Embrace the Bizarre.

This is one of G Adventures slogans. Our CEOs wear it on their T shirts. In india something bizarre pops up every 30 minutes or so. It happens with food - boiling milk on your cornflakes. In shopping - receive a chitty for the goods you want to buy, go to payment desk to pay, take receipt from payment desk to packing desk where someone else has brought your goods, present receipt to packer who will identify your goods by matching his copy of the chitty to the receipt, pack the goods and staple the receipt to the packaging. Process time at least 10 minutes. However, four people rather than one are in gainful employment.

When we go to the barber we look at ourselves in the mirror. Here, street barber's customers have their faces up against a wall while directly behind them all of life goes on. But they behave as though they were looking at a mirror.

In some places we also have to hide our beer. If the restaurant doesn't have a licence then you have to buy your beer from the state liquor store. The beer bottles go under the table and the glasses are wrapped in napkins to hide your sins from other guests.

Our Hotel in Wayanard was bizarre. Originally, built as a block of flats it was in the process of being converted into a hotel. Architecturally, it looked like a Stalin era tower block which should have been located on the outskirts of Moscow but here it was, in the jungle, its 10th floor rising 80 feet above the jungle canopy. One group in our party got a recently upgraded room and were c*** a hoop. The rest of us got dilapidated, 1960's style student accommodation. Our view was to die for - our carpet looked as though something had died on it. We didn't have a shower just a large bucket (regular readers will have noticed that water and bathing have become regular issues on this tour). The mains plug on our television didn't fit the local socket so two stout wires were taped onto the plug prongs and then pushed into the sockets. Since we had no desire to die in a towering inferno I removed them and did without a telly. Most of the other mains sockets were seriously dodgy and none of our overnight device charging was successful. Before retiring for the night I went down to reception to buy a bottle of water. The receptionist, a lovely man who didn't deserve what happened next, asked me how I was enjoying our room.