JC Adventures Chapter 2

 

Overland to India

In early October ’63, crossed the channel yet again, and hitched quickly through Belgium, Germany, Austria and into Yugoslavia.

 

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia certainly showed it’s time under the Soviet communist system. Very poor and primitive, and little progress….

Street scene Yugoslavia 60’s

Yugoslav transport, and the Chevy driven by the mad Turk….

Very little road traffic, but then a big ’55 Chevy with German license plates stopped, driven by a mad Turk, headed for Istanbul.

He had been a guest worker in Germany, and was now headed home, with the car full of contraband. Nylon stockings were on top of the pile, but who knows what was hidden underneath…. He was an erratic driver, and I didn’t want to ride with him, but the chance of a ride straight through to Istanbul was too good to pass up, but there were times to come that I wished I had bailed out early….

I still get horrors when I relive the time we were racing downhill on an approach to a one-lane bridge, trying to pass a big bus that was also racing to the bridge. He was totally committed and no way to stop on that downslope at that speed, but the stone abutments of that bridge were looming very close. When he swerved in front of the bus at the very last instant, our rear bumper clipped the bus and sent the car into a wobble so that it also clipped the abutment which then kicked us straight, so we just got through between the abutments and onto the narrow bridge. Just a fraction of an inch different and we could have been jammed across those abutments while the bus rammed us broadside…. Doesn’t bear thinking about….

We raced through Yugoslavia, then he headed for Bulgaria, cause that was the shortest road to Turkey. I hadn’t figured on going through Bulgaria cause it was still part of the USSR in those days. So, I hadn’t gotten a visa, but he claimed “…no problem, no problem…”. When we got to the border of course there was a problem, but he overcame it by negotiating a bribe to the guard so I could get in without any formality. So away we thundered along into the night, along those empty highways, through depressed empty towns and cities with few street lights and no one out and about, it was eerie….. Didn’t see anywhere that looked like a café open where we could get something to eat…. Whenever he saw someone he stopped to ask, “Istanbul, Istanbul…”, and they just pointed on down the empty highway. Until, on a very dark stretch of highway in the middle of the night, there suddenly loomed a big truck stopped in the middle of the road with no lights on, and with a human body lying on the road in front of it…. It appeared that he’d been hit by the truck, and several men were standing around, and the only light came from their cigarettes. We came to a screeching stop, and I think we hit the body again before he threw it in reverse and swerved around the truck, and with men having to leap out of the way, blasted away into the night…. That was the smartest thing he did, cause no way we wanted to face Bulgarian police…. He would have had all his contraband stolen, and who knows what would have happened to me, with no visa and no stamp in my passport to show that I was legally in the country at all….. I sure don’t like close calls like that, cause the consequences could be dire in a country like that….

Early morning, we arrived at a remote border crossing into Turkey. His brother was waiting for him there, and they and the customs officials all disappeared into a back room to negotiate the bribes necessary…. While I was waiting for another ride, a stray chicken crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and was grabbed by the Bulgarians. That nearly caused an international incident as they shouted angrily at each other…. The Turks were still negotiating in the back room when a little bus came by and took me farther into Greece.

Greece

Then an ox cart and another little local bus, and finally back on the main roads again. At Thessalonica, I heard that other travelers were donating blood and getting paid $10, which was a lot of money those days. So, I went to donate, but it turned out that the clinic didn’t pay for the blood, but on leaving the clinic there was a crush of hemophiliacs begging for that blood to be assigned to them, and offering the payment in a handful of small bills of local cash…. Well, I couldn’t take money from someone who desperately needed that blood to survive, and was so obviously desperately poor…. So, I guess it helped someone out, but was a distressing experience to see that desperation up close…..

One night I found a little cave to sleep in, which was a good novelty. But early morning there was an earthquake tremble, so I scrambled to get out of there….

Went to Athens and of course saw the Acropolis and other ruins there.

