Dogster: Death on the Ganges

THE NOBLE CALEDONIANS


Caledonia is the Latin name given by the Romans to the land above the Antonine Wall, north of their troublesome province of Britannia - some pedants call it Scotland. These days the word has fallen into disuse, living on only though a brand name - ‘Noble Caledonia’ - a U.K. based travel group specializing in river cruises.

It’s a very reputable company, which is why sixteen of the twenty-five passengers sailing the Ganges in November 2009 booked through them. These Noble Caledonians were a pretty elderly bunch; two in their mid-eighties, most in their seventies; the youngest a well-preserved sixty-five; six men and ten women with a total age of around one thousand, two hundred and fifty years. By now these people were an endangered species - there’s something about river-cruising that brings them out en masse.

The trip was a beautiful no-brainer: get on the plane at Heathrow, get off in Kolkata; be met and fussed over, transferred to the ship and check-in. All they had to do was unpack then sit on the upper deck, drinking gin and tonic while cruising along the Ganges - fourteen stress-free days later pack up, disembark in Varanasi, fly to Delhi then home.

It’s a shame it didn’t quite turn out that way.

Six couples, a mother, daughter and three singles arrived at Heathrow and checked in separately. By Delhi they were on nodding acquaintance - by Kolkata the group had welded into an exhausted cluster.

At a Kolkata restaurant called Aaheli the gourmets queue for hours, hoping for a table and a glimpse of the food - it’s that good. Lucky Caledonians – it was the scene for tonight’s first group dinner. Along one wall the top table was set for sixteen.

Six husbands sat mute, broad British backs to the room, staring intently at the wall. Six wives chatted away, daintily ordering their Special Thali. All of them were trying to pretend they knew what a thali was.

‘Not too spicy, whatever it is!’

‘No peppers!’

‘Not hot!’

One sweet old dear pulled the waiter aside.

‘My husband and I can’t eat any spices at all.’

Aaheli’s were way ahead of the game. They served their bestest, blandest Bengali; curries for Caledonia with no curry; a tasteless tourist Thali with all the papp and none of the dum.

‘Lovely!’ everybody chorused when asked, ‘very nice.’

Of course, they didn’t like it at all.

‘Rabbit food,’ one husband sniffed in a rare display of raw emotion.

The men were almost entirely mute in public, only speaking when spoken to. They’d settled into docile acquiescence, borne of long experience. Not one of them wanted to be here. Most of their wives were silent too; good, kind people but quiet, restrained - Dogster found it all a little bit dull. Secretly, I think they found themselves a little bit dull, too.

These were the meek waiting for their inheritance. I have it on good authority they are due some considerable real estate, but in this floating world the mild become heir to nothing but the crappy end of the cruise stick. They were all in the grip of forces greater than themselves: the women were bonding.

Run for cover.

Each one of them was vying for the Alpha-Gorgon spot.

aloha dogster, was wondering where you were. glad to see your tales again.

Nine other clients arrived separately in dribs and drabs during the day; two couples, two singles from Australia, a German duo and a solitary American. Dinner at Aaheli was the first time they had seen the other passengers. More to the point, it was the first time the other passengers had seen them.

The Noble Caledonians firmly believed that everybody else on board was crashing their exclusive party; the arrival of every non-C cruiser was cause for animated discussion, instant irritation. With each new face the whispering chorus of disapproval grew - and the more the Caledonians criticized, they more they bonded.

After all, if they were going to have an ‘us’, they needed to create a ‘them’. Fortunately, when you’re a Brit of this ilk nearly everybody on earth is a ‘them’ so there are lots of options to choose from.

The Germans sat on their own at a table for two. A youthful, bright-eyed psychologist and his intelligent, cultured wife looked around at the group, wondering what they’d done to deserve this. Of course, they’d been instantly ex-communicated. Don’t even mention the war.

‘L-l-l-lesbians,’ one sniffed.

Two kind ladies from Melbourne were unaware the blow-torch was upon them.

‘Alien l-l-l-lesbians’ she repeated.

‘Sh-h-h-h! Mother!’

The oldest woman at the table couldn’t give a monkey’s toss whether the alien lesbians heard her. Perhaps she said ‘Austr - alien’ - it’s impossible to know, her vocal pyrotechnics were so belabored. It was rather like having Lady Bracknell to dinner.

Lesbians, as we know, don’t really exist. Women? Can’t be possible. How? This old dame was smarter than that – she’d been around. It was only a pity the girls weren’t black as well – they could’ve scored the pariah trifecta.

Neil and Sue ran a restaurant. They were genuine, good people, salt of the earth from Oz. She was grumpy at dinner, kept rubbing her eye.

‘I’m getting a stye, look.’

She proffered her eye for inspection. Yes, she was. It started when she wiped her eye in the street yesterday – by today it was infected.

‘It’s throbbing, now. It’s getting worse.’

She put her sunglasses back on.

‘You know what it’s like with these things, you think everybody is looking at you...’

It wasn’t just paranoia, she was right. Tsk tsk tsk.

The Australian couples dined together. They had sensibly pre-ex-communicated themselves to save time.

It was time for Dogster’s fall from grace. Six gimlet-eyed matrons looked up as he made his grand entrance. M’lady squinted and reached for her glasses.

‘Who is that man?’

That man was scanned for defects; hit with a full body ultrasound as he walked in the door. His teeth rattled. This was better than surgery.

‘Is this another one?’ someone hissed.

‘He’s the journalist.’

‘Oh dear…’

‘Is he one of us?’

Dog sincerely hoped he wasn’t.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ tsk’d one.

‘Oh-h-h-h…’ oh-h-h-h’d another.

A third just sighed and rolled her eyes.

The mongrel failed muster. He was scanned, judged and found wanting in less time than it took to kill a cat. Damned and ex-communicated before he’d even sat down, the poor mutt was herded off to sit with the other single men – both, alarmingly, called Joe.

One was American, but despite the war, he’d been ex-communicated too. It didn’t take long to work out why. The other Joe was not just ex-communicated; he was already in the running for cruise pariah.

Pariah Joe was sixty-eight but looked a great deal older; he was a man who’d lived on his own for far too long. A mountain with unkempt white hair and a crumpled shirt stared at me, little-boy eyes swimming in thick-rimmed spectacles, a child peering cheerfully from an old man’s face. He was so completely without guile, so utterly naïve I rather liked him.

‘Bought these for twenty bucks in China,’ he said proudly, peering through the bottle-top lenses, ‘I’ve been a-a-all around the world. I got these in Bei-i-i-jing!’

Joe was an innocent abroad – but he was traveling with a different agenda.

He coughed, a lava-filled death hack that cut through the restaurant like a chain saw. I looked over his shoulder at the table full of Caledonians behind him. Tsk tsk tsk. They really didn’t like that cough.

‘Where are you from, Joe?’

‘Straya-a-a-a!’ he cried, ‘greatest country in the world.’

Aussie Joe told me everything in that single nasal bray. He had a very moist mouth and big lips. He liked to talk but tended to spray.

Yankee Joe barely talked at all. He was a short, nuggetty man’s man with a broad Noo Yoick accent, a no-crap kinda guy with too much dough and no friends. His wife was two years dead. He looked much younger but was seventy, an ex-surgeon who, like many of his breed, had developed the ego of a diva. Like all sawbone superstars, he had the compassion of Stalin.

Even getting these few details was a struggle. He sat at the table, resisting any effort at small talk. He resisted big talk as well. As a matter of fact, he resisted any kind of communication. It was very, very odd. Most people make an effort when sitting round a table with strangers. Not Joe. He just sat and drank and when the food came, ate. He appeared to have no social skills. Of course, he did – Joe just couldn’t be arsed using them. He’d ex-communicated everybody long ago.

He only blossomed when he saw a beautiful woman. Then his face softened, he smiled and laughed, suddenly witty and magnetic, the very soul of masculine charm. Joe was an unabashed admirer of the female form - some might say a bit of a lecher. His period of mourning appeared to be over.

Brru-u-u-urppp.

Aussie Joe belched.

Gorgon eyes flashed at the Top Table.

I could sense a ‘tsk tsk tsk’ coming up very soon.

The German couple looked over and smiled.

‘Ooops, ‘scuse my French,’ he said, ‘all this Indian tucker, I’m getting bloated…’

Joe ate everything. Food was food. He just ate it. Brru-u-u-urp. Like those terrible glasses in their thick black frame - he just wore them, prescription or not. His complete lack of sophistication was quite startling to anybody but a fellow Australian, his world view that of a curious, elderly child. Behind those rims and the blather was a kind, good-hearted man from the outer suburbs of Canberra.

Poor Joe. He was too easy a target. He’s already been ex-communicated once, just for being Australian. He was doubly damned because he was eccentric, triply condemned because of that terrible cough - now the belch! In public! Truly, he was going to hell.

Across the way, the Ganga Gorgons appraised the Pariah Table.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ tsk’d one.

I knew it’d come, sooner or later. These women were like a cage of rabbits.

She was a stylishly dressed widow from somewhere small in Surrey, asplash with bright colors and cash. Her arms and neck were weighed down with tastefully chunky jewellery framing a perfect mane of swept-back grey hair. In her village, I’m sure she opened the fete. Good grooming masked her black, vacant heart. She was Lady of the Dead Squire’s Manor.

M’lady had brought her best friends on the cruise with her, a small plump woman with an elderly husband. The two girlfriends were thick as thieves; both married for the money. M’lady already had it - her husband got the message and dropped dead early. Maybe she’d killed him. For women like this murder was nothing.

The girlfriend was an effusive, buxom gossip; star of the amateur theatre group. ‘Oh-h-h-h…’ she gasped theatrically. She was an actress, she claimed, but I rather had my doubts - once a luvvie, always a luvvie, I guess.

A third woman just sighed and rolled her eyes. Not a word needed to be said.

The eye-roller was a silent assassin, a simpering killer in a pastel cardigan. She has no face, just a pixilated blur. From the moment she clapped eyes on Dogster she said not one word to him nor ever looked in his direction again - she knew Dog-Satan when she saw him.

‘Oh, dear…’ said the fourth.

Another well-dressed woman looked him up and down. She was the youngest of the old; black silk and cerulean blue, more chunky jewellery but no husband, just a drinking problem instead. Her face was drawn, as if failure had gathered at the nape of her neck and squeezed. Judging by the expression on her face, one of us had farted.

The pause lengthened as they all stared at the servant’s tables, mutely disapproving, bonding as they located their prey. Every group has to have a whipping boy; everybody needs a pariah dog.

From the silence a single word cut through the air.

‘Augh-stra-a-alians…’

This was failure’s mother. She sat there like a cane toad at the top table, blinking her lack of concern. The old dame was eighty-six with a face like an inflated spaniel; dangle jowls, tiny eyes lost in a meringue of soft flesh bubbling out from her cheek-bones, layering down her face like drapes in a box at the theatre. In her time she’d been a formidable woman but form had long since settled into function - something had shrunk, leaving her spaniel folds exposed.

After that crowning contribution, nothing else was needed. The Queen Mother had managed to conjure up a whole sub-species just from the name of their country.

Aughful. Stra-a-ange. Alien.

Aussie Joe’s pariah status seemed sealed.

Ahhh, but they hadn’t yet met Dogster.

to be continued

So happy you're back! Love the "black, vacant hearts."

Good start, Dogster - lots of colorful characters - setting the tone for what I am sure will be a great tale...

Thanks guys. I see we're all having a rash of italics. lol. Hi Ken, you got in super fast. Did you give hawaiiantraveler my special secret message? It's O.K. to use the tongue.

Yup Craig, all scene setting, that's why I stuck it in as a big wodge. Damn hard to keep 25 characters on the go, I might say. This is going to be a bit of a challenge; I'm trying to see if I can technically hold all the pieces together. If I fail, there'll be nobody left at the end, so I'll know.

moremiles: glad you're in for the ride. I love it when people tell me lines that resonate - otherwise I have no idea of knowing what you pick up on. I just cross my fingers and hope...

Yes! (And a mystery unfolds already. Which one of the 17 Caledonians who boarded at Heathrow didn't make it on to the boat?)

Ah, I've been waiting for this for a long time. I'm sure it will live up to my anticipation!

Where does it say 17?

[Actually, there were 17, but as Yankee Joe was immediately excommunicated and American, for ease of explanation, I made it 16 instead].

She's ferocious. lol.

Kathie, this has been hard to write. It's not a snappy story with easy jokes and cra-a-azy situations. Walking my particular ethical line through the go/no-go zones of the situation means that I've concentrated on elements of the story but left others out entirely.

It's spread over a fourteen day period, too. Gawd - it's only the first night. Settle in. Roast those marshmallows. It's a long way to Varanasi...

Looking forward to more.

I know you've given lots of thought about how to write this. Good job so far . . .

"Six couples, a mother, daughter and three singles arrived at Heathrow and checked in separately."

Ahh, I found seventeen. I've been puzzling over that for an hour. Amazing how you can't see something right in front of your face.

'Six couples, a mother, daughter and three singles

Only Marija would think to actually count them. Dang. I thought I'd changed every reference. 10/10 Eagle Eye Award to Marija.

