Sorry to keep harping on about the roads because I’m apportioning no blame….but the conditions….and……and…..We thought the road between Kathmandu and Chitwan was bad. It was just an appetiser for the main course – the “road” between Chitwan and Pokhara. First of all there are more buses per square kilometre of this road than a Greyhound car park. And the potholes are big enough for a Yorkshire family (you need to be a Monty Python fan). Again, it’s rain, landslides, washouts and traffic, lots of traffic. But why, over about 75km where the road was non-existant for 100m out of every 500m, did I only see one maintenance machine operating…on a Monday. I have a theory so bear with me.
Something that is ubiquitous in all of the towns and villages we pass through is beautifully ornate and colourful houses with arches and pillars and pattern tiled walls with strawberry stripes and peppermint swirls. Obviously they were designed by the Willy Wonka of architects. They are big too and many have unfinished columns poking out of the flat roof, no doubt in preparation for construction of the next floor. The connection with the roads? I am convinced that these terrific houses are owned by those who also own the tyre franchises across the country.
And why aren’t the roads being repaired when there are dozens of idle machines parked up everywhere? Did the operators all call in sick? Did they drink too much of the home-made rice wine we sampled a couple of days ago? The one that tastes like watered down kerosene? Are the authorities proud of the roads the way they are because let’s face it, it takes diligent neglect to allow them to deteriorate to this extent. No, they are being paid to stay at home by the tyre franchisees.
Despite the conditions, somehow or other, our admirably skilled and requisitely aggressive driver Mukhand, got us here to Pokhara yesterday, thoroughly shaken up but in one slightly dishevelled piece. And as a bonus cultural experience the ladies got to experience the road-side squat conveniences. The trip wouldn’t have been legit if they hadn’t.
The CB and I are now sitting on our balcony watching the fluffies drifting around the nearby hills. We can’t see the snow-capped mountains and apart from a brief glimpse in Kathmandu a few days ago, we are yet to see what Nepal is most famous for. But maybe it’ll be today because we have booked a chopper flight to Annapurna base camp this morning and we just need those last few clouds to scud off.
You’ve got to feel sorry for the Nepalese in some respects. They live in a spectacular country but lots of mountains means lots of water flowing really fast. The consequences of this are felt mostly by the roads. Landslides and washouts make the roads seem like they’ve been built upside down. Imagine under the jagged rocks and potholes are progressively finer layers of gravel underlain by a smooth layer or bitumen. I’ve only encountered rougher driving terrain underground and in the bush back-blocks of North Queensland and neither of those were designated national highways like the road between Kathmandu and Chitwan. In fact neither of those examples were designated as roads. Notwithstanding the conditions, the driving is like a demolition derby going in both directions round the track but miraculously, in five hours of driving we didn’t see one accident.
The number of buses was inversely proportional to the state of the road and scooters carrying whole families were everywhere. It must be quite daunting to be riding down a steep hill on a wet potholed road with the wife and two kids hanging on for dear life to you and each other and be confronted by two buses next to each other coming straight at you. To make matters worse, there are grand canyon like escarpments feet away on both sides – one going straight up and one going straight down. But the rider’s thinking it’s nothing I haven’t handled before and at least I’m wearing the family helmet.
An entirely smoother mode of transport was experienced later in the afternoon on the East Rapti River as the CB and I and our two travel companions, a guide and two oarsmen crossed to the National Park on the other side for a bit of a safari. The guide helpfully pointed out a crocodile sliding into the river just before he and the oarsmen and the safari Jeep driver who was waiting 50 metres away, on the bank, had to jump into the water to push our grounded boat the remaining way to the shore. Local knowledge I guess.
Rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and deer were the extent of our safari viewing if you don’t count the army. I think their reason for being there was more to do with poaching and less to do with the proximity of the Indian border. The tigers and elephants remained in hiding although we did see their recent footprints.
