A chota-peg of gin at the club?

Leaving Darjeeling, April 15^th 2011

Bags are packed for next 2 days of travelling onwards – jeep to Bagdogra, flight to Delhi, overnighter at Y’s in Delhi and then early BA flight back to GB...It’s early still here – dawn is freshly pastel outside.  The jeep drivers 7 flights below are chatting and yelling to each other.

We had a wet final day in Darjeeling yesterday.  The unseasonal weather we bring to the places we travel!  Having tried to go to the Post Office and Bazaar, we found both closed, due to the Assembly or local elections that are taking place.  Loud megaphoned political messages (a free Gorkhaland or at least separate State status is universally desired here) were being broadcast across the town yesterday and large rallies were happening down at the bus stand, with significant police presence.  We walked further downhill to the Botanic Gardens, dreading the walk back uphill with our achey limbs - “Oooooh, my knees” as Miss Cow might say - after the trekking excesses.  The Botanic Gardens are another vestige of the British presence here – fabulous trees, rock gardens, orchid houses and hot houses full of flowers, all lovingly maintained. 

Throughout this region, we’ve been really struck by the gardening – banks of marigolds, pansies, geraniums - flowers outside almost every house and the efforts to reduce rubbish seem heroic in comparison to other areas of India we’ve visited (Bins!  A strong pro-environment conservation message!  An effective ban on plastic bags!) However, toilets...I think my worst toilet of the trip award goes to the Botanic Gardens public toilets. Fortunately we’ve all perfected a no-touch, backing in carefully approach to the use of lavs in India by this stage in the game and that the hand gel has lasted till now. WD says the fact that it’s taken till now to find a truly disgusting toilet shows that India is making progress in some directions.  I disagree and say that we’ve purposefully avoided the grimmest establishments with the children and that our expectations have been pretty low from the outset.

Walking back uphill, of course we got caught by another storm and ended up sheltering in another dark teashop (exacerbated by the inevitable power cut), drinking cups of chai with other wet individuals and schoolboys eating samosas.  I think it would be hard to imagine, from an English perspective, the number of people (I counted at least 17) who can pack into one of these establishments, cramming onto benches and stools in a space maybe 6 foot square, along with the gas rings, hot oil and candles...

Eventually the storm cleared and the sun came out and the mountains loomed out of nowhere, magically and in complete crystal clarity.  The children were determined to spend their last rupees at the tourist stalls along the street next to our hotel – a very little pocket money (or rather bet winnings) has gone a long way here.  We’re amused by how different they are in their purchasing – M has bought yak knit wear, L has bought a Chinese-made (oh the tragic irony!) Tibetan solar-powered prayer wheel and W a metal Sun God image....And then we were allowed to go up to Observatory Hill, the highest point in Darjeeling and a shared Hindu/Buddhist holy place.  The prayer flags were so thick that there was barely a view to see.  There were some aggressive-looking Macaque monkeys (with posters warning of monkey trouble) demanding chapatis with menaces and the WPs were keen not to spend our last few days in India sourcing Rabies vaccine, so we beat a hasty retreat.

WD had promised me a drink at the Club (or at least the Windermere Hotel, “The best colonial hotel in the world” according to the Sunday Times) for our last family night in India.  Amazingly they let us in – on another occasion in our past lives pre-children, WM and WD were bundled out through the kitchens of a similar establishment in another hill station, to prevent us from sullying the atmosphere for a private party.  Anyway it was funny to sit on the chintz sofas watching the sun set on Darjeeling and on our trip, toasting ourselves with huge gins and ginger ale (for the children).  The hotel was a complete time capsule but artfully uncontrived – the fusty interior décor reminiscent of grandparents’ decaying sitting rooms, with photos of am-dram and Christmas meals of the past.  No one was playing the upright piano in Daisy’s Music Room sadly, and we endeavoured to explain a gramophone to the children.  We arrived as the afternoon tea (bone china and cake under a net cover) was being cleared up by a woman in black and white Agatha Christie maid’s attire.  Quite who stays in this immaculate piece of nostalgia (for $300 per night and up) is unclear – based on our observations, rich Indians from Bangalore and Japanese tourists.

I can hear the children waking up next-door (W fell asleep into his macaroni cheese last night). 6 O’clock Indian time = 1.30 am GMT.  I’m anticipating some tricky adjustments, and not just our internal clocks, when we get home.  Bear with us.  We’re really excited to be coming home (Keith!) but the last 5 months have transformed our ‘normal’, as we’ve adjusted to travelling as a family and being in India, and we’re simultaneously really sad that this Special Time (aka WD’s Sabbatical) is drawing to a rapid close.

We're going on a bear hunt (Remix)

[with apologies to Michael Rosen]

We came up with this whilst trekking....

We’re going on a bear hunt,

We’re going to catch a Himalayan mountain bear,

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-Oh! A bamboo jungle!

Can’t go over it, can’t go under it,

We’ll just have to go through it (and make some walking sticks whilst we’re here)!

Stumble-trip, stumble trip!

We’re going on a bear hunt

We’re going to catch a Sloth bear

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-Oh!  A hail storm!

We can’t go under it and we can’t go over it and we can’t really go through it

So we’ll have to sit in a tea shop and wait for it to finish!

Bang-bang-bang-bang (on a tin roof)!

We’re going on a bear hunt

We’re going to catch a black bear,

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-Oh!  A raging mountain stream!

We can’t go under it and we shouldn’t go through it as we don’t have waterproofs

So we’ll just have to jump over it!

Splashity-splash! Splashity-splash!

We’re going on a bear hunt

We’re going to catch a red panda

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-Oh!  A cute shivery puppy lost in the storm!

We can’t leave it behind

So we’ll have to take it with us!

Yippety-yap, yippety-yap!

We’re going on a bear hunt

We’re going to catch a tiger (we’ve run out of native bear species)

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-Oh!  Kanchenjunga!

Can’t go over it (it’s a holy mountain); can’t go under it!

We’ll just have to climb round

Pant, pant, pant, pant! Whinge, whinge whinge! How much further?

We’re going on a bear hunt

We’re going to catch a leopard cat

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-Oh! A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

We can’t go round it

We’ll have to go in to turn the prayer wheels!

Clang-clang-clang-clang

We’re going on a Bear hunt,

We’re going to catch a clouded leopard

We’re not scared (or prepared)!

Uh-oh!  A land fall!

Can’t go over it, can’t go under it,

We’ll just have to climb round it very carefully!

Smash, smash, smash (watch out for your heads!  Another boulder’s falling!) CRASH!

We’re going on a bear hunt,

We’re going to catch a panther

We’re not scared (or prepared)

Uh-oh!  What’s that?

1 wet nose, 2 shaggy ears, 1 fluffy tail –

IT’S JANAKI THE PUPPY!

Quick she’s chasing us and she’s going to LICK YOU -

Smash, smash, smash, CRASH!

