You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir!

by Danny Bent

  The Indian soldiers were the same size as their Pakistani counterparts and, right in front of me, the two armies paraded on their respective sides of the border, marching in unison. Then all the soldiers stopped. There was silence. One soldier emerged from each group. They had obviously been watching too much Monty Python - The Ministry of Silly Walks sketch in particular. They marched towards each other and, every fifth step, they kicked a foot up towards their heads to see who could kick the highest. Crowds of civilians and tourists on each side of the border come to watch this ceremony on a daily basis and cheer if one of their soldiers seems to have won out on the foot kicking.

  Another soldier came forward and they stopped side-by-side at the border crossing. Looking towards their different gods, they started making a call – a single note – almost like an ‘aaah’ at the dentist. This went on and on as apprehension built in the audience. The competition seemed to be about who could make a single note last the longest without breathing. The Pakistani soldier outdid the Indian one, and the crowd around me went wild.

  And the next event in the school sports day challenge was to find out who could run up their flag the quickest.

  This routine happens every day. Stern faces seem to mask a friendly rivalry. It reminded me of the cycle rides I do with Steve. But underpinning all this frivolity, was a deeper undercurrent. To the north especially, people were being killed in gun fights and both sides were blaming the other for the explosions in cities. It was a nasty situation.

  When we thought no-one was looking, we posed for pictures, kicking our legs as high as we could. Within a space of seconds, a large guard was looming over me. Bowing my head, I shook his hand and made for the sanctuary of the buildings.

  Leaving the dry desert landscape of Pakistan with its grey buildings and the men wrapped in grey or brown shawls, I walked through the border post separating the two countries. The Pakistani guard stamped my passport in a distracted manner without even looking at my visa.

  As I popped my head out the other side, I was greeted by green lush foliage, birds flying and sounds of animals. I wanted to go back and see if the grey Pakistani side had changed too. One thing remained the same however – the friendliness of the people.

  Five kilometres from the border, we were dragged off the road and through two gates decorated with flowers in colours I hadn’t seen for some time. A big hotel had been decorated to the nines, and the guests were sitting at red plastic picnic tables. We were required to sit down and talk to the guests.

  Dressed in my finest-looking, nastiest-smelling Lycra, I had been invited to participate in a Sikh wedding celebration. The colours of the men’s turbans intoxicated me, or was it the whisky they plied me with? I’d never seen men gallivanting in such bright colours before. It felt wonderful. Nisa, dressed in her traditional Pakistani attire, was dragged over to the women’s section whilst Aron, still queasy from his tummy bug, had to keep rejecting the whiskies which were then passed onto me.

  The music started and we were surrounded by dancers pulsing and wiggling their bums and hips whilst gracefully snaking their hands through the air. The dance floor was crammed with men whilst the ladies looked on. It was as if the men were performing like the peacocks in the natural world. Bright colours and exuberant dancing.

  It was amazing to think that in some Indian's wedding pictures there would be a guy with flowers all over his bike, wearing the tightest, shortest shorts ever. Surely they would wake up the next day with a nasty whisky hangover and look back and wonder who the hell he was.

  Back on the bikes, we wobbled another fifty kilometres towards Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple. The traffic in town was horrendous. Aaron and I were buffeted from pillar to post whilst Nisa led the way. At only five foot and riding a worn out bicycle, she was in complete control. She even managed to hustle a bus off the road and onto the pavement. She was so strong and confident, I couldn’t believe it.

  Finding somewhere to leave our bikes, we made for the Golden Temple. We stopped off to have our feet washed in the gushing streams that ran between the street and the temple, and were told to cover our heads. Luckily Nisa had a scarf round her shoulders and was able to put it on my head. Aaron had a woolly hat. I tried to copy the way the locals did it, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job creating a turban around my head. A soldier guarding the temple stopped me and pointed out that the top of my head was still visible, kindly correcting my headdress for me so that I felt quite regal in my first ever turban as we strode over to the lake surrounding the Sikh temple.

