How They Destroyed the Taj Mahal

"You know Shah Jahan, life and youth, wealth and glory, they all drift away in the flow of time. You strove therefore, to perpetuate only the sorrow of your heart... Let the splendour of diamond, pearl and ruby vanish... Only let this one teardrop, this Taj Mahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time, forever and ever."

Rabindranath Tagore

In order to fully enjoy this phase of the trip, I've completely relinquished all shutterbuggery, leaving it in the able hands of Vincent and the rest.

"You have not seen India until you've seen the Taj Mahal," is the catchphrase which had been repeated to me ad nauseam and I am not certain which bugged me more; the pithy, annoying know-it-all tone which is often used to say it, or the fact that it's not true. Every time I tell anyone planning a North Indian backpacking trip that if their schedules are packed too tightly, they can give Agra (where the Taj's at) a miss, they'll shoot me this incredulous "you nuts?" look and then proceed to reiterate that dumb line like it's some brainwashing cult mantra. Look, I've actually been there and honestly, the Taj seriously didn't do it for me.

Traveling to Agra can be a real time eating detour at the best of time, and at the worst, a maddening experience. First, you have to make your way to the smog-filled capital of Delhi, where every breath you take makes you feel like you're getting cancer. Proceed from there to look for a mean of getting to Agra, which is easy considering the number of tour agencies scattered all over the city like flea powder over a flea-bitten bitch. Finding a deal which is actually reasonable is a much more epic labour, so be prepared to bargain the the trunk off Ganesha's face. After that, the heartache begins.

Going to Agra using the highway on either a bus or a hired minivan can take between 4 to 6 hours one-way, depending on traffic conditions and how big a bastard the guy running the tour agency you booked is. A particularly sleazy one would have your driver spend more time trying to shepherd you to souvenir emporiums and mindbogglingly expensive eateries, than actually bringing you - and allowing you sufficient time - to see the sights. Well, maybe taking the train there could have been a much more pleasant experience but I wouldn't know anything about that.

More on that later, but first,

Josephine stuck in a very scary zombie apocalypse nightmare.

I just thought that you ought to have a realistic idea of how Agra looks like when you stop pointing your camera at the Taj and turn around to see what's behind you. There's a palpable sensation permeating the streets that seems to be trying to tell you that the city of Agra is grievously diseased and leprous, and the air here, if it's even possible, is worse than Delhi's. As far as vacations spots go, it doesn't get more depressing than Agra.

But that's not the scariest part about the place. The scariest part is, everyone there has the ability to make you feel less than human. Everywhere you go, you have the distinct impression that you look nothing more to them than some stupid, fat cash cow with painfully swollen udders waiting to be milked for all you're worth. From the minute we got off our minivan, we were immediately beset by several pesky knickknack peddlers trying to sell us some really tacky looking mini-snow-globe Taj Mahal keychains exorbitantly priced almost ten times more than they're actually worth and they simply wouldn't take no for an answer. These peddlers then followed and badgered us all-the-fucking-way to the Taj's entrance, that's a whole kilometre's walk. Don't even bother gracing them with a reply. Just ignore them. Zen out and put a faraway smile on your face. Pretend to be engrossed in the sights and sounds (and smells) of Agra. That won't help the least bit in getting them to bugger off but at least, you're calm and somewhat serene by the time you get to see the Taj, which is kind of important. The moment you open your mouth, you're fighting a losing battle against escalating frustration and futility. By the time we actually reached the Taj's entrance, the number of knickknack peddlers following us had tripled. At one point, there were two of them to each of us. What made it even more dismal than it already was, was that all of them were children of the school-going age variety, and you know that they aren't getting much of an education tailing tourists about the place. That's what the sleazy merchants sicking these kids on you wanted you to feel; pity. And you know you aren't having much of a holiday pitying people all the time.

Even if you're really into crappy souvenirs that fall apart five minutes after you've paid for it, don't trouble yourself bargaining because the peddlers themselves will knock down their own prices as they buzz around you like flies. 100 rupees! 70 rupees! Okay boss, I give you 50 rupees! Very good price! Best price! Okay, okay, 30 rupees! Last price 10 rupees, boss! 10 rupees! 10 rupees! 10 rupees for two!

Just shut up, walk on and wait for the price to plateau. All of them goes through the same routine no matter what they are selling.