I think we'll push on just a little further

So here we all are in the one place at the one time; sixteen Caledonians, six Australians, two Germans and mute Yankee Joe, all poised to cruise away up the Ganges to Varanasi.

There was just one small problem. The Mother Ship was dead.

She’d been floating, immobile in the river for a week while the owners quarreled. Finally, just this morning, the poor swan was tugged in to see the ship-doctor. Yup, she still had that broken propeller she’d had for three weeks. Right now she was high in dry-dock somewhere up-river, surrounded by shouting men and mobile phones - the passengers weren’t going anywhere.

Oh, another minor concern - nobody had told them.

Mobile phones at dawn. E-mails and faxes flying. A man called Singh is at the coalface, screaming into his I-phone. More men cluster around the stricken ship. Boiler-suits scurry, experts are summoned, secret deals made - something horrible is happening.

By six a.m. it is apparent that the boat cannot sail. Someone has to tell the passengers. The boss runs for cover leaving poor Sumit, the guide and man in the middle, to explain. He’s sent off on a breakfast run to announce ‘a slight delay’. We’ll be leaving after lunch. This buys another three hours.

‘Errr… we’ll be Kolkata touring this morning,’ Sumit said brightly, thinking very quickly. Off they go.

There’s no let-up at the dry-dock. A state of full emergency now declared, Mr. Singh is shrieking blue murder into a blushing I-phone. Minions dispatch, taxis arrive, mobiles bleep and rage, men in overalls hurtle up and down stairs as if pursued by the Goddess Kali, a grinder sends up a shower of Lord Shiva sparks; Mr. Singh is spewing money, calling his pals in Parliament, pulling every stunt he knows.

Lunch.

‘Yes?’

Twenty-five foreign faces staring.

‘No?’

‘Err…’

The stricken look on Sumit’s face says it all.

I won’t expose you to the relentless horror of the next forty-eight hours. Trust me, it’s boring and you don’t want to know. Just imagine that two days of utter confusion has gone by. Better still, go sit in your bathroom, lock the door and beat your head against the basin till it bleeds.

Go. Stop. Stay. Leave. Now? No? Off? On? Briefing, secret meeting, mobiles shrieking. Don’t know. Go? Yes? Stop. Stay here. E-mails firing, missing wiring, intrigue - sabotage. On? Off? Stop? Go? Don’t know. Yes? No. Definite? Certain! Maybe.

Dogster heard a cultured voice hissing into his I-phone.

‘This is costing me a fortune! Just lie. Say anything and get them on the boat!’

He looked around to see who it was. To his complete surprise, there was no-one there.

Somewhere in the late stages of the ordeal, frazzled passengers and damaged ship were united. They sat fat at Ballyghat and waited for a very long time. The stye in Sue’s eye grew bigger by the minute.

Tick tick, tick tick…

Brru-u-u-urppp.

At least we knew which cabin Aussie Joe was in.

Every minute the engines remained idle was a minute less the boat could sail.

Tick tick, tick tick…

In her upper deck cabin the Lady of the Dead Squire’s Manor was composing the first draft of what would soon become a lengthy letter of complaint. Next door her luvvie friends unpacked their stash of duty-free liquor.

Tick tick, tick tick…

The less the boat could sail, the less chance of making it to the destination. Everybody knew that, except for the passengers. They were on board and, as far as they were concerned, their cruise had begun.

‘Bwaawww, bwwa-w-rgh, India-h-h-h,’ one husband brayed, raising his whisky at the skyline.

‘Wa wa wa,’ the others muttered,’ very good, bwa-a-ah.’

Not one of them noticed that the boat was not moving. Most sunk enough wine at dinner to kill a small cow - they were cactus by ten, by eleven the boat was deserted.

Below decks it was a very different scene. Mobiles erupted like alarm-clocks, multiple Singhs screeched orders, secret prayers flew into the night – while the Gods considered their reply, a troupe of lawyers was preparing theirs. The boat remained trapped at Ballyghat. It wasn’t just the engine that was broken.

It’s a long way to Varanasi…

More eventually, maybe, definate, dunno. Yes, no, Stop, go. Sit on the boat and wait. We all had to.

Ah, yes, I will return to read more!! You don't need photos when you can write like this!

Ah, a captive audience... both them and us.

What great dramatis personae. But please, don't let our Hero Mongrel's antics be overshadowed by those of lesser creatures. We have a Dog on this boat! Eagerly awaiting cast off...

A boatload of characters come alive for us, what fun. I'm sort of waiting for someone to get murdered, Agatha Christie-like.

What is it about you and cruises?

The great thing about river-cruises is that you get to extraordinarily out-of-the-way places very easily indeed. The only bad things about river-cruises are the other passengers. They are a specific, quite dreadful breed. The pax I describe could have been on any one of a dozen cruises - it's just that on this one, they were in the majority. Usually, they don't come pre-bonded - which gives a natural group-dynamic a chance.

Maybe I will murder someone. I certainly felt like it.

>>>They are a specific, quite dreadful breed.<<<

Any relation to some of my rather horrid -- but, yes, wealthy (kindly die soon) -- Scottish relatives?! (One of many reasons I went to live/work in Asia.)

Now, warm Sunday morning greetings to you dogster, before departing a rather cherished Hong Kong business travel hotel for a flight back 'home' (guess the airline), and rumour has it, doggie dude, you're going to commence flying business class, Singapore Airlines, ex-Melbourne!!! If so, I (we) salute you. (My primary reason for posting on fodor's -- marching orders from 'the better half' and all.)

Truth be known, I don't read every word of your reports. (So hope to never, ever do a 'boat cruise' -- fear of being trapped with those Scottish relatives and remain rather partial to a rather specialized high altitude climbing forum and sqtalk; big surprise.) What I do read is wonderful. (But just between us, dogster: a 'couple of Girls' are putting out astounding trip reports over on sqtalk, SQ R pics and all; no bias from me.)

Keep up the good work dogster, and all the best to all 17 of you in family friendly fodorland, from a rather productive/fun ~ 96 hours in Hong Kong. (And thanks for considering/flying SQ.)

macintosh (robert)


hey, hey, cripple creek ferry/

(n. young)

The only thing Scottish about these cruisers was the name of the company they booked with. They were all British to their bootstraps. Not old-school-tie, not at all. These people aspire to old-school-tie. All they got was old.

I am indeed considering SQ, robert. I cannot spend one more night on an angle in Thai business. That lovely big mega-thing flies to Melbourne now. I might try that out.

Thank you for your kind words, my friend. Really, it's never necessary to read everything. Just dip in and out. Everything is just a moment in time. It can link to another moment - or not link. As you choose.

Doggie- a joy for the panda's eyes. Your prose is poetic. I laughed out loud so many times, Beth kept saying. "What are you reading?". She was not surprised. Please keep us informed.

One question, "Does it actually count as a cruise, if the boat is not moving?" I thought the notion of cruising entailed motion. Wrong again.

I'm trying to pick out the one passenger with which I can identify most, not counting our fasir chronicler.

Yes, I thought this might keep you diverted.

They are still fixing the engines so it'll be an hour or so yet. Nobody knows what's happening but Mr. Singh has deserted the ship. I heard three blasts on a whistle before.

There's a comfortable chair outside your cabin. You can smoke cigars there with your feet up on the railing, looking out at the Ballyghat Bridge. The local spirits are terrible, but they're free and do the job.

"She has no face, just a pixilated blur".

I think I know these people. They make me run screaming. Or at least wanting to scream and be very elemental and earthy.

Good - I've been waiting for dogster to (re)start chronicling the cruise of chaos. From his description of the cast of characters it was doomed from the start. Yet another confirmation that I should stay far, far away from boats.

WEST BENGAL


At eleven-thirty p.m. on day four of what was once a fourteen day cruise the engines kicked into life. Everybody involved breathed a heavy sigh of relief and had a beer. Vishnu, Mr. Singh’s man on the spot, roared with delight. With the captain and the crew finally in charge, the ship shuddered and sailed into the night.

They have a schedule to catch-up – and there lies the nub. They can’t do it. Nothing, not even the petulance of the owners, can make the Ganges shorter.

According to company statistics, even with a reduced itinerary, we have six hundred miles to sail in seven days - that’s just under a thousand kilometers. In broad terms, we have to average one hundred and forty km a day.

Sailing upstream, against the current, the boat averages 8.5 km an hour - at best. So, we must sail for nearly seventeen hours a day simply to cover the distance.

For the first four hundred kilometers in West Bengal, we can sail anytime, night and day – but after Farrakah, we’re in Bihar; there the boat can only sail in daylight hours. Daylight is from 4.30 am – 6.00 pm; that’s fourteen-ish hours each day.

Something’s gotta give.

‘We are sailing smooth at an average speed of 8.5 km/h. Passengers disembarked at a place called Kalna this afternoon for an excursion and it was enjoyed by everyone.

The food on board seems OK so far. The breakfast is average. I think the quality of the jam could be improved so I will look into that for the next cruise. Lunch was quite good. The food was good but the service could be improved. These are all just small operational things though and not as serious as I was expecting!’

The traditional - and only - tourist excursion in Kalna is a rickshaw hurtle through town to the Nava Kailash temple complex then across the road to the Lalji, Krishnachandra and Siddeswari temples. These temples are covered with wondrous terracotta reliefs. Most groups give up after an hour - I’d like to think they were overwhelmed but that’s not true; not everybody is as into bas-relief as me.

Once sated with terracotta, the punters are scooped up by and paraded back down main-street to be dumped at the wharf, just meters from the ship. They can visit a whole Indian town and not once set foot in it. As far as everybody was concerned, this was brilliant tourism. In many ways it is. The boats swan in, disgorge, wait, swallow and sail off into the evening. Utterly non-intrusive – a tourist purist would be proud.

This is the third time the Dog has been to Kalna. He spent fourteen days cruising up and down the Hoogli mid ‘08. This time he decided to walk. After a long, interesting street in which Dogster was easily the most interesting object, after a lengthy chat and a cup of chai with his latest, bestest Kalna friends, by the time he got to the temples his viewing time was up. Poor stupid sod didn’t know till a kindly sweeper tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Go! All go!’

They’d left Dogster behind.

Hurtling along the main street of Kalna in a rickshaw, laughing like a drain, Dog could hear the ship’s hooter.

Bwa-a-a-awpp-p-p, Bwa-a-a-awpp-p-p.

Hu-u-urry U-u-u-p-p-p!

Of course, the Caledonians were lined up at the railing on the top deck, tut-tutting at his vulgar tardiness as he turned up ten minutes late - just another reason to loathe him.

Don’t look at them Dog, you’ll be turned into stone.

We’d been ashore for exactly ninety minutes.

‘Quick, quick, rush back! Hurry, hurry! Tsk tsk tsk.’

We sailed on up the river for the rest of the day, continued all night and didn’t stop till after lunch at Murshidabad, one hundred and forty kilometers away.

He was in the Doghouse all day.

A very curious phenomenon was taking place on the top deck.

Two lines of eight deckchairs faced the river bank on either side. In between them was a nest of couches for conversation and coffee tables, a kind of non-reserved space. By some unspoken agreement each Caledonian couple took charge of two deckchairs. The singles were slotted in between them. This was the Claiming Of Chairs. No words exchanged; no towels nailed to the furniture, everything understood. The same couples went to the same deckchairs every day, without fail. If they were not there, the deckchairs remained empty.

The prime spots were two sets of chairs either side of the captain’s cabin, the only ones facing forward. The Lady of the Manor spread her ample behind on two of them, piled the table high with books and settled in for the duration. Her luvvy pals did the same on the other side. The Australians and the Germans hovered down the back or in the sun; out of sight and out of the Caledonian mind.

The Nobles took their rightful place in the dress circle, limply surveying the passing scene. They beckoned a colored lad to bring them libation, patronized him gently with a distant sniff of encouragement then settled back into the silence, positively bovine, a symphony in pastel. Lined up like exhibits in a wax-museum, the Caledonian circus waved languidly to the packs of screeching children lining the banks.

This is a new occurrence along the Hoogli. Every village we passed became a scream of ‘Bye bye! Bye bye!’ chanted by every child in the village. We were their signal to run riot. They’d appear in marauding packs on the riverbank screeching this single phrase over and over again.

‘Bye bye!’ shouted the tourists, ‘bye bye!’ and waved as hard as they could. The flesh under their arms wobbled ferociously, like the gobble under an angry turkey’s neck.

‘Bye bye,’ screamed the children.

‘Bye bye!’ shouted the tourists, ‘bye bye!’ and waved as hard as they could. Wobble, wobble, wobble.

‘Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye,’ screeched the children. It’s only cute the first dozen times. One little boy ran down to a rock, dropped his pants and wiggled his brown arse at the tourists.

‘Bye bye bye bye!’

‘Oh,’ said M’Lady.

Behind him another ten or so lads were holding the forefinger of each hand in the air. ‘Bye bye, bye, bye, bye bye!’ they screamed, dancing with feral joy, all the time giving us the multiple finger.

‘Oh,’ said her friend, ‘dear, oh dear.’

They went back to their books and refused to look up, ever again.

