Englishman in Strasbourg

Today I decided to take things easy.  I stayed in bed until twelvish and was finally up and around by one o’clock. Later I would go and check out buses to Pushkar via a travel agent’s as recommended in the guidebook. I decided that now would be a good time to meet the landlord and [...]

I checked in to The Golden Palace Hotel having had a restless night at Shampoo Villas.  Aside from the runny bottom and the traffic noise first thing in the morning, I had been disturbed by the cleaning boy; who insisted on coming in and half-heartedly moving a brush over the floor and then asking for [...]

Hotel Shambhu Villas, Udaipur. I awoke around eleven and decided that there was no way I was going to check out by midday. So I relaxed a little and got ready for a day of sight-seeing and post-office hunting, which as vaguely indicated on my map. After an omelette at the roof garden restaurant around [...]

8am. I awoke to find the train stationery and the people in my booth collecting their things together. “Udaipur?” I asked hopefully – they nodded. I got out of the train and found a bench to sit on to collect my thoughts. It was already noticeably hotter than Bombay.  Task 1: find a hotel. I [...]

1pm, Central Station, Bombay. I had enjoyed the taxi ride to Central Station. Halfway, we had paused at a set of traffic lights and in the queue (not lane) next to us the owner of a privately owned vehicle had got out and was having a heated argument with the driver of the taxi in [...]

Time at last to start the famous journal; well famous in the sense that everyone whom I met before beginning this trip said: “Are you going to write a journal?” So hopefully after I have written it, it will become famous. I am currently lying on my Hotel bed in the Kerwala Chambers Guest House  [...]

Tourist Bookings Office, Churchgate, Bombay. Met a couple from Brighton in the bookings queue.  They were headed for a highly industrial town in Gujerat. They’d stuck a pin in the map and decided to go. I had mode more of a calculated choice: to only go to places that the guidebook really raved about and [...]

I began the day by moving hotel.  It wasn’t a difficult task by any means because the hotel I was moving to was situated on the top two floors of the same building as The Strand – The Kerawala Guest House. The room was a far cry from my situation in The Strand but cost [...]

4am, 52 Green Avenue, Northfields, London. Having spent the night packing and chewing the cud with Adrian, I had had little sleep. Not much more than two hours in fact, but I was exhausted and slept deeply. Squeeze elbowed me into life and got up to make some super-strong coffee for the first leg of [...]