Sunday, November 1, 2009

GOODBYE INDIA

Today is our last day in India. It has been more than three months since we landed in Delhi in the midnight rain on July 27.

Will I be sad to leave tomorrow?

NO!

I am ready to go. I am exhausted.

Things I am looking forward to:
Drinking water from a tap
Wearing pants that are made from less than 10 square metres of fabric
Less time spent on the loo
Full-sized towels
Breathing in through my nose more often
No thongs in the shower (depending of course on how clean Angus and Chris' shower is)
Soy milk!
Non-Indian food. Any kind.
Less ghee
Anonymity (i.e. being stared at by every man on the street)

We have had an amazing time here. We have met great, interesting people, we've made Indian and French and Norwegian friends, we've tasted more flavours than imaginable, and we've seen so many sights.

Things I will miss:
The friendliness of the people here
The head wiggle
Nice hotels
Shopping
The food. Maybe. In a while.
The colours - saris, dyes, flowers, paints, religious posters, in the food...
Heat
The rupee.

Over and out for now. See you in London!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Houseboat

We spent one lovely and very expensive night on a houseboat called Angel Queen in the backwaters of Kerala. It was a smallish boat (some can hold conferences, a jacuzzi, ten bedrooms...) but felt like a palace floating through the flotsam.

It was beautiful, even if I did regret swimming in the water when I saw people pooing in it the next day. Ah well what can you do, this is India.










Spice tour

We spent a few days in Thekkady - a beautiful Keralan hill town famous for its Tiger Sanctuary (where I saw no tigers but two ELEPHANTS!) and also for spices. We stayed at a guesthouse that backed onto the reserve so woke and fell asleep to the sounds of birds, monkeys and wild boars. It was so nice to be in the jungle, to see so much green and so much mist. To be so far from a desert!

The town was very quiet because earlier in the season there was a terrible boating accident on the lake in the sanctuary. Over 40 people were killed when many people apparently rushed onto the upper deck to get a better look at the view and the boat capsized.

Again I think how lucky we are to be Australian - this time because we are (almost all) taught to swim at a very young age.

Outside of the sanctuary, the town is surrounded by delicious plantations - forests of cardamom, cinnamon, coffee, tea.

We went on a short tour of an excellent spice garden with a very proud Abraham (you may have seen him on BBC's Around the World in 80 Gardens):

He showed us how cinnamon actually grows on a plant:

The tiniest chillies can be the deadliest:

My favourite (cocoa!):

and who knew 'Allspice' was a single plant? I always thought it was a mixture of all spices. I swear I could identify distinct spices in that mix!

I now want a spice garden.



Haircut

One day, a little boy called Stefan wanted to get his hair cut.

He found an Indian barber who didn't speak English.

The style was touch and go for a while there...
And at times it was pretty scary...

But he survived, and his haircut even looked good. And although it cost more than when his girlfriend cuts it for free, the grand total was less than $3, so he was pleased.

The End.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Kochin




We are in The South!

We got the overnight train from Bikaner back to Delhi and went straight to the airport at 6am - just in time for our midday flight which was delayed by another two hours. Two flights and a lightning quick stop in Hyderabad later we were in Cochi/Kochin on the west coast of Kerala, on the ocean, with greenness and lushness and coconuts and pineapples and mangoes and men wearing dotis.


Aside from the heat, I think the doti is perhaps most responsible for the laid back atmosphere of this area. The doti is basically a bed sheet worn by local men as a sarong, or at times tucked up into itself to resemble a nappy. Can't help but feel relaxed when all the men look like this. And I am happy to report near to ZERO hassle from these nappy clad men too. Ahhhhhhhh this is nice.

It's lovely here. We feel like we are in another country. After all the travel and the belly sickness we have just been chilling out, doing some yoga again, eating dosai (savoury pancake) and getting ready to board a houseboat to cruise the backwaters.

It's fascinating too - it's a very Christian area, with Christian iconography worshipped with the enthusiasim of the hindus and some Jewish history thrown in for good measure. It was colonised by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British and is now Communist. And it seems to work!