Clang, clang, clang

Pant, pant, pant, whinge, whinge, whinge, ARE WE NEARLY THERE?

Yippety-yap, yippety-yap

Splashety-Splish, splashety-splish

Bang-bang-bang-bang (on a tin roof)

Stumble-trip, stumble-trip!

Quick – back to the lodge, under the covers with a hot water bottle...

Too late – she’s jumped on top of me-

LICK LICK LICK!

Others, guess what?

Darjeeling, 14^th April 2011

WM: So we’re back from our trekking adventure – aching of calf and gluteal muscles, extremely stinky (somehow wearing the same pants continuously, sleeping in your day clothes and not washing in the freezing water makes sense at high altitude), and extremely tired but happy.  We found W anxiously squeezing his quads yesterday, saying, “These things, mum, they’re getting TOO big!” – have we been over-exercising our poor little boy?  The WPs inevitably wished to have walked further, higher, for longer but are so grateful to our children that they are tough and adaptable enough to have made it up the Himalayas on foot aged 4, 7 and 9 at all, not something we’d have imagined possible earlier in the trip.  Respect.

WD and WM had had some qualms about the trek – are we negligent parents (beyond even the negligence of bringing the children to India in the first place?) to take the children up into the mountains, carrying our essentials and kit?  And it was the lack of kit, in particular waterproofs, that worried us.  You are required to take a guide to enter the National Park – and there are multiple trekking companies that offer various packages (including the ‘Indian’ option of jeeping you up the track to the highest point – never, ever walk when there’s motorised transport available).  Our trekking company lent us down jackets (WD was sceptical, but we ended up wearing them every day so they were essential), but we only had one pair of child-size waterproof trousers (a bequest from George) to see us through any potential wet weather.  As it turned out, our guide, Navin, had an accurate sense for imminent precipitation and would steer us to the nearest tea shack for shelter and would then need some serious encouragement to let us back out into the slackening rain, even after we’d explained that we are British and used to being rained on... Navin had also brought his younger brother, Nitish, along for a post-exam ‘treat’, but I think mostly as an extra pair of hands in case children or bags needed a carry.  Both of them were very sweet and gentle with the children, considerate of their pace (more than the WPs maybe?) and it was great for there to be alternative adults for the children to walk and talk with.  It’s really noticeable how good and involved young men in India are with kids – something that’s become almost culturally unacceptable, or at least deeply suspicious, in the West which has to be a loss.   

So, trusting luck and in the spirit of adventure, we left on Monday and took a car over some very rutted roads to a further staging post than the standard trail head (thereby avoiding a steep 800 m climb at the outset), although we did wonder which of us would be the first to vomit as we did hairpin bend after hairpin bend along juddery roads. We had to stop at various security points to fill in passport details – WD launched into massive self-explanation when the officer queried his research visa and how long we’d been in India (it turned out he was actually a forestry officer and a history graduate and was simply interested).

Having arrived at a very isolated and bleak corrugated shack-village (Dhotrey), we had some tea and cabbage momos (tasty) to set us up for the walk and walked out into sunny woods.  We’ve hit the end of the rhododendron season at this altitude – but you still see the odd tree flowering or magnolia, but it feels very strange to see these cultivated ‘garden’ plants in their wild setting.  Lots of flowering bamboo too – useful for cutting campaign walking sticks (a big stick is essential to W’s enjoyment of any hike).  We got quite sweaty climbing up through the woods, or ‘jungle’ as Navin referred to it, and stripped off layers down to T-shirts and replaced woolly hats with sunhats.  We failed to spot much wildlife - Black bears, Himalayan newts, Clouded leopards and Red Pandas are among the various endangered species of the region.  Maybe that was lucky, because I am now so enamoured by the fluffy Red Panda (there’s something about their tails and the way they lie around on branches with their tongues sticking out, looking like overfed cats) that I would have been seriously tempted to pop one in my pack to illegally smuggle it home.  We did however meet lots of gorgeous cows wandering along the same paths, with alpine bells jangling, grazing on bamboo.

WD: Climbing above the tree-line, we arrived at Tumlu (3070m), a windswept hilltop that made us very pleased that we’d brought the extra jackets.  We quickly put back all the layers we’d shed on the way up and extra to eat our packed lunch at the ‘summit’.  The border with Nepal is simply marked by a concrete block at the summit with Bharat (India) and Nepal written on each side: instead of wired fences and guards there are just a few brightly-coloured prayer-flags fluttering in the wind.  No immigration, no security – and for the next few days, we repeatedly casually crossed the international border without any drama or visas. The children realised that in a week, they will have been in 4 different countries (Cambodia, Thailand, India and Nepal).  How decadent is that!

We stayed in the small Nepali village of Tumling, in one of the two guest-houses on this trekking route; there were only about another ten houses in total along with a cowshed. Our lodge (run by the local school teacher) had a huge kitchen and adjoining living room where the night’s trekkers congregated to eat, try the Tibetan beer from a wooden tankard, and dry their socks by the fire, with a few dogs and a cat with frost-bitten ears for additional company. Our room was suitably basic: there were plenty of heavy quilts both to pad the hard beds, with hot water bottles and even the option of a very smoky fire in our room to really keep us cosy.

We woke before dawn on both days at around five o’clock hoping the sky would be clear enough to see the distant mountains in Sikkim: we were lucky on our final day. The WPs watched the dawn sun gradually light up the snowy peaks of Kanchenjunga while the dead-tired wolflings slept on.

On our first night, a large party of non-walking Calcuttans were staying in the bunk-room above us.  Our guide was very worried and warned them to be quiet and not to disturb us!  He had been to Calcutta once, and disliked the shouting and money-making.  The other trekkers included seven young Czechs, who disgusted M by the amount they smoked, a party of four Britishers fresh from a Cambridge choir tour of West Bengal, and an American couple of teachers fleeing their home in Bangkok during the Thai New Year festival.  L had an independent time sitting on a stool in the busy, smoky kitchen podding peas with Tibetan grannies and chatting to a French group and anyone else who was happy to listen to her tales. The food was plentiful and fortifying – fried Tibetan bread and porridge for breakfast and soup, egg curry, aloo-gobi and dal, plus the exciting extra of tinned fruit salad and custard for supper.  Staying a second night meant we realised the menu repeats every night as almost nobody stays more than one night...

Everyone else was walking on along the well-marked path, reminiscent of a Roman road and rumoured to have been laid by the British across the hills to Sandakhpu, the highest point on the trail at 3600m where on a good day you can see Everest and other peaks in Tibet, Nepal, India and Bhutan. This stretch was too long to contemplate with the children and would have entailed at least two or three extra days’ trek (which the WPs would have loved). So we stayed another night in Tumling and, after a brief excursion to watch part of a day-long yajna (sacrifice) at the village temple, we set off for the next village of Joibari. The path ran either side of a low ridge marking the border, so we had a choice of rhododendron and bamboo woods in India or open hills (Nepal). No sign of large furry mammals but we watched some eagles circling high above; though they may have been the vultures we saw landing to feed the following day.

