Saturday/Sunday 15/16: we went on a Tiger safari this weekend down in Ranthambore NP. Unfortunately we didn't see any tigers, although they were in the park as the other trucks did see them. We saw a lot of other wildlife though - monkeys (running along the wall of the hotel, twirly tails held high in the air), chipmunks, pretty birds, peacocks, deer, bambis, scops owl. We were in open-air vehicles and the dust was so bad, I could literally scrape it off my face and I swear we were walking dust poles! The hotel was not that good, and by the end of the evening we were all wanting to be back in our little mud huts! Sunday: we were taken to Sawmodpur market. It was hot, dusty, exhausting, and I didn't buy anything. However I took lots of pics of the spice, and fruit stalls, the food vendors, the materials/saris/bags stalls, the hogs roaming in the streets, the kids begging, the camels being driven along. I felt more and more sick by the end of the day and indeed was when we got back to the camp. Felt drained and off colour. Yeuk!
Monday: Michael cycled to work today and he became known as "Michael on the Cycle" to all of the camp! He really was the Indian Professor! When we walked into the class, they all stood up and chorused "Good Mooorrrrning" and all their faces lit up into smiles. That really lifts my mood, whatever mood I am in.
This week our workshops are cookery classes (last week it was the Hindi lessons). Today we learnt how to cook Mixed Pulses in a lovely spicy sauce, and then had it for dinner.
In the evening today we heard drumming from the nomads camp just outside the camp gates. Manoj went over to them and invited them into the camp, and we were treated to a free dancing show, with drums and pipes, and the women and kids sitting in the shadows of the fire's twilight. Very evocative. They are here for the feast of Holi which comes up over the Easter weekend.
Tuesday: had to knock down the birds' nest which they have been busily building right above my bed. I know it is cruel, but I don't want birds s**t all over me and the mosquito net when the eggs hatch. I voiced to Sarhu today (the project helper/translator) that I was missing "green", and he agreed - he comes from Himachal Pradesh, up in the mountains and was just posted down here in rural Rajasthan, so he does understand where I am coming from.
Wednesday: I was dropped off last and late at school today and when I got there, Michael had already started Old Macdonald - they had learnt the words and sounds so quickly I was really proud of them. Michael had a bad session today, as he tried to teach times-tables, but they just copied the tables and had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and the lack of English understanding really does not help.
Thursday: a huge wind blew up from the west overnight and I had to shut the shutters to keep all the dust out. It went on for a long time and the door rattled - all the gaps in the straw thatch and under the door didn't keep the dust out very well, so I had to shut my bag completely, and wrap up clothes and journals etc. I had to shake out my bedding as it felt all gritty when I got up. Today had a mega pain flare up and overall inordinate weakness. I slept most of the day under the mosquito net and missed meals - not a good day at all.
Friday: felt a little better today and not so weak. At least I had power in my muscles and didn't ache so much. This was a good thing as we had to be driven 6 hours west of the camp to Pushkar to go on our camel safari. It was the start of the Holi holiday (festival of colours) and the colours (red, blue, green, yellow, purple) were being thrown everywhere, including at vehicles. Whenever we stopped we had to shut the windows against being splatted! It was odd going back to Jaipur as we have been there on so many occasions, that I could actually recognise the streets and routes we were taking. The road west to Pushkar was amazingly good - all tarmacked, traffic lights, overpasses - quite the westernised style of road-building.
In Pushkar our hotel was the Ram Guti Guesthouse and it was the best hotel we have stayed in so far. The porch and round front tower were painted in white, with pale blue and yellow edgings, with a brown tiled reception area, with a Ganesh shrine on one side and heavy wooden furniture. Graziella and I had the largest bedroom and it was like a suite with 2 single beds, a settee stretched round the corner walls, a huge bathroom and a fan that was like a helicopter's propeller, it was so large and efficient!
We decided to go out into the market area as it was cooler by now. We walked along a tarmac road but it was all covered with the dust and muck we are now immune to. We passed bag shops, sari materials, jewellery outlets, fast food/fried food stalls, fried sweetmeats, a juice bar very colorful fruit stalls, open smelly fires burning in the gutters. We went down through a gap in the buildings to the edge of the lake and the view across the ghats was stunning with the setting sun illuminating the lake and the white buildings. We ate at the Moon Garden restaurant and we all chose Italian dishes. I had penne puttanesca and after so long on a plain diet I enjoyed the taste, but ate too much rich sauce! The others had pizza and felt similarly rather full-up afterwards, although there was always room for vodka and brandy, in our large room so that everyone could sit down and rest after the long day.
Saturday: Holi day. We watched the festivities from the roof terrace. The adolescents go round the streets with drums and water, and then either mix the powdered colours with the water, or throw it dry! Either way it makes an awful mess, of clothes, specs, skin, and I was glad to be above it and just enjoy the colours an fun from far away! I got a lot of good pics of the fun.
In the afternoon we walked to meet our camels. Mine was led by 2 boys and they did a wonderful job of leading it, making it run/jog, and encouraging it on. Getting on was a challenge - you have to lean right back and then lollop forwards as the camel gets to its feet. I found myself gritting my teeth and straining to not fall off - Michael got a very funny pic of me, which he has just sent through email - thanks Michael!!!
Once we got out of Pushkar, the scenery was so different to around Sunderpur. It was in a hilly area, crops like maize, mango trees, marigolds and farmed roses in the small protected fields. The farm holdings were very simple structures, often just 4 sticks stuck into the ground and the "walls" made of grass woven together and slotted in between the sticks. We got off the camels for them to have a rest and a drink and we were all walking like John Wayne! My coccyx and upper legs felt numbed, but it was all good fun and an adventure. The sun was going down by the time we got to the camp (5 hours of riding), and we were surprised to see proper pitched tents, with camp beds, mattresses, pure white sheets with blankets, and the best thing of all (which you will never believe) we had a flushing toilet in its own little patterned canvas tent, right in the middle of the rocky desert. Unbelievable, but great :). We had dinner around the open fire, and our group of 8 were the last to go to bed (after midnight) as we were talking so much about all our adventures.