 

 

Didn’t want to re-trace the long road to get to Turkey, so decided to go to the Greek island of Chios, which is right near the Turkish coast. Easy to get to Chios by ferry, but then problems, cause that crossing is international, and not just any boat can cross over there. The only boat that could go across wanted a lot higher price than I wanted to pay… Myself and another traveler did consider buying a rowboat and rowing across, but just as well we didn’t, cause that could cause lots of problems…. So, sat on the beach and looked across at Turkey… Didn’t want to go all the way back and around the road, which would take days and the costs of food and accommodation, so finally paid the fee and went on the boat, MV Aphrodite….

Turkey

Istanbul was the most exotic place I’d seen until then, and I loved it. All the minarets and muezzins calling the faithful to prayer was exotic for a westerner.

Istanbul

The Blue Mosque

Of course, the Blue Mosque is impressive. But the most fascinating was the Grand Bazaar, one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world, with its impressive arches. Everything from spices to gold for sale, and all with endless haggling.

 

Actually, I had planned to go from here to Egypt and up the Nile by boat, and then overland to South Africa, but in Istanbul I met travelers who had just come from India, and they described how easy and economical it was by road along that route. So, I changed my mind and went east instead…. 

What glorious freedom to be able to make choices like that in an instant!

Overland to the East

Not much chance of hitching ahead, so got on a slow and crowded train for two long nights to Ezurum in eastern Turkey. Bought a ticket for a bus to Dogubayazit, but the bus only went halfway to Agri, so the clerk in Ezurum had cheated us…. The Agri locals were sympathetic, and let us sleep in the bus station and gave us flat Turkish bread.

Turkey was very poor and primitive in the ‘60s.

Turkish pickup trucks…

Next morning got in an ancient Austin bus still labelled in English for 22 passengers. I counted 45 humans, both inside and on the roof, plus three goats on the roof, a wood stove, and several telegraph poles up there, very top heavy.

Snow-capped Mount Ararat dominating the area.

Finally got to the Iran border, and had to sleep on a very cold and hard concrete floor while waiting for an onward bus.

Iran

Crossing borders like this is often difficult for transport, cause there’s little local traffic back and forth. Had to wait a long time until a slow bus came to the border and took us over a gravel road to Tabriz, with 2 Aussies, a Malay, and a German. Once again slept on the floor of the bus station. Then another long tiring bus ride to Tehran. Found a cheap hotel and had a real bed for the first time since Istanbul.

This was the time of the rule by the Shah, so was peaceful on the surface but a lot of discontent due to the ruthless, corrupt rule. Iranian people intelligent and friendly and proud of their Persian heritage.

Seen along the way.

A walled compound.

 

Nomad pickup truck.

When it was time for a toilet stop, the bus would just pull over, and people would fan out to do their business in the open without privacy, no bushes anywhere. 

 

That was a lot easier for the locals, squatting in their voluminous clothing, but for westerners in blue jeans, it was full exposure…. The locals don’t use toilet paper, (more on that later), but now I realized what a problem it would be if they all did use paper out there. When I dropped a piece of used paper, the wind blew it away and it tumbled across the desert. If everyone used paper, there’d be bits of used paper blowing back and forth everywhere…. Paper doesn’t degrade in that dry climate, so the litter would be everywhere….

Mosque in Esfahan.

 We’d bought tickets all the way to Kerman, but had been ripped off once again, cause this bus didn’t go that far, so lots of protest and haggling, but no refund… Such is the middle east culture… Then had to get a couple of local busses with lots of waiting around and delays before finally to Zahedan.

 

Pakistan

The only way across the desert to Pakistan was a weekly train to Quetta. There were 16 foreigners on that train, 6 Germans, 3 Aussies, 2 Dutch, 2 Yanks, 1 Canadian, 1 Italian, and 1 Malay, so that shows that there weren’t all that many travelers going overland in those days. That was before the hippy invasion going for the dope, so travelers were still well accepted. Later the locals got very tired of the hippies….

