i'm as serious as cancer, when i say rhythm is a dancer

what a song.

to start off with - beijing is really good. the nightlife is busy, as are the streets and the food is excellent. myself and the boy matt have visited tiananmen square and the forbidden city. admittedly we were looking for tiananmen square when a tour guide told us we were in the forbidden city but that's irrelevant. i've bought a watch with mao waving which is the best purchase ive ever made. it stops every 30 minutes but that's beside the point. rumour has it that mao is pickled in a frozen cage in a building just off tiananmen square. they wheel him out every morning between 8 and 11, so we need to see this.

as expected, we've also made a few errors since arriving in this part of the world. the first being sleeping on the great wall of china. your not allowed to do it, the chinese knew we were doing it, we knew they knew we were doing it, but we denied it. on the way along the wall the last person we saw at around 5pm was a german character. when we told him our plans he said "well you won't die, but it will be cold." he wasn't wrong. we spend most of the night marching back and forward like border guards along a 20 metre stretch which we thought we couldn't fall off to try and keep warm. earlier on we tried our best to avoid drawing attention to ourselves in case we ended up in a gulag. from midnight onwards we attempted to start a fires in the hope of ending up in one of them. matt wouldn't let me burn the lonely planet, he reckons it's made of the wrong material. it's made of paper matt. idiot. the sun came up at 5.30 and i'd rather speak no more of it.........apart from the sunset was out of this world........and my camera broke so i don't have any pictures.

second mistake - going to mongolia during a national holiday. bus to chinese border town - 15 hours. sleep in odd hotel - 5 hours. time to cross the most messed up border in the world to Zamen Uud - 7 hours. Being told there are no trains to Ulaan Bator or back to beijing - priceless. By this time it was dark, one of the drunks in the car park claimed to be a taxi-driver. he took us around 3 hotels and none of them would have us. we ended up sleeping in the taxi drivers yurt eating sheep milk curds - my favourite. 4 hours across the border the next day followed by a 15 hour coach journey back to beijing. 3 WHOLE DAYS. i'm ruined. we did sleep in a yurt, i got punched of a mongolian and we were in a jeep in the desert so it pretty much ticked all of the boxes anyway.

our plans for the nest 2 days include: eat beijing duck, see acrobats, see pickled mao, stop taking the piss of mao so loudly - it's frowned upon.

all that's left to do is buy a joe kinear face mask and i'm sorted.

no more india

so i'm just about done in india. it's been different. if i do come back, i'll be going to the south and i'll be bringing more people with me. and a gun. no. no guns.

i've been round rajasthan for the past 7 days with my driver called anwar. he was a very nice man. was in the sense that i'll probably never see him again. he's not dead. travelling from town to town was an experience. indian roads are something else. i was easily entertained on 6 hour journeys just by the surrounding chaos that follows you everywhere you go. dogs (wild/domestic/dead), camels (herd of/strangely happy), sheep (flock of), cows (random/dead), buffalo (herd of), elephants (singular/grey), mules (herd of/demoralised), goats (mental looking), tortoises (mostly dead) and monkeys (angry) litter the roads. there are also no rules on indian roads. you can drive anywhere, in any direction as long as you use your horn. it's brilliant. the places i visited were:

Mumbawa - not much there

Pushkar - got caught up in the Ganesh elegod festival and was forced to dance by locals. felt better later on when the drowned the elegod in the lake. that'll learn him. drank a dodgy milkshake was out of action all the second day. missed the camel safari. downer.

Jaipur - saw the pink city and a fort (there are too many forts they should really knock some down)

it rained so i didn't go on an elephant. thinking about it the animals let me down on that trip. i have punched my fair share of cows since arriving here though. you've got to get your fill when the RSPCA aren't in town.

Agra - saw the taj mahal. it's pretty good. it's no st james park though. WHATS GOING ON WITH KEEGAN! I'll save that rant for another day.

so......i'm back in Delhi. it's even more of a party town after those bombs went off. people aren't happy. i blame jesus. i think i'm going to find the gandhi museum this afternoon then pack my bags for china. i'm meeting my friend matt in beijing. it should be special.

not the usual

Things are still mental. Can you chill out in India? Not even if you book a weeks holiday in a war zone? No chance. I've been in staying on a lakeboat in Srinagar, like Michael Palin did in Himalaya. It was possibly the nicest place i've ever been, bar Hexham. Instead of chilling out I embarked on a 4 day trek in to the Himalayas. It was beautiful, odd, scary and weird. Two nights ago i was in the mountains at 16,000 feet with 6 pony's, a campfire and 3 guides singing and banging drums to yellow submarine. I don't know why. I couldn't see yesterday as I had snow-blindness. Today my eyes are red, which matches my face, but I'm happy enough. I'm going to Bikaner tomorrow. I think there are elephants there. I'm off for some food.

Mumbai Madness

.......Mumbai's not exactly mad in the rave sense of the word. It's just pretty fucked up. Noise, hassle, taxis, drowning elephant gods in the sea. I'm lost for words.....and I was only there 3 days. I'm kind of glad I did it, but I won't be going back. The one massive positive I'm taking away from Mumbai is Elephanta Island. There are no elephants there, but monkeys a plenty. Other than that, i've been ripped off numerous times, stood in plenty off cow poo's and had a drunken taxi driver crash over a central reservation - the only central reservation in Mumbai, it possibly through him. On the train to Delhi I fell flat on my face, then knocked a light off the roof which fell in to a womans curry. I'm on fire. Since I've been in Delhi I've had men trying to usher me in to a mosque and been in a car crash. I've been in Delhi for 8 hours. INDIA. SORT YOUR LIFE OUT. I'm off to the North tomorrow to find some tranquility in the mountains. I'll be back next week with an update.

I've just read this back and it's really negative. It's been ok. Maybe it's just because I have the shits?