The sunny morning gradually turned grey and we reached Joibari before the rain started. We imagined we were staying for a brief cup of tea while the shower passed, little realising quite how many hours we would be sitting in a dark room watching the rain and hail outside. And what rain! The storm was right overhead for some of the time: great flashes of forked lightning, rumbling thunder and a torrent of floodwater down the muddy street. Noodles for lunch at 11.30 didn’t appeal much but they were very welcome at 1.30 when we were still trapped inside. Cows and sheep ran down the road looking for shelter, and two shaggy goats wandered in to get dry in our teashop (and were very cross when I dragged one out by the horns). After an hour sitting around a fire in a wheel hub, we were joined by about twenty Nepali school children who were on some sort of expedition, who abandoned their shattered umbrellas outside and flooded in, slipping on the piles of hail stones outside, giggling and passing round the brandy for ‘internal warming’. We felt quite well-prepared for bad weather by comparison with their flip-flops and shirt sleeves. The regular cups of tea were very nice. Less good was the location of the much-needed toilet, a small locked shack the wrong side of the flash flood.

WM: Amidst all this, M emerged from an excursion to the kitchen with two, month-old, quivering puppies that had appeared on the back doorstep, more waifs seeking shelter from the storm.  She stuffed them down her down jacket and intensively mothered them.  Quite how ‘lost’ they were remains a debatable question (Were we, in fact, puppy traffikers?  “These foreigners turning up with their gortex and misplaced compassion, stealing our Nepali puppies – it’s outrageous!”).  But they were undeniably cute and Navin decided to take one with us as he likes dogs and was quite happy to add another to his 3 at home already.  He let us name them – WD came up with Parvati and Janaki, daughters of Nepal and the mountains.  M was delighted (though sad to leave one behind), although less excited by the responsibility of clearing up after the puppy.  There’s a campaign gathering momentum for a puppy when we return home.  In the meantime, W is still definitely my little pup:  unreliable toileting, an eagerness for snacks and a wet nose are canine features that spring to mind.

W: We found a dog.  It was a puppy.  And what was her name?  Her name was Janaki.  And when I runned, she runned after me and she licked us.  She licked M and L on their faces.  And mummy, she did dog torture on WD – she held dad’s hands, whilst she (the dog) licked his face.  And she had a box as her kennel.  The dog was a her.  The puppy drinked milk.  The big dogs runned after her.  Bulls Eye (another puppy at the Lodge) runned after her.

And one side of the mountains was India and one side was Nepal.  And Nepal had snow, well it was like snow but it was made of hail stones.  We made Mount Everest out of snow.

We walked a long way.  And then it started raining.  When it quietened down, and was still raining, we still went for it.  The worst thing about trekking was most of the days it rained. 

I liked going trekking because we made up a Bear Song – M, and L and WM and me.  [WM: I will publish this as an adjunct to the blog]

WD: We were quite relieved that Navin organised a jeep-ride back along the road as the rain and flooding had made it treacherous. Not that the ride was a delight on the very bumpy track in hideous weather, even in a Land Rover with legend, ‘The English Rover Yum-Yum’ emblazoned across the front.

WM: Yes, I had to have faith in British engineering, perched on the front seat (with W sleeping across my lap – how?) lurching up the track in four wheel drive.  The visor windshield was steamed up with condensation and our driver obviously didn’t believe in (or they weren’t working) windscreen wipers to see through the driving rain and sleet, so it was guesswork where exactly we were relative to the edge of the track and the precipice.  But it was the right call, however terrifying, as the storm rumbled around the mountain tops right to nightfall, and we felt for the soggy walkers finally making it up to the trekking lodge, dispirited after a first day’s walk from Hell.  Despite not doing much walking, it had been an amusing day of adventures, interesting animal and people encounters and extreme weather in a startling beautiful place.  It’s been hailing and stormy in these parts for a part of almost every day over the last fortnight – which is very unusual for this time of year – ‘a depression in the Bay of Bengal’, global warming, the Wolfgang effect, who knows?

Day 3 in the mountains brought a decent dawn – for those of us able to get up to see it – but the day swiftly clouded over and by 11 was hailing again.  It was a 14 km downhill hike back to the trail head along the ‘standard’ path, with plenty of opportunities to dawdle looking at holy spots – water prayer wheels and shrines, stupas and prayer flags flapping in the emptiness, and popping into a Buddhist monastery to check out the 108 Buddhas and divine beings arranged in a pyramid (WD is on shaky ground with his Tibetan Buddhist iconography and is unable to satisfactorily answer my queries about who the Buddha or bodhisattva at the apex is – although he is the embodiment of detachment hence his complete indifference to the naked woman wrapped around him).  We are convinced that this 14 km is ‘as the crow flies’ (rather than the zig-zagging down and down that we were actually doing) as WD and I felt we were all making good progress only to be told we’d covered a mere 3 km in 2 hours...

Janaki chased the children down the mountain side on her tiny legs, giving them huge pleasure and motivation to carry on walking.  We sheltered in another tea stall for the worst of the storm (with chickens on this occasion) but this time were insistent that we continue on foot, which was a good call on our part as the sun came out and coming under the cloud into a sunny valley (with another Tibetan monastery) was a delight, despite a killer on the knees descending about 1000 m in a few short kilometres.   The WPs reflect on aging – M skips down the hill, we notice new creaking in our knees and feet that weren’t there before.  Still, you have to use it (or lose it) – WD pointed out an old Nepali lady porter toting 2 heavy rucksacks up to the attic at our hotel, one on her head, another on her shoulders, without breaking a sweat to make me feel, without question, inadequate.  Everyone was happy to see Maneybhanjang (the trailhead town) coming closer and a car waiting to collect us, but sad that that meant the end of the trek.  It would have been great to keep going – and end up in Sikkhim.  All the children claimed to have had a great time.  M, how did you feel about the trek?

M:  I feel extremely proud of myself because I can feel that I walked for 3 days in the Himalayas, but I’m tired and achey.  I want to do it again, only for 6 days and 5 nights next time.  I wouldn’t mind doing it with my parents but not with the smaller ones, because they limited how far we went.

WD: But if we did this again, even W would be bigger and able to walk as far as you can now?  Do you know this is the first time we can remember really physically wearing you out? 

M:  I’ve had 2 nights’ good sleep and I’m much less weary now.  I think I’ll remember best going to Joibari and having that massive hail storm.  I’ve always wanted a puppy, but I’d like one even more now.

WD: And L, what did you think?

L:  Daddy, it was great fun.  I liked having Janaki having around, so we could play with her and run with her and watch her little legs.  I didn’t like her fighting with the bigger dogs or them stealing her food.  I think she gave me fleas as me and Dad have got really itchy bites on our backs and our bottoms and they’re not mosquito bites for sure.  I liked feeling that I was in the mountains, but whenever mum and dad woke up really early to see the summits, I couldn’t wake up and I stayed in bed.

