Christmas Day 2010

Christmas Day 2010

Twinkling lights from all the paper lanterns in the trees, some thumping bass from the rooftop next door, a slight breeze in the hot, humid night air and our dripping washing on the line. This has certainly been a different Christmas in Cochin.

The children’s anxiety that Father Christmas wouldn’t know where to find them was proved ill-founded, although WD & WM were concerned that the Norad/GoogleEarth Santa-tracking seemed to bypass southern India for Colombo, Karachi and Mazar al-Sharif.  The children were impressed that F.C. had brought selected items from home, but also procured so much of their stockings locally and not forgotten the tangerines.

On Christmas Eve we learnt that the English service at the Anglican St Francis’ Church was at 8am with the Malayalam service before at 6.30. Hearing music from inside, we rushed in at 5 minutes to 8 thinking we were late, only to discover that this was the tail-end of the Malayalam service. It’s a grand old airy church: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century grave stones, Portuguese and British; rope-pulled fans (pankahs) along the aisles; and lots of lights on the Christmas tree in the corner (not coniferous, naturally). The Lord’s Prayer and ‘Silent Night’ in Malayalam were entirely recognisable and we felt properly Christmassy, especially after all the friendly handshakes and good cheer afterwards.

Fort Cochin is well-developed for the many foreign tourists who come here, and ten years since the childless WPs came here there’s a lot more fine hotels and restaurants making it hard to find a cheap dosa or banana-leaf thali. The fishermen are still out on the huge hanging Chinese nets, selling a wonderful array of fish, prawns, lobsters, baby hammerheads and crabs from the quayside, while great tankers head out to sea. M was very concerned by the possibility of overfishing. We wonder how much the Chinese nets are for show, as they don’t seem to catch much – at least not when we were helping. Otherwise it’s a lot of the same tourist paraphernalia found across India - bright patterned cotton trousers, Rajasthani puppets, snake-charmers with cobras – and a few surprises, such as the vegetable peeler demonstrations.
L & M enjoyed their first green coconut, sucking the water happily and then scooping out the soft, white flesh from inside. L has been writing menus for her forthcoming coconut-themed beach café as a result. 

Everyone (except WD) is suffering a little from climate adjustment.  Wolfmum is not temperamentally or physically well suited to the tropics (excessive and futile sweating, brain addle and general malaise).  The children look flushed and W is complaining of groin rot already (he tried to show me whilst we were out having supper).  We’ve upped our fluid intake and shower, lie under fans and will no doubt adapt.  But it’s fun to look out and see coconuts, papayas and bananas growing over the balcony. 

I hope that the children did not feel short-changed by Christmas away – there were moments of regret (the crib service at Beckley carrying sheep, ‘proper’ Christmas trees and the full turkey work up…) but I hope they remember this special one away.  And the day has had its ups and downs (family Christmases!) – early starts, thrills (W’s battle hamster!) and disappointments (things broken…), overtired children at the end of the day – but with added disorientation and a small helping of home-sickness.  Thank you family for the Skype-ing (even if no visuals) and all the presents.

Sleigh bells?

In Flight, 24^th December 2010

Somewhere, 30,000 feet down there, are the dusty plains of Gujarat as we fly south, like swallows (or some other, better chosen, Asian migratory bird whose name escapes us right now) via a stop-over in Mumbai.  Hopefully we will be in Cochin tonight after the inevitable hanging around in Indira Gandhi airport this morning for fog-related delay. 

Kids are getting to be experienced travellers – unfazed by hopping on and off aeroplanes and generally enjoying the generic charms of modern international airports (security queues, clean toilets, KFC! Pizza Hut! skidding on the shiny marble floors, free internet access).  I’m missing the pre-globalised days of rancid terminals with nothing to do and nowhere to sit. L loves flying – “I love all the little things you get” - even in the pared-down world of budget domestic Indian airlines. Spice Jet, so far, beats Ryan Air.  W may sleep or may not, no sign of it yet – he’s singing his own version of Bowie’s ‘Starman’ to me as I type. Wolfdad is reading India Today, opting for a photo collage of the last 35 years of Indian history rather than the ins-and-outs of onion prices (food inflation is a big deal here), the WikiLeaks scandal and local crime stories which dominate the daily English Language press here.  I’m a nervous flier at the best of times never having been completely convinced by the science of flight or perhaps having inadequate faith in the safety culture of these capitalist boom businesses, and there is no complementary G&T or equivalent anti-anxiolytic to take me mind off the turbulence or bumpy descent. But even I’m prepared to opt for this (and survive the carbon footprint guilt) rather than a 3 day epic family rail adventure – overnighters yes, longer probably not…

Transit seems to be the theme of the last few days – overnight train ride back from Jodphur 2 nights ago, a day spent reorganising our luggage and doing some last minute elving in Delhi and now onwards. 

Jodphur had felt (even by North Indian standards) a bit of a filthy, noisy, fly-ridden place – tiny narrow streets where you could reach into the shop fronts from your auto; the old city so tortuous you could only navigate by using the Fort for bearings; open sewers and cows who snack on rubbish. I had to untangle an electrical cable from the tonsils of one bovine. (Another cow aside - L writes appointments in Wolfdad’s diary unbeknown to him. He slipped up and failed to keep his date for dinner with ‘Miss Cow’ on 20^th December at 6.45 pm.  She was upset, we’d imagine.) We saw the Fort – which was very fine with superb caskets for riding on elephants and palanquins, little hands memorialising the mass sati of a previous generation and a great array of canons (W’s favourite). Wolfdad went to Osian to see a goddess temple that’s a major pilgrimage site of the region (and a lot of other exciting early nagara temples!) whilst the rest of us hunkered down in the haveli guesthouse, the kids rolling around on cushions and talking much too loudly amidst the hushed couple conversations at breakfast-time. 

The last day turned out to be the most fun – we went out of town to a big park at Mandor to see cenotaphs of the Rajas of Jodphur, monkey business (the children and I watched a comedy I think, put on largely for our benefit, as the monkeys were driven from the trees by banging of drums, brandishing of big sticks etc, only for the monkeys to return to taunt their adversaries 5 minutes later) and playground encounters.  The children were visibly upset by a little girl begging with a babe in arms and snotty toddler at her heels, sobbing ‘no mamma, no papa’ and wanted to give her all their money.  L has decided to undertake fundraising activities back in the UK on her behalf.  Hard to understand, let alone explain the causes and best solution to such moral dilemmas to my crew. Particularly as we later saw the girl without the younger children and the baby being carried by another woman, possibly its mother… A huge Marwari family were having a big day out, tried to explain their intricated inter-relatedness, wanted to know everything about us, decided M had Angelina Jolie eyes and Bollywood looks (to which M self-deprecates, ‘but I’m only a country girl…’) and wanted us to join in their games.

