Entries from September 2007 ↓

7 Grandmasters
Spectacularly fast kung-fu in this 1978 genre classic.  Despite some early confusion as to what the hell was going on the plot to come became crystal clear about a third of the way in.  There’s an incredible amount of fights in this film but unlike Master of the Flying Guillotine (in which I started getting very bored) I still wanted to watch to the end.

It’s also amusing because of what complete cocks all the heroes are.

Police Story
Action is as outstanding as ever but there’s actually a lot less kung-fu than I remember.

My Neighbour Totoro
I swear Miyazaki can do anything, far from his big epics this is as simple a tale as they come, a beautiful little film.

While we didn’t quite get the litany of bad luck that made Morocco such fun India was also hard work for a 2 week break. We got back on Sunday and it’s still soon enough that my jet lag is mighty ripe. Our short tour of the North of India was enjoyable but food definitely proved to be a focus for the trip. Delhi was fairly hectic, touts, beggars, and Jonny’s shit throwing shoe shiner, were everywhere and there was absolutely no evidence of the new affluent India praised on TV. The slums were built on whatever traffic verge was available and conditions were pretty dire. We had pretty damn nice food in Delhi though, nowhere close to as spicy as I’d been lead to believe and pretty lovely in the tummy.

Thankfully Hindu’s drink so unlike going to Morocco in Ramadan this wasn’t going to be a dry holiday. We made our way to the pretty sweet Imperial Hotel (we read John Simpson singing it’s praises in the magazine on the plane over) to try catch some rugby, unfortunately despite the full size poster advertising the world cup, the barman couldn’t find it on the tele (and asked at one point if the football he had up on screen was rugby). But after a chance meeting with a bunch of students from Edinburgh we decided to fly off to the mountains. Unfortunately we couldn’t land the first day so we returned for an extra day of mostly reading our books in Delhi.

We made our way some 400 miles north to Leh. A much more pleasant town set at 3500m in the Himalayas bordering Kashmir. We spent another 2 days doing very little were spent trying to acclimatise to the high altitude air. Doing anything was fairly knackering but we managed to make it up to the spectacular palace and catch the local polo final. We also had an excellent meal at the Tibetan Kitchen of dumplings called Momos. The second day and a return visit wasn’t so great, Jonny knew the meal was rough before we’d finished it and left early. It took me to the next morning to feel it (so our encounter with Delhi belly wasn’t strictly from Delhi). This glorious morning was also the start of our three day trek through the mountains. With very little food in us we made it up to the 5000m pass (for me it was barely at that height it was 5 baby steps at a time and a 5mins break to get my breath back). Crossing the pass was necessary because unlike climbing a simple peak not getting over it meant a 2 day return journey back the way we came.

Thankfully on our return Jonny was too ill to make me do the 12 hour motorbike (I’ve never even been on one before) journey along the highest road in the world. So we decided instead to do the 17 hour jeep journey south over the 2nd highest road in the world. A booking cock-up meant we ended up in the boot with 2 other guys, getting stuck in a puddle and a breakdown meant I spent 24 hours in the back of this jeep with 3 other guys knees forming with mine a lovely sweaty spaghetti in the middle.

We had just enough time to do some climbing and enjoy the town of Manali which is definitely hippy camp when Goa is too hot. It was a pleasantly relaxed place but unfortunately home to another dodgy meal for us just to make sure we were basically ill for the entire trip. A quick 12 hour sleeper bus and we were back in Delhi with just enough time to buy some cheap Levis and head home.

Great fun but hard work. Pictures will be up soon.

The layers of grime from last weekend are gradually being removed.  I’m still pretty knackered and sore, 3 days of dancing in muddy slog will do that to you, but what a weekend.  Connect was billed as a boutique festival, quality over quantity and looking back at the weekend there’s been plenty of festivals with more bands I’ve wanted to see but the hit/miss ratio at Connect was out the park.  I think over the weekend I’d class only one or two acts as average.
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