The Hazuardi Palace in Mushidabad is a vast, inflated structure, a Doric confection on the banks of the Ganges. It has nine hundred doors and one hundred and fourteen rooms, all packed with Indian oddities. Cruise the upstairs galleries and you’ll find a row of portraits; the Nawabs of Murshidabad. I’ve met the present day Nawab - he looks exactly the same. Not something to aspire to, really – his great-grandfather was a famously horrible man.

There’s lots of things to do in Murshidabad: I love the Katgola and Nasirpur Palaces, wonderful crumbling ruins, the Adinath temple, the Nizamat Imambura, the chai stands along the river, the bling and brick-a-brack stalls along the road. I’ve watched a Bollywood movie being filmed at Wasi Manzil, been watched in turn by a thousand locals, staring at the boat…

Not today. We were in and out of the Palace in sixty minutes, knocked off the Katra Masjid mosque in half an hour, zoomed around in a rickshaw and were back on the boat two hours later.

I looked at Sumit.

‘It’s a crime…’

He knew what I meant.

We sailed on.

Well, at least we're moving... T.B.C.

‘Bye bye bye bye bye bye!’

These kids were starting to grate. Every village, without fail.

‘Bye bye bye bye!’

At least the screaming broke the silence, that black shroud of British reserve that gripped the top deck. In my long history of river-cruises, it’s a first. A world of utter calm, blissful quietude; twenty people sprawled on the top deck and not a word spoken amongst them, gathered there like Quakers on vacation.

They have no questions to ask of anybody, nothing new they need to enquire about, no wisdom they need to consult. Certain of their superiority, they felt no need to doubt or even discuss. They read, do crosswords or sleep, drool running down their chins. Those not snoring discretely guzzle gin and show absolutely no interest in India at all. One has brought her quilting, one her knitting, another the auto-biography of David Niven. Several dog-eared books of puzzles do good trade. Occasionally a wild game of mahjong breaks out, even a brief conversation - but words are generally not required, nor any but the mildest stimulation.

They sat in self-satisfied silence, occasionally glancing at the scenery, at this point in proceedings, happy to glimpse a cormorant. Live people scare them. Only grubby children and suitably picturesque poverty attract their eye, provided it's from a safe distance.

I couldn’t stand it. The terrible silence hit me like a marshmallow brick – it was overpowering, like entering a different, parallel world. Surreal. I’d stand at the top of the stairs looking around. Nothing moved. The only living thing was the top-deck Bongo, trapped on duty behind the bar, hoping for an order.

I could survive for just minutes at a time then had to rush away. I couldn’t breathe; it was the most claustrophobic open-air location in the world. Some odd glitch of group-dynamics had created this; some strange rule was holding it in place.

It was all about a woman with thin, dyed blonde hair.

She was entirely ordinary in every way except for one pertinent fact – she had cancer. She was not shy about playing the tragedy card. She came on this cruise because the brochure said: ‘Note that cabins do not have TVs or phones…’ She interpreted this to mean no noise at all – anywhere. Her cancer required that all passengers comply with her regime of silence, the implication being that if they spoke, she might die.

Well, there’d certainly be no worries with Dogster. She was another of the pixilated strangers he shared the boat with. She never once talked to him, never once acknowledged his presence with more than a withering stare, made certain that she never shared a table with him - let alone a smile.

But she had cancer. Cut her some slack…

See? As soon as you get into the topic, you’re damned as a hard-hearted bastard. Actually, she was a certified Mrs. Beeton bully who’d managed to turn passive-aggression into an art form. Her cancer just meant she could add ‘martyr’ to her list of accomplishments. She seethed with something secret, angry at herself for falling ill, angry at an unthinking world for standing by and letting her, angry at the simple pleasures others took for granted, holding firm to what she knew. She preferred to gaze on nice things, picturesque rural activity, preferably through glass. Life should be one long Andre Rieu concert, not the grubby parade of Bihar that presented itself on the river bank.

‘There’s nothing noble about dirt,’ I heard her say, ‘none of them wash.’

She’d sit and read, pale and pastel in the afternoon sunlight. If any noise other than the permitted ones occurred, she’d sigh. If the disturbance continued, she’d sigh again. A third imposition warranted a slight turn of the head, a laser glance over her reading glasses and then a return to her book.

Should none of these red flags be noticed, next move was the slow burn. This involved a sigh then the book was lowered very, very slowly to the lap. Her tragic, martyred head turns very slowly. The sweetest of smiles...

‘Would you mind...?’

The upper deck reverie was only disturbed by Raja, the highly enthusiastic wildlife guy. When sailing, his job was to stand up on the upper deck, scanning the horizon. Every now and then, he’d shout out a sighting, a Brit or two would rouse themselves from torpor and trundle to the rail for a cormorant viewing.

‘Dolphin! Dolphin! Two o-clock!’

The four frisky dolphins got a cheer. They were frisky and Gangetic which, if you’re a British tourist, is a surprisingly big deal. They look pretty much like other dolphins to me, only smaller.

Raja and Raja alone was allowed to break the code of silence. The Gorgons liked him – even Cancer joined in. When not scanning, shouting or sharing his binoculars, Raja was the enthusiast. He was relentlessly upbeat about everything, his perfect teeth and perfect English melding in a perfect storm of lavish charm. He could lie like a robber’s dog, meant not a word of anything he said but was so expert, so skilled in the ways of the foreign fools that one could only admire his consummate skill.

There’s only so much a naturalist can do from the deck of a moving boat. He pulled every stunt he could. Those Gangetic Dolphins may well have been crew members with fins strapped to their backs.

After whizzing past Jangipur, we cruised up a long canal section to the Farakka Barrage, arriving promptly at lunchtime on a Sunday, when the Lock is closed.

We got there eighteen hours early; docked at the Lock and sat on our watery bum, forbidden to leave the boat, trapped till nine am tomorrow.

Farraka is four hundred river km from Kolkata. We’ve already covered over a third the cruising distance. We have spent five hours ashore in three days. Five of eighty hours on the boat; that’s 6% of our time.

Me? I'm bouncing off the walls already. I can tell what’s coming up.

We’ve gaily sailed past Serampore, Barrackpore, Chandernagore, Chinsura, Hugli, the extraordinary ISKCON temple at Mayapur, the tree-temple at Nabadwip, the brass works in Matiari, the site of the great battle of Plassey, the crumbling Khushbagh and Nashipara Palaces outside Murshidabad, the Katgola Palace…

Only Sumit and I know. Each time we’d chug past another wonderful thing, we’d lock eyes and sigh.

‘Oh, Sumit, this is a crime…’

We were going to do the same right through Bihar.

more tomorrow-ish. I'll see if anybody's still reading.

I'm still reading.

Hey Dogster,
Hope you don't mind if I listen here from the back row. I always love a good story and you do have that gift. This one has a lot of potential....
Aloha!

I'm reading too!

A diversion of the highest level. I'm always amazed at the degree of restraint that you demonstrate whil having such keen observations. Fortunately, I am nearly insensate at my most perceprinve and the slights are ignored. On those rare occassions in which I get an inkling that I'm not the most charming furry creature they've ever met. I have been known to upset the apple cart.

Please keep me amused, forever.

I'm still here.

Yes, Gpanda, you'd think they'd know automatically they were in the presence of remarkable men, instead they fail to see our magnificence. How can this be? Our magnificence is a self-evident fact. Not, it appears to everybody.

That restraint you admire comes after a great many drafts. I can assure you it doesn't come naturally.

I'm delighted that you are still here Craig, mj, patty. Of course you're welcome hawaii.

Tomorrow Bihar.

Still here; still being vicariously claustrophobic.

Do you agree about the quality, or lack thereof, of the jam?

I remember you were so excited about the Gangetic dolphins that you raced to an internet cafe in Bihar to share the experience with us:

I don't think I can locate a copy of Conde Naste right now. I'm surrounded by water and men with guns. [No, it's not Alcatraz]. At the moment my only options are a bullet or a Gangetic Dolphin. Given the way this adventure is turning out, I'd prefer the bullet.

As always, enjoying the ride...

BIHAR


Up, up. We are floating up to Bihar.

Bihar is the third most populated state of India. It’s the big empty bit in the middle, up the top, just below Nepal. Eighty-three million Indians live there. Think about those numbers. Eighty-three million; that’s four times the population of Australia, the entire population of Vietnam or Germany – all living in a place I’d barely hard of. Nearly ninety percent of Bihar's eighty-three million live in extreme rural poverty. Sixty percent of them are below twenty-five. Bihar has the lowest literacy rate in India, just forty-seven percent. It’s a recipe for disaster already, just on the stats.

Up, up. Important looking men in crisply starched shirts stare down at me as the ship looms up, up from West Bengal.

Ten minutes later I’m looking down at them, waving their goodbyes to the skipper. The huge steel gates swung open, engines kicked in, the propellers whirred and we slid into Bihar, pushing gently past the bodies of two bloated cows, waiting for their turn in the lock.

‘Bihar has become a byword for the worst of India - of widespread and inescapable poverty, of corrupt politicians indistinguishable from the mafia-dons they patronize, of a caste-ridden social order that has retained the worst feudal cruelties…’ a survey by leading magazine The Economist has found.

‘It is often joked that, in much of India, people do not cast votes so much as vote castes,’ the London-based weekly said. The 14-page survey, which speaks of India's economy reviving up, has a separate section on Bihar, ‘an area of darkness’ where many Indians are being left behind.

It mentions Naxalite terrorist attacks and chronic misrule that has led to crumbling infrastructure, collapsing education and health systems and evaporating law and order. Quoting a study which covered 69 of the most disadvantaged of India's 602 districts - of which 26 are in Bihar - it said Bihar's biggest growth industry is kidnapping for ransom.

‘Bihar has a claim to be the ancient heart of India,’ The Economist said, ‘these days, it is seen as the armpit.’

<grey>Press Trust of India New Delhi, February 25 2004</grey>

We arrived at the concrete factory around 4.00. Across a wasteland of dirt stood a tower, a hut, a moving belt and a scene out of the Bible. A hundred men balancing sacks of concrete mix on their heads were walking in single file towards a corrugated iron structure with open sides. A conveyor belt stretched from the top of the building to the ground outside. Everything was covered with fine grey dust – when the wind blew in the right direction, so were we. Rajmahal was sepia.

Passengers poured off the boat, just as eager as I was to get out and walk. This was the first time we’d been allowed off in forty-five hours. Nobody cared that it was sundown, nobody cared what there was to see – all everybody wanted to do was get off.

‘Where are we?’

‘I don’t know?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What is here?’

Whatever it was, it was a kilometer along a long dusty road, through a gauntlet of astonished locals. We were the hottest show in town. The passengers walked in twos and three, whispering amongst themselves. The group took a left and inspected an architectural object of importance that appeared, to the casual eye, to be a big empty thing mostly fallen over.

Rajmahal became capital of Subah Bangla when Shah Shuja Mughal, Viceroy and second son of the Emperor Shahjahan set up his court there in 1639. The prince built a famous stone palace called Sang-i-dalan for his own residence with an attached Diwan khana. I didn’t know what a Diwan khana was either.

Well, whatever it was, I think I was there.

I couldn’t follow the historical significance; once again my grasp of seventeenth century Bangla history was found lacking; my secret pig-ignorance showed. The site ended up as yet another example of awful ancient archaeology; some non-descript brick walls and a vaulted structure, a dome for the Diwan being kept alive by a surly group of bricklayers, a garden at the side and two large rubbish tins being shagged by plaster penguins. It was all very tidy and really, I didn’t care. I was out of jail.

Just across the road was a rocky hill overlooking the Ganges. On top was a ruined something or other having a garden put around it. I’ve forgotten what this was. Two youths were sitting under a tree at the top, listening to a stream of tinny Bolly-pop from a mobile phone; a glimpse of a world a long way away. Rajmahal is a country town now. Time had been no kinder to their prospects than it had been to Shah Shuja’s Sang-i-dalan.

They looked up at me like I was lunch, delivered to this unlikely spot by a gracious Hindu god. Perhaps I would be kidnapped. After forty-four hours on board the boat, it seemed like a damn good option. I decided to sacrifice two cigarettes to keep ahead of the game. That worked. I was not abducted. Of course, I already had been, the minute I got on the boat.

Heavy-hearted, Dogster dawdled as the others clambered aboard. It was already inky-black, only the ship’s floodlights to show the way. A dozen soldiers were standing looking fierce on the bank. He shook everybody’s hand, paying special respect to their captain.

‘I’m a lucky man,’ he said, hoping that flattery works on a man with a gun, ‘I am one hundred percent safe. I have the bravest men in Bihar on my side.’

By the time this was translated into Bhojpuri, Magadhi, Maithili , Angika, Urdu and all the other Bihari variations on a Hindi theme, Dog was a very popular foreigner. More booty from Australia was shared, his bony shoulders clapped in a manly manner and he was subjected to the multiple re-shaking of hands - then Dog went back to where all popular foreigners have to go: onboard the bloody boat.

They guarded us all night lest we become a growth industry. A Pandaw full of rich passengers would be a fine hijack prize. I would kidnap us if I was a Bihari hijacker. Best not to go into details here - the walls have ears. Those ferocious soldiers liked their job so much, four of them stayed on board till the end of the cruise, sitting quietly in the prow, white teeth in the darkness, cradling their machine guns, ready to strike.

