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Juanito’s Travels 50 yr backpacker – Pushkar, India 1995 & Bangkok 2023, Mexican visas & changing plans pt22

In 2023

My ambition to have finished writing about my 1995 trip before starting my actual 50 year backpackers hasn’t eventuated and I find myself in Bangkok, Thailand, by a swimming pool, polishing off a Chang beer bought from the 7/11 for just 39 baht kept cool by my Bernie’s Kai Kai, Torres Strait Islander stubby holder I brought with me for just such occasions, with a MacBook in my lap not even 24 hours into our round-the-world trip, aka the Gira Mundial , which started with a few rough patches at Bangkok airport when we tried to get a visa on arrival for my wife who is travelling on her Mexican passport.

bernie's kai kai stubby holder

Our research showed that she should be able to get a visa on arrival in Thailand for 30 days and we based our plans around that. It turns out it’s not as easy as that. Firstly Mexicans travelling on their Mexican passport can only get 15 day visas for Thailand and also need to show an exciting plane ticket. I was ok as I am travelling on my Australian passport which means I get 30 days on arrival without filling in any forms. But of course I can’t leave my wife!!! After much convincing that we would indeed leave  after 15 days to go to Laos by bus, the immigration guy stamped my wife’s form and she got her visa. Luckily we have e-visas for our remaining South-East Asian countries (Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia) and the Laos one didn’t specify a date of entry so we could go there a bit earlier than we planned so my wife can be within the 15 day visa timeframe. Which, the immigration guy reiterated, must be kept otherwise we’d have to pay 500 baht per day of the overstay. The visa-on-arrival costs around 2200 for Mexicans. We had planned to visit Thailand for 5 more days, so the penalty would only cost slightly more than getting another visa-on-arrival and keep to our original itinerary, which I did contemplate, but my wife is very much the stickler for rules, so in the end, we’re going to Laos 5 days earlier than we had planned.

But that was yesterday. Today we’re lounging about on poolside deckchairs after having spent the morning at Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace looking at the most amazing architecture you could ever imagine. Dazzled by the beauty with every turn of the head, sitting in front of the Emerald Buddha not allowed to take photos just contemplating the room, and the littler Emerald Buddha that dominates the place even though it’s only around 60cm tall. Then wandering some Bangkok riverside markets, tasting the most sublime chicken red curry you can imagine, buying a hat for myself, which was sorely missed in the hellish heat on April in Bangkok – it’ll be over 38 every day we’re here and even though I wore a shirt down to the pool I can’t bear to have one on even as I type. Not trying to convey some sexy image, just can only wear the bare minimum amount of clothing at present to retain the socially accepted level of decency at a venue frequented by all ages. Also pretty desperate for a swim, but waiting till I do a bit more of my blog so I don’t feel I’m too far behind with it for the remainder of the journey. But anyway, such a wonderful, though almost hellishly hot day makes the visa troubles and the long flight, and everything worth it! And once through immigration, even though we were zombified level tired, we still managed to get a SIM card, book a Grab taxi, get to our hotel and all that without being totally ripped off – as I had been on my first trip to Thailand. Interestingly enough they still, 27-28 years later, have warning signs about people in regards to gem scams. I guess the model still works, why fix it!

Anyway, back in 1995, in India, on the way to Thailand, but still a few more days away (back then)…

In the morning I went over to the Belgian couple’s, who I’d shared the elephant ride with the day before, at the hotel. As I said, they had their own driver whom they offered to drive me to the bird sanctuary. Well, in the morning I rocked up to their hotel and they informed me that the driver had been annoyed that they diverted from their plans and had gone to Jaipur where he had had to sleep in his car, so he was pissed and was refusing to take som chippy with him in the car. So, at the last moment, the plans were changed, I wasn’t going to the Bird Sanctuary and had to find a plan B, or just stay in Jaipur, I guess, but I didn’t even contemplate it at the time.

The only other idea I had was from Steve who had mentioned Pushkar, so I just said thanks to the Belgians and good luck and I headed with my backpack straight to the bus station and made my way to Pushkar. Which you can read about here so I won’t elaborate any further. But for me, in 2023, I’ve almost caught up with my 1995 trip! Just one more leg (apart from Pushkar to go!) which I’ll make a new post for in the coming days while also trying to keep up to date with the actual, as it is happening now (or at least when I’m writing) Juanito’s Travels, 50 year backpacker trip AKA el Gira Mundial!!

And I will even start doing some more photos! Though the mystery of the written word without the millions of pics has something going for it as well. We have definitely lost the art of looking and reflecting now we can outsource our pictorial memories to our cameras. Our camera phones both promote mass tourism and will also be the death of the places we visit, if we’re not careful. Us humans are historically rarely careful enough though.

Wat Phra Kaewroyal palace Bangkokgrand palace BangkokAnd yes, the pants are super que fashion!

Juanito’s Travels 50 yr backpacker – 1995 Jaipur. Rajasthan, India, this guy Steve from Australia, a Belgian couple, elephant rides and a dead tiger on a floor, pt21

1995

I was woken just before dawn by the conductor. They were so efficient these Indians, and super polite, I was constantly feeling like a regal gentleman, even though I was clearly a hippy with just a few dollars to his name. “Mr Royston, your stop is soon”, he said. And I woke up and looked out the window at the pre dawn light as we pulled closer to Jaipur and the Indian guy scoured and the British guy remained sound asleep.

Maybe 20 minutes later I was outside looking for a rickshaw to take me to meet Steve, who wanted me to meet him at another cheaper place he was staying by himself before we headed to the place he’d read about in his Lonely Planet that he invited me to come along to so he could share the cost. He’d written down the address of the place he was staying on a bit of paper which I unscrambled and explained to the auto rickshaw driver.

There was hardly anybody on the roads at this time. It was dusty. the place was just waking up. The cows were sitting under trees. People slept out in the open here and there. The pedal rickshaw driver drove around a bit past a few crossings and then back down some of the same street until I eventually spotted the name of the hotel Steve had told me about and got him to stop there.

I was barely able to stay awake. I sat around in the garden of the hotel under some trees with monkeys in them, clutching anything small enough for the monkeys to take as they would take it if you turned your eyes for a few seconds. The hotel had a bit of a restaurant happening outside. I was hungry and ordered some chai and whatever else they had on offer, perhaps some more chapatis, or even corn flakes and yoghurt. Steve showed up in a bit and looked up at the monkeys. “I hate those monkeys, they take anything”. He has remained as charming as when I first met him in New Delhi. He had his bags ready, he seemed pretty confident I was going to come. I wasn’t too fussed to be there, but Jaipur was an improvement on New Delhi in terms of the sound, and even had more trees and the like. It was almost suburban where we were.

We made our way to the famous hotel from Lonely Planet. I just wanted to sleep. When checking in I kept yawning.

“Cover your mouth when you yawn”, the man at reception barked.

“What, sorry, I have been travelling all night.”

“Only illiterate people don’t cover their mouth when they yawn”, he said.

‘Sorry”, I said. A few moments later, I yawned again and was so tired I forgot to raise my hand to my mouth in time. This time the guys just glared at me. We got the keys and I went sheepishly off to the room.

The room had two beds and I immediately lay down on mine after taking my shoes off and just lay and rested. Steve asked what I was going to see in Jaipur.

“I dunno”, I said, “I don’t have any guidebook or anything, I wasn’t really planning on being in India at all, so no idea, I’m gonna rest a bit first before doing anything.”

“I’m going to go to look around a bit.”

I waved him off and got in maybe a half hour power nap which left me slightly more refreshed. I got up and looked around the hotel. It had a beautiful garden that included a peacock and some fine roses. It was kind of fancy, much more than I’d be able to afford anywhere else in the world. Still it was a bit of a stretch in my meagre budget so I could only do a maximum of 2 nights there I figured.

I found Steve in the garden smoking a cigarette and drinking some chai. I sat down at the table with him. He had his Lonely Planet sitting next to him on the table closed. I pointed to it.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your guide?” I asked.

He looked at me as though I had asked him to donate a kidney. “You should have bought your own rather than bludge off someone else”.

“Woh, ok” I said. Not sure what distorted sort of childhood this guy Steve had but anyway I wasn’t going to argue.

Steve seems to regret his outburst and a minute or so later tries to explain himself. “I met a lot of people with no money in India, trying to take advantage, that’s all”.

“Up to you mate, I don’t mind”. I said. It’s funny the things that stick in your head over the decades, like some guy called Steve who wouldn’t lend me a Lonely Planet, while so many other details are lost.

He was a weird one that Steve. I got up and went back to the room to freshen up. What I really wanted was a shower. I didn’t have the energy to engage with Steve over his fancy Lonely Planet book. I had a prejudice against Lonely Planet, in my mind it wasn’t for real travellers anyway. Real travellers just went with the flow. In 2023 I’ve drawn on them extensively because they provide some great tips. I even contributed to one, helping edit the Ireland guide (I think in 1997) while doing a placement for my university writing and editing course.

But back in 1995, I had a shower and got into some fresh clothes, it always seems like a layer or dirt was scraped off your body whenever you showered in India. There was just so much dust, and in New Delhi the added smog. It will be an amazing transition when they have electric auto rickshaws and electric cars zooming around the streets.

I sat back down on my bed. Steve came in a bit later. He apologised and handed me the Lonely Planet guide to have a look at. I wasn’t too proud to take it and flicked through for some ideas as to what to do for the day. I saw there was a fort on a hill outside of town.

“This Amber Fort sounds good”, I said.

“I went there yesterday”, said Steve.

“Cool, well I might head off there. Do you want to catch up for dinner late for something.”

“Sure”, said Steve.

After a bit more resting I made my way to the fort. Jaipur was a pretty pretty city (the first pretty used in the sense of quite – when I travelled with Corinne years earlier she was struck by the phrase ‘pretty ugly’ thinking it must mean pretty and ugly at the same time, rather than quite ugly. In some ways Jaipur was also pretty ugly. It had beautiful buildings dominated by this marvellous pink colour but also its ugly side, rubbish, dust, grime, a wall where men just pissed out in the open and the urine ran between their legs into the gutter. Of course it also had its cows, I loved the cows.

When I got to the fort I spotted a line for elephants which were taking people to the top of the hill to visit the fort. In 2023 I’m more aware of the welfare of elephants, and my wife and I are planning a trip to an ethical, non-riding, elephant sanctuary in Laos. Back in 1995 I was super keen to jump on the back of one and make my way up the hill like a Raj on a tiger hunt. And it only cost around 120 rupee return – about a $1.20AUD maybe, based on more recent exchange rates.

The line was kind of like those at a theme park where they had to fill a carriage and they have a spare seat and they yell out for anyone who is there by themselves, like they sometimes do on lines to get on roller coasters at Movie World and other theme parks on the Gold Coast. A couple had climbed onto an elephant and were waiting to depart. The mahout called me up and asked whether I wanted to ride with the couple.

“Is that ok with you guys?” I asked the couple.

“Yes, that is fine.” they replied.

So I climbed on and we rocked back and forth, and side to side, as we went slowly up the hill. As soon as the elephant had departed there were at least two hawkers, who seemed to be officially assigned to the elephant, who tried to sell their wares on the way up the hill, yelling offer after offer. One was selling bracelets, scarves and other knick knacks, the other string puppets. I had no room,  or interest, for either in my backpack but ignoring them, saying no, saying I wasn’t interested had zero effect on them, they were like super-hero level hawkers in India and the word ‘no’ had no effect on them, only a sale would stop them. At least the puppet man, who followed us the whole way up the hill. I think he started trying to sell the puppets for 400 rupees and by the time we’d gotten to the top was offering them to us for 200, or maybe even 100. It is like when you go to the supermarket and you see all these signs everywhere saying everything’s 50% off. Yeah, that’s only because you jack up the prices by 50% first every now and again. I’m sure this guy went on to be a consultant for Coles and Woolworths.

The couple I was sharing the elephant with ended up being Belgian. Well they also started off being Belgian. They didn’t suddenly change as they went up the hill in line with the puppet prices, perhaps starting as Swedish and working their way down through Denmark and Holland until they declared they were actually Belgian. That’s no reflection on the value of Belgians, and these ones were very, very nice. They were newlyweds and had decided to go on a trip to India for their honeymoon. They were smiley and very friendly and we chatted about our trips and where we were off to next. They had a plan to visit some bird sanctuary and of course I had no freakin idea.

In 2023 my wife and I listened to a podcast from some newlyweds who were commercialising their love by making a podcast about their honeymoon. The episode was about Chiang Mai, and they kept mentioning they were newlyweds and that they had met other newlyweds and blah, blah, blah, the usual inane shit. My wife and I are constantly on honeymoon and we don’t go making podcasts about it. I did start this blog though I guess, but that’s different. I don’t think anyone reads it and I’m merely hoping for posthumous fame, like Franz Kafka when they discovered his work and published it. It was genius. That’s all I want, people to find this when I die and say, wow, he was a genius. So just after vanity not money. I do have my principles.

