Saturday 21st - Train and Boat and Cable Car

We wake around first light as a few other passengers in the coach are stirring.  There are people sleeping on the floor and stretched from seat to seat across the aisle. Our luggage is still safely chained to our seats where we left it. The train halts to wait for a southbound to pass. There is a chai stall on the platform so we down one with biscuits for our breakfast.

The inhabitants of the coach sort themslves out and we regain exclusive occupancy of our seating bay. We seem to be well up with the schedule and roll along steadily between stations. At one place an organised group rapidly hang sacks of vegeyables onto the outside of the train before boarding the Unreserved coaches. We get coriander outside our window, a pleasant change from the odour emanating from the toilet cubicle. A couple of stops later they jump off and remove all of the sacks. The final stretch passes amost without incident until a young lady comes to practise her English on R. We have been on the train for over 19 hours and she leaves it until ten minutes to go before speaking up. We get into Jabalpur only a few minutes late. D has had great fun, R is relieved to have survived.

Our hotel is quite close to the station but when an auto driver offers us a fare of 30 rupees we go for it. It is a two minute ride but saves getting lost. After a few minutes delay we are told that there is a room ready for us and that we can have a complimentary breakfast today as we will be leaving so early tomorrow. Our room is a good one with a balcony overlooking the pool. We have a quick sluice and get breakfast before going to recover some sleep.

By late lunchtime we have recovered enough to go for a beer and some pakoras and afterwards for an outing by car to Jabalpur's big attraction - The Marble Rocks. Our driver is a young man with minimal English and a horn affliction. The trip takes us out to a village on the side of a valley. The driver shows us where to go for the boat ride and runs after us to correct us after we miss the obvious stairs down towards the river. These are lined with statue and knick knack shops, but there is no pressure selling just a bit of half hearted "See my shop madam".

Down by the river there is a 20 seater rowing boat just ready to depart, cost Rs50 for half an hour's cruise up the Narmada River and back. There is a group of female engineering students on board and one falls into conversation with R. The two lads on the oars do a decent job as they row against the current.  There are cliffs on either side and some of the strata is bleached quite white. Another crew member starts a commentary in Hindi complete with jokes that make the girl students laugh. When we get to the turn around point two bigger and stronger looking young men take over the oars for the downhill stretch. The commentary continues and all of the Indian passengers seem to think it was good as they hand over their money. We enjoyed a restful cruise in the sun and a bit of interesting scenery.

We climb back up to the car and assume that we have seen everything but no. First our driver suggests a kilometre walk to a viewpoint. It is hot and we had a hard night so we pass on this and he drives on to a car park where he is insistent that we must see something but is unable to explain what. He points us towards another alley of souvenir shops and we assume that he is getting a fee for throwing us to the lions. Nobody really tries to sell us anything and at the end of the alley there is an official looking sign in Hindi with an arrow. We follow this and are somewhat surprised when a cable car appears.

The sign says Rs 75 return so we cannot turn this down. There is no queue and as we board the car D is told where to sit for the best photos. We head out over some spectacular waterfalls, which we later learn are called the Dhuandhar Falls. Most of the rivers that we have seen so far have been rather dried up but there is enough water here for a fine mist to be thrown up, creating a rainbow effect. On the far side of the water is the mass of people who have walked to the viewpoint. Our side is much less crowded and we take a walk to get the best vantage point. The return 'flight' is equally exhilarating and we vote our driver a capital fellow for his persistence.

He is now satisfied that we have seen the essentials and we return to base. We are both tired and dine early. R is so shattered that she cannot even last through dinner. We are both sound asleep by 8 pm.

Friday 20th - The Big One

The Peanut Hotel is OK apart from their inability to get the tea order right. Two black teas, no sugar is a fairly simple request but they manage to get it wrong twice. After breakfast we have a bit of time to kill so we watch the cricket on the television. England collapse.  That's quite enough of that. The hotel calls us an auto for the ride to the station. Today is one of the highlights of the trip for D. We are taking a trip along the Satpura lines on one of the very few surviving Sleeper trains on Indian Railways Narrow Gauge (NG) lines. Nagpur also has a Narrow Gauge Railway museum but this closes a few minutes after our inbound train arrives and opens a few minutes before our outbound train leaves. Major planning error by D.

