Uttar Banga Express

I just couldn’t resist making a post about this one, eat yer heart out Bunghit Din  and the Burpa Rifles. You might notice the similarity between the dress sense of Kenneth Williams  (known as The Kharsi in Carry on Up The Khyber) and another Afghan leader with a farcically similar name that you may have heard of.

Anyone fancy a spot of Tiffin ?

We need to give our visit to the Sun Temple more time than I had first realised as it’s a good 90 minutes by taxi from the station. So as a direct result of giving Konarak an overnight stop we are now scheduled on the sensationally titled Uttar Banga Express overnighter from New Jalpaiguri to Kolkata. We then have 6 1/2 hours to test Gordon Ramsay’s claim that Kolkata is the food capital of India, before spending the afternoon on the  Coromandal Express down to Bhubaneswar, then a taxi and a night in Konarak, perhaps at the brand new ITDC guest house.

The Sun Temple

This also has the advantage that we can attempt to imitate the above night shot. We need to be back in the car for 10:00 AM the following morning in order to be in good time back at Bhubaneswar for a 12:00 kick off and another overnighter down to Chennai and the Dosa fest. We might need to get a slightly earlier train down from Howrah depending on when they turn the lights out at the Sun Temple, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site don’t you know.

We’ve ditched the Kangra can-can and mingling with the monks due to lack of interest. We now have a 30 hour contingency plan in New Jalpaiguri (base camp for the Darjeeling Railway). so you can do the Darjeeling run and re-live your late teens (on a student grant!) as long as nothing has gone awry in Assam.

We are now discussing the details of the Assam section with our contacts on the ground. I think we’re probably going to be looking at further changes to the itinerary which I’ve just updated, but we couldnt have a better person to work this out with as he works near Tipong and his home town is Dhemaji where we get the train back to Rangiya on the other side of the river. If you are wondering what all the fuss is about crossing the river at that point, take a look at this

The Brahmaputra at Dibrugarh, click on the image for a closer view

GCIRC Think Tank Meeting

The steering committee will be convening at Khan’s in Westbourne Grove at 7:00PM on Tuesday 2nd February.

Photo by Bellaphon

If you happen to live in the south east of the UK, and can make it, you’d be most welcome. If you have any issues you wish to be  raised in the minutes please jot them down either in here or on the thread on IndiaMike. Things being discussed will include our ride aboard the “Uttar Banga Express” (you just couldn’t make it up could you), and loads of weird timetabling stuff. Actually, we are going to need WiFi obviously ….  I can’t see any mention of that on their site.

Bellaphon has provided us with a great review of Khan’s

Stop Press: Khan’s doesn’t do alcohol anymore, and there’s this WiFi issue, so we may reconsider this. But it stands for now.

England Zindabad!

Before anyone starts, no I am not going to be chanting that on the train, I just thought it would grab the attention of our Indian readership.

The rigorous GCIRC planning process has just noticed that the World Cup of Cricket for 2011 is to be held in India. To honour our fantastic adventure they’ve decided to start the tournament the very same day we set off from Mumbai in order to maximise the general confusion our event is likely to cause in the sub-continent.

It turns out that we will be in Ahmedabad the same day as the mighty Zimbabwe are due to tonk the Australians off the park.  Anyone wishing to do that match could get off the day before (we have to go through it twice because of the rail map). You could then rail or fly to Delhi or elsewhere if you wanted to do more railing with us.

We aren’t due to be in town anywhere else the same day as a match. However, we will be passing back through Calcutta 3 days after India tackle England at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. This gives those of you who find the whole idea of spending 2 solid weeks on Indian trains just a bit too stupid, the chance to join us for a manageable, and highly nutritious ride south. You will be able to visit the Sun Temple at Bhubaneswar the following day, then the day after that spend 8 hours enjoying Chennai’s finest eateries during our  Dosa Fest as part of the GCIBC (great circular Indian bread challenge) on Friday. You are then ideally situated to attend the England versus South Africa match being held in the same city on Sunday. (fans of Indian food are in the generally accepted food capital of South India, an extra day pigging out would be well worth it). If 3 days n Kolkata is too much you could come up and do our Darjeeling section, there aren’t any big matches that week till the weekend anyway.