There were lots of local smugglers on that train, and the police kept trying to catch them. The smugglers had all sorts of tricks, one of which was to scramble up on top of the train and jump from car to car, or run alongside when the train was going slowly and jump back on when they could. At least one got left behind when he couldn’t catch up, so don’t know what happened to him in that bleak desert, with only one train a week….

 

The train took 40 hours across that desert. Along the way an Aussie got sick with dysentery. He was a ‘tough’ Aussie and wouldn’t take the Enteroviaform that I carried for such contingency, so that by the time we got to Quetta, he was really sick. He was so sick that when he sat on the toilet he’d puke on the floor, and when bent over to puke into the toilet he’s shit all over the wall…. Sorry to be so graphic but that’s how bad it can get…. (As an aside, I learned early on to always carry Enteroviaform, and as soon as you didn’t feel like eating when you would expect to be hungry, start taking the Entero; if you leave it until you’re obviously sick then it’s a lot harder to clear up…) I dragged him down to a local clinic and fronted up to a medico. He took a quick look and handed a prescription, which we had to take to the dispensary, which was a crumbling mud-brick building with shelves of big bottles. The sleepy-eyed assistant got out a big mortar and pestle, and added some of this powder and some of that. Then got down a big bottle of red liquid with “Poison” on the label, and added a big dollop, and then some more, no measuring. Then mashed it all up with the pestle, into a pink concoction. The medicine was free, but we had to pay for the old coke bottles that he put it in, and then sealed them with a twist of paper. He said that was enough for two days, and then we should come back for more. Blain didn’t really want to take this stuff at all, but he had no choice at that stage, cause he was desperate. But within an hour he was feeling better already. (Turns out the red liquid was belladonna, and it’s often mixed with opium to treat diarrhea, so no wonder he felt better). When he’d finished the first lot in two days he felt ready to go, so he didn’t go back for more. We started out on the road, but soon he was sick again, and he had to turn back and get more of the foul stuff. No doubt they know how to treat such gastro problems there, because they’re so used to it…

While waiting around I decided to get a cholera shot. Went to the medico again, and then had some second thoughts when he pulled out a tray of used needles swimming in alcohol and sorted through them looking for the sharpest one. (No disposable syringes in those days) I guess the alcohol would have killed any germs, but the needle was pretty dull from bumping into the other needles in the tray, so he really had to poke to penetrate the skin….

While strolling in the local market in Quetta, a trader came running over to tell us that President Kennedy had been assassinated! It’s said that everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot, and I sure remember that day vividly…..

 

Afghanistan

Headed north up into Afghanistan. This was before the Russian and American invasions, so Afghanistan was peaceful, at least as peaceful as it gets. There has always been a lot of inter-tribal fighting going on, but that was local and personal, and didn’t bother travelers. As a matter of fact, there was a strict code that the roads and public markets were neutral territory, and all must go in safety there. Not unusual to see a man shopping in the market, with a pistol in his belt and a shotgun and bandolier of ammo on his shoulder. They were very hospitable to all travelers from afar, but would shoot their neighbour enemies on sight if they strayed into their territory. Those feuds have been going on for hundreds of years. No suicide bombers killing innocents in those days….

In a public market I saw a demonstration of the character of those men. A tall, sharp-eyed, powerful man with a big revolver in his waistband, strode up and sat down in the dentist’s chair. This was one of the defacto ‘dentists’ set up in the open market, some with pedal-powered drills, but most with just a pair of special pliers for pulling teeth, and often displaying a box of gory rotten teeth that they’d pulled. The man opened his mouth, the ‘dentist’ reached in with the pliers and twisted and wrestled and yanked the offending molar out by its roots, then stuffed a wad of green plant material into the hole. No anesthetic, but the man didn’t flinch. He spit out a bunch of blood, dug into his robes for the payment, then strode away…. And the Russians and Americans think they can frighten such men into submission….

Soon enough I was reminded of those ‘dentists’ when I bit a piece of bone hidden in a curry, and broke a tooth…. It was sensitive and painful, but I decided to live with it until I could get somewhere with better facilities…

 

Firewood market in Kandahar.

Clothing market in Kandahar.