Today's weather is very different. There is hazy cloud cover and it seems cooler but more humid. The BBC weather forecast suggests thunder later. We strike lucky at the station as the doorkeeper on duty at the Air Conditioned Waiting Room appears incapable of reading our ticket, which is for Sleeper Class, and waves us through. R is installed with the luggage and D goes in search of chai. This is a bit of a struggle but in the process he does find the NG platform,  conveniently situated at the far end of the platform containing the waiting room. R is fortified with chai and D goes to get some NG photos.  The two platform terminus is quite busy and the time passes quickly.  Soon it is time to retrieve R and the bags as our train should be in anytime. We top up with bottled water and biscuits as we pass the catering stall. We have no idea what might be available on this trip.

The train pulls in and we double check the number on the destination board. 58839 Nagpur - Jabalpur is correct. We find the reserved coach in the middle of the train. This coach is unusual in as much as it has 2S chair car type seating in bays of 4 at a lower level and ten Sleeper side berths above along each side of the coach. We have bookings in both 2S and Sleeper and dump our bags on berths 8 and 9, taking two of the seats below berth 8. We are near to the door, good for photos and door riding, but also close to one of the toilets, not so good. At least it doesn't smell from the off and we are not in either berth 1 or 10, jammed in right beside the bogs.D tries out one of the berths for size. OK for width but a bit short for anybody 5'3" or over.

Turnarounds on this section are pretty smart so just a few quick photos and we are ready for the off. This line is 2' 6" gauge with diesel locomotives. Our trip will last nineteen and a half hours if the train is on time, we will cover 398 km, undergo two reversals, where the loco swaps ends and the train changes direction, and if we had been in a hurry we could have done the trip in less than 9 hours on the broad gauge. The coach is quite empty and the TTE checks our tickets. A chap sitting opposite seems keen to point out that we cannot have tickets for both sitting and Sleeper but the TTE didn't seem at all bothered. The chap keeps coming back to the subject but thankfully gets off at the first stop.

The route starts by diving under the BG mainline and then passing through a rather scruffy part of the city. The first stop, Itwari Junction, is a long one and quite a lot is loaded into the luggage van at the front of the train, including a large wooden bedhead and foot. After this we make good time, running between two BG lines and leaving the city behind us. These lines appear to serve some large industrial complexes and one of them, not shown on D's Indian Rail Atlas parallels our track for about 20km.

R has requested suitable entertainment for the trip so D treats her to a copy of 'Good Housekeeping', usually full of tips on how to get your maid to be a better cook and 101 things to make with condensed milk. This issue has a free gift that should come in really useful.

We cross the state border into Madhya Pradesh and the surroundings become more rural. There is also evidence of work progressing on the conversion of this line to BG.There are regular piles of BG concrete sleepers and ballast along the side of the line as well as drainage work visible. Some bridges are in place. There are regular stops although the ones at the small stations and halts are very sharp - barely 20 seconds at a stand, then the guard's whistle, loco hooter and we are moving again. There are some longer stops at bigger stations - with time to take photos or visit the chai stall but not both.

We get the feeling that Western tourists are a bit of a novelty around here. One chap has some English and from time to time points out things that might be worth photographing. The other people at our end of the coach just watch us to see what happens next. Nobody else seems to want to ride the doors which suits D very well and even R has a go at it. The train starts to climb through a range of forested hills, the sky goes very dark and it begins to rain very gently. There is some major engineering work going on to build a new trackbed for the BG line.  The scenery is not up to Darjeeling or Nilgiri standards but is still worth looking at. At this point the thunderstorm breaks and the hatches are battened down.

The climb comes to an end as we emerge from the forest onto a windswept looking plateau. Think Rannoch Moor but not so damp or miserable. As the descent begins there are isolated sections where BG track has been laid alongside the NG. Looks like a time limited future for the Satpura lines. Book now before it is too late. As it gets dark it stops raining and we move back into a more populated area, arriving on time at Chhindwara, where the first reversal takes place. Nearly all of our fellow travellers get off here and a new crowd gets in. 

