Gay London gets a boost by Tube: 24 hour weekends

London Underground has announced that in 2015 parts of the tube network will run 24-hours at the weekends. This will give nightlife in the capital a huge boost making it much easier for gay clubbers to enjoy much more of what the City has to offer.

The 24-hour running will cover the Picadilly, Victoria, Jubilee, Central and Northern Lines, which will no doubt make life so much easier for Londoners and tourists. It will also make selecting hotels much easier as travelers can now look beyond the centre city and towards upandcoming areas including Greenwich, Shoreditch, Brixton and Shepherds Bush.

The underground celebrates 150 years and while behind some of the other leading global cities London has taken a while to prepare for 24 hours. And while we all complain about the services, during peak hours it is one of the best underground networks in the world and pretty good for its size and age. This now moves the city in the right direction, if only it could handle 24 hours 7 days a week and cover an ever greater expanse of the city...

The Underground really has been built typically on the lifestyle culture of Britain's. Pub shuts at 11.30am - get the last tube home. It ignores middle-length nights out (you know, until 1/2am, and complete ignores the later hours of 3/4am.) the number of times I've waited an hour for a Night bus and then it's taken me another hour to get home.

This news is really exciting, and will make weekends much much more fun in the city. The tube has been less fun since they banned drinking (alcohol) on the network...so maybe this will add a bit more drunken British Spark! 

India - a world of contradictions

I'm full of contradictions - I know it! I like to travel to discover new places, but really there's no place like home. I love to wonder and enter my own world but I love to be surrounded by people and entertain. I'd like to make a simple life but I make it more complex. I like to get up early but I love my bed! 

So really India should have felt like home - instead it mirrored the realities of my own contradictions and the challenges they bring.

Poor - rich

India is one of the BRIC countries, growing faster than most with huge investment. New areas of cities are owned by the rich ad powerful building huge complexes. The middle class enjoys Shopping Malls, cinemas and international cuisine. Side by side leaving among the poor, manual laborers, homeless, people living in shantytowns; One earning a couple of dollars an hour, another struggling to earn that in a day - let alone the mega wealthy.

 

Apparent in every part of the world, but here it's even evident in the social classes and interaction between these groups. It accentuates the split, the gap and the distance that is seen at home - it makes you shudder. Not even the homeless have access to clean water or toilets. 

Trust 

Trust is misplaced here. Someone you know talks of trust, and someone you meet on the street talks of trust. The word is miss-used and potentially misunderstood – especially for a British traveler. It is thrown around like it’s a commodity, and it does soon become a monetary factor. Trust is rarely used in Britain, it’s a term that’s implied by conclusion not as a matter of fact.

Money

It makes the world go round. But in India it is a factor that’s essential but loses it’s value with every word you utter. Haggling is the norm, and frustration becomes the cause. The contradiction is – you can buy products cheaper in the UK than you can in India if your haggling skills are not up to scratch. I can assure you that many items I bought could have been purchased at the same or less than in the UK, especially small trinkets like magnets, postcards and posters.

Transport

The world is your oyster in India, you can take a train, a car, a taxi, a helicopter taxi, an auto-rickshaw or a poor man can pull you along like you are the cart and he is the horse. But you get nowhere fast. You spend more time negotiating the fare for the journey than you do actually travelling.

Food

India is renowned for its food, either you will end up with Delhi Belly/Kolkata Splutter or you will dine in the finest of restaurants (actually even then there’s no guarantee) but try actually spotting restaurants, or at least somewhere you’re will to allow your stomach to be abused by. Unfortuantely I found I was eating the same thing day in day out, and only if I had travelled with someone else could I have had diversity!

 

These are just a few areas I can refer to – but it gives you an idea of the epic differences between Europe and India.

Enjoy your trip as best as possible. But I can certainly say, India is interesting, even if it is not my cup of Green Tea!

Judging India in Jaipur

It's to the north west of the country, in Rajasthan, Jaipur is the capital - a large city. Rajasthan was the last state to agree to be part of India.