The Shikkar Lodge was really fun because there were nice people who gave Janaki milk and there was a nice roaring fire near the kitchen. 

When we got back, we were really, really tired and our legs ached a lot.  We went out for a really good pizza and then ate cookies as well.  I was hungry all the time when we were walking and we had to have lots of snack breaks. 

WD:  We gave all of ourselves a big physical challenge and we all (even the WPs) did just fine. Somehow mountain air, high vistas and lots of activity just fills you with a sense of wellness. Let’s do it again.  It’s been a tremendous finale to the trip standing on top of the world with you all, looking out at some of the highest mountains in the world.  The landscape was wild and empty which was a satisfying contrast to much of our subcontinent experience, and mountain culture and values seem happily different to the mainstream.

Beware of wolves in puffa jackets

Darjeeling, 9^th April 2011

WM: So, I’ve just done a Tesco’s order for next Saturday (when we’ll arrive home).  How bizarre to be contemplating sliced bread and cat food from here...

We’ve also survived a mammoth hail-storm.  The skies went black, there was 30 minutes’ hail (up to the size of big marbles) drumming down deafeningly onto the corrugated iron roofs with growling thunder and streaks of lightning.  We sheltered under the awning of a Tibetan Handicrafts shop, watching those braver than ourselves run up or down the road (by now a minor river) – monks in flip-flops, porters leaning far forward, carrying gas canisters and sofas uphill with the weight supported on their foreheads, old men with deftly rolled up trousers and pink umbrellas, boys throwing handfuls of the icy hail, like snow balls at each other - and the market stall holders buttoning up their plastic sheeting fronts to protect their wares. 

The storm broke just as we’d signed up for a 3 day trek higher up in the mountains starting on Monday.  We’ve been loaned some fantastic 80s down jackets (M looks like some über-cool, retro-chic fashionista in hers*, the rest of us just don’t and WD is having delusional itching already, thinking too much about body lice) and I’ve bought the kids all yak wool hats with ear flaps and daft plaits.  I’ve just tucked them up in bed and they’re still wearing their woolly hats, looking ridiculously like the dwarves of ‘The Hobbit’ (M is Thorin, L Boffur, W Fili, WD the Hobbit and WM Gandalf, they’ve decided). *M disagrees fiercely.

Darjeeling is about 2200 m high.  We know we are up in the hills but haven’t really seen much of the higher peaks as the weather has been cloudy, though sunny, and visibility pretty poor since we arrived.  It’s been great to wear tights and jumpers and vests again (there had to be a point to carrying these through the heat of the plains) – though WD and M are somewhat less convinced.  Maybe it’ll aid re-acclimatisation to British weather? WM loves Raj hill stations.  My forebears knew how to enjoy themselves – drinking gin (or nimbu pani for the children), playing snooker, idling on benches and pedestrianized promenades, trips to the botanic garden, gymkhana pony-riding , painting watercolours, taking tea at the Planters’ Club – much of which can still be done today... New variants can also be seen – public school year-offers skateboarding in Chowrasta, the main square, and the availability of really quite good pizza spring to mind. 

On a fine day, Kanchenjunga (India’s highest peak, the world’s third highest) can be seen from town – and even Everest from certain vantage points – but we’ve seen nothing.  Conversely, there are moments when you look down, and the mountainside just falls away vertically beneath you right down to the valley, over tea plantations, and you can’t quite believe a town can manage to balance on this ridge.  Walking around, you pass cottages with pots of geraniums and primulas brightening their windows, grander timber-framed mock Tudor houses with wisteria around the door, as well as the bazaars (selling everything from trekking socks, to mini prayer-wheels, to underwear and umbrellas).  The central square is a delight: pony rides, the Oxford bookshop, Gorkha flags and statues of local heroes, corncobs cooked on charcoal, a people-watching fest...Happy dogs catnap in sunny spots – they are fluffier, look better fed and a bit more wolf-like, and seem to smile - perhaps prefer they prefer the climate or are better cared for here than elsewhere we’ve been in India?  The people look really different too, with their beautiful round faces, flat cheeks and black hair, nose rings and ready smiles. Tibetan grannies sit and chat on benches in their distinctive stripy aprons, passing prayer beads through their fingers.  We are staying on the 7^th floor of our hotel (in the attic), so even making it to our room provides a strenuous aerobic work-out and WD and my calves ache after several days of climbing up and down hills.  Maybe you need to live here to develop the stocky legs of the local school girls and the stamina of the old ladies carrying heavy bags up the steepest of inclines?

We’ve pottered around town, enjoying the more relaxed atmosphere of the place (hill people are different), and the days here are beginning to merge together, although there’s a terrible, rather oppressive sense of finality knowing that we’ll be back home (barring unforeseen eventualities) this time next week.  Interestingly, we’ve found a limit to our capacity for sitting in genteel teashops. Remember this is still India, so since Independence, the teashops have morphed into more Indian affairs, with added ‘features’ like mirrored ceilings, loud stereos playing Bryan Adams and bad fry-ups - oh yes, you can get sausages of a kind here - for the hungry foreign trekkers and domestic tourists that flock here.  But despite the beans on toast and large jammy buns, sadly they do not come close to Cambodian cafés.  L&W also get really fidgety and, unless they can find alternative distractions (like disabled ladybirds for instance), will set about breaking glassware and fighting with each other for entertainment.  However, I shouldn’t worry, having read the (Bengal) Telegraph’s report of a recent (Cambridge) study of sibling rivalry which apparently concluded that sibling fighting was highly effective at developing social and life skills, often giving 2^nd children a healthy advantage in the popularity stakes. Hmmm. Maybe we should be encouraging them? 

The nicest times have been walking in or out of town.  One day, we rode the toy train (with a mini diesel engine, not the tourist steam special) to Ghoom, the highest point on the track, 5 miles or so from Darjeeling.  It was great fun, the track running alongside the cart road, and coming within centimetres of people’s homes and shops, pedestrians waving to the children and never far from the vertiginous drop.  W had a fantastic time hanging out at the station whilst we bought tickets, playing trains on the tracks (with warnings not to try this at home), watching the steam engines stoking their engines, shunting carriages and showering us with lumps of ash.  There’s a small museum in Ghoom, since the Railway was accorded World Heritage status (the children were ticking off the World Heritage sites/sights they’ve visited since we’ve been away and we’ve not done so badly) – but there’s a plea to ‘erstwhile masters and past employees’ to return memorabilia to the museum.   And then we walked back to our hotel with a detour to see a Buddhist monastery along a quiet road, lined by homes perched on the steep incline, prayer flags, the odd stupa and Shiva shrine, back into town.