The station facilities are pretty basic and the catering stall is ruled in for chai but out for the fritter like things that are acting as a fly magnet. Biscuits for supper tonight. The toilets are so far away that R fails to find them and has to use the on board facility which is ripening nicely. A new TTE has joined the trip and he is being hassled a little by people who want a Sleeper berth. We have spread our microfleece blankets, brought specially for this occasion, and piled our bags on top to deter claim snatchers. The new TTE appears satisfied with our double ticket arrangement and he gets everybody sorted. We have just decided to turn in when there is a bit of a dispute about the light at our end of the coach.  One group want it off, one group say on and they carry the day. It remains on all night. 

At another stop a couple of guys get on who want to sing and play music on their phones. Eventually they quieten down and we get a night of fitful sleep. We are awoken for a while by some rough shunting at the second reversal. 

Thursday 19th - Happy Birthday Mr CST

We wake quite early and decide to get on with the day. Our train does not leave until 10.40 so we have time to do a bit more exploring. Hot water is ordered and arrives in two large, steaming buckets, more than enought for a decent shower each. The Plaza does not have in house catering beyond cups of tea so omelettes are ordered in. When we have had bread omelette before it has consisted of a plain omelette,  served with two slices of bread and usually eaten as a sandwich. This bread omelette actually contains the bread, a bit like eggy bread with extra egg.

After packing and settling up we head out to explore, find an ATM and buy some bananas for the train. It is sweeping hour, when all of the shopkeepers busily wield brooms in order to sweep dust and rubbish off their forecourt and onto their neighbours'. In the market some of the more energetic stallholders are just setting up. We get about a kilo of small bananas for 25 rupees and provide great entertainment to the locals just by walking about and taking photos.  We see a shop with a sweetie jar saying 'Orange bites' but the contents are other flavours so we pass. R is looking for small sachets of oil for when she gets some Mehendi done and nearly finishes up with half a kilo of sunflower ghee.

Like all good Indian towns Jalgaon has a clock tower. This one sems to owe more to the influence of dome five year plan than the Raj amd manages to display a different time on each of its four faces. None of them is correct. As we admire the edifice the fire brigade rush by with sirens blaring. The reaction ftom the other road users is to ignore them and carry on as usual.

As we are thinking of heading back to the hotel to collect our bags we hear drums down a side street. There is a large collection of men in fancy uniforms,  milling about and a small crowd starting to gather. D starts taking photos and is immediately summoned to join them. At first we struggle to understand what the event is but eventually they manage to  explain that they are celebrating the birthday of Mr CST himself, Chhatrapati Shivaji, by parading around the town. Everybody wants to shake D's hand and pose for pictures with him. D tries to hand over the camera to R and she is also pulled into the group photo. A passer by obliges by taking a few photos for us. There is a little dancing and some chanting,  then we part with lots of smiles and more handshakes as we need to get to the station.

The station is visible from the doorstep of the hotel. We pick up our bags, walk down the street and across the footbridge.  Jaljaon station will not win any prizes. It is infested with flies, most of the catering stands have no chai and there are no train indicator boards on the platforms or tannoy announcements.  A chalkboard shows our train, the Howrah Express, as 15 minutes late on platform 3. D almost gets it badly wrong. A train for Howrah pulls in, coach A1 is in the right place on the platform but the train number is wrong. Is this ours? Forgetting the basic principle that the train number is paramount D gets on board and finds our berths occupied.  A passing vendor is consulted. This train does not go to Nagpur. Quick! Get off before it starts.

D walks 15 coach lengths back down the platform to check the delay board again. That was a train running 6 hours late and taking a very different route,  a narrow escape!

There is one more freight then our train slips quietly into the station. We have side berths in 2AC for this trip. One chap has borrowed one of our seats and the coach attendant is having 40 winks in our upper bunk but they shift without any fuss. We get settled in and enjoy the view.  The window is a little grubby but definitely workable and the charging socket works so we hsve no groinds for complaint. One of the experts on Indian Railways once described 2AC as 'Curtain Class' and this coach looks to fall into that category. However there is a small girl with a very short haircut in the bay opposite and she keeps peering round the curtains at us. Soon mother, who has heavily Mehendied hands looks out to see what the attraction is. R digs out the sweets and soon the curtain is open and we are chatting away.

They are a family travelling to their brother's wedding in Nagpur. It looks like Granpaw, Mrs Mehendi, her two daughters (about 10 and 2) , her husband and her younger sister, who is a teacher and has flawless English. They are from Surat in Gujurat where they had to board the train at 3.45 am. No wonder they had the curtains closed. We while away the journey with dangerous pursuits such as eating on board samosas and door riding.