A gale force wind and sandstorm blew up overnight and the beds were covered with dust and sand. Thankfully I had tied in the the apron to our tent tightly, but Viv and Jenny had dust even in their sealed bags. However I used the time during breakfast to walk up to the top of the dunes and got pics of the blue-tinged sunrise, with the sun's rays shooting through the clouds. I also saw geomorphology in action - the sand was being turned into stone as its colour and texture changed from a light cream to a honey color. I also got some pics of desert plants, footprints and sand patterns
Most people opted to walk 1km back to the road but I rode in the cart and getting down from the wooden flat-bed to take a pic of the camel's feet, I ripped my right hand on a metal nail. Thank goodness I had had an update of my tetanus vaccination! Once we were back in Pushkar we went out to the markets again and I bought pretty soft cotton bags, and a Rajastahni wall hanging (blue silky materials, different stitching and textures) which I had been looking for for ages. We reached the Brahman temple but my feet were too sore to go any further and so I sat with Chris in a roadside cafe and had pure freshly squeezed OJ. Not done through a machine though - this was literally pushed through a hole in a wood nozzle with a pointed piece of wood, and the juice and bits all served up in a long glass. It was the first street food I had had and it was SO delicious and refreshing. For lunch we stopped at the Sun and Moon restaurant and the tortoises mooched around our feet and nipped Jane's toes!!
The road trip back to the camp, via Jaipur was 6-7 hours long and very tiring indeed. Everyone was pooped out at the end of the trip but we had a quiet night round the campfire and I went to sleep to the sound of the mouse nibbling at the straw above my head!
Monday, 21 April 2008
Monday 10th to Sunday 16th March
After finding out yesterday that we don't have hot water piped to the huts, I found the standpipe this morning. OMG that water was hot (it wasn't always during the month though)! However I will never complain about cold or badly working showers at home again - at least we can just turn the tap on, in tiled bathrooms, and the water comes out. In the village and our camp, all water comes from the well, which has to be pumped up by (usually) the women or the children. We are very spolit in the west as to what they have here.
As part of the morning chorus this morning I heard peacocks crowing from the open fields along with sparrows, pigeons and birds that look like the noisy mynahs in Australia. We all went native and dressed in our new Indian clothes, even the boys, and we quite felt part of the landscape. These dresses were to become part of us by the end of the month and it really made a difference in the schools to be dressed appropriately.
This morning we had a tour around the work areas - schools, day care centre, and a home-based school for adolescent girls who work on creating saris. I think the tiredness of yesterday and the travelling caught up with me as I felt very tearful that I couldn't do this teaching, that I wouldn't be able to get on with the kids. However all of the group was feeling the same and we all commiserated with each other and cheered each other up over lunch.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with the camp manager who allocated us to schools and work areas - I was paired with Michael from Germany to teach in Bagadi Primary School, and with Graziella to teach the adolescent girls. Being paired with Michael was great - he is a maths teacher in Germany and so I can watch his style of teaching and learn a lot from him. Before dinner we had Hindi lessons, using transliterated words, and not the Hindi script, but the words were very useful in the classes later on.
Tuesday: had a tiny splatter of rain this morning and heard thunder in the distance, but the day ended up overcast and warm. Every day now, we have to plan lessons between 9.30-10.15 and Michael and I worked together to plan them to be complimentary - i.e. I could help with maths and he with English.
We were dropped off at Bagadi school first and here are some observations of the village as we were driven there: dusty, brown, rural huts, bricks sometimes, porches made of straw and branches, goats, dogs and cows roaming the streets, and in people's yards, water pumps at which children were jumping up and down on the pump handle to get enough pressure to get the water out, round flat pats of cow dung shaped and mixed with straw, laid on roofs to dry out and then are used for fuel and manure. A woman carrying a huge load of straw on her head walking down the middle of the road; men usually sitting on slatted beds, knees hunched up to their chests, white circular head-dresses; women working a huge circular open wheel to do the laundry in the field; laneways were bashed-down dust lanes, deep ruts and potholes; crops in the fields standing up in stooks or lined up at the edges of the roads for drying and then storage.
Class: Michael and I were led into a class of 7-12 year olds, approximately 12-15 each day. We had been told that today we would just be observing the teachers to see what we would be doing, but it immediately became apparent we would be doing the teaching TODAY and that literally were no teachers for these classes. Michael therefore started with number games, lining them all up against the walls and checking their counting and understanding of maths. I did a Look and Say on letters and images and I was really surprised by how much they did know and remember. I also asked them to spell parts of the body and although there was a lot of collusion on the part of all the kids, they clearly understood and remembered their spellings. It is just such a shame that their talents and aptitudes are hidden in rural schools, just because their parents can't afford (paying) schools in town or city for the talented kids.
Michael and I were pretty happy with what we achieved this morning, but the others felt really down-hearted and not happy with their placements. Again everyone gave moral and emotional support, which was valuable on all sides. We had chai tea at 4.00 and I had to have a nap before dinner as I was exhausted with today! Overnight I heard a lot of rustling and chewing in the straw - I think I have a mouse in the thatch!!
Wednesday: when the kids were naughty or non-attentive today I put on a "stern" face! but really they didn't need a lot of telling off. At break time, I taught the girls hop-scotch and as I said to C at home, it is a shame that adults have to grow up. When one has the opportunity to play with kids and play their games, and see things from their perspective, it reminds us adults what we have lost and what an opportunity to regain the fun and joy of life - which had been lacking in my life for so long.
As we left the school today the girls insisted on holding my hands - I had about 5 of them hanging off me as I walked down the rutted, muddy and wet-cow-patted lane; and the boys fought over the privilege of taking our equipment box back to the minibus. I promised them a rota of doing this through the weeks and they were happy with that. A lovely memory of leaving the school each day is the kids running alongside the minibus, waving at us with both hands high in the air and say Bye, ma'am, bye ma'am, bye gerugi (which is the Hindi word for (male) Teacher). Lovely!
Thursday: had to do the washing today. None of this shoving it into a washing machine. I had to lug the hot water from the standpipe, mix it with cold from the tap into the bathroom, and swirl around the Travel Wash gunge. I disappeared in a cloud of bubbles as I misjudged the amount of gunge I needed!! However the clothes were clean :). All had to be handwashed and then hung on the line strung between the huts - it looked like a chinese laundry when all 3 of us around our little quad had done all our washing! However with the sun being so hot, and getting hotter, I could do a wash after breakfast and it was all totally dry and stiff in the sun and wind by lunchtime.
I began the teaching day in a bad mood - something one of the staff had said had really wound me up, but do you know by the time I worked with the kids at school today my mood had lifted the clouds. Michael praised me for being innovative in teaching and we worked together on his maths problems, me illustrating what he was teaching by writing words and images on the board. Oh yes, we worked with dusty white and coloured chalks - non of this white board stuff. No computers either!