I don’t remember a great deal about the Amber Fort. I guess that’s why, in 2023 we take millions of photos of everything, so we can look back and look at them and say, oh yeah, I must have visited this place and that place because I have all these photos of it. Back then in 1995, I just experienced the place, and for the most part left that back in the 90s. I do remember some room of mirrors and some beautiful architecture, and sitting and looking out at the value below looking at the view, the reddy soil, the acacias, the vultures riding the thermal winds, and the monkeys scurrying over the Parapets, the tourists walking through the place taking photos. I think I was too tired to take it all at the time. Though that happens sometimes, when you visit places. When I went to Italy with my daughter we visited Pompeii, which is amazing, but we just wandered the streets aimlessly and were kinda too tired to see how amazing it was. That’s travel.

After our fort tour, the Belgians and I got back on our elephant and headed back down the hill, with several more hawkers in tow. At the bottom, I went and bought the elephant a mango and fed it to her and patted her trunk. She didn’t seem too unhappy, no less unhappy than many of the poor Indians in India at the time. Just trying to survive. The Belgians invited me back to their hotel for a drink. I was like sure. We headed back.

Wow, these Belgians were staying at a super fancy place. It was quite literally an ex palace of a Raj. They showed me their room – don’t worry this is a g-rated blog and this is not about to degenerate into some sordid offer a threesome with the newlyweds. They were, and as far as I know still, happily married. They were just being nice and Belgian – I don’t think I’ve met any other Belgians so I’m assuming their whole country is full of nice people. Whether or not they are into threesomes, I don’t know, it’s not for me to judge, and if they are it doesn’t in any way diminish their niceness. Anyway they had a fancy four poster bed and even a real dead tiger as a carpet on the floor.

Ok it was a real dead tiger, I think it had been dead for quite some time and when it was killed attitudes were very different, so I’m not sure why you would throw out a perfectly good dead tiger skin. And besides, India has recently reintroduced cheetahs back into India and the cheetahs are even having babies, so let’s focus not he presence. I must admit the tiger did look freaking awesome.

The Belgians seemed cornered that I had no plans so they offered to take me with them to the bird sanctuary they were visiting the next day. They had hired their own personal driver so they could offer me a seat there. I was like sure and we agreed to meet the next day.

I went back to the hotel and Steve and I went out for dinner. I told him of the elephant ride and the plan to go to the bird sanctuary. He said, ‘looking at some birds is a waste of time’. I’m not sure what his plans were, I think he may have mentioned that he was going to Pushkar or something before heading back to New Delhi and back to Australia.

We chatted a bit more and ate some more dhal and chapatis. Steve went on about how grubby India was, he didn’t like the place, the rubbish in the streets, the peeing wall, the constant hassling of the hawkers. To an extent I agree, the intensity of the place was driving me a bit crazy as well. But Steve, he really hated the place, I just found it tough to handle. Steve had a greater appetite than mine and ordered around 6-7 chapatis to my 2-3. We went back to the hotel, and the next day went our own ways.

When I got back to Australia I looked up Steve. I rang up his house and his mum answered. She told me he’d killed himself. Seems he’d gone to their holiday home somewhere and shot himself. I’m not sure she was as detailed as that but she may have been. I guess it wasn’t just India that was too much for him, it was life in general. In retrospect he must have been very depressed. I felt for him and his family. R.I.P

 

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi to Jaipur, India on a train to meet Steve, or whatever his name was, the Aussie guy, Pt20

Map in hand, I headed to New Delhi railway station. I had plenty of time, the train didn’t even leave for another 2 1/2 hours or something, I felt super organised.

From the map it looked like I probably;y just needed to walk a kilometre or two, so after getting there I thought I’d just be able to relax and have some more dhal, and perhaps a mango lassi and another chai, perhaps my fourth or fifth for the day, as I waited.

I couldn’t quite figure out the direction of the map so I asked a gentleman with another fine moustache for some help.

“Excuse me sir, I was wondering if you may help me find the railway station.”

He stopped and asked, “Indeed, where are you going to?”

“Jaipur” I said. “According to the map the station should be around here somewhere”.

“Jaipur? I travelled there many times. This is not the station you want, the train leaves from a station across town.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Totally certain. I travelled to Jaipur by train many years. Every month I would go there, the train departs from old Delhi station. It is across town.”

“Oh! How long does it take to get there?”

“Maybe 40 or 50 minutes. When does your train leave?”

“In around 2 hours, so I better get over there.”

“That should be fine.”

“Thank you”, I said.

“You’re welcome, enjoy your time in Jaipur, the pink city, it is very beautiful”.

He waved me down an auto rickshaw (the smoky ones with kerosene or petrol power) and explained to the driver where I was going, after some negotiation he agreed on a price for me and I thanked him again and headed off.

Oh well, I thought, I’d still have enough time for a dhal and chapatis when I got to the station and checked my bags in and in about an hour I had arrived. I wandered casually onto the station and looked around for my train, clutching my train ticket for the travel agent at the fancy hotel. There were not too many English speakers around but after 10-15 minutes of searching I found a train conductor who spoke English and showed him my ticket.

The train conductor looked at my ticket and looked at me, and rocked his head from side to side in the familiar Indian way and said, “This train is not for foreigners, you need to go to New Delhi station. This is old Delhi station. Why did you come here?”

My face went pale, I replied “I was walking to New Delhi station and I asked someone for directions and he said he always took the rain from this station, not the one I was walking to.”

As usual a couple of interested crowd members gathered around to watch the confused foreigner who had gotten lost. It was like watching reality TV I guess. The train conductor shook his head and clicked his tongue and said, “this train is just an Indian train. The train taking tourists leaves from New Delhi station. What time is your train”.

I told him that it was now about 1 hour away.

“Hurry!” he declared, “if you go now you might make it!”. A rickshaw driver was somehow privy to this conversation and motioned me to jump on his rickshaw. I stood by it for a few seconds and haggled over the price to the station. You didn’t want to sit down until you’d negotiated a price, otherwise you may end up paying anything. The negotiations were rather rushed, the rickshaw driver was getting almost as nervous as I that I would miss the train. He agreed on a price and I dived on and he tore through the streets at record speed.

The rickshaw driver could have easily been a stunt driver for a James Bond film, he weaved around cows, people, narrowly missed trucks and did everything short of using wooden planks to jump over the crowd. He was an absolute legend. I just sat back waiting for us to hit something, my life was in the hands of Ganesh, any other god who’d wager for it. I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch – I haven’t mentioned that before so I may not have had a Mickey Mouse watch with me, but I did own one at some stage and I did need a way of telling time before having an iPhone so it’s quite possible I did have Mickey on my wrist.

The train was due to depart in about 20 minutes. I had no idea of whether we were getting closer but I feel like we didn’t stop for anything.

“You’re doing really well!” I yelled over the noise of the engine. I wasn’t sure we’d make it in time, but ten minutes later we were there. As we approached I carefully counted out the amount of rupees we’d agreed upon and then added about a dollar’s worth more. He deserved whatever little extra I could give.

I jumped off the rickshaw as it slowed, handed him the cash, he went to give me some change, and I was like keep the change please, and I put my palms together in reverence at his super-human rickshaw driving abilities. I ran into the station, frantically asking whoever I could get the attention of for the directions to the platform I ran along, and several train conductors stood together around a clipboard. They saw me coming and motioned for me to come towards them. I ran over to them, panting.

As I approached the man in charge of the clipboard yelled to me, “Mr Royston”. Royston was my middle name so I knew it must be me. “Yes!” I yelled back as I got nearer.

“Hurry”, the train is about to depart.

“Sorry, I’m so late, I was told to go to old Delhi station. So I had to rush back here.”

“What sort of person would tell you to go to old Delhi?”

I reached the train conductors and handed the man with the clipboard the ticket, he looked at it and then said, “this is your carriage, hurry!” he shook his head “why would someone tell you to go to old Delhi, that is a local train, not the tourist train”, he was in disbelief as to how someone could have done such a thing. I could see it was a genuine mistake, but now I never trust directions. Google maps is the only one you can rely on, the rest is mere suggestions.

I jumped on the train, a few moments later it was pulling out of the station. I looked out of the window at the train conductors, there seems a sense of pride on their faces that they’d got the tourist on board. Nowadays I’d put a clapping emoji on a picture of them and post their picture on instagram, back then I just slumped in my seat and let the adrenaline subside as I watched them disappear as the train pulled away from the station.

——-

I had a sleeper carriage, first class A/C – it was still only $5 or $6 and had saved me another night’s accommodation. It was around a 7-8 journey, so I’d get some rest, before arriving early in the morning. I was sharing the berth, if that’s what you call them, or was it just a carriage, with two other men.

We got to talking a bit. One of the guys was a British Indian businessman on a trip over and the other a local businessman who didn’t speak any English. So the British guy translated for us. I don’t remember much of what we chatted about, perhaps where we were from, what we do. I remember the British guy saying the other businessman was very surprised when he told him that they had to clean their own houses in Britain. “What, no servants?” the guy had said, and we laughed a bit before I said I better get some sleep.

A few hours later we pulled into a station. I was still a bit peckish and asked whether there was a chance of getting something to eat. Of course there were people selling wares on the platform and I think I managed to get something to eat, and also a chai in a clay cup. The train stopped for a few minutes, enough time to drink the chai. I asked the British guy what I should do with the empty clay cup and he said, “just throw it onto the platform, they will collect them and make more” and chuckled a little. He was a jolly man.

So I wound back my arm like I used to when playing baseball at high school and pitched the clay cup onto the platform, narrowly missing the head of the conductor and others around before smashing into small bits on the platform.

“Sorry!” I yelled. The British man chuckled again. “You don’t know your own strength”, he gently lobbed his empty cup onto the platform.

There was the usual array of kids, families, women with children, dogs, cows and the like around. A man watched as his young daughter peed on the tracks away a bit. The air was still very warm, almost without a hint of chill. I went back and rested some more.

 

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi India, free to do what I want Pt19

Sunny Guest House New Delhi 1995

1995

Having broken from my hotel owner’s shackles, by paying my outstanding debt, I was free to do what I want(ed). I managed to keep $100 from the $200 I was sent from Australia from the hotel scam guys’ pocket in the morning, I found my way to Connaught Place and booked myself in at a backpackers – at Sunny Guest House. I have virtually nothing I’ve saved from this trip, but I’ve managed to fish out the business card from the guest house with its warning, all too late now:

Do not believe the story of Auto Rikshaw & Taxi Drivers Come directly to Sunny.

Oh well, you live and learn. Tuk Tuk and rickshaw drivers can be dodgy for sure, my wife and I didn’t even bother taking a tuk tuk in Bangkok when we were last there on the 50-year backpacker trip, which I have managed to write about in a future post, which is where all these posts are leading to! So be patient. I also warned my friend Fyyaz who was in Bangkok the last few days to steer clear of the tuk tuks! Especially while drunk. Which he was. I hope he went for the dodgy tattoo idea I suggested to him though. Fyyaz did accompany us on part of our Vietnam/ Cambodia leg of the 50-year backpacker journey. I haven’t quite gotten up to that bit yet, I’m currently stuck in Laos (post 30 I think), but it will come! One day.

Okay, now, back in 1995.

The backpackers cost me around 100 rupees a night, maybe even 200, perhaps even less, I can’t remember exactly, but that was still only something like $2-4 a night so with my $100 I could still easily afford at least 10-14 nights in India. My next chance to get a flight out of India was still about a week away where Thai Airways said I might be able to get a seat on a flight to Bangkok. Thai Airways had guaranteed I could get a seat in another 10 days though, if they couldn’t find me one sooner. So I had to budget for 10 days, plus keep a bit leftover for my time in Thailand – the next leg of the journey – which may be another 2 weeks. I knew I’d probably have to lend a little bit more money from someone to get me through that period, but I’d see how far I could get with what I had in my pocket now.

Having bought some cheap street eats for as low as 20 rupees (around 40 cents AUD) over the last few days, I knew it could be done. Some dhal and chapatis, from memory, cost around 20-30 rupees, or 40-50 cents depending on how many chapatis you wanted. I was fine with 2-3 chapatis per dhal. Chai cost as little as 4-5 rupees (maybe 8-10 cents AUD). For breakfast I ended up having corn flakes with yoghurt made from the local street cows, for around 20 rupees, so full of cardboard and marigold goodness – it was actually very good! And then there were activities and transport. Entry into temples was mostly just a few rupees. Motor rickshaws didn’t cost that much, often less than a dollar. Sometimes you’d even get a cycle rickshaw, pedal powered solely by human effort, which was even cheaper, perhaps half that. If I was careful I could make it.

