Larry's latest update!

We'll be jeepers it's been a while I tell ya! Those Heywood's hardly ever let me have a turn on the computer but here I am now typing away and I've got so much te tell yous about what I've been up te!

After that wonderful place of tea plantations that was baltic, like Ireland...Darjeeling, I went to a place called Kolkata. It's actually Calcutta, I mean what eejit decided to change the name and then gave it the same name wit a different spelling? Anyway, maybeee they had extra money in the budget that year and fancied changing all the signs in the place or something, mind you I wouldn't know what having extra money in the budgets like, being from Ireland and all that but hey ho!

Kolkata was a nice place, it had lots of buildings like in England, big grand ones...mind you loads of them were totally run down and even rotting away because apparently there's this here law to do with social housing which has been around forever, well actually since the partition of India from Bangladesh when the dominant communist party tackled land ownership issues with

strict rent controls. Anyway this law means that some tennants even today only have to pay 1 rupee a month rent, which is like 1.5p!! So the landlords just never fix the buildings and someday they will just be beyond repair. I got to go see where Mother Theresa's Mission is and saw the room where she worked and slept which was reeeely cool. Her room was small, but not as small as the one i have to live in at the front of John's rucksack! Every aspect of life was really lived on the streets here, where people wash, sleep, eat, type documents, tailor clothes, play cricket, mend shoes and shop.

After Kolkata we took a big long train overnight to Varanasi. It was quite dirty with loads of rubbish but it was cool to get to go on a boat down the ganges river as the sun rose. There

were all these people swimming in it and washing in it and loads of people washing clothes too, the Heywood's wouldn't even let me dip me toes in the water but I saw I sign for a swimming club

on the banks of the ganges so I don't know what they were so uptight about. There were some fires on the banks of the river, apparently these were bodies! Something to do with reaching Nirvana if you die here, but I never liked that band anyway so I don't think i'll head here for me cremation.

I was taken to Jaipur next, it was shopping heaven and full of palaces! Then on to Mumbai. Mumbai was sweltering! I nearly drowned in me own sweat cause those there Heywood's didn't tink to take me out of the rucksack pocket for ages! I was delighted when they did take me out because the buildings were amazing! Left from India's colonial days the university, massive Victoria Terminus the gateway to India and the Prince of Wales Museum, to name just a few, make quite an impression. Then I tought they'd taken me to a war zone, there were things flying past me head from all directions and people with bats....they Heywood's said it was just some game,

“cricket” i tink they called it, but I don't know, there were literally tousands of people on this wee patch of grass! John and Louise sneaked me into a Bollywood film without getting me a ticket...I couldn't understand a single word but those two obviously found it hilarious cause they were laughing all the way trough...I couldn't really enjoy it cause I was recovering from a practical heart attack after tinking we were being gunned down at the start of the film, but it was just all the chairs folding up as everyone in the cinema stood up abruptly to sing the national anthem before the film came on! My favorite place in Mumbai though had to be the masala market...it was a mad place. Loads of wemen come to get their year's supply of spice! They choose all the spices they want at the right quantities and then they wait while the shop heats them, cools them and them pounds them into powder. This woman I spoke to...once she got over the fact leprechauns really can talk, told me she had been waiting eight hours for her spice mix to be ready!! Mad!

Anyway, the battery on the computer here is low and the Heywood's will go mad if they goto use it and find the battery dead so I'm off! I'll stick some pictures in soon so you can see the places I told you about!

Byeeeee!

Larry