The red sandstone gateway to the Taj Mahal.

We hoped to make our way to the Taj early, hoping to catch that magical few hours in the morning when the bluish-white marble monument slowly turned yellow as the sun rose, and at the entrance, I got the first cruel slap of commercial tourism in Agra. The entrance fee was Rs 800 rupees per head, which isn't that much of an outrage till you realise that Indian citizens only need to shell out 20 rupees to get in. If you look like one of the locals, all's fine and dandy but when you look like some misplaced Chinese Communist like me, you can't dodge that. 800 rupees is about ten times what you pay elsewhere in India to get into any historical landmark, tomb or palace. I know it's the Taj Fucking Mahal, okay, but that didn't quite wash away the hurt.

By the time you got to this point, you're still grumbling about the 800 damn rupees.

Everybody busied themselves taking pictures and were generally zoning into their private "I-can't-believe-I'm-here" moments as soon as we got in. When the awe wore off a little, everyone, being the Malaysians we are, began camwhoring with one of the Seven Wonders in the World. It's always either these two invariable camera trick poses (a la propping the Torre pedente di Pisa up from its side); holding the Taj on the palm of your hand or pinching the tip. On hindsight, it's pretty stupid to try to make the Taj seem smaller than it really is because, well, it's the size of the thing that truly gets to you,

Whoakay.

At one point when most-obliging Vincent was trying to get the generic poses down to pat, some friendly looking local guy offered to do it for us. He played the camera like a maestro, getting all the right angles and trick shots perfectly and there we were, thinking how nice he was to help us out while at the same time, wondering uneasily at the back of our minds why such a pro didn't have a camera of his own.

Or at least, we wondered till the moment he returned the camera and asked for a fee.

Congratulations. You just got conned right in front of one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The fact that its only 20 rupees for the local rabble to get into Taj meant that it's very affordable for this unscrupulous breed of tourist milkers to turn a profit. They'd pretend to be tourists themselves, get in and then proceed to play the helpful bystander to anyone looking like they need some help with the camera. You'd think twice about asking anyone in the place to help you take a picture of you and your sweetheart because before you know it, he'd drag you through his entire repertoire of cheesy Taj Mahal photographic clichés and then guilt you out of a few bucks. Whether you pay him or not is not important because by that time, all the Wonder has already been knocked out of the Taj. Being conned, no matter how slightly, can potentially ruin your day. You realise, for the first time, that the entire garden of the Taj Mahal is crawling with these sleaze bags who, like the kids outside, visualise you as one giant walking stack of US dollar bills. And if they can get in, who knows who else got in? Very probably, several pickpockets had already got their eyes trained on you from the time you entered the grounds. You'll find yourself reflexively checking your wallet to see if its still there every five minutes.

For the record, we were gutted for 50 rupees. But we're still at the beginning here.

It's a fucking jungle out there.

I'm one of those persistently cheerful vacationer who tries to shrug off every annoyance that comes my way so I really tried to immerse myself with the experience and all. Inside the mausoleum, there were two sarcophagi. A small one in the centre, and a larger one to its left - the most obvious asymmetrical feature of the entire Taj.

I tapped on the shoulder of a knowledgeable looking guy and asked which of the two belonged to Mumtaz Mahal, the woman who had the Taj built in her loving memory, and to Shah Jahan, the man who loved her enough to build it. That guy obligingly told me (Mumtaz's in the middle). But he didn't stop there. Oh no.

He launched into a full lecture about how the tombs were really located below the false sarcophagi in a plain chamber below because it was forbidden in Islam to adorn one's resting place (though how Shah Jahan figured being buried beneath one of the most achingly beautiful monuments in the world circumvented that is beyond my ken). Then he told me about the lamp hanging overhead. And explained to me how the floral and arabic pietra dura adorning the Taj are really gemstones encrusted into the marble. And he told me about the marble. And about how the Jali screens surrounding the cenotaphs were really cut out from single blocks of marble. And he tested the echo in the dome by shouting and inviting me to try it, though I bet that's not very high on the list of things to do in places where dead people are interred. He just wouldn't quit or let me get away, and he actually physically dragged me around by my arm!

"Shit," I thought to myself. He's going to ask me to pay him and sure enough, he did not disappoint. I paid him 20 rupees, leaving both him and I unhappy about the whole affair. You can't fucking ask where the toilet's at in the Taj Mahal without being charged for it, okay.

