Mysore

I went to visit the seat of the Wodeyar maharajas, once one of southern India's most powerful kings. The maharaja obviously didn't want for much and his Palace is suitably grand: marble and granite on a huge scale, intricate wood carvings adorn most rooms, and I counted many silver engraved doors.

I especially liked his receiving room with it's ornate peacock stained glass ceiling and his gilded throne. I could see myself sitting there whilst my vassals bowed down to kiss my toes. And just in case they'd forgotten why they had come to pay tribute, the entrance to the grand hall was flanked by two vicious, snarling tigers carved out of heavy black-green marble.

The city itself is vibrant and colourful. The market is a warren of stalls selling piles of long green beans, stacks of plump crimson tomatoes, and pyramids of small pale lemons. Pungent fumes from the stocks of fresh jasmine hang mist-like around the flower stalls. Wholesalers sit on a bed of petals to the left from where they sold sackfuls of roses, frangipanis and other flora. On the right are an army of cross-legged workers who shape the flowers into chains violet, pink, and white offerings to sell to worshipers.

The pace of life in Mysore is relatively laid back. Cows wander the streets, happily hoovering up banana peels and anything else they discover. The star of the trip was undoubtedly the big black and white cow which had discovered a black Suzuki Swift. She stood there, eying the front bumper, nodding her head up and down, and then moved round the side to nuzzle up to the wing mirror. Maybe she was angry, or else she wanted to mate. Either way the result wasn't going to be pretty so I didn't stick around to find out.

2007 Shatabdi Express

Most Brits are conditioned to feel nostalgic about the railways - mainly because we can remember their glory days, but also because we are incessantly complaining about their current dilapidated state.

The railways are an institution in India. Not only does it have the most extensive network in the world, carrying millions of people every day. It is also the world's biggest employer with close to 3m workers. Of course, the impressive statistics hide the fact that much of the rolling stock is old and crumbling, there are few high-speed routes, and delays are frequent.

But for me, riding an Indian train is full of nostalgia. On most European trains food carts are merely designed for glorified snacking. In India, you've barely been seated five minutes when the tea-wallah comes racing down the aisle to offer you a cup of piping hot chai. What's more, he's soon followed by a samosa-wallah, a myriad of others serving rice, raitas, chutneys, curd, mango juice and more!

Outside rice paddies and water buffalo drift past my window. A man is bent double, plucking coriander from his plot. A boy rides an oversized bike down a dirt track. Palm trees and a cloudy grey sky. Humid, sticky. Hot.

On board a plane you miss the subtle, slow transformation of a landscape. Frames of reference are distort and time is shortened. Going by train is the way travel should be: functional yet timeless, languid and enjoyable. I can't help but think we've lost something by flying about in aluminum birds.

Ganges starts in Sholapur

Only a few lucky foreigners escape from a trip to India without a Delhi Belly story. I'd heard many gut-wrenching incarnations of it: a friend who spent half the day in wild, anguished dashes for the nearest loo, another who lived through a 10-hour train trip in fear of a liquid explosions from both ends, and other stories too gruesome to retell.

I - in my own conceited-world-traveller-way - was not going to allow any nasty bacteria to colonise my lower my intestine. My plan was simple: bottled water and a "veg" diet whilst my gut adjusted, and then I would ease my way into more adventurous options. The first week passed with no major incidents. So far, so good. Time to push the boat out.

I'd arrived late into Sholapur. The 200km+ train trip had worn me out, but I hadn't eaten since midday. Rather than turning in, I decided to fill my belly. The hotel restaurant was humming with locals, and a delicious smell of charring meat kebabs and rising naans met me at the door. I plopped myself into a wicker chair and ordered a cold Kingfisher, a chicken kebab from the tandoor, and a Peshwari naan. Life was good.

The food arrived swiftly. The chicken pieces lay in a neat row, struggling to free themselves from some sort of a yoghurt-herb concoction, whilst the naan stared up at me through a lurid red jam. I peered at them suspiciously, a wave of tiredness swept over me. But I resolved to struggle doggedly on. I stabbed the chicken with my fork and lifted it to my lips. It was soft and slightly rubbery, the consistency of Edam cheese. The naan was slightly damp and squishy. I forced myself to eat a few mouthfuls, and then called it a night before I retched.

If I'm honest, the meat was pinker than it should have been. And I knew from the start that it probably contained a small army of germs ready to attack my feeble Western stomach. They say that fortune favours the brave - what b*ll%cks! All I know is that, for me, the Ganges starts in Sholapur.

Rural India: Can it shine too?

Most visitors to India don't have the chance to venture out into rural areas. They zoom through India's cities in air conditioned cars, gawp at the IT palaces, cough on the blue rickshaw fumes, and come away with the impression that India is indeed booming. But the cities tell you only part of the story.

The countryside is home to more than 700m people (~70% of India's population) scattered across roughly 600,000 villages. And whilst agriculture now only accounts for about 20% of GDP in the new India, it still generates the majority of employment. So to really understand what's happening in India, you need to see the rural picture. (Or to quote an Indian proverb: "What does a monkey know of the taste of ginger?")