Afternoon I called home using the extremely cheap phone line. C answered and it was lovely to hear a familiar voice from home and to hear what was going on. I am so looking forward to seeing C again - even when one is travelling with people and working in a team, one can be lonely and miss the little things from home.
Friday: it was really cold overnight, would you believe, and I had to wrap my costume scarf around me and get into my sleeping bag. However the sun poured through the window - which is really a hole in the mud hut wall, supported with a wire cross and covered with mosquito netting. It warmed up fast today and in the afternoon I had to sit in the shade. Class was a disaster - my own fault as I didn't prepare well enough, but this was enough to make me feel very downhearted and again doubt my own abilities to see this volunteer project through, especially as everyone else had had good days and were crowing over their achievements. I took my MP3 out into the dust fields behind the camp and listened to music to myself. I had to get out of the camp just for a while, but people noticed and were very supportive later.
As part of the morning chorus this morning I heard peacocks crowing from the open fields along with sparrows, pigeons and birds that look like the noisy mynahs in Australia. We all went native and dressed in our new Indian clothes, even the boys, and we quite felt part of the landscape. These dresses were to become part of us by the end of the month and it really made a difference in the schools to be dressed appropriately.
This morning we had a tour around the work areas - schools, day care centre, and a home-based school for adolescent girls who work on creating saris. I think the tiredness of yesterday and the travelling caught up with me as I felt very tearful that I couldn't do this teaching, that I wouldn't be able to get on with the kids. However all of the group was feeling the same and we all commiserated with each other and cheered each other up over lunch.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with the camp manager who allocated us to schools and work areas - I was paired with Michael from Germany to teach in Bagadi Primary School, and with Graziella to teach the adolescent girls. Being paired with Michael was great - he is a maths teacher in Germany and so I can watch his style of teaching and learn a lot from him. Before dinner we had Hindi lessons, using transliterated words, and not the Hindi script, but the words were very useful in the classes later on.
Tuesday: had a tiny splatter of rain this morning and heard thunder in the distance, but the day ended up overcast and warm. Every day now, we have to plan lessons between 9.30-10.15 and Michael and I worked together to plan them to be complimentary - i.e. I could help with maths and he with English.
We were dropped off at Bagadi school first and here are some observations of the village as we were driven there: dusty, brown, rural huts, bricks sometimes, porches made of straw and branches, goats, dogs and cows roaming the streets, and in people's yards, water pumps at which children were jumping up and down on the pump handle to get enough pressure to get the water out, round flat pats of cow dung shaped and mixed with straw, laid on roofs to dry out and then are used for fuel and manure. A woman carrying a huge load of straw on her head walking down the middle of the road; men usually sitting on slatted beds, knees hunched up to their chests, white circular head-dresses; women working a huge circular open wheel to do the laundry in the field; laneways were bashed-down dust lanes, deep ruts and potholes; crops in the fields standing up in stooks or lined up at the edges of the roads for drying and then storage.
Class: Michael and I were led into a class of 7-12 year olds, approximately 12-15 each day. We had been told that today we would just be observing the teachers to see what we would be doing, but it immediately became apparent we would be doing the teaching TODAY and that literally were no teachers for these classes. Michael therefore started with number games, lining them all up against the walls and checking their counting and understanding of maths. I did a Look and Say on letters and images and I was really surprised by how much they did know and remember. I also asked them to spell parts of the body and although there was a lot of collusion on the part of all the kids, they clearly understood and remembered their spellings. It is just such a shame that their talents and aptitudes are hidden in rural schools, just because their parents can't afford (paying) schools in town or city for the talented kids.
Michael and I were pretty happy with what we achieved this morning, but the others felt really down-hearted and not happy with their placements. Again everyone gave moral and emotional support, which was valuable on all sides. We had chai tea at 4.00 and I had to have a nap before dinner as I was exhausted with today! Overnight I heard a lot of rustling and chewing in the straw - I think I have a mouse in the thatch!!
Wednesday: when the kids were naughty or non-attentive today I put on a "stern" face! but really they didn't need a lot of telling off. At break time, I taught the girls hop-scotch and as I said to C at home, it is a shame that adults have to grow up. When one has the opportunity to play with kids and play their games, and see things from their perspective, it reminds us adults what we have lost and what an opportunity to regain the fun and joy of life - which had been lacking in my life for so long.
As we left the school today the girls insisted on holding my hands - I had about 5 of them hanging off me as I walked down the rutted, muddy and wet-cow-patted lane; and the boys fought over the privilege of taking our equipment box back to the minibus. I promised them a rota of doing this through the weeks and they were happy with that. A lovely memory of leaving the school each day is the kids running alongside the minibus, waving at us with both hands high in the air and say Bye, ma'am, bye ma'am, bye gerugi (which is the Hindi word for (male) Teacher). Lovely!
Thursday: had to do the washing today. None of this shoving it into a washing machine. I had to lug the hot water from the standpipe, mix it with cold from the tap into the bathroom, and swirl around the Travel Wash gunge. I disappeared in a cloud of bubbles as I misjudged the amount of gunge I needed!! However the clothes were clean :). All had to be handwashed and then hung on the line strung between the huts - it looked like a chinese laundry when all 3 of us around our little quad had done all our washing! However with the sun being so hot, and getting hotter, I could do a wash after breakfast and it was all totally dry and stiff in the sun and wind by lunchtime.
I began the teaching day in a bad mood - something one of the staff had said had really wound me up, but do you know by the time I worked with the kids at school today my mood had lifted the clouds. Michael praised me for being innovative in teaching and we worked together on his maths problems, me illustrating what he was teaching by writing words and images on the board. Oh yes, we worked with dusty white and coloured chalks - non of this white board stuff. No computers either!
Afternoon I called home using the extremely cheap phone line. C answered and it was lovely to hear a familiar voice from home and to hear what was going on. I am so looking forward to seeing C again - even when one is travelling with people and working in a team, one can be lonely and miss the little things from home.
Friday: it was really cold overnight, would you believe, and I had to wrap my costume scarf around me and get into my sleeping bag. However the sun poured through the window - which is really a hole in the mud hut wall, supported with a wire cross and covered with mosquito netting. It warmed up fast today and in the afternoon I had to sit in the shade. Class was a disaster - my own fault as I didn't prepare well enough, but this was enough to make me feel very downhearted and again doubt my own abilities to see this volunteer project through, especially as everyone else had had good days and were crowing over their achievements. I took my MP3 out into the dust fields behind the camp and listened to music to myself. I had to get out of the camp just for a while, but people noticed and were very supportive later.