Occasionally on our travels the CB and I have encountered hidden gems where you least expect them. One was the Sultana Royal Golf Hotel outside Ouarzazate in Morocco. Incidentally, I am yet to locate the golf course. However it is home away from home for celebrities filming at the movie studios nearby (think Game of Thrones and Gladiator). When we were there, there were only two other guests. The Barahi Jungle Lodge is another of these, here adjacent to the Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. It’s the feel, the vibe, the je ne sait quoi (that’s French, for the uninitiated). I felt like Richard the Lionhart returning from the crusades, such was our welcome and treatment thereafter. Another keeper.
So we met a godess yesterday. I’ve never met one before. I met the King of Malaysia once because a coal fired power station was named after him and….it’s a long story but he gave me a signed, leather bound copy of his biography in return for a Newlands Coal Mine tie. Fair swap? Anyway, he was respected (or his position was because I’m not sure he was particularly well-liked) but I’m not sure he (or even his position) was worshipped. I’ve also met a few politicians who thought they were gods. And the only other time I’ve bowed to someone (other than as described below ) was when I gave evidence in a court case and it was mandatory to bow in the general direction of the judge when entering and leaving the court. There is so much I could add to that but won’t because so many judges read this blog.
9 year old Nihira is the Kumari of Lalitpur, a city to the south of but contiguous with Kathmandu. Kumari literally means “virgin” and these young girls (there are 10 in Nepal) are annointed as goddesses from a very young age until puberty when they lose their deified status and return to civvy street. This is taken very seriously by Hindus and Bhuddists alike and deserves the utmost respect. The CB and I were both blessed by the young goddess. We were asked to kneel before her so she could bless us. I said she’d have to help me up as well as bless me, what with my dodgy hips so I bowed instead and with her tiny index finger she put a red tika in the middle of my forehead which was meant to protect me. I don’t think a similar experience can be had anywhere else. And my hips still ache.
Another 9 year old girl called Trishna is the goddess of Kathmandu. We weren’t allowed to meet her – no foreigners allowed. Apparently the Lalitpurians are more inclusive than the Kathmanduians (is that a word?). That sounds like something that might appear in Gulliver’sTravels but of course wouldn’t be allowed in our utterly ridiculous woke first (and rapidly receding) world. Thankfully the Nepalese don’t give a shit about this and some of the conversations we’ve had with the locals would have them shunned by the champagne socialists. Heavens no!!!! The things that offend our snowflakes (it’s all an act actually, IMHO) are real world problems elsewhere.
Getting around here is an interesting experience. I’ve previously mentioned the traffic lights. Today we went further afield and the lights do actually work so let’s go back into the older part of the city which is infinitely more interesting. There are two types of roads here. The new, modern ones utilising the most recent and sophisticated construction technology and materials and those dating back hundreds of years. The first type can best be described as potholes connected by thin ribbons of bitumen. The second type would make the Romans proud – solid cubes of limestone and other rock-types arranged in close formation with striations cut into each rock to aid traction. And no amount of monsoonal rain is washing these suckers away.
This place is Temples ‘R Us. They are everywhere – concentrated into clumps round squares, big and small and in the most unlikely of places, like insinuated into the trunk base of a massive tree. The Hindus, who are the dominant religious denomination and the Buddhists who are a distant second co-exist and worship shoulder to shoulder. The gnashing of teeth over religion back home in Australia, epitomised by the recent one-day tenure of the CEO of an Australian Football League club, terminated because of his religious connections, is worthy of massive disdain. If the club in question tried to recruit a CEO in Nepal (using their dubious standards), they’d have the choice of about five people, and right now, I’m one of them and the CB’s another and if they come knocking, they can stick their job where the sun doesn’t shine.
And by-the-way, this morning the weather was beautiful and I expect the mountain flights were successful and we didn’t go because the weather was expected to be like yesterday. One more chance, next Friday.
Off to Chitwan to tomorrow to see some wildlife and to try not to get malaria.