We caught a local bus back into town, which was fun – a professor of Social Science from elsewhere in India got chatting with Wolfdad and was very jovial, interrogating M about her wish to do archaeology and asking her, ‘What is history?’! M looked a bit nervous…

When we got back to the old bit of town where the haveli was, in the late afternoon, the auto rickshaw drivers at the rank called out, wanting to know how our trip to Mandor had been, an old lady comically counted the kids ‘ek, do, teen!’ (one, Two, THREE) squealing with delight, the tailor on the corner had invisibly mended the rip in my salwar kamise for the princely sum of 10 rupees, we bought bags of beautiful oranges from the fruit stall on the corner, and a little girl invited us all back to her house to meet her granny… so we fell under the spell of the neighbourhood especially as we climbed onto the roof top and watched the sun set over the city (Jodphur is known as the ‘blue city’ as the Brahmin’s colour code spread to the other houses of the old city) with the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, temple sounds and evening activities on other roof tops all around. 

W: I want to write my own things!  Ohh!  Fine!! Fine!!!!!!! I’m too tired to think but I can’t have a snooze! (5 minutes later – he’s out cold. We’ve touched down in Mumbai, now back in the air…)

Our second night train was okay – everyone knows what to expect now and Wolfdad even succeeded in buying blankets (though whether or not they are ‘top quality’ as claimed seems a little dubious to me) so we froze a little less.  L wasn’t travel sick on our blankets this time – though there was a moment where it looked in the balance (we’re re-appropriating a whole lot of airline sick bags for future use)…

Arriving at Delhi Junction in the cold and mist was hard, and the taxi-drivers were mean bastard negotiators (WD needs to learn the Hindi phrase approximating to ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’) about taking us to the elite Government area in Delhi where we were going for breakfast with Y, one of Wolfdad’s PhD students, and her eminent Civil Servant mum.  I had quite some reservations about this: exhausted and dirty children and parents arriving for the first time in this respectable home.  I was utterly, happily wrong – my children behaved impeccably, reading TinTin and playing with the elderly, fluffy tailed dogs (there was a mutual love fest between them and L) and eating muffins and boiled eggs. We and our luggage were taken to a Government Rest House, so kindly arranged by Y’s mother, and WD and I got a real kick out of being driven there in the back seat of a government white Ambassador, complete with curtains and flag.  I felt like doing royal waves.

So we’ve left fleeces, jeans, trainers and a whole heap of other stuff behind in Delhi.  It’s light cotton all the way in the South – daytime temps of high-20s-low 30s, night time low 20s…We’re hoping the Penninks make it to Cochin from Beckley – Heathrow is apparently open now but they’ll need their wellies or a four wheel drive to make it out of the village as the snow is still thick on the ground there.  M is reading weather reports and worrying…

Father Christmas (or Farmer 'Tismas as W used to call him) is on his way looking at the NORAD-Google satellite tracking (check it out!). We need to hang our stockings up tonight and hope.

L: I like aroeplanes and slidy floors at the airport. Don’t belive dad hes always wrong. Were on a aroeplane and were about to touch down were kochin is awaiting. Mayas reading on the kindle and im doing the blog right at this moment. The troble with aroeplanes is your ears hert on the way up and the way down. By the way they are herting right now. Well bye bye.

End of term school reports

Jodphur, 21 st December 2010

Wolfmum on home-school: Bit of a different post – today is the last day of home-school before the holidays.  ‘Teaching’ your own kids demands more patience than any other task (including the spell I did actually spend doing primary school teaching in London in the early 90s) I’ve ever done but it’s also really fun to have my dirty hands on their learning, if only briefly.  So I apologise to their teachers in advance for what they have and haven’t learnt over this interlude.  And I apologise to my children for when I’ve been less than patient.  I’ve asked them for feed-back – perhaps I did learn something on the Medical Educators’ Course?  Here are their thoughts:

L on home-school: “I really like having a new teacher – even you mum.  We have different work.  I do like school and it’s quite fun for W to be in it too.  Less good is when it feels like you’re being my teacher and you should be my mum.”

W on home-school: “I do easy things and I like doing work and it feels like you’re a real teacher.  It’s nice every day. There are never, ever any problems.” (I really pushed him to think of some negatives, sunny boy)

M on home-school: “The upsides of home school is that we have more choice about what we did so we can do work on things that are interesting to us or India-based.  Mum and Dad give me a really hard time about how I hold my pen, and I know it’s to help me but sometimes it gets really annoying. Sometimes I think my sister puts me down a bit and my brother says ‘MUM! MUM!’ just when I need her help as he feels that he needs to do work to feel good.  I like looking at all the paintings on the walls whilst I work and it gives me lots of things to think about. It’s very nice working outside in the sun instead of inside a hot sticky classroom.  We are allowed break times with W but it’s flexible when we have it.  When we were in Delhi we went outside and did skipping at playtime”.

Wolfmum: Anyway, to mark the holidays I’d really like to share some of their work.  If this is all a bit much, please have no qualms about skipping straight to the next travelogue post.  I’ve just finished reading them ‘Running Wild’ by Michael Morpurgo at bedtime.  Despite its subject matter, they’ve all been entranced by the tale of a boy living in the jungle after he survives the Boxing Day Tsunami – thoroughly recommended.  Even W has got a lot out of it – when he managed to stay awake long enough to hear the end of a chapter….

So W drew a wonderful picture (I wonder if we can take a photo and attach?) of orang-utans and tigers and elephants and Will (the boy) and told me about the story:

“It’s about a boy called Will and he goes on an adventure.  His Dad goes to the war and gets blown up by a bomb.  His mother goes into the sea and she died from the tsunami.  An elephant called Oona rescued him.  Then he found a new lady, not his mum, but a lady who looked after orang-utans.  Then he rescued Charlie (another orang-utan) from a bear.  He runned away so fast from the bear.  He stayed in the jungle but his grandparents let him stay and they said, “If you want, you can stay and we will come here to live””

As I said lots of tragedy but adventure and survival too… It draws quite a lot on Kipling (Just So stories and Jungle Book) as well as the ‘Tyger, tyger’ William Blake poem.  M has written her own tiger poem – I’ve helped her edit it, but the vocab and ideas were all her own.

Dangerous Predator by MB

Tiger, tiger beautiful and bright,

The most sleek and agile in the night,

Streaks of orange and of black leap and jump,

Let loose from a bow of twine as he pounces, then disappears.