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Thursday 6th - Saturday 8th March
Orientation days with Idex. We had Hindi lessons at the office which came in very useful at the schools later in the month. We had Indian food at lunchtimes (rice with seeds in, tomato, cucumber and beetroot salads, beans and vegetables in spicy sauces, chappatis or other breads (can't remember the name just now).
On Thursday we were taken to see a Hindi Bollywood movie. Now this was quite interesting as it was all in Hindi, and obviously it was a humourous film as the crowd broke into laughter at regular intervals - but we couldn't understand any of it!! The movie theatre was straight out of the 1970s - swirly carpets, pink shell-shaped decor, plastic flowers, a balcony for men to view/ogle what was going on below, the smell of stale popcorn, and over all the "smell" of India - mustiness, pollution, people, dust, dirt. We all decided to leave at half-time - indeed there was an interval in the film! We headed toward the old city and Jane and I hit the markets - she made good bargaining deals on jewellery and I bought a very nice blue top from the government shop in which I paid a fixed price - I was not in the mood for bargaining!
Friday - an exhilarating but exhausting day. We were picked up early and taken to the Amber Fort, just outside town. On the way there we saw a lot more of the old city - majestic red/pink buildings, shuttered up with red and green-painted shutters, an elephant being driven down the extremely narrow street so that it filled the street. The Fort was majestic on the hills - white/pale stone, gardens below, older red sandstone forts and walls above it climbing up the hills. We walked through the elephant stable yard and I got lovely close-ups pics of their feet, their painted faces, their gentle eyes and flapping ears. We had an elephant ride up to the Fort and it turned into an elephant traffic jam as some were going up and some coming down. We were also sprayed regularly by the ellies as they exhaled!! The sun was very hot and we felt quite regal climbing up to the Fort entrance.
The Fort itself was mind-blowingly beautiful - arched doorways, intricately carved in marble and stone, with inset semi-precious stones. The main gate fascia hasn't been changed in 400 years due to the quality of the original building. Elephant images were everywhere, especially holding up arches and doorways, a glass palace full of mirrors and glass, an inner sanctum for the maharajah and his wives only, secretive passageways which were illuminated only by the flash on my camera. As we walked out of the back gateway a monkey sat on the battlements and flicked water (or something else?!?) down at us.
By the time we finished there the heat was very high and my feet were complaining hugely of too much walking and stress on them. We walked in a group back down to the minibus and had a very welcome lunch and rest back at Idex office.
In the afternoon we went shopping!! Graziella and I shopped together as we were looking for the same kind of things - dresses and silks. We had great fun in one shop as the vendors kept pulling costumes, dresses and shalwars out of plastic bags, and we tried on many of them in a room the size of a kitchen long cupboard!! I bought a pure cotton outfit in bright blue with intricate stitching on it which I wore every day when teaching, and another one which was a heavier material which I didn't wear as it was too hot for me. Graziella's, in the same material, shrank in the wash! I found blue patterned bed covers, and she bought pure silks for her sisters, and I found some blue decorated bangles to match my clothes.
We were wandering along the covered walkway outside a material shop and suddenly a big brown cow just meandered across in front of us!!! with the beautiful sari material one side and the gutter and street on the other! Only in India!
We all convened at 6.30, having been walking round the market for 4.5 hours and we were all happy with our purchases. Chris and Michael had bought real "Indian teacher clothes" - white cotton shirts and trousers, and Chris had had shirts made, which would be delivered this evening. Only in India would you get such good tailoring and customer-oriented service.
Back to the host family and Anju surprised us by bringing out saris and Graziella and I played at dressing up - I bought mine as it is a bridal sari in a deep red, with blue silk fibres and gold edgings, and very beautiful indeed. Bed very late on our very hard bed - it was literally just the metal part of a bed, no mattress, which meant that we were both very stiff and tight in the mornings. The bathroom was small and serviceable but with no hot water, so we had to get used to cold bucket showers - such is life in urban India.
Saturday: up later today, with a tepid bucket shower, and after taking our farewells of Anju and Ritesh with lots of photos, we were taken to the Idex office and then got on the minibus which would take us down to the project camp. The group of 8 of us felt as though we had known each other for years now, and we all agreed that moral and emotional support would be very important to all of us in the following 3 weeks.
Out of Jaipur and back along the tarmac road. However we turned off at Dausa and got our first taste of rural Rajasthan - the conditions in the village were dire - poverty, child destitution, women in terrible manual jobs, dirt and rubbish piled all over , streets not tarmacked, animals roaming everywhere. Lalsot was worse, but our camp was about 10km further on and we were in deepest rural India villages called Sunderpur and Bagadi.
We got to the camp after dark. It was purpose-built to house the volunteers in this area. We were welcomed with a bindi on our foreheads and very sweet chai tea in the recreation room. The buildings were long low mud huts, with straw roofs, a long thin "bathroom" area with a concrete floor, only cold piped water, no hot water unless it is heated when the power came on and it came out of a standpipe. The bed was hardboard tacked onto a metal frame, and I had a full mosquito net over mine. The mattresses were thin palliases, and I pulled two from the spare bed (as I had paid for a single room for this month) onto mine to make a really comfortable bed for the 3 weeks. The walls of my hut were nicely decorated with patterns and images but others had plain walls. The electric power was always intermittent, and we relied on the generator when the government-controlled power went off. Viv and I turned our beds over and over to check for er, bugs, and I saw evidence of mice being in the hut. We both feared that we had done the wrong thing coming here, but this was first night nerves.
After dinner, the brandy and vodka came out and a good time was had by all, and I mean all.
On Sunday we went to Lalsot for the market, but it was such a horrid experience for us all (being tagged by kids, cameras being pulled off shoulders, being pushed and shoved by the kids, digging into my back) that we went back to the camp within an hour. I was also very ill (er, bowel-wise) in the afternoon so felt under the weather, which was very hot and sultry this afternoon. Viv woke me up for dinner and I felt better later.
Monday 10th March: more updates to come. See you soon......
On Thursday we were taken to see a Hindi Bollywood movie. Now this was quite interesting as it was all in Hindi, and obviously it was a humourous film as the crowd broke into laughter at regular intervals - but we couldn't understand any of it!! The movie theatre was straight out of the 1970s - swirly carpets, pink shell-shaped decor, plastic flowers, a balcony for men to view/ogle what was going on below, the smell of stale popcorn, and over all the "smell" of India - mustiness, pollution, people, dust, dirt. We all decided to leave at half-time - indeed there was an interval in the film! We headed toward the old city and Jane and I hit the markets - she made good bargaining deals on jewellery and I bought a very nice blue top from the government shop in which I paid a fixed price - I was not in the mood for bargaining!