I ended up with a rough daily budget of around $7-10, including travel and accommodation, which would be very tight, but doable. I stuck with my cornflakes for breaky, dhal for lunch and chapatis for lunch and dinner, one piece of fruit a day, and about 5-6 cups of delicious milky and sugary chai, mostly from chai wallahs with a kettle brewing in the gutter, and occasionally a mango lassi.

A few words on the dha (which spell check keeps telling me is spelt ‘dal’ but I keep  ignoring it – no AI gonna tell me what to do). I ate what the locals ate. I’d find a place on the street set up with a few chairs, open walls and presumably some iron or something for a roof. You sat and ate your dhal in a little bowl, an almost creamy mixture of beans and lentils. You ordered a chapati from the guy with the plate of chapatis walking around. You rip off a bit of chapati and dip it into the dhal and eat the chapati with the dhal. Then the heat hit you. The spicy heat, a level I’d never experienced before nor since experienced since. My mouth and lips tingled, my throat went numb. The only flavour in the end was spicy heat. My eyes bulged and watered, I sweated profusely, I’d almost trip out with every bite. Then I’d take a sip of water, take a breath and try the next scoop until I’d finished my little bowl. If I’d splurged on a lassi I would sometimes take a sip of that to relieve the pain. I never went for naan, they cost extra. I never got rice, also extra. Almost every day I did that twice a day.

At Sunny’s I got a bed on a roof, again with no walls, just some sort of iron roof overhead to keep the rain out. There were maybe 30 beds up there. The shower and toilets were also up there on the roof. The shower had a door and was enough to get you clean. I didn’t drink the water but I did brush my teeth with it, using my tea tree toothpaste which I figured killed any bacteria in the water. Downstairs there was a little dining area where I got my cornflakes and yoghurt and my chai of the day.

On the first day I went to the Thai Airways to see what chance there was of getting on a plane. They said not to even bother checking for at least 5 days when there might be a chance of a vacant seat. Along the way I found a fancy hotel that looked like it had nice toilets, so I just wandered in there and used theirs. It became my main place of toiletry when I was in New Delhi and I’d make a special trip there at least once a day. The place also had a little train booking agency.

With no plans on what I should do in New Delhi I ended up taking a pedal rickshaw to Gandhi Park, to visit Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, and just hang out. There was an array of activities including many earwax cleaners who would pour things in your ear to clean them of their wax. I hadn’t had much trouble with earwax but Delhi’s pollution was wreaking havoc with my nose, and at the end of the day  I’d have a thick wad of black snot that you could have lit like incense. I gave the wax people a go, apart from the wax they burnt your ear hair. Being 27 years younger back then I didn’t have a huge problem with ear hair. Now I’d happily go to the park every now and again for a good ear burning. They just used a lighter and their adept hands for the practice.

Also going on in the park was yoga and a lot of shoe shining. I had my shoes shined at least twice a day while there, but my Italian Scarpa boots would look almost as dry and dusty as they had been before the shines just 2 or 3 hours later. I sat down and warded off the throng of Indians trying to sell me their wares, they were persistent and very common. As soon as I walked out into the street from your accommodation or got off your rickshaw I’d have at least 3, usually 4-5 people following me around with bracelets, knick-knacks and the like. I never bought anything but that didn’t stop them trying. It drove me crazy after a few days, as did the intensity of the place. There are billions of people in India, like literally a billion people. People are everywhere, the noise is intense, the only time I felt I got any respite was when I was back at the guesthouse or inside a temple, and then as soon as I walked out the door, or gate, the intensity would come crashing down on me.

As I was sitting down on a bench, my ears fresh and hygienic, I looked around for a chai as I ignored the beggars and the vendors. I saw a man cutting hair or something and asked with a nod of my head and a point to his glass to ask where I could get one. He nodded his head and a few minutes later a kid came over and poured me a chai. I felt like a king as I sipped the deliciously sweet and milky chai – in a proper glass mind you, not some polystyrene cup, a proper glass. After my chai, perhaps the 3rd or 4th for the day, I made my way to the Gandhi Memorial. I remember it being simple, with some flowers and a flame. I looked it up on wikipedia and the image seemed to align with what I remember. I had another few moments of peace as I reflected in front of it, then headed back to Sunny’s.

Back at Sunny’s, in the bed next to me I found a fellow Australian. He may have been there in the morning but I didn’t notice him. He seemed very uptight and basically all round unfriendly, with a bit of a suspicious sneer, still he initiated a chat and asked whether I wanted to go look at some sites. We went to the Red Fort – my second trip, the sad cobra was still there, and other cruel animal acts that I hope they’ve since banned. Steve, which I think the guy’s name was, wanted to film with his fancy video camera. They tried to charge him at the gate but I suggested he just say he wasn’t going to use it and to just go on in. That worked and he could film for free.

At least I think that was Steve, I may have suggested the same to the German guys I met earlier. Who knows.

Steve was heading to Jaipur that afternoon and asked if I wanted to go with him. He was a bit tight and I think really wanted to know if I’d share the cost of a room with him, it wasn’t as cheap as Sunny’s but I think still ok for my budget at maybe $5 if we shared, so I agreed to meet him there the morning after next. I had nothing else to do and there was no chance of getting on a plane to Thailand for at least another 5 days, so it sounded like a bit of an adventure. Later that day I went back to my favourite lavatory in my fancy hotel and got the guy at the train booking station to book me a sleeper train – so I’d save money on accommodation for the following evening. I think I just spent the remainder of my time in Delhi, sitting around Sunny’s, though I feel I must have visited somewhere else the next day just to fill in the time, perhaps just wandering around the Connaught Place area and stopping here and there for some dhal and chapatis, chai and fruit.

Oh I also had to cash some traveller’s cheques at some point. I think the Western Union had given me most of my $100 in travellers cheques for some reason that is perhaps lost now in 2024, but made perfect sense in the mid-1990s when we couldn’t just get electronic Money transfers and the like. For whatever reason I had to go to an exchange place to exchange my traveller’s cheques for real money I could spend. I think I had $80 in travellers cheques in different USD denominations so I could get a little out at a time. I went into this fancy place and waited in queue to swap my travellers cheques. I watched some Japanese tourists leaving the exchange window with a plastic bag full of rupees, like they were carrying bags of bricks. My rupees would have been lucky to fill my wallet. I got to the window and I handed over my travellers cheques to exchange, and then the guy asked for my passport, I cringed a little and then handed it to him, he examined it, and unlike the immigration guy, he spotted the visa was over 3 months out of date. He looked at me with a great amount of suspicion and a frown in his brow that was also clearly under his manly black moustache.

“We cannot exchange these, you have no valid visa for India.”

I thought he was about to call the cops on me as he looked around the room, so without saying much more than another little whimper, I grabbed my passport and travellers cheques and got the fuck out of there. Around the corner and down the road a bit I paused, and took a breath having walked very quickly, just below a job, around the same pace as an Olympic walker, reckoning the immigration police weren’t on my tale just yet. I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, in my head. Was I back to having no bloody money again. I calmed myself down and looked up and saw that a place across the street had a sign that they exchanged travellers cheques. It looked dodgy and had no Japanese tourists with wads of cash, more of a convenience store/ traveller agency/ ad hoc business. I went in there and decided to give that one a go with a smaller cheque. They didn’t even look at my passport and just handed over $20 worth of rupee. Quite the little fortune for a backpacker in India in those days.

“On second thoughts”, I said maybe I’ll exchange a few more. My heart relaxed a bit from its pounding, poverty narrowly avoided again.

After that I went back to Sunny’s, probably after getting another chai, and perhaps these peanut things covered in some sugary syrup which I’d been finding around the place, had a shower,  packed my blue backpack and headed off to the station.

Which you would think should be relatively straight forward, but which turned out to be an adventure in itself.

 

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi India without a visa but with a little scam Pt18 (not pt IX of Star Wars)

New Delhi India Street 1995

March 2023

There’s risks with nostalgia. Stuart, from the biodynamic farm, Inisglas, I first stayed on when I visited Wexford, Ireland, told me: “never look back”. I perhaps interpret that as never hold onto the past. Anyway Stuart said lots of things and was against floppy discs and technology in general so I will ignore Stuart and go back to reflecting on a trip from 27, now 28 years ago. Though Stuart did have a point of the need to move forward. Sometimes I want to try and recapture the spirit I had back then in 1995 rather than move on. But I also like to remember.

Patrick Leigh Fermor looked back on his trip walking from Holland to Constantinople in the early 30s in a trilogy starting with A Time of Gifts. That was a nice reflection, not trying to change the past, just remembering. It’s a nice slow read with some interesting details of the past. A Time of Gifts wasn’t published until 1977. That was the year Star Wars IV: A New Hope was first released in cinemas.

Star Wars IV: A New Hope is a very good film. One of the best of all times. It has a very simple story, lots of action. It had the character of Hammerhead, the best supporting character ever to appear in a film. I wrote a fan fiction featuring him in a story I wrote: Cuba: with Hammerhead the star of Star Wars: A New Hope.  I bought an action figure of Hammerhead in the late seventies when I went to Toombul shopping centre in Brisbane with my grandfather. My cousin Alistair told me I should be getting all the main figures before I started getting the more obscure ones. But Alistair’s family was rich, I had to choose more carefully, and I couldn’t go past a dude with a head like a hammerhead.

 Star Wars IV brings back wonderful childhood memories that I love to reflect on. I still have a Hammerhead action figure (even with the original weapon), along with a Jawa and Greedo. Now in 2023, I am faced with the nightmare of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen. EP VII was okayish, EP VIII got worse and was a waste of however long it took to watch it, maybe 2 hours or something. Then came Ep. IX: a confusing nostalgic homage to a great trilogy that began in 1977, and has still, yet to be surpassed. A New Hope brought so much hope. Then the hopes were slowly destroyed. Years later the originally released trilogy was followed by a prequel trilogy which did have their moments, they were ok, even looked like they were going to be good, but then Annikan just walked around being grumpy and frumpy all the time like some petulant child and in the end it just got shitter and shitter. And then came the abyss of the trilogy sequel, where the only stars were those from the 1977 film, including two non-human, non-droid stars, the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon. Those began the era where the writers couldn’t get away from their nostalgia for what was once good, where not one new idea was created, where they created another Death Star, like they had been stuck in the tractor beam of that original Death Star since 1977, which meant the best they could do was now create a new Death Star which was now the size of a planet.

The sequel is full of characters who die and then come back to life and save lightsabers from being chucked into fires and having chats with their sons. Where Palpatine comes back to life and wants to take over the universe again and the character Stoke or Snoke or something was really Palpatine. Where all the actors can do is keep yelling out “Poe!” or whatever. They’re always yelling! When Luke yelled it sounded like he was yelling for a reason. When the new ones yell I’m left asking: What the feck are they yelling about? And they just keep flying around to places to find some triangle thing which will show them how to get to some other place they need to go to to destroy a new star fleet filled with star cruisers which, like the Death Star, can destroy whole planets, but like there’s heaps of them, thousands or something – must be cheaper in CGI to just make one and then copy it hundreds of times.  I couldn’t tell you how Ep. IX ends, I’ve struggled to get halfway through it and not sure I can bear the pain any more.

But enough of the horrific side of nostalgia and back to my own reflections of adventures past, in the lead up to my new adventures in a few weeks.

1995: Maybe November

After the 20 odd days in France at the Vipassana meditation centre, and hitchhiking from Paris to London with Beth,  it was time to try and make my way back to Australia.

My Thai Airways ticket had options to stop in India and Thailand on the way. I had to stop in Bangkok, even just to change planes. India was an optional stop. All I wanted to do was go home, but when I booked my ticket in Paris, at a travel agent, before the time of online bookings, before leaving for London, they only had a seat available to New Delhi, India, where I’d have to wait at least a week before getting another seat from India to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Melbourne. I’d at least only have to spend one night in London before heading off.

I had about £80 to cover the 16,800 kms from London to Melbourne. I spent around £10-15 staying a night in London. I probably got a slice of pizza for a couple of pounds. I had to get out of London otherwise I’d go broke: Down and Out in Paris and London. London felt that way at the moment, I felt I had a pretty good time in Paris. I always love Paris. My friend Howie wasn’t too impressed with it. He also thought Laos was so-so. I’ll be finding out about Laos at the end of April (2023).

