Travelling Tim

Take off your shoes before going into church, then break open a coconut on the altar. Encourage the handicapped to squat in a line near the entrance. On Fridays, kneel on your doormat, facing east.

After staring long and hard at all strangers, ask them for their 'good name', their 'native place', then take a photo of them with members of your family.

Slyly ask young guys if its really true they have sex with their girlfriends.

Be surprised when your male friends won't hold hands with you.

In your local pub, turn off all the lights and play loud music. Add paraffin to the whisky so it tastes better. Charge foreigners 10% more for all drinks.

Ask random travellers if they'll write to you when they get home. Call everyone older than you 'Uncle' and 'Aunty'.

Encourage your wife to put on weight. Get her to do the laundry in the local boating lake. When she's not looking, paint a red line across her head, and a dot on her forehead. If she has an errand for you to do, just reply "Send the boy!"

Install an electric water-heater in the bathroom, making sure the bare wires are easily accessible from the shower. Ban all toilet paper from the house. Keep a milk bottle next to the toilet.

Only buy stainless steel drinking glasses for the house, and tupperware pre-stained with tumeric.

When starting a journey, refuse to set off until you are 2 hours late, and have all your family there to wave you goodbye.

Any journey over 15 minutes requires you to take various foodstuffs in metal tins. Wake your wife at 4am so she will have time to cook it for you.

All vegetables, especially spinach, should be cooked until unrecognisable. Any remaining taste should be diguised with spices.

At the railway station, ignore any seats, and after urinating off the platform, wrap yourself in an old bedsheet, lie on the floor like a corpse, and snore loudly. Never use the foot-over bridge.

Confiscate your children's Rice Crispies, add onion, coriander leaves and lemon juice, then shake noisily in an old tobacco tin.

Visit your local motorway service-station, and complain to the manager that there are no beds outside. And how can you run a cafe with no tandoor?

Remove all gears from your bicycle, and add 2 bells. Ride straight into oncoming traffic without looking or taking any note of other road users.

If you know more than one language, use snippets of each in every sentence. Before talking, fill your mouth with leaves.

Invite friends around for a barbecue, then slaughter a goat in front of them with an old sword. Insist they all leave their shoes at the door.

When getting married, demand a TV, a motorbike, some bedsheets, and a lakh of pounds from your future inlaws. If they don't pay, invest in a kerosine stove.

If your marriage has fewer than 600 guests, worry that people will think you are cheap.

At the tobacconists, purchase cigarettes singly. Complain if they don't stock Beedies, or if there's no burning string to light them with.

You start a taxi business, and take passengers to the hotel that tips the most, rather than the one they asked for. Use the meter? - haha do you think I'm stupid ?

Avoid using lights when driving at night. Don't forget: there are only two traffic regulations - might is right, horns are mandatory. Always overtake on the blind side. Never start a journey without playing loud Bollywood music. Light a new incense-stick when passing every church.

Make your wife ride side-saddle on a scooter, even if she isn't wearing a sari. The standing area at the front is suitable for 3 children - the rest must sit on your wife's lap.

Never travel on a bus without one leg tightly pressed against your neighbours. If there's a baby onboard, pick it up, and be surpised when the mother objects. Reserve your seat with a scarf.

You report your local bus driver because he will not let you on board with a four foot metal trunk,two sacks of aubergines and a crate of live chickens. Demand to know why there are no video facilities, playing scratchy music so loud that the windows pop out.

You decide to supplement your meagre finances by stopping "foreigners",silently thrusting into their hand a dog-eared piece of paper that says,"pliss giv munny I am duff and dump".

Release all cattle from local farms, and guide into the high street. Throw plenty of garbage into the gutters, so they won't go hungry. Stick dung-cakes on the walls of your house.

Insist on writing your daughter's 'Lonely Hearts' advert, starting it with the mandatory 'Fair and slim, wheatish complexion...'

Recruit 6 servants, who can be housed in the potting shed at the bottom of your garden.

When buying vegetables, complain if you don't get a handful of green chillies for free. Act surprised if the bags aren't made from old school copybooks, or plastic bags so thin they barely last long enough to exit the premises. Always ask for 'best price'.

Cover your TV with a plastic lace cover, despite what the manufacturer says. Cover your dining-table with plastic, ditto the VCR remote, and cover your sofa with bed sheets.

Re-wire your house with 15 switches in each room. Some of them even work! All rooms need ceiling-fans, with a 12 speed control-box.

Grow a long thumbnail, and paint it red. Blow your nose into the street. Throw stones at all the stray dogs you meet.

Regard taxi-seating limits as a challenge. Commute to work on the roof of the train, and call for the chai-wallah. If the roof is full, the carriage's luggage-racks make a comfortable long-term alternative.

Open a restaurant, and get a 3-year old child to spell-check the menu. Discard any cutlery, apart from the house 'spoon'. If you must clean the tables, use a floor-cloth: primary-school kids are ideal for this job. Provide a sink in the corner for everyone to spit in. Only serve 'Meals'. Provide 'Filtered Water' on request.

Remove all gears from your bicycle, add two bells and some tinsel wheel decorations, then pedal straight into the traffic without looking right or left.

When flying, you're the one with the biggest ever suitcases, usually covered in camoflage material. You try to carry a 40" TV as hand-luggage, checking it in just as the gate is closing.

