The Aruka Valley trip.

20th November still in Pondicherry.

Just to recap, the trip is about visiting the so called primitive mountain tribes, 5000ft above the sea side town of Visaghapathanam. The Anhdra Pradesh Tourist trip is good and bad, we get a good iddly rice cake and potato curry for breakfast, on one of the most glorious mountain train rides, a good lunch too, peanuts in a vegetable curry I like. But the show case of the trip, the visit to the local museum, first you cannot take photos of the exhibits, secondly if the indigenous tribes people are primitive, a description I despise, their case is not helped by the junior school production of village life, its models are so unreal. A quick once over with a dust buster would be good. Outside 20 local women in local dress link arms behind their backs and do a series of winding snake like dancesto a small quartet of musicians.

We also enter some 1,000, 000 year old mountain caves, they drip constantly, water runs every where, and its cool. The squeak  of rubber shoes on stone mixes with the squeaks of thousands of bats disturbed by constant visitors to their caves.

I talk to Dr Rambhopal and his wife Nagamani on the coach trip back about the future if India. Be get back to Visakhapatnam, in the darkness of the bus we all say goodbye, Captain Karma, (of the Bhutan Police) yes its his real name, says that we may never meet again, but that its been a wonderful experience. I couldn't agree more, the Bhutan Posse were just awesome. No wonder its GNP is measured in happiness..

Friday morning, I pack to leave at 4.15am to catch the train to Chennai. I notice that the battle on the floor, just by the skirting board, between the small red ants and the larger sand ants is a draw. Both have captured and removed the two dead cockroaches that I squashed the night before.. I thankfully leave "The Legend Hotel".

I catch the tuktuk to the station, its the same one as yesterday. I get to the station the train is already there on Platform 1, Wow no stairs to climb. I show the conductor my ticket, "Ah Mr Westwood, I have been waiting for you" its like something out of a James Bond movie (circa 60s). We leave dead on 4.45am bound for Chennai.

I have already found birth 21 in my two tier Aircon carriage, I am asleep before we leave.

Waking at 8.00, still on my bunk bed I find myself among three young business women students, working out a stratagem to buy a bank. Actually they are the finalist of 6 in a National Competition for the best business team in Indian Government, they are called the "Black Boxes". Adjacent on the passage bunks is a family  with two children, one of them who screams so highly she could shatter jewelry.

A train in front has a derail so we are held up for an hour, I miss my connection to Pondicherry, what a drag, I will not bore you with the ticket exchange routine. I opt for an 8.30 train to Valluhapam the next day rather than wait till Monday.

I have to bed down in the 1st class waiting room for 10 hours, but its cooled by aircon and its got security. The other option was a station hotel, which is no option. If I am going to be eaten alive I want it to be in a chilled atmosphere.

 I am woken at 5.00am by an announcement in English, coming from the ceiling saying that if I want to go to Hell
(well that's what I thought it said) the train is now on Platform 3. I think I will get on board, I am so tired.

I lie a wait for another 3 hours. I peruse the other travellers around me. A lively wiry silver haired man has a broad band of white over his eyebrows and a red/yellow mark at the centre. There is a young man, in a Playboy tee shirt complete with bunnygirl, with purple tipped fingers and 5 purple dots on his hands the size of pound coins and the shape of a 5 dice. A mother in a marigold sari, has bright red fingers and the soles of her feet dipped in the same red. A middle aged man spruces himself up, perhaps he has a secret assignation, he oiled his body, applies eau de cologne, and brilliantine's his hair. Two families with two boys each sit in front of me, the mothers quickly oil their youngest sons, dust them with talc, apply a white dust dot to their foreheads and then low and behold fit on dark glasses.

Leaving to catch my train, I notice that its thrashing it down outside, the Monsoon is late in Chennai.this year. I sleep on the train and wake up in just as we pull into Valluhapam. I get a cab to the Ganga Guest House in Pondicherry its half an hour by road. The Taxi driver, driving at 40mph overtakes in 4th gear, its not the first time I have noticed this. On some of the most dangerous roads in the world, it would be essential to get a move on in 3rd or 2nd..

Pondicherry looks faboulous, its one place I have always wanted to visit ever since I was a boy and fell in love with the name.

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