Our hotel (the Hotel Dekeling) is jolly nice – a rambling, wood panelled delight over multiple floors, run by an extended and very hospitable Tibetan family.  We have an amazing, literally birds’-eye view of the town from our gabled attic rooms.  It’s warm and cosy – with sofas and a wood burner in the communal living room, hot water bottles and thick bed quilts, Buddhist art and pictures of the Dalai Lama – if a bit noisy because of its central position, so you wake early to appreciate dawn breaking, myna birds on the roof, ‘Tibetan dormice’ (aka big fat Indian mice) scuttling around in the roof space and George, a frenzied four year old from Liverpool, who terrifies and appeals to W in equal measure.   There are a good assortment of other folk staying, mostly older – including a frightening trio of English ‘ladies’ who we imagine to be the matron, Latin mistress and retired Physical Education teacher of some upstanding institution, and they terrify us all collectively with their archaic and forthright language (they do not shy from describing a child as ‘odious’ and ‘frightful’ for instance – not about one of ours I hasten to add). 

I had a scary few moments when W disappeared yesterday.  He was with us in our room and then he wasn’t.  We got more frantic as we realised he wasn’t hiding anywhere, wasn’t in George’s room, wasn’t in the communal living area, wasn’t in the toilet – where was he?  Having raced down the 7 flights of stairs, I finally found him sitting right at the bottom of the stairs chatting to the waiters who work in the ground floor restaurant.  He’d thought we were going out right then and would follow him downstairs; we thought we were getting ready to go out in 10 minutes or so, not imminently... He’d heard us shouting to him, but said he was too busy talking to the waiters to answer and he didn’t seem in the slightest perturbed – of course, he wouldn’t have gone out on the street by himself... Anyway, all was well – no need for panic (although of course we did) - and hopefully we’ll still make it home with the right number of children.

10^th April 2011

A further hail storm and complete grey-out this afternoon – although when we woke, it was clear and sunny and we could see snow-tipped mountains in the far distance for the first time which was amazing.

M: Today we went to a zoo. As everyone knows I hate zoos, but given that this is a recommended zoo (because of the conservation work it does in India) so I went along with it.  We were first met by a huge cage with macaws, pheasants and African grey parrots (the ones that can learn to talk really well), then we moved on to the lesser animals section. My favourite animal there was the red panda.  We saw lots of them: they were up in the trees, on branches and in bird boxes.  Then we went to see the deer and the blue sheep. We saw samba deer which were really big and I was glad they were a good distance away from the tiger (samba deer are tigers’ favourite food).  I liked the Himalayan wolves too because they looked wonderful with their furry yellow-white coats in the sun.  Then we went to the big cats’ enclosures.  We saw a very unhappy leopard who was pacing up and down in boredom and we saw a black panther with warts on its neck, who also was pacing.  We saw a clouded leopard and a snow leopard.  The zoo has successfully bred snow leopards in captivity when no one else in the world has managed this.  I think this is because of the altitude of the zoo which is similar to their normal habitat.

We also went to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute.  I found out that Tenzing Norgay [who lived here] was one of the two men who first climbed Everest.  I liked their model of a crevasse.  They also had a Himalayan Range model, and you pushed buttons and it lit up to show you where particular mountains and rivers were.  I want to learn to climb as well as learn to scuba dive. 

I’m looking forward to going trekking in the mountains.  I hope we see Mount Everest as we trek over the border to Nepal.  I love walking so I can’t wait to begin our trek tomorrow morning.  We need to buy lots of snacks like dried fruit and cheese straws and chocolate.

WM:  So we’re leaving to go trekking for 3 days/2 nights tomorrow morning along the Singalila range. Still not sure if this is a splendid or completely dumb finale to the trip.  The children really wanted to walk and sleep out after enjoying the trek in Mount Abu.  But we’ll be much higher and the weather more erratic, so we’ll see...L promises to hold my hand and encourage me when I start to whinge and to try and motivate me, rather than telling me I'm a complete failure for the rest of my life if I can't do it (her first idea). Whether or not it’ll just tantalise the WPs as a truncated taster of the full 5-7 day trek, or completely finish us off, time will tell.  But it felt important to finish this adventure with another adventure.  I need to pack again.  We need to tell Harriet, Holly and Max that there’s no room in the ruck sacs for them – will they cope?  WD and the children are finishing watching Tomb Raider (obviously for the Angkor shots)  and say I need an outfit like Lara Croft’s tight body suit with fur-lined cape in Siberia for trekking. They are destined for disappointment I think.

You know you're back in India when....

Darjeeling, Gorkhaland, 7^th April 2011

You know you’re back in India when:

On arrival at an international airport, you’re picked up from the plane in a decrepit, ancient bus and dumped in a damp terminal where bags make it onto the baggage collection carousel one at a time over the course of an hour (but they do make it).

You wonder if there’s going to be problems with re-entry on our complex visas but the immigration official’s manner softens and he agrees that a holiday in the mountains is a good plan.

There’s a headline in the newspaper: ‘The Baba is critical’.

The pastry and samosa on the shelves in the airport café look very similar to the ones that were there when we left a fortnight ago.

When we refused to get in one particular taxi, its wing and the bonnet repaired with string and paper-mâché, after what looked like a recent head-on, our concerns are countered with protestations of ‘It’s not a problem – all the taxis are like this!’

The insanity of the interweaving manic city traffic, with a near miss at every junction, comes back anew. [I love a notice board in Darjeeling: ‘Obeying road rules is a mark of a civilised society, animals only are exempt. You decide’, but the children preferred a different road safety slogan, ‘Better to arrive in peace, than in pieces’]

Horns.  All day and night. Continuously.

There’s a semi-naked sadhu with his trident being pulled along in a rickshaw next to you.

You walk round bodies (sleeping?) on the pavement.

Loud Americans insist that Indians just don’t get solitude.

W’s cheeks are sore from pinching again.

You spend a whole afternoon in a railway waiting room on time-lapse setting.

The children begging on the street look hungry and malnourished but there’s an epidemic of obesity among middle-class children.

The tiniest children go off to school in over-size uniforms with smart oiled plaits and ribbons with back packs larger than themselves.

It fails to occur to our travelling neighbour not to switch on the central light (and just to use her reading light instead) at 10pm to eat an elaborate and stinky fish curry meal on the train, waking us all up.  Oh and then to make some loud after-dinner calls on her mobile.

Your cough comes back (or is that Bird Flu picked up in Cambodia?).

The sound of hawking (not mine) punctuates the day.

There are three fluffy, dirty-white kitten-cats hanging out on a hot tin roof, pretending to be tigers.

The Victorian ironware is still in use – from park benches to railings to the Toy Train.

There is no flesh on show (except for some cold tummy rolls under a sari-cardi combo and the chunky calf muscles, between school skirts and white pull up socks, of hill-walking school girls), not even among the foreigners here, but that could be due to their fleeces and gortex.

They play AC-DCs ‘Highway to Hell’ in genteel tea-shops and have ‘Hotel California’ as a ringtone.