Me, coming out of the Taj Mahal in disappointment. It's freaking genius of Pei Min in capturing how my experience at the Taj was. Oh, and I finally got a haircut, by the way.

The reason anyone visits the Taj Mahal is to experience the grandiose melancholy of the Mughal Emperor's and his grief for the lost of his consort, his most trusted adviser, his best friend, and most of all, his Love. Without this powerful sentiment for which the tomb stands, the Taj Mahal is just a glorified block of marble - a very pretty block of marble, I'll give you that, but just a block of marble nonetheless. How then can you truly feel its magic when every single minute you spend there, you're being surrounded by people who defile its very meaning - people trying to earn money off a man's overwhelming sorrow for his wife's death? These people did not fail in breaking the illusion every time and it really brought out the cynic in me. I simply couldn't help but to see the Taj Mahal for what it is in this day and age; a pile of white, cold and hard cash. Whatever the Taj is trying to say to you through the centuries it endured, it's lost in the static of commerce and the mire of sleaze which now surrounds it - smothering it, destroying it.

I'm just sensitive that way. I consider myself a pretty discerning traveler and tourist, and above all else, I treasure the emotions invoked in me when I stand in the midst of history and the ages past and the experience of going to any city on the whole - and on the whole, I can say that Agra and the Taj Mahal is the worst experience I've had on this entire backpacking trip. When I was in the city of Udaipur, I could truly feel the living wonderment of the beauty of its many fairytale palaces and the serenity of its romantic lakes. When I was in Chittor, I could marvel at the indomitable spirit of the Rajput and the hideous strength of the stronghold of Chittorgarh. In Jodhpur, the monstrous Mehrangarh beckoned the child in me to explore its immensity (or maybe it was just the opium) while at Jaisalmer, its golden palace and living fort under siege by irreversible water damage and the efforts made to save it really made me feel that it was genuinely beloved and that its loss would be truly heartfelt. That's what all the other places I've just mentioned had in common; the people living there are proud of their heritage, proud of what they have to show the world. There is no such pride in Agra.

So no - seeing the Taj Mahal does not equate to seeing India. Maybe the postcard version of India, but I can assure you that you that if you've only seen the Taj Mahal, you truly have not seen India at all. I have had an infinitely better time in all the other places I've been to and that's really what's important in a vacation, right? Having a good time? Let us not forget that.

Just so you know the only place left in the city where the purity of the Taj Mahal can truly be appreciated is from the Agra Fort,

The Amar Singh Gate, one of the two entrances into Agra's Red Fort.

In his later years after the construction of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan took ill and his son, Aurangzeb, led a rebellion and publicly executed his brother and the heir apparent. Even after Shah Jahan recovered from his illness, Aurangzeb deemed Shah Jahan unfit to rule and placed him under house arrest,

Where Shah Jahan was imprisoned.

The view from his prison?

This,

So sad.

He was locked in that room till he died 8 years later, and every single day of that 8 years, all he could do was look out sorrowfully out at the magnificent tomb he built of of his Love for - and his loss of - his beloved wife. That is what it really stands for; Loss. As Tagore beautifully put in words lesser men could only gape mutely at; it's one man's teardrop on the cheek of time.

It's sad that the only place a person can really see the Taj Mahal is not in the Taj Mahal itself.

One of the most exasperating things about my trip to Agra is the tour we booked ourselves into. We barely spent more than two hours in the Taj Mahal because our minivan driver kept calling us to make us leave because he was worried that we would miss seeing the other places in Agra, and we were compelled to obey because extending the time would mean that we have to pay extra. It turned out that the only thing he was worrying about was that we won't have enough time to visit all the souvenir emporiums he was collecting commission from. Even the restaurant he took us to for lunch were pricey beyond all reason, and the food was quite honestly bad, or so I've heard. I wouldn't know because I was so pissed that I simply walked out of there to look for eats outside on my own.