Friday - an exhilarating but exhausting day. We were picked up early and taken to the Amber Fort, just outside town. On the way there we saw a lot more of the old city - majestic red/pink buildings, shuttered up with red and green-painted shutters, an elephant being driven down the extremely narrow street so that it filled the street. The Fort was majestic on the hills - white/pale stone, gardens below, older red sandstone forts and walls above it climbing up the hills. We walked through the elephant stable yard and I got lovely close-ups pics of their feet, their painted faces, their gentle eyes and flapping ears. We had an elephant ride up to the Fort and it turned into an elephant traffic jam as some were going up and some coming down. We were also sprayed regularly by the ellies as they exhaled!! The sun was very hot and we felt quite regal climbing up to the Fort entrance.
The Fort itself was mind-blowingly beautiful - arched doorways, intricately carved in marble and stone, with inset semi-precious stones. The main gate fascia hasn't been changed in 400 years due to the quality of the original building. Elephant images were everywhere, especially holding up arches and doorways, a glass palace full of mirrors and glass, an inner sanctum for the maharajah and his wives only, secretive passageways which were illuminated only by the flash on my camera. As we walked out of the back gateway a monkey sat on the battlements and flicked water (or something else?!?) down at us.
By the time we finished there the heat was very high and my feet were complaining hugely of too much walking and stress on them. We walked in a group back down to the minibus and had a very welcome lunch and rest back at Idex office.
In the afternoon we went shopping!! Graziella and I shopped together as we were looking for the same kind of things - dresses and silks. We had great fun in one shop as the vendors kept pulling costumes, dresses and shalwars out of plastic bags, and we tried on many of them in a room the size of a kitchen long cupboard!! I bought a pure cotton outfit in bright blue with intricate stitching on it which I wore every day when teaching, and another one which was a heavier material which I didn't wear as it was too hot for me. Graziella's, in the same material, shrank in the wash! I found blue patterned bed covers, and she bought pure silks for her sisters, and I found some blue decorated bangles to match my clothes.
We were wandering along the covered walkway outside a material shop and suddenly a big brown cow just meandered across in front of us!!! with the beautiful sari material one side and the gutter and street on the other! Only in India!
We all convened at 6.30, having been walking round the market for 4.5 hours and we were all happy with our purchases. Chris and Michael had bought real "Indian teacher clothes" - white cotton shirts and trousers, and Chris had had shirts made, which would be delivered this evening. Only in India would you get such good tailoring and customer-oriented service.
Back to the host family and Anju surprised us by bringing out saris and Graziella and I played at dressing up - I bought mine as it is a bridal sari in a deep red, with blue silk fibres and gold edgings, and very beautiful indeed. Bed very late on our very hard bed - it was literally just the metal part of a bed, no mattress, which meant that we were both very stiff and tight in the mornings. The bathroom was small and serviceable but with no hot water, so we had to get used to cold bucket showers - such is life in urban India.
Saturday: up later today, with a tepid bucket shower, and after taking our farewells of Anju and Ritesh with lots of photos, we were taken to the Idex office and then got on the minibus which would take us down to the project camp. The group of 8 of us felt as though we had known each other for years now, and we all agreed that moral and emotional support would be very important to all of us in the following 3 weeks.
Out of Jaipur and back along the tarmac road. However we turned off at Dausa and got our first taste of rural Rajasthan - the conditions in the village were dire - poverty, child destitution, women in terrible manual jobs, dirt and rubbish piled all over , streets not tarmacked, animals roaming everywhere. Lalsot was worse, but our camp was about 10km further on and we were in deepest rural India villages called Sunderpur and Bagadi.
We got to the camp after dark. It was purpose-built to house the volunteers in this area. We were welcomed with a bindi on our foreheads and very sweet chai tea in the recreation room. The buildings were long low mud huts, with straw roofs, a long thin "bathroom" area with a concrete floor, only cold piped water, no hot water unless it is heated when the power came on and it came out of a standpipe. The bed was hardboard tacked onto a metal frame, and I had a full mosquito net over mine. The mattresses were thin palliases, and I pulled two from the spare bed (as I had paid for a single room for this month) onto mine to make a really comfortable bed for the 3 weeks. The walls of my hut were nicely decorated with patterns and images but others had plain walls. The electric power was always intermittent, and we relied on the generator when the government-controlled power went off. Viv and I turned our beds over and over to check for er, bugs, and I saw evidence of mice being in the hut. We both feared that we had done the wrong thing coming here, but this was first night nerves.
After dinner, the brandy and vodka came out and a good time was had by all, and I mean all.
On Sunday we went to Lalsot for the market, but it was such a horrid experience for us all (being tagged by kids, cameras being pulled off shoulders, being pushed and shoved by the kids, digging into my back) that we went back to the camp within an hour. I was also very ill (er, bowel-wise) in the afternoon so felt under the weather, which was very hot and sultry this afternoon. Viv woke me up for dinner and I felt better later.
Monday 10th March: more updates to come. See you soon......
5th March - Agra to Jaipur
We had to be up really early today as we were going to the Taj Mahal. We piled into tuk tuks, but they were the Rolls Royces of the fleet - gleaming green metal work on the front, cream colored plastic seats with bright red and orange flowers on them. We joined the main road traffic madness, but then turned off into a side street - just outside the main gate of the Taj there was the extreme poverty that we were rapidly getting used to, including animals roaming the streets (hogs, cows, goats, mangy dogs, chickens), open fires rubbish and trash everywhere, knee deep in most places, and over all the dusty brown choking air.