Lovely single-toothed old blokes come up to tell you what a fine profession teaching is, and to let you know how much they appreciate your ancestors’ gift of the railway to Darjeeling.

There are dogs lying around all round town – and we saw one licking a pair of discarded, pooey knickers.

Birthday fun, nothing to be done!

Darjeeling, April 7^th 2011

L: I’m seven! Well, I woke up on a train at 6 am and mum and dad plus W came to sit on my matrasse to say “Happy birthday”.  It felt absolutely bazaar to be seven on a train at 6 am In the morning. We arrived at the staition and were joined by about 12 begger children wanting food and water. So we bought them a packet of Time Pass crackers and a packet of Little Heart biscuits for ourselves because there was no breakfast to be had.

We went to the pre-paid taxi stand but then discided we didn’t want one so the jeep drivers  started crowding around us and saying “you want jeep?” because everyone go’s in jeeps up mountains. We discided that we would have the best jeep and the cheepist jeep.

We started up on the road at alarmingly high speed bumping along and we saw our first sight of the toy train track and then started up the mountain, we were nearly pushed over the side but it only felt like that. We stopped for a break at a trucker’s stop and the three Wolflings had a minute maid squash plus WM and WD had a sugary cup of tea. The next part of the journey was more tedious than ever because we were all soooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired and impaitiont to get there. I crashed out on mum’s lap and that disappeared most of the journey for me.

When I woke up we were practicly in Darjeeling. The traffic is mado and it is very polluted, though not like Delhi.  We arrived at Hotel Dekeling and we had to climb seven flights of stairs, but it was worth it. Our rooms really nice and we’ve got an amazing view of mountainside. On a clearer day you can see the third highest mountain in the world- but we haven’t seen that yet. Also you can see Everest if your lucky at a particular spot.

About 20 minutes after we arrived, we met this four-year old maniac called George who tried to make us eat this weird chicken crisp thingy-me jig. I don’t know why he did this thing to me, George picked me up and dropped me on the lego- which rather HURT! After that I got a bit fed up with George so I went and drew a piture with Holly.  Then I went up to George’s room to play domminos with his mum.

We went to have breakfasty-lunch and I had cornflakes, momos, orange juice, and Tibetan bread.it was yummy and the food came quick.  We opened my birthday presents (mum and dad hadn’t forgotten). They were a travelling hammock, a notebook for writing stories, a marble elephant, a Simpson DVD, some yellow sunglasses, a very special Tibetan scarf, and a Tin-Tin in Tibet comic.  I liked my presents a lot.  The best ones was the Tin-Tin comic and the map and the elephant.

Next we went for a little trundle around town. We saw the post office and a few trekking places and then we went to Café Coffee Day and mum and dad had a coffee (so W could use the toilet as he was desperate). After our walk we went back, watched a bit of Tomb Raider and bounced around a bit more with George.

A few hours later we went out for birthday supper at Glennary’s and I had rice and tandoori chicken and roti. After we had eaten mum went down to the bakery, I didn’t know what she was getting, but...............IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY CAKE (7 muffins with candles)! I shared my cake with everyone, including George, then we went home and went to bed. It was a memorable birthday because I was up in the mountains and it was really different to a normal birthday. Thank you everyone for the birthday emails and texts. I can’t wait till I get home and can see you all. Well better say goodbye. See you soon.

[WM: just factually – we didn’t go for the cheapest jeep and we didn’t nearly fall off the mountainside – and I disagree that Darjeeling’s really polluted because I’m enjoying the mountain air....But it’s lovely to have such a gorgeous and funny and clever seven year old daughter who can write her own blogs!]

Blistering Barnacles

Back in PP, Cambodia, 1^st April 2011

Steamy hot early morning with the fan cutting the humidity...  It’s 6.15 am.  Laura’s gone out for a run (this is for ‘relaxation’, she’s not training seriously for anything at the minute, having done an Iron Man event in New Zealand a few weeks ago but states, only partly in jest, that she won’t get out of bed for anything under a 70 km bike ride...) and Tom similarly has left for a swim before work.  M and the boys are already playing Monopoly, but WD is trying desperately to cling to the edge of sleep after a poor night (too hot, then too cold with aircon on, then too restless, WM having Larium dreams and L complaining about W taking up all of her mattress) W says he ‘was kept awake all night’, but my memory is that he was the one doing the keeping awake (“Mum, mum – are you awake?”)...  Anyway, we’re off to Kampot (far South of Cambodia) in 3 hours, so I need to pack and sort and get ready for more fun, by a river this time...

I visited Laura at work in her clinic yesterday.  She has a busy but interesting work load, practicing a mixture of primary care and ER-type medicine (they have a resus room and receive trauma cases) and has to work much more autonomously, with far less secondary care back-up than at home. The smell of the place (international standard healthcare cleaning fluids) sent me into a minor tail-spin of panic about my return to work after so many months away.  She jokingly tries to recruit me to work here – there’s a need for more female, foreign-trained doctors to cover the expat women and children – but whilst it’s briefly tempting, there are too many good reasons not – but for anybody out there with the relevant qualifications obviously, without children or with pre-schoolers (the figures don’t add up if you’re paying for education here on a locally-recruited, rather than expat-recruited, package), who loves heat, is sick of the NHS reforms and wants an adventure, I can give you Laura’s contact details...

L conversationally told Tom (whilst we were out with them at one of his protected conservation sites, looking for – and seeing – extremely rare Sarus Cranes and Elds Deer) that she’d been in “this type of situation so many times – sitting or squatting - besides a stinky lake” which cracked him up.  So now we know what she thinks we’ve been up to for the last 5 months!

We have a plan to get the children for April Fools’ Day, hatched between us scheming adults:  we’re going to tell the children that there has been an escape from a crocodile farm (there was a craze for farming crocs a few years ago which failed to deliver the anticipated riches – as no one appreciated that feeding the beasts on household waste, keeping them in cramped and over-crowded conditions would not deliver the finest handbag-quality crocodile leather, and locally it’s considered inauspicious to eat the meat, so the only option is to flog it to tourists on the barbeque...) into the river at Kampot, so there are some safety concerns, particularly children swimming.  However, there the crocs don’t much like the taste of sun cream so if you slaver yourself in the stuff, you’ll probably be OK.

Les Manguiers, Kampot, 2^nd April

I am pleased to report complete success, at least with the gullible Wolfgang progeny (Jack looked suspicious), as regards the above plan.  They completely bought it, and we only confessed when L started to get a bit anxious.  Fortunately, it was already well on the way to noon, so there was no opportunity for their revenge – until next year?