A penetrating emerald stare,

Glittering eyes, the colour of the jungle canopy,

Remember glorious memories of the past:

Successful hunts and slow digesting in the sun.

The striped hide he wears with pride,

Flames and sparks are alive in his joyeous dance,

Then the vision abruptly dies.

He’s hard to track but his surroundings feel his presence,

The jungle shakes and shudders,

Trees uproot in fright as he walks into view.

With his claws sharper than a dagger,

His smelly, raw carrion breath,

His shakingly loud roar,

Surely the entire universe must know to save this magnificent beast?

Tiger, master predator, ruler of all you survey,

Your subjects bow low to your mightiness.

L has cracked joined up handwriting and is just overflowing with story.  She’s written her own story inspired by ‘Running Wild’ this morning and I’ll transcribe it (with some grammar and spelling corrections and some capital letters…).  It’s Mani’s story – who is an adult orang-utan in the story, who was brought up in an orang-utan orphanage:

The Orang-utan nursery by LB

There was a jungle fire.  The orang-utan family were running for their lives through the jungle.  Mani was clinging to her mummy. She could hear the jungle chorus.  Every time it came louder.  She clung more tightly.  Rush, rush, rush through the undergrowth, through more jungle.  ‘Nearly there!’ she wished. 

Meanwhile Mr Antony was having a celebration because he had made the jungle fire so he could grow palm trees for palm oil on the land to make even more money.

Back in the jungle, Mani’s mum reassured here they were nearly there.  They swung and swung. They were completely exhausted.  Mani buried her head into her mother’s chest.  She squeezed even tighter.  Some of the orang-utans fell and that made her even more scared.  There were only 20 of them left. 

In the distance, Mani could see a little house and there were a lot more orang-utans there.  It was the orang-utan nursery.  All the orang-utans were heading there.  It looked quite nice thought Mani.  The woman with the straw hat came out. “Hello little Mani!” she said kindly, “Do come in!”

Suddenly Mani spotted her best friend.  She ran out of her mother’s arms and went with the little orang-utans and their foster mothers to the back yard.  Soon it was bed time and Mani slept with all of the other orang-utans in a shed. 

Meanwhile Mr Antony was thinking up other nasty tricks…

Back at the nursery, all the little orang-utans were enjoying hopscotch. Mani enjoyed games a lot. Mani was growing stronger day by day and was soon going to be released into the wild.  Eventually the day came and Mani hugged her friend and her mum and was released back into the wild.

The End

 So we all deserve a jolly good holiday - no more school till Tamil Nadu! Hooray!

Bears and Baked Bananas

Mount Abu, !8th December 2010

Snakes, cormorants and terns were sunning themselves on the rocks in the middle of Nakki lake when we passed them in our rowing boat yesterday morning. Earlier this year a crocodile from Bernard’s Tank, elsewhere in the hills, came on a six-week holiday here, scaring away all the happy boating holidaymakers. From our hotel we can see the lake and the rocky hills all around. We’re about 1700m up but it feels a world away from the hot, dusty and busy plains. It’s almost quiet here – I say ‘almost’ because we are still in India and nowhere in this exciting place is really quiet.

Before coming here Mount Abu (for Wolfdad) was about the spectacular Jain temples at Dilwara, a few kilometres out of town, that despite repeated trips to India (and now teaching a course on the Indian temple) I’d never seen. So the girls and I took a jeep up the hill to see them. I’m delighted to discover they are every bit as wonderful as anticipated. Muni Sri Vijayant Vijayi, author of my temple guide, writes that “the marble has yielded itself with a loving docility to fastidious chiselling” and we couldn’t agree more. After chai drunk from the saucer in good Gujerati fashion and a ‘mangolicious’ carton of juice, we then walked back a few miles downhill to Nakki lake and home, where the youngest member had been catching up on some sleep and WM her novel (Freedom by Jonathon Franzen – highly recommended).

Today we got up early and, fortified by porridge against the chilly dawn, hopped in another jeep with ‘Charles’ (Mahendradan), a young local guide, who had arranged to lead us on a hike through the surrounding countryside. The forested hills all around the town of Mount Abu have been declared a nature reserve and are home to sloth bears, leopards, jackals, deer and jungle fowl. Cool in the shade, warm in the rising sun we walked off along a path used by local villagers out hunting with spectacular views over the hills to the plains far below. The peaks have long been home to rishis and other religious seekers, but I didn’t know about the bears.  Our group not being the quietest, we had no close encounters.  All sensible bears were undoubtedly sleeping in the shade.

I’m going to have a moment of parental pride explaining how our 3 little wolflings trekked 12km (including W @ 4 and 2 months now), no carrying or cajoling needed, including terrain that was steep, treacherously rocky and in patches dense with thick bamboo forest and mossies.  Real adventure walking. Charles said the kids were his youngest ever customers and was impressed, telling the forest rangers about how well they’d done.  Probably the highpoint was reaching a halfway chai stop where we made a campfire in the shade of a local nomad shrine.  We also walked through a deserted summer village for one of the local semi-nomad communities who practice transhumance.  Our kids were (briefly)thoughtful after seeing how whole families, including their buffalo, live, sleep, cook in the small bamboo huts.

L: Our guide said we were going to be in the newspaper.  He said we would be in it because he kept taking photos. We had a campfire. We cooked chai and banana splits. I got to put the masala in the tea. I went in my second jeep. We found some bear poo (black and full of berries) and leopard scat (it was white and furry; leopards like to eat dogs and langur monkeys). We saw wild cucumbers.  The walk was exciting.

WD: Abu's charms fade for grown-ups once we'd been hiking and seen the temples. The children were all ready to stay for weeks (M: 'This is my favourite place yet - can we stay the whole five months and not go back to Delhi?'). We did think of going boating again to try out the swan-peddalo and we might also have spent a happy 20 minutes dressing up as Rajasthani women in the park and having out photos taken. But we decided to move on: the train from Abu Road station to Jodhpur beckons tomorrow (Sunday 19th), then back to Delhi briefly before we fly to Cochin in Kerala on Friday 24th.

WM: Although all the cues are wrong, we are counting down to Christmas... Fewer and fewer doors and challenges left in the advent calendars and the candle is almost stumpy.  W argues with his sisters about how many days are left - we are having really rubbish arguments (particularly L and W - about who can ask for the bill, who is the most tired, who sleeps where....).  The signal for recognising and trying to terminate this is armpit itching.  As we appear to be quite itchy and scratchy generally, we may need to develop another non-verbal.  Anyway, we are stitching our own felt stockings ‘cos we know Father Christmas is coming to good children in Kerala.  And the children  are practicing their carols loudly and making up their own version of the 12 days of Christmas ('On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a tiger in a palm tree').  In case we don't post before Christmas, much, much festive happiness and joy and peace and inner warmth to you all particularly those in the freeze and without much heating oil.

