Barons Jaguar MkV

 Taking time out

Saturday March 24, 2001

After the road dramas of yesterday, we took advantage of our time in Varanasi and went to visit the Ganges at dawn. It was like travelling back in time to an ancient city. The whole waterfront is dominated by more than 100 ghats which have steps leading down to the water. Pilgrims come to take a ritual bath, as well as do yoga, offer blessings, and receive a shave or a massage.

We walked to the Jalsain Ghat, where cremations take place by the waterfront 24 hours a day. The bodies are handled by outcasts, known as doms, who carry them on bamboo stretchers through the streets of the old town and then douse them in the river before they are burned. The bodies are covered in bright shiny material and are swathed in garlands of yellow flowers. To hide the smell of the corpses burning, they are smeared with butter and incense is thrown by the handful onto the burning pyre.

The wood for the cremations is sold by weight and bodies burn for around three hours, but the corpses of those who cannot afford enough wood are partially burned and then the remains are thrown into the river. If the dead person was either a baby, a pregnant woman, or had smallpox, they are not burned. Instead a huge slab of rock is tied to them, they are taken by boat to the middle of the Ganges and then pushed overboard. While this may sound shocking, it seems completely natural here. Unlike Britain, where everything goes on behind closed doors, in India every aspect of life takes place on the streets, whether it is cremations, ironing, bathing or cooking.

The rally left for the Nepal border today, while we remaining in Varanasi, to work on the remains of the car.

Messing about on the river

Tuesday March 27, 2001

After a surprisingly smooth drive through Nepal, the rally arrives at the bottom of the Himalayas. Fortified by a gin and tonic the previous evening, Jo gets up at dawn and takes a raft down the Karnali river.

With the high emotions of the journey to Varanasi now behind us, the Jewel of India rally  moved on to Nepal. While the majority of cars went to Kathmandu, those of us trailing behind after repairs drove directly to Royal Bardia, one of the nine national parks.

The drive here was a far less stressful experience - the roads were smooth, and even had white lines down the middle. This was representative of how ordered Nepal is compared with India. We have no need to constantly blare our air-horns while driving, and there are even mini-supermarkets where you buy essentials along the way, something we have not seen in all our time in India. Alongside the road are scores of small villages which don't appear to have changed for hundreds of years. The houses are made of mud with grass roofs and have virtually no furniture inside; the outside walls are decorated with moulded animals such as elephants, deer and chickens.

We stayed the night at the luxurious Karnali tented camp, which overlooks the Karnali river, a tributary of the Ganges. It was a real joy to sit with a gin and tonic and watch the sun set and the foothills of the Himalayas slowly melt into the evening sky.

After getting up to watch the dawn, we took a raft and meandered down the river for nearly three hours. After the struggle of pushing our increasingly tired Mk5 over mountains and rocky roads for the last few days, it was a pleasure to hear nothing but the river and the sounds of the many birds, ranging from the screaming of the wild peacocks to the chatter of the kingfishers. Other animals we saw along the route included crocodiles, monkeys, spotted deer and wild boar, although unfortunately we never got to see any of the freshwater dolphins, which live, in the river.

In the early afternoon I went with a tracker in search of tigers. We found footprints, dung, bits of claw and fur, and where the tigers had marked their territory - but no tigers. Later on we went on elephant safari across rivers and through dense undergrowth to find some of the one-horned rhino. Suddenly we came across a small herd including a baby. Perfect.

Of the 15 cars that left Udaipur, we have now lost two, with the Jaguar XK120 suffering too much damage along the route, and Edwin Hammond being forced to pull out because of his earlier accident. Our Jaguar Mark 5, so well prepared by Essex-based J D Classics, is still performing well. The engine and drive train are coping with the roads, heat and even with Indian additives in the petrol-water, sand, paraffin etc.

There was drama for some of the cars that decided to go up to Kathmandu. One of the Bentleys suffered two consecutive fires under the dashboard., and Bob Ashworth, who has had repeated bad luck in his old Bentley, lost all his oil and had to be towed nearly 100 miles along treacherous roads at night by Christopher Ray.

The previous day, Bob and Christopher were attacked by hundreds of bees in the most bizarre incident of the trip so far. The queen bee attached itself to Christopher's back, and the other bees followed. Christopher, who is not known for his slender build, ran screaming down the road trying to swat the bees, and only escaped by jumping onto a bus which was passing by. Fortunately, the passengers managed to remove all the bee stings.

Curioser and curiouser

Wednesday March 28, 2001

We stopped overnight at the old British hill station of Nainital, which involved a beautiful drive through the mountains. We have seen a lot already on our journey, but our trip took on an almost surreal quality when the hotel we were staying in arranged for the current Miss World to come to meet us all at a reception. She also waved the cars out the following morning as we started our journey to Rishikesh.

This town became famous after the Beatles met their guru, the Maharishi Mahesh yogi, there. It is built along the Ganges and has numerous ashrams, which offer courses in yoga and meditation. We stayed at the Mandarin Oriental Ananda, one of the most luxurious hotels in India. It is a sumptious complex covering the whole top of a mountain, with views down to the Ganges and the mountains beyond. While the service and design of the hotel are exceptional, it could have been in any part of the world, and I couldn't wait to head into town with some of the other rally drivers to get back in touch with the real India.

We went to the Parnath Niketan Ashram to see the evening fire purification ceremony alongside the river. It was simple and moving. For two of the rally entrants, Kesh and Narinder Kasi from Holland, it was particularly poignant. As Hindus, it was an important pilgrimage for them to go down to the Ganges to say prayers and wash themselves. We then headed for the Triveni Ghat, where I gave a blessing to my family by lighting a candle on a bed of fragrant flowers and floating it down the river.

The driving continues to be testing for all the drivers. The roads are so chaotic that many accidents have taken place despite the fact that the contestants rarely drive at more than 40mph. On some days it has seemed more like a demolition derby than a rally. While everyone is driving carefully, there is very little local awareness of road safety and we have seen numerous close shaves when cars or buses pull out of side roads without so much as a glance around and unsupervised children as young as three run across main roads without a care.

A bumpy ride

Friday March 30, 2001

Some experiences we seek out and others come to find us. Our journey to Shimla across the Himalayas definitely fitted into the latter category.

We drove from Rishikesh to Shimla in the driving rain across mountain roads that were hardly wider than one and a half cars. The barriers alongside the cliff edge had largely disintegrated and it was impossible to know when we were going to meet a lorry at one of the countless hairpin bends. And yet, despite the danger and life flashing before my eyes every time we swerved towards the edge of the cliff it was a fantastic drive that really suited both car and driver. Afterwards Jo  was still amazed by the intense beauty of the surroundings: the mountains resembled a Japanese watercolour painting but the drivers saw only the road.

Arriving in Shimla was a real culture shock after Rishikesh, with many of the Indians - both men and women - in western-style clothing. The shops are also more westernised and there was even a Domino's Pizza restaurant. The reason for this is that Shimla was once the summer capital of India with the British travelling more than a thousand miles from Calcutta and Delhi to get away from the sweltering heat of the plains.

My first impression of the high street was of a rundown Disneyland version of a small English town. But instead of members of the Raj promenading along the Mall, it is now rich Indians and honeymooners who flock to the old hill station. Virtually all the grand old homes of the British, which were made in England and then shipped piece by piece to India, are rotting and beyond repair. Yet the local schoolchildren would not look out of place at the most expensive English public schools, with the girls in their pleated grey skirts and the boys in their blazers and ties.