Dogs, idiots and fat, ugly women

I’ve got a sign above my head that can only be seen by dogs, idiots and fat, ugly women. I’ve no idea what the sign says but it must be there as they all make a beeline to me. The worrying thing now is, I think this sign can be seen even when I use the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like being approached by dogs and the occasion fat, ugly woman. In fact, some would say the two groups are one and the same. However, the idiots of this world, I can do without.

All I want to do is transfer USD to an account, held in the name of my Indian tour operator, at the State Bank of India. I’ve contacted the chap in India, he’s contacted his bank and equipped with all the relevant details, we’re set to go. How difficult can it be? Being a tech savvy kind of guy, online banking is the way forward. I can keep out of the sweaty branch at lunchtime and conduct all my business online or over the phone. Tickety boo!

Whilst I can open a new deposit account “in a few easy clicks” there’s no way to transfer money from one bank to another. So, it looks like it’ll have to be phone banking. After fifteen minutes talking to some lame-brained Lloyds telephone monkey, my life force is being sapped from me at an alarming rate. Have I got the receiving bank’s identifying code? No. Have I got the BIC? Have I got Saturday’s lottery numbers?...Ok, I made the last one up but you get the idea. No matter, let’s go direct to source and speak to someone at the State bank of India.

I’m in luck. There’s a State Bank of India branch just down the road from me. I’ll give them a phone call. Surely, I can buy some travellers cheques (commission free) and then just deposit them into the tour operator’s account? If only life were that simple. Have I got an account at the State Bank? No. “Oh well you’ll have to open one and then transfer the money to the receiver’s account and then keep the account open with a minimum of $1,000US.” What about the traveller’s cheques idea? I might as well have asked her about football’s offside law. Gibberish, that’s what she came back at me with, gibberish!

Meanwhile, the local dogs must have smelt my presence. Woof! Woof woof! I could just about hear the bank employee now over the noise of the dogs. Woof woof! “look on the…”woof woof! “and you’ll be see..” woof! Woof woof!”… then contact your bank…” woof woof woof! “...but there’s a charge” I lost the will to live, hung up and contacted Lloyds again. Thirty minutes later and I was still dealing with a phone monkey reading from a pre-determined, un-wavering script when… my phone gave up the ghost and, like me, its batteries went flat.

Tail between my legs, I trekked to my local branch of Lloyds at lunchtime. Another soul destroying experience. The place was crammed to the rafters with folk. Luckily, the good folk at Lloyds have come up with a novel way of managing the queues. Shut a couple of teller’s windows and go for lunch. No noisy, inconsiderate customers for them. A Greggs steak slice and sit on a bench for thirty minutes, that should see the queue die down a bit! Bastards!

Forty minutes later, with my lunch missed, the transaction is complete. Apparently, it’ll take twelve to fifteen working days for the money to get India. There’s no guarantee the money will get there and they won’t notify me if it does. I’ve been charged £20 for this wonderful service and I’ll be paying again when the recipient receives the money. I can’t understand why we have a banking crisis with this standard of service. Ah well, as long as there’s a couple of pounds left over for them to award their executives a nice bonus. Bastards the lot of ‘em!

Now then, where’s that fat, ugly woman?

It all started with a toothbrush

How is it that when I go online and buy something as innocuous as a toothbrush, it ends up costing me a fortune? I'd better explain...

Amazon are the masters of online retailing. They seem to sell anything and everything. But beware! Buy just one item and be prepared to receive a deluge of daily emails. They quite politely ask if, because you purchased toothbrushes, you would be interested in the following related items… And there my spending starts. For alongside the associated toiletries was a book, The Lonely Planet Guide to North East India. “You may like this book”, the email read, “because in the past you purchased…” do you see which way this is heading?

And so it was, I bought the book, devoured every page and booked my plane ticket to Kolkata. Already my spending had gone from a toothbrush, to a book, to a plane ticket! Maybe I was a little hasty buying that plane ticket but I was now committed to travelling and the planning had to begin in earnest.

In my office at work I have a map of India on the wall. Looking at the Seven Sister States, they seem relatively close together. Being single, I could take a month away from my job here in the UK. I could then easily visit all the states. How wrong could I be? The infrastructure for such a journey is just not there. Distances of over 100km, take much longer to travel. Perhaps a tour company would be able to help me plan an achievable itinerary?

I must have contacted twenty companies, both Indian and some based in the UK. Some just didn’t reply. Others replied that they’d be happy to help and one of their experts would soon be in touch. Their mail never arrived. Some, claiming expert knowledge of the North East, were more than willing to help me. But, if I’d have followed their suggested itineraries, instead of enjoying the delights of NE India, I’d be enduring hour after hour of travel by jeep and plane. This was proving difficult.

The problems seemed to be mounting. Next was the issue of Restricted Area Permits for foreigners. Different websites gave differing advice. “Not possible to visit Arunachal Pradesh unless you pay for 4 people minimum” was one piece of incorrect information. “No access to Mizoram for foreigners”, was another. Even the Lonely Planet guide book was conspiring against me, telling me that a visit to Champai on the Myanmar border was impossible for foreigners. And then another bombshell.

The FCO travel advice website of the UK government speaks ominously of a “30 year insurgency campaign by an ultra nationalist group in Assam continuing with frequent bombings and random killings.” The UK government’s website notoriously overstates the risks of travelling so I had to get up to date news on the situation from reliable sources.

Time to go back online and check out my favourite India travel forum, Indiamike.com. Now this forum has some very knowledgeable western, NRI and RI travellers. Even so there was a dearth of information about NE India. However, the consensus seemed to be that if there are ever sporadic acts of insurgency, none of them seem to be directed toward the traveller and it therefore should be safe to go.

Still the map on my office wall enticed me with memories of many happy times, visiting India’s world renowned tourist areas. I was younger then and a dormitory room held no terrors for me. Now I’m approaching 50yrs of age and the delights of a well sprung mattress are no longer a luxury but a necessity. A bathroom that can be easily (and quickly) reached in the middle of the night is high on my list of requisites when booking a hotel room. Was I really asking for too much?

In 1959, his holiness the 14^th Dalai Llama fled Tibet and was welcomed into the arms of mother India at Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh , one of my intended destinations. I was beginning to think that his flight was a sight easier than what I had to go through. And then a breakthrough. I discovered majulitourism.com.

Majuli tourism is a state registered tour company based in Assam. My contact, Jyoti, helped me develop the final itinerary. His humour and honesty were a joy to work with. He came up with a workable itinerary. He could

organise Restricted Area permits and Protected Area Permits (something I wasn’t even aware I needed). He would include Majuli island in the tour, along with two, yes two National parks! Even more, He would take me to Champai . Remember Champai? The place that the Lonely Planet guide book said that I couldn’t visit? Jyoti seemed to think it was no problem. My itinerary was complete.

I fly to Kolkata and from there to Guwahati. It’s then Jeep all the way to Tawang, Nameri NP, Kaziranga NP, Majuli Island, Shillong, Aizawl and Champai before retracing my steps to Kolkata.

So you see, from buying a toothbrush on Amazon, I’m all set to discover the remote North East of India. At nearly 50yrs of age the spirit of adventure is still strong within me… or maybe I’ve taken leave of my senses!