Jan roundup

A spectacularly bad start. Fun! I'm pleased with a few things though, I've been putting in a lot of volume this week, and watching a lot of training videos. I also think I've been playing ok - not great, I definitely still have leaks, but it's getting better session by session. Also, I've had a pretty good mindset despite running horribly, haven't been getting down or wasting the end of sessions because I'm in a bad mood.

January
Sessions: 6
Hours: 52
Results: -$7.9k


I have an average buyin of ~$80 at the moment, so a nice 100 buyin downswing to start things off. Pretty much halved my online roll so I've been cutting things bit by bit, the amazingly soft ipoker 50r was the first to go, then 30rs on FT. Playing up to 100FOs and 20rs for now. Could use some rungood! Really don't want to have to drop down too drastically.

Going to play a few days this week, then off to nottingham for DTD, spending a few days in sheffield visiting people (and hopefully going crazy in a cash game or two) and then manchester for the UKIPT. Really looking forward to some live poker, hopefully I'll run a little better in real life.

Here's to a better Feb!

POKER

(People looking for my last India blog post should scroll down - it's just boring pokery stuff up here)

Soooo! It's time to grind. I have a huge motivation to play right now (5 months off will do that!) and have some stuff worked out. Firstly here are my goals for 2010, copied from pfu:


Online

Play 30hrs/week minimum. 4 online sessions+ preferably, but if lots of live play then slightly less is ok.

Get a coach. Maybe only 5-10hrs or so, will see.

Renew CR subscription.

Spend 5hrs/week minimum studying my game/watching CR vids/viewing HH replays etc.

Reach an av. buyin of $100.

Stop getting down/tilting during sessions that start badly, or when you bust from the biggest/deepest tournament you have left. It's stupid and damaging. EVERY TOURNAMENT MATTERS.


Live

Play every DTD deepstack/UKIPT 500 I can.

Sat into 2 other GUKPT/UKIPT events.

Make day 2 of a multiday event (would be a first...)

Sat into the WSOP ME (I'm 21! wooo)


General

Treat poker more like a job. Keep putting in decent volume whether doing well or badly, have a better mindset whilst playing.

Related ^^ Get a good routine going. Go for a jog before playing/make a nice meal/make sure I'm fresh and will play well.

Get the standard of my actual play near the level of my theoretical play. Sounds silly, but there's a fairly large gap. This may involve playing less tables online.

Make more than '09.

Keep up other activities (jujitsu, badminton), maybe take some language classes, guitar lessons. Poker isn't everything.



Mainly hoping to treat it all a little more seriously. Going to be playing a lot more live - with the monthly £330 deepstacks at DTD and £1-1.5k GUKPT and UKIPT tours (plus side events) there should be enough to keep me going! Plus I won an Irish Open seat again this year so I have that to look forward to in April.

Starting with a smaller roll of about $10-12k; withdrew a lot before leaving last year and it's needed for other things (rent/live bankroll/food etc)so just going to be grinding midstakes, and not buying into many sunday majors for a month or two, unless I bink something sizeable.

Played 2 sessions so far, 1 light sunday where I bricked everything (obviously) and just played awfully. I was ill and tired, shouldn't have played at all - lost $2.5k or so. Then I played a session yesterday which went much better, had 3 final tables including a small win, ending up about $1k up overall. Mainly was just playing well which made me happy, was worried after sunday I'd forgotten how to play! Made a few mistakes in key hands, including one horrible hand to bust in 4th in a 30r which paid 5.4k to first, so that was fairly costly - but I know what I did wrong, and feel confident I can play well and plug my leaks.

Double guarantees week on tilt means I'm going to play every day I think. I've always run good on tilt, this week would be a great time to continue doing so...

