Live To Win

I think one of the best pieces of advice that i've ever received came from a Circus Oz rigger. We were 10m up in the truss above the stage, discussing equipment, safety and techniques of clipping on. My questions must have either been tiring or amusing, because after some time the rigger turned to me and said that yes, safety equipment was important, but; "Just don't let go". I feel that i've carried this brave and possibly naive piece of advice well. When in dangerous situations, take all possible precautions against accident, but at the end of the day - just don't have one.

Mum and Dad left early this morning, marking a neat month since i first landed in India. Sitting in a dirty dive hotel in the mayhemic (sure it's a word) Pahar Ganj district of Delhi, with a cold beer, i thought i'd compile a quick list of my favourite moments so far. So to go with it there are also some of my favourite photographs. Yes, photographs! Mitch - 1, Technology - 0, hahaha. So without further undulating delay. My father Clive has also been tiring of the constant attention that we attract in public places. One afternoon as we were walking through the metro station, a middle aged business man had craned his neck around so far in wonderment, while still walking forwards, that he walked into a wall. Dad and I started clowning when another two young guys were checking us out. Dad preens his moustache and swings an imaginary handbag, like a predatory prostitute sizing up a beat. I comically slip over on the stairs and bang my head on the handrail. Later on the packed ...

So after my slightly smug dissertation on India's traffic system (or rather on it's decentralised lack of coherence), i felt that it was time to get on the road and eat my words! mmm chrome So first in Pushkar, and then in Udaipur for Dad's 63rd Birthday, i hired a Royal Enfield Bullet, and took to the hills. Royal Enfield was originally a British marque that made motorcycles and lawnmowers. They were associated with the Smalls Arms factory in Enfield, hence their name and motto - "Made like a Gun, Goes Like a Bullet!". Through a confusing series of licensing agreements, Enfield' Bullets were also manufactured in India from 1956, and the marque of "Royal Enfield" was bought by the Indian manufacturing company in 1995. Thus the Enfield Bullet, at 75 years, is the longest consecutively made motorcycle of all time! To test the virtues of this bike, i first had to find a willing and cheap hirer in who had one available in the colours that i liked....

1. Traffic To an outside Western eye, Indian traffic is a life-threatening spectacle of unexplainable near-misses, complete anarchy, and confusing politeness. Cars, Buses, Trucks, Motorcycles, Scooters, Auto-Rickshaws, Cycle-Rickshaws, Bicycles, and Pedestrians both Human and Animal safely share wide stretches of tarmac, seemingly without following any obvious set of rules and yet without incident. How is this possible? To answer this, we must first analyse what it is that the Western eye has been taught to appreciate as the fundamentals of safe traffic management, and what this says about the societies in which these fundamentals exist. In Australia, we have a strong body of traffic laws, accompanied by signs and symbols which relay powerful messages subconsciously. STOP signs. Traffic lights coloured in Red and Green. Lane markers which definitively split the road into independant sections. And so on. The adherence to these directives/laws is of course ensured by th...

Street graffiti and Urinal, Delhi India! As my Hindi progresses slowly, my amazement at this incredible country grows, experiences setbacks, is misunderstood, gets engaged in conversation and taught to understand. Imagine every empty building site that you have ever broken into, or each abandoned warehouse that you silently stole through, enjoying the feeling of wondering at massive empty spaces, populated only by stains, broken piles of bricks, seemingly inexplicable holes dug in the centre of a floor, jutting outcrops of bent and twisted steel, precarious balconies, and twisting creeping greenery clinging to a manga tangle of electrical wiring. Now fill that space with a rushing wind of aggressive scents like the acrid smell of men's urine, the pungent aroma of hot spices, the smoking steel on porcelain of overworked brakepads, clouds of black polluted smoke rising from the fire made from cow shit and plastic waste, the raw sniff of melting steel from naked welding, the r...