We had to walk the last 200 yards to the Taj and through the sandstone gatehouse it was suddenly calm and peaceful. The buildings outside the Taj main area are sandstone, carved intricately, colonnades, arched doorways, green green grass, monkeys climbing over the ramparts. We were open-mouthed with the beauty of this, but much better was to come. As we turned left towards the Taj, we could see it framed perfectly in the archway of the inner gatehouse. According to the guidebook the gatehouse symbolises the divide between the secular world and paradise, and indeed the Taj looked like it was in paradise, the sun just coming up in the east and tinging the marble a subtle pinkish/blueish colour. The Taj is revealed gradually as you walk through the gateway and the minarets then come into view, completing the picture. My camera went into overdrive - pictures of the perfect symmetry of the building and the gardens in which it is set, the beautiful flower beds, the cypress trees (symbolising death) and the fruit trees (symbolising life). As I walked up towards the Taj itself its true beauty was revealed - the marble glistening, the towers, the domes, and most stunning of all the huge numbers of semi-precious stones carved into exact shapes of flowers, leaves, swirls, etc and embedded into every surface and face of the Taj, symmetrical on every side. Graziella and I went into the tomb itself (shoes off or covered) and we were blown away with the intricacy of the marble carved screen, the Koran all over the walls, and the semi-precious stones covering everything. No pics were allowed in here, but it is just as amazing in the memory. I walked around the back of the Taj and the view across the river was like an oil-painting - completely still and subdued colours, hazy river, the air light-brownish with pollution, the river's tranquillity just broken by a boat being punted along. Stunning!
We got back to breakfast by 9.00 and by 9.45 we were speeding through Agra's streets to get a bus to go to Jaipur. The luggage hold was round the back of the bus - no vacuum was required to clean out the metal box as the dust just fell through the gaps in the floor. Our bags were all stuffed in here, and on the 5-6 hours down to Jaipur got totally covered in dust and Graziella found that dust had made its way into her rucksack and ruined some of her clothes - yeuk! The trip to Jaipur was actually not too bad - it was long, hot and tiring, but it was on a made, tarmac road, albeit being made as it was being driven on!! None of the western "waiting a couple of years for the road to be made", this was being constructed in real-time, the traffic using one side of the road to go both ways, but somehow there were no crashes or narrow-squeaks!
We entered Jaipur through the old city (the usual market stalls, dirt, dust, animals etc), but once up into the "new" Jaipur we found a lovely city - quite my favourite of all the cities I visited in India this trip. Wide open spaces, green parks, colonial buildings kept clean, not so polluted, but enlivened by the market stalls, fruit and veg being sold everywhere, tuk tuks and traffic etc. We were taken to the IDEX office for paperwork completion and our first taste of very sweet chai tea, and then after some time (we were very tired by now) we were dropped off at our host families. Ours were Anju (wife) and Ritesh (husband) with Aryan and Emon (sons). This was our true taste of Indian city life, and we had a delicious evening meal, and played with the kids. We were also joined by Michael from Germany, the 8th and final member of our team, and who was to become an important person in my life for the next 4 weeks.
We had to walk the last 200 yards to the Taj and through the sandstone gatehouse it was suddenly calm and peaceful. The buildings outside the Taj main area are sandstone, carved intricately, colonnades, arched doorways, green green grass, monkeys climbing over the ramparts. We were open-mouthed with the beauty of this, but much better was to come. As we turned left towards the Taj, we could see it framed perfectly in the archway of the inner gatehouse. According to the guidebook the gatehouse symbolises the divide between the secular world and paradise, and indeed the Taj looked like it was in paradise, the sun just coming up in the east and tinging the marble a subtle pinkish/blueish colour. The Taj is revealed gradually as you walk through the gateway and the minarets then come into view, completing the picture. My camera went into overdrive - pictures of the perfect symmetry of the building and the gardens in which it is set, the beautiful flower beds, the cypress trees (symbolising death) and the fruit trees (symbolising life). As I walked up towards the Taj itself its true beauty was revealed - the marble glistening, the towers, the domes, and most stunning of all the huge numbers of semi-precious stones carved into exact shapes of flowers, leaves, swirls, etc and embedded into every surface and face of the Taj, symmetrical on every side. Graziella and I went into the tomb itself (shoes off or covered) and we were blown away with the intricacy of the marble carved screen, the Koran all over the walls, and the semi-precious stones covering everything. No pics were allowed in here, but it is just as amazing in the memory. I walked around the back of the Taj and the view across the river was like an oil-painting - completely still and subdued colours, hazy river, the air light-brownish with pollution, the river's tranquillity just broken by a boat being punted along. Stunning!
We got back to breakfast by 9.00 and by 9.45 we were speeding through Agra's streets to get a bus to go to Jaipur. The luggage hold was round the back of the bus - no vacuum was required to clean out the metal box as the dust just fell through the gaps in the floor. Our bags were all stuffed in here, and on the 5-6 hours down to Jaipur got totally covered in dust and Graziella found that dust had made its way into her rucksack and ruined some of her clothes - yeuk! The trip to Jaipur was actually not too bad - it was long, hot and tiring, but it was on a made, tarmac road, albeit being made as it was being driven on!! None of the western "waiting a couple of years for the road to be made", this was being constructed in real-time, the traffic using one side of the road to go both ways, but somehow there were no crashes or narrow-squeaks!
We entered Jaipur through the old city (the usual market stalls, dirt, dust, animals etc), but once up into the "new" Jaipur we found a lovely city - quite my favourite of all the cities I visited in India this trip. Wide open spaces, green parks, colonial buildings kept clean, not so polluted, but enlivened by the market stalls, fruit and veg being sold everywhere, tuk tuks and traffic etc. We were taken to the IDEX office for paperwork completion and our first taste of very sweet chai tea, and then after some time (we were very tired by now) we were dropped off at our host families. Ours were Anju (wife) and Ritesh (husband) with Aryan and Emon (sons). This was our true taste of Indian city life, and we had a delicious evening meal, and played with the kids. We were also joined by Michael from Germany, the 8th and final member of our team, and who was to become an important person in my life for the next 4 weeks.
4th March - to Agra
At breakfast today I meet Jane and Yvonne who had flown in this morning from Scotland - 2 more members of our India team. Chris from Norway came up, bleary-eyed from his long flight too, and that made 7 - just one more to come later in Jaipur. The others went out to the markets again, but I was still too tired, so spent the morning in my room, away from most of the heat and pollution. When we left in early afternoon I couldn't breathe very well, and I felt like I was suffocating and as if a heavy weight was on my chest. I put that down to the pollution - yeuk!
We took a mad tuk tuk ride with Deepak to the train station, which was also a total melee of people and noise. While waiting for the train I people-watched: porters and traders trundling along with square topped wooden carts, men and women carrying huge loads on their heads, women and kids squatting on the station surrounded by their wordly goods. I got a really good pic of a kid dragging a wicker basket along, who then sat on the filthy stone step and looked into his hands for a long time. He was joined by another little boy and they put their heads together - fab picture, newspaper material!!