Dharamsala and onwards

It's pretty cold in Dharamsala, and for the first week or 2 I don't really meet anyone. I end up staying indoors a lot and begin feeling the miserable, wintery haze that I've come to India to avoid. Thankfully I meet some nice people at the Rogpa cafe - run by volunteers with proceeds helping to support Tibetan single mothers in Dharamsala. I end up helping out there a while, and teaching a little English to a local Tibetan girl. I also find a very nice cafe called the Heart Rock, run by permanently chilled-out local Ran, and end up spending most evenings there - it tends to attract a nice, if sometimes slightly odd, crowd. (For example, English trust-fund Bradley attendee with a craaazy posh English + Austrian accent who lived in Mongolia with nomadic horsemen for 9 months and was prone to extreme and spontaneous mood swings. Or the Indian guy who danced his socks off on his own in the corner all night, often impersonating animals. His 'spider' dance was my favourite)

After a month or so of not doing much but having a nice time, I head to Amritsar with quiet-but-lovely American couple Lexi and Chris. The main attraction here is The Golden Temple, Sikhism's most impressive and significant Gudwara. Apart from the beauty and elegance of the temple itself, the sense of community is astounding. The free kitchen, open to all, feeds upwards of 60,000 a day. No restrictions on religions, race, class, gender. Come in, sit down, eat. And the attitude of it all is something that touches me - it's not a big significant thing to help out. You come in, wash a few dishes if you want, leave. Like it's something normal, not out of the ordinary (there's a lot of self-righteous back-patting in the volunteering community) it all makes me feel a little more positive about the human condition. Plus they have a chipati machine that makes 24,000/hour - WAY COOL!



We also head to the Pakistan-India border for the closing ceremony. At first they get all the girls up and dancing to some bangra, amid loud, patriotic chanting.


Next, the guards stamp around aggressively, looking hard. It's a strange atmosphere, like a sports game; good-natured competition. But the tension between the two countries is far greater than that, and I find it a little odd. It's pretty fun though!

After the few days there, the Americans and I go our separate ways. I have to go back to Mcleod Ganj - I need to think about my bike. I'd decided to sell the bike on reaching Mcleod, but moping about followed by having fun has lead to me conveniently forgetting about it. I put up a few posters here and there, and get some responses. The 2nd guy I show it to is a friendly Austrian and he buys it after having a ride around. There are a few problems over the next few days, but a trip to the mechanic sorts it out (30rupees! 37p for an hour long once over of a motorbike - I love India!). Hopefully he's somewhere on the road on the way sown south - he was planning to go the whole length of the Subcontinent, arriving in Kerala. Good luck to him...

After selling it I'm aware of a massive release of tension - the bike had been keeping me there somewhat. I'm freeee! Some other awesome people I've met, Leo and Sophie, are heading to Jaisalmer for a camel safari over Christmas. Yes please! Sophie's already there with her friend Orion, so me and Leo start the long journey from northern Himachal Pradesh to western Rajasthan.


The camel safari is great to start with. I mean, the novelty of riding a camel is enough! But after an hour or two I start feeling very sick. I end up walking behind, and start throwing up/going to the toilet frequently. The group is in front out of sight by this point, and the guy with my camel has gotten impatient and walked on too. Suddenly I find myself totally alone, in a desert in the midday heat, delirious with illness in a fair amount of pain. Then I realise I don't know which way I'm going. I spend a few minutes looking around, and decide on the most likely direction - thankfully it was. Could've been interesting otherwise...

I end up getting a lift back from the camp that night, although not without seeing an awesome sunset:


and a shooting star, that broke off into TWO MORE SHOOTING STARS! So that made me feel a little better. I spend most of christmas day in bed. In fact the only xmas reference is one man who wishes me Merry Christmas, but then tries to sell me bedsheets.


After Leo, Sophie and Orion return from the safari, we head to Bikaner, mainly to see the rat temple. If one runs over your feet it's good luck!



After that everyone heads off in different directions - I go to Jodpur. It's a lovely place, lots of tiny winding streets and a nice atmosphere. I stay in a tent on the roof of a guest house. A lovely view to wake up to in the morning:


View from the fort:


Next is Udaipur, 'the Venice of India'. Another nice town, and some fantastic scenery from the many rooftop restaurants. The palace was used in the Bond film 'Octopussy' and is suitably grand - you get a nice view of it on a boat ride of the lake. I do a cookery course here too, so I can now make all sorts of tasty indian food! In theory at least...

