners wouldn't stop until we reached the top because of something called "The British Stiff Upper Lip". I am not sure what this "Lip" is, but I think one boy in my village was born with it and people came from a long way to see it for a charge of 20 Rupees.

This afternoon as we trekked through thick jungle and past small mountain villages, I walked ahead of the two English women (who were more interested in trying to talk Nepalese to Taklal, smearing white cream on their bodies and eating biscuits) and thought how much I was looking forward to getting back to my village tomorrow and seeing my buffalo. After this trip I've realised buffalo are so much easier to look after than tourists - and often far better looking.

Finding God's Own Country

Here in Mysore the Indian summer is now reaching its swealtering climax. The sun beats down for 12 hours a day and the air doesn't move. Most of the time I am so hot that I can't think straight or string a sensible sentence together. I have even taken to not leaving the house during the day and wearing one of those sweeping floor length moo-moos, like one of those obese people on Rikki Lake wear before they have to be broken out of their homes by cranes and demolition crews after four years of lying in bed eating only Pringles. I can't get Pringles here thankfully, but my incarceration means that there are still many things that I would like to do before I leave in a few weeks. They include:
a) Write more emails;
b) Find a bit-part in a Bollywood film;
c) Dye all my clothes orange and spend a month in silence at a Himalayan ashram, eating only ghee and drinking my own urine (but not the Kool Aid!) once a day to cleanse my chakras;
d) Befriend a beggar (every westerner who comes to India needs a photo of them hugging at least one beggar)
e) Find spiritual enlightenment.
The last one is the trickiest of all. I thought I might find spirituality in Goa, but all I found was a load of bad-smelling trust fund hippies drinking smoothies and weaving banana leaf hats on a beach. I must say I was beginning to feel a little worried about going back to London with nothing but a couple of embroidered pillow cases, constipation, a shit haircut, and a lot of cheap gold jewelry to show for it – with no hint of a spiritual epiphany.
So two weeks ago I headed south on a night bus to Kerala in search of something more substantial than a pashmina to bring home. Famous for it's Christians and Cardamom, India's southern-most state seems to inspire even the most pissed-off backpacker to make evangelical proclamations about the 'intoxicating scent of the spice plantations' and the 'romantic backwaters' fed by its two annual monsoons. It has even earned itself the nickname 'God's Own Country' – but being a strict North London atheist and having been in India since January - I have learnt to prepare myself for disappointment. In India you quickly learn that wherever there is spirituality, there is always some toothless old chancer in a loin cloth trying to grab your bottom, and wherever there is natural beauty, you can always rely on some dodgy Indian businessman to build a vast monolithic hotel filled with dusty plastic flower arrangements and carpet-tiled conference centres.
So as the familiar bus-window landscape of paddy fields, decomposing rubbish, corrugated iron shacks and fluorescent-lit tea stands flashed past, I had already convinced myself that the heady scent of Cardamom would probably be overpowered by the fruity stench of open sewers, while the rolling tea plantations would most likely be littered with plastic bags and tacky billboards advertising noodles and luxury apartment blocks. After all, who needs to preserve the beauty of God's Own Country, when you can build your own 24-story concrete heaven on the outskirts of the city with built-in air conditioning, gym and sauna?
But I was wrong. At the risk of sounding like a sycophantic gap year student with too much time on their hands and diary pages to fill, as we wound up the cool mountain roads deep into the Cardamom hills east of Cochin, Kerala provided (even a Godless London malcontent like me) a convincing argument for the existence of God - in His Own Country, if nowhere else. As we drove almost 3,500 feet above the humid fug of Cochin, a waxwork Jesus waved solemnly from behind a big glass case in front of a turquoise church, sprays of wild lilies and scarlet blossom grew by the side of the road - and even India's trademark anorexic cows looked fatter and happier as we reached the cool hill station town of Munar.
We were staying with a family just outside Munar, in a house surrounded by gardens of exotic flowers, fruit, spices, tea, coffee plantations and vegetables – which also provided the ingredients for every meal, (rather than Tescos). Not only did every inch of earth seem to have something growing from it, but Rajee, the woman who ran the place, was like a voluptuous Indian lady Madonna who seemed to be able to produce delicious meals and beautiful children simply by brushing past the stove - or her husband - at the right time of day. Forget ashrams, orange robes and chanting classes; eating homemade pancakes with pineapples and honey from Rajee's garden rates as one of the most spiritual experiences of my entire trip. It was like paradise – apart from one minor blip: Rajee's third son 'Deebu', who would be better described as 'Son of Saturn'. He may have only been four, but his baby teeth were brown and pointed into little fangs, and he would charge around the house making unearthly, blood curdling screams and hurling himself against walls. One evening we sat around the table discussing religion. Rajee and her husband Tomy, asked Luiza and me if we were religious. We said 'No', they said 'not even Christian?' and we said 'No, nothing, not even Christian.' They said, 'but the British brought Christianity to India! Even we are Christians'. At which point Deebu, who had been lurking quietly under the table, dragged out a three foot long wooden crucifix from the living room cabinet, threw it to the ground and started maniacally screaming and jumping up and down on top of it. If there had been a stream of green vomit gushing from his mouth, and a man's voice chanting backwards in Latin then I would have thought I was on the set of a cheap 1970s horror film.
After meeting Deebu, I decided that I was fine being a godless north London cynic - until the five hour bus journey from Munar made me re-evaluate my beliefs once more. It was a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day and every window on the bus opened out onto the acres of (Tetley) tea plantations below. I fucking hate Indian buses, but I was actually having a lovely time looking at the tops of green hills with white puffy clouds sitting on top like 99' ice cream cones. All was well until the bus driver began our descent, lifted his foot from the break pedal and decided to freewheel from 3,500 feet to the bottom of the valley. As we swerved and skidded around blind corners, overtaking lorries and motorbikes, gravel furiously hitting the bottom of the bus, I swiftly found spirituality again and made some heartfelt prayers to God. I prayed that we wouldn't die in a pile of twisted metal at the bottom of a ravine in His Own Country, and that if I did I was wearing modest enough underwear to be found in. I also prayed hard that I wouldn't vomit in Luiza's lap, because I would have to jump over her to make it to the window. Luckily He was looking after us that day. The bus slowed down, I didn't vomit and even when the guy in front of us did, the ticket collector shut our window just in time to avoid the spray coming back in and splashing us in the face.
After that our trip to Kerala was littered with what I like to think, were mini-divine interventions. In Periyer Wildlife Sanctuary, six monkeys came and hung out on our hotel balcony. We rode elephants and in every place we visited we accidentally stumbled upon a random village festival giving out delicious free food wrapped in banana leaves. I didn't believe in God before (or at least only before my math’s GCSE and during extreme plane turbulence), but I'm beginning to understand why so many people who live His Own Country do.