There are a lot of policemen in Bihar.

The next day, another twenty-five of their finest had come to Bateshar Sthan, a tiny river town near Bhagalpur, two days sail from West Bengal. Some dressed in khaki, a beret and a rifle; some dressed in khaki, peaked hat, rifle and a shining leather belt with a holster for their revolver. The scariest dressed in army camo gear with the black scarf of a killer wrapped around their heads. They had the rifle, the belt, the revolver and death sunk deep in their eyes.

The passengers filed off the boat one by one, crossed a precarious wooden plank, then clambered up a muddy bank about three meters high to the lower steps of the ghats. The Ganges was low in November. Someone had pulled the plug out.

Twenty-four timid foreigners gathered in a huddle, surrounded by the police. They stayed together, looking neither left nor right. Eye-contact with the natives was to be avoided. Each of the surrounding policemen carried a stick. A policeman’s stick in Bihar is much the same as a policeman’s stick anywhere in India - about a meter long, bamboo and hard. The group made their way up nineteen steep steps as a crowd of one hundred and fifty-three people watched them in complete silence.

As the first of them made it half-way the khaki policemen began to clear a path to the road. They slashed out wildly, beating everybody in sight with their sticks, screaming Bihari threats and abuse. The crowd scattered just out of reach of the swinging bamboo, leaving an empty space for the tourists to thread their way through, en route to the fleet of cars lined up along the bank.

The Bihar Tourist Authority certainly likes to look after its guests.

Holding their breath lest they breathe the same air as India, unsmiling, eyes downcast, the passengers made their way through a gauntlet of blank faces to the vehicles. Once inside, with the windows wound up, doors firmly locked, a gun-toting goon guarding each car, they relaxed. They were safe, a wall of glass between them and Bihar.

Just one passenger held back. Oh, it was that Dogster man, of course. He was making friends, smiling broadly and wiggling his head, threading through the crowd trying to undo the damage. The Queen Mother’s daughter curled her lip. That loathsome man was trouble.

Whistles blew. Three policemen came crashing through the onlookers, wielding those bamboo sticks to rescue him from Bihar. Children were crushed. One camo-wallah stood either side of the Dog, another stood behind and together they marched him rapidly to the last car - so much for cultural relations.

The motorcade took off, horns blaring, ploughing first through the crowd, then along the single street that ran by the river. We turned inland and reached the edges of Bhagalpur. That didn’t take long. We saw a blur of chai stalls, a glimpse of ragged children, the surprised faces of mothers with babies strapped to their breast, tumble-down shacks and a cow.

Just outside town there was a local market; vegetables, fish and meat piled high in clumps either side of the narrow dirt road. There were no shops, just a space on the ground for each merchant and their produce. The road was full of people doing what they always do at this time of the day, buying, selling, looking, walking, staring at the food, eyes lit up with hunger. Then the cars crashed through the lot, blaring their horns, spraying dust and insult over everything, everyone, everywhere.

Beep, beep, wahh wahh, scatter, run. Dog saw a hundred faces glaring at him through the glass. Dust was flying everywhere by the time his car roared through, covering the fruit, the meat, the fish, the people, his heart.

The motorcade continued into the countryside, multiple horns blasting out their message of importance. Time was short. It was five p.m. The sun was coming down. The very special white gods were on a mission, a pack of foreign ruins off to see the Bhagalpur ones.

The Vikramshila Mahavihar Antichak must once have been quite some place. Alas, time has taken its toll - nothing but foundations remained. Occasionally a column protruded a foot above the ground, mostly not. In the centre was a square flat thing with a hole in it that may have been either a stupa or a pile of old bricks stacked one on top of another.

We were led to some big brick thing in the gloom. It was so murky I couldn’t really tell what it was - a wheat-silo, perhaps? I never found out. There were deep holes in the forecourt that I think the guide called The Wells of Death. Somewhere inside, beneath the lolly wrappers and dead rats, was Paradise. I thought of hurling myself in – but decided to stay alive, just to piss the Caledonians off.

By now it seemed like midnight. The sky was Bihar black. We were led away, stumbling over flagstones, groping our through the dark having ‘seen’ what the schedule dictated.

Half way home the motorcade ground to a halt. Midway up a prickly palm tree a terrified child clung on for his life. A policeman shone a feeble torch on the poor thing, shivering and scared in a T-shirt and shorts. Guns were trained on him, forcing him to climb higher and higher. Quite why, I never found out. I have no idea what the other passengers thought. They were leaning from their windows, afraid to get out of their cars. When the poor sod was allowed back on solid ground I walked over to him and extended my hand.

‘Bravo,’ I said, ‘good work.’

He stood blinking in the darkness, terrified, eyes shining wildly in the headlights of the motorcade.

‘Shake his hand!’ someone shrieked in Hindi. Policemen drew their revolvers. Trembling, he obeyed.

Flash! Flash! I was immortalized by a local reporter.

Dogster’s brief fame was little more than a product of the Bihar Tourist Authority’s enthusiasm for their newest co-production. He was white, foreign and friendly – more importantly, he was there.

The next day, on the front page of the Bhagalpur News, was a picture of the Dog and the Monkey. The boy’s face remained fused in terror. When the newspaper appeared on deck the clucking of tongues from jealous Brits was like a horde of cicadas on speed.

‘Who is this man?’ they hissed.

T.B.C. tomorrow

‘There’s nothing noble about dirt,’ I heard her say, ‘none of them wash.’

Although my knowledge of India is limited, I saw Indians washing all the time, in rivers, lakes, and town pumps.

Well, of course they do Indiana.

I know that, you know that - but she just thought they were grubby animals - a sub-species. Reality was not to intrude on her firmly held assumptions. The lower she could place them on the social scale, the higher up she felt.

I'm following along here. While I am fascinated by what you write, I find myself even more fascinated by what is left unwritten.

I can still picture the crew members with fins attached swimming alongside your vessel and the ferocious Bihar Tourist Authority keeping you all safe!

Priceless. I can feel the poeple seethe. Tell me it woldn't be great to read this and then read a trip report from a Caledinian. The mind-body problem in narrative form. Sensory data as a wide variable. I am privileged to read Dogster's take on the events.

loving this....thank you.

Continuing to read......

I'm here reading too.... Both fascinated and horrified, but waiting for the next events.

I am floating along also

Thank you for sharing your own slice of life by telling your traveling stories -- your beatiful writing is so very compelling and entertaining. Love it!! You should take it all and put it together and publish it in a book -- it is way better than the aweful "Eat, Pray, Love" nonsense that was a best seller.

Ditto about "Eat, Pray, Love."

Convulsed with laughter, I'm holding my breath & hoping for tales of Les Patterson & the lecherous Yank at Khajuraho; impaled by the gimlet eye of Lady Bracknell, while the ladies- in-waiting simper & steal glances between their fingers.

Thanks for an engrossing & most enjoyable read, Dogster.

Dogster, have read your amusing reports, thanks to Bob and Andy. I will be very disappointed if you do not make the Boston GTG. They gave you a special tribute one year.

Yeah Dogster! Come to the Boston GTG and we'll arrange a special cruise on the Charles. There's no way any Caledonians can compare to the sniffing and judgement rendered in our unique blend of Yankee Blue Blood and Irish Catholicism, with a tad of Italian and jewish guilt. . It's what makes Boston the Hub of the Universe. You will fit right in.

So glad you are back! Gosh, I thought it was me when I had dinner in the same room as the people from the cruise at Governors in Kenya. I must have been the pariah even without a burp. They do make the room cold even in hottest Africa.

Gpanda, just last night I came across this: a journal of the maiden voyage from one who was there. This was one month earlier, exactly the same trip. The two itineraries bear no relation to one another. But if you want to click around, you'll see his pics of what I'm talking about. The two cruises could not have been more different.

http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/KPS/pages/conferences/india2009/ganges/ganges.html

Notice the food poisoning issues.

Thanks for all those comments: I'm amazed you're sticking with this. I know it's long and entirely inappropriate to a format like this - but this is what popped out. Like Kathy says, it's the bits I'm not writing about... I'm creeping along a fine line here, one step left or right and I'm cactus.

Actually, Kathy, I had to write the whole thing, go to whoa - then go back and cut half of it. Once I realized there was sufficient material to proceed, I could focus on the excursions - which I paid for [no moral issues] and the other passengers [no freebie ethical issues there]. I could focus on historical events: [the boat was broken, we were delayed.. etc] and statistics - because they are fact.

As for expressing an opinion - we-e-ell, that's where the fun starts. That's where the issue of 'biting the hand that feeds' comes up. We've canvassed that so I know you know where I'm coming from - I'll be interested to hear your conclusions at the end as to whether you think I trod this particular minefield with grace.

I'm along for the ride. Thanks for the time well spent in writing it and allowing me time equally well spent in reading it.

Just arrived and lapping it up.

BIHAR BLUES


‘When is the shopping going to start?’

The Queen Mother’s daughter was completely drunk, a martyr to the daily special. A blush burnt through her make-up, that slur-r-r clung fast to her tongue; those sharp eyes had long lost focus, retreating to safety in a distant, dullard stare.

‘Where are the shops?’ she said.

We were moored at Munger, a tiny speck on a desolate flood plain in the middle of the armpit of India. The town’s chief claim to fame is the ferocity of the ongoing Naxalite insurgence; rebels keep blowing things up and decapitating their opponents. Pfft.

Mere Maoists didn’t cut the mustard with the plastered Princess - she wanted shopping and she wanted it now.

‘But are there shopsh-h-here?’

Each evening in the saloon, the barman would present his Cocktail de Jour. Normally this is time for the daily briefing but as there was so little activity, the briefings petered pretty fast. To compensate, the barmen were given instruction to ramp up the Daily Specials.

Today’s was ‘Munger Madness’, a killer concoction of local whisky and Diesel fuel.

‘Well, yesh I will, thank you so much,’ she said, swiftly accepting another one.

Mum sat, entirely unconcerned, squeezed beside her tipsy daughter. She had her hands full with Aussie Joe. Everybody took a turn, even the Caledonians.

Aussie lacked the ability to tell if people wanted him around. He was relentlessly affable, a sweet bumbling giant who would plonk himself down and talk to anyone, riffing on topics only known to himself. In his wonderful simplicity, he assumed that everybody thought the same way as he did, saw the world through his eyes, heard the same tune he had running through his head. He babbled and giggled, never short for words, blissfully ignorant, a figure of fun. The Caledonians rolled their eyes and tolerated.

He was leaning over the low table, spraying his enthusiasms broad and wide.

‘Straya-a-a,’ he was saying, ‘most beau-u-udiful country in the world.’

‘So why on earth aren’t you there then, Joe?’ she hissed, only half-humoring him,

‘It’s a big wo-o-orld,’ he said sadly, ‘gotta see it before I kark it.’

All I could hear was luvvie rabbits.

‘Tsk tsk tsk, da-a-arling, tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk…’

Her two companions listened and tsk’d as the Lady of the Manor let rip about the trip, incandescent with repressed anger. No wonder; for the three of them, she’d forked out close to twenty-five grand. That’s a lot of dead squire. Her face was the Rock of Gibraltar.

‘Tsk, I know, my sweet but we’re having a wonderful time - aren’t we, Darling?’

She tapped on her husband’s arm. ‘Da-a-arling…?’

Da-a-arling was already in the grip of a madness of his own. He’d been Munger’d too.

‘Wha…?’ he said, coming back to earth, ‘wha…?’

‘Good time, good time? Are we having a good time, Darling…?’

‘Oh yes, wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Mah-vellous.’

‘Yoga tomorrow!’ the actress said to the bishop, ‘you’ll be spiritually cleansed.’

Darling wasn’t sure he had a spirit left to cleanse. After eighty-five years it had rotted away. Why couldn’t he just die and get it over with…

‘Bring me more Madness,’ he muttered, ‘quick.’

Yankee Joe was sitting quietly beside them. He was strangely attentive to the widow in her distress. His face softened, he occasionally smiled – once, I even saw him talk.

The Rock of Gibraltar is an impregnable fortress, riddled with underground passages, known as the Great Siege Tunnels. There was nothing that could destroy that Rock; not siege, famine or explosives – hence the saying ‘solid as the Rock of Gibraltar’.

Well, let’s wait and see.

Sue’s stye had invaded her eye.

‘It’s really throbbing. The infection is getting worse.’

The Stye had taken on a personality of its own. It was firmly in residence, perched there like a malevolent grape. All the bitterness of the last five days, all the boredom, the disapproval and bile had flowed into Susan’s stye. It lolled in the corner of her eye, a scarlet succubus drawing strength from our misfortune, sullen, swollen - blocking her vision with a blinking, itchy pool of pain.

‘I thought I’d be able to get some eye-drops up-river… ‘

Like all of us, Sue had no idea just how desolate this area was. She gulped down her cocktail and motioned for more.

‘I didn’t know we were never gonna stop.’

Her husband sat beside her, talking to the Alien Lesbians.

‘This cruise is as boring as bat-shit,’ he said.

Neil boasted a bright, round face that became brighter the more he drank – he literally changed color. Tonight, courtesy a particularly toxic batch of ‘Munger Madness’, he was amber.