Monkey masala

Mount Abu, December 16th 2010

We are in urgent need of toast and cornflakes as W is melting down and wants to do ‘all of this’ blog…

W: nuffin’ not funny poopy woopy L. (WM: I’m transcribing straight from the horse’s mouth - Please, please breakfast come fast!)  I feel very sorry for monkeys ‘cos the people tease the monkeys by throwing crackers.  They are meant to eat bananas and they’d have a much happier life if they ate bananas.  The monkeys were swinging in the trees and being crazy like Max. (= Maximillian, W’s cuddly monkey) Cornflakes!! With cold milk! (W now engaged with eating only)

WM: Coffee, poopy woopy Wolf-Dad! [= Please bring Wolfmum’s coffee urgently.]

WD: It’s a beautiful sunny morning high in the hills with palm trees and eucalyptus growing around the lake under a deep blue sky. So peaceful, perhaps? For a change  it’s actually cold and, as ever, Hindi music drifts our way. Welcome to Mount Abu, Rajasthan’s only hill resort. 

We drove here yesterday along one of India’s great new superhighways: dual carriageways cut straight through the hillsides leaving a smooth road sweeping across the landscape. It’s always best to drive in the middle of the road to avoid the landslides and indeed cows, goats, villagers. There’s plenty of space for drivers as no-one else seemed to be on the road – the steep toll charges every 50km perhaps? Men wearing huge red turbans herd their long-horned cows down the road, ladies in billowing bright red or yellow saris walk down the central reservation carrying firewood home and children sit hopefully by the side of the road with baskets of custard-apples. Good roads and no traffic means that one can – amazingly – travel over 40km/hour, so reaching Abu from Udaipur only took three hours. We’ve finally used the booster seats (thanks Ellie and Ruth) and have contrived some way of three children being tied down with two belts.

L: We went up the mountain to reach our hotel. We saw monkeys sitting by the road. They were sunbathing, itching their toes, eating packets of crisps. We think they only eat masala chips, as they are Indian monkeys. [WM: memories of dassies eating cheesy-wotsits up Table Mountain, Emma and Robert.] I don’t think it’s good for them. I think they need to eat bananas and fruit. We were late for lunch so we ate lots of greasy, yucky snacks [WD: stuffed parathas, pakoras, deep-fried omelettes –we need bananas and fruit.].I really like our hotel here because it is right next to the Nakki lake and that reminds us of our cousin, Annabelle, she calls her dad Nikkinakkinoo [WD: Can you cope with the publicity, Nick?].

Today we went to the Sunset Point. We went to where we could see the view and other people followed us. The people at sunset point were copy cats because they kept following us. It was very busy and noisy. There were some honeymooners there. Dad says sometimes they do kissees.

M: As we arrived in Mount Abu it was hard to decide exactly where we were since we saw a mini model of the Eiffel tower and then a road stall selling baguettes, so it looked a bit like France.  Then it seemed as if we were in Australia because there are huge rocky outcrops and gum trees surrounding us, a bit like I’d imagine the Australian Outback to be. Yet you don’t get wild monkeys and palm trees in Australia and that was what made it India. W still asks ‘Are we on Planet Earth?’

Yesterday evening we realized quite how high up we were. Lakes were puddles, forests were merely a plate of broccoli and people were impossible to see even as specks in the distance. There were a few honeymooners but mainly Gujerati holiday makers wearing strange items of clothing like a sarong but mostly cold weather clothes (luminous yellow woolly hats and furry jackets and children in balaclavas and special camouflaged ear muffs).

WD: For all you readers in Europe (and Montreal) you’ll be pleased to know that The Times of India is today reporting that the ‘cold wave intensifies’ over north Gujarat. Apparently in Abu “life in the hill station has been thrown completely out of gear.” It reports a nocturnal temp of minus 2 degrees – doesn’t bear much relation to our experience. Our taxi driver couldn’t believe we were going to spend 3 nights here. “Much before evening, the roads wear a deserted look with residents venturing out only in case of an emergency.” Sounds dramatic! Rest assured that we are wearing jumpers as well as a shirt to survive the cold snap, and Wolfmum has promised to buy me some ear-warmers for Christmas.

Alarming neon ice-cream

WM: Mount Abu is little changed from two-decade old memory: full of mooney but horribly awkward newly weds and Gujerati boys here for beer (Gujerat over the border is a dry state). Everything is quite tourist-tacky (and this is home market, not back-packer or up market lecture tour variety) in quite an appealing way. Lots of Indians having a lovely time boating (swan shaped pedalos or shikhars – W has made me promise to take him today); horse riding; shopping (the bazaar has a fine selection of wonderful knitwear with added synthetic fur and Chinese ‘Sticky Toys’ – a large poster in our hotel prohibits them, increasing our fascination) and eating (everything fried and super-sweet, ice cream with fluorescent green syrup, fast-food thalis).

It’s back to the children being mobbed – they’re under our balcony in the hotel playground (swings, slides, roundabout!) holding up the traffic as hundreds gather the other side of the wire to chat… In Udaipur, we weren’t at all interesting – as the place was full of foreign tourists and even some with children – we were outclassed by one family with 4 kids, including a baby in a back pack…

Actually the point of being here is to go to some very fine Jain temples at Dilwara.  As long as I’m not menstruating, I can go too.  We were all very tolerant field assistants for Wolf Dad last week when we went to the Jain complex at Ranakpur.  And we’re even planning a half-day trek with Charles, the local snake catcher, tomorrow, to ensure our diet isn’t just temples and fried food.

Kids are fighting, time to go boating…

Comfy Cakes and other occupations

Hi all!  I’m hosting a playdate with 2 sweet little girls of Catalan-German-Belgium-English pedigree : Maya (another! But this is the land of Mayas and our big M causes much happiness when folk find out she has an Indian name) and Zoe.  They’re around L’s age and are happy to play after 4 months or so on the road and are en route from Barcelona to Sydney overland (via Tibet) and sea in a campervan.  The kids are all playing lego and computer games, watching the puppies in the rubbish tip over the back wall, making story books and dens together and eating cucumber and biscuits – it all feels deeply, happily familiar. Sadly I think they are leaving tomorrow.