  Thousands of people are welcomed here every day. Your faith doesn’t matter, you’re wealth is irrelevant, your skin colour is beside the point. You are fed and watered - everything being prepared and served by volunteers - allowed to wash in the holy water (that others then choose to drink!), and invited to sleep there. This was my kind of religion. I lay down with a hand resting on Shirley’s wheel and slept amongst the throbbing thongs of people who had all been re-invigorated by feasting and washing in the holy waters.

  Just north of Amritsar is Dharamsala where the Tibetan government lives out its exile, home of the Dalai Lama who once ruled over Tibet before he was forced to flee by the Chinese military. I hadn't been allowed into Tibet, so here was an opportunity to do a quick detour and experience something of what I had missed.

  However, it required some very strenuous cycling into the foothills of the Himalayas. As I neared the town, monks appeared, dressed up and walking in procession up and down the hills. They held out their hands to give me high fives as I went by. Without this encouragement I don’t think I would have made it up the tortuous ascents.

  After the smog, the tension and the hardships of Pakistan, I dedicated myself to purification. I took a yoga class every day, cycled around the breathtaking mountainous countryside, ate momos, the food of the gods, and caught sight of the Dalai Lama who is ever-present in his adoptive new home.

  Snow topped mountains surround this bustling village and through the centre of it the monks flow like a river in their blood red gowns. It would not be the first river of blood some of these monks will have seen – slaughter, torture and assault occurred daily in Tibet once, and still do to an extent. Refugees arrive every day, having crossed the Himalayas by foot in gown and sandals. All have harrowing tales to tell.

  Running up to me, a monk said he’d dreamt about me - a man in yellow on a bike - the previous night. In the dream, the Dalai Lama had told him to find me and look after me. He invited me to dinner and told me of his days of torture at the hands of the Chinese. He also gave me a bag full of gifts, including a signed picture of the Dalai Lama (a Tibetan's most prized possession). I couldn’t refuse. I still have no idea what on earth happened during those few hours, but my life is richer somehow for the experience.

  A group of Tibetans set up a school in town for refugee adults to learn English. Many of these people had seen nothing beyond their native villages in Tibet. Now ousted from their homes, they needed a new way to communicate with the locals. I felt it was my duty to get involved.

  I arrived early as the staff were cooking for their teachers and pupils. They were making the customary momos, made with simple flour-and-water dough and filled with meat or vegetables, steamed or fried. A Swedish girl with long flowing plaited pigtails and blonde hair looked up at me and asked if I was a Viking with my red beard and blue eyes. She taught me some Vikingesque Swedish. My sword is better than your sword. I like your helmet – where did you get it from? Let me drink your blood. Knowing what would be on the menu, I’d bought some chocolate and we persuaded the cooks to make some chocolate momos. After dinner I spoke with a monk who had almost no grasp of English. Other Westerners were also conversing with Tibetan adults in line with their differing degrees of knowledge of English. The pupils were so grateful, it was almost embarrassing. It was fantastic to be able to help these people.

  Later, one of the other teachers pulled out a bandolin - a cross between a banjo and m
andolin. Rushing back to my dwellings, I collected my ukulele. A massive mini instrument jam session ensued. Towards the end of the night, people were pulling out their opium pipes and rolling dubious cigarettes – I hope they weren’t trying to numb themselves to the music around them.

  Feeling and looking fresher, I slept, ate, practised yoga, and sang and played with our new band - single to be released later this year should we get a deal, write a song and learn to play more than four chords.

  We attended a protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet, but I felt self-conscious walking with Tibetans and Westerners alike arm-in-arm screaming hatred towards the Chinese. Although we British didn’t necessarily try to destroy ancient cultures, or commit torture, or practise mass genocide, we have occupied a large portion of the world until fairly recently and still will not allow the Falkland Islands to return to Argentine rule. It felt hypocritical.

