Tomorrow I see Kanchenjunga. Mystical name conjures up youthful memories reading #arthurransome#swallowdale#excited

Our train was from Sealdah Station, Kolkata to New Jaipalguri Junction, from there we planned on picking up a ride in a shared taxi for the final stage of the journey. This we forecast would take about 14 hours of travel.

Our taxi deposited us at the entrance to the station and we picked our way through the clusters of travellers swaddled in blankets asleep on the floor. Breakfast was sickly milky coffee from a greasy café. Indian stations are pretty unremarkable and lack vistas, preferring instead to rely upon functionalism. If anything is to be observed and noted it might be their scale – platforms are lengthy and as soon as trains are announced become thronged with hordes of passengers.

The Kanchenjunga Express sounds better than it actually is. A collection of badly painted rolling stock made up the train and midway along it’s length we found our berths in the Third Class AC Sleeper section. Previously our window had connected with a rock and although intact, the transparency was somewhat reduced, so with reduced vision we peered outwards hoping for new sights to unfold.

Travelling to Darjeeling onboard the Kanchenjunga express from sealdah station. After twelve hours this doesn’t sound so glamourous #travel

At the allotted time without ceremony the train pulled out of the station and fell into it’s lumbering rhythm. The views out of the window were not particularly inspiring – the Indian countryside presented was flat, barren and generally featureless. In contrast, the rivers we crossed were epic affairs and one could only imagine their size in full monsson flood.

Countless small fields were worked by isolated figures bent double in the landscape. Towns and villages past, their oncoming presence signalled by an increase in litter accumulated beside the tracks. Some stations merited a halt in our progress, some even deserved a lengthier break of 20 minutes. Regardless of stopover it was an opportunity for local businesspeople to board the train and tout their wares.

Today I’ve been offered hair straighteners, USB stick, balloons, wrenches, carpet, t-shirts on the train. #India#train#travel

The tat on display was pretty useless but you’d have to assume there was a market for it, last minute gift shopping perhaps? Food was also offered but it was mostly unappealing and heavy on spice. Our breakfast proper was fried egg sandwiches from the train’s hospitality crew.

A benefit of having the aisle compartment in a sleeper car is that you can pull the curtains closed upon your berth and shut yourself off from fellow passengers and beggars and hawkers that paraded down the corridor. And with the curtains closed and blankets and sheets unfolded upon the bunk it was a comfortable way to travel. Time passed quickly in between naps and snacks.

Upon arriving in New Jaipalguri we alighted from the train and headed to the car park to secure a ride into the mountains. The flip-side of being so visibly a tourist is that you don’t have to go far before services are offered to you. After a bit of brief haggling we secured a car and paying a little over the odds we sped out of town listening to Justin Bieber hits. Thankfully the scenery surpassed the soundtrack and unlike the train there was plenty to see despite the fall of night. The car’s headlamps illuminated the trees and scrubs as we weaved between tea plantations and gradually ascended. The road became steeper and the turnings sharper but our speed diminished not, as our driver threw the car around the bends. It might have been alarming but instead was exhilarating after the slow progress by rail.

Two hour journey from Silliguri to Darjeeling twisting and turning on narrow roads with sheer drops. Full moon illuminates the treetops.#ace

We had come prepared for a change of temperature and were glad that we had put fleeces on before setting off as the temperature dropped dramatically as we  ascended. After two hours we arrived in Darjeeling and found most of the town shut up and in darkness and frosty breath in front of our faces. All about a stillness and absence of sound deadened the night.

Darjeeling is freezing. Literally. It was 26 degrees in Calcutta this morning. Glad we brought thermals and wolly hats #prepared#travel

Thankfully we’d established a guesthouse to head to and we walked upwards towards The Ridge seeking out Andy’s which turned out to be comfortable enough – once we’d acclimatised to the cold nights and changed rooms to get a better view. The morning revealed a large town clinging to the mountainside either side of a ridge. Cars are limited to the lower reaches and after the clamour of Kolkata it was a refreshing change. Views of mountains swathed in clouds swept outwards from all directions and we spent a lot of time slowly walking around soaking up the atmosphere.