The children’s need for other children is palpable.  We’ve found Mohan and his baby sister in the temple yesterday.  They are priest’s children and appear to spend lots of time just hanging out and playing around the temple yard.  The boys smiled at each other and launched into elaborate running and chasing games almost immediately, with me feeling rather nervous that this was not appropriate behaviour in sacred space but everyone assured us that it was okay – kids come to meet each other and play there and use it as a sort of playground and I remember Louis saying they were good places to play.  Mohan taught M all sorts of Hindi words (I’m struggling with it but both of the girls, L especially, seem to pick it up with much less effort).

The day before, we’d found another little boy for W to hang out with – recognising a McClaran buggy being pushed up the ghat, and met a Danish/English couple holidaying with their 3 and a half year old son, Taylor, and baby daughter.  M amazed that we could just meet a family on the street and go out with them for dinner and afterwards to the puppet/dancing show at the restored haveli opposite – but nice to be so spontaneous and it meant that the boys could wrestle and biff.  Big sisters get a bit peeved with constant wrestling and biffing, even if it is normal 4 year old boy stuff.

W: We found another Zoe and another Maya, Spanish ones.  They’re very nice and the bigger one is Maya.  Yesterday I played with Mohan and we runned round and round and round the temple and we laughed at the statue’s bare bottom.  Do you know we sawed a puppet who could take his head off and balance it on his legs?!!  Do you know, there were ladies with fire on their head?  Do you know, there was a lady with 10 pots on her head who could do dancing on glass?

3 weeks in and things still feel quite ‘holiday-ish’ to me -  living in a beautiful ‘palace’ (all hotels/guest houses round here are described as palaces, and claim royal connections), having the odd meal out in amazing locations (edge of the lake, looking out over the Lake Palace, where Sarkosy and Carla Bruni were partying), going to the German Bakery for peanut butter rolls (M rehab food; we were explaining the concept of PlumpyNut for malnourished children to her) and having gone ‘boating’ with them this afternoon (a turn round Lake Pichola in a precariously balanced pleasure-craft with compulsory life jackets – surely a first in India? The lake is so calm, with a deep green algal bloom and the odd commorant).  

But in other ways we’ve shifted into work mode.  Wolfdad is out on the  research trail – currently on a mad dash to Ahmedabad over the weekend with 2 sleeper nights either side – looking at Swaminarayan temples there – and over the last week, he’s tried to pack in as many of the things he’s wanted to see around the Udaipur area as possible.  The plan is to move onto Mount Abu at the end of the week, though the papers report in ‘this unseasonal cold spell’, temperatures there have ‘plummeted’ to sub-freezing which is a bit discouraging…

It’s quite an intense time with the kids especially when WD is away – waking up in the same room; attempting to keep them clean and healthy (they resist showers as the water is SOO cold); negotiating food (we’re still on a fairly limited repertoire but cornflakes and milk based banana porridge here for breakfast has made them very happy); ‘school’ (L’s made a comic based on Rama stories’, M’s just done a PowerPoint presentation on diarrhoea and W has a Christmas card production line going on with a load of glitter glue…); then afternoons we catch auto-rickshaws or go on dusty, stressful (bearing in mind the narrowness of the roads, the density and unpredictability of the traffic) walks to go on outings (the park, a toy train, museums, temples or palaces, a café or bookshop) or try to find provisions (shampoo, antibiotics, bananas) or barter for bangles (Wolfdad and I am constantly reminded of that Harry Enfield sketch – they definitely see us coming - and L particularly needs re-education in how to shop); we play games (Ludo is a new fave and I’ve taught them all Cheat), reply to emails (thanks everyone), write the blog and our journals and read books.  No telly (we’ve tried Hindi cartoons and given up) and our DVD drive doesn’t seem to like the DVDs we’ve brought all this way, but we’ve all got slightly obsessed with Comfy Cakes – which is a sad admission to any of you who are familiar with this game (part of Purble Place) on their computer.  You have to assemble cakes to order along a production line.  W is a Grandmaster aged 4 and has to be time limited otherwise he would play all day.

For the children, I think they definitely feel a long way from home even when we try to establish mini ‘homes’ as we go. M has been quite homesick this week and is drawing an elaborate ‘Rabbit World’, I think as a way of dealing with it (they take trains to Lyme Regis..).  But she feels much, much better physically and I watch her independently and confidently interacting with people and doing things like buying herself chai and think, wow! L is doing much better than I’d have anticipated adjusting at this stage (has just declared to me she doesn’t miss anything) and W feels more grown-up day by day (he’s wandering around the room talking to a rabbit...maybe we've all gone down the rabbit hole?) Love to you all, x

L: I found a message on the mirrow it said I miss home by M. lots of fun from email. We made some freads they were called maya and zoe.  Our freand ship led up to staying up late  doing a hut for a stray dog with puppies. Our hut is neliy finished. Well we went to a bouting trip. Our freands are Spanish. They went to india on a carer van all the way. We played a game of mind sweeper.

Today we went on a outing and I bought some bangles. I chose some blue  and gold patened bangles.  (Self-typed and uncorrected! But please don’t worry, they’re not actually playing with the feral dogs!)

Udaipur, 7th December 2010

So Udaipur is lovely – beautiful place full of frilly (‘m sure this is the correct architectural term Wolfdad?) palaces and havelis all nestled round a lake dominated by the Lake Palace Hotel (think Octopussy – shown every night at the travellers’ cafes at 7 pm), shimmery sun, langur monkeys jumping over roofs… We’re not staying quite in the thick of the old town – but have a hotel with central green courtyard, with the noise of the street keep slightly at bay.   We have a nice room – but the best bit is a stone balcony with cushions that we can lounge about on, watching the goings on in the courtyard below, very Rajput zenana-style…

 In theory, this is a peaceful oasis, but being thick in the middle of Wedding Season means that our days are punctuated by drums and processions and amazing carriages and then the favoured site for wedding parties appears to be a pitch over the back wall of our hotel so we can lean over and enjoy the atmosphere second hand.  On nights when there is no wedding, the mangy fleabag dogs and their puppies who live in the rubbish patch adjacent to the hotel announce themselves and a starlight barking replaces the bhangra beat.    

Although we are very much enjoying being tourists here – sitting, watching the sun fade over the lake with a bottle of Limca – Wolfdad is trying to keep to his schedule, gets up early to go off to catch local buses to scruffy temple sites and comes home mid-afternoon sweaty and hungry.  W is keenest on home-school, demands 'work' like his big sisters and has decided he can do very advanced dot-to-dots and 'mental maths'!