 

Invited to a cup of tea in Kandahar.

No, that’s not ganja he’s smoking.

Street-side barber with complimentary hookah.

 

Typical Afghan bus.

The road from Kandahar in the south, to Kabul in the north, was long and very rough. The ‘buses’ were actually wooden cabins built on truck chassis, with very stiff springs. I had negotiated for a particularly low fare, so ended up sitting behind the rear wheels, so it was a viciously rough ride. So much so that I was exhausted from tensing my belly muscles and diaphragm to hold my guts together… And particularly galling was that for much of the way there was a fine new paved highway alongside that they weren’t allowed to use yet. The story was that it had been built half by the Americans and half by the Russians, and until the Russians had completely finished their half, and the official ceremonies had been done, no one could use it at all….. Once in a while the old road would cross that highway, and that instant of smoothness felt so wonderful….

(The following is a graphic depiction of toilet habits in another culture, but it’s real life.)

The cheap hotel in Kabul, was on the second floor, and the toilet was just a hole in the floor, overhanging the open sewer in the back alley. A real ‘long drop’, but it was good to be that far above the sewer…  But there was a problem for western travellers using toilet paper…. Often there was a draft blowing up through the hole, and then you couldn’t just drop toilet paper down through that hole. Instead, it floated up on the breeze and settled elsewhere in the room…. The locals didn’t use paper at all, but just used a finger of their left hand and then cleaned (sort of) that finger with dirt from a pile thoughtfully provided by the hole…. (Yeh, it’s gross, eh, but that’s why you must not touch any food with your left hand in those cultures…) But I found that I could weigh the paper down with a clod of dirt, and get it to drop through the hole that way….

Speaking of toilet paper, it was impossible to buy any in the shops in those days. There was usually a public reading room at the British and American embassies, so we used to steal the toilet paper from there, and hoard it carefully…. It must have been annoying for them to forever be replacing the toilet paper that they probably had to specially import, but it is the duty of such embassies to look after the needs of their citizens abroad, and this is a real need, eh….

 An ancient defensive stone wall on top of the mountain overlooking Kabul

The city of Kabul.

Kabul suburbia.

Kabul 1963.

Kabul.

Afghanistan was the most exotic place I had seen so far, and I was really impressed. I knew some of the history of how the British had been unable to conquer and subject them to British rule, and could now see why…. The men had a proud bearing and a fierce and fearless stance that wouldn’t back down to anyone. A sharp and cunning eye that was alert and always ready for a challenge. Hard and ruthless men, wouldn’t want to cross them. But sure wouldn’t want to be a woman there….. Would have liked to stay longer and explore more, but it was already November, and winter is severe.

 

Hitching to Jalalabad.

That camel knocked me over and then the rest walked all over me.

Pakistan again

Through the fabled Khyber Pass, and down into Pakistan. Peshawar was a real frontier town with lots of history. Lead balls and percussion caps for muzzle loaders for sale in the market. Has ghosts of the ‘Great Game’ of espionage and invasions back and forth through the pass….

One evening just after sundown was a remarkable sight.
The new crescent moon and Venus were in close conjunction, just like that symbol on the Pakistan flag. Through the dusty haze over those mud-brick houses with a minaret, it was really impressive! Sure wish I had a camera with telephoto, but at least the image is etched in my mind…..

Later there was a spine-chilling screech that moved quickly across the dark sky….. Sounded exactly like I’d imagine a banshee wail to be, and was really eerie….. Didn’t know what to make of that, despite how hard I tried, so it stayed a chilling mystery…. Until many years later I heard a curlew, and finally solved that mystery….

Badshahi mosque, Lahore.

Out of the mountains and down to the big city of Lahore on the plains. There’s a dental college here, so I went there to have this broken tooth fixed. They determined that the root needed to be removed, so they proceeded with that painful process, and then sealed the tooth up again, all at no cost to me. But it wasn’t such a well-done job, as I found out much later….

 

India

On into India, and to Amritsar and the Golden Temple.