I was up in western Maharastra on a trip into "the field". Together with Sauhrab, I was visiting customers and the jhotis (female village entrepreneurs) to assess the impact of our latest marketing promotion. The landscape flat, bare, and dusty. A few trees grow forlornly in the rugged hills. Fields have been recently plowed and sown, ready for the coming monsoon rains. A man, wrapped in a bursting orange lungis, urges his bullock on, leaving churned, charcoal earth behind him.

Much of Indian agriculture is rain fed, and thus harvest come just once a year after the monsoon passes. Farmers live lives of plenty for a few months, and then spend the following 9 months living off their savings. Wealthier farmers with connections can drill bore holes and pump out water to irrigate their field and grow cash crops like sugar cane and fruits.

But the real promise is large scale irrigation. In one village we visited, the government had diverted a nearby river to feed their crops. The concrete canal was swollen with rich brown, silt-laden waters which farmers were sluicing into their fields. Here they harvest cash crops year round and you can see the impact in the village. Houses are bigger, 2-wheelers abound, and kids march off hand-in-hand to school.

Much has been made of how rural India felt marginalised and left out of "shining India". It was said that the poor punished BJP at the polls in 2005 by handing power to Sonia Ghandi's Congress. Progress does indeed feel less palpable in rural areas, but things are on the move. And where there is the right mix of government investment in infrastructure, good access to markets, and savvy farmers, you can see definite hope.

Lifting people out of poverty, will require shifting some of the 700m rural residents into more productive activities - i.e. service and manufacturing jobs. India is fertile and well suited to industrial farming. Agriculture should be booming and with low labour costs Indian exports should be very competitive on world markets. But this requires sufficient economies of scale, which India will only through organisation. (There are many models: social cooperatives ala Amul for dairy products, as well as private sector efforts). To provide the incentives for consolidation the government needs to invest billions in better irrigation, better roads, more consistent power. But as ever, prescribing solutions and making promises is easy. Delivering them is much harder.

No Gold in Bangalore

One of my priorities this weekend was to find myself a gym. Not really because I'm a work-out-aholic, but because my knee demands it. Without rigorous and continuous physical therapy I won't be doing much running come the autumn.

I did extensive internet searches, made an aborted attempt to convince the Oberoi to let me be a member of their plush spa/fitness centre for 2 months, and hunted in back alleys for local players with dodgy sounding names like Futura Fitness and Right Shape Gym.

I about to give up when I finally stumbled upon Gold's Gym's website. Memories of RC Strategy flooded back to me. Jan - hunched enthusiastically in front of his blackboards armed with over-sized coloured chalks - stared meaningfully at me and said: "Test the strategy's internal consistency: does expanding the geographical scope help to enhance Gold's Gym's competitive advantage." I wasn't really sure, but what I did know that I had a huge willingness to pay.

Ecstatic at having found a modern gym which appeared relatively close to the guest house, I jumped in a rickshaw and set him off in the general direction. But although the detailed address appeared wonderfully precise, it turned out to be superficially so. I couldn't find it and I certainly couldn't explain to the rickshaw driver how to find it.

I fell back on Plan B: ring the handy number posted on the website. Ring ring. A man answers.

Him: Hello?
Me: Hello. Is this Gold's Gym?
Him: Yes
Me: Great, can you tell me how to find you, I'm near Cubbon Park but I can't find you.
Him: You want international?
Me: Huh? I want Gold's Gym near Cubbon Park.
Him: How did you get this number?
Me: I found it on the internet. On your website.
Him: This is international. Don't ring me.

Click. Mysterious. Confusing.

I joined a gym a few minutes walk from the office, just off Cunnigham Road. It's called Power Fitness. It's not too dodgy.

Puff goes Perkino II

Saturday night I found myself in a club beneath the Leela Palace (one of Bangalore’s swankiest hotels). I’m two floors underground in the bowels of the hotel, surrounded by a seething mass of hot, sticky people. The deep bass notes of the latest techno track thump out of floor to ceiling speakers.

This is part of India is definitely shining. Here the emerging middle class, the recipients of India’s dramatic IT boom, have come to unwind and spend their hard-earned but eminently disposable cash. Labels – Gucci, Armani, Tommy Hilfiger – are on ostentatious display but its mobile phones that differentiate the “doing well” from the “doing fabulously”. Needless to say, I felt a little out of place with my old school Nokia candy-bar model (one chap even pointed at my phone in disbelief; what could I do but shrug?).

I observe the scene, cold Kingfisher in hand. 750 people make for a pretty good atmosphere and this party is in full swing. Suddenly off to my left, I see the long, white bar light up in an intense bright orange glow. The crowd bursts out into a startling “woohoo” and surges towards the bar. I move with them to get a look thinking this must be the start of some sort of light/laser show.

But to my amazement I see the three barmen have just set the bar on fire. A 20m flame runs the length of the bar. Plastic squirty-bottles in hand, the barmen spray long jets of lighter fuel at it, urging the pyre ever higher. The flames dance, spit, and burst upwards in long golden swirls. They reach the roof, billow big clouds of black smoke, and die down. The crowd roars and the DJ nonchalantly notes: "The bars on fire".

