Return to Oz
My travels are over and I’m back in a country where despite the many apocalyptic events happening throughout the world, a fast horse apparently deserves the first ten minutes of every news bulletin.
The remainder of my time in India went well. As promised, I rode off in to the desert on a camel and returned 24 hours later with a very sore arse. I visited a few more forts and palaces and now know far more than I ever needed to about Rajasthani history. I went to a number of very different cities — Jodhpur which was a nice place whose major claim to fame is that most of the buildings are painted blue, Udaipur which is a beautiful town on the edge of a lake and a good place to relax before I headed on to Ahmedabad, the most polluted city I have ever been to where my eyes were burning after 10 seconds outside and finally Mumbai.
Mumbai was a good place to finish. While still being very clearly Indian, it is India’s most westernised city with alcohol being far more accepted, people more often wearing western clothes and women actually speaking and being spoken to. It also bans rickshaws from most of the city meaning all the would-be rickshaw touts seem to have become drug dealers instead.
The absolute highlight of my time in India was the food which was amazing, particularly for a vegie like me. The restaurants class themselves as either ‘pure veg’, ‘veg’ or ‘non-veg’ and even non-veg tended to have loads of vegie food. It all tasted great, full of flavour and very fresh with my favourite dish being masala dosa — a pancake filled with spicy mashed potato. After such spicy, flavoursome food everything back here is tasting a bit bland.
But its not all bad. It’s great to look at the sky and see blue rather than haze. Driving down a three lane road with only three lanes of traffic moving down it is certainly novel and the sound of silence (rather than car horns) has never sounded so good. Anyway, must go — a newsflash on the highlights of Makybe Diva’s first day of retirement has just appeared on Ninemsn.
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Tom
November 2nd, 2005 at 7:20 am
Did you get the recipe for masala dosa? I’d like a dosa masala dosa. Do you see what I did there?
Don’t you understand, Andrew, for one week a year, horses are more interesting than anything else. Although I must say, the IR reform bill and terror warning have had a good old try of it.
Perhaps Andy should reconsider his rickshaw future if that’s the most likely career path.
Andy
November 2nd, 2005 at 5:14 pm
You think I should become a drug dealer instead?
A dosa masala dosa. hahahahaha. Andrew missed an oportunity for a pun. If he’d used the american ass instead of arse he could have said he rode off on a camel and returned on a sore ass.
We thought you must have been eaten by giant scorpions or plague zombies, you’d been gone so long.
Jack
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:47 am
Do you have a distate for any sport taking up space in the news, or specifically horses?
Anyway, I like India’s classification of restaurants. Although it hardly seems fair that ‘non-veg’ still has vegetarian dishes but ‘pure-veg’ doesn’t have any meat. No wonder the zombies have to eat people.
Can you get beef dishes? Are most people vegetarian in India? Are there really giant scorpions?
Andrew
November 3rd, 2005 at 5:34 pm
Sport generally but particularly sports where the testing the limits of human endurance thing seem to be limited to the ability to hit an animal with a stick and to weigh as little as possible.
I didn’t see any beef being sold anywhere. I think killing a cow is illegal in most of the country (at least technically). I believe the majority are vegetarian, even in the north where I was (I think the South is more strongly vegetarian) although Wikipedia claims only 30% are. I suspect there are a lot of people who eat almost entirely meat-free diets but wouldn’t class themselves as vegos.
Unfortunately I didn’t come across a scorpion, giant or otherwise. The extent of the desert animal attacks I experienced where by plagues of black beetles. There were literally thousands of the things running across the sand and they were crawling over me all through the night. The limit of their attack abilities seemed to be a small pinching bite, so not quite as death-defying as fighting of gangs of giant scorpions.
Tom
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:05 pm
As far as sport on the news goes, I reckon it’s a bit rich to spend 5-10 minutes on the Cup at the start, plus the usual 5 minute sport update at the end, when it was most certainly not a slow news day. There should be a quick announcement of who won, and then the sport should wait it’s turn, because it’s not that important. Or at least, not that important as news, anyhow.
I’m with Andrew on the merits of horse racing.
There’s no way I could sleep with bugs crawling over me all night. Yikes. You haven’t answered my question though.
Jack
November 4th, 2005 at 8:19 am
I hope nobody is saying sport isn’t important. I don’t think anyone is though so it’s all good. We don’t really need to have a discussion about the role of sport in society.
I appreciate people may be frustrated about the perceived lack of focus on the IR reforms and anti-terror laws – but do we really need to begrudge a horse?
And incidentally, they are horses that people are celebrating, not the people who ‘hit an animal with a stick’ (although there is a little more to it than that). It’s hardly a test of human endurance so everyone can get off their high horse. That might have been my worst joke ever.
Anyway if it makes you feel any better Tom all the important bits of the IR and anti-terror stuff probably couldn’t be given justice on a television bulletin anyway. The papers are covering it pretty well.
Tom
November 4th, 2005 at 8:58 am
The papers as in the ones everyone reads or the Age and the Australian?
I’m pretty sure Makybe Diva can handle a bit of constructive criticism. I’m not sure I believe that given the choice between being in horse races, and a life where they don’t get carted around in teeny little trailers and cheered and occasionally shot after tripping over, a horse would choose box number 2.
I think sport has a very, very important role in society. I think it deserves a regular spot at the end of the news. I don’t think that spot should be first because, frankly, it trivialises the actual, proper news, with life-changing decisions being made, people dying, wars being declared, etc, etc.