We also spent a lot of time around the train station which is something of a focal point in the town and home to the fabled ‘toy-trains’, dinky narrow gauged locomotives that attract visitors from afar. We’re not particularly train crazy but were still quite smitten by the engines that ran alongside the road pulling two carriages behind them. We had thought about taking the train up the mountain but it takes three times as long. Instead we took a trip to the next town, Ghoom, to experience the soot and smoke as we chugged around the hills. Full of a big family of Indian tourists whose menfolk had been boozing all afternoon it was luckily just an afternoon’s excursion.

Food and drink (tea not beer, didn’t touch a drop whilst we were there) was pretty good and we at well whilst there. The tibetan momos and thupka were favourites. Glenarry’s tea-rooms was an obvious draw with it’s offer of cakes and brass tea-pots, with large picture windows available for soaking up the scenery.

We really enjoyed our stay in Darjeeling. It’s a lovely place but one does fear for it’s continued wellbeing. It’s obviously massively overpopulated and has large numbers of tourists constantly passing through. Tourism no doubt brings good things but it was worrying to see the drain on water and electricity and the amount of refuse created by so many people. And amazing to think that the only link with the wider world is the road and railway up the mountain, a very fragile existence.

Darjeeling is a town made for strolling, for soaking up alpine vistas and as Andy’s suggest to ‘relax and breathe deeply’ #travel#india

Photographs from Darjeeling can be viewed here

We left London early on the Thursday morning of December 8th. The weather was cold and typically grey as our taxi drove westwards towards Heathrow. We looked out of place as we queued at the Qatar Airways check-in desks, weighed down with backpacks, amongst the well-heeled arabic travellers who all exhibited impressive sized suitcases. This was our first experience of Qatar Airways and it was a positive start, big comfy seats with more legroom than expected and a more than adequate inflight entertainment system.

“And so it begins. 4am alarm clock. 2 hours sleep. Overfilled backpack en route to terminal 4. #Travel is all about the numbers”

From Heathrow we flew to Doha, a huge swathe of airport that had seemingly sprung up from the desert. We landed in the evening and emerged from the stale cabin atmosphere to be confronted by the dry, dusty heat of the middle east. Nothing unremarkable to report, Doha Airport was a reasonably pleasant experience. The wifi was free, the toilets were clean and the food palatable.

Leg 2 would see us fly from Doha to Kolkatta and we assumed a little naively that our plane would match the standards set on the first leg. Disappointment turned to incredulity as the keystone cop trained flight crew attempted to keep the passengers squeezed into the poke 737 happy. It was pretty clear that any form of rest was going to be hard as gripey children howled and overweight passengers snored. Gone was the plethora of movie channels, the age of the plane betrayed by the tiny televisions suspended from the ceiling playing a single solitary bollywood movie followed by something that looked like India’s answer to Mr Bean.

So with more than the usual amount of relief that we disembarked at Kolkata Airport. Dawn had yet to arrive and the orange arc lights that cut through the mist an exotic land began to emerge. Often airports disguise the individuality of foreign territories but not here. Decaying concrete buildings housed antiquated security machines and clusters of airport workers shuffled about the building. The occasional rat sauntered through immigration. A humidity clung to the air and despite the early hour the warmth of the day didn’t feel far away.

We emerged from the airport and hunted down the pre-paid taxi booth which was the recommended method of getting into the centre of the city. Bleary-eyed we were bundled into an ancient Hindustan Ambassador which smelt decidedly wafty and exhibited a well-bruised bodywork. Our introduction to Indian driving and roads was one of terror as low visibility neither slowed the speed or reduced the amount of vehicles weaving in and out of each other.

Cyclists swerved out of the darkness and small fires smouldered at the side of the road, whilst huddled forms shrouded in blankets sat or lay prone upon the pavement. Thick trunked trees with overhanging limbs and dangling creepers interrupted the concrete jungle here and there, and as the city awoke we sped along flyovers towards the southern end of the city centre to where we were to be based for the first three days of our trip.

We stayed here, it was pretty decent. Only downside was that it wasn’t in the centre of town, something that was as much a blessing as a curse. I’d recommend it based on the staff alone who were really helpful and friendly and seemed to genuinely want to help you out. Great omelettes for breakfast as well.

