Flying mangos

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I've booked myself onto a train tomorrow to Chandigar, in the north of the state of Punjab. From there I'll start a three week tour of the North West: Chandigar - Shimla - Jammu - Srinigar - Leh - Manali - Dharmasala and back to Delhi for a wedding which I've been invited to on the 6th of May.

I'm looking forward to getting out of the city and up to the mountains again. I'm gonna do a lot more walking and a lot less eating so that I can get back to my usual ripped physique.

Delhi was nice, but I stayed in the gora ("whitey") epicentre of Paharganj. Not that that's so bad, and actually it was a particularly nice part of Delhi, with lots of street life and action. It is crazy walking down the street here though. You get assaulted from all sides by people trying to sell you anything (and I mean any piece of shit is sellable here): "Ekskuse mee sirrrr, yuwanna mangooo" or else they shout SirSirSirSirSir, until you look and then they demonstrate their wares quickly, be it firing up a little helicopter into the sky or having some kind of flashy, clicky, gimmicky piece of Taiwanese crap that they animate... so then your options are to ignore them or to engage with them. I fuckin' ignore almost everyone... Every now and then I drill out a "Nai chahir baia" (no thanks dude) and stroll on.

Delhi is quite a nice city actually. I know this sounds weird, cos we all have our preconceptions of a place like this, but it's actually quite clean and green, especially South Delhi, the newer part of the city. Aptly named New Delhi, it was the part of the city founded by the Brits when the capital of India was moved from Calcutta to Delhi back in the early days of the Raj. And the old city has its charms as well. I was hanging out with some Danes last week and we went to the Jamme Mashid mosque to hear the evening call to prayer bay out over the roofs of the old city.

Now can we all bow our heads please and observe a minutes silence. My camera.... has died! Boo-hoo-hoo, waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh... This camera was so brilliant. It was red (not pink, red!) and jumped through hoops for me. It's beeen buried in snow in the patagonian winter, has survived a dunking in the caribbean and the sand of the Thar desert. I bought my Casio Exilim before I went to South America over four years ago, and I said to myself at the time that I would be happy if it survived five months of that trip. It outdid itself, surviving my whole South America tour, and the intervening years, with only two cheap repairs. The only consolotion that can come from such a tragic event, is that it owed me absolutely nothing! Unfortunately, I now have to scrape some hard currency together now from my flea infested travel budget to purchase a replacement. (On that note, if anyone has any suggestions as to camera makes and models, then comment here).

So my next update should see me hangin' off the side of Mount Everest or sumfin' like that... wish me luck.

Ur man headin' for da hills...