Finally, we told the driver that we have had enough of Agra, of its world's pushiest souvenir salesmen and its crappy souvenir shops and insisted that he take us back to Delhi as quickly as he could. He did a "I-don't-speaka-da-inglis-verrah-gud" number on us and took us to the grandmother of all souvenir emporiums located at the side of the highway. He parked the minivan there, turned off the A/C, insisted that he needed to get something to eat and disappeared for a full hour. Having no air-conditioning out in the middle of the parking lot in the sweltering Agra heat, we had no choice but to go in. The stuff for sale there were at least twice that of anywhere else we've seen and the dishes in the cafe there were priced more like jewelry than food. These guys really took the phrase "highway robbery" by its most literal sense and brought it to a whole new level. We simply had nothing to do but stare at cute American girls until the driver decided to reappear - and he had the cheek to ask us why we didn't go in to get something to eat too. Fuck, I don't think his entire week's salary could even buy him a decent half-meal in that thieves' den.

It was many long hours later before we got to Delhi because of the evening rush, and even then, the drama did not end. The driver told us that the amount we're paying the tour agency only covered the rental of the minivan and its fuel, and that we had to pay him for driving us around. By then, I was simply too tired to wave my middle finger in his face but still, we just wouldn't relent this time. We have had enough of relenting for a whole damn day.

Anyway, before I wrap up this crazy long post, here's a miscellany of pictures of my day there before it turned completely to shit,

Amazing India.


Ever wondered what's behind the Taj?


Jumping in the Agra Fort.


Me, sitting on the King's throne in the Diwan-i-Am, the Hall of Public Audience.

Not impressed,
k0k s3n w4i

The Best Train Ride Ever

"Yew Kong say the train ride not nice one. Not worth it."

Vincent

The photographs in this post are all taken by Joon Keat and I because we are just better at it than the girls who actually own the cameras.

Joon Keat on the job.

I looked around today and realised that I'm in the thick of July, barely more than one more month before I embark on my next backpacking expedition (this time with Phoebe!) through the hill stations of the Western Ghats in the South. I also realised that I have yet to even reach the Taj Mahal in my travelogue updates, or rather backdates in this case. It'll seriously suck if I'm still writing about some half year old trip when I've already been on a new one - suck for you that is, because you're the one reading it. I've got a feeling that some of the sights I'll write about might not even exist anymore when I finally get down to them. We are a destructive race, us human types. What bastards we are. Given chance, some sleazy business guy will transform the Taj Mahal garden into a theme park with crappy rides and lousy cotton candy.

It was in Shimla that our backpacking team actually split for real because of an unforeseen conflict of interest and by "unforeseen conflict of interest", what I really mean is "I'm sticking to my own plan because I'm a stubborn dick, that's why". It's really nothing personal. I'm the sort of guy who would not cave in to a popular vote. I have a holiday in my mind which I meant to enjoy, and if I have to break from the main group on my own and then meet up in some other city later, I'd do it. I'm not a very good team player that way and I can be quite a pain to include in anyone's master plan, but the least you can say about me is that I am often interested enough to read quite extensively about the places I'm going to visit because I like to make informed choices and have a realistic idea of what I'm in for. So, if you can sift through most of the cock I talk, you'll usually find something that sounded like cock, but isn't quite entirely cock after all.

First class. A whole car for the four of us. We like our luxuries.

Anyway, the Kalka-Shimla railway takes a longer time to get to Delhi, our next stop, than say a bus, which the team opted for. Also, because the number of trains still servicing this old, old narrow-gauge line (it's more than a hundred years old!) are few, and the fact that I would like to take the ride in daylight so I can actually look outside my carriage's window and not just see black, my choices in departure time are pretty narrow. I had to wake up really early that day in Shimla to the railway office to get our tickets. It was pure luck that I managed to score not just seats for us, but a whole first class cabin as well (it was surprisingly pretty cheap per head by the way). The catch was that we had to leave immediately after breakfast, missing out on some of the other things I would have liked to see in Shimla but the way I figured, given the pittance of time we alloted for each town or city we stopped at, I had to be a pretty discerning and shrewd traveler. I don't know about discerning but I can certainly do shrewd very well.

Joon Keat, Josephine and Dhivya were the only three out of the other ten who decided that I'm the sort of guy who make kickass calls on a regular basis, and chose to let me lead them fearlessly into the wild,

So to speak,

Just wow.