It would probably be fair to point out to those who have kept up with us thus far that, for the next few days, this blog will be about trains rather than culture. Although today's trip is primarily a means of getting to a starting point it does pass a couple of points of note en route. At Akola we cross the metre gauge line that once linked all the way from Delhi to the south, but which is being converted to broad gauge , section by section. At Murtajapur the narrow gauge line between Achalpur and Yavatmal runs parallel for a while but is hidden by trees. It comes into view as it climbs a curving embankment before crossing the main line by bridge. At Pulgaon there is a heap of old sleepers and rusting rail where the narrow gauge terminus of the line from Arvi used to be.

As we are getting into Nagpur we pass the very swanky new cricket ground. We get in about half an hour late, just as it is starting to get dark. There are some fairly persistent touts but we make straight for the Pre-paid auto booth where we hand over 2 rupees in return for a fixed fare of Rs74 to our hotel.  The touts were suggesting 100 each and were told to get lost. The Peanut Hotel is about 15 minutes from the station.

This is a modern place with small, but clean rooms. Initially ours has no electricity other than the lights but they sort that out. We look up a couple of places within walking distance where we might get a beer and something to eat. Aren't phones clever these days? The first one, the Fionaa Bar is outrageously expensive and plagued with loud music. Nearly a fiver for two small beers? They must think that they are in Edinburgh. The next place is a bit more reasonable so we decide to try the food which is surprisingly good, lemon chicken with a broccoli and potato dish that we eould have again if we could remember the name. 

Wednesday 18th - Ajanta

Early start today as we have to pack and shower before breakfast. The Oberoi has been a good call and in the rather unlikely event that we return to Aurangabad we would stay there again. Our car arrives promptly at 8.00 and we set out northwards. We have a different driver today, a bit more chatty but a little less proficient in English so conversation is quite difficult.  Once we leave the city we make pretty good progress across a mainly arable area where a whole variety of crops are growing including cotton, sugar cane, bananas and corn.

A deep valley appears on our left and the driver points out the car park and shopping mall a long way below. The road winds down an escarpment and into the valley. This place is much more organised than Ellora. We have to pay a 10 rupee 'Amenity Fee' each. This apparently gives us the right to be assailed by the stallholders as we run the gamut of the mall on our way in. We then pay 15 each for the bus ride up to the actual entrance to the monument where there is a crowd of guides and porters looking to part us from our children's inheritance. D resolutely ignores them all and makes straight for the ticket counter. R is obviously weakened and targeted by a young chap who points out the benefits of having somebody to carry the water bottle and keep an eye on the shoes at the barefoot temples. His clincher is the toilet advice.  R is obviously sold on the idea of hiring this chap .

He is officially a Porter, licensed by the ASI. Some of them carry visitors to the caves along the valley in sedan chairs. Others provide water carrying and shoe minding services. Our chap has good English and throws in a bit of unofficial guiding when the licensed guides are not looking. He even takes a couple of pictures for us.

The caves/temples here are cut out of one face of a horseshoe shaped gorge. They are older than the ones at Ellora and do not have as much diversity of style. Some were started but never finished because of weaknesses in the rock or because of water ingress. There has been more effort to preserve the wall and ceiling paintings than at Ellora which means that barriers have been installed to keep the walls out of reach. Flash photography is banned but there has been some low intensity lighting installed which allows the pictures to be seen.

Our chap gives us some brief details at each cave before allowing us to explore the inside in our own time. The paintings do give an insight into how things must have looked during the heyday of the caves. The lighting that has been installed does give a bit of an eerie glow but allows D's camera, with its low light programme, to catch some of the colours. Once again extra pictures today. In a couple of caves restoration or repair work is under way.

Towards the end of the tour he tells us that we have reached his favourite cave. It is a rather austere, incomplete hall but he starts to sing to demonstrate the acoustics. As we wend our way back to the entrance gate we see an Asian Paradise Flycatcher down by the river. It is at a distance and keeps moving but its white body and extremely long tail are unmistakable. Our man is quite excited by this as he has not seen one here before, and he takes a photo of the picture in R's bird book.