I’ve got out of bed plenty of times at a time with a “4” in front of it, mostly in the am. When you spend a lot of your working years travelling for a living, staggering to an airport at an ungodly hour, sometimes hung-over, to make a flight that will get you to a scheduled meeting is unavoidable. But I don’t think I’ve ever done it twice in three days. We had a flight to Sydney to catch on Tuesday and today, Thursday, we have a crack of dawn flight to Everest and back provided the weather clears.
Well that was a major disappointment. We took off, ascended into the weather then turned around and went back. I don’t care how good your radar is, flying blind at the Himalayas is not something I relished. It was bad enough that the highest mountains in the world were in the same (small) country, let alone the same neighbourhood so the disappointment was real but somewhat muted. Apparently we’ll try again tomorrow.
We were in the air for about half an hour and didn’t see a thing other than whiteness from about a minute into the flight. As far as pointless exercises go, that’s up there with me trying to get a tan (I have a viking’s complexion). A shame also because two flights were combined so we were on an 80 seater (everyone gets a window) rather than the usual 16 seater. You’d rather be aloft in inclement weather in a big plane than a little one.
The rain this morning, when we returned to planet earth was of biblical proportions. I asked our guide if it was the tail-end of the monsoon. He said the monsoon had finished. This was just bad weather. To which he added the all-encompassing comment “climate change”. As it is only day 2, I decided not to tell him I worked in the coal industry. And as we all know, if Australia would only close its coal industry, there would be no more bush fires or droughts or floods in Australia and the Great Barrier Reef would double in size and you’d be able to see its colours from space…or something. So if only Nepal’s neighbour to the south would stop burning coal there would be no more rain in October, the month we were told (by all the best guide books) was the best one to visit this country.
I thought this place would be quite similar to India, but it isn’t apart from the traffic (they have traffic lights but don’t bother to turn them on), some of the food, the preponderance of Hindus and, it has to be said, the place is a bit untidy. But the buildings are a veritable riot of colour unlike in India, walking the streets is a somewhat more private and relaxing affair (apart from the traffic) and there are no cows (or elephants) on the streets. Not an exhaustive list I’ll grant you, but take my word for it. Oh, and the two places smell the same. I’m not going to attempt to deconstruct that.
But one thing I was never able to achieve in all of the times I went to India was meet a real live God. The CB and I did that today. And we have the photographic evidence to prove it. More later.
In the immortal words of Willy Nelson who isn’t quite dead yet, the child bride and I are on the road again. It’s taken a while but here we are. We’re not anywhere particularly special yet – the airport hotel in Bangkok, the Touch Down Sports Bar, specifically – but we’re on our way to Nepal tomorrow to commence the Himalaya Hijinx. And while thinking about the next part of this essay, I confronted the first dilemma of this trip. Is “Hijinx” singular or plural? Is it “hijinx is” or “hijinx are”. This minor irritant would be a real problem if I was afflicted by one of the many conditions our young seem to suffer from these days, like ADHD and IPCC and UNHCR. But I’m not so I don’t, especially the second one which I’d only catch if you paid me, like most of those who have this affliction. So as far as the Hijinx thing is concerned, I won’t even mention it (other than in the titles), just like Fleabag has gone through two Amazon Prime series without naming a number of her main characters.
The CB and I like a tipple, it has to be said, so when told that the flight from Sydney to Bangkok only stocked one brand of red wine and one brand of beer (we were flying gorilla class so meh….) I was fine but the white wine and bubbles drinker CB was somewhat chagrined but as has been her guiding philosophy the whole time she has been with me, she grinned (grimaced actually) and bore it, as you do. There were, of course, other irrelevancies like water and soft drink and tea and coffee made from the water on the plane which they tell you not to drink so, red wine it was but up the back of the plane, if you push your luck by dinging that call-button a little too frequently, that fourth red wine in an hour may contain more than wine, if you get my drift.
