B2B with Kini: Battling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

My friend Kini's web silence gives me a guilty feeling. His last post - Journey's End - was in June. But then he has legitimate reason for silence - battling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) that brings with it "a new scary set of symptoms" each day. My feeling of guilt has to do with failure to keep alive my end of our blog-line...More...

B2B with K: Journey's End

Suddenly I was unbelievably rich, or that is how it felt. I had a return rail ticket to London from Basrur, the Indian tourist office chief. I had a pile of dollar bills in my top pocket from Eli. I had several hundred francs that Inderjit had boldly collected from his fellow students . . .More. . .

B2B: Down and out in Paris

We were finally in France on the home run to Paris. We discovered why not a single French driver would stop for us and give us a lift. The French car insurance prohibited the driver of a French car from giving strangers a lift and in the event of a claim for injury, would refuse to pay. . . More. . .

B2B with Kini: Doing Venice on empty pocket

We must have waited sitting on our suitcases on the speeding edge of the motorway outside Turin for several hours into the night before a young Italian in a two door sports car who wanted to relieve himself spotted us and pulled up. He was going across only as far as Grenoble and we were welcome to share his car. . .More. . .

B2B: Kini on the move - Yugoslavia

We were planning on staying with my Delhi artist friend Rajendra Dhawan (R.K.Dhawan) in his small one bedroom flat trying to evade the watchful eyes of the landlady who lived downstairs with her mouse like henpecked husband. She exercised her power by doing Gestapo style inspections of the property daily at unexpected hours of day or night. . .More. . .

B2B (on road, in Turkey):Dreaming History

Often at night we had to wait for a bed at the youth hostel which would not take non members until the last moment. I recall both of us at its doors sitting on our respective suitcases, in the hope of a bunk bed for the night. Our foray into the University in search of students to provide company and play host to us just did not work out in Istanbul. . .More . . .

Hobson's Choice in Turkey

We ferried ourselves and our bags from town to town, selling a few Gillette blades I had to some curious youths for cash. I cannot recall how many days or how many hops it took for us to reach Ankara . . .We used the same routine of turning up at the local constabulary and showing our placard identifying ourselves as journalists representing India.... the local cop would take us to the bus station and put us on a bus bound for the next big town and we repeated the routine. . .More . . .

Manna From Heaven

If there was one thing that we learnt during our 40 days on the road to Paris, it was that total strangers could be unbelievably kind and hospitable. whereas people you considered to be your friends and well wishers could turn hard hearted, unkind and inhospitable. . .More. . .

My Gifted Friend Cheryl Braganza

I have been blogging about mid 1960s when I arrived in England after an arduous sometimes frightening hitch-hiking journey by road from India. One of the friendships of that era I remember and cherish was with the gifted poet and painter Cheryl Braganza at Onslow Gardens in South Kensington. I remember her as a petite and beautiful young lady with an exotic background. . .More. . .

The Wrath of Mount Ararat

Perhaps, the Shah was after all a benevolent father like figure, a bit stern perhaps, maybe a slightly self deluded monarch who coveted the Peacock Throne. The markets were heaving with Persian treasures, a noisy Indiana Jones tableau, a bit I thought like Chandni Chowk in old Delhi, without the squalor. . .More. . .

B2B with K: Where we were the day Nehru died

Nehru was, in fact, a tourist attraction in New Delhi. He set aside some 15 minutes daily to meet and pose for photos with common people who came to his residence, Teen Murti House. An official photographer from the Press Information Bureau (PIB) was deputed to take pictures that were catalogued and kept for public browsing in the PIB photo library. . .More. . .

B2B with K : Train ride to Zahedan

The train was packed with Baluchi and Pathan families equipped with kitchen utensils and often goats and sheep. They preferred to squat on the floor and use the seats for their cargo of pots and pans. A sort of grim hostility pervaded our carriage; perhaps I was imagining it. Quetta held its own compelling terrors. A wild West town, I imagined , populated by an ungovernable constituency of gun totting warlords and their entourage. . .More . . .

B2B: A saturation point ?

Change the name of this blog to ‘ramblers park’. The account of 1960s nostalgic journey through NW frontier has reached the saturation limit, says a commenter in my previous post. Far from it, my friend.. I thought we had just begun. . .More. . .

B2B:Kini in Pakistan, in transit

I remember boarding a local shuttle train service to Lahore’s grand station and having to pay for it using our depleting £3 of foreign exchange. . . headed straight for the coffee house which we had heard was a haven of Pakistani intelligentsia, writers and poets and hacks and political rabble rousers. . .had a major surprise in store for us. . . The station master, a larger than life Pathan was pleased to see two Indians and unceremoniously invited us to stay with him and partake of his hospitality. We were to spend two days with him enjoying fine home cooked rich Punjabi cuisine. . .More. . .

B2B: Kini hits a speed-breaker

'We took a 2 days 2 nights train from Quetta to Zahedan in Iran . The tickets were bought for us by a stranger, the station master of Lahore mainline station who put us up, fed us, took us around and gave us a surprise by putting us on this train'. . .More. . .

B2B with K: Clueless in Germany, a tale of two visits

Brian had learnt his first lesson in organising overland tours; that you can’t count on a German in Germany to speak English with an Englishman. I felt somewhat indispensable, and flattered by Germany’s preferential treatment towards a desi. . .More. . .

B2B with K : Name Dropping On Friends

There was the perpetual love hate relationship with the elders of the tribe; Francis Souza who was enviously successful in London, Laxman Pai in Paris, and K.S Kulakarni lording it over Triveni, a modern New Delhi elite gallery funded by the government. The elders never paid Anarkali a visit. . .More. . .

B2B with K: Leaving London, home-bound

Right ho, then,’ was all that my friend Sushil Nangia said as he saw me off outside Waterloo Station on that May morning in 1967. I was leaving London for good, and had chosen to do it overland in a 12-seater van, with six others – two men, three women and a girl child. . . More. . .

Train to Pakistan

Some one had kindly paid for two train tickets from Delhi to Wagah border with Pakistan, from where we assumed we would commence relying on the goodwill of passing lorries and cars to take us deeper and deeper in to our journey and nearer to our destination - London. We were just not prepared for what was in store for us at the India–Pakistan border. . .Read more. . .

Kabul Express in The Hippy, Happier Days

For those who have seen the movie I would like to say that my Kabul visit (in May 1967) predated that of John Abraham and Arshad Warsi by nearly four decades. In the movie they were featured as media men on assignment in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban regime. During my trip I was a journalist in between jobs, heading home after three years in England...More...