14 December, Kajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India

Hi all

For this blog, I'm going to load up our diary entries (abbreviated) for the last couple of days to bring you up to date. Here goes:

12th December, 2008
The theme of today is human faeces. It seemed like everywhere we looked, all day long, people were crapping. Alongside the road, all the way into town, through it, out og it - human crap lined the road. Tonnes of it. It's not unusual to see people crapping beside the road, on railway tracks - Andrew's even seen as many as 3 people at the same time crapping directly into a river in the centre of a town! - but I've never particularly noticed piles of crap around. Now, I just don't understand this. It's not a question of human sensivilities - I can handle seeing people doing this, although I wouldn't choose to poo in public myself - but for a country with satellites, call centres and a nuclear bomb, how can it be possible that the most basic sanitation does not exist through vast swathes of the country? It's not a question of welath - anyone can dig a long drop using a stick if no tools are available. And crapping in the fields (common practice) at least fertilizes the crops - but in the streets?? And you're not telling me that even without public helth education, copmmunities haven't figures out that human waste needs to be kept out of harm's way to avoid sickness and disease. I don't know what to put it down to but it's jut insane and truly squalid.

We also met with very strange behaviour today from locals - not hostile, but lots of loud yelling, some decidedly lunatic laughter, loud grunting and seriously feral kids. Just about everyone we passed held out their han and rubbed their fingers to indicate money. Others on motorbikes asked us for our water (not because they needed a drink). The son of the cafe owner where we had lunch (a fat, well dressed kid - a sure sign of wealth) told Andrew to give him his watch and kids demanded 'pen pen', 'rupee' and tried to get our water off our bikes. It was incessant - all day long - an ultimately very demoralising. The strange thing is that we are in quite a rural area - the only tourists here pass through in white private Ambassador cars with private driver-guides - probably with their doors locked! They wouldn't even stop for water - so how are these people so geared up to immediately ask foreigners for money (or the shirt off their backs?). In a tourist area I might expect it - but not in the countryside (and we haven't experienced it before to this degree in India).

By mid morning we both agreed that we would press on and do the journey to Kajuraho in 2 days instead of a dawdling 3 days.

...........

13th December, 2008
...Throughout the morning we were hassled endlessly. In the town of Nowgong, an older man on a bicycle wearing reasonably smart clothes and smart specs pulled alongside Andrew and said, very matter-of-factly: "you give me money". Andrew said "no" and we carried on, ignoring his repeated request. We stopped to buy water and again he approached, took a 10 rupee note out of his own wallet by way of explanation and said "money - you give me". We were quite taken aback! Further down the road we stopped at another shop and as we were leaving, surrounded by the usual crowd, a young guy - again quite smart - certainly not one of the desperately poor people - pointed at Andrew's panniers and said "money - give me" . Again, not aggressive; very matter-of-fact. As we cycled out of town, 4 bikes worth of kids (at least 2 riding pillion) followed us for no less than 5 kilometres harranguing us with yelled demands of "money - you give me money", "pen pen", "rupee, dollar". There was virtually no let up for about 20 minutes - we were nearly beside ourselves by the time they finally gave up. This continued all morning long. Everyone - man, woman, child, holding out hands for money. These weren't the very poor people who had no other choice - this was a cultural thing whereby it was definitely 'worth a try'. But it left us drained and exhausted - the incessant demands. We haven't experienced hassle like this in all the time we've been in India.................

So - the diary entries above perhaps go some way to explaining part of the decision we have now made:

Andrew and I have sat down and had an honest chat and a good look at the map - and we have made the monumentous decision to head North to Kathmandu instead of continuing west to Kolkata and Bangladesh. India is a huge country and at the speed we can go by bicycle, it means that the progress and variation in countryside is very slow. We have been in India a long time now and we both feel it is time for a change. We sat and looked at the map and came up with a really exciting idea - we could head North to Kathmandu - around 7 days of cycling to the border - then wind through the valleys, through Pokhara and into Kathmandu (and possibly on to Tibet) and use this as our exit point from the Indian sub-continent to South East Asia instead of Bangladesh.

Nepal had been in our original planned route (when we had hoped to travel through Tibet until the civil unrest there made visas impossible), and would make a fascinating addition to the itinerary, plus would get us into our beloved mountains again. With more thought and research we have realised that we might also be able to head into Tibet too which would be amazing! So now we are completely over-excited by all the potential of this new route. We will also look into the possibility of flying to Kumming in China's Yunnan Province (if we can get visas for China again) as we would love to spend more time in China and this province is supposed to be wonderful - from there we would cycle south into Laos.

So - feeling very much re-energised, we are going to start heading North from Kajuraho for the Nepalese border. On arrival in Kathmandu (around New Year) we will look into all the other possibilities and make a plan from there. SO exciting!