My first leg back to Australia via New Delhi posed another challenge. My visa for India, which I got before leaving Australia, had expired. It was one of those ones that went from the day you stamped it and this one lasted 3 months. The three months were up about 3 months or so ago. I looked at getting another visa but it cost £20 and would take 2 days to get. I couldn’t afford 2 more nights in London or the £20 for the visa. Figuring if they caught me in New Delhi they’d deport me towards Australia I thought I’d just risk it. I wasn’t too worried about deportation at that point having almost been deported the first day arriving in London at the beginning of my trip.

I got up early the next day and was heading into the tube somewhere around Earls Court, perhaps Earls Court station around 5.30am. I think I had to wait a little until the first train to Heathrow. I looked at tickets out to the airport and it cost something ridiculous like £12. Maybe it was only £6, but it felt like a fortune at the time and any amount I spent meant breaking a precious  £ note and getting coins which couldn’t be converted to rupee in India. Even though it would take a big hit from my remaining funds I couldn’t bring myself to jump the gate. Better to get out of the place with a little less money than get arrested on the way to the airport.

They didn’t ask to see my Indian visa when I was checking in to the plane with my blue backpack, and by mid-morning I was heading in the right direction on my final legs. I was out of Europe.

I slept a fair bit on the way to New Delhi and I didn’t feel too bad when I got there. I lined up for immigration when I arrived and a big scary looking man with a big hipster – before hipsters really took off 20 years later – moustache looked at my passport, he looked at me, he looked closely (apparently) at my expired visa then looked at me again, then without a word he stamped my passport and let me enter India. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Whatever’ I thought, if they let me in, that’s on them. Now I’d just have to wait it out in India for a week or so. At least it was a place where my remaining £40 could get me somewhere. But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy and I was about to fall for another small scam, within my first minutes of arriving. This wasn’t a scam of the scale I’d had in Bangkok on the way over to Europe but it still cost me a bit.

I walked out of the terminal and was hit by the heat and the haze of dust glowing with pinks, purples and oranges of an Indian sunset. I was entering what seemed to be the largest, most chaotic car park in the universe. There were thousands and thousands of cars, and even more thousands of people, cooking things, selling things, yelling at each other, yelling at me, trying to get me to take a taxi. I was pretty sure there were a few donkeys and perhaps an elephant in amongst the throng. There were a lot of cows and dogs for sure.

I chose a taxi about 50 metres from the exit. I asked the driver to take me to the backpacker area which I knew was around Connaught Place. We drove along a very long dusty road, there were more cows, many more people, and more dogs around.

“Sir, that area of Connaught Place is dangerous at the present time. We have Hindu/ Muslim troubles. It is not safe. I can take you to a nice safe area, with nice hotel”.

It was before the times of the internet so there was no way to check if there really was Hindu/ Muslim troubles. I kind of doubted it, and felt a bit like a scam was coming on, but figured I could probably cover a hotel for a couple of days while I waited for the $200 to be sent to me from Australia via Western Union, which I’d asked my family to lend me before leaving Europe. So I went where the guy took me.

When I got to the hotel I explained to them that I was waiting on money and could fix them up when that arrived in the next few days. I rang my sister and she even tried to pay for the hotel with a credit card. But it was 1995, and the hotel guys wouldn’t take a credit card, they wanted cold hard cash. There wasn’t even an ATM around to get cash transferred and withdrawn. So I just had to wait. The hotel agreed to put me up for an unspecified amount. I knew I’d be hit with an unrealistically high bill but I had a roof over my head for a few days, until my money got transferred, and it was a pretty good roof, a fairly decent hotel.

I did get out for a walk on my own in the early morning and explored the neighbourhood a bit. There were some guys making yoghurt out in the open street with milk from cows that were wandering around eating marigolds and cardboard from rubbish heaps. There was a guy with a dancing bear trying to get money from people. The kind of scene you see on those animal cruelty ads on TV – if you watch TV anymore. I got a photo of the first street I saw with a lady in a sari walking down it and a dog in the smoggy haze. Like today it’s a very polluted city. They need electric cars. Which I’m sure they’ll have by the next time I visit.

After the first night the hotel must have gotten nervous that maybe this hippy wouldn’t pay up. They kept a minder around for me to make sure I didn’t run off without paying. It was a bit awkward. The hotel took me around to a few highlights of New Delhi. I went to the Red Fort for a bit. There was a sad looking cobra in a little basket and a million people, cows, dogs, and perhaps even a donkey or camel. It was insane. The actual fort provided a little break from the craziness. I looked up and in one of those arched windows typical of Mughal architecture a woman was brushing her long silky hair oblivious to the throng of people and the noise down below.

A couple of young German guys arrived at the hotel and were staying in the room next to me.  I ended up buddying up with them a bit. I find the young Germans can be so enthusiastic and often bound with joy and energy – just like us young Australians (True Blue or otherwise – see previous post if you don’t get that bit).  One of the guys climbed over the balcony which was adjacent to mine and scared the shit out of me when he opened the glass door from the outside. I was ready to stab him with the Swiss Army knife I’d gotten from Corrine the year before, and which I always carried with me, which was even allowed on the planes in those days. He invited me out for some food. They wanted to go to some fancy place, but I still had very little money and had been going to the cheapest places I could find. I took them across the road, somehow slipping away from my minder and took them to a place that sold these vegetable patty things in soft white bread for about 4 rupees each – maybe 10 or 20 cents. I was really making sure the £20 or whatever I had left worth of rupees would last me until the money transfer arrived. I also had one traveller’s cheque left which was a small note, maybe another $20AUD. I don’t know what happened with the German guys, I think they were just there for a night.

The hotel guys kept taking me to the Western Union office to see if my transfer had come through. I didn’t tell them how much I’d asked for. When, on the morning of the third day the money still hadn’t arrived, they kicked me out of my room but said I could stay with the hotel staff workers. That was an interesting experience, they drove me around to an area of New Delhi I’d never have seen as a tourist, I suppose a typical local area. The workers all stayed in one room and we all had dhal and chapatis for dinner, sitting on the floor, just using our hands and the chapatis to scoop up the dhal. I was happy with that. There were about 4-5 hotel workers in the room. I think they didn’t just work at the hotel, they also worked for the hotel’s associated travel agency, but I wasn’t clear about that. I’d seen most of them over the last few days, often they’d be napping in the car they drove me around in, or napping on couches in the small travel agency office which they’d taken me to when they got sick of my money not arriving, to hang around. After dinner they rolled out some mats and the 5-6 of us slept on the floor taking up most of the space in the room. Years later my mum, son and daughter rented an AirBnB in Shinjuku, Tokyo which claimed to be able to sleep as many people in about the same space. Read more about the shonky Shinjuku  AirBnB and our trip to the snow monkeys.

Possibly on the morning of the 4th day when my minders took me to the Western Union office again my money had arrived! And I had my $200! I got some cash and the rest in traveller’s cheques I think. Well I must have ended up with a few more travellers checks – which would again pose a few problems over the next few days, but I’ll come to that.

With my $200 I could finally free myself from my minders. I went back to the travel agent and braced myself for the bill, knowing it would be a lot. The travel agent guy did some sums, adding up trips to the red fort, hotel accommodation etc, I’m pretty sure he was just Putin random numbers into a calculator that would add up to the sum he had in his head, and then he announced, “$200 USD”.

Having mentally prepared myself for this moment I unleashed a tirade of abuse: “You fucking scammers, there is no way that place is worth $200 USD, my father is a diplomat (posing as a semi-retired carpenter driving taxis on the Gold Coast) and you’ll be in big trouble.” I was playing a role I’d rehearsed in my head for days, make as much noise and fuss as possible and keep whatever money I needed to survive the rest of my Indian leg at least. “I don’t have that fucking money, I only have $100 AUD and that is all I will pay which is still probably double what I actually owe you scammers” and blah, blah, blah. I felt kinda bad as I’m not usually like that but I needed to look after myself. The lower level workers who’d shared a floor with last night just gathered around, interested in the entertainment on an Aussie going ballistic.

“Enough with your fuckings this and fuckings that, you are being a very rude person”, said the travel agent guy and he took the $100 AUD, form his lack of protest I could tell I was being well and truly fleeced even at that price, but less fleeced that I would have been so I was ok with that. After the exchange was done and the yelling died down I said, “sorry, I’m just tired and want to get out of here”. He just looked at me. But it wasn’t quite done. I still didn’t have my luggage. The boss guy sent a worker off to get it. I don’t know where it was but it seemed to take a long time to get it. I was starving so I asked if there was any food around. The boss guy signalled to one of the workers to go get me something. He came back with some dhal in a clay pot. I gave him about 5-10 rupees. I was starving so I just ate the dhal with my fingers. The boss guy looked at me and said, “without chapati, what a waste”.

It was an awkward wait around with the travel agency guys. They kept giving me dirty looks because of all my swearing and carrying on. It was worth it to have $100 in my pocket. When the bag arrived I headed straight to Connaught Place to find a cheap backpackers to stay. There weren’t any Muslim/ Hindu problems. At least none that made it unsafe at the moment.



Juanito’s Trables 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 Vipassana in Le Boise Planté Pt17

I’ve left this post in draft for a few months now. My wife and I have moved from Canberra to the Gold Coast – where I grew up. We went to my Palm Beach Currumbin high school this morning to buy fruit and veggies at the Farmer’s Market there. It was where I went to year 11 and 12 in 88 & 89, where I met Christophe on my first day – my best friend featured in earlier blog posts – and hung out with Billy, the born-again Christian with an Egyptian background. I think he might have been born in Egypt perhaps, but his family had to flee when his dad read the bible, something frowned upon in the Egyptian Christian tradition he was from. There were arguments in the family and a knife was pulled by his brother, Billy’s uncle. The things people get upset about. Billy’s mum made awesome Egyptian sweets and other food, we were always treated to some nice things when we went over there. I first dislocated my shoulder at Billy’s house when we were playing handball with him, Christophe and I think our Lebanese friend Pascal. I once did a short scene in drama class with Pascal about racism. I managed to be racist against Pascal. Not the first time I was racist. I was a shit in that respect, and not just to Pascal. Hopefully I have learnt my lesson in that respect and certainly try and avoid passing on any lingering racist attitudes.

I was shocked the other day when my ageing aunt came out with some racist musings about how she was a ‘True Blue Aussie’ like Bryan Brown and that my cousin’s child, her grandchild was not, as his mum, her daughter-in-law is Filipino. I was shocked, but can’t say I didn’t hold such attitudes in the past. My love of history has led me to realise though that there are no ‘True Blue Aussies’ (which is a thinly veiled way of saying ‘pure white’ dare I say Ayran Aussies), and that we are  all  multi-cultural. Like my racist Aunt who had a mother who was Irish – who themselves were considered inferior by the English for centuries, and a great grandfather who was Chinese – a fact that only materialised when a few of our family did some DNA testing. Looking back I could see my great uncle Cyril looked a lot like a Chinese front the Guangzhou region. Sadly our family were so racist nobody ever admitted that we had that Chinese ancestry. Anyway, I own my own historical racism and I’m trying my best to rectify it. I realise now I don’t think any of us are born racist, we’re taught to be racist as we go. Not that I want to pick on Bryan Brown, but I’m guessing his connection to Australia doesn’t date back 60-80,000 years like the First Nation’s people who were dispossessed by the racist, and anything but benign British Empire.

Moving on though.

Planning for my 50th year backpacker trip continues. I bought an actual backpack at Pacific Fair a few weekends ago, it’s yellow, not blue like the original I had from 1995. I’ve booked a train trip from Vienna to Venice and paid for a train ticket between Salerno and Palermo, Sicily which we’re going to do in a day, around eight hours or sleeping, playing cards and watching the Italian and Sicilian landscape from the window. I know they’re both in Italy but I like the sound of keeping Sicily separately.

Back in 1995, I was still in France at the Vipassana meditation centre.

What more can I say about Vipassana Meditation?  It changed my life and led to deeper insight into the nature of my existence, and of all existence which is no mean feat. Vipassana in the ancient Pali language literally means ‘insight’, or close enough to use the word ‘literally’ literally (not sure where to put the quotation marks on that one – could have gone for the 2nd literally actually). I don’t meditate anymore. I’m sure I’d benefit from it. I feel the next sentence I write should contain the words ‘I should get back into meditating’. Let’s see.

It’s been many years since I last did a Vipassana meditation course. I did it in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I’ve also written of my 10-day course in Herefordshire, England, which I did at the start of my trip in 1995, in a previous 50-Yr-Backpacker blog post, and another time when I went to meditate with Kosio and my RMIT uni friend Evan Karayanidis, gets itself a chapter of my ‘book’ The Adventures of Kosio and Juanito (and Corinne). So you can get details from there if you like.