Okay, here's the obligatory educational and boring bit which I insist on writing in ever travelogue but for you pleasure, I have condensed it into just one sentence;

The Kalka-Shimla (or in this case, Shimla-Kalka) Railway travels through a panoramic gallery of some of the most awesome sceneries on this side of the Himalayas and unlike the much more popular and very, very, very, very, very overrated Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (which I've also been on, by the way so you know that I know what I'm talking about), the Kalka-Shimla tracks does not run beside any roads or highways at all, charting a course right through the lovely hills with just the raw wilderness on both sides of the train throughout the journey.

See? That wasn't so hard to read through, right?

And it gets better.

You know those awesome sets that obsessive model train hobbyists always try to build? They all have something like the Kalka-Shimla countryside in their minds; beautiful trees, rolling hills and valleys, a smattering of terraced farmlands here, and a spot of über quaint railway town there - y'know how the recipe goes.

I have this really, really annoying habit of gloating whenever I'm right about something and the reason I gloat at all is because I actually aim to annoy. I do it consciously and purposefully, and It's like I always say, you don't get many chances in life to gloat, so grab a glass, break the keg and let it spilleth forth.

Vincent, got regret or not? Here, have a big frosty mug of Root Beer Gloat - and another picture to go with that,

Ho boy.

The picture above was pretty hard to snap but luckily, the croplands were located in a natural cul-de-sac in the mountains and the tracks went all around it in a huge semicircle. The engineers who built this thing seriously knew what they were doing.

The best part is that the whole ride lasted a whooping 8 hours! So, we get a full 8-fucking-unbelievable hours of this sort of view and quite unexpectedly, it wasn't monotonous in the least bit because of the rather steep descent, and the vegetations change in accordance to altitude. We started out at about 2000 metres above sea level in Shimla, and to put a scale on things, that's like a quarter of the height of Mount Everest.

Of course, nobody can sit quietly for 8 hours and just stare like a zombie at the scenery,

Awesome sights make me emo.

I have no fucking idea how people can stand having long hair without wanting to rip them out of their roots.

Here's Joon Keat messing up my camwhore moment with the moving train. He then accidentally bit off his freaky long tongue when the train accidentally ran over a conveniently placed plot device, and his girlfriend mourns its loss, ifyouknowwhatImean.

One of the cool things about the ride was these tunnels we passed through. There were like, 102? Josephine tried to count them but she stopped bothering at about 20,

"Strap yourselves in, gentlemen. We're blasting into hyperspace in 3, 2..."

Technically, this doesn't count as a tunnel.

You know what else is cool? We traveled over 864 bridges along the ride and most of them looked like this,

This is the only passable picture we got of any one of the bridges. It's a moving train, okay, and we had to like lean out of the carriage to take them.

These are old-school bridges, and I'm talking Ancient Rome old school, here. They are built viaduct-style, which is just fancy Latin saying, "We lack the tech to built a single bridge spanning across a chasm so we built one consisting of several smaller, manageable spans joined together."

You got to hand it in to these toga-wearing, olive-sucking, bulimia-inventing pinnacles of decadence and hedonism though. Their bridges look freaking awesome,

Wikipedia to the rescue!

An ingenious dried leaf plate we ate curry and chapatis from in one of the hill stations we stopped at along the journey.

Some hill kid and presumably, his mom. If he was younger, he'd be waving like mad saying "HELLO!" over and over again to foreigners like us in a moving train, just like those kids you see in National Geographic Specials.

I'm going on a similar train ride in Ooty (short for Udhagamandalam) this August and it was reputedly as good as the one in Shimla though I have this preconception that the hills in the south of India won't be nearly as stirring as the ones they have up in the Himalayan north, but hey, I'll find out real soon, eh?

The moral of this post is, it's always better to find out about anything on your own than going on the words of someone else who may or may not know better don't listen to Vincent listen to me because I'm damn smart.

Just joking only lah, Vince. I'll stop teasing you about it now. After all, you already missed one of the best parts in the entire trip. Okay, I'll stop gloating as well.

Readers, do you know the English word "glee"? I think it's coined just to describe how I'm feeling right this moment.

Next post: The Taj Mahal, and why it sucked.