The Golden Temple is the centre of the Sikh religion.

One aspect of the Sikh religion is that every temple (gurdwara) must provide free accommodation and food for all travelers. Of course, this was very popular for impoverished young travellers…. Accommodation was usually just a clean floor, and the food was just dhal and chapattis. But we were used to sleeping on floors, and an added advantage is that there’s no place for bedbugs to hide on a concrete floor.

Camped in a Sikh gurdwara.

Feasting on cheap bananas.

That’s my faithful little Primus stove.

The gurdwara at the Golden Temple had a fine marble floor, so real luxury, even felt ‘softer’. There was no blue foam sleeping mats in those days, but by now I carried a piece of corrugated cardboard that made a big difference on concrete.  Dhal and chapattis are good vegetarian foods; lentils and wheat are complementary proteins, and I found I could survive well on that combo. Farther south, the cheap basic Hindu diet turned to white rice and vegetarian curry sauce, and I really couldn’t survive with any vitality on that diet…. I felt just as lethargic as the people there seemed to be….

 I like the Sikhs, cause they’re very open minded, and accept you as an equal, without preaching their religion at you. In India they are the mechanics and truck drivers and engineers and soldiers, and that means they must have rational minds, rather than the airy-fairy beliefs of so many others….

Met a Sikh businessman who owned a cardboard factory, and he offered a couple of us a ride all the way to Delhi, in a car for a change, luxury compared to the crowded buses. He also owned a building right in the old section of Delhi, and offered that we could stay there, so it was really convenient to explore old exotic Chandni Chawk and the Red Fort.

When I went to the central post office to pick up my mail, there was a letter from my mother. She pointed out that the current Canadian High Commissioner to India had been raised on a neighbouring farm when she was a child, and she had written to him, and he had invited me to visit him there. So, I phoned, and he said I’ll send my car for you tomorrow. So, I washed my dress shirt and jeans, and next day waited for his car. Up rolled a stretch Cadillac with a chauffer and dark windows! I stepped in, and all of a sudden the noise of India disappeared, and we rolled silently away in air-conditioned comfort, what an experience! The car pulled up to front door of the Commission, I walked up reception, and the receptionist treated me like a stray bum, cause I guess that’s really how I looked, despite my newly washed clothes. When I said that Mr. Ronning was expecting me, she called on the intercom, and when he said, “Please bring him in”, she looked really miffed…. There were other rich Canadian tourists waiting to see him, and they also looked askance when I got in ahead of them. He turned out to be a great country boy, and really envied the adventure I was having. As he said, he has to observe all sorts of protocols, and can’t just go poking around everywhere and having adventures…. He really was envious of my lifestyle. We yarned for a long time, then when I left, those snooty tourists were still waiting, and gave me a really disdainful scowl. It was a heck of a lot of fun. Then the big Caddy took me back, and I stepped out into the noise and chaos of real India again, and the interlude already seemed just like a dream…..

I had now moved to the Sikh gurdwara, so breakfast on Christmas morning 1963 was dhal and chapattis. Later went into the city and splurged on fish and chips and ice cream for Christmas dinner.

But enough of the big city, so headed to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

Walked up to the big entrance gate, with a noisy crowd of hawkers, and hasslers pestering, as in all India…. Stepped through the gate, and it was suddenly quiet and peaceful, and so beautiful! That has to be the most beautiful building in the world! The proportions are just perfect, those Moguls did know their architecture…. In those days there wasn’t many tourists, so pretty much had the place to myself. Then out the gate, and back into the noise and hassle of India…..

 

This was the bank of the Ganges in ’63.

A clean and peaceful scene.

 

This is the same bank of the Ganges in 2008.

Plastic bags and rubbish everywhere.