Next stop on the Rajasthan tour is Bundi, a small, sleepy, rural town. The palace overlooking the town is huge, dilapidated, and labyrinthine. I spend a while tottering up broken steps and peering through dark alleys - it's so refreshing coming from the UK where everything that could possibly be seen as dangerous or even just broken or dirty is closed off. I see some local Indians walking along ridiculously high castle walls like stepping stones. My last day here is the Bundi Kite Festival - a day where everyone flies kites on the their roofs. It's really really difficult! I lose about a dozen kites and cut my hand several times, although towards the end of the day I can keep the bloody thing in the air for a few minutes at least.

That evening I leave for Agra and the Taj Mahal. I had some reservations about going, but everyone I spoke to said yes, it's dirty, smelly, noisy, there's tons of obnoxious tourists and shameless touts, but you simply have to do it, the Taj is worth it. And I'm glad I did.


Finally it was back to Delhi. As with most people I was a little phased by Delhi, but I find it totally normal now, and have a good look around, before catching my flight HOME.

Which is where am I now. Everything's so quiet! Where are the cows? The buffalo? The people peeing in the gutters, the rickshaws, the noise, the sewage, the rubbish, the people asking me questions? The awesome street food and stalls crammed together like jigsaws? The saris and shawls, the dogs and dhabas? I'm going to miss it all.

...though some things more than others!

1200km, 7 towns, 3 throttle cables, 1 bike (part 2)

My bike is getting fairly tired by this point - riding it out of the multistorey car park is much more difficult than anticipated, since it's on a hill. My bike does not like hills. After a few tries, a few stalls, a few rollings down the hill backwards, I end up turning around and going for a kilometer or so in the other direction to get a run up, and this finally works (just about). Then I hit a traffic jam. Indian traffic jams aren't much fun at the best of times, but with a bike that really doesn't like mornings (I'm not so partial either) it's pretty stressful. It's a proper jam, we'll move maybe 10m, then stop for a few minutes. As the line moves forward the 10m, I stall (surprise surprise) and immediately the driver behind me starts beeping like crazy, shouting 'HELLO SIR, GO GO!' behind me. It's fairly obvious when a bike stalls - you have to kick start it again (several times if you're on my bike!), and the traffic had once again stopped 10m ahead. *BEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP* 'HELLOOOO! HELLO! SIR! SIR! COME ON GO GO GO! SIR!' Yeah, thanks for that. Wouldn't want to be 10m behind a stationary car. I was fairly close to calmly getting off the bike, putting it on the centre stand in the middle of the road, and going to talk to the driver. Managed to restrain myself. I finally get out onto the open road.


After a few hours I notice an Indian on the side of the road having problems with his bike. I'm not sure I can help, but stop anyway - his chain has come off and the pliers I've bought come in handy. We end up riding the same way for a while and Vikrant demands I come to stay the night at his house in a small village called Barmana. It's proper rural India - no running water, the mother making chipatis over a small wood fire, the milk we drink and ghee we eat is from their cow. I'm welcomed into their home as one of their own, get stuffed with food and get told I'm a 'great man' for helping Vikrant with his bike.


With a friend of his who's a teacher we walk around and up to the local temple, and then have a clandestine beer (their parents would disapprove, although they are both 25+. Interestingly their fathers drink, but don't allow the sons to. Of course the women of any age have no chance). Drinking in India doesn't seem to be a relaxed, social thing - in fact it seems the actual drinking isn't even done for pleasure; each glass is guzzled away as quickly as it's poured, to get maximum 'effect'. It's like being 16 again.

The next morning I try to get going early, but I keep being offered things and being introduced to new family members. I also get an invitation to his brother's wedding (brother is an all-purpose word for male relative, so I'm not actually sure what relation it was) which I duly accept, it's in a week's time. It's all very nice, but I'm a little nervous about getting going - I want to get to Manali before dark and it's a fairly long ride. It doesn't help that when I try to get going there's a problem with the bike, so someone calls a mechanic and I have to wait around for ages, and then have lunch. So it's 1pm before I set off, and I just ride non-stop, getting to manali just before dark. I'm pretty frazzled when I arrive, so it's nice to find a very pleasant guest house with hot water and beer. Cue contented sigh. I end up not doing much for the next few days, except going on a few walks. Oh, and this:


I head down for the wedding, and am once again received with delight. There is a small ceremony that evening, and then a bigger celebration the next morning with full-on dress, a band and dancing, and then we head off in the car (much to my surprise!) to a ceremony in the bride's village, several hours away. Whisky is consumed on the way. More ceremonies, more music, a huge buffet, another whisky.