We grab a very quick lunch of Veg Pakodas and head back towards the car. Our driver is ready and we hit the road for the 55km to Jalgaon, which is the nearest railway station to Ajanta. The roads are a bit rougher on this section and we are really feeling the heat so we are pleased to be deposited at the Hotel Plaza, near Jalgaon station. This hotel gets consistently good reviews as a basic, clean stopover. We are shown three different rooms and opt for a basic room with fan and bathroom for 850 rupees, less than £9. Hot water in buckets on call. Free wifi, shared with the hotel next door.The chap in charge is very helpful and draws us a little map of the main attractions in the town.

After a quck cool down under the fan we head out to check the attractions.  First up is the shopping mall,  anchored by a Big Bazaar. We need biscuits for the train tomorrow and surely a sophisticated place like this will stock 'Orange Bites'. These people have some sort of paranoia about shoplifting and the security guard tries to work out a way to lock D's camera so that he can't stash anything in it. R's handbag gets secured with a plastic cable tie. We find the biscuits, and with difficulty, the sweets. There are some multi coloured things in a hard plastic box which are descibed as boiled sweets. We take a chance. On the way out we see another rack of sweets containing ' Big Orange Slices'. Hang the expense! Let's go with both types.

Leading international retailers have not yet spotted the opportunity that awaits in Jalgaon and most of the mall is vacant. R does spot a Bata shoe shop and decides to look at their sandals. The ladies' styles do not have big enough sizes but there is one pair of men's that looks good and fits. A mere Rs799. We politely decline the offer of the shoebox.







Next up is our host's recommended watering hole where have a couple of beers before heading around the block to the Arya Hotel, his recommended restaurant.  We have a veg biryani with stuffed pepper and makhani daal. More than we can eat and change out of £3.

Tuesday 17th - Pancake day.

The cold tablets do a knockout job on R and she sleeps in until 8.45.  We have breakfast but even an aloo paratha, her favourite,  does not cheer her up and she takes another tablet and crawls back into bed. D does some light blogging for a while and then heads out to explore more of Aurangabad.

You probably have to be Aurangabad's mother to love the place. It is sprawling, dusty and intersected at regular intervals by pungent open sewers. If there is any kind of historic centre D utterly fails to find it. The place even has insects so hard up that they are ptepared to bite D, a first in our five Indian trips. There is some kind of market in front of a Hindu temple but it is a poor affair and utterly devoid of shade. A canopy is provided for the benefit of those queueing for the temple where there seems to be a good turnout today. Do Hindus celebrate Shrove Tuesday?

We are totally out of Orange Bites, our favourite Indian boiled sweet, and D enquires at some likely looking establishments but nobody has them. He does get a couple of 2 rupee sachets of Surf Extra so we can do emergency laundry. Eventually a stall holder suggests 'Orangefillz' as an alternative. These are condisiderably smaller but Rs10 is invested. They turn out to be a reasonable substitute with some kind of liquid centre. 

Back at the Oberoi R is still feeling ropey so a siesta is invoked. By 3 p.m. she is feeling a little better so decide to do something. The two Aurangabad attractions (as listed by LP) that we have missed are the Aurangabad Caves and Panchakki. We had caves yesterday and will have caves tomorrow.  Three days out of three seems like overkill so we go for Panchakki, which means 'water wheel' and is described as 'a garden complex'.





 When we get there we realise that we drove past it yesterday on the way to the Baby Taj. Garden complex is gilding the lilly a little. The famous watermill is in a small building at one corner and there are various water tanks occupying the grounds of a mosque. R does spot a few bee-eaters and wagtails as well as some kind of dark brown martin. None of these are prepared to pose for photos.

R fancies a cup of tea so we pick LP's recommended smart hotel, the Lemon Tree. This turns out to be a longer ride than we expected and even less effort goes into their Lemon tea than at the Panjim Marriott. To add insult to injury they pull the 'no change' stunt for 11 rupees. In disgust we head back to our room and D is sent to the offy just around the corner for a couple of beers. This establishment has very limited stock and as far as cold beers go there is one strong brand and one very strong. D chooses the lesser of two evils and buys a couple of 8% by volume bottles of "Knock Out".  

This is just about palatable and fills the gap before we go to supper at the Panchavati Hotel, a sister establishment to the Oberoi. A big screen TV is screening a ludicrous shoot 'em up movie where the villains wear black and the hero a white jump suit a la Elvis in Vegas. It is all in Hindi until it finishes when "The End" appears in English. The portions are huge and we finish up leaving some food.