Postcard from Goa

"Eefa you wanna fuckin' holiday from fuckin' India, then you should goto Goa," spat Bravo, the angry middle-aged Italian ex-pat I met on the beach in Gokarna three weeks ago. "Eeza the only motherfuckin' place in zee 'ole fuckin' country where you can ezcape ze fuckin'women in saris, blokes wiz ze big fuckin' moustaches an bad shoes, sheet motorbikes an stinkin' piles of garbage an' cow sheet every fuckin' place you go. Eeza lika fuckin' paradise man." Despite being a fossilized old racist with a body like a worn leather saddle bag in a g-string loin cloth, I have since discovered that Bravo was quite right about Goa. The lush stretch of coastland between Maharashta and Karnataka is a spiritual honey pot for jaded western malcontents, retired package tourists and gap year students, desperately trying to lose themselves (not find themselves) via the traditional means of cheap beer, ugly sarongs, fake dreadlocks, hallucinogenic drugs and largely unregulated raving. People like itbecause you get all the trappings of a spiritual break in a developing country – the heat, the brown people and the funny foreign food, rickshaws and squat toilets – but you can still eat egg and chips for breakfast, most of the brown people are called things like Martin, George and Theresa (thanks to the Portuguese) and you can get drunk really, really cheaply. And this is where I have been 'losing myself' for the past 10 days (on a two week holiday from India) with Rosie, (on a two week holiday from London), along with a whole lot of other people on holidays from various things. But as with most holidays –home is always closer than you think.
It all started with a large tattoo of Che Guevara, emblazoned on the back of a puny Welshman from Pontypool. Rosie and I were sitting in a café overlooking the least populated beach in southern Goa, gazing out into the distance where the jungle meets the flat white sand, thinking how wonderful to finally be so far away from it all, with only the sound of the lapping waves and a herd of buffalo for company– when suddenly: "WELL, well, well gurrrls," says a rolling Welsh voice, the sound of smacking lips just audible. We turned around to find a skinny bloke (Gaz) standing dripping wet in a pair of baggy red trunks, with a nervous looking chubby mate (Big Rich), looking longingly at us in our bikinis. "I 'ope you don't mind if me an' my buddy Big Rich sit ourselves down next to you, its not often' we get to talk prrrropa English on a beach in India to a pair of such bewtiful ladies such as yourselves, is it now?" Before there was time to react, Big Rich and Skinny Gaz were pulling up chairs, and suddenly I was transported from my Indian beach idyll to drizzly South Wales, the waft of fag smoke and the smell of wet dogs and chips by the sea. "No not at all [stop staring at my tits]", we said, "nice to meet youboth [fuck off fuck off fuck off]". After a bit of idle chit chat about Gaz's previous career as a Morris Dancer, a Bookie and a Ballroom Dancer and about how he once made 48 quid having sex with a girl on an Internet chat room, we finally got onto the subject of the Cuban revolutionary stamped across the back of his puny ribcage. "Oh this ole' thing, yeah got it done on 'oliday in Cuba last year". Wow, we said, it's really nice. "If you like this one, you should see the one I'm going to get done when I go to Jamaica: the lyrics of Redemption song tattooed over my entire right arm". Wow, we said, is that because it's your favourite song? "No, my favourite song is 'Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve," said Gaz.