I go for a walk with a few friends of Vikran, and the idea they have of the West is... well, inaccurate to say the least. One person asks me how many girlfriends I have, on answering none they were visibly shocked, several refusing to believe me. One guy actually believed that women in London walk around the streets in bikinis. He was eager to learn though, asking me many questions about western culture, saying 'this is what I know, what I've been told - teach me, tell me how I'm wrong'.

**Rant warning** Vikran comes over to tell me not to drink any more whisky - I've only had 2, but he's not drinking so I figure I should be a good guest. 10 minutes later and I find him necking neat gin, 30 minutes later and he's staggering around singing. Hrmph. He's also ignoring me and I'm being bombarded by (mainly drunk) people asking me where I'm from; it's getting pretty boring. Indians as a rule don't understand privacy/solitude, or being quiet and being the centre of attention for many hours at a time is pretty much my own personal hell. One guy asks me who my favourite musician is, doesn't wait for an answer, tells me his is Shakira and proceeds to wail the first few bars of 'hips don't lie' - and then does it all again, literally a dozen times. I'm no where near drunk enough for this. I start getting pretty grumpy; am still getting pinched and pulled in 7 directions at once, people demanding I dance so they can take pictures of me, singing terribly, asking me questions. I slip out to go for a walk, but get followed by some people who talk non-stop, and then end up trying to show me pornography (what the hell? how am I supposed to react to that? to be enthusiastic? I guess they weren't expecting a bitter laugh and a 'jesus christ' followed by me walking off, but I really don't see what their goal was). I'm in a really bad mood by this point, and walk for a fair amount of time to find some peace. When I get back everyone thinks I've been throwing up because I'm so drunk (I can't quite express how frustrating it is being totally sober and surrounded by drunks accusing you of being more drunk than them). I try to sit in the corner and read a book - HA! - and spend most of the rest of the night resisting demands for me to dance. I generally love dancing, but I'm in such a bad mood and pretend I'm not feeling well. Not that that deters them. I suppose I can't deny there was a degree of spite in not dancing too. I'll spare you my gloomy ruminations on humanity from the evening - suffice to say it was a low moment of the trip.

The next morning there is more music, more food, more ceremonies, and then we head back. I was hoping to get back early to head to Dharamsala, but we get back to Barmana in the early evening. It seems my insistence that I'm ill has come true, and I feel pretty awful. I feel a lot happier being back in the village though, and get a bit of time to myself. Vikrant gives me some medicine, and then tells me I should get up early the next morning in order to throw up. I decline... I'm feeling better by the morning anyway. I leave with mixed feelings; loving the simple village life and the welcome I'm given, but realising these people are at the core the same as any other, which I find depressing. Still, I'm fond of the family, and when I'm invited back I say I'll try - truthfully.


A pleasant day's ride and I'm in Mcleod Ganj, a Tibetan community for refugees fleeing their homeland, and the home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Government in exile. And that's that. Here end my bikey adventures. It's a nice place, and I've been here a while - think I needed a rest!

1200km, 7 towns, 3 throttle cables, 1 bike (part 1)

I made it to Dharamsala! And I'm still alive, with all my limbs firmly attached! Yay! Though it was not without its scary moments...

So I leave Rishikesh at 9am or so, stocked up with fuel for both bike and myself, and hit the road. I take the route I've driven up a few times, so it's a nice start, and helps me get used to having all my luggage on the bike. It's a great road, awesome scenery, good condition, barely any other cars. So I'm trundling along, take a corner perhaps a tad quickly (which is unusual for me, most of the time up until then I'd been creeping along at 20km/hr twitching nervously thinking 'ohmygodohmygod I'm going to die') when I behold an old lady wandering in the middle of the road. Upon seeing me she panics and starts jumping back and forth, meaning I have to brake somewhat sharply and, due to some handily placed gravel in the road, I slide and come off my bike. Awesome! 3 hours into my journey and I've already narrowly missed a pedestrian and fallen off the bike whilst moving. Back to trundling along at 20 then I guess. (Luckily I'm fine, just a scrape on my arm).

