Maya Swell Press

Train from Bordeaux pulls into Paris late afternoon on a Friday, montparnasse station a grey ugly concrete shell. I’m a bit on guard … I’ve heard stories about Paris, edgy dangerous and full of thieves. Cautious, I double check the station map before I get off the platform. A young African guy just off the train is standin around lookin a bit lost. No plans, no bookings, a few clues about possible jams and places to busk … a vague idea about camping rough on the edge of the city later in the evening. The station shopping mall is a bit more civilised … I hold back the urge for a decent coffee till I can find a bar in the outside world … but pick up a good map with an index of streets and coverage outside the inner tourist zone. A cigarette outside the station while I make a few plans. Whatever happens, the big pack is awkward and heavy, decide to store it at the station and travel light … horn, clarinet, and a few clothes in the laptop case.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last train to Hentai from San Seb … I’d been running around town all evening making excuses not to leave my last safe haven in espana. 20 minute train ride and a whole new country. Carriage is full of French revellers who’d been partying the night in spain. Too late for a train elsewhere, and the station shuts in an hour … time to find a place to crash. French police are arresting someone at the station, fairly roughly … maybe an inauspicious omen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Train from Bilbao to San Seb is less scenic, and I sleep for a large part of it. But the rain has stopped, the day is warming, and it’s going to be a beautiful weekend. Grab a cafe at the first oasis of calm I see. Cafe Iguna. Slightly stylish, but probably in the wrong part of town for what it’s trying to be. But … magic … it has WiFi. Internet check finds a big music store two blocks away. Play around on google for a bit checking the layout of the town … then decide … to fuck it all and just wander around. One music shop sends me to another music shop and then to another that specialises in woodwind. Yes thay have decent sax mouthpieces. But theyre just about to close for siesta.

Read the rest of this entry »

Train from Llanes to Bilbao, from Asturia to Basque country, is well worth the 7 euros. Beautiful country, lucsious green greymajestic cliffs jutting out. Relaxed warm and dry and enjoying the view. Arrival … Bilbao station, an interesting old building, and Bilbao … seems to be in absolute fucking chaos … there are about 10 circuses going on at once.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very difficult to leave Granada … it’s a beautiful day when the bus from the old centre of the town pulls into the estazione de autobus. Plan A is to bus to Barcelona to take in a bit of Gaudi, and try my horn in the streets there. Plan A is shot to pieces quickly. Only bus to Barcelona is late night, and 70 euros. Seems expensive when I can get to Madrid for 15. I’m still trying to keep within a budget that comes from what I make playing on the streets. The last couple of nights have been good, but not that good. Madrid it is, and I’ll work it out from there. There’s a bus leaving in 45minutes. Enough time for an espresso and an icecream.

Read the rest of this entry »

The streets of most cities in India will throw all sorts of horrors at you, every heartbreaking story and plaintive look, every imaginable hustle, all expecting a few rupees. Most travellers on long stays get a bit hardened towards this. Most Indians are. Generally it seems that the most (financially) effective beggars are the most horrifying … not out of compassion I think, but purely so that particular beggar doesn’t have to come onto the street for another week or so, so people won’t be confronted by whatever excruciating deformity is their stock in trade … certainly in the big metros it seems to work like this. Remembering India now after a few months in Europe, the harshest and most genuinely heartbreaking story from the streets is not born of ugliness and deformity, but quite the opposite.

Read the rest of this entry »

Further back in the journey, someone had pointed out that you couldn’t really have experienced everything that Indian trains had to offer unless you had at least one trip in general class. The sleeper class that I had used up till now had reserved seats, and allocated bunk beds. General is chaotic, allocated only in theory, sometimes standing room only, with floor sleeping, hard benches and half of India trying to squeeze into the same spot. I didn’t think I’d give it a go for the 36 hour ride from Jalgoan to Varanasi. What I hadn’t figured on was general class coming to me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Heading from Mapusa by any means necessary, back in one version of ‘real India’. By any means necessary of course means an overnight bus. Plenty of ’em, and no booking necessary. No time to book a train, so … it’s just not the most pleasant way to get around India … add all the things you don’t like about bus journeys to the trashed state of the majority of India’s main roads. Northern Karnataka’s roads are particularly disasterous … big iron ore mines, overloaded indian lorries, corrupt weighbridge operators, and a thriving black market in the ore slipping big trucks under the tax radar down roads between Hampi Goa and Mumbai. I’m not looking forward to the journey but I’ve got itchy feet, and it’s time to get them moving. Poona is a likely destination, and means I can avoid Mumbai … not in the mood for another big city, though Mumbai would be interesting.
Read the rest of this entry »

Used to be that GOA stood for Good On Acid. Now it seems like it’s back to simply “good on a humid sunny day by the beach”. Not quite the party zone that it once was. Government regulations, a few very dried up conservatives, and a music and alcohol curfew. There is still a bit of a scene here, but I think it is a bit harder to find. Many more commercial events, more of a club scene, and a lot more driven by the domestic indian tourists and beautiful people. Even still, this is a state that is insulated from the grubby realism, beggars and polution of ‘real india’.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hampi (as in ‘humpy’) is another of those pieces of India that are somehow in a bubble of time. Like nothing has changed there for a 1000 years, maybe an empire or two rise and fall, and leave their assorted bits and pieces lying around …

The scenery is lush piled on desolation. Granite pebbles are thrown across the countryside. Ruins of a 16th century empire are thrown about the cliffs almost as randomly as the boulders. Most date from this empire (Vijayanagar) and many predate it. Walls run through the middle of town. The main stretch of Hampi runs along the old bazaar. A river splits the town, with most of the town on one side, and a few hotels and restaurants on the other. A boat takes you across the river for 10Rs. Along the river rice fields, with patches of peanuts, banana plantations on this side. A green belt runs up to the local dam, but beyond this strip, the land is bare, harsh.

Read the rest of this entry »