Introduce a pecking order at work, and get a flashing red light for the roof of your bosses car.

At your local cinema, you press up against the back of the person in line ahead of you in the ticket line, then reach around in front of him and shove your money into the ticket booth. You then complain if the main feature is less than 6 hours long, or is not interupted every 15 minutes by a song and dance routine in the Swiss Alps.

Programme your computer to randomly disconnect from the Internet every 10 minutes. Cover the monitor with a plastic lace cover, despite what the manufacturer says.

Send a telegram of commiseration at the birth of your friend's daughter.

Refuse to eat with Cockneys, citing caste differences. At a restaurant, enquire if certain menu items are "possible".

When staying in a hotel, dispose of all top bedsheets. Increase your TV volume until the walls shake, then complain if 6am bed-tea does not arrive. Insist on taking a shower with a jug and a bucket. Telephone the front-desk to send up more hot water every 15 minutes.

And finally, just to prove that you are really behaving like an Indian, be friendly, tolerant, kind, helpful, generous, and welcoming to all the foreign visitors you encounter.

Traveling on Indian Roads is an almost hallucinatory potion of sound, spectacle and experience. It is frequently heart-rending, sometimes hilarious, mostly exhilarating, always unforgettable -- and, when you are on the roads, extremely dangerous. Most Indian road users observe a version of the Highway Code based on a Sanskrit text. These 12 rules of the Indian road are published for the first time in English:

ARTICLE I:

The assumption of immortality is required of all road users.

ARTICLE II:

Indian traffic, like Indian society, is structured on a strict caste system. The following precedence must be accorded at all times. In descending order, give way to: Cows, elephants, heavy trucks, buses, official cars, camels, light trucks, buffalo, jeeps, ox-carts, private cars, motorcycles, scooters, auto-rickshaws, pigs, pedal rickshaws, goats, bicycles (goods-carrying), handcarts, bicycles (passenger-carrying), dogs, pedestrians.

ARTICLE III:

All wheeled vehicles shall be driven in accordance with the maxim: to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail, to stop is defeat. This is the Indian driver's mantra.

ARTICLE IV:

Use of horn (also known as the sonic fender or aural amulet):

Cars (IV,1,a-c):

1. Short blasts (urgent) indicate supremacy, i.e., in clearing dogs, rickshaws and pedestrians from path.

2. Long blasts (desperate) denote supplication, i.e., to oncoming truck: "I am going too fast to stop, so unless you slow down we shall both die". In extreme cases this may be accompanied by flashing of headlights (frantic).

3. Single blast (casual) means: "I have seen someone out of India's 870 million whom I recognise," "There is a bird in the road (which at this speed could go through my windscreen)," or "I have not blown my horn for several minutes."

Trucks and buses (IV,2,a):

A. All horn signals have the same meaning, viz: "I have an all-up weight of approximately 12.5 tons and have no intention of stopping, even if I could." This signal may be emphasised by the use of headlamps.

ARTICLE V remains subject to the provision of Order of Precedence in Article II, above.

ARTICLE VI:

All manoeuvres, use of horn and evasive action shall be left until the last possible moment.

ARTICLE VII:

In the absence of seat belts (which there is), car occupants shall wear garlands of marigolds. These should be kept fastened at all times.

ARTICLE VIII:

1. Rights of way: Traffic entering a road from the left has priority. So has traffic from the right, and also traffic in the middle.

2. Lane discipline (VII,1): All Indian traffic at all times and irrespective of direction of travel shall occupy the centre of the road.

ARTICLE IX:

Roundabouts: India has no roundabouts. Apparent traffic islands in the middle of crossroads have no traffic management function. Any other impression should be ignored.

ARTICLE X:

Overtaking is mandatory. Every moving vehicle is required to overtake every other moving vehicle, irrespective of whether it has just overtaken you. Overtaking should only be undertaken in suitable conditions, such as in the face of oncoming traffic, on blind bends, at junctions and in the middle of villages/city centres. No more than two inches should be allowed between your vehicle and the one you are passing -- and one inch in the case of bicycles or pedestrians.

ARTICLE XI:

Nirvana may be obtained through the head-on crash.

ARTICLE XII:

Reversing: no longer applicable since no vehicle in India has reverse gear.

After Whisky, Driving Risky
Keep Your Nurves On Those Sharp Curves
Overtaker, Undertaker
Bro Go Slow
Brakes Don't Fit, You're In Shit
Speed Thrills But Kills
This Is Not A Runway
On My Curve, Check Your Nerve
Life Is Short, Don't Make It Shorter
Life Is A Journey, Don't End It Early
Drive With Care, You'll Get There
Better Late In This Life Than Early In Next
Take Care Not Dare
Expect The Unexpect
No Race, No Rally, Enjoy The Valley
Road Is Hilly, Don't Be Silly
Hurry Makes Worry
On The Bend Go Slowly, Friend
Be Mr Late, Not The Late Mr
Go Gently On My Curves
Always Alert Will Accident Avert
Fast Won't Last
Time Is Money But Life Is Precious
Do Not Be Rash And End In Crash
Drive On Horse Power, Not Rum Power
I Am Curvaceous, Be Slow
Peep Peep Don't Sleep
Drive Like Hell, You Will Get There
No Hurry, No Worry
Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow
Save A Life, It May Be Your Own
Keep Nature Natural