Articles published in February, 2025
This might be a good time to imagine yourself in Kathmandu, with no TV.
Friday, 31st, to Pokhara
Into Nepal towards Pokhara. First flat road then mountains rise up steeply before me, a rich red-brown village, houses of adobe, top half white, lower half terra cotta. Frames painted in almost black brown, and intricately fretted wooden shutters. Echoes of Ecuador, Colombia. Poor Nepalis wear shawl or cloth, muddy white, and tight trousers that often look more like ragged bandages. Bare feet, toes splayed, calloused, creviced. Rich Nepalis wear conical hat with design in pink ice cream colours, a suit jacket over long-tailed shirt and tight legged trousers with baggy tops. Jackets always of very dull material. The tops of old-fashioned English suits. (The jackets come to Nepal. The bowler hats and trilbys go to Bolivia). Someone told me that in Afghanistan the secondhand clothes business is literally so.
Road to Pokhara has many broken patches and rises quite high, but weather is perfect. Arrive in mid-afternoon though the town itself escapes me. A local directs me to the lake where I find a colony of small restaurants. “Lakeside, Lake View, Greenlake, Baba, Snowland, Hidden View,” each with rooms attached for about five rupees. Food is served outside on tables under canopies – variations on basic Chinese meals, with buffalo meat (Buff). Many dishes, even the tea, have a vaguely unpleasant taste, which I called Tibetan Aftertaste (TAT). Never diagnosed.
[Here I have to confess to a quite extraordinary lapse on my part. I have since diagnosed the taste. It was cilantro (or the coriander leaf as some call it), which I had eaten happily in South America, but not since. Now, in Pokhara, I didn’t recognise it, and so I didn’t like it. It shows me just how subjective taste can be.]
The population consists mainly of slightly blissful Westerners, and sharp, dedicated Nepali boys who seem to run the whole show. The latter are multi-lingual, gifted calculators, and shrewd conversationalists, but their most impressive feature is that they never solicit to the point of hustling. They DO take No for an answer, unlike their Indian counterparts.
Behind the front row of best places overlooking the lake are other cheaper huts for tourists.
I met Collin, the Australian maths teacher on his BMW. He is designing a raft to float down the Murray River. With him is a Kansas Peace Corps guy, newly commissioned, full of his coming project (a water system) with an amazing vocabulary of Mid-American expressions that sound close to blasphemy out here. I learn from him that there are five stages in the realisation of the individual, culminating in the person who has formed his own value system and is able to apply his intelligence to realise his objectives.
On a later visit we meet a couple in Snowland. He has ginger beard, morose expression, glasses and little woolly hat. She looks like an off-duty nurse. She conducts both sides of their conversation, telling him what his likes and dislikes are, discussing the merits of various dishes in the light of his tastes and physical needs, and then orders for them both. He said: “I’ve had enough grease for one day.”
Saturday, December 1st, to Kathmandu
Lovely ride. Much of it along a river. 120 miles. 5 hours. Good road except for the last section climbing up to pass into Kathmandu Valley. Visit British Embassy to find Dudley Spain. He’s not there. I’m recommended Kathmandu Guest House. Then go to Freak Street and Durbar Square, to see if Carol spots me.
[Somewhere along the way – probably in Delhi –I made contact with Carol, who had been travelling independently, and we’d arranged to meet in Kathmandu. I was expecting to find her there.]
Met Gavin Fox, and we meet again at 7pm at Swiss Restaurant for dinner. Just after eating Carol sees me through window and comes in looking like a Russian princess. We are so delighted with each other that poor Gavin is embarrassingly de trop.
We go to Carol’s hotel where Lorenzo is staying – also Australian – whose partner was knifed when they were camped out on a trek. Then we go back to the K.G.H
Sunday, 5th December
Leave K.G.H. to go to Lalibala Guest House.
[The Lalibala had a large, gated yard where bikes and other vehicles were safe, and we met an exotic mixture of travelers there, including a young English couple on a bike, Meg and Eliot, whom I visit to this day, almost fifty years later.]
The Lalibala Guest House, 1976. John Murray surrounded by BMWs. But where’s my Triumph?
There it is, with me doing my Grouch Marx impression
Follows: A week of hunting for permits, visas, boots, etc. [We decided to do the Annapurna trek.]
Visit Swayambu Temple – where monkeys slide down the handrails.
Starting the trek, December 13th
10am from Shining Hospital along valley of strewn pebbles and boulders through villages and Tibetan camp, slowly uphill.