There are different Vipassana traditions though, the one I did was in the tradition of Goenka, which draws on Burmese traditions. The Vipassana centres around the world are set up in very much the same way. Men and women have separate sleeping, dining and exercise areas. The meditation hall is also divided between men and women. I’m not sure how they deal with people who don’t identify with either sexes or are fluent. I guess they have to pick the side they’re most comfortable with and keep with that for the 10 days. There’s a spot at the back where they could perhaps sit in the middle.

In France, in around October/ November (I’m still not completely sure) 1995, I had agreed to serve on courses rather than sit one. That is, I helped support the running of the courses, by cooking, cleaning etc, rather than sitting silently for 10 days. Serving on a course at some point was part of the meditation technique, putting others before oneself, selfless service. Selflessness does benefit oneself anyway so in some ways it’s a good way to be selfish and benefit others, which is better than selfishness that doesn’t better others I guess.

It was the first time I’d served on a course.

There were a few differences with service on a Vipassana course as opposed to sitting a course. For one, you could talk. You could also mingle with the opposite sex in the kitchen area – you still had separate facilities and sleeping quarters for females and the males, and you couldn’t have sex.

Instead of meditating all day, you meditate 3 hours a day during the whole group meditation sessions where everyone meditated in the meditation hall. You would think nothing much could go wrong with those few little differences, but I managed to get in trouble. More on that in a bit.

They were a cool bunch at the meditation centre. Most had been to India, where Goenka first expanded the Vipassana centres and which was the historical home of the Buddha. Having travelled to India most could also speak quite good English. Good, as my French was bordering on non-existent, but I did end up learning the French names for most vegetables, or des légumes.

There were a couple of guys I’d met at the English centre who showed up in France. Beth, this English tapestry expert and some Polish Woman with a very round, cute face. There were also about 7 French, mostly guys but there was maybe one woman, and a German guy, who complained that the French would always speak French rather than English, and perhaps 1 other person from some other country.

The first few days I was at the centre, before the start of the first course I was to serve on. We mostly did gardening and cleaning, which is also service. We’d meditate at least 3 times a day, in the morning, around midday and in the evening. We all helped prepare our meals. Unlike when you were doing a course as a server you got three meals a day. We had a decent breakfast and lunch that we all ate together and then we had a light evening meal which we often prepared ad hoc.

Des légumes were delivered to the centre, they were amazingly fresh and tasty, completely unlike the veggies we got in Australia. There was a small vegetable garden a bit away from the centre, which was still part of the centre’s property,  but out of bounds to those taking courses who were restricted to the meditation hall, their quarters and a small outdoor area where they could get a little bit of exercise a few times a time. The veggie patch was just a short walk up the road from the main centre, it still had a few courgettes, potatoes and tomatoes going from the summer which we collected and took back to add to dinner, which makes me think I probably arrived some time in October, as by the time November came about there was too much frost about for these type of things to survive.

As it was a fully vegetarian place there was also a large assortment of dry beans, lentils and chickpeas to add some protein to the meals. The milk, le lait, from la vache, was collected in big metal milk containers from a farm down the road. I drove the van down once with one of the French guys who I liked, as he was a very hippy type. I didn’t have a licence and didn’t really know how to drive too well, but I managed. I kept asking the French guy to remind me to drive on the right, rather than the left, as it didn’t come natural to me. We saw a huge owl on the way that night, it swooped down from the trees over the van.

A day or two after I arrived a meditation course started. Our chores were then focussed almost entirely on feeding the 60 or so students and cleaning up after them. So a lot of food prep and dishwashing. I made bread a few times for them and also a kind of mozzarella style cheese I learnt to make in Ireland which I prepared using lemons to curdle the milk and then adding salt and hanging in a cheese cloth overnight to get rid of some of the moisture. I only  did that once as the centre manager said it was too expensive.

As servers, we all had to watch a VHS video of Goenka explaining to us the importance of service and reminding us to also keep the 5 precepts of buddhism. Got to love VHS with its Ring-like magnetic lines running through it, kind of like a link to the Other Side.

Everyone helped prepare the breakfasts, lunch and a light supper. There was this English guy, who showed up to serve on the course who kind of took charge of the meal cooking. He obsessively tried to sort through lentils to find little rocks, which seemed, well, obsessive. The French guy who collected me from the village was the head boss. He did the food ordering and stuff. He used to be some maître d at a hotel. He was nice and well organised.

We had a bit of free time after lunch so we could just walk around and hang out a bit.

During the first course I served on I was pretty chilled and relaxed. I chatted a fair bit with Beth and the Polish girl as we peeled and chopped vegetables and the like. The meditation teacher was this American guy. He came up to me one day and said I had to stop talking so much and so loudly as it was disturbing the silent meditators. My voice does carry. He seemed stressed. He should meditate more I thought. I’ve been waiting 27 years to express that come back. Perhaps I should meditate more which may mean I wouldn’t hold on to such pettiness so strongly. I also remember a time some kid stole my clutch-pencil for me in class in like year 6 or 7. It was one of those pencils with a plastic casing and a ‘clutch’ to hold in a lead (really graphite) which you didn’t have to sharpen as you just pressed up more lead (graphite) and voila (another French word) you have some more lead. Anyway some little prick stole it and even though I don’t need or want my clutch pencil anymore – it was green by the way – I still wish all sorts of misfortune and unluckiness on the person who did it.

Meditation supposedly helps you deal with such deep down attachments that are making you miserable. I bet the person doesn’t even remember taking the pencil – though I suspect the person knew exactly what the fuck they were doing.

Just focus on your breath. Watch it go in and out. Watch the rage rise and pass away. Rise and pass away. Fucking prick, in, let it go, out. You don’t actually say anything like that when you meditate, or at least the technique doesn’t teach you to do that. It teaches you to just observe.

Soon the first course had finished and a new one was due to begin in a couple of days. Us servers went back to doing gardening and the like. We all took a walk to a nearby village one day and had a look around. I had the best apple I’d ever tasted in my life on the way. It was on a tree hanging over the fence on the road we were walking on. It was so good that I tried to find the actual tree on Google maps years later. Just like in that movie Lion, where the guy tries to find the village where he was born using Google maps and then one day he finally finds it and goes and finds his mum who he was separated from when he was a young kid and fell asleep on a train. I think I actually did find that apple tree, I swear!

The first course had taken its toll, I realised it was time for me to go back to Australia and, as I had done at the start of the journey, I had miscalculated and had now run out of money. I did a calculation and it seemed after staying in Paris a few nights and buying that avocado, I probably didn’t have enough to even get back to London to get my flight back. I certainly wasn’t going to Barcelona to try and find Agatha, who had pretty much ghosted me, just as Corinne had.

I rang up my mum – who my wife and I live with at the moment as we’re trying to save money to buy a house, and well, she has 5 bedrooms and only uses one and we can use the whole top level, and she lives 800 metres from the beach so it’s a great set-up in its own right – crying and asking if she could lend me a little money so I could make it back, she said leave it with her and she’d see what she could do. I said I was ok for now, I would serve another course where I’d be fed, and have a bed and showers and all so it was all fine.

I think that day I walked into the forest that bordered the mediation centre and just sat under a tree for a few hours being one with nature.

Beth sat the next course so I didn’t have anyone to chat to in the kitchen really. She was a chatterbox as well to be fair, just my voice is deeper.

A Romanian woman called Elina came to serve on the next course. We did chat a little but I did the ‘right’ thing and didn’t gossip excessively with her. I did find out a little bit about her though. She said she was an actress. I joked and said, does that mean she was a waitress? She said no, she was a working actress. As we didn’t talk a lot towards the end of the course I asked for her address and started writing to her. I still write to her on occasions after nearly 27 years. I tried to catch up with her in Paris last time I was there a few years ago. But she was off filming. She does some weird stuff, which I like. She’s often semi-naked.

It turned out she really was a working actress. She was in Schinlder’s List and an episode of Seinfeld. However, she was discovered by a film director in the USA called Hal Hartley when she was a waitress, so I wasn’t far off the mark.

The American guy was replaced by a Swiss guy on the second course I served on. He was much more chilled and brought Swiss chocolate with him for the servers to eat. I ate too much one night and my body wasn’t used to it. Since I’d been obtaining from sexual activity it had all been pent up and the chocolate seemed a catalyst for my libido to go into overdrive. My Skin also got itchy. I tried going to have a shower to regain some balance, but afterwards I just had to have a wank and let it all out. There were a few stains on the sheet.

The second course also finished. As everything does. I’d managed to book myself a seat on a plane leaving from London in a few days so as soon as the course ended I said goodbye to Elina and hitched a ride with Beth, who was also heading back towards England, and some French girl who had done the two courses back to back, so she’d been meditating for like 20 something days in a row. We visited the French girl’s flat in Paris, it was just a little thing with a shared toilet in between her floor and the one below. She also lived with her mum, as my wife and I now do. We walked around Paris a bit and then Beth and I had to turn our attention to where we were staying for the night.

Beth said we could get a bed at Shakespeare bookshop. It turned out we couldn’t, we ended up getting a place at the California Hotel, or some name like that. We had contemplated sharing a room but I stipulated we definitely wanted separate beds. I don’t know if it was ever even remotely on the cards, but that was perhaps the last chance to have actual sex on my European tour and I was too Buddhist to even give it a go. Like I said though, not sure even if it was remotely ever on the cards!

The next day Beth and I hitchhiked from London to Paris. I won’t write about that again here, just click on the link above to check it out.

After Paris and London, the next leg of my journey was India.

 

Juanito’s Travoles 50-Yr-Backpucker – Dublin to Paris on a bus blogger de blog Pt16

13 December 2022

You know I should be ‘working’. But I turn 50 on Friday and I work for the government, so I’m instead I’ve got SBS world movies on and my rose gold coloured (not sure if that should be hyphenated to rose-gold-coloured – I don’t think they taught me that at school) MacBook Air in front of my shitty work laptop where I just move the mouse every so often to stay online (and answer the occasional query). I just walked up to Supabarn and bought a Three Mills bakery baguette, some turkey ham, some rocket and mixed lettuce, and made myself a sandwich with some cranberry sauce that’s been in the fridge since last Christmas (or perhaps the one before). I got regular pork ham for my son.

Back in 1995 (not literally this is not Back to the Future)

I wish I could write more about Tubbercurry, Sligo. It was the birthplace of my grandmother Bee, in 1899. We called her Bee. She was Bridget, which is also my Daughter’s middle name. After 27 years Tubbercurry is just another place, just a few memories. It’s also called Tobercurry. It’s confusing. One end of the town there’s a sign Tubbercurry and at the other end there’s Tobercurry. It could be an Irish thing. Not like one of those stupid Irish joke things. I’ve worked out they racist. More an Irish spelling thing.

On a side note, in recent years I found out I had a great, or great-great, grandfather from Guangzhou in China. No one told us when we were young. Also a racist thing. But my great-uncle Cyril did look very Chinese.

So Tubbercurry. I remember a poly-tunnel (a big plastic dome-shaped tunnel) where they grew their gherkins and tomatoes.  A pen for the pig who ate the whey that was leftover from the cheesemaking process. The homemade cheese with organically grown poly-tunnel gherkins, and little organic tomatoes on the homemade bread. Perhaps a cow. I don’t think a cow, I think they just bought in their milk. Cows are a hassle, you have to milk them everyday. At Inisglas Stuart used to get frustrated with them and kick them on occasions. Pigs are easier, they don’t care. They eat buckets of food scraps and wallow in the mud. They don’t care. They’re pigs. We took some acid at a ConFest hippy festival in Victoria in the 1990s and ended up sitting in a mud puddle like a pig. I can see the appeal.

There were also the rows of kale, spinach, onions, scallions, potatoes – you’re never far from a potato in Ireland – homemade cordials, digging, planting, harvesting. We’d go pick wild blackberries a couple of times, which formed the basis of those cordials and also homemade jams. Mostly the German organic gardeners’ son and I just shoved them in our mouths while we were out walking in the countryside, which is literally everywhere when you work on an organic farm. We had early morning starts, long days, fairly early to bed, nothing much in the way of TV, but there was a TV somewhere, I remember the kids on the farm asking about Home & Away, an Australian TV soap. It wasn’t a very exciting time. I didn’t mind because I was busy, and I liked the soil on my hands and connection with the earth. It was nice. But that was it. Nice. And kind of relaxing, uncomplicated, just honest manual labour to produce food for people to eat. Not whatever I do for the government, in my current job, which is much more abstract than pulling out a scallion, digging up a spud or picking a capsicum or eggplant in a poly-tunnel. Those are the memories I have of that time. Perhaps around 3 months of nice, relaxing, uncomplicated, life.

I’d saved a few hundred pounds during my time on the farm. I was still on the dole and getting around 40 pounds a week – or maybe a fortnight, in those days 40 pounds seemed to get a fair amount – from the government. Volkmar and Claudia paid me another 20 pounds a week for helping out.