Anyway, we’re here now – it’s taken me a day and a half to write this pathetic amount. The CB and I went for a wander around an area called Thamel this afternoon. Every European in Kathmandu did the same. We heard mostly German accents but also American, British and a few Aussies. More of that in the coming days. But tomorrow we go for a flight round Everest and other monuments to the geological process, provided the weather cooperates. It didn’t today and tomorrow’s not looking flash so let’s see.
One thing we did notice while sitting in the hotel bar (so you can be sure this survey has statistical legitimacy), is that there are many groups or shaven-headed (or bald) middle-aged men lurking about the place. They are either waiting their turn to walk up Everest (I think it’s like climbing Ayre’s Rock these days), or they aren’t and you can draw your own conclusions.
It’s been a while and apart from the last few weeks, not much has been happening. The last few weeks however involved helping to organise a mass visit of colleagues including the MD and CEO, from various corners of the globe to Brisbane for meetings then a series of mine and port visits. If you can imagine what planning and implementing a cross between a royal wedding and D-Day is like, that was it. Herding cats doesn’t even come close.
Airport transfers and meetings on the first two days went swimmingly. But just so you know how seriously I take these things, I MC’d the MD’s dinner on day 1 when he hosted a bunch of dignitaries and …ugh…coal suppliers. My commentary commenced as follows:
“Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen” (obviously not a government function or this would have been “birthing people and scum”).
“Thankyou, I wish my children were as obedient.”
“Thankyou for coming. I am hosting tonight. My name is Chris and I’m the Australian representative for the company. My pronouns are “golf’ and “beer”. I have another but choose not to bring it out in polite company”
And so it went.
Then on the first day of mine visits it all went to shit, starting with my airline ticket which had been cancelled by the booking agent and I found out an hour before the flight. I had 13 people, most of whom had never been to Australia before, in two groups heading in two different directions and for a while it looked like half of them (my half) would be on their own. The other group were on their own anyway as I am only able to be in one place at a time, much to the child bride’s chagrin.
Fortunately I was able to secure one of the few remaining seats on the Hi-Viz Express with my group and the fly-in fly-out or FIFO or fit-in or fuck-off (an intolerant bigot would say) mine workers. On landing in Emerald it took more than an hour, for various unfathomable reasons, to check-out two hire cars. We could have bought them quicker. And now I have to sort out the mess as both cars have been invoiced twice. While all this was going on the other group missed the guide I had organised for them in Gladstone so confusion reigned. A long first day became even longer – a 4.30am start to get the flight, two mine visits and about 4 hours of driving. No wonder Dysart thought the zombie apocalypse had descended upon them when we arrived that evening.
As I’m writing this, I’m also writing my weekly report for the above-mentioned people. Who said white, heterosexual cis-gendered, privileged, middle-class sperm donors can’t double task. And I’ve just inserted a link to the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in my weekly report. This is also the somewhat tenuous link between the mine visits and said weekly report.
Firstly, why is a Stones song in my weekly discussion on the status of the coal and iron ore industries in Australia? It’s because I insert songs and cartoons and occasional pithy comments to make these reports more interesting to the disinterested reader. While not detracting from the legitimate stuff I put in there, the various non-sequiturs do give the reader more incentive to open the report if only to check out the cartoon on page one. Here is one of my favourites from a couple of years back:
I worked at a copper mine for a few years about 15 years ago and got into this habit there – one report for the board and one for the staff. The last one I did for the staff explained the copper and gold prices using a Pink Floyd theme. I was particularly proud of that one.
But back to the Rolling Stones connection. I had two young tech savvy Indians in my vehicle and it took them about two days to work out how to pair their phones with the sound system in the car. It took old tech dinosaur me about ten minutes. So I had a couple of relaxing days of the Rolling Stones (there’s the connection, if you missed it), Led Zeppelin and the Pogues before being assaulted by a musical genre which, to be fair, I was very familiar with. I have spent more than a year of my life in India thanks to numerous (around 80, last count) business trips so am quite familiar with Indian cultural proclivities. I have also seen their movie. I know they make hundreds every year but it’s basically the same one with a few minor variations on the same theme – hero rescues heroine from moustache twirling villain while being assisted by numerous chest shaking, pelvis thrusting dancers. Their movies are like AC DC records. So I spent the last few days being subjected to a never-ending procession of Indian hotel elevator music.