We went through some dreadful slums on the way out of Delhi - crumbling grey walls, dust dirt, corrugated tin roofs on shacks, poverty everywhere. The countryside was dusty and brown, but with occasional green areas and quite a few deciduous trees. On the train we heard the "tomato soouup" man, which became a running joke for Jenny and Viv on all train journeys we took subsequently. 4 hours later we got to Agra and the hotel was a traditional Indian one - ever so slightly decayed and "colonial", but clean and serviceable, and I shared with Graziella. Again I couldn't breath properly which was rather distressing.
We took a mad tuk tuk ride with Deepak to the train station, which was also a total melee of people and noise. While waiting for the train I people-watched: porters and traders trundling along with square topped wooden carts, men and women carrying huge loads on their heads, women and kids squatting on the station surrounded by their wordly goods. I got a really good pic of a kid dragging a wicker basket along, who then sat on the filthy stone step and looked into his hands for a long time. He was joined by another little boy and they put their heads together - fab picture, newspaper material!!
We went through some dreadful slums on the way out of Delhi - crumbling grey walls, dust dirt, corrugated tin roofs on shacks, poverty everywhere. The countryside was dusty and brown, but with occasional green areas and quite a few deciduous trees. On the train we heard the "tomato soouup" man, which became a running joke for Jenny and Viv on all train journeys we took subsequently. 4 hours later we got to Agra and the hotel was a traditional Indian one - ever so slightly decayed and "colonial", but clean and serviceable, and I shared with Graziella. Again I couldn't breath properly which was rather distressing.
India week one
Firstly, many apologies to everyone who has been awaiting the update to this blog. It is 3 weeks since I got home, and this is the first time I have been able to get online to TRY and update the blog for India. As it was a 4-week project, I will split these entries into the 4 week periods, so you don't have a lot to read in one go!! Remember, when the blog is published the final week will appear first, so scroll down to read it in order
2nd March:
The flight from Auckland-Sydney-Mumbai-Delhi was SO long. I had to leave the Auckland hotel at 0300 and had to pay NZ$25 departure tax at the airport, which was really annoying. Good thing I still had some currency on me, wasn't it. It was raining horizontal rain in Auckland, which kinda rounded off the NZ trip quite nicely as on the first day in AKL in January it was also raining!
I got to Sydney really tired and I was not impressed by having to walk through the transfer area rather than getting a full wheelchair transfer. My TCS today was really bad today - stiff and tight back, and painful feet, so that didn't put me in a good mood for the 12.5 hour flight to Mumbai. Luckily, for the time between flights (the outward one was delayed by 1 hour) I found a line of seats all together and slept quite a bit and felt a lot better afterwards. On that Sydney-Mumbai flight I got a bulkhead seat so could really stretch out my legs, but I still had terribly painful feet (pins and needles, cramp, numb feet - grrr).
As we flew over Mumbai the atmosphere was grey and polluted - a taste (literally) of things to come. In the airport I saw surly bureaucrats, and little tin-pot officials gesticulating and ordering people around for seemingly no reason. As my case was very delayed coming through, I feared that it had got lost somewhere between the cities and the spectre of having to deal with those officials hung over me. Thankfully it came through and I got transferred to the Jet Airways flight. The transfer "bus" was very dilapidated and it had to stop on the airport ring road as a cargo plane taxi-ed and stopped just feet from the edge of the road. Health and Safety there ain't!! The Jet Airways flight was a couple of hours up to Delhi and I slept all the way.
Delhi airport - NIGHTMARE!!!!!
I was shattered when we got to Delhi but I still had to wait a long time for my case to come through. I had to fend off the bumsters asking "taxi, ma'am, ma'am" and I walked out through the empty (by now) arrivals hall, expecting to see someone from IDEX to meet me. There was no-one there. I had had a dreadful sinking feeling since part-way through NZ that this would happen, due to many administrative failures by my sending company - and it happened. I was stranded at the AP, with a phone number for IDEX that didn't work and totally alone as I was the only person coming in on a domestic flight to Delhi.
The guard in uniform suggested that I take a pre-paid taxi into town, and after a lot of other things going on I eventually got to the Hotel Surya Shelter - and found they didn't have a booking for me. Apparently (as I found out a week later) my hotel booking had been changed by my sending company, and despite me telling them that I was out of email contact from the previous Friday onwards (and being +13 hours to GMT) they emailed me the new hotel name on the Saturday?!?!? when I was in transit from Auckland to the airport and then in the air for approximately 16 hours. How inefficient can you get?!? By this time I was in emotional collapse - I couldn't stop crying for tiredness and frustration, I couldn't understand all the Hindi being gabbled around me, and I didn't know where I was meant to be staying for the night, or indeed whether I would be able to join the project the next day.
Here I must commend the male night receptionist of the Surya Shelter hotel. He was very reassuring and seemed to know the contact for IDEX, and suddenly a guy from IDEX appeared and arranged for me to go to the Hotel Perfect, just round the corner. The receptionist at the Perfect, wasn't! He was a surly bas***ard and wouldn't help much with contacting the rep. I took the decision to sit in the reception area and wait for the girls from the BA257 flight to come in in the morning. I had snatched bits of sleep, but nothing helpful. By this time I had been up about 26 hours and my body was hurting more than it had done for the whole trip, I was physically and emotionally drained and feeling very lost and alone.
At last Deepak, the rep, came in with the 2 girls from the BA flight - Viv and Jenny from England. They were very pleasant and unfortunately listened to my woes, but were reassuring and helpful. We got showed to our rooms, but by this time it was time for breakfast. We went up onto the rooftop terrace and had, er, cornflakes with hot milk!! and toast! The atmosphere was brown with pollution and not nice to breathe but there was nowhere else to go to eat. Graziella from Sydney/Switzerland came over from the Surya Shelter and that was 4 members of our India team.
