Once they've turned off all the movies, the only thing for the television generation to do is to watch is the digital map that tracks the aircraft's progress from origin to destination.

It was looking like we were going to get in to London a few minutes early until the pilot decided to do a loop over north-east London:

Or perhaps the pilot was trying to draw a pair of spectacles on Greater London...

It did seem like the cabin crew were in a slightly frivolous mood because I'm almost positive I heard the captain say, just before we started out descent into London: "And like me, the fasten seatbelt signs have just been turned on".

(Let's call the whole thing off...)

Throughout my Indian travels I've been finding myself referring to Mumbai as 'Mumbai' (rather than Bombay) and to Calcutta as 'Calcutta' (not Kolkata). There is a tension between the slightly un-PC, harking-back-to-the-days-the-British-Empire, use of colonial names, and the rather pansy, trying-to-be-too-sensitive-and-correct, use of the modern names. But for some reason, my sensibilities seem to fall one way for Mumbai and the other for Calcutta. Don't have a strong feeling about Chennai/Madras situation, but will probably err on the Chennai side of the equation.

Asked to explain this I would probably say that Calcutta still has a very colonial feel and is largely a British invention (being, I think, the administrative hub of British activities in India) while Mumbai has a much richer, decidedly Indian, identity. But the truth is I don't really know. I just feel a bit awkward saying Bombay or Kolkata (though for different reasons).

However, it was somewhat comforting to discover on the journey home that the in-flight route tracking system also referred to Mumbai and Calcutta.

So I may not be right, but at least I'm not alone.

I've noticed a rather sneaky sales technique that I call Service By Stealth.

The most common form seems to be Guiding By Stealth. Guiding By Stealth works like this. You visit some monument or temple of interest, and a man wanders up to you very casually, starts a very normal conversation, and then starts telling you a little about the sight in question. Once in full flow, he's difficult to interrupt or escape and by the time you've worked out that he's a guide by trade, rather than just a particularly well-informed and obliging local, you've already had half a tour and feel obliged to either finish it or pay something for what you've already had.

A similar technique is employed by the masseurs in Varanasi. Massage By Stealth is slightly more invasive. A man will approach you with a big smile and extend a hand in greeting. You shake it, but once a grip has been established the man won't let go but instead will start massaging it, working his way up your arm, and chatting all the while, with no mention of what he's doing to your arm. By the time you've persuaded him that you really don't want a massage, you've already kind of had one.

One practice common to many of the stealth operators – and it really, really frustrates me – is the "as you like" approach to pricing. It's particularly annoying when you've already had whatever product or service you're trying to pay for (by stealth or otherwise), but is still pretty annoying beforehand.

I had it today in a barber's shop in Diu after a shave (of both head and face). It goes something like this:

"As You Like" It

– Thanks. That's great. How much do I owe you?
– As you like sir.
– I'd prefer if you just give me a price.
– No, no, sir. It's up to you. Pay as you think.
– But you don't really mean that. Just tell me how much. Please?
– As you like sir.
– Okay. Eighty rupees. I know that's more than fair.
– Eighty rupees not enough sir. One hundred minimum.
– So you really mean: as you like, as long as what you like is at least one hundred rupees then?
– Sorry sir?
– Forget it...

There are lots of dogs in Diu, which is not so unusual for India, but these ones seem to have developed the rather cat-like habit of jumping up on, and prowling along, walls. Sometimes, quite high walls. I don't know why they do it, maybe just because they can.


Perhaps the behaviour will spread elsewhere, like the bluetits and milk bottle tops phenomenon.

All I can say is that coming across a growling Doberman at face height after dark is a little disconcerting...

On my first full day in Diu I rented a bike and cycled along the southern edge of the island to check out the various beaches. Was immediately surprised at just how empty everywhere seemed to be.

This is Sunset Point, apparently the most popular beach with Western tourists. I think it's supposed to get pretty busy around December but right about now there's not much competition for beach space.

I carried on cycling and got as far as Nagoa Beach which is supposed to be the most popular with Indian tourists, although the guidebook warns (women chiefly) of "pissed up Indian men". (Gujarat is a dry state, but Diu has some kind of independent territory status and is administered from Delhi; not only is beer freely available here, but it's about half the price of anywhere else in India...) Had a bit of a swim on a quiet stretch which was rather nice but swallowed enough sea water mucking about in the waves to need a drink so went to investigate the main area.