‘It’s not what we expected, that’s for sure,’ said Kath.

The Aliens were the best behaved lesbians I’ve ever met; virtually invisible for the first five days, they emerged only to share a table at meals. Given the vileness of their companions it wasn’t hard to see why. Kath was a youthful sixty and just retired, her pal Kim a little younger and still working; great gals but in this context - shy, very shy. A great many of my lesbian friends would have punched out the Caledonians days ago.

‘Varanasi can’t come fast enough, as far as I’m concerned,’ Kim said quietly, ‘these people are awful...’

The Awful Caledonians continued to tolerate their gate-crashing co-cruisers, said ‘good morning’ and swapped strained pleasantries as they passed on the stairs but made no more attempt to mingle than they had on the first night. They certainly resisted any attempts to be mingled with - whatever was set in stone at Aaheli that first day remained unaltered.

Like the stye in Sue’s eye their power grew. The more we sailed, the less we stopped, the happier they became. Today, with nothing to see and no halt even if there was - with nothing to do but stare at the distant bank, the group was positively joyful. The upper deck buzzed with conversation; they chattered about England as if it was just outside the window; of home renovations, of what thatch to put on the barn, of bathroom tiles and curtains – anything but India.

No wonder they were cheery: they’d seized control of the boat every bit as surely as the infection had taken command of Sue’s poor face.

‘Some of them are nice,’ said Kim, trying valiantly to put some balance into the conversation.

‘I wouldn’t know, none of them will talk to us,’ Neil said.

‘Not since the very first day,’ Sue added.

‘Do they talk to you?’

‘Not if they can help it,’ said Kath.

‘You?’

Dogster shook his head.

‘You?’

‘Never!’ chorused the Germans from the end of the table. ‘Not one word.’

So, it wasn’t just me.

Normally the Hun were full of life, embracing every day with enthusiasm, good humor and energy - but by now the cruise was bringing them down. They were easily the most educated and interesting people on the boat.

‘I’m so-o-o disappointed,’ Frida said, ‘I was so much looking forward to this and what do we do? Sail.’

Since we let Murshidabad five days ago we’d spent precisely five hours off the boat; an hour at a village, two at Rajmahal and two at Bhagalpur. We’ve spent one hundred and six hours trapped aboard and five trapped ashore, a lavish 4.7% of our time.

‘Pishhh. Every day. All day. Sail. And why all these policemen?’

This probably wasn’t a moment to mention Bihar’s newest growth industry.

‘Boring as batshit,’ Neil repeated loudly.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ he heard.

‘Ahhh, shuddup, you old hag,’ he hissed over his shoulder.

Amber was turning to red.

The gorgons tutted furiously.

‘Augh-str-a-aliens…’</I.

‘Who are these people?’ Sue gasped, ‘who died and put them in charge?’

The Alien Lesbians tried to shoosh her.

‘No, bugger it,’ Sue said, ‘I’m sick of being disapproved of...’

‘Brru-u-u-urppp,’ said Aussie Joe.

‘You tell them…’

‘No, you tell them.’

‘I can’t tell them.’

‘You have to.’

‘You tell them.’

‘No.’

Vishnu, Andrea and Sumit were sitting around a table in the dining room, deep in conversation. Push had come to shove. They had no hope of making the schedule, no hope of getting further than Patna and little chance of salvaging the cruise.

‘Sumit, you’ll have to tell them.’

‘It’s not my responsibility to tell them.’

‘Well, someone has to tell them…’

‘They’ll kill us.’

Vishnu, Andrea and Sumit at the briefing. They’d just announced that the company had abandoned any attempt, first to get to Varanasi, then Buxar, then Gazipur, then Doriganj and settled on Patna, two hundred and eighty river miles short of their destination. The fourteen night cruise the punters originally booked had shrunk to seven. Eight hundred miles of Ganges has become five hundred miles. Oh, and there was a mere six-hour drive to get to Varanasi.

‘Errr... errr... eauh-h-gh…’

It sounded like someone straining at stool, but was just a complaint trying to come out. Heads turned to the source of the noise. A wild-eyed woman with thin blonde hair sat forward like a trap about to snap on a rat. If ever a passenger was going to complain, it was Mrs. Melanoma.

‘We do-o-o seem to be missing rather a lot. This is not quite the cruise we expected to have...’

‘Speaking for the other passengers...’

‘You don’t speak for me,’ hissed Sue.

‘Or me,’ said her husband.

The Australians were turning rancid.

‘I feel I must say that the last two days have been a lot of sailing...’

‘The last five days, you mean,’ muttered the German couple. They were turning rancid, too.

‘There’s not been a great deal to see…’

A murmur of restrained agreement swept the saloon, as if a furtive rat just scuttled through. Obviously everybody was turning rancid. Out came the piece of paper that every guide dreads: the original itinerary.

‘We’ve covered barely a third of this…’

There was an awkward moment as she waited for the support of her Noble Caledonian peers.

A very British silence ensued. Six husbands sat mute, studiously looking in the opposite direction. Six British wives did the same. Only the Gorgons reigned supreme.

‘It’s certainly not the cruise I paid for,’ M’Lady snorted eventually.

‘Nor us-hh,’ said Princess Plonk.

‘Nor us…’ said Luvvie Darling.

She prodded her husband.

‘Mah-vellous,’ the old codger chimed in.

This was a full-scale revolution. Two whispered comments from the stalls, a bleat from the dress circle. For the Noble Caledonians, this is war.

‘Of course, we understand the difficulties you’ve had…’ Cancer continued but she hovered, faffing around - she couldn’t quite bring herself to plunge the sword.

Vishnu and Andrea were pinned to the bar, two squirming dung-beetles in crisis. The color had drained from their faces; all that was left was four desperate eyes. With all the Gorgons boring in on them, turning to stone was just a matter of time.

‘I think what she might be trying to say,’ said Lady Bracknell, grasping control of the situation, ‘is that while we understand your situation…’

She paused, lining them up for the coup de grace…

‘…in return we expect you to understand ours.’

It was a thinly disguised threat, delivered in parliamentary style. Yup, those Brits were on their laptops, cooking up a storm. It’ll be lawyers at forty paces before long.

‘Oh, she’s so good. How perfectly put. Bra-a-avo,’ one whispered.

‘Where is the shop?’

Trapped like twin bunnies in the headlights, Vishnu and Andrea nodded seriously and agreed with everything, lying when appropriate - even, on a couple of rare occasions, telling the truth.

‘Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure everything will be fine,’ Vishnu said brightly.

‘Oh, yes, of course, everything will be fine,’ muttered Andrea, swallowing hard.

He was a far less convincing liar than Vishnu; he’d not been trained in the Singh School of Insincerity - no matter. Mild applause ran through the lounge as if a thousand frustrated moths had been set free. The Caledonians were positively ecstatic. Another victory for Britain.

Da-a-arling gave a little snort.

‘Bring more Madness!’ he cried.

Of course, they’d achieved one hundred percent of nothing at all.

It was a bright, clear late night. The passengers kept drinking through dinner and were heard carousing on the top deck till eleven. Dog was left to mosey the deserted decks by midnight. He’d taken to nocturnal wandering, relishing the quiet, the space and above all, the absence of Caledonians.

Aussie Joe stood at the railing, looking out over the Ganges. He was alone on the top-deck, just his thoughts and the Milky Way for company. His huge hands gripped the rail as he rocked back and forth.

He appeared to be singing. It wasn’t until I got a bit closer I realized he was rocking in pain. A man in pain doesn’t want to be seen. Dogster hung back.

Poor old Joe.

Joe thought he was dying. By the look of him, maybe he was. He’d cashed in his assets, sold off the house and, before he lost it, set off to see the world. I thought this was entirely to be admired. I watched from a distance as he bent forward over the railing, leant back and moaned.

‘Errr-r-rr-ah-h-h-hhhh!’ he whispered softly, ‘oh-h-hhhh…’

Then he let out an enormous fart. It was the Fart of the Century, a meandering, bubbling aria of a fart, a fart to spark a tsunami alert.

‘Ah-h-h, that’s better,’ he said to Mother Ganga.

Mother Ganga chuckled back.

A small bird fainted on the far bank, falling insensate into the current.

Death on the Ganges.

tomorrow - the bitter end

A late start for me but excellent writing dogster! If I was on the cruise I wonder how you would describe me?

Thanks pook. I think I'd put you in the silent assassin category. Easily the most dangerous.

The paleontologist's account of the maiden voyage is simply amazing. Talk about maintaining a stiff upper lip. He doesn't even mention passengers, both dead and alive, abandoning the boat. Which of the two trips do you think was worse?

I'm sure you could have endeared yourself to the Caledonians if you had but asked the ladies to teach you to knit...

This was certainly worth the very long wait. Thanks!

Good morning, dogster. I've finally found the time to read this tale. Excellent, as always. Can't wait for the rest of it.
Carol

Still reading and enjoying every minute.

Oh Dogster, thank you, thank you!! I laughed so hard at fainting bird!!!

Oh, nice paragraphs by the way!!!!!

Is there 'Death on the Ganges?'
Cant wait for the next (last?) installment

or was it just the bird? cant wait to find out.

another incomparable Dogalogue

Thank you!

"dogalogue"... I love it!

The "Incredible India" campaign really means it is incredible that anybody would go there.

merckxxx: You sound like a person who's never been to India. It's absolutely fabulous!!

The hook line for a Northern Territory (Australia) travel promo was, "If you never never go, you'll never, never know".

Seems to fit the rest of the world too, doesn't it?

Finally I am up to date on all your fantastic adventures or misadventures! Brilliantly written. I love your writing style. Never been to India, but all your stories make me want to travel there.

I am in the mood for new places and new faces -- but alas at the moment I am stuck here in New Jersey, however, getting to read about all the adventures of the dogster is a small consolation and actually quite satisfying until I am able to fly the coup again.

In the meantime I am chuckling away at the last portion . . . the fainting bird . . . can't wait for the next installment!

Lovely comments, guys - even a visit from grumpy old merkxxx, who despite thinking I'm a bombastic narcissist [I love that - lol] is still reading...

I'm delighted that you've been traveling with me chicken: what a long strange trip it has already been. The next couple of reports may change your mind about coming to India. lol But I won't get ahead of myself. There's a final chapter here to finish.

Yup, just one more to go. I'm trying to pull all the pieces together which, as LA will understand, is as much to do with mathematics as literature. I chose this broad canvas as an exercise but now I suffer the consequences. So bear with me.

I'm glad you liked my fainting bird joke. Hold on to that laugh.. the last chapter is much, much more bleak.

Indeed, LA, Death will come to the Ganges. The fainting bird was just the canary in the coal-mine.

I came across this post while seeking info on a future RTW on
20th that was 2 days ago, after reading the first draft I
then clicked on your name and went back to 2006 ( by the way the much mentioned Bhutan trip is missing) however in the past 2 days I have had 3 rest room breaks and a handful of sleeping hours, had it not been for reading all the comments I might have finished sooner.I find myself reading your stories not so much for ideas on where to stay or what to see (though i have gotten some pretty helpful hints) but the sheer brilliance of your writing style has made me lose all focus on the job at hand, my poor husband is 2 seconds away from calling the men in white jackets to cart off the crazy lady howling with laughter at the computer screen, I laughed, I cried, I frowned, I sighed. I say all this to say this, we have 3 problems
1) I haven't done hell all about my trip
2)now that I'm all caught up it's going to be a bother waiting for the next installment
3)not having the Bhutan chronicles is like buying a long awaited novel only to find there are pages missing
if they are not in the ether can you please guide me to them thank you kindly,

Wow, silver - that is fine praise indeed. What wonderful words of encouragement. I love it when someone stumbles across the dogologues. What an odyssey of idiocy it must seem. So thank you for making my day.

Some of what you've read is just first draft, first impressions coming out in a flood - some of the stories are more considered, final drafts. I'm really lucky people have put up with some of the more extreme subject matter. I'm learning the perameters. As you can tell with this post, I'm trying to stretch them, to see if I can juggle, talk and chew gum at the same time.

Let me help you go back to the beginning. The missing Bhutan post is not under my name. All these stories began when Jules39 asked me a simple question about my cringe-making trip to Bhutan. I found myself pouring out the story. It was great therapy - not, for a moment, great literature. But there was the sense of reality, I guess. People responded.

Looking it up I realize that post is only two years ago. Amazing. I've been traveling and writing ever since. You know where. It's all because of jules39 and this post:

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia/dogster-bhutan.cfm

I found that rather well written and informative, I will never get a guide(I'm a bit of a princess) right before you said you were thinking of kicking him in the bum I was way ahead of you he deserved that and more but who am I to judge. Now that that appetite has been fulfilled I think there was mention in one of the tales (I forget which one maybe the one about the hijra), where you mentioned something about the devdas and murder most foul.............. Sorry, I'm an insatiable reader and it's been years since I found a new author who entertained so well, Oh before i forget i have added tonnes of stuff to our itenirary because of you I wanted to do it all but hubby rained on that little parade, according to him there will be other trips, he doesn't understand I've been dog bit now I've got the sickness

lol silver - I'd rather think that the lesson from Dogster's adventures would be to NOT do what he did. I can't recall the other reference right now. The trick to India is to go everywhere but the obvious.