Truckloads of it just dumped all along the river……

Finally out hitching on the Grand Trunk Road, that ancient road with so much history, what a buzz! So many feet, hooves and wheels have travelled this road. Traders, armies, mystics, and the general throng. Sure wish I could have walked it when the caravanserais (the truckstops of the day) were active. It was considered neutral ground, and all could travel it in safety. I think Rudyard Kipling knew it pretty well in the British Raj time, and since Kim is one of my favourite books, those are the images vivid in my mind. It didn’t look quite the same by the time I was there, but still a whole lot of character. Camels and ox carts and holy cows often set the pace, and the trucks had to work around them, no such thing as a centre line. Lots of people on foot. Lots of dust and noise and lots of everything….

Walking the Grand Trunk Road.

But hitchhiking was pretty futile. Not many likely vehicles, and the trucks all wanted passengers to pay. A westerner standing beside the road soon attracted a crowd, and a crowd attracted even more of the curious, so pretty soon you couldn’t even see the road…. Then someone who spoke some English would ask a standard set of questions, “What is your name?, Where are you from?, Where are you going?, What is your profession?, What is your education?, What family do you have?, etc. etc. Then when he had gone through the list, someone else, who had just heard all the answers, started asking the same list of questions again…. And then another would go through the same list, again and again… I guess they were just demonstrating their knowledge of English, but it sure was strange and annoying..... The crowd just wouldn’t disperse, as more and more stopped to see what the attraction was. Not a comfortable scene for a recluse like me….

The trucks had locally built bodies, that extended right over the engine, and seats for several passengers in the cabin. When a truck did stop for me on the road it was only because they hadn’t found enough passengers before they left the depot, and the only seat left was the one that nobody wanted – i.e.- sitting on the engine cover, which was hot and noisy and uncomfortable…. So, I finally realized that, instead of waiting by the road, it was much better to go to the trucking depot, and hunt for a ride there and negotiate on a price for a better seat. So, life became a matter of hanging around trucking depots, waiting for a truck that was usually delayed long after it was promised to leave…. The depot was usually a large open square, where several companies each had a small office, and often a common mechanical and tire service, and eatery. Various drivers and helpers and strays hanging around. Pretty basic, but I slept on many of those floors while waiting, and ate the Indian equivalent of truckie food.

The cabins of those trucks were always noisy and crowded, so I tried to ride on top of the load whenever I could. Riding on top was great! The trucks were slow so just a nice cooling breeze, and quiet, and a good view of the scenery, and no one trying to make dumb conversation…. Most comfortable was a load of sacks of grain. But one night riding up there, as we pulled into a truckstop café, the truck bumped an overhanging tree, and hundreds of birds perched in that tree all shit at once and I got covered….

To Allahabad.

Invited to stay with RS Dobe in Allahabad, and was most interesting to learn something of life there. Learned that he had been arranged to be married from childhood, but his proposed bride had died, and now he couldn’t afford to arrange another marriage on his junior civil servant salary. So, he prayed every day to a Hindu goddess that he would have a good marriage in his next reincarnation….. and he seriously believed it…..

He took us to see the Kumbe Mela at Triveni Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati Rivers.  It’s believed that all the gods come in human form to take a dip at the Sangam and expiate their sins. Tens of thousands of people also come to bath and expiate their sins. This year was especially auspicious, because there was also an eclipse of the moon. Very exotic atmosphere with all that going on….

Next day got a ride on a cotton truck to Varanasi (Banaras), and found an ashram that Dobe had recommended. Slept on a solid wooden bed, no special celebrations for New Year’s Eve.

But did stop to ponder what a fantastic year it had been! All those adventures from the Arctic Circle to Varanasi, and lots more to come…. I came for adventure, and sure found it!

 

1964

Varanasi is the holiest of the seven Hindu sacred cities, so thousands of pilgrims flock there to bathe at the ghats in the holy River Gunga (Ganges), and have been doing so for thousands of years. Many believe that death at Varanasi brings salvation, so there are thousands of frail elderly people hanging around waiting to die….

When they do die they’re cremated in public on open fires on several of the ghats. This was all very exotic to a westerner….

Cremation ghats in action.

These are the government scales to make sure that they used enough wood to do a thorough job. Still, it was a bit gory to see them poking at the body to try to make it burn better, and then throwing the remains into the Ganges, not far from where others were bathing and brushing their teeth.