The irrepressible gloat,
k0k s3n w4i

There are Only Two Kinds of People in This World

How moral is it to strike a stray dog which chewed on your shoes because you left them out? I saw someone doing that the other day and it shocked me. It's not that I've never seen it before but perhaps, I've never seen it happen in quite that way. Maybe it's because it was a puppy which didn't know better but even so, a grown stray wouldn't be very smart about that either. Maybe it's because it yelped so pitifully. Or just maybe, it struck a chord in me, a trigger in my soul which just revolts against being punished while not having the capacity to understand why I deserved it. It's like when I was a little boy and my mom told me to run an errand for her - I simply didn't know how to do it so I went and asked her for clearer instructions. Just because she was in a vile mood, she snapped spitefully at me and accused me of pretending to be stupid so I don't need to run that errand for her. I cried, and she scolded me some more. Because I was really young back then, it left this bitterness in me which I can still taste today, and I tasted that again when I saw that man beat the puppy.

That's the two kinds; one who would kick a dog, and one who feel it's wrong.

I'm sorry I haven't been updating properly for a week now, and those who have stayed with me anyway, thanks for being such awesome readers. I meant to write more tonight, but I have to prepare for my visit tomorrow to a home for some semi-voluntary work (it's required for this phase of my medical course) and cheer up some puppies, I mean, mentally-challenged children. For the kids' sake, wish me some luck here, okay?

In Search of Heaven

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

Mark Twain

I spend a lot of my time thinking about what life means to me. I read ravenously, trying to find some sort of clue to an ultimate truth I can work to or at the very least, an inkling of what's in store for me in this world and the next. Sometimes, I get very vivid and damn complicated dreams about spiritualism and existentialism. Like last night, I had this... what I would call a false-continuity, paramnesia dream. That's what I call certain dreams of mine which seem to play out like the sequel of previous dreams I had - except, I never actually had those previous dreams (maybe I did have them but my conscious mind simply can't call up the memories but I won't think too hard on that because there's simply no way of finding out for sure - just like a lot of the hard questions in Life). Everything and everybody made me feel as if I've seen them somewhere or sometime before in some dream-version past.

I dreamed that I was dead, after being executed for the the crime of attempting murder on Jackie Chan. It's the sequel to that dream which I never actually had of accidentally stabbing him in his stomach with an icepick. Then, I spent the whole dream wandering about invisibly like some sort of wayward soul, stranded and unable to move on to wherever I was suppose to move on to. In my dream, I noticed that there were no other dead spirits like me about, so I conjectured that there must be some final resting place which all of them ultimately ended up. I asked the only people who could see and hear me - my grandmother, my father and Jackie Chan - about that; about this elusive afterworld which I couldn't seem to find and more importantly, why I was the only one who couldn't.

No one could give me a satisfactory answer, or as I mused in the dream, no one actually knows for sure where they go after they die. I spent a lot of time haunting the movie theatre because that's one of the only few logical place for a ghost to hang out in for all eternity. I always thought that movie theatres house a lot of wandering spirits because when you are invisible, intangible, undying and bored, what else is there for you do to amuse yourself? I spent many years there watching movies alone. I tried shouting in the ears of some of the moviegoers there but not a single one of them could hear me. I stood in front of them and they looked right past me.

Nearing the end of my dream, I visited a travel agent's office and found, to my surprise, that one of my classmates, albeit one I'm poorly acquainted with, was working there. She could see me, hear me and even touch me. Maybe it's all those years I spent being incorporeal and unable to physically interact with anyone, I don't know, but I wanted so bad to kiss her. I think that's the thing I'll miss the most after I'm dead; warmth and lips. I just stopped caring and kissed her. Then I undressed her and made love to her. It was at this point that I had a dream-breaking epiphany; there is no afterworld for me because I never really believed there is one. Why then was I looking for something I don't think exists anyway?



P.S. Sorry for being unfaithful in my dream, Phoebe. It's out of my control and I seriously never thought of doing such a thing before - just like how I never thought of accidentally stabbing Jackie Chan in the stomach with an icepick.



Has the weirdest dreams,
k0k s3n w4i

A Bit of the English in the Mountains

"Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs."

Mark Twain

During the course of these past few days, I half-wrote several posts - all of which I binned because I felt dissatisfied with them. I am my harshest critic and I am the only person I trust to completely disregard my own feelings. I want to improve, to write better but being my own editor has very definite limits. All I can do is tell myself that I suck while being unable to actually give myself pointers or instructions for the obvious reasons that I am me, and my faults are mine.