Having almost missed my flight at the start of the trip, it was only fair that I almost missed it at the end. Having to return to our starting point because the hire car company wouldn’t allow an A to B hire, only an A to A, we were faced with a four and a half hour drive back to A after a port visit in the morning and retrieval of a left bag at our hotel which required a one hour diversion.
I was struck by how relaxed the usually officious security people at the airport were when faced with the bottle opener and spray can in my check-in bag which wasn’t being checked in because check-in was closed when I arrived at the airport half an hour before my flight. I guess they realised it would be taken off me at the foot of the plane’s stairs and put in the hold. Either that or imagining hijacking a plane with a bottle opener and deodorant was a bridge to far for even these people. Dear reader, you should try this because it guarantees your bag will be first off the plane. Not good for the blood pressure however.
The actual motivation for writing this was that the CB and I will be off on our travels again soon but I got side-tracked, as usual. But now that borders are open despite covid still being rampant throughout the world we are free. Fortunately politicians can’t think of any other ways to squeeze political advantage out of it so have lost interest. We’re off to Nepal so expect a series of Himalaya Hike stories. Actually it won’t be a hike. The CB doesn’t do camping or tents or hikes unless it involves one of these:
Good luck to you if you have managed to escape the what are now proving to be useless restrictions placed on us by our public servants. The CB and I are about to get our fourth dose of a vaccine that was once guaranteed to prevent us from catching covid (remember “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”). And we’ll have to wear a mask that’s now only good for robbing banks when we get the vaccine. And we’ll have to stand 1.5 metres away from the surgery receptionist before we get on a plane with a couple of hundred other people.
This covid thing will be right up there with the Y2K bug, catastrophic man-made climate change and rap “music” as the biggest frauds perpetrated on the human race in the last hundred years, IMHO.
It’s a truism that if you want something organized efficiently, don’t get a bureaucracy to do it.
I was recently asked to travel from the city I live in in Australia to another city in Australia, in another state, have a meeting then fly back the same day. Pretty straight forward you would have to agree and not an unusual occurrence. In my full-time working days I did it regularly. But do you think I could decipher the reams of instructions and descriptions polluting numerous government websites in order to understand what freedoms I would have to forego to do this. Because this whole episode, world-wide has been an exercise in restrictions of “freedoms”
I use the inverted commas round the word freedom because freedoms, by definition, are free and not to be tampered with by busy body politicians and their cadaverous health bureaucrats. Unfortunately, that’s not what the word means anymore. Once inalienable freedoms are glibly given and taken and rationed. They are rewards for good behaviour given to inmates who have behaved themselves.
Our premier is a whiny socialist, typical of many politicians around the democratic world (there’s a major contradiction in terms in that last sentence). Listening to these people try to explain what we can and can’t do on a daily basis is something I have given up doing – life’s too short. They live for it, I know. I don’t. Notwithstanding, it makes the libertarian portion of my blood boil.
So back to my dilemma. After spending too many hours trying to understand whether I could take my day-trip without having to put my granddaughter up as collateral or leaving a few pints of my own blood (the non-libertarian part) for the inevitable transfusion I would need after returning from the home of the walking dead in the south of our country, I gave up. That is, I gave up trying to work it out for myself. The solution – ring your local member of parliament and get them to earn some of that salary they didn’t forego when most of the country was locked down and destitute. So I did. It’s been a couple of hours so even the people who wrote the manual don’t seem to be able to make any sense out of it. I found it easier to work-out the instructions regarding construction of an Ikea bookcase. And I haven’t got a degree in architecture.