We did spend one day doing some proper sightseeing in Cochi. We got the ferry across to Fort Cochin (no sign of any fort-age but we believe them) and took the above pics.

Now we are in Allepey, and tomorrow we board our houseboat! More pics surely from that.

High Tea!

We've been on a quest to take High Tea ever since my cousin Sam infamously misheard me and thought I said Stef's work in Alice Springs involved 'providing HIGH TEA for an aboriginal health organisation", rather t6han the usual IT.

I still crack up at the image of Stef and Stew driving their troupie in tails to provide the remote nurses in Aboriginal communities across central Australia and WA with fresh scones and delightful cakes.

In steamy Fort Cochin we found it in a cute oasis of a cafe called 'teapot'. We had Assam tea with honey and banana and walnut cake. I wanted to stay there forever.

In Bikaner, we stayed here:It's called Lallgarh Palace and it is the most amazing hotel I have ever been in. Why did we take such a sudden turn away from the usual shabby but ok budget guesthouses that we deserve? How did we get let in? Family connections don't you know. Stef's great-grandfather lived in India, he was an architect who was partly responsible for some pretty impressive landmarks (such as the Victoria Railway Station in Mumbai, for example). He was also good mates with the Maharaja of Bikaner at the time, whose granddaughter, pictured below, now runs the palace as a hotel.

Stef's dad Simon has a copy of a beautiful, signed book the Maharaja gifted his grandfather way back when. Simon very generously wrote to the Princess and offered to donate the book to her museum, if she was interested.

So we brought the beautiful book - which is even bigger than Shantaram - all the way to India. We were invited to the Princess' Delhi home, which is a lovely apartment in the diplomatic area, where we were fed tea and biscuits and tried very very hard to behave in an appropriate manner. We were really nervous, but the Princess, who has lived for many years in London as well as in the Palace in Bikaner, was an expert in small talk. It turns out she already has a copy of the book, so she told us we should hold onto it and that we should visit the palace.

So we did. We got an amazing discount so we spent two nights in one of the best 'historical' rooms, with a bathroom bigger than any I've had in a house, a couch set, a writing desk and a beautiful bed. We slept well.
The Princess with her pugs.
A less adored pet.
The pool.
One of many, many corridors in the epic palace.

My only disappointment was that I was a little ill in the belly department and couldn't take full advantage of the massive buffet breakfast.

We left for the overnight train back to Delhi wondering what had just happened, where we'd just spent three days, which of us had dreamed it?

Back in the desert

It seems we can't stay away from desert country. And so we found ourselves swaying to sleep on an overnight train from Delhi to Bikaner in Rajastan, the state of the desert kings.

It looks a lot like Alice Springs around here, with infinite stretches of yellow sand dotted with spinifex-like green shrubs and not a lot else.

There are some differences, of course. There are less road trains and more camels, there's more pollution, and happily there is more harmony between the two major groups in the area (muslims and hindus).

Also, rats are worshipped.
We took a local bus to Deshnok, a village close to Bikaner and famous for the Karni Mata
Temple...also known as the Rat Temple. There are rats EVERYWHERE, asleep, awake, eating, pooing, or just running around erratically. As with all Hindu temples you have to remove your shoes before entering. We spent about ten minutes walking around the small temple, stepping in rat poo and trying not to have them run over (or under!) our feet. In a word, it was FOUL. But kind of interesting.

Smelly Delhi



Snapshot of Dharamkot


Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A Month of Lotus (Lotii?)

So, one month of intense yoga practice and what do we have to show for it?

Yesterday Ida and I took some pics during our self-practice...here is a sneak peak.
This is me doing a version of 'Scorpion' pose. Note the feet are NOT touching the wall (in this split second).
Mid way between back arch and handstand or something.

Hari letting me know my left leg is not straight.Ida, the Girl with the Amazing Flexible Hips.

Ida and I in a relaxation pose - the amazing Halasana. You can all try this at home next time you are stressed out - simply pass out over a table and VOILA, perfect.