It's not that I've ran out of ideas or things I want to talk about. I have a limitless supply of those in my mind because I'm just own of those annoying smart-asses who just happen to have an opinion on every conceivable subject in this world and the next and are bursting to let everyone know what it is, whether everyone wants to or not. Just say something. Anything. I'll always have something to say back. Gosh, I just don't know when to shut the fuck up, I can tell you. I always thought that that's the most annoying thing about me, and I always leave conversations kicking myself in the ass for talking way too much.

But put me in front of a computer, in front of a blinking insertion point on a word-processing interface, I'll just stare blankly at it for about 15 minutes before realising that I'm suppose to, y'know, write something. I'm really not good at this sort of thing. I worry too much about how each of my line sounds like (I wish I'm that anal about my grammar, but my girlfriend has that covered) and I have the attention span of a goldfish - which is to say I don't focus very... OOH LOOK, PONIES!

It's during these moments I would simply give up in disgust and do something mindless and relaxing - like write a travelogue. I kind of like writing these because I know none of you actually reads them. No pressure, see?

Good thing I still have so much to talk about,

1. This is Shimla. You got two seconds to guess what is missing from this picture. Times up. There's no cars. It's a big-ass street with no cars on it. Okay, there's that blue truck in the left but let's just pretend not to see it. Do you know why there's a scarcity of vehicles in Shimla? I bet you don't so I'm going to tell you. Wait, maybe I won't after all. In order to make you read all my other captions in this post, I'm going to hide the answer somewhere - randomly.

2. The interesting thing about Shimla is that it used to be the capital of India in the summer months during the rule of the British Raj. Apparently, these fat, white colonists couldn't stand the heat of the season and decided to just shift their entire administrative centre up north into the hills every time the south started to cook. I seriously wish my own college has that sort of mobility too but no matter - I'm returning to Malaysia FOREVER in September, haven't you heard? Anyway, that is why Shimla looks like an English town - albeit one full of Indians. There's no more white people here because Gandhi killed all of them.

3. This is the Town Hall. I can tell you loads about its history but I'm sure you don't want to hear anything like that at all. So, I'll just tell you how I managed to take a night scenery photograph like this right here without a tripod or placing Josephine's camera on any nearby parked cars (not that there's any car in the town in the first place); I simply held it up with my own two hands. Yeah, just like that. Damn steady, right? Now you try it at below 10°Celcius and tell me steady your hands are.

4. Here's another reason to visit Shimla. I mean, you've no idea just how people in India love to spit every-bloody-where. Just walk through any street and count the number of phlegm-splats you see on the way. And then there are those who chew betel nuts so their spit is bright red. Just look at any public trash can - they are practically covered in the dried red mucoid gunk of the people who suck at aiming (presumably the same folks who can't pee straight). Anyhow, when you've lived in India as long as I have, you'd stop caring about people spitting in public. The bigger problem is people pissing and shitting in public - and there's no 'No Urinating or Defecating' signs in Shimla. Maybe they consider faeces to be litter here, I don't know.

5. This is the reason why any vehicle running on internal combustion engines aren't allowed in Shimla. They smoke, obviously. This is seriously my kind of town. Back when I was in secondary school, I used to have these daydreams of myself leading some sort of brutal revolution against smokers for polluting the air us non-smokers breathe and exposing us to the same detrimental health consequences they suck willingly into their own lungs. I always felt very righteous about this and I often imagined elaborate scenes where my anti-cigarette crusading brothers and I violently lynching anybody we find on the streets with a fag. So satisfying. Nowadays, I don't really give a damn. I noticed that 70% of the people I see in the Medicine Ward are there because of some lung disease caused directly by smoking. Seeing that about 70% of my income next time as a doctor will come from these wheezing, struggling-like-hell-to-take-a-single-breath patients, I say "Puff on, mate." Pay the tobacco companies first, then pay me.

Anyway, that's not really the reason why there aren't cars in Shimla. I was just shitting you.

6. The Christ Church. It reminds me of the Christ Church we have in Malacca. It also reminds me of ice-cream, for some reason.

7. At night, after they have turned on the spotlights, the Christ Church is transformed into... a cooler ice-cream? I just can't get over how much it makes me want to reach out for a tub of good ol-fashed vanilla. Please tell me, is there anyone else out there who also think that it looks like an elaborate sundae? This is really unsettling me.