 My experience of the last 2 days has involved navigating the medical system here.  M had appeared to improve on antibiotics last day or so in Delhi, but blew high fever and felt really awful our first evening here which concerned me some. So we summoned a handsome beardy paediatrician on a nocturnal home visit (on recommendation of owner – ‘very good, very expensive, always late’) – he did actually engage Maya, wanted to exclude enteric fever so arranged investigations for the next day at a ‘Diagnostic Centre’ across town (my agenda was a stool exam to exclude anything protozoan). 

So the kids and I crossed town to Chetak Circle with a kindly rickshaw driver, carrying a ziplock bag of M’s stool in my handbag.  M absolutely terrified by the idea of a blood test and culturally it’s really tough – there doesn’t appear to be any empathy extended to a child in this situation, no emla (magic cream), let alone play therapists and their ilk, and the phlebotomists here just seemed to laugh at her distress…

Anyway as of this evening, when I had to return for the results, she has Entamoeba histolytica cysts  – so basically has amoebic dysentery, or possibly has had a mixed bacterial/protozoal infection but no sign of typhus or paratyphi from the serology they did… Oh and possibly a UTI as well.  So we’re now throwing metronidazole at her as well and at least have some idea of what we’re treating. (Wolfdad has always rather fancied Flagyl® = metronidazole’s brand name, as a good name for a rabbit, or perhaps a chicken).  

Doesn’t reflect brilliantly on our ability to protect our kids, M having amoebic dysentery in under 2 weeks of our arrival, but I am as staggered as I always am at the ability of any human life to survive in such a faecal soup of pathogens as exist on every surface here.

M:  Here in Udaipur with cows on the streets you have to watch out for cow s**t which is everywhere.  Dad’s rules for cows:

·         Always be at least a metre away from a cow’s backside as they kick just as hard as horses and their s**t needs a splatter zone. (although holy cow poo is considered good luck)

·         If one is moving towards you don’t think it’s going to change direction for you because they don’t even stop for cars.  The only thing they stop for or change direction for is buses. 

As well as cows, goats, pigs, donkeys and mangy dogs roam the narrow streets. 

Last night, we went to a café called Queen’s Café for tea, which was run by a nice woman called Minakshi, who had 4 children (the youngest slept all the time we were there) – and they played with us, in their upstairs room which was also their bedroom, whilst we were waiting for our food to be cooked and after we’d eaten as well.  The Café was their home as well so we were eating at their kitchen table.  The homemade pakoras were really yummy.

We’ve found out why I’m feeling so rotten yesterday as it turns out from my blood, stool and urine tests that I have amoebic dysentery which comes from dirty water.  Amoebae are one celled organisms that get into your gut and cause cysts in your liver unless you treat them soon enough.  Lots of children in India live with diarrhoea and amoebic infections like mine.  I am getting better but I’m feeling very weak and wobbly and my family is annoying me quite a lot, as my tolerance level is low (wolfmum:  I’m taking the irritability as a good sign, as it means she’s at least got the energy to fight with us all….)  Mum and Dad say that we are all proper travellers now as we spend a lot of time talking about our guts and we are planning ‘Diarrhoea – the musical’ as we have made up some songs to make the situation funnier.

When we got to Udaipur dad was offered some recreational drugs.  It was cannabis and he rather flatly said NO! I thought Mrs Morgan would be proud of him as we had been looking at avoiding drugs, smoking etc.

WD: Mrs Morgan, you should indeed be proud (of M). Actually I was rather flattered that I’m still worth the bother.

Back home for lunch (my agenda) from a morning at Nathdwara, a major Vaishnava pilgrimage temple to Krishna 30 miles north of here. I arrived in time for morning darshan, so good to see the passion and excitement of all the devotees as Srinathji (Krishna) was revealed to us all. The streets around the temple are very narrow and filled with small stalls selling lots of pilgrimage paraphernalia, snacks and sequinned clothes. I had a cup of chai, moved aside for cows and watched a fine wedding procession with full brass military band pass along the narrow lanes. Then back on the bus over the hills and back to Udaipur. I’m hungry.

We promise to talk less about defecation in future blogs (or at least the next one or two).

2nd class, 3 tier sleeper nights

Good to leave Delhi, if temporarily. The security and guns are omnipresent and a little depressing.  Every time you go onto the Metro or enter a public space (cinema, hotel, cafe...), you have to go through metal detectors, bag scans and frisking (lady and men's queues) and security guards, police, secret service are everywhere, all overtly armed and jumpy.  We are told that this is the price people accept for living next-door to Pakistan...

Leaving Delhi, catching a night train - all the remembered hassles of navigating platiforms and crowds, hanging on to bags and now new paranoia about getting separated from the children (we live by the Meerkat Mail maxim of 'Stay Safe, Stay Together' - recommended for avoiding jackals) but fairly efficiently, we made it into the right carriage and were watching Delhi disappearing into the night and chatting to our neighbours (returning from a family wedding, exhausted after 7 days and very hopeful we didn't want dinner and would want to hang up the bunks as soon as possible). 

Arriving this morning, we felt so happy to see Rajasthan emerging out of a misty winter dawn from the train window.  We'd frozen en route , as we'd been told we would, despite multiple layers (vests, T shirts, long sleeved shirt, jumper, fleece, etc) and I have to say it was W's hot 4 year old body got me through the night... He asks me from time to time, 'Are we still on Planet Earth'? Whilst I'd been snuggling with him, Wolfdad was winnning Heroic Dad prizes for keeping the girls cheerful through the long night, singing Raffi hits and shaking chunks out of blankets (see below).

W: We slept on the train.  It was a diesel.  I slept with mum and M slept on top and two Indian ladies on the bottom.  Do you know who slept next to us?  Dad and L.  It was very wibbily and bumpy and noisy on the train.  We had good snacks.  I didn't sleep well because it was too cold and bumpy.  It kept me awake (Wolfmum:  For the record, W slept the very best of everyone...)

L: It was very dirty and hectic at the station. I listened to Raffi most of the night on dad's I-Pod.  I was sick in the middle of the night on the train. (WM: L is well - we think this was simply travel sickness plus nausea induced by the smelly borrowed blanket) When we woke up we were in the middle of nowhere.  Trees and bushes galore.  There were lots of villages like Beckley.  At last we arrived.  The station was very busy with lots of other people arriving.  We went to the hotel on a tourist taxi.  Our hotel has a swimming pool but nobody swims as it is too cold.  All the Indian people wear lots of clothes and scarves and say how cold it is, but it feels hot to us at least during the day.  I've heard that it's been snowing at home. See you next time.