 

It is the land of kings. It's part of the desert, and this wealthy part of India delivers one final resounding cultural insight to the country for my trip here. As I head from Delhi on a local bus that takes 6 hours stopping at every town along that way I see the change from central India to Rajasthan. More fields of corn, yellow fields being harvested by women in incredibly bright saris of multiple colours, carrying towers of gatherings a-top their heads. A few horse and cart help transport the harvest and then there’s the rare tractor. I've been transported back in time.

A highway is being built between Delhi and Jaipur, slicing through the middle of towns, cutting buildings in half as locals continue to try to operate businesses and homes that have been part-demolished. Pavements are made of the demolished rubble as kids and shoppers clamber their way along the road. The bus jaunts over and aside large potholes - it's a construction site on a massive scale.

I arrive in Jaipur and the atmosphere is instantly different to Delhi, the architecture more unique and original, it feels like there is a real heritage here that belongs to Rajasthan, my hotel - Umaid Bhawan Heritage Hotel - reflects the style of palaces in the region: it's ornate, slightly extravagant, visually rich.

The Pink City: painted to hide the cheap materials used to construct the inner walls. The heat of the day sets in early as I walk to the palace. The streets are lined with food markets that open early, and local shops begin to set up for the day. I stop at a temple and enter a conversation with the man on the door.

He asks me about Britain, I ask him about Jaipur, we exchange stories. Things are changing fast and it's having a cultural and social impact that is challenging and full of fear and strife. The recent rape cases in India purely highlighted the huge issues the country faces. Families that killed their first born, if a girl, force the country to now pay the price. There are less females, more males and therefore not enough to go around. Men cannot find wives and this is a social situation they don't wish to face - to be an unmarryable man! If they haven't found a partner by their mid-twenties sexual rage sets in. These men are virgins, now becoming desperate like a dog on heat. Men are now paying dowries instead of the girl’s family. Men are going on search for women from the city to the depths of the countryside. And women are taking advantage of this - marrying and taking all valuables and disappearing, then remarrying.

 

If this is how it is for the straight set what about gay Indians. Where does it leave them in social acceptance? 

India is still socially conscious. You must marry someone of a similar cultural standing. Women are still second rate and money and riches still mean a lot.

As I tour the city and visit the palaces and forts surrounding Jaipur you see much of the immense wealth the state has had. The investment in huge constructions that bare the mark of quality together with technical focus like water delivery, plumbing and toilets. This made me wish I had visited the more rural and smaller cities like Udaipur and beyond - the tales travellers had told me drew my imagination to the history and richness of the region. 

I explored the forts and palaces like a kid; running up and down staircases, winding in and out of alleyways and trying to get the most from my visits - I clicked away on my Cannon trying to get used to manual photos! 

I stopped by Monkey Temple, spending nearly 3 hours just watching the monkeys jump and dive into the algae filled water holes. It was kind of magical - but these were much less hassle than the people and kids below who just continually demanded money or items to sell to me. 10 days into my trip I had enough of this. I succumbed to a life beyond lone travel - I could only wish to be with a travel companion, not just to share this moment with but to throw them into the gauntlet to deal with these tourist touts so I could just hide.

I wanted to go home now! And it was certainly time to go back to the hotel with a pit stop to buy my final goods - some silk neck scarves and a final silk bed spread. With that...I was done.

I left early on the Thursday morning, back to Kolkata. I grabbed my things and headed home - dear home...

TOP TIP – when booking a coach make sure it is authenticated. Unfortunately I was sold a fraudulent ticket and the ‘said’ coach did not turn up. Do your best to use the local Tourist Information Centres, these are commercial, so not like Europe or USA where they are run by the local government, but at least there is more guarantee for legitimacy. Trying to finally get a bus to Jaipur was hard work and I ended up on a local public bus service…it should only have taken about 3 hours without stops to any other destination.

Cuba - Sightseeing - Old Havana, Centro, Costa Blanca,

Havana can be covered in two days. Exploring Habana Vieja will take about three hours where you will see the Plaza de la Catedral, Plaza de Armas, Plaza Vieja and may well stumble upon the odd Tourist festival.