Apart from the one trip to Dublin, I didn’t have any expenses. We had food, lodging, I just ended up buying a little bit of tobacco for entertainment once we smoked the whole tin Volkmar had shared with me, and a few stamps to write postcards and letters to family, Agatha in Dublin, and even one to Corrine in Switzerland.

I farewelled Sligo and headed to Dublin one last time. At the time it was one last time, I may make it back there again. I’m thinking 2025 could be good, a 30 year anniversary trip.

I booked a bus ticket from Dublin to Paris. It was going to take like the best part of two days and one night or something, but it was only around 25 pounds.

When I got to Dublin there was no-one to see in Dublin. Agatha had left to go back to Barcelona. I had her address there and I wrote that I may try and visit her after I went to France. It was late October I think, or perhaps even early November. The streets of Dublin were grey and drizzly like some atmospheric detective drama, which drizzly days in Dublin seem perfectly suited. There was even some thick fog hanging about the lampposts.

It was not a happy day. I didn’t have much time between arriving from Sligo and leaving on the bus. I just walked around a little to stretch my legs, and smoked a cigarette in my green Melbourne tram conductor’s coat, in the fog under a lamppost, just like and fuckin’ Irish spy. Standing under a lamppost, in the dark, the smoke drifting into the air mixing with the fog. I felt pretty tough at the time. Working on farms is a good work out. Even a skinny young man like me develops a few muscles and tone after a couple of months on a farm. Some broad shoulders and the start of a six pack. Maybe 2 cans’ worth.

The bus left close to midnight, I got on and then we headed to some port where the bus was put on a ferry and then the ferry went over to Holyhead in the UK. We didn’t have to stay on the bus on the ferry and I got out and had a cigarette on deck as I watched Ireland drift away and the UK approach. It was a good feeling to have arrived and left Ireland by sea. It’d been around six months. Some of the best and most interesting of my life.

We got back on the bus and down through Birmingham (I don’t know if that was the place, Google maps suggests it as a route from Dublin to Paris so perhaps), sleeping a little, looking out the window a little.

We arrived in London in the morning and had to wait to swap buses. The sun was warm. We had about 2 hours to wait.

I needed to go for a pee but had no pounds to pay for the turnstile to get in.

‘I don’t have any pounds’, I said to the cleaning guy.

‘Just jump over’, he said in what may have been a Jamaican accent.

And in that way, due to the kindness of strangers, I was able to pee. I’d been on the bus around 12 hours, though Google Maps reckons you can do the trip in around 8 hours and 28 minutes, I guess you stop a few places along the way. It was at least the best part of the night and most of the morning. After the pee, and a bit of standing around at the bus stop, we set off again for France.

The bus went down to Dover, then the bus got on a train and across the Chunnel. We were on a bus on a train under the English Channel to Calais.

I’m sure we passed the Somme at some point.

In the late afternoon, we reached Paris. I was knackered. Some guy was at the train station spruiking a hotel. There were three American girls there. He convinced them to go with him to the hotel. I was super tired, and I had some notion I might as well follow the girls, so I just went. We stopped for pizza along the way.

It wasn’t cheap. The hotel, not the pizza. $100 for a night or two. A quarter of my savings. I always seem to get a bit ripped off on the first days in a new country – but nothing compared to the sapphire scam of Thailand a few months earlier. It was in Francs though so I didn’t work out that immediately. It was a decent hotel though, nice clean sheets. Actually super nice, white and crisp sheets, with nice fluffy pillows. I had a shower. It felt like I was washing away months of country soil. It was fucking amazing. I used all the little soaps and shampoos and the soft towels, then got into a nice fluffy bathrobe. I masturbated, then slept like a baby.

The next morning I woke up and watched Scooby-doo in French, masturbated, and then decided I’d head into the centre of Paris on the train. I laid in bed a few minutes – the sheets felt so good – before heading down to breakfast.

I met someone at breakfast who’d bought a cheap airfare from Dublin for around 40 pounds. About 15 pounds more than I’d spent on my bus ticket, though I would have saved 15-16 hours travel time, and perhaps gotten a cheaper place to stay. But I liked my clean crisp white sheets and fluffy white towels, and little soaps and little containers of shampoo and conditioner. And being able to watch Scooby-doo in French. It was more value for money than a rip off. Plus they had croissants and things for breaky so I could fill up for most of the day.

It was a struggle buying a train ticket. I had zero French. My French teacher in year 8 had said I was so bad at French that I should have to go back to year 7. They didn’t even teach French in year 7. I think she was just a cow and it was more of a reflection on her that I didn’t know jack shit French.

After struggling to try and find the words related to tickets – it was like pulling marshmallow shaped unicorns out of the air – the young ticket woman asked, ‘where you want to go?’ she was low-level grumpy but not overly impolite, just sounding tired of foreigners who go to France and can’t speak any French. And hell, she knew English and I knew not French, so I got to appreciate that fact.

‘The Louvre’, I said, shrugging my shoulders struggling to figure out where I should be going in Paris, but somehow everyone knows the Louvre, even uncultured guys who grew up on the Gold Coast with shitty French teachers.

She gave me a ticket which lasted a few days so I could get on and off a few times while I was in Paris. It may have been a 10-trip ticket. The dude clipped a little hole in it every time I entered the station. Apart from the long trips back and forth from the hotel, I mostly walked around though.

I went into the centre of Paris and found a cafe close to a metro station. It wasn’t near the Louvre exactly, I just got off at some random spot. It had a nice little roundabout with a few restaurants, bars and cafes about.

I had a coffee with cream. I didn’t realise I’d ordered one with cream. I asked the waiter why the coffee cost more than the price they’d written on their blackboard. I didn’t realise that the cream would cost me a few extra francs. The water was nice, it wasn’t his fault I couldn’t speak French. The coffee was nice though.

I found my way to the Louvre. It had some cool stairs that kind of floated down in a spiral. They probably still have them there. I didn’t visit the Louvre last time I was in Paris, I went to the Musée d’Orsay instead.  I saw the Mona Lisa and some Egyptian stuff. Just like today there were signs pointing to the little painting by Leonardo, La Joconde in French, so you could make a v-line for it and get a photo with it. La Joconde wasn’t as impressive as the other Italian Renaissance paintings in the room. It’s just very little. And really, it’s only kind of super famous because some dudes stole it. I’m no Italian Renaissance expert, but it’s more of a nice little portrait than something you go ‘wow’ over. The Egyptian stuff was in the basement. That was pretty cool. I also saw the Venus de Milo. The armless beauty. Even before the internet I knew that was super famous. How did we figure such things out before the internet, perhaps in books, TV shows and popular culture absorption.

For lunch I found a supermarket, where I wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. I got some bread and an avocado, and an Asterix & Obelix jar of Nutella, which had a collectable glass which held the Nutella as a gift for my niece and nephew. The avocado was like $5. My money was quickly evaporating.  It was starting to dawn on me that I would never get to Barcelona with the money I had. I got some Gauloise blonde cigarettes (they were much cheaper than the avocado) from a bar and something to drink from a little shop, some orange juice and water, and then some nice nuts from a nice lady from the nut shop, and I went down to the Seine to have a little picnic. It was glorious. Being in Paris with an avocado, French nuts and a very strong cigarette.

The guy from the hotel taught me to say ‘ou se trouve‘ which, ‘where is [insert place]’. I asked some paramilitary ou se trouve le toilette when I was in some fancy looking building. They laughed and one of them pointed me in the right direction. There were paramilitaries all over the city. There had been some bombings by an Algerian group in the months earlier. I wasn’t able to find a rubbish bin as they’d sealed them all to stop people putting bombs in them. And on the way not he bus when we got to France the police got all the African looking people off the bus for interrogation. I never saw so many police and paramilitary in a city. They had serious weapons too. Proper machine guns and all. But still they laughed when I asked them in bad French how to get to the toilet.

Later in the afternoon I walked around some more. I decided while in Paris I should  catch a movie. I asked some guys who were walking along chatting to each other ou se trouve le cinéma, they interrupted their conversation and with a roll of the eyes one of them broke off and showed me the way to  the nearest cinemas. It was a bit out of the way so the guy was super nice to help me out. Actually all the French were nice to me. The cinema was some arty one and showing some English language independent film. I was the only one to laugh at any of the jokes. I think everyone else was French, and maybe the jokes weren’t that funny. But I thought they were. It was a nice film.

I spent one more night at the hotel, it was all I could afford. I visited the Eiffel Tower the next day. I asked someone ou se trouve le Eiffel Tower, and they rolled their eyes and pointed to the big pointy steel thing pointing up into the sky. In those days you could walk right under it. Nowadays it’s fenced off like some zombie enclosure. I didn’t go up the tower. It cost too much. Sitting underneath it was enough. I’d contacted the Vipassana meditation centre at Le Boise Planté and they said I could come down and help serve other doing courses the next day. I’d also written to them when I was in Ireland, so they were kind of expecting me. It was in the direction of Auxerre, about 2 hours south of Paris.

I just walked around Paris some more, I didn’t go to any more museums or anything. I just soaked up the Parisian atmosphere, the seine, the cigarettes and so forth. In the evening I went back to the hotel asking another person, ou se trouve le métro. I guess that was a bit like asking, where is the railway system?

I had just enough money to get on the bus down to the meditation centre, but that was about it. How to get back to London, to Australia? That was another story for another day. I wasn’t even sure exactly how much money I had left at the time. Working out the francs took a little bit to sink in. I think I may have had $50-60 left. Merde.

I wasn’t going to have to think about that for a month or so though while I was at the meditation centre. At that point I wasn’t sure how long I’d stay. A month in France sounded nice. A nice round number.

I worked out what bus I needed to get from Paris to Le Boise Planté, paid some more of my precious francs and then headed off. I left the rest of my Gauloise Blondes on the bus on the seat just before I got off. You couldn’t smoke at meditation centres. They didn’t even have coffee.

While waiting for a lift from the bus stop to the meditation centre I struck up a conversation with an old guy. He spoke no English and me no French. I tried a few words in German. I don’t know what he was saying but he had a good old chat. Perhaps about a cat, or village life, maybe some story about the days of nazi occupation, or perhaps something about a nice courgette he once had. The French did have very nice vegetables as I would find out during my stay at the meditation centre.

The guy from the meditation centre picked me up in a minibus after I’d been chatting for half an hour or so with the old man from the village.

It was dark. We drove to Dhamma Mahi. We didn’t talk a lot.

They found me a bed in the servers quarters. They gave me something to drink and eat and then I joined in the evening meditation and went to bed. The sheets were much more rustic than the fancy hotel ones.

I was back in the sanga, the buddhist community, my family.

I was calm. It was going to be my last adventure in Europe for a while.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Tubbercurry (tobercurry) Sligo, Derry Girls, Netflix, Bruges, and Sustainable Travel – 1995 (and 2022) BlogPt15

The organic farm in Tubbercurry (aka Tobercurry) Sligo was much better run than the biodynamic one in Inisglas, Wexford.

It was run by a German family, Volkmar, Claudia. I guess the German part is always a clue that efficiency may be on the cards. Besides, unlike Inisglas, these guys actually lived off the money they got from the farm so less time for poet yoghurt makers, like Stuart and ex-drug dealing chicken farmers on the run from the UK police.

Volkmar and Claudia had a very blonde boy and a girl. How this German family ended up in Tubbercurry, in the west of Ireland, I’m not sure. I think they said they saw an opportunity to buy a farm and went for it. I admire people like that, sometimes it seems we’re overwhelmed by choices to the point we are frozen with choice.

Which takes me to Derry Girls. It’s a TV series on Netflix if you haven’t heard of it. There are many choices of shows and movies to watch, most of which you really get the sense you’ve wasted part of the precious life you have after watching them, seems like we just have to fill our lives up with stuff, whatever that stuff is. I include myself in that and I find it difficult nowadays to just listen to a crow crow, or look at a flower, to be quiet and mindful of what is going on around me. But back to the tele, Derry Girls is set in Derry in Northern Ireland, which is also the setting for one of my previous blogs. I mean Northern Ireland, not Derry, which I have never visited.  It’s about these young Irish catholic women (Derry Girls, not my previous blog), and a wee English lad, growing up in the 1990s in Derry – or Londonderry as it’s also known as. I watched the show and cacked myself silly (cack is a way of saying poop). Which is pretty much irrelevant to this travel tale, except that after watching the show I decided I should try and visit Derry when my wife and I do our round-the-world trip in 2023 to celebrate my 50th birthday (hence the title of this blog if you hadn’t yet cottoned on).