WD:  Initially I was thrilled to be on a sleeper again, with the family - the peeling blue paint, sticky plastic seats, the grilled windows, the floor scattered with peanut debris and other rubbish, the chai-wallahs, the sound of points being crossed, the view of the train track through the hole in the toilet floor...  Having spent so much time (hours, no days) travelling around India like this, how marvellous to be sharing the experience - until the girls were grey with fatigue and I had to apologise to our neighbours for the sicked-on borrowed blanket (social embarrassment is cross-cultural)  But we did make it safely, and everyone slept at least a little. So, next time posh 2nd Class AC?  Well that is dependant on waiting lists and quotas and, for me, 3 tier sleeper class remains 'cheap and best'.

10 rupees for requests but No Erotic Love Songs

Tonight (4th Dec) we leave Delhi on the overnight Mewar Express to Udaipur. But how could we leave before visiting the 62^nd Annual Chrysanthemum Show at the YWCA? A spectacular horticultural extravaganza of marvellous blooms.

It has served to reinvigorate all our spirits and senses of humour as the previous 48 hours had been…challenging.  Poor M hit the wall – with full-on traveller’s diarrhoea (and vomiting) – and was really quite unwell.  So 2 nights up and lots of enforced ORS (Dioralyte) – M not appreciative – and resorting to antibiotics given her fever and profuse purging.  Literally 2 hours post azithromycin, she sat up, stopped vomiting  and started chatting again, and today is starting to think about food again….Just as well given an overnight train journey tonight.   Whilst we all knew this was going to happen ( and often),  it was rough for M and the rest of us: L furious at the amount of attention she was getting,  C stressing about logistics and me worrying about finding her a ‘proper doctor’ if my GP skills failed her.  (Thanks Laura for the advice from Cambodia)

M, do you want to add anything about this most sh*!y of episodes?   

M: I have been doing  green pond weed diarrhoea and vomited more times than I care to remember but am feeling 90% better today – doing a lot better than before.   

So Year 5, there you have it…

Anyway back to the YWCA Flower show – as L gutted to be missing English Christmas, the stalls and good folk very helpfully reminiscent of school Christmas fairs and fetes we have known – cake stalls, brick-a-brac, second hand clothes, performances (girls rapping in Hindi in base ball caps, accompanied by others dancing in saris – we weren’t quite sure of the message, but their teacher assured me it was  ‘street theatre’) all amidst 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and highly commended chrysanths. 

And the music, wolfdad?

 Where is a Chrysanthemum exhibition without a 70s disco soundtrack? It’s exactly what you’d expect at the YWCA: ‘Saturday Night Fever’, ‘Ra-Ra Rasputin’, and of course ‘Y-M-C-A’. I  threatened to upstage the street theatre with some embarrassing dad moves and had to be physically restrained by two daughters from teaching the crowd the YMCA dance. But where could it be more appropriate? Fergus, I needed you there. For ten rupees we could have requested our own music but couldn’t easily comply with the ‘no erotic love songs’ declaration.

L: You’re such an idiot, dad, and really embarrassing. I really liked the YWCA especially the restaurant called ‘Buns & Cakes’. I really liked the omelettes and chapatis.

W: zzzzzzzzz [he’s asleep on a hard chair- after 2 weeks, he’s finally resorted to an afternoon nap.]

We’ve rationalised our stuff – left a whole load in Delhi – and are leaving on 3 tier, non AC sleeper tonight.  It’s good to be moving on – different vistas etc – and looking forward to Rajasthan (Udaipur, Abu, Jodhpur with Wolfdad nipping off to other places), 20 years+ since last there.   Some nostalgia remembering being in India with Sam and Emily aged 18, but an utterly different experience as ‘respectable’ married mother of 3.  

 We’ve lit the advent candle and are opening doors on the calendar and doing Granny Jane challenges daily (yesterdays was ‘an alphabet of flowers’ – we had to resort to cheating - ‘yellow flower’ and ‘xerox flower’- when we got stuck) but the countdown isn’t just to Christmas, oh no – it’s a countdown to the Penninks!  Sam and Eva, we can’t wait!  See you in Cochin on the 25^th Dec…

W is stirring but sleepy still in Wolfdad’s lap.  L has rewritten the menu for the café and M is designing a rabbit house/mansion.  Lodi Gardens beckons….

Photo fatigue

M: We have been to the Red Fort on Saturday. It was built by Shah Jahan from 1644 - 1656. It took 5000 people to build it. While it was being built, Old Deli was too. Shah Jahan was building it so that when he was dead people would remember him by the city he built. As well as Old Delhi, he built the Taj Mahal, which you may know, so he must have enjoyed building. Shah Jahan thought that he ruled the world and that is what his name means: 'world ruler'. He was a Mugal ruler and that made him very important and powerful and people came from all round the world to see him.

When we went to see the Red Fort, dad told us lots of facts about the places we were in . Like when we were facing the throne, he told us that it was made of carved white marble set with pictures of Orpheus with his lyre and other gods . Originally it had lots of rubies and emeralds enlaid in it, and you can still see a few but most have fallen out or been stolen.

All the while, we were having our photos taken with people who were treating us like celebrities because we (english children) are so rare in there country. I thought that Old Delhi stank of dog poo and human poo as the drains aren't very good.  The streets were very narrow with an awful lot going on: cycle rickshaws, people making tea, juice stalls, lots and lots of shops and market stalls selling anything you can imagine and lots of traffic so we had to have our wits about us.

W:  The Red Fort was very big and do you know why it was called the Red  Fort? Cos the outside was red bricks.  Inside was white marble bricks.  I remember the throne - you couldn't sit on it. 

We played dogs in the gardens and L, she holded the lead, and me and M were the dogs and I was the number 2 dog and M was the number 1 dog but we were both Top Dogs!  Lots of people were shaking my hands and M said only one photo but sometimes they did lots.

I liked looking at the cows in India.  They are buffaloes.  Their buffalo pats were splatted on a wall so the sun dries them and then people use them for their cooking fires.  I've got a cold so I can't smell any stinks.

L:  As you went inside the Red Fort, it changed to white marble from red stone as you got towards Shah Jahan's Private Quarters.  There were lots of beautiful decorations and carvings and precious stones.  I really enjoyed going there because it was quite interesting.  Daddy spent most of his time taking photos, we did drawings in our notebooks and had lots of pictures taken of us!  I thought it was a bit annoying when people took my photo and didn't ask. 

I need to get on with my Hanaman story now so bye!

Metromania

End of week one and we're still here, alive, together, intact and continent. Wolfmum has just informed me that 30-70% of visitors here will have some form of travellers' diarrhoea within two weeks. So, 6 days to go? Her source? The internationally peer-reviewed and medically respected Lonely Planet guide. So enough of intestines for now....but we did so enjoy hearing on Parentmail that there's threadworm in Year 1 back at home. Cheering news, my friends.