Some confusion at first crossing. Dave comes, and goes to Dhanpur, and we climb steeply for 1200 feet, to Nandanda. I have a really hard time climbing with the pack, but no lasting pain. Arrive 5.30. Great views. Marriage ceremony greets us at last step, led by two men with vast alpine horns, and bride covered in a litter. B&W pix. Passed women in shoulder litter, carried like backpack, in the valley.
Marriage procession in Nepal
Words fail me
14th, Nandanda
Long night. Before dawn a small dog outside does barking exercises non-stop. Up at first light to catch Annapurna and Machapuchare. And the sunrise. Dark stooping figures of women with a child between, barefooted, shawled and loaded with baskets and head straps. They are chattering loudly. Who wants to change their lives? Think of Cudlipp and his “Poverty of Aspiration.” Pompous phrase. Who gives a fig for his opinions and beliefs? It’s his power they listen to. How could he know what they need? {God often speaks through crooked mouths} [Cudlipp was a famous and on the whole admirable editor of the Labour-orientated Daily Mirror. Can’t think why I took him on this way.]
Later a band of pack donkeys passes below lodge window which overlooks square dalle roof and stone street. Ponies have cockades and strips of carpet to protect flanks from harness. They all wear bells of many different tones and pitches, and the combined sound makes a wonderful river of sound flowing ––––––.
Mahendra lodge. ‘Peanut tea’. Saw sunset from rise. Slept in loft. Sewed up Carol’s pouch on stoop. Carol took pack on to Kare, Lamle, Chandrakot, then down steeply to Birethanti.
Long suspension bridge. Checkpoint. Lorries. Because Ghorepani tomorrow is high and distant we go on to Tirkedange – a tiring last haul up about 1500 ft. Map is wrong here, and first village which ought to be Hille is in fact Sudami. At T there are already several people – two Japs and a young Aussie with a very hearty manner.
We sleep on the floor here. Just after we arrive a vigorous young man comes in with a lightish pack on his back – tennis shoes, neatly pressed trousers – an almost theatrically athletic entrance. He almost immediately starts playing with the children, and has a very familiar manner, but because I take him to be a Japanese trekker it’s not until he changes into shorts and a T-shirt and busies himself about the place, I realise he’s the father. He has walked from Pokhara that day, while we are tired after taking two days. [In fact, Pokhara is much closer than Kathmandhu]
Sleep on mats, but the Aussie has spilled Raxi on one, and I breathe it in. [Raxi is a local liquor]
I’ve come up the West coast to the capital where, as usual, I look to Lucas for help and shelter. Here, word for word, is what I put in my notes.
Often, In India, it seems impossible to get away from people, and yet . . . . . . . .!
New Delhi, Monday 27th November
Swiss couple very flattering outside American Express. Give me address in Geneva and invite me there. Lucas friendly (after funny business with wrong number} and I’m installed in a dusty dancehall on 3rd floor. Itch at night and I make another discovery. It’s lack of loving. Self-induced need for caresses and sensual feeling. And I tie it up with my feelings for Carol versus Jo. Painful but fascinating.
My correspondence always leaves melancholy shadow. Pat’s letter needs answering, but how? I start, then give up in disgust. It’s all ego – what I think, and feel, and want, etc. Why should anyone be interested in my researches into myself – or how I want to run my world. How can I deal with this if I’m to continue to value myself.
Tuesday
Morning motorcycle maintenance. No clearance on inlet valves. Too much on one exhaust (right side, and blackening in rocker box.) Points OK. One pint oil used since Bombay (900 miles) Clean air filter, top up gear box and batteries.
Rush to bank. $714 there.
Afternoon meet Gaekwad. Interesting figure. Talks about his plans for cultural centre at Baroda. Slow to thaw, but affable and invites me back. Later visit. Opulent clothing I rich, dark hues. Baby mouth. Talks about politics as a theatre, the need of rapport with audience, understands needs of artists, etc.
Wednesday
To Kanpur. Long, hard ride. Trouble with lorries, and pick up stones again but the one time I was ready to throw one, couldn’t brake in time to get hand free. Fantasise a whole series of events involving encounters with lorry drivers and Law. Also melancholic about Pat’s letter. Feel misunderstood. Last night when I tried writing to her found my letter overloaded with ego and wondered if I am obsessed by my own precious reactions to everything.