“#thebestinn #kolkata #travel great little guesthouse in quiet part of town. Lovely hosts, spacious clean rooms near Rabrinder Sadan metro”

At our host’s suggestion we sampled several local eateries and were impressed by the food placed before us and which we swiftly devoured. Having heard many a tale of Indian cuisine that resulted in cataclysmic digestive reactions we were a little fearful but thankfully at this early stage our stomachs were threatened by neither bacteria or spice. I thought the food in Kolkata was pretty good and stood up favorably when compared to the rest of our destinations, bettered probably only by the food in Kerala. The curries were tasty and rice was plentiful, Naans were freshly cooked and we tucked into a few Thalis.

Special mention should go to the snacks we picked up, the onion pakoras that accompanied the ice cold Kingfishers we consumed in the colonial themed Fairlawn Hotel were mighty tasty. As were the Kathi Rolls – sheesh kebabs wrapped in parathas and drizzled in chilli sauce –  from Nizam’s, a local institution.

“Drinking beer in the fairlawn hotel garden – pleasant escape from the hustle n bustle of hawkers, beggars and rickshawmen #travel #Kolkata“

Rickshaws competed with taxis, and trams ran up and down the main boulevards delivering the city’s inhabitants to places of work and play. And either side of the roads people hustled and bustled while above all this activity cables stretched from building to building, sagging occasionally towards the ground. Kolkata also has an efficient Soviet built metro which felt slightly dated and operated without fuss or glamour. For a few rupees we would speedily travel between our lodgings and the city centre, without the hassle of taxi negotiation and extortion.

We enjoyed walking along the Hooghly River and between the decrepit Raj era architecture whose names betrayed their British beginnings - Fairlie Place, Government House and The GPO. The tall buildings cast long shadows over the gridlocked streets and provided shade from the fierce sunlight. We walked out of our comfort zone as the pavement disappeared from underneath our feet once past the Armenian Church and the Howrah Bridge. Our surroundings became visibly more squalid and our senses were ambushed by an onslaught of smells, sounds and sights. This was the ‘native’ part of town where European influence had been limited and Bengali culture thrived.

With hungry eyes and inquisitive minds we wandered around the centre of the city and found it to be a relaxing and welcoming location. The poverty was visible and impossible to ignore but it wasn’t as overwhelming as we were expecting. Kolkatta was also easy to walk around, the pavements were wide and well maintained and in the CBD there was an order and tidiness that encouraged casual wanderings.

“#Kolkata. A city decaying into dust. Hot, humid air is filled with dust, car horns and Sikh songs sweetly sung #travel #India“

As our time in Kolkata drew to a close, and the next stage of our journey began we were a little sad to leave. It had been a comfortable few days and had served to be a welcoming introduction to India. Our next adventure began on Monday morning when we headed towards Darjeeling.

Photographs from Kolkata can be seen here on my flickr site

Words of warning: from here on in, for the foreseeable future it’s all going to get a bit Indian.

Having returned from an extended honeymoon in India I am now going to attempt to document our journey. In a series of instalments the explorations of the good ship Dobinson will be elaborated upon.

The journey will cover:

1. An early morning arrival in Kolkatta
2. Heading north to Darjeeling
3. Too long on a train to a Agra
4. The Taj Mahal living up to the hype
5. Relaxing in Jaipur
6. Hitting an all time low in Delhi
7. Getting our Mojo back in Kerala
8. Finishing on a high in Varkala
9. A brief stay in Bangalore before
10. A very long flight home

“I can’t see the point of a strip like that” exclaimed Alan Green repeatedly. So intrigued I googled a few images and was pleased to see that it’s yet another winner of the “not my type…’ award. Don’t normally agree with Mr Green but on this topic we are both of one mind.

I don’t mind the colour – it’s an improvement on the salmon pink shirts they wore when L’Arse came, saw and conquered on their turf – but those characters sure are hard to read from a distance.

Possessing a certain Gallic charm the ‘beaks’ of the numbers close up and and encroach on an already tiny area of negative space. Fives become eights and eights become zeros. No heroes here mon ami.