I have already planned out our trip on a Google Sheet. After visiting South East Asia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia (which has its own Google Sheet) we are flying off to Vienna, down through Italy, including Sicily, and then, according to the Sheet (which is the 2nd Sheet in the 3 Sheet series covering our whole trip, the third being Mexico/ Latin America), we were going go fly from Palermo to Athens and then across to Turkey via the Greek Islands. There are many Greek Islands, so I’ll be a bit more specific. We were going to go to the island of Tinos then across to Ikaria and Samos before heading to Turkey to visit the Ancient Roman site of Ephesus. Ephesus gets a shout out in the bible, as Paul or John or someone writes letters to a church there or something. I’m not a regular church goer but my father-in-law passed away in Mexico last weekend so we went to church and there they mentioned Ephesus. It was a sad weekend, but I’ve taken a few days off of work and thought I’d write another blog post rather than watching more Netflix.

Back to the 50th birthday year travel plans, the Greek Islands were set, until I saw the crazy antics of those young women on Derry Girls – Orla, Erin, Michelle, Clare and James. I consulted my wife about my thoughts on changing plans to include a quick trip to Derry. She said, ‘if we’re going to Derry we have to also go to Bruges’. Bruges is in Belgium and was also the name of a Netflix movie which had a few Irish lads in it. By the way neither Netflix, nor the Irish tourism board, give me any money for promoting Irish-related viewing on my blog. I don’t even put ads on my blog. It seems inauthentic to me. And as a young person who was in his 20s for most of the 1990s, and who once even attended a Nirvana concert at Fisherman’s Wharf in 1992 on the Gold Coast, and who smoked so much hash on the way to the concert that I ended up lying down in a mud puddle the whole time and barely remembering more than one song, I was, and am all about authenticity – which sounds like something Rick from the Young Ones might say, sans le hash. I think you should only write for yourself and write as though nobody is reading this. Which, in this case could quite literally be true. Let’s face it, I’m no Patrick Leigh Fermor – author of a travel trilogy, of actual books with pages in them, rather than a trilogy of Google Sheets, or blogs – accounting for his walking trip across Europe and onto Constantinople in the early 1930s. Come to think of it, there’s still a bit at the end of the third book where he goes to Greece that I haven’t read. Well, he does go on a bit to be honest.

So, after consulting my wife, I consulted the appropriate Google Sheet for Europe and tried to work out how I could swap the Greek Island section for a trip to Derry, Ireland and Bruges, Belgium. But the thing is, if I go over to that part of Europe, I feel obliged to go try and visit my friend Elina in Paris. Obliged is the wrong term, I mean, there’s no way I would visit Paris without at least seeing if she was free for a coffee, as she was the only dhamma vipassana buddy from the mid-90s I still kept in contact with. We’re both doing what vipassana people do though – even though I have strayed from the path a bit – and we are growing old, constantly changing, and sooner or later going to simply pass away. Yes, coffee in Paris, when we’re in our 70s or 80s, could be the go.

Elina is an actress whom I met in 1995 at a Vipassana meditation centre in France (spoiler alert for a later blog post). She lives in Paris. Last time I visited Paris (you can read my account of that trip here) she was off filming something with her husband so I was unable to catch up, but I feel I’d be rude if I didn’t at least try and visit her if I was going to Bruges. She makes very weird films which I’m occasionally in the mood for once I realise most stuff on Netflix is a load of shit. Elina and I had been penpals (were we actually sent real letters and cards to each other) for some time in the 90s and early 2000s, when she lived mostly in New York, and we’ve kept in touch on and off since then. To be honest, my efforts are more than hers – though she always writes back when I write to her. I’ll see a film Elina’s in on SBS television and then I’ll send her a message and then we chat again for a few days. It’s always lovely and, for me, brings me back to those days in Ireland and Europe in the 90s, just as Derry Girls has. I always thought of her like some sort of past life soulmate. Though I don’t think I ever expressed that to her.

So, a trip to Derry would have to involve both Bruges and Paris. It’d also mean we’d need to spend at least a night or two in Dublin, on the way to Derry, as most planes tend to fly from Palermo to Dublin rather than Derry. And even if we didn’t travel by plane I haven’t been to Dublin since 1995 so I couldn’t go all that way without a visit to Temple Bar and a pint of Guinness. In the movie Bruges yer man says, ‘I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin’ and, ‘I’m still in fuckin’ Bruges’, and ‘Bruges is a shithole’. His words, not mine. But the things you do for love and a chance to visit Derry and Ireland again. The movie might actually be called In Bruges, but that’s not that important at the moment. The important thing is I had allocated 8-9 days on my Google Sheet to go from Palermo, Sicily, over to Athens and then across the above-mentioned Greek Islands, and then over to Selçuk, Turkey where we could visit the ancient city of Ephesus, the Roman Empire’s capital in Asia Minor, before heading up to Istanbul as our last European destination. They’re in Eurovision, so I’m going to say they’re European. Let’s park the debate on whether Australia can be considered part of Europe due to their inclusion in the song contest for now.

I’m committed to sustainability and wanted to limit our travels by air as much as possible, trying to instead use trains and boats. I know, until we have electric boats and 100% renewable energy powering the grid, it is a difficult calculation to make as to what form of transport wins out in terms of carbon emissions. Planes are definitely not the best though. And besides it’s much nicer spending time on a train than a plane. To get from Palermo to Paris by train takes the best part of 2 days, assuming you may want a stopover in somewhere like Milan on the way. Then we’d need at least 2 nights in Paris in the hope that Elina may be there to catch up for a coffee with my wife and I. To get from Paris to Bruges is not that bad, a couple of hours, easy enough. Then you need at least two nights in Bruges in order to ‘see things’.

So we’re up to 6 nights already. Then we could either spend another 2 days travelling from Bruges to Dublin across the UK – I did something similar back in 1995 from Dublin to Paris, which I’ll come to in a later blog – or you could fly from Bruges to Dublin, then spend the night there before taking a train and bus up to Derry where you’d also want to spend at least 2 nights, enough time at least to do some sort of Derry Girls tour of the place, before then flying back over to Selçuk, probably via Istanbul. What’s more is that all the accommodation in these places is like double the cost of those I’d found on the Greek Islands.

In many ways it’d just be easier just to do a Patrick Leigh Fermor and walk around for years not worrying about all these schedules or the impact on the environment. I’d be tempted but for the fact I can only take 3 months off of work at the moment, and my wife has no interest in walking around Europe for years, even if it did include Bruges.

So, in the end, we’re going back to Plan A. No Derry, no Bruges, no Paris and just  flying from Palermo to Athens and then flying from Athens to Ikaria – skipping Tinos as I get very seasick and I couldn’t work out the ferry schedules – and onto Samos then over to Selçuk.

Back in 1995, life was far less complicated. I got my Willing Workers on Organic Farms guide book (more of a pamphlet than a book) out, I looked up farms in Tubbercurry, Ireland, where my grandmother was born, I rang up a place and arranged a time to come, then I stayed there for around 3 months, more or less. There was no Netflix, I didn’t even watch TV. There was no internet, I wrote a letter, or postcard,  home to my mum and family on occasions or made the occasional phone call. There were no websites to calculate the time you’d spend travelling between places. I just worked picking, planting and pulling out weeds during the day and at night I’d look at the stars, sit around smoking a cigarette chatting to Volkmar, or go out looking for hedgehogs with the very blonde boy. On the weekends I’d explore the countryside, picking mushrooms with a very blond boy, who seemed to know what he was doing to avoid being poisoned, and riding around country roads in between hedges visiting graveyards, abandoned churches and other things you find in the countryside.

I’d still write to Agatha, and she, from memory, wrote back a couple of times, though our letters were still tender and, for me, I was still hopeful that we might develop a romantic relationship through them. At one stage a young German woman who was riding around Ireland with her friends stayed on the farm for about a week. She was a nice woman and I had some attraction to her. She stayed in a separate part of the caravan with me and we’d watch the stars and search for hedgehogs together some night. I was still a horny young man, who hadn’t had sex since I was with Corrine the least year,  and I had thoughts of trying to get together with her, but I somehow still felt too connected to Agatha and felt it would be a betrayal to contemplate another woman. Instead I’d read a letter from Agatha and think of being with her.

I had some funny ideas back then. Looking back I didn’t owe anyone anything. And, as it turned out, my love for Agatha was, for reasons that are still mysterious to me, but which might have been as simple as she just wasn’t that into me, unrequited. Corrine was more straightforward, and even though I sent her a note or two when I was in Ireland, she was married.

So I spent the last warm days of Autumn hard at work on the farm, delivering fresh organic vegetables, like kale, even before it was fashionable, and herbs to hotels with Volkmar. There was one cool one that looked like a castle on a large estate with cute farm animals abounding. We also went to Sligo city on our regular stops. We’d stop for lunch every day on a nice table outside under a tree, to eat freshly made bread from Claudia, with home made cheese, gherkins and tomatoes from the green house and even some homemade chutneys and jam I think, as well as some pretty decent coffee.

It was largely an uneventful time there in Tubbercurry, but I was at peace. I was also, as I am now, committed to the idea of sustainability so I felt my farm labours meant something. I was also being rewarded for them I should say, getting 20 pounds a week extra and being able to save the whole of my dole check each fortnight. I had chosen to work on farms in Australia because I wanted to help mother Earth, or something like that. I mean sustainability has a much greater urgency and imperative now in the 2020s, bordering on desperation, but it’s nothing new, sustainability was big in the 70s, 80s, 90s, hell it dates back to Mayan civilisation, and cities like Palenque, in modern day Chiapas, Mexico which rose, flourished, and then declined and disappeared back into the jungle, due, in part to climate change, droughts, and unsustainable practices back in 226 BC to 799 AD.

Talking of decline, I tried to visit Agatha one more time in Dublin while I was in Sligo. I took the train across the wee country, I went to La Casa Chaparrita, but no-one was there. I tried calling into Agatha’s friend Bear place to find out where she was – at least I remember her name as Bear. Bear said I should have called ahead and that Agatha had visited some family north of Dublin where she’d work as some sort of nanny when she first came to Ireland. My grandmother had also worked as some sort of nanny when she emigrated to Australia when she was ten in the early 1900s. Agatha was on her way back to Barcelona soon. She let me stay at her house overnight. She was kind. I went back to Sligo the next day. I was sad.

The weather was starting to get colder and more miserable. When I got back to the train station closest to the farm in Tubbercurry it was drizzly. I had to wait an hour for Claudia to come and collect me. I must have looked like a sad wet puppy.

One day in Late September/ October I think, the warm weather just stopped. I said to Volkmar and Claudia that I’d move on in another week or two after finishing helping with the end of their summer and autumn cropping before the real cold set in. They thanked me and I made plans for my next journey. This time to France to stay at another Vipassana meditation centre, I thought I might even be able to make it down to Barcelona to try and visit Agatha one more time. But first things first.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Newcastle, Australia & Tubbercurry, Sligo – 1995 BlogPt14

2022, raining, I read a few chapters, no, just a couple of pages, of Jungle of Stone. I had thought of working on my Minecraft world a bit while I listened to the rain. Then I thought I’d just listen to the rain and now I’m listening to the rain writing about listening to the rain.

As I head closer to my 50th birthday I don’t think I really need to leave my mark on the world. I don’t want the most Instagram likes. I haven’t even got a Tik Tok account. I doubt I’ll ever write a book, be a Hemingway, but perhaps I wouldn’t mind going to Pamplona one day. I don’t want to watch the bullfights though.

I didn’t even feel inspired to write another blog post. There was a time in my 20s when I forced myself to write. I even wrote a film script which got the interest of a well-known Australian Director and an option from a UK producer.

Some days I think I have a good idea for a story. I’ve usually forgotten them by the next day.

I don’t really want to leave much of a mark on the world now. I just hope that I contribute to making it a slightly nicer place. And hopefully not a shittier place.

I’ve started doing a Sustainability and Circular Economy course online with the University of Cambridge. I first remember getting interested in sustainability, the environment and what have you back in 1992 or 1993 maybe. It was somewhere between finishing school in 1989 and travelling to Ireland in 1995.

I was down in Newcastle visiting my best friend from high school, Christophe’s brother Luke – who had started calling himself Luka at that stage. Christophe and Tanya were in Scotland at the time and although I wasn’t great friends with Luka he’d said I should come down and check out Newcastle. He was hanging out with a bunch of hippy, druggo freaked out types. Even a couple of punks. I just remember a few of them. There was Johno who had this back goatee and was into spirituality and pentagrams and had weird eyes, smoked weed incessantly and collected two dole checks, one under his real name – which I assume was John or perhaps Johno – and one under a fictitious name. He was studying music at some music institute. There was also Pia who was going out with a guy called Canine. They were all a bit freakish. On occasions the punk dudes would come over and have a bit of smack. Pia warned me off trying it. I never did. Even those who use such dangerously addictive drugs can have the sense to warn others off going down that slippery path. I was fine with heaps of weed and the occasional mushroom and LSD trip.