8. There's a certain Jakhu Temple built at the top of a hill at the edge of the town of Shimla, and it is dedicated to Hanuman, the Monkey God in the Ramayana who led an army of monkeys to fight the Demon King Ravana. There's a big signboard at the bottom of the hill that said if you can reach the top within an hour, you are fitter than fit (because you're only just fit if you take an hour and a half). Dhivya and I made the 'fitter than fit' mark and I actually reached a few minutes earlier than Dhivya! I beat Dhivya Stronglegs! Dhivya the Tennis Murderator! Dhivya the Amazon Queen of the Court! Anyone who knows me knows that I loathe physical competition of any kind and my Body Mass Index is stuck solidly in the overweight percentile (for shame). Josephine and Joon Keat took two hours, haha. Gandalf the White up there could have beaten them with one colostomy bag tied behind his back.

9. And the view from up there ain't half bad.

10. One of Hanuman's young recruits in his monkey army - the temple grounds were absolutely crawling with them and it's pretty hard for me to get this close to a baby for a picture. One actually snatched Dhivya's spectacles right off her nose and skedaddled with it. It was lucky that Joon Keat managed to "persuade" our simian thief into giving it up. Ask Dhivya to show it to you sometimes; they have teeth marks on them. This is why there are big ass sticks for hire at the bottom of the hill. And no, the monkeys aren't the reason why cars aren't allowed in Shimla, as amusing as that thought may be.

11. Scruffy li'l puppy which was bullied by the monkeys. It's quite funny really - Hanuman's homies got it surrounded and when one of them tapped the puppy on its back, the pup would swing around in surprise. Then another monkey would approach the pup's back and do the same thing, and the puppy would turn again. The poor puppy was positively spinning around on the spot trying to snap at his instigators but they were always too quick for it. This proves beyond reasonable doubt that monkeys and humans are related.

12. Here's another picture of the same puppy just because I feel like it. It's my blog. My rules.

13. Awhile later, a pack of mongrels descended like holy fury upon the troop of monkeys for daring to mess with one of their young 'uns. One of them has the most terrifying eyes I've ever seen on a dog. It's BLUE, almost pinpoint, swimming in a big pool of white. Other than that, it's just like every other lovable stray I have met on this entire trip. Can you imagine this bitch running towards you in some dark, deserted alley in the middle of the night? The heart attack would kill you first.

14. I've been to the quaintest little Indian coffee house imaginable in Shimla, and it's called... Indian Coffee House! Just sitting in there will take you decades back when local Indians were made to dress up in full traditional garb to serve java to portly English aristocrats who were too wussy to sweat out the Indian summer heat in the plains. And I know what you're thinking; that's one heckuva long menu board and that's one heckuva headpiece he's wearing.

15. The Indian Coffee House also serves the most delicious Mutton Noodle in the entire universe. I swear that if I ever return to Shimla, it would be because of that damn awesome noodles. Penang Char Kuey Teow can kiss my ass.

16. Never in my life could I imagine a train station this spotless in India. It's like some sort of real life paradox. Several holes were ripped in the time space continuum just because the Shimla Railway Station exists.

17. The Bahá'í wuz here, yo.

18. OMG, it's an authentic something-th century steam engine! See, this is how I write when I didn't bother to do the research.

19. This is definitely the longest I have ever let my hair grow out in my entire life, and I had to sort prop it up with a scarf so it doesn't cover my eyes and annoy the shit out of me. Oh, I got that scarf from Amritsar, actually - I had to cover my head before entering to see the Golden Temple of the Sikhs there. Whoa, I'm like some groovy traveler guy now. Even some dirty bit of cloth I wound around my head has a cool back-story. Now, where's my funky yak bone bracelet I got from a Tibetan shaman for saving his grandmother from the evil clutches of internet addiction and global uncontrolled consumerism?

Anyway, from the (improbable) Shimla Railway Station, I went on the most amazing train ride of my life. I'd have included the insanely scenic pictures of that leg of the journey in this post but it's 2 bloody o'clock in the morning here and I am starting to hate being awake.



P.S. I lied by the way. The reason why cars aren't allowed in Shimla is really because they smoke. The municipal council don't want their air to be polluted, it being a prime holiday spot and all that.



Fitter than fit,
k0k s3n w4i