Since meeting Gaz & co, Rosie and I have spent more time trying to lose them, than losing ourselves. We covertly moved into a different beach hut, started sunbathing at the other end of the beach and started wearing big sunglasses and speaking in thick Russian accents –but to no avail. The Welsh boys can sniff us out from a kilometer away like a herd of horny goats. And we are not alone. The longer you spend in Goa, the more people you find trying to escape from something: shit jobs, broken marriages, drug problems, family problems, or a disappointing career as a Morris Dancer… You find that some people escape by dressing themselves all manner of disguises bought from roadside tourist shops like Technicolour tie-dyed dungarees, genuine clip-on Rasta dreadlocks and pixie hats woven from banana leaves. Others go the classic route of choosing from the large assortment of hallucinogenic drugs on offer here - like a group of guys who I met last week. I found one of them, Steve, an electrician from Essex, sitting red-eyed under a mosquito net in his beach hut. He had been in there sweating for three days waiting for his mate Paul, who got lost after taking some bad acid at a rave in North Goa. "Where did you last see him?" I asked. "Well," he said thoughtfully scratching his chin, "I think it was when he escaped from the back of the car, took off all his clothes and ran into the jungle naked shouting: 'WHO THEFUCK ARE YOU? I WANNA GO HOME!'" He didn't have a passport, any money, any clothes, or any idea where he was, so I suppose you could call that the most literal incidence of losing oneself that I have come across so far.
Tomorrow I am leaving the beach, the bamboo huts, coconuts and powercuts and I am proud to say that I came out of the Goan beach experience relatively unscathed - with only a mild case of faux spirituality, a couple of dreadlocks and a small Che Guevara tattoo toshow for it.

Nearly nirvana

I have now entered phase three of my Indian journey. Let's call it thelying-in-a hammock-on-a-washed-up-hippie's-paradise-with-agang-of-soap-dodging-Israeli-backpackers-sipping-coconuts-and-smoking-extremely-strong-Indian-charis-phase.

I am staying on the aptly named 'Om Beach' in Gokarna, about 12 hours away from Mysore, 5 hours away from Goa and about a million miles from anything resembling real life. It's the kind of place where you might be having a bowl of fruit for breakfast in a beach cafe quietly reading your book, only to look up and find a middle aged woman stripped to the waist, saggy breasts sweating in the morning sun practising an orgasmic beach yoga on a rock, flinging her dreadlocks to the heavens in an ecstatic sun salutation. Of course there are also the crusty white men in loin cloths playing wooden flutes on thebeach, who look like they may have been there since 1968 but who I like to think, are actually cashiers at HSBC Crawley on a two week package tour - and picked up their clip-on dreads at the high street joke shop before they arrived.

But without doubt, my favourite new friend here is a Canadian fellow by the name of Jonathan. He looks like an albino sadhu, with a knotted ginger beard almost a foot long and a pair of oatmeal fisherman paintstied at his sinewy hips. He has the uncanny ability to catch your eye in a moment of weakness, hold your gaze with his intense pink little eyes and regale you for an entire evening with monologues on merits of Canadian lawns vs British lawns, to scaffolding, to the rules of chess. Sometimes I think people come to the beach in India, grow a beard and an intense-seeming gaze, simply to compensate for the absence of any real personality - but that's probably just me being cruel and unforgiving again.

You might think that all I do is sit about in cafes and on the beach all day sunbathing and bitching about my fellow man - but there is alot more to reaching nirvana than that. At night we try to light bonfires, but usually get too stoned and end up flat on our backs gazing at the stars for a few hours, and then walking up the rocky path to my beach hut in fits of hysterics about the cow on the beach who got it's horns stuck in a hippies' sarong... or about when you try and order banana and nutella pancakes for pudding and it arrives with complimentary pieces of carrot and cauliflower.