My thoughts: 2 floors underground, no visible exits, 750 intoxicated people. Thank god we're not all wearing polyester.

Puff goes Perkino I

I set off to find the office, just a few blocks away from the guest house down on Cunningham Road. It’s a sticky morning and I’m a little anxious - in my head I’m running late. I hop over cracked pavements, slip past street vendors, dodge the odd stray dog. So far, so good.

To the initiated, traffic in India needs no introduction. To the uninitiated, suffice to say that it’s a little different from London or New York. Crossing the road requires significantly more skill and guts as you have to navigate a constant flow of honking cars, zig-zagging rickshaws and bikes, careering trucks and buses.

I spy the office on the other side of the road and gingerly step down off the pavement, steeling myself for my first attempt. Out of nowhere a rickshaw appears, hurtling towards me. I jump aside to avoid certain death (okay, I exaggerate; certain injury) and thankfully secure a soft landing. Actually, I’m a little surprised by how soft and squishy the landing is. I look down and understand why. It’s true: cows do wander the streets in India.

Banglore JIT (Just in Town)

BA119 disgorged me at 4.30am into the arrivals hall of Bangalore’s brand, spanking new airport. Barely open three weeks, it’s a fitting glass and steel gateway to India’s IT hub.

I’m in Bangalore for a 2 month internship with BP, the international energy company. I’m working in its alternative energy business with a team that has developed a smokeless biomass stove which is being sold to rural customers. It is a category-creating product which is aimed at the bottom of the income pyramid; its promise is to save the customer money (by being more efficient) and to improve their health (by being smokeless). Click here for a good summary.

This is my first trip to India and I feel lucky to be here as this emerging giant edges towards centre stage in the world economy. After two years in China, I wonder what my own comparisons of the two countries will be.

31 May - 6 June: Corsica

Lost in Corsica
Holidaying in Corsica is a bit like being a castaway on Lost. Although the island is just a few hundred miles off the coast of France, no one seems to know where it is. There are few visitors, little infrastructure, practically no hotels, and not much to do once you get there except “survive” (although unlike Oceania passengers, I managed to drink cold beer and mojitos all week instead of cave water).

My arrival on the island was admittedly less dramatic – overnight a bright yellow ferry, no 747s, dramatic crash, etc. My fellow passengers on the ferry were largely bearded motorcyclists and station-wagon-driving-families on camping holiday. In my mind, like the Oceania passengers they all conveniently died on arrival. I was forced to put up with a young, mini-skirt wearing companion who tagged along for the ride (sadly there was no exciting and dodgy past to discover).

Like my fellow TV survivors, I found that my island (Corsica) has a rugged interior full of misty and inhospitable peaks (the tallest being more than 2500m). The coastline, like Lost, is idyllic: endless curving bays of fine white sand. I raced up mountain passes and along winding roads to get as far away from any Others that I might meet. The locals have a ferocious reputation; it was rumoured that they are wild and dangerous. But I never met the Others. Scary locals are impossible to find.

Just like a peanut
I’d been sitting on the beach for the best part of a week. Being a fair-skinned red headed lad I’d naturally applied large dollops of sun-screen to avoid becoming Perkins flambé. Too cool down on occasion, I plunged my sizzling self into the cold, glass clear Mediterranean several times a day. Shivering I returned to my towel to warm up under the sun’s searing rays. The goose bumps quickly disappeared and the water evaporated leaving me covered with a fine salty patina like some sort of exotic fish dish. I repeated this routine daily until my skin began to turn a shade of nutty brown (okay, here I exaggerate for I’m incapable of being anything more than off-white, but lets for a moment pretend I am).

I was explaining this phenomenal transformation to Ebba one evening, hoping that she would agree with me that I was now looking like some sort of bronzed Adonis. She sipped her beer and gave me an amused, quizzical look. “I think you are more like a peanut: greasy, salty, and perhaps little brown on the outside.”

Pizza, pizza everywhere and nothing else to eat
You would imagine that Corsica would produce heavenly food; a sublime fusion of French and Italian culinary traditions. But whilst the food is delicious, Italy has actually won hands down. The staple Corsican diet is pizza. And it’s everywhere, utterly unavoidable.

On one two-hour stretch of road which meandered mostly through barren countryside, I counted no fewer than 32 pizzerias. There were battered buses parked in rest stops churning out dodgy flatbreads. I saw full-blown gourmet restaurants with food-fired ovens serving up artisanal pies. I passed some rundown cafes dishing up pizza alongside hamburgers and dodgy kebabs. Every town seem to have at least half a dozen pizzerias on the main drag. Never had I seen such pizzerias per capita density and such willingness to eat pizza.

Yet I shouldn’t complain. The pizza was lip-smackingly good. Fine, crispy and thin crusted, these pizzas came topped with scrumptious local goats cheese and smoky Corsican ham. Nevertheless, part of me was a little sad that all this Italian influence had only brought piazza. Where was all the gelati?