I get lost a few times on the first day, with the signs being few and far between (and most of them in hindi) and the people giving me wrong directions. One detour took me passed an old man who spoke no english but grasped that I wanted to get to a town called Dharasu. He hopped on the back, chattering away non-stop in hindi. It was a while before I realised he didn't actually know the way at all, and just wanted me to take him to Chamba (some way back the direction I'd come) - repeating the words 'ChaaaambA! petrol PUMP... CHAMbaaa... peTROL pump' for about 20 minutes, with various different intonations and stresses. I somehow manage to find the right road, although it's more of a dirt track. The views all around are absolutely fantastic - for an hour or two I'm riding along the side of one of India's biggest hydroelectric dams; sun setting, mountainous background. They're fairly controversial actually since many villages were flooded to allow their contruction (you can see the tops of trees and telegraph poles emerging from the water), but DAM they make good scenery (see what I did there)


Sometime after this my first throttle cable breaks. At this point I'm a total novice when it come to bike repairs, and in fact hadn't even bought basic tools for the trip, vaguely planning to buy them somewhere along the line, or assuming nothing would go wrong. I had some spares though and flag down a passing biker who fixes it for me pretty quickly. I make sure to note what he's doing so I can do it myself if it happens again.

Some hours later, as it's getting dark, I stop and ask for the town I'm heading for and am told it's back in the direction I came. It gets reeeaal cold up in the mountains at night, and Indian roads are not ones you want to be driving on in the dark (pot holes/unmarked speed bumps/landslides) so decide to call it a night and ask for the nearest guest house. 5km in the other direction they say. 15kms later and I find a tiny shop, the owner of which tells me it's 40km further until Chamba (the town I'd passed through 4 hours earlier) and the nearest guest house. Ugh. Someone overhears though and offers a truckers' sleeping stop, 'very simple' they say, but that's a-okay with me.

Until I get inside, and there's the world's second biggest spider scuttling around on the wall. I don't mind being in a crowded cafe with an awesomely huge spider, but sleeping in the same room as one? hm... it's all creepy and swings around on only a few legs like it's enjoying itself. If you shine a torch at it the light reflects of its many, alien eyes. EWWWW. I end up putting up my mosquito net (I know, I'm a wuss) and manage to doze for a while, and set off first thing the next morning.


Taking the advice of the person I met the day before, I head back the way I came, trying to figure out which wrong turning I'd taken. The only vague possibility I could see was a little track heading down the side of the mountain, towards the bottom where there's a huge bridge - maybe that's where I'm supposed to go? It quickly deteriorates and huge rocks are everywhere, and I'm bumping about all over the place. I started thinking I'm probably on the wrong path about 10 minutes in, and then find a person who says 'NOT ROAD!' with surprising forcefulness, so I head back. Which is far more difficult of course because it's uphill - and, riding an enfield (a slightly grumpy one at that), you have to go fairly quickly even in first to stop it stalling. Cue even more bumping on a rocky, wet, slipperly path less than a single lane wide, with a 50ft+ drop to the left and landslide debris to the right. weeee!

I decide the guy who gave me directions was just wrong, and head the way I was going to originally - hell, it's a real road at least. Turns out I'm right and I make my way towards Barakot. The road starts heading through forests and is really beautiful, great to ride through - until my throttle stops working again. ARG. This time it's not the cable but the handle that's broken - where the cable attaches. I flag down another biker and we end up melting the handle together, cable included, and it holds until barakot, where I find a mechanic (who does nothing for the throttle handle incidentally, that's a problem solved, nothing to worry about) and a guest house. Barakot is a pretty small rural village - they obviously get a few tourists in season, but this is very much the end of the season, and I'm stared at even more than usual. Being a foot taller than most Indians and covered in oil generally doesn't help me keep a low profile.