 

They claim the Ganga purifies all, and it must be true. But all those images put me off my food for the rest of the day…..

While I was watching all that, a holy cow charged me and knocked me down the steps right onto the ghat.... Don’t know what her issue was, I hadn’t done anything to her…. What a way to start the New Year…..

Construction crew at work.

The Grand Trunk Road goes on east to Calcutta, but now I crossed over the river and headed south. Riding the trucks again. Got to Rewa, and considered going across to the erotic temples of Khajuraho, but that was quite a ways off the main road so it would mean a couple of days of hassle to get there and back, so just kept going south. I didn’t have much ‘tourist’ spirit, just wanted to get on the road, so saw lots of roads and truck depots in India but not many of the classic tourist sights…. The traffic was getting a lot less now, and a lot more hassle to find a ride…..

The Sikh religion doesn’t have a seven-day week like we do, but they’ve adopted Sunday as a day of rest, so on a Sunday a whole lot of trucks gathered by a river for a rest stop. The Sikhs don’t cut their hair, and always wear turbans, so it must have felt really good when they let their hair down and washed it in the river. Various food sellers had set up stalls, and when a cricket bat and ball appeared it became somewhat of a picnic. Someone got some homebrew hooch, and of course as a guest I had to share. I wasn’t afraid of the hooch, but they mixed it with some of that stagnant river water, with whatever I wouldn’t want to know in it….. So, next day I had a stomach bug and didn’t feel well at all…. So, get out the Entero again….

But this time it wasn’t diarrhoea, I just felt sick and couldn’t face the thought of food, which is very unusual for me….

The following are my actual notes in the little pocket diary that I carried:

Monday 6 Jan - Feeling rough. Waiting for truck at depot. Wrote home. Truck went at 8pm but no room for me. Slept in chair. (In the letter, told my folks I was feeling sick, then didn’t get around to write again for a month, so of course they were worried and thought the worst…)

Tuesday 7 Jan - Feeling rough. Met local ‘alternate doctor’ and he gave some foul tasting concoction wrapped up in a leaf…. Promised truck in evening.  Truck finally went at 5pm. Rode on top, stars very bright.

Wednesday 8 Jan - Got to Nagpur 5:30am. Slept in trucking office, waiting for connection. Feeling rough.

Thursday 9 Jan - Feeling rough. Not eating. Promised truck going in the evening, but none came. Moved to another depot. Slept on charpoy (woven rope cot) in the open.

Friday 10 Jan – Truck finally went 1pm…. Long grind. Ate Bananas. Feeling rough.

Saturday 11 Jan – Arrived Hyderabad 8am. Ate eggs and bread and then threw it up again. Sat around transport area. Feeling weak from lack of food. Slept on stone slab in the open.

Sunday 12 Jan – Not eating. Walked out of town. Stopped along the way for a street-side ‘doctor’ offering free consultation and pills. (At this stage I’d try anything…) Finally a truck at 5:30pm.

Monday 13 Jan - Rough ride ‘til 1:30am. Slept on parked truck. Eggs on Primus. (I carried a tiny Primus stove that burned any sort of gasoline, and it was a treasure. Could cook porridge or boil eggs for safe sustenance food…) Truck to Guntur. Slept on dirt floor in village common house. Lots of mosquitoes….

Tuesday 14 Jan – Went to tobacco factory for water. Eggs again. Finally feeling better.

Wednesday 15 Jan – Shower at tobacco factory, first for two weeks…. Lift with tobacco factory cricket team. Chicken lunch with cricketers. Definitely feeling better now. Slept in mission school at Nellore.

Thursday 16 Jan – One lift for 20 miles, then wait for 6 hrs…. Slept on missionary’s veranda at Gudur. Attacked by another cow….

Friday 17 Jan – Eggs on Primus. Quick lift on truck, then the police at a check post put me on free bus to Madras (Now Chennai). Found the Sikh gurdwara. Slept on the stone floor.