Monday 16th - Ellora

The Oberoi has no restaurant,  food is served in your room. This is not uncommon in India and does provide an incentive to tidy the room from time to time. We phone to place our order. There is a bit of difficulty with R's boiled eggs ( the menu spelling is Boyal Egg) but after the phone is passed around the kitchen a bit the message gets through.

The car arrives a few minutes early and we sort ourselves out. Two minutes down the road R realises that she has left the binoculars behind. This is always a reliable indicator that there will be interesting birds to see. Our driver seems to be the calm, unruffled type and he negotiates the morning traffic with minimal horn use. Most of the roads are in decent shape apart from a few vicious speed bumps and we are soon out of the city and heading roughly northwest. We go through a couple of small towns, over some hills and we are at the car park for the Ellora caves.

As usual there is a throng of touts selling guidebook s and junk such as soapstone elephants. They are ignored as we head straight to the ticket office where we also buy a copy of the official guide book. This is pretty good but lacks a site plan so we initially get lost and go to the end point of this section rather than the beginning. On the way to where we should be we hear, then see, numerous grey hornbills in the trees. R curses her forgetfulness.  

Ellora is a complex of over 30 temples dug into a 2km long rocky escarpment face. All are at least 1000 years old and the oldest ones were made in the 600s AD. There are Buddhist, Hindu and Jain temple remains, each gathered together in their oen group. We start with the Buddhist temples, which are quite austere but with some beautiful statues. The Hindu temples are much livelier in style and one of them, the Kailasa temple, involved cutting out by hand and removing 200,000 tons of rock.

Words don't do much justice to the place so there are extra photos today.

To start with it is fairly quiet but soon the school parties begin to arrive. In a couple of the bigger caves there are caretakers who are happy to point out some of the secret features. One hall has quite amazing acoustics and R cannot resist practising her Om chant. The caves are all at a very comfortable temperature but leaving the shade to progress between them is hot work.








We are by no means the only Westerners about but we get a good few requests to pose for photos. One such request is from a teacher who wants the photo for a class project. 

By the time that we get to the Kailasa the place is jumping. After experiencing a pretty hairy crush on one of the dark staircases leading to the upper levels we decide to stay in the better lit areas.

This place is quite something and would merit quiet contemplation.  By now the sun is really fierce so we opt out of walking up the hillside to a vantage point overlooking the Kailasa and go in search of a cold Limca. We have finished the first section and it is now 1 p.m.

We find the car and move on to the next parking spot. Our driver suggests that only a couple of the caves at this point are worth visiting. After what we have just seen they are a bit of an anticlimax.











We move on to the group of Jain Temples. Here a caretaker is keen to show us some paintings that have survived fairly intact and with good colour preservation. He is fishing for a tip but it is worth it.

From Ellora we move on to a nearby village which contains the site of the tomb of the last great Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb. He specified a wish to be buried simply in the open air a wish that held good for 200 years until Lord Curzon decreed that a marble surround be erected. There wasn't a lot to look at really. The things that will stick in the memory are the scorchingly hot paving slabs in the de-shoeing area and the numerous donation boxes that were pointed out, leaving us rather short of small notes.

By now R was starting to display all of the more spectacular symptoms of a cold so we decided to pass on Daulatabad with its one hour climb up a hill and pitch black, bat infested tunnels. We opted for home via the Bibi-qa-Maqbara, more usually known as the Baby Taj. This is very similar to the real thing in many ways with the triple advantages of having much cheaper ticket prices, being much less crowded and of not being in Agra. 

We get back to the hotel at around 4.30 and order in black tea, forgetting to say hold the sugar. It goes down anyway. R opts for a doze and D wrestles with the technical problem that has been preventing us making blog posts. More by luck than good judgement he manages this and fires in a post for Saturday. 

When R wakes we decide to try the place next door, which describes itself as a Restaurant and Bar. It is an out and out den of iniquity,  full of men ordering bottles of Sprite and quarter bottles of whisky. By the time we realise this we have ordered a beer which is consumed rapidly and we move on to the Swad restaurant,  much more respectable and unlicensed. We have been recommended to try the Gujrati Thali here which we do. The food just keeps coming and we have to tell them to stop. On the way home we stop off to get some cold cure tablets.