I’m lying under a mosquito net staring across a greasy-green limpid river (it’s about a quarter mile to the other bank) through palms, banana fronds and mango trees.  Definitely an Indochine fantasy... (Helen, remember the film with the lovely Catherine Deneuve?) Our cottage on stilts is about 5 metres from a bathing platform and we spent yesterday afternoon bombing and diving into the brackish water, canoeing and swimming idly. There are shoals of tiny jumping fish that skim the surface of the water ahead of you.  L and W were splendidly brave, jumping in from great heights (wearing life jackets for extra buoyancy).  WD and M swam right across and waved from the other side, so I salute them too!  This morning we woke post-dawn to the sound of an armada of squid boats chugging up-river, after a night out fishing at sea.  WD awoke confused – ‘Oh the horror!’ – gunboats on the search for Kurtz?  Choppers? [We ate the fore-mentioned squid with Kampot pepper for supper last night.] 

This is Laura and Tom’s preferred spot for R&R – they come for a weekend every few months - and we can quite understand the attraction.  3 hours from PP - a cluster of small bamboo cottages on stilts in a large garden, a great spot for wild swimming and canoeing with tropical hills rolling down to the river on the opposite bank, fed regularly from a kitchen without a menu or choice for the children to complain about...It’s a few miles out of Kampot, the state capital, and a few miles further from the river mouth and sea and beaches.  We’ve brought Kim San and Poe (some of Laura’s staff) who let Laura know (via us) they’d never been to Kampot, had friends here and would love to come too.  So there’s a definite holiday vibe to the trip, as we all sit down to supper and wine together. 

It’s rest time and W’s announced he wants to stay here forever (I think we all feel like this a bit, 2 nights will just not be long enough...), and please can he have his rest time in canoe? 

W: I learned to canoe in Cambodia.  How I canoe is I have flippers on two sides of a paddle and I went up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down – and I just keeped going till I went where I wanted to.

I’ve got bad scratches on my legs.  And I got them from jumping off one of the steps and I scratched them on the barnacles on the ladder.  They’re really ouchy and they might have healed by the time we come home from India so I might not be able to show you. But they probably won’t...[WM: W was very upset by his wounds and required second and third opinions as to prognosis, but they don’t seem to deter him from more river swimming; only L has escaped barnacle injuries, M has even achieved salt water blisters.]

WM: M and Jack look exhausted with the non-stop outdoor physical activity. Yesterday when we arrived, she wanted to do everything, right now,  and all at once – swim, play ping-pong, climb trees, dive, canoe, explore, play beach volley ball, cycle, supplemented only by bouts of competitive games (Deal Monopoly and Bananagram). We are struck still by their similarities – M absolutely and determinedly keeping up, until collapsing in a heap.  I had to bring her back earlier from the canoe expedition upstream as she was over-heating and tearful and worried about burning her legs in the hot sun - but it takes a great deal to make her submit to downtime or acknowledging any limits.  We’ve planned a boat ride down to a sandbar to look for clams later on this afternoon, but it depends slightly if the gathering storm clouds keep off, as there have been some half-hearted efforts at rain and grumbling distant thunder over lunch.

A short while later and we’re just back from our crazy boat adventure out to a sandbar where the river opens into the sea and you can seemingly walk on water at least from a distance.  Unfortunately, the wind blew harder and the skies grew darker and all the fishing boats seemed to be going in the opposite direction, into port.  By the time we reached the sandbank, there was driving rain and everyone was freezing cold  – so utterly reminiscent of family boating in England.

 L: So I’ve been having lots of fun with Charlie. Our first project was making a football ground.  Then our second project was a dog kennel for Charlie’s strange dog. Our third project was writing a story about Charlie and his strange dog. Kampot was very nice and I liked canoeing. 

We went on this rainy boat ride and we all had to cuddle together to keep warm and we snacked on salted pistachio nuts.  And we all wore really silly life jackets but they helped to keep us warm.  We saw lots of bridges that had been blown up by the Khmer Rouge and now rebuilt and we also saw a squashed jelly fish and a sea urchin on the sand spit and lots of mangroves.  We waved at lots of fishing boats.  When we got back, we needed to wear really warm clothes and drink a hearty hot chocolate.

I’m going to miss Cambodia. I absolutely forgot we were leaving – I thought we were going to have more fun! I don’t want to write any more cos I’m too sad....

Mummy, I think I sleep-walked up to your bed last night. (Explaining the hot little body I had to turf back on to her own mattress in the middle of the night – hmmm)

5^th April 2011, stopping over in Thong Ta Resort and Spa in Bangkok (with a 20% discount on massage and free airport pickup).  We’re so impressed by the functional efficiency of a night’s stop-over in Bangkok, being picked up by a pimped-up minibus with tinted windows, and our ‘resort’ did a marvellous American breakfast - ham and eggs and flayed little boys’ willies (actually artfully chopped frankfurters, but none of us could face them).  The children were fascinated by the kitsch clay figurines in the garden – dogs’ bottoms, gnome-like children and naked ladies straddling ashtrays.  We ate pad thai on the street and showered, stared a lot at the old, ugly European or American guys with much younger Thai wives or carers (there seem a great many),  slept  for a few hours and are now about to jump back on the connecting flight back to Kolkata in half an hour.... 

WM: It’s been great spending time with Laura, Tom, Jack and Charlie over the last fortnight and hearing a bit more about their lives in Cambodia and their insights into the country.  Thank you for being such gracious hosts: sharing your house, your special places and time so freely, despite obviously having way too much on the boil work-wise at the moment.  Thank you boys for tolerating the Wolflings’ invasion of your space and toys.  My children have loved having familiar peers to hang out with after a relatively arid period for child company – and alternative adults to chat at (poor Laura was talked at by W incessantly for 3 hours on one particular journey). And thanks too to Kim San and Poe for all the clothes washing, meals and child entertaining...WD says please can he have Kim San's amok recipe? 

Leaving feels like the cosy security blanket of the Evans’ home being ripped away – and we’re all pining already.  India feels like it’s started again already – Bengalis trying to check in multiple flat screen TVs in the Kolkata queue (oh sorry, chaotic throng) and carry through vast artificial flower bouquets as hand luggage (that just aren't going to fit in the overhead locker anyway you look at it).  Laura and Tom, we’re in awe and can’t wait to hear the next instalment when you drop by in the summer and we’re already scheming a Big Adventure to top the boat trip... 

W:  We met Charlie and Jack’s rabbit and he’s called Daisy [WM: he really is] and there was a guinea pig (I don’t know what its name was).  I kept finding seeds and I kept telling Tom ‘What are they?’ (WM: and they were nearly always mangoes) There were some yellow seeds that came from a flower.  And we found really big helicopter seeds, not little like the ones in Beckley – they were much bigger.  What you needed to do was be up somewhere high and throw them really high and they spinned round and round higher... Tom read us one Dr Seuss we don’t know and it was called ‘5 apples on top of a head’ (or maybe it wasn’t?)