Still in Delhi and enjoying the institutional delights of the YWCA: M's keeping a graph of daily toast consumption alongside the masala/plain omelettes for breakfast. Quieter during the week, or are we just adjusting to being in a city, let alone an Asian one? The children struggle to get to sleep but then the exciting illustrated 'Tales of Hanuman' (thanks Louis) probably doesn't help (with Wolfdad's graphic sound effects). Every night is a sleepover with two beds for three children, so one gets the 'snugglepatch' [Ed. What?!], i.e. is wrapped up at the feet of the other two. And the joy of sleepovers, as every parent knows, is the next day. But tonight they've gone to bed before us - the first brief parental downtime for a while.

The first few days were for getting settled in before Wolfdad went off to see some colleagues at the archives. I've been searching through the dusty old files (and I mean dusty - they fragment alarmingly) at the Survey for a few mornings and have found some useful material. More of that this week. After a few hours I've walked home again across Rajpath with the President's House just about visible if the fog or smog isn't too bad. Then after a morning of homeschool at the Y, we've had lunch and all gone on a modest outing around Delhi: to Lodi Gardens with parakeets and furtive snoggers amidst the tombs; to the National Gallery of Modern Art (watching Anish Kapoor being installed); found a great playground in a fantastically inappropriate location in the middle of six 'lanes' of traffic; to see the latest Harry Potter in Connaught Place (whilst Wolfdad braved the railway station booking office - drat, we're not eligible for the tourist quota anymore - as we're not here on tourist visas - and Indophiles will know what this means...3-tier all the way, m'dears). Over to Wolfmum:

Ok, to set the scene - we're in our 'ante'-room, explosions outside (more fireworks over the Bangla Sahib Sikh temple next door), children gently snoring and coughing (imported from home) and a stream of music off Spotify (technology is amazing, we've spent the evening harking back - M thought Michelle Shocked great but W&L more into wild dancing in their pants to Brimful of Asha)...

I think the idea of this period in the YWCA was for 'gentle acclimatisation' but as an Indian friend commented there is no such thing as a gentle introduction to life here.  Everyone gets exhausted very quickly the minute we step out of the door into the noise and pollution - but has done the metro (the kids and I ride in the ladies' carriage, whilst Wolfdad has had to travel with the men, much more squashed and frantic), jumped in rickshaws, walked the streets of Old and New Delhi and interacted with the many admirers the kids attract, though their patience with the endless requests for more photos at the Red Fort was being challenged yesterday...We try to mix monuments ('work') with parks and off-the-leash time.

Wolfdad did some academic hobnobing (in a small way) last week and L went to a children's bookfair today, came back saying she'd made friends which was good news as YWCA has an 'older' clientele or american yuff groups, who look a lot less clued up than M and L, even W... 

Homeschooling (yes, I am endeavouring to attend to the little darlings' educational needs) - we do something every day (well weekdays) and it's been a mixed bag of wild success (Wolfdad walked into all 3 painting still lives of indian fruit, listening to Bach!!!) and horror - L telling me that I'm not a proper teacher, and know nothing compared to Mrs Smith (I realise this, but thanks anyway L).  I am getting braver - can cross big roads with 2 children, working up to 3 - this may not sound impressive, but the traffic does not give way to pedestrians, maybe will swerve to avoid you, but will not slow down, even if you are on a 'pedestrian crossing'.

We're here another week and then to Udaipur in Rajasthan for two weeks. All going as well as expected at this stage, better in some places. Is there nothing M won't eat here? Bananas. And she refuses pointblank for any of us to enter McD's even when W said he's tired and would like chips. M says it's not proper food, and by 'proper' she means biryani, tandoori roti and shahi paneer - at the very least, if not a double egg chicken tikka kathi roll. Good girl.

Ok, love to all. Time to sleep and dream of Albion.

Day 2, 21st November, YWCA Blue Triangle, New Delhi

We wrote this earlier this week but had to cut and paste it once wireless established.
Photos still challenging - we're working on it.

Namaskar! The distant sound of traffic, parakeets, horns and the occasional bang drifts into our room at the YWCA. The day after our early morning arrival in Delhi and we’re slightly less fazed by jetlag, and revived by toastbutterjam and pizza. Yesterday afternoon we walked down the road and through a few back lanes to Connaught Place: good practice at crossing New Delhi’s wide streets and the wild traffic, alarming for the uninitiated. Modern India transformed by the arrival of western conveniences such as air-conditioned coffee shops (with caffeine) and Pizzahut. The streets and constant buzz (and bangs) of the street are enough for the children to start with as we adjust to all being here. We look up and there are kites in the sky, just like home, though many more; and scruffy pigeons sit on the window sill hoping to hop through the window past the mosquito nets. But the screetch and flash of green as parakeets swoop from the trees are new. Late November and the hazy sun makes the days a warm 25 degrees by midday but it cools at night.

Kids good travellers so far: lots of smiles for the three of them complete with back packs and Harriet/Holly/Max cuddlies.  The older 2 stayed awake on the plane watching videos on demand and then L crashed out in the taxi oblivious to monkeys, cows, crazy traffic.  Last 24 hours as predicted: everyone a bit wierded out – M by shoeless children, L by time difference (up reading Horrid Henry at 4am) and W by unfamiliar food.  However, team spirit high –  all camping out in one YWCA room with a second room and bathroom ensuite – and learning how to brush teeth without using the tap water and trying to be a bit more pro-active about handwashing …

M: We went on an auto-rickshaw. Every time we swerved past a corner it felt like it would tip over because it tipped over to one side. When we almost back at the hotel when saw a huge temple all lit up with strings of light. It looked amazing!

This morning, after breakfast which was toast omelette and chips! Yes I know I said CHIPS!   We went outside and saw a banana tree growing in its local habitat. Then up in the branches we saw a green parakeet!  

L: This morning I am getting ready for my Christmas show which is Room-on-a-Broom, and at the end there is a really crazy sheep. It is changed a little bit. I have written a script. On the aeroplane I couldn’t go to sleep so I listened to stories and music. Last night I couldn’t get to sleep because of all the fireworks and bangs, and the cars. It is quite hot. Yesterday we went for a walk and we saw squirrels, birds and lots of stray dogs. Today we are going out to a restaurant and we might have dal and rice and chappatis - yum.

W: I liked the thing we went on when we all got squashed [the autorickshaw]. It’s sometimes hot and sometimes cold. Sleeping was the best with Mum.