The last few years I’ve started to appreciate more and more the power of language in design. When designing engaging (and perhaps even enlightening) corporate communications within a strict set of brand guidelines it’s very often that the impact of the words which are the one thing that has the most flexibility and arena for exploration. A little bit of fun, personality and dare I say it vitality can be injected into a templated standardised, sanatised layout.

Similarly work that exists across a range of channels (eg. posters, emails, twitter, literature, facebook, etc) the one consistent element that rises above colour, type or image constraints is a Brand’s language or tone of voice. Going beyond the simple strapline, a well thought out tone of voice is a powerful weapon to possess in a brand’s arsenal.  Innocent is becoming a bit of a cliché but only because they do it so well. Another example might be Jamie Oliver whose business have sprawled into various guises yet all speak in his familiar cockney geezer way.

My personal fave is Spitfire Ale - the bottle of Britain. Cheeky, highly referential and a little xenophobic the personality of the product sweeps you away or leaves you cold. No bad thing, akin to marmite you either love it or you hate it. And if you love something it’s very hard to put down, particularly a hoppy pint of Kent’s finest.

And so, seeking to explore a new direction in communication I enrolled on a one day course run by the School of Life.

Titled Words for Life it offers attendees the methods to ‘to get the best out of the things you write all the time’. Things like complaint letters, CVs, postcards; the everyday items that offer an opportunity for creative embellishment but often succumb to tired and weary formal generalities.

Run by the affable and uber-intelligent Rob and Molly, two skilled wordsmiths who run We All Need Words, it was promoted as a fun day – which it was! A little nerve wracking to stand up in front of a group of strangers and read out one’s garbled prose but a good exercise nonetheless. In fact, reading one’s own writing out is a good test for comprehension, pace and usefulness.

These are some of the notes I made on the day, but I will follow with the key things I learned. They will be easier to read here rather than my indistinct scrawl on the pages of a layout pad.

1. Good writing isn’t about good grammar, it’s more important to be interesting than technically correct. Nobody likes a pedant.

2. Listen to the voice, see my point above about reading things out loud. You’ll detect rhythm and structure – both weak and strong.

3. Like so many things writing is all about the idea, once the core thought is in place things tend to fall into place around it.

4. Use the word ‘solution’ with extreme caution, beloved of the IT and hygiene industries it  has become overused to the point of being meaningless. Like organisations that describe themselves as professional or institutions that claim to be contemporary.

5. Write in the way you speak, ie normal not formal. Normal-speak can still be clear and unambiguous, and sometimes more so.

6. Editing what you’ve written is critical. You might have a fabulous idea but it will no doubt still need to be nurtured or gutted a little to make it shine that little bit brighter.

(nb: I’ve returned to this 5 hours after writing it and have noticed glaring typos and dodgy capitals and repetitive wording. he bits i’ve spotted have gone but to highlight this point again, your writing is only as good as it’s last edit.)

7. We can learn a lot from children’s books. They use simple sentences and words, repetition and strong ideas to keep minds engaged. We sat in a semi-circle on the floor looking up at teacher…pardon, Rob reading from Michael Rosen’s book ‘Sad Book’. It’s very, very sad but all the more so because of the quality of the words. Sitting on the floor was strangely regressive and no doubt added more to the impact of the reading.

8. Have fun. Enjoying what you write (or do or think or design…) is imperative.

There can’t be too many lavender shirts around – for good reason. It reminds me of the perfume packaging my gran used to have on her dressing table. (It also looks like a washed out Chelsea strip).

Spurs have added another gem to their stable of dodgy strips, witness the chocolate/pooh brown effort from a few seasons ago. Tasty…

This is how the restaurant describes themselves:

Diners don’t choose – they just tell what they don’t eat and how spicy they like their food. We then do the rest, serving up small tapas-size portions of food with the emphasis on sharing many courses. It’s like having your own personal chef – and the result is a unique meal you will treasure forever.

Sounds simple but when sat in your seat and asked “What don’t you want to eat?” the mind goes blank and one looks towards the waiter for a bit of a steer. “Pork? Shellfish?” he queried. We’d promised to just go with the recommendations and see what emerged and despite having a bit of a moment when we hadn’t queried ‘Offal’ it would be fair to say that there wasn’t anything that came to the table we were disappointed by. In fact each of the sixteen or so dishes was a delight, not just in taste but in presentation, aroma, and timing.