Update
I have been advised by my local MP’s office that if I want to go to this particular state for a few hours then return, I have to be double vaccinated (I am) and while I am there, get Covid tested and return a negative then on my return, do two weeks in quarantine. This is for my protection because I am incapable of protecting myself. I need a whiny socialist to look after me apparently. And this brings us full-circle back to why you don’t want bureaucrats organising anything.
I’ve been to Iran seven times between 1989 and 1998. The first time was just after the Iran/Iraq war had finished so the Esfahan Steel Plant which I visited was still surrounded by anti-aircraft guns. My hosts also helpfully pointed out, from the panoramic viewing window in their board-room, the hill over which the Iraqi planes came when they bombed the place throughout the war. They had managed to keep the plant operating, to their credit, which is why I was there – to try to sell them some coal. But that trip’s not the reason for this post. There are plenty of incidents and experiences gathered over seven trips to write about but I’m going to tell you another story.
Getting to Tehran was problematic because there were so few flights so I’d waitlist on flights from Rome, Frankfurt, Vienna, London or Dubai and whichever one came up first I would take. These flights invariably got in early in the morning which allowed a few hours sleep in a cash only, once five-star hotel which had been Iranianized into a two-star. Then it was back out to the domestic airport to catch a flight down to Esfahan. Then would follow a lazy eight or so hours of shouting, fist banging “negotiation” then a flight back to Tehran to collapse into bed in the same hotel I had been in that morning.
After doing this a few times I decided to ask my hosts if we could negotiate our next deal in Tehran rather than Esfahan. They declined but to compensate, said I would be picked up at the airport and driven down to Esfahan thereby being able to sleep in the car. How kind.
Firstly, let’s consider the “picking-up” bit. On a previous trip they had “forgotten” to pick me up at Esfahan airport. The airport is on the north-east side of town and the steel plant is 45 kilometres south-west of town, in fact, that’s its address – 45Km on The Esfahan-Shahrekord Road. In the domestic airports back then there were no English signs and no English announcements. Also, there were no mobile phones and no public phones, just a phone call shop where I could have booked a call if only I could speak Farsi or one of the attendants could speak English. This prompted me, in desperation, to step away from the counter and shout into the terminal crowd “does anyone here speak English”. But that’s another story for another day.
As luck would have it, on the day in question, a driver was on hand to pick me up as I emerged from customs. Whether or not anyone is there at all is just part of the lottery and anyone could act as a taxi driver and most people who owned cars did. So you could be picked up by the local axe murderer if your luck was out. Being 4.00am after a flight from Europe where you had one or two gin and tonics because they’d be the last ones for a while and then wended your tortuous way through the airport formalities, you were fair game. But this bloke had a clipboard so was obviously legit. And he had another passenger – a German engineer who was also going to the plant.
So we set off in an ancient Chevrolet with four bald tyres on the four or five hour drive through the desert down to Esfahan. Now give the shah his due. He may have been a typical monarchical despot but he was our despot and he knew how to build roads. The freeway system round Tehran was pretty impressive although starting to resemble Ozzy Osbourne – visibly deteriorating. And the road to Esfahan was a wide-open highway. But that didn’t stop us getting a flat tyre.
So there we were – an Iranian who couldn’t speak English or German, a German who couldn’t speak English or Farsi and an Australian who couldn’t speak Farsi or German – alternately looking at each other and then the flat tyre. There was no spare – obviously – but there was a jack. Eventually our driver decided he would take the wheel off himself because the German and the Aussie obviously weren’t interested.
Way off in the distance we could see what looked like buildings so after removing the tyre and leaning it against the vehicle the driver jogged off into the heat haze, towards said buildings. The German and I looked at each other, shrugged our respective shoulders, found a bit of shade each and recommenced reading our books,
Eventually the driver materialized and without acknowledging us, stood the wheel up and commenced to roll it down the road in the direction from whence he had just come, occasionally batting it with his hand to ensure that it kept up with his steady jogging pace. Fritz and I went back to our books.
After another hour or so, the driver presented triumphally with a freshly fixed bald, fraying tyre and I swore to myself that I would be flying back to Tehran.