These dudes, except for the punks, all lived in the same house with Luka. I forgot to mention that.

The drug scene distracted me a bit. I mean the reminiscing about the Newcastle drug scene of the early 90s. It wasn’t really ‘the drug scene’. People did other stuff besides drugs. Listening to Rage Against the Machine, the Butthole Surfers and the Pixies (plus others). Playing music – I may have had a go at like a tambourine or triangle. I wasn’t very musical and considered myself a writer or something. Sitting around talking. Occasionally getting some food. Going down the dole office. Visiting other people’s houses. Probably having sex. Though I never did during my time in Newcastle. Like with Agatha, I would have if I had the opportunity, just the opportunity never came up and wouldn’t come up until t 1994 when I met Corinne and travelled up the east coast (again this is a fictitious version of the events, see earlier posts where I explain I met her at a Hurstbridge train station in Melbourne – though much of the rest is trueish).

But back in Newcastle. It wasn’t a drug scene per se. Just everything we did tended to be done stoned.

After hanging out with Luka a bit I ended up renting a garage in a share house with Matt, Aaron, and the guy who worked at the Thai restaurant, who might have been called Rowan, or Lauren or something. I more remember that he’d bring leftover Thai for us, which was very nice of him. Matt and Aaron were going to the University of Newcastle. Rowan may have been going to uni as well but I was more interested in the Thai food.

One day we were out walking around with the guys on the way to the dole office. A few years earlier Newcastle had been hit by an Earthquake and many of the roads had cracks in them. We went past some place on a stormwater drain on the way to visiting some dudes. Possibly to hang out a bit, possibly to get some weed. Possibly to do both. Who knows? The dudes had planted this amazing guerrilla garden on the edges of the stormwater drain. I’m not sure if the drain is the right term, it was like a mini version of one of those pretty big ones like they had in the movie Grease where they were able to race cars along. A stormwater thingy?

The one in Newcastle you could race a few BMX bikes along.

The dudes in the house, well maybe not a house, it was more a shed or abandoned factory type thing you could access from the stormwater drain, had marigolds growing, and some veggies. I can’t remember but I imagine some beans and maybe a zucchini, and some tomatoes. They may have had a few sunflowers growing as well. I was intrigued by the garden and asked the dudes I was visiting about it. They said it was some organic, permaculture garden thing.

I was straight into it. I think maybe after we’d gone to the dole office I went to the library, got a library card and rented out a VHS video which featured Bill Mollison, one of the creators of Permaculture, this sustainable gardening/ farming system, and watched it. It explained the general principles of Permaculture. I got inspired and went and got some beans seeds and some other veggies seeds and found a patch in the backyard and planted them. They started growing and I was amazed, but then I ran out of money and went up to Queensland for a few weeks and when I got back the grass had grown over the spot as neither Matt, Aaron or Rowan were interested in looking after veggies. They also hadn’t done any dishes since I’d been away so I did all the washing up when I got back as I can’t fucking stand piles of dirty dishes.

I felt like Neil from the TV series the Young Ones. Neil plants the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed. Except when your housemates neglect the seed altogether.

Anyway that was the start of my passion from gardening.

This post was meant to be about my trip to Sligo with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car. It’s turned into one of those ‘3 years earlier’ things TV shows always do now.

1995

Around 3 years earlier. I had hired a video about Permaculture featuring Bill Mollison. I got into sustainable gardening. I wanted to help the planet. I wanted to be green. I started doing gardens at friends’ houses in Melbourne. I sent off to Eden Seeds for heirloom seeds. I focussed on mixing the three main types of plants in Permaculture, and sustainable gardening – legumes (things like beans and peas) which put nitrogen in the soil, heavy feeders like tomatoes and zucchinis, and root crops like carrots and potatoes. In that way you helped keep the soil healthy, without using chemicals. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs used the same method growing beans with corn and pumpkins together, to maintain the health of the soil and get greater yields from smaller spaces.

And now, in 1995, after working for a year on a farm in Nutfield, Victoria, for Bev and Peter Brock, who I met after doing some WWOOFing on a farm in Gippsland, Victoria, and a few months on the biodynamic farm of Inigislas, Wexford, I was now heading to another organic farm in Tubbercurry, Sligo, to do more to save the planet.

Oh I forgot to finish my story about my adventure with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car.

Well, we had driven from Donegal to Sligo in the carrot car. I was getting more and more annoyed at Agatha’s fresa (Mexican way of saying posh) friend who always wanted to go buy oysters from restaurants and thing like that, and who wouldn’t go skinny dipping in the Atlantic, who wouldn’t let me drive the carrot car because I didn’t have a licence, who was basically super boring.

I mean I was always going to get dropped off in Sligo to go work on the farm, but now I was super ready to be done with the carrot car and go help plant some actual carrots. I was still into Agatha mind you. We didn’t have, and would never have, a sexual relationship – sounds like a statement from former President Clinton when you put it like that –  but I did find her to be a soulmate. Someone I’d like to spend more time with and whom I’d miss having around for years to come. But her fresa friend, I was totally over her.

I can’t even remember where the carrot car dropped me off. I think I’d maybe contacted the German guys who ran the WWOOFing farm I was going to and they said they were going to be in Sligo city that day and that I could get a ride back with them. Whatever happened, I said my goodbyes and ended up on the farm in Tubbercurry which was where my Irish granny, Bridget Marron, who we just called Bee was born before coming to Australia as a 10 year-old girl with her father and uncle after her mother died.

But more on Tubbercurry next time around. I’ve been giving too much backstory in this post so I’ve run out of space.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Donegal (the greatest place on earth) in the Carrot Car, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean & Reflection on Gay Abandon – 1995 BlogPt13

donegal postcard 1995

In 2022, I’ve been reading a book called Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen. It’s about John Stephens’ and Frederick Catherwood’s journey into Central America in the 1800s to rediscover the great civilisations of the Maya at places like Copán in Honduras and Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. I have my own stories about my visit to Palenque, on my first visit to Mexico, which you can read here, also one to Calakmul, another grand Mayan site in the jungles of southern Mexico not far from Guatemala. I thought it was a bit of a trek to both these sites, but nothing like in those days. I mean I was watching Mel Gibson dubbed into Spanish in the movie Get the Gringo on an air-conditioned ADO bus on one leg from Merida to Palenque while occasionally chatting to a few young women British backpackers who had seats by the toilet, and a British couple who were sitting just behind me. Meanwhile Stephens and Catherwood were held up by bandits and constantly attacked by nasty disease ridden insects. There are a few bandits about, but comparatively speaking I would say it’s a much safer trip now.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but it has already struck me that adventurers often have this sense of gay abandon. Decades before heading to Central America, Stephens’  tried to buy a house in Greece after visiting the great ancient sites there. He found they wouldn’t lend him money for it, nor were they that keen to sell a bit of their ancient country to an American. He shrugged it off and then jumped on a boat ‘at a whim’ and headed to Turkey. He wanted to visit Egypt but THE Plague was going around (yes THE Plague) and ports like Alexandria displayed red flags to say it was a no go zone. Stephens had to spend months in quarantine at several other ports in lazarettos, where even letters were treated as though they may be carrying plague and were allowed off of ships only by means of extraction with iron tongs, with the letters then placed in an iron box for their own quarantining period.

Nothing as exciting as that awaited us in our carrot car as we left Northern Ireland on the way to Donegal, Republic of Ireland. I just mention the Stephens experience as more of a reflection of the gay abandon I used to have in my twenties and the difficulties I have now to even contemplate such things, what with work, kids, a wife, bills and the like. Though the spread of diseases like COVID and Monkeypox are still ever present. And some years ago I did pop off to Mexico to visit some Mayan ruins in the jungle, plus a few Aztec, the archaeological site of Guachimontones not far from Guadalajara, oh and the ancient Purépecha site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacan, with my wife to be. I also visited the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, another lost civilisation north of Mexico City. So I haven’t done too bad. I also plan to take my wife to Italy and other places. Perhaps even Turkey and Greece on a whim, sometime during my 50th year – oh yeah the purpose of this blog! Even I get sidetracked sometimes as to why I’m writing this!

I can’t say Donegal left a great impression on me. It was nice and all. We went to the ‘smallest pub in Ireland’. But the one we’d been at in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh the night before was, in my opinion, even smaller. I’ve seen smaller ones down alleyways in Melbourne. And added disappointment was Agatha’s Spanish friend who turned out to be a bit annoying. I felt myself more of a traveller, something more like the Patrick Leigh Fermor ilk (Patrick walked from Holland to Constantinople and into Greece in the 1930s –  for those who haven’t read his stories or my earlier blogs), travelling along on less than  £15 a day (Patrick did it for considerably less, but it was the 1930s). My Spanish friend seemed like some wealthy spoilt tourist, whose parents probably supported Franco (I’ve gone too harsh there, she wasn’t that bad!). I abandoned the crew a bit and left them to do the touristy Donegal things while I just walked around by myself. It seemed a bit hilly from memory. You could see the ocean. I think. I just wasn’t that into it. We did get some postcards and wrote ourselves a note and sent it to la chaparrita in Dublin. That was fun. And cheap. It was the only note I now have from Agatha. A memory of  the last days I ever saw her, though I didn’t know that at the time.

On the postcard it said:

postcard from donegal 1995

It was the sort of thing you write in your 20s. Seems like Agatha’s friend was called Olga. She did predict that I would have kids in 15 years. Indeed I had a daughter and son by then, with my daughter having already turned 8 and my son 6.

I’m not sure where we stayed in Donegal. Some sort of backpacker place. I think we managed to get ourselves a room altogether again. Agatha and I might have even shared a bed again. I don’t know. We stayed one more night. Had some drinks, smoked some weed and the next day we were off to County Sligo.

Not before a quick drive north of the town of Donegal though. Now that I remember, if not vaguely. I’m not sure why we drove north of Donegal, or even whether it was north. It may have been Westish, but there doesn’t seem much West of Donegal. Perhaps it was North-Westish, but I’m sure not south.

We drove along one of Ireland’s coast roads. With no GPS we just went with the flow. We saw a farm that faced the Atlantic. It was a nice day. A sunny day. Mild. We drove along the road for a while until we decided we were lost. Not panicky lost. Just not knowing where we were lost. It didn’t matter. It was a nice road. With sheep, green grass, the wind, incomprehensible farmers who you think are speaking Gaelic but who just have that really thick Irish West coast accent. Majestic views of the ocean which stretched to Iceland, if you could see that far.

We stopped for a bit. Perhaps we had a sandwich. I’m amazed I can barely recall eating in Ireland in those days given my obsession with food now, but that was way back then in 1995. I wasn’t much of a foodie then.

I remember the first time I tried carnitas in Mexico though. It was on the way to the archaeological site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro. My wife was a vegetarian at the time but she insisted I try tacos carnitas – a slowed cooked pork delicacy. The man who gave me my first one ended up being featured on the Netflix show the Taco Chronicles. I thought I would definitely get food poisoning as the pork had been sitting out in the sun on a wooden bench with ZERO refrigeration for hours. I didn’t. And carnitas have become my second favourite taco type just behind tacos pastor, which is pork cooked with chilies, spices, pineapple, and achiote paste. Que rico!

Back in Donegal. I think we may have had some nice bread and a bit of cheese now that I strain my brain. With the Spanish adding some ham. I was vegetarian at the time, so cheese was my kind of go to protein source. We stopped by a little rocky outcrop which had a narrow path to the sea with Irish green grass lining both sides of it, which led down to a small beach with some fairly safe looking waves coming in.

It was warm for Ireland. I felt like a swim. Spanish woman stayed up by the car eating her jamón because she didn’t want to get sand in her shoes. German carrot car owner (I think I tried naming her in earlier blog posts. I liked her, I wish I was more confident of her name), Agatha and I went down to the beach. They sat on the beach smoking cigarettes. I stripped down and waded into the water. I didn’t go further than waist deep. I grew up by the beach and was always respectful of the ocean’s power, especially if I didn’t know the area. I spent about 15 or 20 minutes in the Atlantic Ocean. I put my head under a few times just to get my body temperature adjusted. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t freezing either. It was almost approaching the Goldilocks zone, though more on the side of slightly invigorating. The Atlantic Ocean felt smooth and clean on my naked body. I felt alone. I wanted to be alone. I came out of the water and sat for a few minutes naked with the girls, smoking a cigarette before dressing and heading back up to the carrot car.

I had the feeling this may be the first and only time I would ever swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you do anything.

Later we drove back along the same road, along the coast, then past Donegal and towards Sligo.