I'm told the way I want to go (across a fairly barren stretch of 'road' through some mountains/forests) has been blocked, so I have to head back south again. It's not exactly the same way I've come, but feels like a bit of a backtrack. The scenery is astounding though:


More riding though tiny villages, giving cute school children lifts, getting stared at by everyone. I get to Poanta Sahib before dark (not without losing another throttle cable - I don't know why, I'm not revving it like a madman or anything. I managed to fix it myself, under the close scrutiny of at least a dozen locals who stop to watch the crazy white man covering himself in oil, which I'm very proud of) It's much bigger than Barakot - definitely a city - but again, this is not the season, and there's not a westerner in sight. I find a mediocre guest house, wash away a few layers of grime with cold water, find a take away curry and a beer (my first in nearly a month, Rishikesh is a completely dry town!) and have a good sleep. Next morning I take the road towards Shimla, one of my main 'destinations' for the journey. The road is wide, straight and generally in ok condition and I actually manage to go at 50-60km/hr for prolonged distances (very rare up to this point) and get there pretty quickly. I check in at the YYYY-M-C-A! and have a tepid shower (an improvement). My room is big and clean, and there are no humongous spiders lurking in every corner. Result!

Shimla is an odd place. An old British hill fort, it was turned into a town after some Brit settlers came here in summer to avoid the clinging dusty heat further south. As a result, it's has a strange feel to it - like an Indian city but with some Britishness hurled at it. There's a few mains streets filled with expensive, western brand shops (nike, addidas, domino's pizza), all extremely clean - littering, spitting and even smoking are illegal and are punishable by fines. Everyone's dressed in smart clothes, looking rich, beautiful and sophisticated. But... kind of boring. There's not a lot to do. Then 50ft down the hill and you're in an Indian market, winding streets with stalls of all varieties, back to the vibrant colours and smells of a more traditional Indian city. I'm not quite sure what to make of it all.

There's also a very disconcerting air raid siren that goes off every day. I'm woken the first morning by a full blown alarm; it's a terrifying sound, and in my sleepy daze I'm slightly worried the world is coming to an end. Next time it goes off I'm outside and no one pays it the slightest bit of attention. They don't even seem to register it; I'm the only one freaked out in the slightest. It's like being in 'The Prisoner' or something.

So anyways I stay here a while, but get a bit bored, and still have had very little human interaction. There are a few English speakers here, but most are 60+ rich Brit retirees, obviously living here because it's the least Indian city in the north of India, and they can still live like the colonial masters they feel like; ordering around locals to carry their bags and bring them food in superiour, lordly tones. Time to leave.

To the mountains! (part 2)

The next morning, after our breakfast of dhal and roti we head to the valley of flowers. I'm feeling a bit 'bowelarily tumultuous' as I put it, so the walk is punctuated by...stops... but it's a much easier walk than the day before and the views are stunning.



I head back a bit early as I'm not feeling great, realising as I get back that Tyler has the only key to our room, and have a nap in an open spare room. When I wake it's dark and I find no sign of Tyler or Gribb. Downstairs no one has seen them either, and a czech couple said they saw them a few hours before and that they were trying to find a lake, deep into the valley. They also said it's a crazy idea and hoped they'd changed their minds. The woman speaks some hindi and talks to the locals, who are starting to worry, and she tells me there is a real danger of bears, who come out at night to eat.

I have a fairly hyperactive imagination and had idly thought about one or more of us being eaten by bears many hours earlier but I do it just to pass the time, without any expectation or worry. As the locals start amassing a search party to go into the hills I begin to wonder if one of my crazy daydreams might actually be coming true. When I get up to go with them they tell me they know the area and will be quicker without me which, having seen some locals on the paths, I don't doubt. I also had fallen in the river on the way back earlier and my spare clothes are locked away in my room, so realise it's probably sensible to stay behind. A hypothermic cheesies wont help the search. The minutes tick by...