The photos above show each course. We began with a pork and prawn soup in an earthenware pot (hot, sour and fragrant) and finished with Peking duck pancakes (crispy, sweet and filling). In between came a succession of little delights that at the off-beat end of the scale featured ingredients such as jellyfish, tripe and kidney which contrasted with the more familiar tempura & chilli beans and steamed sea-bass.

The dishes kept coming and we were a bit worried about the final price having loosely agreed on a ball-park figure of £50 per person – we’d declined the option of lobster which came with a small supplement. The quality and the quantity of our meal suggested this figure would be exceeded but when the bill arrived we were surprised to see food coming in at £48 each, which the Dobinsons both agreed was extremely reasonable for such a distinctive and memorable dinner. A highly recommended eating experience.In fact the only disappointing aspect was seeing what was being delivered to adjacent tables and missing out on belly pork delights and noodle baskets, requests were sure to mention next time we come.

1. A relaxed mind helps concentration. The nervous system is focussed entirely on the job at hand; repeating the same (correct) set of actions time after time after time. Without distractions flying around the chambers of my mind a clarity flowed through my nervous system and sped the arrows on their flight through the air.

2. Right hand holding the string in the right way. I was clenching the string last week in very unrelaxed way and this meant the arrows were going everywhere. Not so now – fingers are splayed wide, string between second and first knuckle, string releasedas hand pulled back past jaw line.

3. Confidence in the equipment. There tends to be a bit of bambi-ness towards new tools; a jerky, clumsy set of actions born out of unfamiliarity with what is in one’s hands.

4. Head position. Keeping in the head absolutely stationery, with eyes fixed on target, gives you a consistent referenc epoint.

5. Slowing down. It’s not a test of speed to release the arrows, taking one’s time aids consistent grouping. Breathe, gently pull string back, hold on target for a count of two produces the right result.

That was truly horrible, I’m glad I wasn’t able to watch it. What a horrific way to show how utterly threadbare and lacklustre this Arsenal team has become.

You can pull this team apart and point fingers but after so many years of invincibility Arsene Wenger has a great deal of explaining to do. Sack him? No chance, this would be a calamitous knee jerk reaction that would only deepen the pit we have pushed ourselves into. Wenger has moulded this team, he’s scouted players to play his system – this is his mess which due to overspending rivals and purse strings tightly held can’t be brought out of. He’s committed us, himself and his players in one direction. Like it or not this train has to be allowed to continue towards it’s destination.

Here are some thoughts that sum up neatly the curent state of the empire:

Optajoe

• Arsenal conceded an average of 0.87 goals per PL game in August between 1992-2010, but have leaked 3.33 in August 2011. Decay.
• Samir Nasri (ManCity) has two more Premier League assists in this game than he managed in the whole of last season with Arsenal. Passion.

Orbinho:

• Howard Webb has given 3 penalties to Man Utd in three games v Arsenal at Old Trafford.
• Arsenal have won two penalties in the Premier League at Old Trafford; but missed them both.
• Arsenal have taken 13 points from the last 13 games – the worst run under Wenger. The last time the Gunners had a worse run was in 1995.

Arseblog: I said yesterday I was fearful of facing United with the squad in the state it was in. I wasn’t expecting to win the game. I thought, with a huge performance, we might be capable of nicking a draw. But I never thought I’d see an Arsenal side managed by Arsene Wenger get pummeled like that. It was painful, embarrassing, humbling and, in a strange, perverse way in the cold light of day, it almost feels necessary.

Eastlower: These are all problems of Wenger’s making. He now faces three season-defining days to add some steel and experience to the ranks. And after that, he has to find a way to get us back on track, because, remarkably, staggeringly, we still appear to be in the same rut we fell into in February.

Zonal Marking: Part of the issue, in simplistic terms, is that Arsenal didn’t have players who were fit to perform the tasks required. Some of this was because they lacked experience, some because they were simply the wrong players for the situation.

And some reasons to be cheerful*?

• Robin van Persie has scored in 10 of his last 11 Premier League away matches.
• Arsenal have scored two goals in a league game at Old Trafford for the first time since November 1984.

* this is me clutching at straws.