I stopped at a stall for some water and got chatting to a couple of Indian guys – Raghav and Mahesh – from Gujarat on a short holiday with their wives and kid. A quick chat turned into an offer of a drink; a quick drink turned into a bit of a drinking session and then by a meal; and that was quickly followed by an earnest invitation to come and visit them up in a town called Mahesana before I headed home. Seemed like a good way to finish off the trip so I promised I'd work something out and they seemed very pleased.

Here's me posing with the whole clan (Raghav and Mahesh are cousins):

After the food had settled I was informed it was time for swimming Indians swim in their pants. They strip down to their pants, go and have a swim (well, a deep paddle, it seems many Gujarati's can't swim), then go back and put their trousers on over their wet pants. I guess when you live in a hot country you don't stay damp for very long. Can't really imagine doing it at home, but then I can't really imagine swimming in the sea at home either.

I had some trunks with me from my earlier swim but rather than have to suffer the indignity of the whole changing whilst holding a towel around yourself trying not to drop anything in the sand but also trying not to flash anything private at anyone and also in the spirit of going with the flow I just stripped down to my boxers think we were going to jump right in. But then there was a good five minutes of faffing around, chatting, finding the right spot for the wives to stay with the shoes and clothes, etc. etc.

I just wanted to get in the water because in the water I was swimmer, but on the beach I was just a man standing around in his pants. And as far as I could see I was the only whitey on the whole beach and thus was already attracting quite a few stares. In the end I just headed out on my own and waiting for them to follow me in.

After our swim they had to shoot off to catch a bus back home to Mahesana, and I got to cycle back to my guest house in my wet pants. Given that they were to spend the best part of a day on a bus, I definitely preferred the wet pants option.

Okay, I promised in an earlier post to elaborate on Shantaram, and now Jess and I are in Mumbai (having rejigged our schedule to allow an extra day in Mumbai) where the book is largely set.

The first I heard of Shantaram was from Emily, my little Canadian travelling partner, who I met on the Gibbon Experience in Laos. She'd read it and loved it, and was amazed I'd never heard of it, particularly as I'd already spent some time in India.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we're in a playing pool (well crazy pool) in a bar in Vang Vieng in Laos and there's a guy sitting on his own in the bar reading a copy of Shantaram. Emily dashes over, immediately starts raving about the book to him and it turns out he's loving it too.

Anyway, it turns out Matt is from London, on a holiday visiting Laos and Cambodia, and has almost finished reading the book. We have a few beers, play some more crazy pool, and at the evening we swap email addresses and he asks if I'm heading to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, which I told him I was. "When I've finished Shantaram," he says, "I'll leave it for you somewhere in Vientiane".

A few days later I'm picking up my email in a random web cafe in Vientiane and get an email from Matt entitled "The Shantaram Trail" telling me, true to his word, that he's left his copy of Shantaram at the Laos Paris Hotel in Vientiane. Now I'm sure I've walked past this hotel very recently and lo and behold I look out of the window and it's just across the road.

So I head across the road and say to the guy on reception "Er, I think you might have a parcel for me. My name is Glen Long". He nods and pulls out a rather dodgy-looking carrier bag with a Post-It note with my name on. And that's how I came to get my copy of Shantaram.

Shantaram is a little daunting at first because it's so damn big. It's nearly a thousand pages of reasonably dense type so you can't help thinking "If I'm going to lump this brick of a book around it had better be as good as people say..."

But it certainly delivers. You can read better blurb elsewhere but it's essentially a (true) story about an Australian who does some bad things at home, ends up in a high security prison, escapes, runs away to Mumbai and goes underground, living in slums, getting in with some of Mumbai's most dangerous and interesting characters, and quickly falling in love with the place. It does a superb job of evoking the craziness and excitement of India and you can't help but wish you were brave enough to throw yourself into a place as much as Lin, the main character does.

During my first leg in India I'd read The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Now while it's a beautifully written, melancholic masterpiece, it's not (for me at least) a rollicking page turner. Shanataram is just that and manages to still be very wise and literary. Imagine something with the pace of a Dan Brown novel that wasn't complete shit. In fact, was far from shit. That's Shantaram.

