Graham and Janette's travels » india

Indian beer is rubbish

Graham — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 05:08:06 +0000

The most common beer here is Kingfisher. It is acceptable but has a unpleasant chemical after-taste. Cobra tastes like water with caramel flavouring. Disgusting! The Cobra in Britain is very different and much better. These beers are labelled as ‘Alcohol content below 5%’.
The best beer so far has been Thunderbolt, labelled as ‘Alcohol content between 5.25% and 8.25%’. It’s still not great.
Africa, by comparison, had very good beer. Each country had only one bottler (who also has the Coca-Cola / Fanta / Sprite concession, and controls the bottled water, one hell of a monopoly, but that’s another blog post) which made one or two beers which were very good, better than British lager.
I shouldn’t be suprised that the beer is bad – the only person I have seen drinking beer here is, well, me.
The tea, however, is very good and very varied. I guess I’m tee-total until Bhutan. We go to Bhutan tomorrow. Yey!

In praise of sidewalks

Graham — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 05:00:14 +0000

Sidewalks, pavements, whatever you call them, they’re great! I bet you take them for granted; come to India, that’ll set you right.

Apart from the honourable exception of Mumbai (which I suspect is British built), there are no sidewalks in India. This means you, the stray dogs, the cows, the beggars and hawkers, all walk right down the road. The lorries, buses, cars, motorbikes, bicycles, auto-rickshaws and cycle rickshaws all bear down on you at high speed, honking if they can. No wonder there are so many crippled beggars here. I love sidewalks.

Darjeeling

Graham — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:23:02 +0000

We spent four days trekking out of McLeod Ganj, went to a lecture by the Dalai Lama on Monday, then flew across the country and now we are in Darjeeling. We go to Bhutan on Sunday. It’s been raining hard for about 14 hours in Darjeeling. India is crazy. Time for breakfast.

India

Graham — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:56:11 +0000

We arrived in Mumbai this morning at 2am; what a contrast to rural Africa! There are 16 million people living here, who seem to mostly drive around using their horn.
Hopefully the super-fast Indian net connections will mean we can catch up on our photos.
Tomrrow is Independence Day here, so we’re looking forward to a big celebration. Janette has already bought her India flag just in case anyone thought she supported those evil colonizing Brits.
We’ve already been photographed by some locals, filmed by Indian tourists from Delhi, and appeared in a student documentary on Bollywood. It won’t be long until Bollywood casting directors hear of our arrival.
Dinner was curry, of course, but in a curry house almost identical to a British curry house (except the unfortunate no alcohol rule). Strange, I always assumed British curry wasn’t authentic. Apparently it is.