DEATH ON THE GANGES


Somewhere south of Samaria, stark against the sky, a Bihar warrior sat proud in the saddle, gazing wistfully at opportunity sailing by. The stallion, the turban and the rifle showed he was a man of substantial means. The horse reared, his white robe flowed, they settled and stood strong, a distant photo opportunity just waiting to be found.

Raja was a camera buff. He always kept a spare Nikon at his side, ready to capture the latest wildlife wonder. He spotted the lonely horseman, grabbed his camera and zoomed. His Nikon flashed money in the afternoon sun.

The rider raised his rifle and casually aimed straight at the naturalist.

Raja jumped back. He said nothing to the dozing passengers, just walked slowly over to one of the crew. ‘Get the soldiers on alert…’ he whispered, then he was back with his punters, white teeth flashing, enthusing about insects and eagles, cruising and schmoozing, the master of his game. He took care to stay on the far side.

Our personal police force joked in the prow. Kept separate, hidden from the clients, they hovered all day on a state of sleepy red alert. Sunlight glinted on their rifles as they smoked and laughed, binoculars poised, trigger fingers at the ready. On a shout, four snoozing soldiers snapped into gear, silently raised their weapons and stood alert.

On shore, the man laughed and lowered his gun, sat proud and watched as the ransom sailed away. He clicked his tongue and dug in his heels, pulled on the reins and galloped off.

One day, he thought, one day…

The Ganges in this part of Bihar is wide, flat and listless, a seamless watercolor of grey, blue and distant sandy brown. Occasionally there’s a ragged boat, a clump of confused locals motionless on the shore - but mostly we’re sailing through a grubby desert, an undulating blanket of despair.

The ‘bye-bye’s’ stopped long ago. Now they just stand and stare.

There’s nothing to see but statistics, guns and dolphins - oh, and our occasional companion - bobbing, bloated death. A pilgrim floated by on his way downriver, eager to queue for space in the Lock. Once, Raja saw the corpse of a young woman on the bank. She was being eaten by a dog.

Despite his eagerness to please, our wildlife expert didn’t point that out to the slumbering tourists.

We rounded the bend at twilight. A scene from the New Testament sprawled in front of us; a misty sea of tents, humpies, ramshackle hovels overlaid with drifting smoke; five thousand people - ten, twenty, who knows? Tent city extended forever. When Moses took to the desert it looked just like this. On the ghats nine great cremation fires roared into the sky, hell and heaven swirling into an endless Bihar night.

What a scene. Samaria.

This has been a religious site for centuries; a township that grew up around faith. Once a year it mushrooms into this extraordinary prayer-party. The air was full of chanting, the world was full of life – for the first time since I’d left Kolkata India lay before me, all of a sudden, I was alive too. The pastel half-life I’d been living fell into perspective.

‘If you don’t let me off here to explore, I will kill you,’ I smiled sweetly to Vishnu. He scurried away.

‘Oh-h-h, no-o-o,’ Lady Bracknell said loftily, ‘I wouldn’t want to go down there amongst them.’

‘Them? Who are them?

She gestured at the scene.

‘Those people.’

She managed to invest as much loathing in those two words as her theatrical namesake poured into a handbag.

‘They won’t eat you, you know...’

‘Just the same...’

‘Do you think they’ll kidnap you?’

‘I just don’t want to be near them, that’s all,’ she pulled a face, ‘the smell. The hands…’

Dead people, dead people; I’m sailing with dead people. Slow death on the fast-flowing Ganges. Get me outta here.

The vista became a sea of candles, the drifting smoke from fires, districts bound together with chanting. Every area seemed to have its own sub-culture of priests of all shapes and sizes, all with a P.A. system and a tribe of acolytes, all intent on maintaining their 24/7 prayer vigil. Ram ram, ram ram… ram ram ram-ming into the night.

By the time we’d landed and clambered ashore, it was 6.30 pm. A dirty orange sun hung low, overpowered by the haze. More tourism in the dark. The Samaria fair was, if not closed down, closing fast as we walked through – it was late night for the pilgrims, dinner time; cooking fires and pungent smells, women squatting over clay ovens dug from the dirt, clustered in front of make-shift homes.

This looked like desperate poverty but actually, it was pure faith gone camping. What seemed like shambolic ruin was really a highly organized pilgrimage. This religious fair lasts forty-five days. They come for the duration.

The briefest of visits was allowed. Two policemen came to find me, crouched slurping chai at a stall, stood patiently waiting till I finished, then escorted me back to the ship. The gangway was dismantled and we slipped off the bank, drifting with the current to the middle of the river to anchor.

From the ship the noise at night was mesmerizing. Chanting and prayers meshed in a magical hum, distant drums, distant drummers, the sing-song of Samaria. I sat with my windows open, drifting away to far-flung Hindi Babel. Ram Ram, Ram Ram. Smoke belched from the cremation fires, flames and faithful climbing high in the black Bihar night. Samaria is a very good place to die.

Around midnight the wind changed. My cabin filled with the sweet smell of burnt Hindu.

The Great Siege Tunnels of Gibraltar have been breached.

Yankee Joe slipped silently out of her cabin at one am, padded softly along the deck in bare feet and disappeared downstairs to his berth on the lower deck. His work was done.

After a while she came out, stood silent, leaning on the rail. Her dress billowed in the night breeze, her hair was down, she was the mad scene from ‘Lucia’ sans gore. By the look of her, our mute American found his tongue.

She posed there, rather too self-consciously, looking a bit like Ava Gardner in ‘On the Beach’. It took a while before I realized she was posing. At the back of the boat, leaning round the corner, was a dark face and a pair of sparkling eyes.

The deck lights clicked off. No, I don’t believe it.

A few minutes later a dark shape appeared from the back of the boat. An Indian ninja crept along, stopped in front of her door, knocked softly and whispered his name. The door opened swiftly and he scurried inside. A moment later her light clicked off.

I’m in a floating Feydeau farce.

Soon another death, live from the Ganges.

Long live ‘La petit mort’.

At six-thirty am, escorted by a phalanx of khaki muscle, the punters filed through the gathering crowds of curious onlookers and threaded their way up the bank. Policemen beat the pilgrims away. Eyes downcast, bunching together lest they touch an Indian, the group advanced. Dogster was somewhere in the middle of the watching crowd, waving goodbye enthusiastically as the huge black bus drove away fifteen minutes later. On the side, in enormous white letters it said: BIHAR TOURISM.

Nobody knew it, but it was the Bus of Doom.

Drive 3 hours by coach to the ruins of the vast Buddhist university at Nalanda and then after lunch in a local hotel continue on to Bodh Gaya, place of Buddha’s enlightenment and a major centre of pilgrimage for Buddhists of all sects from all countries. Return journey from Bodh Gaya to Patna is 5 hours. This will be a long, uncomfortable day but richly rewarded by visits to these world heritage sites.

Well, you can’t say they weren’t warned.

Everybody relaxed, settling in for a long day’s driving. They crossed the huge Mokameh Bridge and fell headlong into the chaos of Indian roads. Highway 31 is just a track overrun with madness, crammed with all the detritus of Indian life. Up the front of the bus Andrea and Sumit watched in amazement as their police escort carved a path through the masses, sirens blaring. It was great to be off the boat.

The Bihar Tourist bus was huge, black and probably doubled as a multiple hearse for flood victims when not carrying sightseers. It ploughed along, scattering the cows, trying to break the speed record. They were an hour along the road when it happened.

Death drove out of the Bihar blue.

The screech of brakes threw everybody forward. Andrea caught a glimpse of the driver’s face just as the oncoming truck ploughed head-on into the bus. In slow motion the windows smashed, the floor caved in, glass and metal crunched together in a blast of destruction. He felt a blow, then saw red as blood burst around him. Passengers flew out of their seats, rag-dolls in the cyclone, tumbling about in a mass, crushed and bleeding in the wreckage.

The Bus of Doom tipped over the edge of the road and rolled sideways down a wide bank into a ditch, ending up on its roof with a crash of smashing glass. Ex-Caledonians lay strewn inside. There was a terrible silence.

Actually – I made that last bit up.

That’s what nearly happened. I’m glad I wasn’t there.

Read Andrea’s remarkable blog for details of this special day. He’s Italian so cut him a bit of slack with his English. That doesn’t excuse anything else. He knows the words ‘duty of care’.

Seven passengers stayed on board including Mr. Dogster who said there is nothing in the world worth fourteen hours in a coach. We left at 6.30 am. The journey was thrilled by an encounter with another bus that almost caused an accident…

I was sitting in the front seat and all of a sudden we were shocked to see another bus just 3cm from our window and on the other side there was just 10cm gap to the edge of the road.

Three centimeters is just over an inch.

Now, I dunno about you guys, but that’s cutting it just too fine for me.

It was even more amusing when we ended up being escorted for some kilometers by a jeep with armed Bihar special police force. In order to give way to our bus one of them was using a stick to stop any vehicle coming up. Innocent people riding bicycles had to put their heads down to avoid being hit by the stick. It was incredible! We could not stop laughing for about 30 minutes.

Hilarious.

I’ve always found the mix of tourism and thuggery a heady brew. It adds a kinky edge, don’t you think?

Andrea continues to gush as he describes their long hard day of tourism. I can’t be bothered repeating it. His published blog concludes with these brief words:

We left at 5pm and after a few near accidents on the way back, finally arrived safely back to the new Patna river terminal at 9pm. I had dinner and am ready to sleep now!

Dogster has come into possession of the original report. Don’t ask how. Here is the uncut version.

We left at 17.00 – after asking to the group whether they wanted to stop for dinner in a local restaurant or go straight no stop to the ship – unanimously the group said ‘BACK TO THE SHIP PLEASE!’

We stopped in a liquor shop to buy local gin. In order to alleviate them the pain of the journey and the thrill of driving in the Indian roads we decided to stun them with some Gin and Tonic! It was good choice because in fact we have been close to big accidents for two more times!

The worst was when we stopped 2.5 cm from a big truck – our driver was able to stop the coach avoiding a catastrophic frontal impact! After several less important ‘almost accidents’ we arrived safely but shocked to the new Patna river terminal at 21.00!

‘How did it go?’ I asked brightly.

‘They nearly killed us!’ Sue said, sinking into her chair at dinner. They had just this minute returned. ‘Truly, they nearly killed us!’

Was she being serious? She was looking very tired.

‘They nearly killed us!’

She kept on saying that. An angry, monkey’s bum of an eye stared wildly at me. The boiling slug was breeding. The stye was bright purple with a hint of blue, an art installation growing on her face. Behind it a bloodshot pupil peered out, like a naughty schoolgirl caught with the coke.

‘Ga-a-a-awd, where’s that waiter? Gimme a drink! Quick!’

If they but knew it the Caledonians were in her debt. The Great Stye of Bihar had sucked up all the fate, enveloped the poison. Without that stye they would probably be dead.

‘We were sitting up the front of the bus! Gawd, it was THIS close!’ She held up thumb and finger. ‘Bee’s dick! Gawd, I thought we’d die.’

She downed a brandy. Poor Sue. She carried a heavy burden.

Neil rocked up.

‘Did she tell you?

I had no idea of what had transpired.

‘Truly, mate, we’re lucky to be alive.’

Yes, we are.

Goodnight Caledonia.

When Dogster woke up late next morning, all the other passengers were gone, exactly as he’d intended, checked-out and entombed in the Black Hearse, rolling due west to Varanasi.

No goodbyes - exactly as he’d intended. The old fox felt curiously free.

Not a soul even noticed he was missing; he had vanished from whence he came. The invisible man had gone all the way – finally, he’d made himself disappear.

Dog was the Phantom, a spy, the kind voyeur, secretly smiling in the dark. Largely absent and kinda disturbing, he was an oddity lurking on the fringes; some old stray who’d slipped the leash and wouldn’t go home. He appeared only at briefings and meals, never once attended a lecture or film, never stayed with the group when ashore, rarely went up the sun-deck cemetery and didn’t drink himself stupid in company. They couldn’t work out who he was, passenger or scribe, whether he was kosher or not. Whoever or whatever he was, they didn’t care for it.

‘They think you’re a journalist,’ said Sumit, ‘they think you’ll write bad things about them.’

How could they think that? How cruel. As if I would do such a thing.

I spent a long time staring into darkness on the Ganges, sitting on the chair outside my cabin, trying to recapture my soul. The longer I spent on the water in the company of these people, the harder it became.

I was a horrible man. I must be. Nobody would talk to me.

I was aughful. Strange. A-a-alien.

I was the Pariah Dog.

High, high in the sky a circling Bihar vulture watched as a big black BIHAR TOURISM bus turned due south. The snoozing tourists had the curtains drawn already. Sumit dozed in the front seat – only the driver was watching the road. Bihar flooded by.

Due south?

Just one last glimpse of Andrea’s unpublished report.

PAX left at 09.00 by the same bus of yesterday.

The journey was supposed to take 6 hours but we just received now the news from Sumit that they still have not arrived yet because the bloody f…. idiots took the wrong way! Instead of taking the road to Buxar/Gazhipur and then Varanasi they went south to past GAYA and then turned west to Varanasi.