We eventually made it to Esfahan after passing through the city of Qom which is where all the religious heavies live. There were check-point-charlies on all roads in and out and security was somewhat ubiquitous. That is one place you don’t want to go for your holidays – smiles were as rare as golf courses and frivolity is a capital offence. And if applying for a job there, a sense of humour is definitely surplus to requirements on your CV.
The first hour of discussions with my hosts was taken up by trying to arrange how I was going to get back to Tehran. They eventually got me on a flight back that evening. Elimination of that source of stress allowed me to relax into the rough and tumble of hours of intense negotiation over a couple of dollars per tonne of coal for a 12 month contract. That was then, when the price was around $50/tonne. Today it’s $185/tonne and varies by up to $8/tonne daily.
Iran is a different world and today, so’s the coal market.
If you fly often enough you’re going to encounter the occasional “moment”. I remember a work colleague telling me of a discussion he had with the company pilot many years ago. The pilot told him that flying a plane is 99% sleep inducing boredom and 1% blind panic. Those of us sitting behind the pilot, preferably behind an internal wall and even more preferably, on another level (somewhat counter-intuitively, the bigger the plane, the less likely it is to go down) hopefully don’t experience all of those moments of blind panic but occasionally we do although to be fair to pilots, what causes us passengers to white knuckle our fingerprints into the metal part of the arm rest are probably just ho hum moments to those who’ve seen it all.
So there have been times I’ve contemplated rapid religious conversion and another time I would have taken up smoking again if the no smoking sign had gone off. Let me tell you about this episode – my first brush with a melodramatic death. But first a precursor to set the scene.
The night before, I was attending an Australia-India Business Council dinner at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi. The residence is a very nice building with beautifully manicured gardens, as you would expect. The dinner was taking place under a large marquee in the garden and everything was going swimmingly until a rip roaring storm stampeded through town. These storms charge in from the nearby Rajasthan Desert so orifice clogging dust and high winds precede torrential rain. As the storm picked up steam (and everything else in its path), the guests decamped from the marquee to the residence and watched the carnage as trees were stripped of leaves and what wasn’t nailed down disappeared into the distance, including the marquee. It finished up in Pakistan. Not the country but over the wall and into the back yard of the Pakistan High Commission which was and still is, next door. Afterwards the garden looked like the Pakistanis had bombed it in retaliation for launching surface to surface missiles at them cunningly disguised as a large tent.
The next night my agent and I flew down to Madras as it was known then and is still known now, by the locals. I think only cricket commentators and politicians call it Chennai. As luck would have it (or not as the case may be), we encountered one of these storms in a most inconvenient place – a few thousand feet above the ground.
To make matters worse the plane was rather old – a 737 1 Series which was so old it didn’t have overhead lockers; it had a luggage rack. Having flown many times before and having learnt what is a normal sound or movement (and by process of elimination, what isn’t), I felt and heard the plane take off at maximum throttle in a steep climb then after a short time, ease back on the throttle and lessen the elevation as we gradually began climbing to cruising altitude. Talk about being lulled into a false sense of security because a few seconds later, the engines roared back to life and the nose went up so high I thought we were on our way to the moon.
Then it began. And it seems a little wimpy looking back but I was pretty certain this dilapidated old plane was going to disintegrate and I didn’t have a parachute. I had never to that point and probably have only one other time since, experienced such mid-air violence as the plane was thrown around the sky. And the no smoking sign was on so I couldn’t take up smoking again and my agent couldn’t get the top off his bottle of scotch lest the contents finish up all over the surrounding passengers. And as I looked out of the window I could have sworn I saw a marquee fly past in the sandy gloom. I can only assume the pilot had decided that the best plan of attack was to spear right through the middle of this storm. Going round it or under it was for cowards.