After an hour or so, we hear shouting, see lights and our hotel owner carrying a huge flaming torch with a triumphant grin on his face. Tyler and Gribb follow closely behind.
"Where have you been you crazy bastards!" I yell in mock outrage.
"You were worried, huh? Yeah, I would've been too." Smiles all round.
Turns out they simply misjudged the time - though Gribb had started a 1hr+ steep unpathed hill-climb as it was getting dark, and he was not to be persuaded otherwise. Tyler turned back, and after a little while, in a rare moment of rationalisation (or self-preservation?), Gribb changed his mind and turned back too.

After our dhal and roti, Tyler gets us invited to a 'party'. I wish I'd got a video - it was just a bunch of old, very drunk Indians singing and staggering around a campfire. The entire village is there (perhaps a dozen people) and they are delighted to see us; shaking our hands non-stop, standing us up, sitting us down, trying to teach us a local dance (uncoordinated drunken stagger is more accurate!) We leave pretty quickly.

The day after we head to Hemkund - a temple 4.5km above sea level in the mountains. Gribb made himself throw up the contents of his stomach the night before because of indigestion from the roti ("roti is very strong food - make fire in belly") and diarrhea took care of the other end, so when he says he plans to not eat anything all day, we're surprised to say the least.
"You ever hiked for 8 hours without food before?" Tyler asks.
"I fine, I just have water, and sun energy." And he faces the sun, palms up, eyes closed. While he has his breakfast, we have ours: guess what?

It's not an easy walk; only 6km each way but it's a 1.5km climb so it's fairly steep. Gribb is, not surprisingly, struggling and turns back halfway. We're very glad we carried on.


The night is so cold I can't sleep. I'm wearing 4 long-sleeved tops and a hoodie, and hiding under the duvet but still am shivering uncontrollably. I feel worse and worse throughout the night, and by the morning I've got the works - aching joints and muscles (or 'moooskles' as Gribb calls), slight fever, headache, cough, cold and the runs. It's going to be a fun 14km hike back, I think grimly.

Turns out to be ok, weather is good, and I feel a bit better once I get moving. More naked swimming/being frozen from Gribb, more flirting with beautiful women from Tyler. We meet Shankie, an friendly Indian (are there any other kind?) who we passed on the way back from Hemkund, turns out he is doing the entire Govindghat - Hemkund trek in 48 hours, camping out at Hemkund. I can only imagine how cold that must have been. We walk together for the rest of it, and he is heading Rishikesh-wards too, and gets us sorted with a bus back, leaving 4.30am the next morning. Tyler is heading to Nepal though and gets a different bus, so we say our goodbyes ("lets hug it out, bitch!"). We end up sitting out on the street all night - possibly not the best idea considering my state but oh well - and finally get our bus. Not the funnest 12-hr bus ride I've ever had, but we make it back finally and I trudge to find a guesthouse in a daze. I have my first hot shower since arriving in India, and I can't quite put into words how good it is.


So that's that! Back in Rishikesh now, heading off tomorrow on the enfield. Wish me luck! I'm gunna need it...

To the mountains! (Part 1)

Tyler, a friendly American I've been spending a fair amount of time with over the last few weeks, is planning a trip to the mountains; the valley of flowers and Hemkund, and says I should come along. On the surface we're fairly contrasting characters, (him a loud, open American, me a quiet, reserved Brit) but we have many deeper similarities and get on well. Plus he plays loads of poker - what's not to like? He also invites a Russian named Gribb... I guess I should explain about him now.

Gribb Gribb Gribb. Where to begin. I suppose a good place to start might be the fact that he named himself Gribb (Russian for mushroom I think) after a mushroom shaman, and when we asked his real name he wouldn't tell us, saying (please imagine the accent) "that is not me. I am not my name. I am not my biografia". He later won't allow us to take pictures of him because it would 'steal his energy', and tells us he's burnt all the photos of him that he can get his hands on ("I am not me. I am not human. I am nothing. How can you save nothing?"). This is a particular shame because he has a floppy Mohawk with shaved head either side, a penchant for bright or neon clothes ("is very acid!") and several funky ear-bar things. It's quite nice not being the crazy foreigner and center of attention for a while! Every local we pass either laughs, shouts something like "Good hairstyle my friend!" or just stares open mouthed for minutes on end.