A few weeks before Jess was due to come out to India she emailed me to say that she was reading The God Of Small Things (I don't think on my recommendation) and was finding it hard going. At this point I was only one hundred pages or so into Shantaram but it grabbed me from the start and I told her, if you really want to get in the mood for India you should read this book. She did, and before long was further along than me and was loving it.

So, fast forward again, this time to mid-March, and Jess and I find ourselves in Mumbai, hugely excited at the thought of being in Shantaram territory, and feeling we know some of the places already.

Leopold's Bar on Colaba Causeway is where we first meet many of the book's key characters. In the book it's the haunt of foreign tourists and Mumbai gangsters and everyone in between. A place where shady deals are struck, it's largely ignored by the Mumbai police on the unspoken understanding that nothing too illegal takes place actually on the premises. So you can arrange to buy drugs, but the actual exchange must happen outside.

When we first went in Leopold's it was a lively cafe bar, full of foreign tourists, but no obvious gangsters. It was happily milking its celebrity status with numerous Leopold's merchandise for sale, including copies of Shantaram itself, a shame but I guess inevitable. On another occassion we went in the evening and visited the bar upstairs, which was much more the type of thing we'd expected from the book – very crowded and noisy with lots of little nooks and crannies where pretty much anything could be discussed without fear of being overheard.

Anyway, if you've not read, read it. I'll lend you my copy. I'm just waiting for the film to come. Someone must have bought the rights by now.

The early morning rickshaw ride from Hampi to Hospet (in order to catch our train to Panaji in Goa) was the most nerve-wracking to date.

We'd arranged for 5.30am pickup by Siddish, the driver who'd taken us around the ruins the previous day, but at 5.45am there was still no sign of him so we wandered into the main bazaar to find another driver. On the way we bumped into Siddish who explained there was a problem with his rickshaw but that his friend would take us.

So the four of us piled into another rickshaw and set off on the 30-minute journey to Hospet station. It was still pitch black, the roads were terrible and littered with people, animals and early morning traffic (with no lights, obviously), the driver went full pelt and most of the time his attention seemed to be more on a conversation with Siddish than on the road. At one point we shot straight through a puddle in the middle of the road and I had visions of aquaplaning into a cow.

But once again, we survived the journey physically intact, and arrived with a good fifteen minutes to spare. Except that we soon found out our train was running at least two hours late.

In the end it was four hours late – time we just killed on the platform. The highlight of which was a hot breakfast of tasty vadai (which we'd been wanting to try for a while) from a stall in the station. The lowlight was a man trundling past us pushing a wheelbarrow full of dead dogs (presumably killed on the tracks but possibly the haul of a canine bounty hunter – sometimes a price per dog is offered as part of a local cull...)

On arrival in Hampi found a family-run guest house mentioned in the guidebook called Vicky's and asked if they had any rooms. They showed us a room on the ground floor, which was perfectly nice, but when I asked if they had any other rooms (I thought something higher up might be less noisy) I was rather indignantly told that it was their best room.

We were pretty knackered from the train journey so decided to take the room. Once inside it was a tiny bit spooky. It looked at lot like someone's main bedroom, with lots of personal touches, including a couple of weird portraits on the wall of a stern Indian couple – the portrait of the woman was a photograph but the man's appeared to be a painting made to look like a photograph. The eyes seemed to follow you around the room, just like in Scooby Doo.

We joked that the owner had probably kicked his mother out of her bedroom so he could make a few hundred rupees renting her room out.

That evening, when we returned to the room after some dinner, we found his mother sleeping on a mat on the front porch under a mosquito net.

We told the owner the next day we felt a bit bad that we'd taken his mother's bed, he brushed it off saying she preferred it out on the porch. Yeah, right. Of course she does. Just loves being out on the porch with no fan and a couple of stray dogs to keep her company.

I just hope she gets cut of the room rent...

The following sign was encountered outside a building in a busy street in Mysore:

– "Excuse me, could you tell me where Dr Ahmed's Piles and Fistula Clinic is please?"
– "Why of course. It's just between Dr Pathak's Centre for the Chronically Incontinent and The Ayurvedic Premature Ejaculation Institute. You really can't miss it."
– "Thank you so much."
– "You're most welcome."