We decided to go out and explore Delhi. Although I was crying out for sleep I agreed, as it would be the only opportunity to do so before we got on the road to Agra and Jaipur. We were surrounded by hawkers and transport, tuk tuks, bicycles; we passed fruit stalls, and stalls holding all kinds of products. The overall memory I have of this walk is a dust-covered, hazy brownish urban landscape, full of a crush of people, choking haze, no peace to oneself, no personal space, kids tagging and begging. Graziella suggested we go up to Connaught Place by tuk tuk, and once we had found one which didn't rip us off and change his charges as soon as he turned the thing on (!) we joined the melee on the road. It was every man for himself, no lane control, no lights on any vehicle, no direction, tuk tuks shared the road with cars, vans, trucks, people, horse and cart, hand carts, cows, goats, horns blaring. The smaller vehicles banded together to get across roundabouts and intersections, and went hell for leather, not looking to left or right, but just going. In our tuk tuk we went ooh and aah but got to just outside the rotunda of Connaught place in one piece. By this time we were all feeling frayed round the edges and jet-lagged, and the western-style tea place appeared like a mirage!! We entered an air-conditioned place (like Starbucks) and I had Darjeeling Divine, which was like nectar. When we had finished this, I decided that 40 hours of being up was too much and so Viv and I got a tuk tuk back to the hotel. I did fear that we were being taken in the wrong direction but we got there eventually. I staggered up to my room, locked the door and slept for the next 16 hours non-stop. Even when the girls and Deepak knocked at my door I didn't hear them. Only a text from CJ at home woke me up at 8 pm and then I just went straight back to sleep.
Thus finished my first day in India.
2nd March:
The flight from Auckland-Sydney-Mumbai-Delhi was SO long. I had to leave the Auckland hotel at 0300 and had to pay NZ$25 departure tax at the airport, which was really annoying. Good thing I still had some currency on me, wasn't it. It was raining horizontal rain in Auckland, which kinda rounded off the NZ trip quite nicely as on the first day in AKL in January it was also raining!
I got to Sydney really tired and I was not impressed by having to walk through the transfer area rather than getting a full wheelchair transfer. My TCS today was really bad today - stiff and tight back, and painful feet, so that didn't put me in a good mood for the 12.5 hour flight to Mumbai. Luckily, for the time between flights (the outward one was delayed by 1 hour) I found a line of seats all together and slept quite a bit and felt a lot better afterwards. On that Sydney-Mumbai flight I got a bulkhead seat so could really stretch out my legs, but I still had terribly painful feet (pins and needles, cramp, numb feet - grrr).
As we flew over Mumbai the atmosphere was grey and polluted - a taste (literally) of things to come. In the airport I saw surly bureaucrats, and little tin-pot officials gesticulating and ordering people around for seemingly no reason. As my case was very delayed coming through, I feared that it had got lost somewhere between the cities and the spectre of having to deal with those officials hung over me. Thankfully it came through and I got transferred to the Jet Airways flight. The transfer "bus" was very dilapidated and it had to stop on the airport ring road as a cargo plane taxi-ed and stopped just feet from the edge of the road. Health and Safety there ain't!! The Jet Airways flight was a couple of hours up to Delhi and I slept all the way.
Delhi airport - NIGHTMARE!!!!!
I was shattered when we got to Delhi but I still had to wait a long time for my case to come through. I had to fend off the bumsters asking "taxi, ma'am, ma'am" and I walked out through the empty (by now) arrivals hall, expecting to see someone from IDEX to meet me. There was no-one there. I had had a dreadful sinking feeling since part-way through NZ that this would happen, due to many administrative failures by my sending company - and it happened. I was stranded at the AP, with a phone number for IDEX that didn't work and totally alone as I was the only person coming in on a domestic flight to Delhi.
The guard in uniform suggested that I take a pre-paid taxi into town, and after a lot of other things going on I eventually got to the Hotel Surya Shelter - and found they didn't have a booking for me. Apparently (as I found out a week later) my hotel booking had been changed by my sending company, and despite me telling them that I was out of email contact from the previous Friday onwards (and being +13 hours to GMT) they emailed me the new hotel name on the Saturday?!?!? when I was in transit from Auckland to the airport and then in the air for approximately 16 hours. How inefficient can you get?!? By this time I was in emotional collapse - I couldn't stop crying for tiredness and frustration, I couldn't understand all the Hindi being gabbled around me, and I didn't know where I was meant to be staying for the night, or indeed whether I would be able to join the project the next day.
Here I must commend the male night receptionist of the Surya Shelter hotel. He was very reassuring and seemed to know the contact for IDEX, and suddenly a guy from IDEX appeared and arranged for me to go to the Hotel Perfect, just round the corner. The receptionist at the Perfect, wasn't! He was a surly bas***ard and wouldn't help much with contacting the rep. I took the decision to sit in the reception area and wait for the girls from the BA257 flight to come in in the morning. I had snatched bits of sleep, but nothing helpful. By this time I had been up about 26 hours and my body was hurting more than it had done for the whole trip, I was physically and emotionally drained and feeling very lost and alone.
At last Deepak, the rep, came in with the 2 girls from the BA flight - Viv and Jenny from England. They were very pleasant and unfortunately listened to my woes, but were reassuring and helpful. We got showed to our rooms, but by this time it was time for breakfast. We went up onto the rooftop terrace and had, er, cornflakes with hot milk!! and toast! The atmosphere was brown with pollution and not nice to breathe but there was nowhere else to go to eat. Graziella from Sydney/Switzerland came over from the Surya Shelter and that was 4 members of our India team.
We decided to go out and explore Delhi. Although I was crying out for sleep I agreed, as it would be the only opportunity to do so before we got on the road to Agra and Jaipur. We were surrounded by hawkers and transport, tuk tuks, bicycles; we passed fruit stalls, and stalls holding all kinds of products. The overall memory I have of this walk is a dust-covered, hazy brownish urban landscape, full of a crush of people, choking haze, no peace to oneself, no personal space, kids tagging and begging. Graziella suggested we go up to Connaught Place by tuk tuk, and once we had found one which didn't rip us off and change his charges as soon as he turned the thing on (!) we joined the melee on the road. It was every man for himself, no lane control, no lights on any vehicle, no direction, tuk tuks shared the road with cars, vans, trucks, people, horse and cart, hand carts, cows, goats, horns blaring. The smaller vehicles banded together to get across roundabouts and intersections, and went hell for leather, not looking to left or right, but just going. In our tuk tuk we went ooh and aah but got to just outside the rotunda of Connaught place in one piece. By this time we were all feeling frayed round the edges and jet-lagged, and the western-style tea place appeared like a mirage!! We entered an air-conditioned place (like Starbucks) and I had Darjeeling Divine, which was like nectar. When we had finished this, I decided that 40 hours of being up was too much and so Viv and I got a tuk tuk back to the hotel. I did fear that we were being taken in the wrong direction but we got there eventually. I staggered up to my room, locked the door and slept for the next 16 hours non-stop. Even when the girls and Deepak knocked at my door I didn't hear them. Only a text from CJ at home woke me up at 8 pm and then I just went straight back to sleep.
Thus finished my first day in India.
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