Kanpur an unwelcoming town. Very busy and big. The Orient Hotel. English-speaking son of owner. The British always used to be in here. Place as run down as can be, but two splendid billiard tables, splendidly placed at the heart of it. Indian swells playing. One like ‘Roland’ without monocle – he never bends – glides across the floor, shoulders set in check tweed jacket with cardigan below. Other in classic white Indian– long jacket and tight trousers baggy round the crutch, with camel hair jacket over the top and big shawl for going out – lock of hair fixed over forehead and long narrow sideburns – very full of himself – the Prince of Kanpur – lots of whispering and conspiracies, and pairing off for intense conversations – tense scene round the telephone – illegal drinks half-concealed (it was ‘dry day’ in the bar) – cries of “Well” at a good shot. Little bursts of English with the degree of affectation that we once applied to French phrases – a fascinating scene and right in line with my fancies about turn of century Europe being relived in India.
Out for walk to watch (a) a train of buffalo carts creeping silently through the night, to shouts (more like barks) of swathed drivers, and the half-loving thwack of stick on hide. Dormant figures lie in heaps of sacking. Must be returning to villages after selling goods (b) pathetic man in threadbare cotton shivering and praying to a demonic red god lurking the shadow of a tiny stone temple by garage. (c) Rickshaw driver curled in seat, wracked by continuous coughing (d) jobless teacher begging – “you have one recourse – to give me something for food – I haven’t eaten all day. For humanity’s sake” – that last harsh appeal still echoing with my own dismal response, “You’ll have to sort yourselves out.”
The Mall, past Queen’s Park, then canal, then railway crossing. Big advertisement shows couple in swimming things, framed by huge message: STOMACH GAS AND SEX PROBLEMS Consult Dr. etc.
HIND’S Tailoring College, and the tiny door leading up to it.
To Gorakhpur, Thursday November 30th
Over the Ganges, and it’s really got something, this river.
Much later, astonished to see passing me in the opposite direction some men looking harassed and carrying a man in a litter at a slow jogging pace along a long road past sugar cane. The man is dressed in full Western suit, tie, etc. – young.
Bearers have pale blue cotton headdress. Another empty litter follows. They are travelling down a long, tree-lined road, and I’m too rushed (and surprised) to take a picture – which would have meant riding back a way and waiting.
This must have been after Faizabad where I stopped for the breakfast I’d promised myself in Lucknow. Lucknow seemed very grand, huge empire buildings, parks, but somehow I got through to the other side without seeing a place.
Faizabad much tighter, more crowded, bazaar town with old arches. Stopped in square and had eggs. Young Sikh comes to introduce himself, talks about the importance of his family in the town. Father came from Punjab at partition time. First made living as a photographer, then became cinema owner. Have two cinemas and was planning a third big one, but borrowed too heavily and was forced to sell his interest in order to repay. Now is trying again. Son took me to his house up a side street, gave me tea and sweets made for a recent wedding ceremony. Wanted to interest me in old coins. Says he has to sell them because Govt might find them and accuse him of hoarding. “Black wealth”. Exaggerated, I thought.
In Gorakhpur stayed in probably the best hotel in town. Had good meal, although the first seat I sat in collapsed under me, and I fell over backwards. First a drug salesman introduced himself, recommended A & D vitamins. Then the cable company engineer came over, thinking I was his age. Astonished by my real age. [He was 28. I was 45.]
We talked about reasons for growing old. Constant concern with money, he thought. Trying to keep the same level of living. We walk to the chemist’s shop. Boy brings out a tin of vitamins, half full. Expiry date 1975. [It is now 1976] Brings out another tin. 1978. 4 paise a pill. As we walk away talking about difficulty of finding people to take management decisions, it occurs to me that the boy is probably taking his own decision now – to transfer pills from one box to another. The man invites me to stay at his home in Delhi.
In Gorakhpur I discover there is a direct route to Nepal. Not marked at all on my map. Goes to Natawawa – Sonauli, very close. Beautiful weather, hot sun, cool air. On way see two more litters, both completely covered by crimson canopies. Bearers in same pale blue headcloth.
Border in morning. Then first problem. Have no visa. Why? All my visa info is from my journey’s outset, but of course had no plan to visit Nepal. However, can get visa at police post in Barawa, 4 kilometers away. And pay sixty-odd rupees. Which means changing dollars at bank.
First stage in story of frustration.
More to come. See you next week.
Friday
More lorries, front wheels collapsed, nose-dived into ditches and culverts.