That has extended the trip by over 100 km! Now it’s 19.00 and still they have not arrived yet after more than 10 hours driving. Vishnu is angry like a tiger against this bloody Bihar State Tourism coach.

Expect thousands of complaints now...

WE ARE ASHAMED.

A small black car drove up to the dock.

A greasy man in a crumpled shirt leant breathless on the wheel. He coughed, a pint of mucus bubbling like a cappuccino in his throat. He hoiked it up then gobbed out the window in a thick, Patna splat on the wharf.

‘Here’s your car!’ cried the purser, much too enthusiastically.

With nary a backward glance, Dogster drove away.

THE END

Now can we have the other 50%?

No. Reflect upon what you do have, not what you don't.

Cruises scare me for all the exact reasons in your story. If you are outnumbered by idiots -- you are in trouble and nowhere to go unless you jump ship. After reading about your cruise ship experience - and now this one - would you think twice about taking a boat trip in the future?

"Around midnight the wind changed. My cabin filled with the sweet smell of burnt Hindu." That gave me chills -- how surreal.

"From the ship the noise at night was mesmerizing. Chanting and prayers meshed in a magical hum, distant drums, distant drummers, the sing-song of Samaria. I sat with my windows open, drifting away to far-flung Hindi Babel." Love this part . . . I am right there with you . . .

Well done.

Thank you, dogster.

For me, the most appalling part of Andrea's account was the section you quoted

"It was even more amusing when we ended up being escorted for some kilometers by a jeep with armed Bihar special police force. In order to give way to our bus one of them was using a stick to stop any vehicle coming up. Innocent people riding bicycles had to put their heads down to avoid being hit by the stick. It was incredible! We could not stop laughing for about 30 minutes."

Somehow, from your descriptions, I assumed the Caledonian passengers would see the locals as subhuman, but that one of the staff would share that assessment...

Thanks Dogster. It is wonderful to see the language used so brilliantly. I coose to ignore the novel concept of a New Testament Moses.

Discovered this thread this morning and after briefly considering going back to work, I couldn't resist reading the whole thing immediately. Of course it was worth it. Bravo dogster, and thank you for another fabulously written report.

Indianiapearl - I have been to India and more than 50 other countries and every country is a better visit than India. Dreadful place. You can have all of it.

I will!!! As many times as I can before I leave this mortal coil. Sorry you have such insensitivity.

So Dogster: This sounds like a tragedy in at least three acts --- boat has mechanical problems, leaves several days late, everyone herded through archaelogical sites at dusk/dark with flashlights because of incompetent planning, Naxalite revolutionaries waving guns overhead, dead bodies burning or floating on the Ganges --- aren't you glad you didn't pay for it? Do the Caledonians (even they got screwed) and others get a refund? What's the epilogue?

Off-cuts #1:after the briefing

Andrea and Vishnu scuttled out of the saloon at the first opportunity and hid on the deserted upper deck.

‘Phew,’ said one.

‘Phew,’ said the other.

Then they laughed. Both of them knew the punters wouldn’t get anything, not the shine off a brass razoo, unless the company chose to compensate. Legally they were covered every which way. Where money is concerned that’s all that matters. Morality comes a distant second. They ordered up some Munger Madness and relaxed, the words of their founder ringing in their ears:

Itineraries are skeletal and indicational only. The daily schedule will be subject to constant revisions. Some excursions may be cancelled, whilst you may find yourself on excursions never offered in the first place! All depends on water levels and flow rates, the weather, local bureaucracy and a hundred other factors that make and shape a cruise...

As every decision thus far had been reactive, rather than pro-active, this meant we were all at the mercy of fate. The fine, print in the passenger contract really says it all.

Bottom line: the company could do anything they liked. Their shtick covered all: 'it's an adventure, an expedition, never-before seen! Challenging, difficult, prone to disaster, yadda yadda, death-defying cruise! Should not be booked by the faint hearted.'

Crap.

The most dangerous thing on this cruise were the owners. This was an expedition into the Heart of Incompetence, a little known Anglo-Indian state - of mind.

Actually, indiana, I have no idea what happened. Communication has been strained. I certainly know that if I HAD been a full-fare paying passenger, I would have been like a screaming banshee from day one. As would any other group of mixed passengers.

The Caledonians endured, seethed and avoided confrontation - the very confrontation that would have radically changed their trip - for the better. So dumb. At least two stops, one of them Semaria, occurred because I spat the dummy. Had I not, we would have stayed on the boat.

The real frustration of all this was, with my inside sources, knowing what would happen way, way in advance and having to watch as every prediction inexorably came true. The other frustration was being surrounded by those arse-wipes of fellow passengers.

So chicken: what to do? I haven't forgotten your question.

After this cruise I decided that this particular company and Dog must part company - not entirely because of the events of the Ganga, but because I realised I'd spent a lot of my life on these particular river-boats and they are all exactly the same.

I found myself waking up in the same boat I'd spent a month on in Burma, looking out at a broad, fast-flowing wall of brown, squinting at the distant river bank, wondering where I was.

Irrawaddy? Mekong? Chindwin? Brahmaputra? Hoogli? Same, same, same.
They are not, of course, but when 22 hours a day are spent sailing, the focus returns to the boat - and the passengers.

Which is the other reason I'll have to let this brand go: the passengers. The Anglo-Calo-centric nature of the company means it attracts precisely the breed of client I describe. I can't cope with another chorus of disapproval. Never again.

It's always a lottery. Mostly, I can balance the passenger list with the sight-seeing. Usually, we're on and off the boat all day, just coming back for lunch. There's hardly time to scratch yourself, in between excursions, socialising and meals.

Usually, there isn't a huge wodge of one nationality, and one specific kind of client. There will always be these old Raj biddies, but usually, they are in the minority. There will always be Ladies of the Manor - usually, I get on rather well with gorgons.

But they have to give me a chance.

So I'd do more. The assambengal twin cruises up the Hoogli and then to Patna are far better value. Compare the two itineraries. Frankly, sometimes it's the only way, short of a damn expedition, to get to these amazing places. Often there is no tourist infrastructure at all.

But this latest adventure gives me food for thought.

I can't cope with another chorus of disapproval. Never again.

You have and you will and you can! Our mighty Dogster was outnumbered this time by a choir of fools, that's all. It's a simple matter of statistics...

"But this latest adventure gives me food for thought."

So, are you off again, on yet another adventure? I'll be visiting Haagen Dazs at Central World in just a month.. should I bring along my orange Fodors bag?

Loved your dogalogue, as always!

Carol

I feel your pain Sir Dog but you did say that you did these things so that we wouldn't have to,(or did someone else say that for you) doesn't matter, stop the skylarking, break out the corkscrew and hop to it youngun

lol silver, 'tis true. Dog only exists so you can all say:

'There but for the Grace of God, go I.'

Carol, I may well be around sometime then. I have a little West End reminiscence to attend in London in June/July. Juggling these Indian visa regs is a pain. Dunno. I'm hot to trot, but May/June can be bad India-wise. I'd be there now if I wasn't so slack.

dogster, Thanks for letting me sit in on your voyage. Your talent is so good it felt as though we were sitting there next to you at times....

I have never really seriously thought about a trip to India. I really had no interest in seeing India. It always comes up in conversations with other travelers but I never have given it any serious thought and after a tale like this one who would ever dream of it.

But somehow this report amongst all the many others I have read on this site has moved me a little bit towards the wants to see category. Your writing and travel styles move us past the temples and other mundane tourists sites and takes one on a journey that is not seen by many. Thanks again!

Aloha!

should have read takes one on a journey to places that are not seen by many

Dogster, Thank you for taking us all along with you. I could not have stood it myself, they sound like a bunch of wretched people!
Another case for not taking a cruise again for me for a long time!

and to Merckaxx, India is not for everyone that is for sure. But for those of us who love it....it is a wonderful country with lots of history and fantastic people, I feel very blessed to have been able to go there.

Thanks Doggie.

Phew! Congratulations on surviving the trip, and on the report. Just confirms my belief that I should stay far away from cruises! (But not from India, aside perhaps from Bihar - I remember there were armed guards on the train through Bihar, too.)

While on the topic of survival:

As you don't know, I was pesticided In The Worst City In India. That's a story I'll tell later, but it has rendered me highly sensitive to chemicals, disinfectants, petrol, pollution and pretty much everything that lives in the air in India. I know that the green gunge that lives in my lungs will go. Day by day it is.

So this happened after the cruise, not during it?

Dogster: Have you considered getting a visa for a year instead of six months? We got the year visa (more expensive) because at the time, swine flu/H1N1 was rearing its ugly head, starting in the U.S. We were afraid the trip might be cancelled by people over whom we have no control.

Or is it an Australian thing?

Great read Dogster! Thank God for cancelations. Two weeks with pixilated strangers and death by flatuence, no thanks.

Indiana, the problem with the India visa is that you can not now re-enter India unless you have been away for two full months. So whether you have a one month visa or a 10 year visa, re-entry is restricted.

Well, what an interesting day.

Should I start a new chapter?

DOGSTER CLOSES CRUISE LINE

Apparently they have just cancelled the 2010/11 season.

should you start a new chapter? i've been sitting in front this screen like a loony for two days, what's the hold up? good job on closing them down by the way heehee

lol silver. I must confess that the latest news does free up my hand somewhat. But I became very concerned about the length of the piece for this medium - there are another two chapters I haven't included, one about the politics going on behind the scenes and another about the passengers - so I cut to the chase in Semaria.

No, I don't think I'll share those with you. This post already holds the world record for longest ever trip report. Many people will never make it to the end. It's the nature of the net.

Frankly, writing about a specific event, specific people is a bit of a minefield. One become acutely conscious that they may read the end product. Sp then there's the tussle between the writer in me - who has no morals at all - and the man - who still has some vestigial remnant of ethics.

Dancing on the razor's edge. I brought in the editor's scalpel.

hang the editor as for morals truth is truth the pen is mightier than the sword, or in this case the keyboard is mightier than the BS artist who pedal their sh...te unless ethical beings such as yourself makes us unsuspecting masses aware, I give you leave to go forth and spread the word. I have the sneaky suspicion that you are having a dry spell, i have a close friend that makes no sense at all until she's well and truly snookered, sober her up at your own peril...I say break out the white and if that has lost it's punch hit the shiraz your neck of the woods is known for that or is it syrrah whatever just don't torture us anymore START WRITING

Bless you silver - but you've just had about 85 million words already... scarcely a dry spell. Everything is written. I'm just not going to post it.

I'm amazed that anybody had followed this odd story this far. Very grateful for those that have. I must say that this latest news gives me an unexpected Grand Finale.

How about sending it out on request, like Peter's Beijing Hutong Walks?!

Am I to infer that I will not be able to immeduiately book a Ganges River cruise so that I can repeat the Dogsters antics? How unfair is that?

No one, man or beast, can repeat the Dogster's antics...

When I saw Maui Wendy's post that the 2010/2011 season had been cancelled, I wondered if someone was reading your story or whether they came to their senses all on their own.

"Apparently they have just cancelled the 2010/11 season"
So have been somewhat vindicated for your experience of "Death on the Ganges" (btw -- love how that title relates to your story on so many levels).

I don't believe Dogster closed the cruise line (as yet unnamed). The owners and managers did that themselves. I'm so glad I wasn't on one of their cruises.

Well, so matter how experienced or inexperienced we are, every new adventure teaches us something. And that is the way I hope it always will be. Thanks once again Dog, for for an illuminating trip report...

Chicken: I'm so pleased that someone noticed how the title related to the story in multiple ways. I didn't get it quite right structurally, 'cos I was editing, but I'm delighted you noticed the attempt. 'La petit mort' was my favorite. In the full length version I cover that somewhat less abruptly - it's a veritable feast of seduction before the kill...

I'll have to re-write my 'behind the scenes' chapter now. I suspect this mass cancellation had absolutely nothing at all with the timing of this post. As Kathie said, one would hope they came to their senses independently. I suspect the story is just a wee bit more complicated than that.

If the cruises are cancelled - what happens to the boat? There, sitting in Kolkata docks, is a perfectly good river-cruiser - one now in Indian hands, as I understand it, 'owned' by the local partners. So, I'm wondering, what will happen to the 'real estate'?

Marija - I thought of that 'on demand' thing. It's a great idea. Right now I'm trying to think of a good way to put all the final drafts of all the stories in one place. I'd very much appreciate suggestions as to where that might be. [No rude answers merkxxx - lol].

Catch up: hawaii - thank you, my friend. I see kuranosuke gave you my message. lol. I've been thinking about what reccos I could make for India-for-those-who-kinda, maybe, might be interested; if-it-wasn't-so-bloody-hard-and-smelly.

India does luxury travel like nowhere else on earth. If you're not averse to splashing the cash, there are places in India and ways of getting there that would knock your socks off. There are multiple Indias. One of the first things I did was take a trip on the maiden voyage of The Golden Chariot, a luxury train in Karnataka. Even though it breaks all the rules of independent travel we all tend to like in here - I really enjoyed it - and you sure know where I'm coming from. India delivers.

But actually, as I said somewhere above, the biggest clue I can give you is to go anywhere BUT the obvious. You will survive if you don't see the Taj Mahal.