Saturday 18 Jan – Porridge on the Primus. Went for a swim in the Bay of Bengal. Ate at Chinese restaurant. Finally feeling normal again….

Kept going right to Rameshwaram, the very southern tip of India, and got on the ferry across to Ceylon (Now Sri Lanka).

 

Ceylon

Then an overnight train to Colombo. There was a comfortable YHA Youth Hostel in Colombo, so I settled in there. It was so good to find western style food in Colombo, at really affordable prices, for instance, a tough steak and chips for 15 cents US! Also, a good library unchanged from British times, dark and musty but some good reading.

The corner shop near the hostel.

The gem trade was very active, with shops all along the street. Most passenger ships between the Europe and Australia stopped in there, so these were the customers. Touts hassling them all the time. I got to know a gem trader and money changer, and became a tout for him. The passengers trusted a white westerner more than the locals, so all I had to do was strike up a conversation with them, and suggest that if they wanted to take advantage of the bargains, I knew a trader who was more honest than the rest. If they bought anything I got a small commission.

There was a big black market in currency at that time. You could get three times the official rate on the black market. You could even buy air tickets between other countries with these discounted rupees, if you could show the airline a stamp on your currency declaration form that said you had exchanged your dollars or pounds at the official rate at a bank. Well, my trader had a drawer full of stamps stolen from different banks, and the official currency forms, so when we went to change money there he asked, “Which bank do you want?” So, when I met a couple of Americans who wanted tickets from London to Boston, he changed the money at three times the official rate, then took one third in fees, so they still got the tickets at half price. Of course, the airline overseas is going to want their payment in real currency, so the Ceylon economy is being ripped off at a great rate by that black market….. No wonder those corrupt countries stay poor….

It was a really interesting place to hang out, with lots of action going on due to the frequent passenger ships. We even managed to get an Aussie who had come overland but run out of money, a stowaway place on one of the ships going home. There were lots of young Aussies on board, on their way home from their travels in Europe, and they had organized a group to help protect stowaways. They would arrange for the stowaway to share a different cabin each night and bring him food from the dinner table. They split up his belongings so that several could carry them on as if it was shopping. Then they brought someone’s ticket back ashore so he could show that when boarding. It was all very well organized, and no doubt he got back to Australia, cause that was the next stop. He would certainly get caught by immigration in OZ, but since he was a born Australian citizen, all they could do would be to slap him on the wrist and charge him with fare evasion, which would be no problem to pay off once he had a job. And he’d have a great story to tell in the pub!

I really wanted to get to Africa so was waiting for a ship across the Indian Ocean, but very few going that way. One was promised to Mombasa, but kept being postponed, week after week, so I was in Ceylon for two months, but a good place to hang out. Hitched up into the highlands of Kandy, where the climate was cool and covered with tea plantations. Orange Pekoe from Ceylon has always been my favourite tea, so it was interesting to see it all. Neat bungalows of the British colonials in manicured gardens, so different from the congested city….  Then around the south coast of the island.

 

 

MV Isipingo finally sailed for Africa on 24 March 64. Chuffing slowly across the calm ocean, with flying fish skipping around. Traditional English breakfasts, with toast and jam and chilled butter, and basic tropical third world service, luxury to me after all that rough overland travel…. All the other passengers were British ‘colonials’, a retired judge from Tanganyika going back to set up a distillery (forever tippling his sample stock), a retired tea buyer from Ceylon (very ‘pukka’ and nose way up in the air), and a retired couple from Ceylon with a retarded son (very much kept to themselves). So, lots of time for reading, and practicing the technique I’d learned in Ceylon from a German artist, of how to forge rubber stamps…. Made a really good stamp in my medical card to show that I’d supposedly had my yellow fever shot….

 

Steaming across the Indian Ocean

on this ancient freighter, headed for Africa…..

MV Isipingo was built in Belfast in 1934, and this was its last trip before being scrapped. The engine broke down halfway and we were drifting for a while until they managed to repair it…. Luckily the weather was calm all the time….

Classic adventure!

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