Tribals with three camels, each with upturned bed on top of their belongings. Women leading them had each breast separately wrapped in pink muslin slung over top of sari at midriff. Cows with horns [pointing] in every direction, like the printed characters in Hindi writing. In Ahmedabad a sudden outbreak of handcarts – everything gets pulled or pushed by people instead of animals. Two women heaving one towards me, wore the same-coloured clothing of reds and yellows, and both had their heads and faces completely wrapped in saffron muslin. These wildly energetic but faceless creatures make a very strange impression. And the tribal women really are energetic – they fling every part of their bodies into what they’re doing.
Two enormous elephants coming towards Baroda – the rider is level with those on top of a truck’s cab. Biggest I’ve ever seen. After Ahmedabad leave Gujarat for Rajasthan. Clothing styles change immediately. No longer a single sari but a voluminous skirt, and a cloak which billows out behind and is caught up at the bottom. Usually bright, plain colours, mustard yellow, blue, burgundy, etc. The state line comes just before a range of desolate, stony hills, and road winds amongst them. Here for the first time boys make threatening gestures (memory of Ethiopia). Mountain people, life here looks barren. Herds of goats, sheep and some camels. First camel carts take me by surprise – brown, wooly animals.
Also I begin to see dead dogs by the roadside for the first time in India. Bunches of cactus live roadside – narrow green fingers. Many fortresses on hilltops – the roughest, least valuable land is always most protected. Havens for the proud, rebellious, and I suppose least ingenious and adaptable. Stone walls run like seams up the mountain sides.
20 kilometers from Udaipur on impulse decide to try a bungalow. Man in jacket and dhoti, with gold earrings like old sailor, attends me. No food. I walk 100 yards to village. One row of small shops. Brahmin sits cross-legged behind ––––– tins of grains, –––––, potatoes, with scales. No eggs, no vegetables.
“This is very small village, near big city. Eggs are not available.”
Cigarettes. Packet of biscuits. Get out stove and boil some rice. Mix with soya. Not very successful. Herb tea. Then another walk in dark. Group of men conversing. Children chattering. Further along some figures squatting close together in road, shrouded in robes, almost invisible. When trucks pass get up and move. Then return. Radios playing in various houses. Batteries waning. No electricity.
Agonising night, skin pricking all over my body. Again and again I get up. Is it insects, or me? See nothing, hear nothing. A kind of hell, and I’m fearful of it continuing.
Have a strange dream in which I’m reconciled with Connor Walsh. [My business partner in a magazine which I edited in 1967 who eventually accused me, unjustly, of undermining his authority and made my job impossible.] In the morning have a vague sense of these residual bitternesses being connected to this skin condition.
However, I feel OK. Eat a couple of biscuits and continue to Udaipur.
Saturday
The picture summed up the extremes of India: The mother with two infants preparing food in a filthy street under one sign promising “modern amenities,” and another all the delights of Bollywood, and all outside the walls of the city, Udaipur.
Udaipur has an extensive city wall with parapet and bastions. Take one picture.
The fortress above Udaipur.
Mountains are slowly sinking into a flat sea of soil, and only peaks protrude now, with more workable land between. Corn, pulses, and other vegetables.
The Rajasthan man is very distinguishable, smooth brown warrior faces with down-curving moustaches (as in Mughal paintings) Richly coloured head-dresses, tightly wrapped trousers, woolen jackets and sweaters, sandals tip-tilted. All carrying short sticks.
Land flattens further towards Ajmer.
Camels everywhere. Wonderful to watch. Great padded feet swinging over the road. Heads swaying – how do they support their heads? The design seems structurally unsound. And the shafts and harness shooting up at a giddy angle to bed down on the hump – one expects the carts to become airborne. Who told me camels can tow four time the weight of an ox? What attracts me so much to camel country? That’s where I feel a special excitement – not the tropics. I love the hot sun striking through cool air.
Temperate climates give peace – tropics torpor or discomfort and a sense of being permanently immersed. Which of my ancestors lived in the Middle East?
Ajmer. Open town. Tourist bungalow. Pleasant meeting with Germans, Brazilian, Australian, Chilena, Heather Matthews and the two Swiss jewelry collectors. Mike, black clothes and beard, happiest running down Nepal or Ceylon. She, self-conscious about the tirades. The other two girls revived all my pleasure of South America – listening to Spanish and Portuguese, talking about Chile – and “Hio.” And later about Australia. Dinner at Honeydew. And a too quick beer at back of Wine Shop {Why Wine?) Take a “tonga” ride. Go to bed in trepidation – fear of the itch – but it’s not too bad this time.