His beliefs... I got most of it in one huge dollop the first night I met him. I wish I'd had a tape recorder or something, I've forgotten most of it, but suffice to say my jaw was on the ground the entire evening - some of the stuff he was coming out with was just... WOW.

He believed the world as we know it will end in 2012 because of the Mayan calendar (given to us by aliens thousands of years ago, along with the pyramids and various other things), he believed there are aliens on the moon, on mars, on earth, he believed you could survive on nothing but 'universal energy' and claimed to have gone 4 and a half days without food or water. He believed technologies in films like The Matrix and Total Recall exist and are kept secret by governments across the world. I think my favourite was his belief that when the poles melt after the apocalypse in 2012, the lost city of Atlantis will be free from its icy prison under the North pole and float to the surface, replete with 5-metre tall gods with strange skulls (pictures of which he assured us he'd seen) possessing special powers such as teleportation and telekinesis. I kid you not. It was incredible! And I honestly believe that he honestly believed it. I got to utter the words 'sorry, why are there demons in babies' minds?' which brought me great joy.

I asked him, somewhere towards the end of the evening, where he got all this information. Can you guess what he said? 'The internet'. I'd tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't help laughing (or should that be loling?). As one of the others said afterwards, 'some people shouldn't be allowed on the internet'.

So that's a not-so-brief intro to Gribb - the kind of person who comes out with sentences like "I fly.... outside of matrix!" with seemingly no context, that send me and Tyler into giggles. In short, he's bat-shit crazy, but enormously good fun. As Tyler points out, he adds a bit of life and energy into our group.


Ok... So the whole trip starts out pretty weirdly. We book a jeep for 6am, I turn up at 5:40, stick around for an hour and find no trace of Tyler, Gribb or jeep. I find Gribb and Tyler the next day, it seems they overslept, but I have no idea where the jeep was. We book it again, found my team this time, waited for an hour (which included over-friendly cows and a very spaced out lady who sat with us for ages howling at the moon) and then got told the jeep wasn't leaving because it wasn't full. Third time's the charm, and we finally take the 8hr bump-fest to Joshimath. From there we get a ride to get a ride to Govindghat, the starting point for the hike to Ghangaria.

Govindghat is eerily empty, not quite a ghost town, but certainly dying (or hibernating - the season is all but over). We are the only tourists, and the few locals we meet all seems to be emptying they're possessions into trucks (in a disconcertingly hasty, almost panicky manner) or huddled around fires of burning rubbish. We manage to get a room at the only open guesthouse, get told by several people that the valley of flowers is closed and there are no places to stay, but Gribb is insistent everyone is lying, and that we should go. "You think of problem, make problem! There is no problem" We try to explain dying of exposure or starvation would be problems whether we think about them or not, but he doesn't quite get it. We find one person who says there are things still open, and of course he's not lying - everyone else had 'bad energy'. We decide this craziness is why we brought Gribb along, and set out the next morning anyway. The walk up to Ghangaria begins wonderfully, a winding path following a tributary of the Ganga with the Himalayas in the background. I gaze hungrily at the view wishing I had photographic memory and mourn the fact the photos won't do it justice (not bad though):



Along the way we stop beside the river for Gribb to have a swim. It's glacial water, and putting my foot in for more than 5 seconds causes pain. I turn and see Gribb, absolutely butt-naked (as Tyler would say) dunking himself into the river over and over with a huge grin on his face. He emits a high-pitched roll of the lips, sounding like a Pokemon - 'brrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeee!' Then his signature choking noise, that I imagine to be similar to that of a strangled duck, and then a spit. KKKKARH-spit.

The end of the 14km walk gets tougher and we're pretty tired by the time we get to Ghangaria. It's even quieter than Govindghat , we see maybe 3 or 4 people. We find there is an open guest house though, and they serve food. It's starting to get dark and frighteningly cold; Tyler is shivering like crazy - I suspect he has a touch of hypothermia but he feels better after some dhal and roti (our diet for the next 4 days). Our room has no electricity, the toilet doesn't work, and the gaps in the doors and windows mean it's the same temperature inside as it is outside. It's certainly below zero at night as the edges of the river freeze over, and we spend the nights fully dressed and shivering.