  * * *

  After Dharamsala I saw a totally different side to India. Reaching the cities I passed through the slums where people were living in huts erected using sticks and polythene bags, and where to survive they had to sift through rubbish to find food, or collect enough plastic to sell to buy food. On the streets, they slept in rags, strewn left and right. As I passed south it got warmer but it was still very cold at night. These people took hours to stop shaking the following morning. Some didn’t wake at all and lay in the streets for days until the smell got too much and someone cleared them away where they wouldn’t bother passers-by.

  In our hotel room, the price included a rat which clambered up the curtains and jumped from point to point. Then there were the bed bugs biting and savaging our bodies. We also had lizards which we welcomed to keep the mossies at bay, and mould of the scariest nature, its tentacles slithering down the walls like long fingers waiting to grab us and drag us to our doom.

  When we entered cities the smog was unbelievable. Breathing was like sucking on an exhaust pipe - maybe worse. We could see about five metres and make out shapes only up to fifty metres away. It reminded me of scuba diving at thirty metres under, but without the hammerhead sharks. Instead we had cars whose lights acted like lasers in a disco and which cut through the smog like light sabres. The setting sun was snatched into the mist like a fish catching surface flies. I had anticipated that some cities might be smoggy and had brought a fume mask normally worn by builders in the UK. The filter turned black immediately. We wore scarves round our faces at night and even tried poking cigarette filters up our noses to clean the air.

  One night I couldn’t sleep. The bugs were bigger than ever. Everything is big here (the cows are frighteningly large, like dinosaurs. No joke. They are huge). They kept jumping on my face (the bugs not the cows), landing in my eye sockets, my beard and my hair. I was constantly grabbing them and crushing them between my fingers with tremendous force, making sure they didn’t bother me again.

  Sander had met us that day in a café. He was very sick again, having passed through Pakistan. Aaron was slowly getting better but remained very tired. I didn’t want to switch on the light and wake them just because of a few bugs.

  I put my roll matt down on my mattress to stop the bugs getting at me, but it made no difference - they just kept coming. However, the noise from outside was a distraction - the deafening sound of the TV set.

  I did manage to get a few hours' sleep in the end and I woke in the morning with a bladder full to bursting. Dashing to the toilet, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I passed. That wasn’t right! I came back to the mirror and stopped. Suddenly my bladder was the least of my concerns. I had maggots in my beard and hair and on my face. I ran back to my bed. They were all over my pillow and the bed was covered with them. A constant stream of them was dropping from the rotting wooden beam above my bed. They hadn’t been jumping, they’d been falling. Even after some serious grooming, the itching in my hair wouldn’t go away. By the end of the following day it became too much. Taking my pen knife I cut my golden locks off, leaving me with a fairly short shaggy mane.

  But at least I knew there weren’t maggots crawling in it.

  Chapter 35

  Sander, Nisa, Aron and I continued on our way across the Indian landscape. We were tired, and with tiredness came irritation. Whereas the attention of an entire village was fun at the outset, being watched by people standing perfectly still without saying a word - so many people that there was no way we could navigate our bikes through the hordes - soon became wearing.

  It wasn’t the staring, it was the lack of communication that drove us nuts. It drove Sander to genuine insanity and made Nisa feel very awkward. It was as if they wanted us to entertain them. I was sure we were entertaining them by being ourselves, but I needed to take it to a whole new level to alleviate the stress.

  I became the ring master. My sole purpose was to entertain. Doing a little jig, I’d whisk Nisa off her feet with some ballroom dancing, sing a song, juggle available fruit, and then take Sander's cap and put a few rupees in it before asking them for money. Their reactions were hilarious. Some fled, some crossed their arms to protect themselves, but the majority just kept watching, which pushed us to try a succession of gambits to clear ourselves some space.