That's the best thing about an Indian beach holiday: you may be sitting on the most beautiful white sandy beach in the world, looking out into the tranquil Arabian sea, eating fresh salty pineapple - until a cow comes and craps on your towel, a 60-strong group of Indian men gather aroundyour boobs and ask "madam one photo please?" and you get back to your hut only to find that your bikini has been eaten by rats. So you see, it's nearly nirvana - but not quite.

If karma exists...

... Then may it bring a plague of locusts, a gut full of vicious tapeworm and a herd of sexually frustrated holy cows down on the thieving bastards who nicked my wallet last weekend. So if you are sitting comfortably, then I will tell you what happened.

It all began on a virtuous weekend excursion to northern Karnataka with the founders of the NGO that I am working with. I was tagging along to do some groundbreaking interviews with some former Devadasi prostitutes, who are the women that certain rural Hindu communities 'dedicate' at the age of 12 to work as sex slaves. It is basically rape disguised as a form of religious devotion - so I thought it well worth the epic journey across state to find out more about it. It also seemed like a neat way to alleviate some of the guilt I'd been feelingover my new silk sheets and plasma screen TV.

Like so many Indian journeys it began with ten sweaty hours sleeping on a rubber train bunk with six Indian blokes, followed by a bowl full of warm salty curd with suspicious bits in it and three hours of vigorous bumping through the countryside in the back of jeep. I wasn't feeling my best and by the third hour was desperate for theloo. I made the mistake of casually mentioning this to Stanly (my Indian boss), who then mentioned it to his wife, who then mentioned it to the rest of the staff, two wives, three children and Santosh the driver who all laughed for a good few minutes about my predicament, before delving into some serious discussions about WHERE SARAH SHOULD GO TO THE TOILET? It was all becoming rather uncomfortable –physically and emotionally – as the car full of nine people began scanning the side of the dirt track for suitable bushes (for"privacy") and running water (for "washing"). "Sister, you need number one or number two?" So I did what any other self respecting English girl would do and did some serious backtracking. "Stanly, actually Idon't need to go anymore. If we pass a toilet and there's an opportunity then I will, but otherwise don't worry." To which Stanly replied: "Opportunity is there, but toilet is not! HA HA HA!". After half an hour of more discussion, my wish was granted and toilet was there in a dodgy highway hotel. Naturally the curious hotel manager stood outside the filthy bathroom with a red light bulb and listened as I weed.

Our first stop that morning was the famous Hindu temple where these young girls are initiated into prostitution. The car drew up in a cloud of dust and flies at what could be described as an Indian Glastonbury in the middle of some bleak scrub land. It had all the elements of an English music festival: it smelt like human poo, was full of market stalls selling fried food and ethnic tat and almost 100,000 drunk people dancing around covered in bright yellow andorange dyes and pissing everywhere - but unlike Glastonbury I was the only white woman. I stood out so much I may as well have been walking round with a flashing sandwich board and a megaphone shouting "I'M A (POSSIBLY SLUTTY) RICH TOURIST, IF YOU PUT YOU'RE HAND IN MY BAG (ORON MY ARSE) YOU'LL FIND AN IPOD, WALLET FULL OF RUPEES AND A NICEDIGITAL CAMERA, COME AND GET IT IF YOU'RE RUNNING LOW ON CASH (OR IF YOU FANCY A FEEL)!"But I was in no condition to keep an eye on my bag. Looking up into the carved wooden balconies of shacks lining the road, young girls in full makeup and tatty saries were hanging out of windows. Hindi music blared from speakers and crowds of people danced pulling each others hair, stamping their feet and throwing up handfuls of brightly coloured powdered dye into the air. Every so often a crowd of children would gather around me, but they were much too sweet-looking to worm atiny hand inside a zip, and feel around for a nice black leather wallet, carefully remove it and zip it back up again without me realising it... right? Elephants in red and gold stood grandly at theentrance to the temple, people danced and prayed and petals and flowers were squashed into a multi-coloured paste underfoot. Walking back to the jeep, through puddles of shit and incense ash, I was reeling from a mixture of toxic smells, religious fervor and extreme culture shock.

It wasn't until I was back in the jeep that I discovered that all my cash and credit cards had been stolen. As miles of sunflower fields,forests and brightly coloured houses flashed thorugh the car window on the next leg of the journey, I thought about the lucky Indian buying £100 worth of rancid whiskey, sweets, rice, saries, cow harnesses andglass bangles, while laughing hysterically at the dodgy photo on my driving license.