Now my then agent and still good friend is a pretty cool customer who was quite used to the privations of travel round the Indian sub-continent as well as the vagaries of the weather. When I saw the look on his face I knew we were dead. But that was not to be because after what seemed like an hour and was probably ten minutes at most we hit clear air. The rattling rivets that were still in their holes relaxed back into place, ashen faced strangers silently started at each other, the relief on their faces palpable and couples pledged to never take each other for granted ever again, ever.
That first Oranjeboom went down like altar wine when we hit the bar at the Taj Coromandel a couple of hours later. The blood pressure was back to normal after about a week.
Since the CB and I decided to do a reverse tree-change and move from a semi-rural acreage setting to a townhouse closer to the city one thing we have missed is the view or in our case, views. There’s the horizontal (or slightly elevated) view to the hills in the distance and the vertical view to the incomprehensible splendour of the Milky Way. We hadn’t seen the Southern Cross and its Pointers for four years because of the blocking effect of city lights but a few nights ago, there they were.
Stanthorpe only has around 5000 people and we were out of town anyway so if he’d been there, Darryl Kerrigan would have been in his element – how’s the serenity. This piece of trivia would not have registered with those of you who haven’t immersed yourselves in the Aussie cultural equivalent of the Renaissance, a movie called “The Castle”. Watch it. Here’s a taste.
And I mention the Southern Cross because it’s very much part of the Australian psyche (and flag). And it and Orion’s Belt are the only celestial constellations I can identify.
Day 2 was a wine tour – all day. Four wineries and the Queensland College of Wine Tourism for lunch. That was about 38 wines all up. For professional tasters, that’s all in a day’s work. For amateurs like us it’s a serious challenge which was approached with all of the grit and determination we could muster. There were four of us (plus the driver) on our tour, the CB and I and a honeymooning couple who spent their time on the back seat of the mini-bus while the CB and I admired the scenery.
For the pros, wine tasting is all about the five “s’s” (pronounced “esses”), as in swirl, sniff, sip, swoosh (round the mouth) and spit. For us amateurs there’s a variation on this theme that goes swirl, sniff, sip, swallow, serve (the next one). And by the end of the day you might find the real amateurs doing the sip, swirl, swallow, sip, swallow, sprint, spew.
In these wine growing and wine making areas with lots of cellar doors you’d have to assume that, especially on the weekends and in high season there will be at least a few half pissed tourists on the roads. Which could explain the signs near all of the main intersections which tell drivers to stay on the left because this is Australia. Apparently these signs are all over the country but this is the only place I’ve noticed them and also apparently it’s because of the proliferation (in non-covid times) of fruit picking backpackers. In these covid times some fruit rots on the vines because our entitled youth and unencumbered older types are too lazy to pick fruit for $25/hour. There’s a strawberry runner farm in the area which employs about 600 people at peak times but….despair.
The CB and I would have offered to help out but with my dodgy back and her bursitis ravaged shoulder the best we could do was make a financial contribution so we signed up for wine clubs and bought a car full of produce, mostly of the liquid variety. And as previously mentioned, the Ugg Boot Lady got a couple of sales (four if you count each boot). And we bought Christmas stuff (and chocolate) from the Christmas farm because it’s May already and we don’t want to leave it too late.
Back at the cabin, after a long day supporting the local vintners, it was time to relax in front of the fire and not go to the bar because it had closed at 5.00pm. Incidentally, we did attempt to grab a cleansing ale at about 4.55pm but the lady behind the bar assured me that they closed at 4.45pm. I pointed in the direction of the reception area and reminded her that there was a sign there that said it closed at 5.00pm but she assured me it said 4.45pm. It didn’t and when I went to take a picture of it the next morning for this blog, it had disappeared like so many conservative Twitter accounts.
We had plenty of wine and beer but there was a principle involved here. After dismally failing to invoke the principle it was back to the cabin and the fire. It was then that the CB and I discovered we would make useless arsonists. It only took about four goes and a box of fire starters to get a decent fire going. I should know better because fires burn oxygen and as the oxygen content in the room drops, sleep creeps up. And that was that.