  Swine 'flu was sweeping through Europe and we’d seen it on every news channel in India, so we’d burst into coughs and sneezes while wiping our noses and apologising for bringing the 'flu into their country. It worked a treat. At a local market we made up T-shirts carrying the legend 'Danger - Swine 'Flu Infected' written in both English and Hindi.

  At other times I would keep my fume mask on and bark like a dog, scaring the people half to death, then pretend to be a policeman, with whistle and hand gestures, attempting to control both the people and the traffic.

  It all seems a little mean looking back on it, but it got us through with sanity intact.

  Sander took to explaining that we were Albanian brothers from the circus - sword swallowers and knife throwers (“I only sometimes make mistakes”) - or we were escaped criminals, bank robbers and murderers.

  The English speaker in the crowd would always command respect and would usually translate Sander word for word. He also, for some reason, never failed to remind people that “if the monkeys start falling out of the trees, it’s too hot.”

  We would then jump back on our bikes, cycling off in fits of giggles like school children.

  Then a pervert on a motorbike came up alongside us, blowing kisses at Nisa and making rude gestures. It was about all Sander could handle, and he hurled himself and his bike at him, chasing him down the street.

  We stopped in Ambala and searched for a place to stay. The town was one big rubbish tip. Sander tripped on a dead swollen rat in the road. Cows in India are supposed to have developed the capacity for digesting paper. Lining the streets, they ate the rubbish or ran from the rabid dogs that chased them. The smog and lack of sunlight was making our eyes red and skin pale, giving us the appearance of tragic vampire brides.

  At every juice stall we carefully watched to make sure our juice wasn’t diluted with water, although we were often not fast enough to stop them putting salt in it. It’s perfectly normal here to put a few spoons of salt into your juice but, to our Western tastes, it was a foul habit.

  We managed to grab two cheap rooms that were so small we had to sleep around our luggage, separated from one another by a makeshift wall. After wandering the town and finding the restaurant with the smallest number of flies in its pots, we lay on our beds chatting. Sander and I could converse with Nisa and Aron as easily as if there was nothing between the two rooms. For the most part there wasn’t; just a board from eye level to the ground.

  India seems to have the hugest number of beggars who are victims of severe disabilities or injuries. Blind, crippled and diseased, they tore our hearts from our chests. If we gave money to them, it would be taken by their pimp and, even if it wasn’t, there were too many of them to have an impact – you’d need millions to fund them all.


  We had to cycle round a guy lying in the road, looking like a child pretending to be a dead cockroach - lying on his back with his arms and legs rigid above his torso - the only difference being that this man was actually dead and left to lie in the street with no consideration at all - another victim of the Indian roads. This highlighted to us how dangerous cycling through India was. People don’t stop, even when they hit people, as the villagers have been known to come out and savage the car and its occupants if the victim is one of their own.

  After coming across this dead body, Nisa and Aron packed their bikes on a bus and made for Nepal, and Sander flew on to Thailand. I had to continue on my planned route as I was doing it for the children. It was the only way I could persuade myself to put my life at risk any further, subjecting myself by the hour to thundering trucks, weaving cars, tuk tuks travelling in the wrong direction; potholes, and raised road surfaces.

  * * *

  There are hundreds of cycles in India, the majority being the three-wheeled rickshaw type, hence there are lots of bikes shops. They are not quite Bicycle Richmond standard, but they do the job. Shirley was as tired as I was. She regularly needed light repairs done to her. But still she was strong and her frame still excited me.

  In Meerut I took a ride with a rickshaw driver but it was too painful watching him struggle with my weight. Making him stop, I pushed him into the seat at the back, to his bewilderment, and seized control of his vehicle. The rotation of the pedals was more eliptical like a rugby ball than circular like a soccer ball. The bike was in the worst condition. Chaos ensued as people fought to watch the idiot white guy with a really bad haircut cycling a local bike with an Indian in the passenger seat. Cars hooted their horns and trucks wavered off the road as their drivers looked over their shoulders – so business as usual on the streets of India.