And thank you Craig. The lessons in this adventure were worth learning. Of course, the real issue is 'what did I do to create this' not 'what did they do'. But I decided to make this more a story about them rather than a story about me. 'I Am A Camera'. lol. Didn't someone smart say that?

A special Dogster stamp for those who know the reference.

john van druten

Close - but not close enough.

christopher?????

Mr. Isherwood is correct.

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed."

from Goodbye to Berlin, 1939

Now, that's something to aspire to.

you're well on your way, now if only you would finish the play.............

Elementary, dear Dogster: www.dogsterstails.com. (Take a look, for example, at www.maribelsguides.com. She used to offer the guides on fodors by request before setting up her own website.) The world is full of youngsters who would delight in designing a worthy site for you for a mere pittance. You can recoup some of the cost by selling assorted Dogster tchotchkes, photos, personally escorted tribal tours, and, of course, spiritual counseling...

Is Tangata vindicated?

Although I like my pampering as much or even more than the next person . . . clean sheets, elegant food, wine and a masseuse make me very content -- I'll have to agree with you dogster on moving away from the most obvious tour attractions and places. When I look back on my travels (much of it humanitarian related) the best experiences have always been with the local people - simply participating in their daily lives. I always feel like I take away and learn so much more that I give and it seems to feel well worth the mild (or sometimes not so mild) discomfort I have had to deal with. On many occasions I have been greatly humbled by the warm generosity found -- often from people who have so little to give.

chicken
I could not have said it better! Yes, "living" with the locals is most definitely the way to really get the feel of a country/city.

I must say, rotten tomatoes hurled my way, that the Taj was not worth the hassle. I hated Agra. I enjoyed other places so much more, especially Amritsar and Gwalior.

No rotten tomatoes, but while I hated Agra too, I have to say I was blown away by the Taj (enjoyed Fatehpur Sikri and the bird park too). I saw it both at sunset and sunrise (practically deserted the second time) and loved the way the colors changed with the light. Doubt I'll go back, though.

Agree Amritsar was worth the detour, but didn't get to Gwalior (did like Orccha, though). I'd put in a good word for Mysore, too - in fact for the south in general.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who was "swept away" (Lena Wertmiller). There's so much more to see in India.

Yup, I think you have a choice in India - play the game - or strike out on your own. Most just play the game. They don't know that there is another way to see India. As a travel agent said: 'they only wanna go where they know...'

Trying to escape the assumptions put in place by generations of cookie-cutters can be frustrating and difficult.

'No, I don't want to go to that tourist restaurant surrounded by tour busses - I want to sit and drink chai in this hovel by the road...'

'No, I don't want every skerrick of taste leeched from my dinner. No, I don't want you to bland everything down to baby-food...'

'No, no, no...'

Just jump outside that horror straight-jacket - there is India.

But actually, the majority of tourists WANT the cookie-cutter. If you are at any of the tourist places, there will be a firm expectation that you are a tourist and will behave like tourists do.

And sometimes, that's a lot of fun. But I realise, looking back on my stories, that not one of them mentions a single famous touristy thing. Mostly, the tourist sites are things to be endured these days, rather than enjoyed. The only topic to reflect on with travel to India, really - is fear.

The other thing to know is that India ain't the India of ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. We've all grown up with decades of horror stories: you'll get sick, you'll have beggars hanging off you, blah...

Actually, India is changing so rapidly, education and literacy skills are climbing, the hospitality industry hovers just this side of greed waiting for the season... there is now little reason to think of it as particularly intrepid.
Of course, if you are a traveler of certain years, you are likely trapped in yesterday's assumption.

India is easy. That's if you pay. Then you can see 'pretend India', the India you came to find. It's all just a huge piece of theatre. Like the upper deck of my river-cruise: ‘Bwaawww, bwwa-w-rgh, India-h-h-h...’

I realise as I write, there is actually a whole sub-section of the Indian hospitality industry devoted to the ‘Bwaawww, bwwa-w-rgh, crowd. The more I think of it, the bigger it gets.

Came to this very, very late. Dogster your writing gets better and better.

You don't need to set up a website, you can do a blog and post all the stories together. However if you do none of us will ever get anything done.

I note with amusement the Dogster's reference to "behave". Not our Dogster. The last time he behaved, he was in knickers. (Do they wear knickers in Oz?) Whatever, it was a very long time ago.

Hi LA - thanks. I think the prose is pretty clean in this one. Really, I just wrote it to get it out of my system. It's more a color-piece than a story as yet, but I had fun trying to manage my cast of 25. That was the purpose of the writing exercise. Trouble is, I've realised, that a cast-list like that sets you up for a ve-e-ery long story - and that's leaving out the other 50%! So I cut to the chase at the end.

Silverblossom's enthusiasm above made me go back and find the old stories and my later drafts of them. Lordy, there are a lot. The later drafts are way better than the Fodor's ones so that's why I'd like to stick 'em all somewhere.

Right now I'm putting them in a Booksmart book. That's an endless saga.

Gpanda, it's possible that the last time I MISbehaved, in was in knickers.

Knickers in colloquial, and rather dated Australian, are underpants for little old ladies.

"I'd like to stick 'em all somewhere."

Why not a blog? I'm using Wordpress (see mytimetotravel.wordpress.com ), which is free, and dead easy. If you take their defaults, all you have to do is type (or copy and paste, if you've already written it).

Dogster do you mean that you are doing a hardcover book, blub.com?

I have used them a number of times, most recent my trip to India with 160 pages of pictures, mostly 8x10 and 5x7s and put all my blog in as well. Love it!

listen it's been eons since i found anything worthwhile on this hell portal to read, i've been planning trips till i'm ready to shoot myself have pity dogster drop a line.....or two by the way i'm about to book &beyond india wilderness safari let me know if there have been any tiger eaten tourist not reported to the public in days gone by

ps in all seriousness as a connissuer of literature I can attest to your giftedness, you turned a two week india tour of leisure and shopping into a three week safari keep up the good work. next stop kathmandu whooohooo

oops make that four weeks

Well, thanks thursday - I'm inspired. I've opened a wordpress blog - now I'm trying to work out how to set it up and add pictures. I'm very over-excited.

http://thedogster.wordpress.com

might get you in there. Later on today I'll put this piece in - along with some of the extra material.

Wonderful Dogster - now we can have another read - all in one go. Bravo.

Bravo, another amazing tale doggie, whats next on the menu?

I'm having a wonderful time. lol. There's more for you there Mary. Look up to the top right of the page. Look. Final drafts of the stuff in here. I'm adding as we speak.

Then, much later, photos. lol. What's that saying...?' Happy as a pig in pooh..?'

Hi two - we cross posted. I have to go to London in June so I'm gonna grab a multi-stop not-quite RTW ticket and do stuff,/i>. Dunno what, dunno where.

You will have to pass by BKK on your way to LHR so can we expect the return of the dogster?

Yes. Hanuman, en route to a bitta glitter. I'm sticking them for a companion fare. I've told them I've married a beautiful Thai lady. I may have to borrow one of yours.

My My Dogster, you have been busy.... Fantastic, doggy tales in one place.

Well, as thursday said, it's incredibly easy to do. Keep watching - and hopefully reading: the versions you have read in here are very different. I'm not even a quarter of the way thru. Oooh, but Smeagol, this is fun. It's like letting the rabbits out to play in the sun. I grow fond of my little stories. Now here they all are, in a row. lol lol lol.

Just read your Good Friday story, fabulous Dogster, i wish i could write like that.

I have just the girl for you, desperate, lonely and fond of dogs. May I introduce you to: http://www.fodors.com/community/profile/askoksona/

Wonderful! I'm so glad you've now got your own website! I'm going to bookmark it.

Oh, Hanuman, now you are dredging up ancient history, lol. The people asking about AO and MacIntosh will be even more bewildered!

Wow, the floodgates are open! What did I start? Most bloggers do a post a day at most... I'm going to have to ration myself - I just mailed my taxes, and figured I could now get down to serious planning for the next trip, and another massive time-sink opens up! (But seriously, this should be a lot of fun.)

Pix are also dead easy - put the cursor where you want it to appear, and click on the tv-shaped icon - the first one after "Upload/Insert" - tell it where to find the photo, give it a caption, choose from left/right/center and the size - I'm using medium. When you have time, you may want to move on to choosing a theme - under "Appearance" on your Dashboard.

Yay! I am going to bookmark it and start to poke around . . .

Ah, he's now mastered photos!

Wonderful! but the seduction scene is still missing...

And who said that you can't teach an old dog new trick?

It's so amazing. I'm completely excited. Now I can show you Bruno, the monster dog! I had no idea there were so many stories waiting in the wings. I've been beavering away on them behind your backs for ages. Of course, since I'd stuck the first drafts in here, I could scarcely bung in the final drafts as well - which are dramatically different in some cases. So they get to see daylight. I can hear them all, squealing with happiness at being set free.

Dog, that website looks A-mazing already!!

Yes -- in agreement with Smeagol -- the website looks fantastic . . . and stories I have yet to read! Hot Dog!

You're uploading very large size picture files dogster: 3648 x 2736 pixels. IMO you only need about 600 x 500 for blog display and it will save you time and space as well.

More pictures please!!!

Thanks guys. I'm having fun. How do I reduce those pics, I wonder? I'll go scout. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I stopped in to read the lastest Death on the Ganges comments, and discovered a Doggie blog! And Thursday's blog! Double Yea! It is indeed the greatest thing since sliced bread!

dogster, thanks for the great ganges tale. also, your blog is awesome.

btw, ht doesn't know what he is getting yet. i'll see him in a couple of weeks. no tongue, however. lol.

dogster,

I’ve been a silent fan of your talents for too long & wanted to add my voice to the choir.

Thank you for sharing your misadventures - and now a blog, as well! Hurray!

Please keep the tales coming!

Awww, thank you m_bran: I'm always gratified when a secret lurker breaks cover - I know what a lurch into the light that can be. It is a catalogue of disaster, isn't it? hopeless.

I'm delighted you've come to visit in such an auspicious day: the first preview of the Dog Blog. Although it isn't really a blog. It's a library of secret delight and firm warning: do as Dog says and not what he does.

As a matter of fact, I wouldn'y do what he says, either.

I think I'll officially launch it on April Fool's Day.

Cool - the pix do make a difference! Now awaiting the dog photo (no, the Bruno one). [Thanks, dreaming - dogster's industry is underlining my need to put up a new post!]

Thrilled to see the Dog Blog! Still catching up on some of the older trip reports but this tickle trunk of Dogster detail is sure to entertain. Thank you so much for sharing your pictures and stories.

Looking forward to your next trip....

Dinner with the Queen...LOVE it.

Well, I'm amazed: 375 of you have come in to read stories in the first 24 hours of the post, all from that one weeny mention up above. Amazing. I get stats, I can see how many read what stories and what search engines bring them in.

Those finding the stories after having done a search on: indian aunties visible part showing or hot bangladeshi aunty without dress may be disappointed...

It's very exciting. I'll just give that address again:
http://thedogster.wordpress.com/

lol lol lol.

I love having your stories all in one place. I've been going back and forth reading what you'd written here about Sikkim and Darjeeling, but now I can find the parts I want to review easily! Thanks, dogster.

Great stats! However, most counters just tell you the number of hits on your site. You can't tell whether it's one person visiting you a 100 times or 100 people visiting once unless you go through a lot more trouble. I don't know if wordpress lets you see how long each visit lasts. That's an interesting statistic.

I think many of us have it saved in Favourites.... I'm finding new stories to enjoy and reloving stories i have read...

Just read "The Devil Kolkata" again - now accompanied by photographs. That story just kills me. It is so heartbreaking. I have experience working with orphans and such -- but not w/ kids directly involved in child sex-slavery. How utterly deplorable and depressing. I guess it hits closer to home since I have 3 of my own that fall into that same age bracket.

I know that when people are on vacation the last thing they want to get involved in is exactly what you found yourself in the middle of. However, I am going to put this out there anyway . . . http://www.ijm.org/ It is a solid organization. My DH has met with the director personally.

Yup, it sure spun me out, chicken - for a long time after. I was only able to take three photos that whole time. It just wasn't kosher to bring out the camera - but I snuck the two blurry ones. The most devastating one at the end was proudly posed.

As you see, pics are coming in, but they are the most time consuming part. But I think they add to the text..?

Well now there have been 650 through the doors. Like Marija, I have no wauy of knowing how many stay but I can tell where they click. Whether they read I dunno - but I reckon about half are reading - which is a neally nice [and kinda odd] feeling. It's a bit like I've opened a library and I can kinda feel people beavering away.

Really, it's quite a palpable sensation.

651 - just had to check out Bruno.

lol - another fifty by now, Craig. I have more pics for that story later, by the way. What a saga this is.

OK, Dogster. We have to figure out a signal for when you're done with a story, both text and pictures. Surely you don't expect us to keep checking each story to see if it has changed from the last time we looked, even though that adds to your count of visitors. Can you make the title red or something when you've called a halt to changes? Or will there never be an end...

Well, I have no control over what you do, Marija. The site has only been up for two days - do you think you're being a little bit cruel? lol. I'm afraid that you'll just have to cope. Rust never sleeps.