Anyone who is up for a longer stint with us, but still would like to catch the England v India match (I’d sorely like to do this myself), can trade the Assam section of the trip for that. You just get off at New Jalpaiguri on the Saturday and we’ll perhaps see you back there 3 days later for some Joy Train fun, or you can spend a few days in Kolkata recovering from the previous week’s locomotive lunacy.

The full World Cup schedule can be found here. Eden Gardens is reputed to have the most intimidating atmosphere in all of India,  especially if you are an Indian cricketer and it’s all going mango shaped at the crease. (Indian readers will be relieved that I have chosen not to post a youtube vid of the last semi final to be played on that ground.  But we all know what happened ….) And for any Indians tuning in who may wish to point out that playing England these days is more like playing South Africa, here’s a guy I know you’ve all  heard of who pre-dates our penchant for playing Pretorians.

One of “England’s” finest

And here’s a few more

Crunch Buster

The GCIRC research and development committee bring you, with only a single extra day’s running time, the following fantastical additions to our already outrageous adventure. You can now spend a whole evening goggling at the Golden Temple (must be done at night as you can see), can-can up the Kangra Valley railway, mingle with the monks of Dharamshala, and if that isn’t enough you can even tick the Taj Mahal off your to-do list if you haven’t already done that.

The Golden Temple of Amritsar

Photo By James Barker

This is all to add to the dash through the Darjeeling mountain railway, the boat ride across the Brhamaputra’s most chaotic series of channels, and the  Tipong Colliery steam railway which were already core parts of the plan. We can now also worship at the Bhubaneswar Sun Temple. And of course there’s still a whole lot more.

Mingling monks of Dharamshala

Photo By Motographer

If this doesn’t represent value for money then I’d really like to know who you’ve been buying your holidays from, not that you’ll be buying any of this from me of course, that’s the whole point. These additions are achieved entirely on rail (you need to drive the last few miles to get to Dharamshala). Those still keen to do Kashmir, weather and insurgent activity permitting, would have to ditch either the whole evening in Amritsar (though I am informed it can still be dashed through on rubber for a lightening strike round about lunchtime)  or the Kangra Valley railway. i.e you can still do the whole plan, including Kashmir if you fancy it,  but just miss the glitzy photo op at the top of this page.

The Sun Temple of Bhubaneswar I decided not to post the most interesting pic I had for that one, but lets just say this place somehow managed to avoid Moghul censorship

We also offer you 3 of India’s classic narrow gauge railways , namely

Kangra Valley Railway for Dharamshala

Photo by S Versain

Darjeeling “Toy Train” You’ve perhaps heard of that one. One way only, but seriously guys and gals, this itinerary takes some beating

The Tipong Colliery Steam Railway the last non-tourist steam railway on the planet ?

And all for about 150 quid. “Incredible” really isn’t the half of it. I’m not insisting that people give at least 5% of the £500+ they are saving by doing this with GCIRC, or much better still open up your own Virgin Money Giving page and start scrounging off their mates, I’m just politely suggesting it. We may even be able to tweak the timetable enough so that anyone really keen for some agro in Agra could drive straight off there when we get to Delhi if we get the afternoon train down from Pathankot, do the Taj first thing in the morning and still get back on the train in Delhi. I’m not expecting many entrants to still have Agra missing from their T-shirt list, but if you are an India virgin and reckon you need to do this, just add about 50 quid to your bill depending on how many of you can share the cab fare, and it’s all yours.

We’ve got round about 50 assorted random individuals interested so far, about half of who are fairly well nailed on. The ferry crossing of the Brahmaputra and the accommodation situation at Tipong are going to take some forward planning if we are looking at anything more than a handful of us, which we clearly now are. We’ve got contacts established at that end of the world, but accurate details, even first hand accounts, of this ferry are hard to come across. I don’t know what the biggest tour party every to land at the colliery is, but it cant possibly have been as big as this is threatening to turn into.

The bidding just hit 3 figures on my donations page. My next missive will be a tad more serious with some facts and figures about my chosen cause, and a generally more technical approach to the business of prizing money from computer industry executives and also from the bunch of people who I’ve known since freshers day who seem to think they are somehow exempt from this.

Have a fantastic 2010 everybody, stay tuned.

Note: we’ve since ditched the Kangra can-can and mingling with the monks. But an evening at the Golden Temple is a def (at no timetabling cost!!. you get in no later than the next up train from Jammu to Delhi). We also have a half proper bash at Darjeeling, and a cursory culinary quest in Kolkata to consider.