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Men in suits should be purposefully employed. When they hang about vaguely they leave a sinister impression, as of Mafia. This accounts for my uneasiness when several suited Indians hung about at the Lucas backyard in Delhi. Yet they were only Indians doing their nothing – in suits.
Sunday
Morning conversation outside the camper van. Exchange addresses with Brasilleira. Off to Jaipur. Swiss promise me a good road, and it’s medium. Now, however, the houses show signs of Government patronage. Water pumps, clinics and stuff. Fields bordered by tall rushes. Camels ploughing. Three men on elephant. Make a real effort to photograph people. Jaipur at midday. Find the Rajdhane hotel. Cubicle room for 12 rupees, but hotel is sweet, prettily kept outside, with a merry staff.
Jaipur Palace
After a nap, walk three hours to the stunning terra cotta centre of this “rose city.” 17th century town planning. Is this the most impressive main street I’ve seen? Wonderful palace façade. Cheeky people. Public urinals yet! Dine at Nero’s, at same table as Nigerian ‘clinical psychologist’ and colleagues. Back to Hindi, and bed.
Monday
Morning ride to Delhi, and this time the road is really good (except where it runs into a small mountain). Make astonishing discovery that speedometer doesn’t work over 40mph. 42 = 45, 45 = 50. No wonder I was hammering out of Bombay. Bad news for new pistons. Was I lucky?
Stopped halfway for biscuit and cigarette, sitting on a stone looking out over fields, sun very hot on my back. Two lads stop and chatter round the bike. I avoid them, but they can’t resist seeking me out.
“Where you dwell?” asks one.
“England” I say, and “Where do you dwell?”
“Diarrhoea” he says, or something similar.
“Have you come to look at me?” I ask, smiling faintly. To my surprise he is embarrassed and turns quickly away. First time in India I find a respect for privacy, and I’m almost sad to let him go.
PS: To Bill Shanklin, wherever you may be, thank you for your surprise gift. I did as you suggested and bought a wonderful bottle of St Emilion Grand Cru. We savoured it almost down to the dregs. Merci beaucoup.
In case you haven’t been following me during the last year or two, I am reproducing, word for word, what I wrote in my notebooks on the journey that led to my books, Jupiter’s Travels and Riding High.
I arrived in India at Madras (now called Chennai) earlier in 1976 and have been travelling round the south of India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). It’s November now, and I’m coming up the coast towards Poona (now Pune). When I was young it was still possible to hear old Empire hands launch into conversation with: “When I was in Poona . . .“
But before we get to Poona I have some rather nice pictures I wanted to show you earlier, when I got back to the coast at Karwar. It was a fishing village, and the boats were not only beautiful, but it seemed to me that they wouldn’t have looked any different 200 years earlier.
And this one
And then there was this excellent goat in Goa
[I was beginning to make notes of how the clothing had changed as I went along.]
Tamil Nadu, buff cotton round head, loosely, shirts and dhotis.
Hill stations, trousers, cloth wrapped round head over ears, usually woolen scarf.
Maharashtra, topi, jacket and trousers.
Women, same saris, but tied for working in North Karnataka and Maharashtra so that their legs show from thigh down. South more prudish.
Also in Maharashtra some groups wear turbans of purple, orange, etc.
Riding south in Tamil Nadu, narrow tar roads, patches on patches on patches, like sealed corrugations. Few cars, but lorries an buses, all spew out diesel smoke, never look in mirror. Road generally raised above surrounding paddy where ox teams are churning up the mud after last harvest. – men in loin cloth only, seeming very primitive and close to the gleaming wet soil. Women in lines of thirty or more, advancing, bent double, across fields planting paddy – saris brilliant. Oxen often have enameled horns of marvelous shapes, sometimes tipped with brass. Heads high, yoke resting between neck and hump, each one in line with a wheel. Men walk alongside ploughing teams on road carrying their ploughs, indicating that the labour of carrying is not a conscious problem.
[So now, back on the road from Kolhapur to Poona]
A fascinating challenge adjusting to speed differences between animal, pedestrian, cyclist and motor traffic. Maximum safe speed 30 mph. Occasional vigorous outbursts of swearing at buses and trucks cutting in as I overtake – or overtaking each other at my expense. Too hot for jacket. Bike boils in villages, particularly when I get lost in some bazaar street. For the first time horn is essential. Are pedestrians dreaming or deliberately contemptuous. Gopi, later, says that after the war, about the time of Independence, the people resented traffic as a symbol of the rich, and their leaders encouraged them to claim the roads for themselves and their animals.
