I apologise for the unsavoury content of this posting

I've heard my readership has expanded. Good work to my covert publicity team. Readers should spread the word further. Your rewards, I assure you, shall be in heaven.

Mumbai airport looked like civilisation. I'm not sure quite what I was expecting, a shack with a peanut wallah? India landed outside the airport. The 90 minute ride to Mumbai central was through the largest slums or so called 'fishing villages' in Asia. You can imagine the stink; Oxfam factor 50. I knew civilisation was approaching when the kids began wearing shoes, and then the mobile phones appeared... There was something fetishistic about their abundance. They are after all the internationally recognised symbol of middle class status.

Mumbai is a curiously succesful blend of petrol fume, car horn, wallahs spread over every available inch of pavement, and a population density approaching custard. Stopping in the street wasn't an option. A seconds map glance was enough for an army of street vendors, drug dealers, pimps or disfigured tramps to close rank. Crossing the road has proven an art form. It is common to wait for five minutes for a stream of traffic to clear, and sometimes there's no option but to leap in front of it, hoping that taxi has seen you. This is what Indians practice, notoriously fatalistic. On one occasion I joined a considerable crowd of pedestrians, waiting for a gap in the traffic. Two massed armies. On nobodies orders the pedestrian battalian surgered forward en masse, sweeping me along. The cars screeched and bleated with little time to stop.

My hostel was in Colaba, allegedly Mumbai's hippest corner, the party playground for Bollywood startlets. Instead picture soho, only left out in the sun to rot for twenty years. Apply the same to the touts, pimps and drug dealers; emaciated heroin addicts with grubby clothes and hair, hissing at you from doorways. One rank specimen, one of those notorious ear cleaners, shoved his needle-like instrument into my ear univited as I passed. Add to this broth a few thousand tons of rubbish, distribute evenly and throw in a few starving children for good measure, and you might have an idea of Coloba.

Mumbai is intriguing, as perhaps the ultimate exercise in contrast, a place where tramps with legs missing scoot via skateboard past Gucci boutiques. A pocket of air opened inside when I bought my train ticket out, but only after an earnest search through the extravagant gothic Victoria Terminus, being bounced from Indian to the next like a flustered English pinball. The highlight of my time there was the boat trip to Elephanta island, the sight of ancient shiva temple caves, carved straight into the hillside. Some friendly Indians I met there said they thought that Indian were terrible to foreigners, that it made them ashamed to be Inidan.

However, something throroughly crap did happen. I was following a cue of Hindus to a shiva temple in downtown Mumbai. A religious festival was in swing. When I arrived I got chatting to a staff member, who oversaw cremation and associated rites. He seemed trustworthy, with impeccable dress and good English. He agreed to show me round, and he gaved me a genuinely fascinating tour, describing the process of cremation, and pointing out pieces of leg bone in the ashes. We were then joined by two other staff, who took me to the end of a narrow walkway to a sacred tree, child graves on either side. They then demanded to a fair whack as a donation, forcibly retaining me as I tried to push past. They had me cornered; I couldn't just run over the graves of fresh, shallow buried infants. I gave them some of what they asked, and to reassure me the donation was 'genuine', they slotted the notes into a steel, padlocked 'donation box'. It seemed like a strange form of charity to me.

Of course I am now well beyond Mumbai, writing in Bhuj in the Kutch region of Gujurat. But its getting late, and a grotty hostel room beckons. And these blog postings take time; I've already left it over two weeks, and experience has piled up alarmingly fast. To all, good night. I'll be right back...

The Time Before

Hi, I am known by some as Jacket Boy. This has nothing to do with jackets, but a little to do with the fact that I am a boy

About me....I inhabit a pleasant corner of London. Herne Hill. The biggest problems people have here are coffee related. I will soon be headed to the third world. I have heard it is "inspiring", that one can "find oneself" admid opened sewers and one-legged beggars with polio. I'm convinced, seriously. Yes, I am that wonder child of the 21st century, destined to eradicate AIDS, give peace a chance and raise a muliticulatural family for a modern Britain, a different child for each race. Yes, I am a gap year student.

So far....working various shit jobs. Waiting tables, selling books, banking, best of all law clerking: wheeling trolleys for lawyers. I have proven myself indespensible to society. Nothing spells justice like a sweaty young man dropping stacks of confidential paper work on a busy (and wet) corner of Fleet Street. Banking was perversely interesting: involved calling the bank from the bank to boost phone points, bringing the bank employees closer to their end of quarter bonus. I suppose you would call it "doing customers out of call time". The pay wasn't great for criminal work. The long and short: I have amased a crap fortune, which I shall smuggle out of the country and into the hands of selected denizens of South East Asia and the Indian sub-continent.

First stop, Bombay (Mumbai, sorry India), home of Asia's largest slum. Can't wait. Then up through India to Dharamsala, down through the ganges route to Banaras (Varansi) and up into Nepal. Afterwards re-entering India, a flight from Calcutta (Kolkata, sorry once more, I can't get a hold of this Independence malaki, but it sounds great) to Bangkok, swiftly entering Cambodia. Then infiltrating Vietnam with extreme prejudice (yes, you've seen the movie too) and onto Laos. Making my way back to Bangkok, I'll journey down to Penang. After Malaysia I'll boat to Indonesia, descending to Bali for my flight back home, stopping for 24hrs in Hong Kong. All this promises to take up nearly seven months of life, from 12th Feb to 5t Sept. I shall of course learn each local dialect intimately, establish precisely nineteen orphanages, and provide fresh water to whom I choose...As a comfortable member of a liberal, affluent society of temperant weather, I am unequivocally a force for good.

So...broad rimmed hat logded firmly on head, moustache waxed to a sheen, brouges worked to a polished glint, belongings neatly wrapped in a red spotted hankerchief at the end of a stick, machete slung through a fine leather belt, a slim volume of symbolist verse sat louchly in shirt pocket, a rakish smile above a clean shaven chin...I bid all at home a fond "see you in September", my plane dispapearing from this horizon and into the next...(excuse this pretentious bilge)

Don't worry, I'll keep you posted. And no, I'm not including any moronic pictures of me with my backpack, at the aiport with mum. Sorry if you're disappointed

Jacket Boy