What do ox carts carry? Baskets, coconuts, wood, grain and straw.
Poona
[Went to visit Lucas, my sponsor. Now called LucasTVS, a joint Indian company, which still exists today. They suggested I visit Perfect Motors.]
Perfect Motors. Mr. Ekbote. Perfectly air-conditioned office, approached by ratty staircase. Mr. E gives me spirited pep talk about India’s progress.
[I asked him if he had visited England.]
His contretemps with Her Majesty’s Immigration.
“Do you intend to stay in UK?”
Mr. E: “What a stupid question. Do you think I’d tell you if I did?”
“You are insulting the Queen’s uniform.”
“I don’t care what uniform you’re wearing. If you ask a stupid question … etc., etc.”
In Germany he tells his friends about Indian technology. They are frankly disbelieving. He points to their fan (Do they have fans in Germany?) and says, “It’s made in India.” Unscrews cover to prove it. Lots of other gadgets too. Mentions that India is probably doing a deal with Dassault for the Mirage, although still supposed to be on Mig 22. Says he knows because specifications of various sub-contracted parts have changed. Sends me to see Bharat Forge Co. and Bajaj Scooters.
Says India has one year’s stock of grain (admits storage facilities inadequate but now being built.)
[I hear stories of mountains of grain under plastic being consumed by rats.]
India has trading surplus. Is repaying the capital on World Bank loans. Big business is selling consultancy abroad. Technology in telecommunication is high, etc.
Go to Poona Club. In evening go for a ride along Laxmi Street. Amazing congestion. At last find my way round a circuit and back. Buy map. Carburetor playing up. Float valve is obviously sticking on low throttle. Had to clean it out again at TVS.
In Bharat Club meet two metallurgists who make sintered metal components. Were in Lichfield. One is manic, the other silent. Invited to dinner following day by two lots. One half Portuguese, the others, Sikhs. Neither ever turned up. Went to M&S house to have dinner. M puts on a sort of show of sophisticated living. Boasts of his pal in Bombay with flat behind the Taj. Promises to introduce me. Never see him again. (BO!?)
Friday 12th
Morning of batteries. After lunch to forging company. Seminal experience, like the Jain school. [Another vast dark space full of smoke lit by fire.] Staggering sights of men in long black fireproof gowns and goggles working at huge steam hammers three times their height. The hammer lunges down constantly, and withdraws, like cobra swaying, waiting to strike. Manhandle lumps of red metal with long tongs, twisting it across the die from one hole to another and Wham! Wham! Wham! The hammer strikes, almost seeming to do so of its own volition – as though in some sort of complicity, but dangerous, uncertain, like wild beast barely trained, elephant, killer whale.
I feel all the old excitement of men releasing great energy and mastering it that must have excited the minds of the early industrial revolution.
But how much of this is my projection? How much is really there? What do the faces show? Grim. Impassive, but not bored. Not even specially fatigued, and they’re on top of it.
[I remember talking to one of them. Very proud of his job, seven days a week. Pretty sure he told me they got one day off a year.]
Saturday 13th to Sunday 14th
Lazy days watching cricket, reading, writing a bit.
Monday 15th
Early away to get a look at Bajaj Scooters before going to Bombay. At factory was kept waiting an hour before a substitute for Mr. Jain could be found to take me round the works. “Mr. Jain is not in his cabin.”
[Bajaj, made the best auto-rickshaws in India as well as scooters. It is still thriving today.]
Met the export manager instead. He was an impressive fellow. Revealed that production for domestic market was rigidly limited by Government. Bajaj has “nine-year order backlog,” though other firms make scooters and can’t sell them. Govt insist that no-one shall become too big and wipe out employment by economies of scale. Bajaj makes 320 per day (including three-wheelers) can rise to 400.
En route [to Bombay] procession, in pairs, with saffron flags and cymbals, women carrying food, apparently going a long way.
Later a family coming back, with lacquered chests on heads.
Road not bad until Thana, where Bombay island begins. Barges unloading sand from dredgers, a huge activity, mountains of sand all moved by the basketful on a woman’s head. (She’ll put it on her head just to go five paces). Anyone who wonders how the pyramids & temples were built need only go to Thana now.
Awful lorry-infested crossings, the expressway to Bombay. One ghastly estate of rehoused slums along roadside.