WM: Our minds are definitely turning to return at this stage.  There’s a great deal of distance from here to cover before April 16^th to make it home, not all of it merely geographical.  I’m a bit apprehensive about how it will be to go back to India, after such a wonderful holiday.  L’s 7 in 1 day and that’s an important milestone for us all – and we really hope she’ll have an especially memorable one this year.  I think we’ll be travelling by train and taxi up to the mountains in Darjeeling (assuming the pesky independence movement for West Bengal hill population haven’t closed things down, which they do from time to time) on the day. I arranged a personalised chocolate gateau to be delivered (made by rehabilitated deaf Cambodians locally, of course) whilst we were in Kampot for candles with other kids, because I don’t think I can guarantee that on the day!

L:  My first birthday was quite good, the cake was yummy but it was a bit strange having people I didn’t know so well there but seeing the third highest mountain in the world in the Himalayas on my birthday will be memorable.

WM: But there’s also thoughts of how to make changes (small and larger ones) to the way we live on return – reforms and resolutions suggested by absence and alternative experiences here.  Routines can change, we can live with far less (all of us), and heck, let’s get a canoe! 

Dr Fish and the Blue Pumpkins (Reasons to be cheerful, Part III)

Siem Reap, Cambodia, March 29^th 2011

I’m sitting in a branch of the fabulous Blue Pumpkin Cafe, reclined decorously on a white leather sofa, quaffing a perfect coffee and nibbling at an amazing fruit salad (banana, water melon, dragon fruit and pineapple), listening to world music whilst M and W (wearing his new sunhat – indoors?) companionably write their journals with me. WD has taken L out as his field assistant for the morning. We are watching the comings and goings of Siem Reap street life - pigs riding bareback on motos, Buddhist monks seeking alms, the busy procuring of business for the ‘Healthy Hands’ massage parlour opposite – apparently ‘massage’ here can mean a vigorous and health giving massage, the same with optional extras or overt prostitution, how confusing...  We definitely seem to have reached tourist heaven here in Cambodia….

The contrast with India is profound.   We have already exhausted Tom and Laura’s patience with our constant one-sided comparison score sheet.  So this blog starts with an explicit disclaimer – we do realise our experience is an exceptionally privileged one, based on the inequity of our (relative) economic power and Cambodia’s disadvantage, the superficiality of spending time with expats and in tourist/NGO zones, our conscious switch into holiday mode (WD is wearing an Angkor beer T-shirt in an extraordinary lowering of his standards) and swimwear, and the weariness that accompanies 5 months on-the-go with children in India, however wonderful…

So…

Transport

Autos (even when converted to CNG) in India are noisy, polluting and alarming, whilst the tuk-tuks (trailers on the back of a motorbike) here are quaint, go slow and have plentiful space for a family of 5.  They fill up with petrol out of whiskey bottles at proto-petrol stations, manned by young girls at the side of the forest (when this first happened, I assumed the driver was buying his hooch for the night).  Distances around Angkor are large and tuk-tuks are not fast, so we have spent a big chunk of the last few days rattling for hours on a mission, less good for the WPs’ lower backs.  WD had gone out on a bike for one day, but got extremely sweaty and lost down the long straight roads out of town and around the archaeological park, which didn’t encourage him to repeat the experience.

A minibus ride 5 and a half hours from PP to Siem Reap departs on time, has numbered seats (and people sit in their allocated seats or offer to swap us the ones with extra leg room!), the luggage fits in the boot (well nearly), the driver keeps to schedule with only a 15 minute stop (to drink Khmer coffee with condensed milk and eat lotus heads), we drive in AC comfort without loud music or video entertainment and are provided with lurid coloured sweet buns and water for refreshment.  The bus is spangly clean.  There is a notice clearly banning hand grenades, dogs and durian fruit – and all travellers appear to abide by such manageable dictats. At the bus stop, there are no touts and we are picked up by a fleet of complimentary tuk-tuks to take us to our guesthouse...All of this would be an unimaginable dream in India.

We haven’t travelled truck-class though: you see women stuffed tight into the backs of open trucks in their headscarves travelling back from their shifts at garment factories.

Traffic is relatively busy in cities and along the new National Highways out of PP. We have to remember that it’s coming at us from the opposite direction to home and in India, but it consists of relatively more bikes and 2 wheelers than the car epidemic of Indian cities and seems to move more slowly, so finding an interval to cross is easier.  Horn use is far more reserved – for which I’m deeply appreciative – reflecting the politer, calmer character of these parts?

Noise

Cambodia seems so very tranquil.  It’s an unfair comparison – the entire population here is 11 million (barely 2 million in PP), so the constant pressure for breathing space we’ve experienced in Kolkata due to the sardine density of the city is absent.  Here, I’m aware of just how loud the Wolfgang are – a reversal of the Indian standard.  Except that is when dining in the vicinity of loud American NGO women discussing the men in their lives (bosses and boyfriends):  then I was caught between a grotesque curiosity and desire to interject with my own illuminating wisdom and the urgent need to push a mute button (too much detail). 

There are no packs of wild dogs snarling and scrapping to keep us awake at night.  Domestic animals as well as local wildlife faces a hard time keeping out of a cooking pot or frying pan or barbeque.  Kim San’s (Jack and Charlie’s long-time nanny) dog disappeared and she looks sad when she tells us... Where are the cows, the monkeys, the shit-eating pigs?  Out in the country maybe? Not in the city certainly. 

Laura and Tom complain about the constant noise of construction around their house. PP definitely is a city that is changing week to week: their road was dirt track when they moved in, the old wooden villas of the city are coming down to make way for flat developments (for expats), or rarely renovated with taste and style to become boutique hotels (we enjoyed swimming in the beautiful Villa Lanka garden with its still, green pool). 

 There is a very powerful political elite here, repeatedly voted for by the electorate, perhaps in exchange for the last decade’s stability and relative peace.  The NGOs despair of the human rights abuses (the land rights of the poor, in particular, are trampled) and the limited democracy and impossible corruption and lack of impartial law or effective judiciary.  We hear about the central pressure for a ‘Development’ agenda – meaning shiny modernisation, buying into global capitalism for the wealthy elite, opening up of new markets for foreign companies, ‘creating capacity’ and demand (for what? – anything, it seems), rather than health, education, jobs, food... Longstanding floating villages are evicted to build hotels with river-views, casino resorts are blasted into mountain-sides and ‘concessions’ granted within apparent impunity inside protected National Park areas, vast ports and dams planned, endangering the fishing and estuarine ecology.  I’m reading of similar sagas in India in Arundhati Roy’s ‘Listening to Grasshoppers (Fieldnotes on democracy)’, so these themes are certainly not limited to Cambodia.

People don’t shout: losing your temper will result in a loss of face, so should be avoided at all cost.  People smile as they tell you terrible things (our guide describing the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge at the S21 museum) which is more than disconcerting. I’m sure these cultural behavioural differences which make the country so much more tolerable to us on a superficial introductory level after India, make it impossibly hard as you try to get to know and understand people.  Pretty much everyone of the WolfP’s age or older inevitably has a story of suffering and loss (and sometimes complicity), except these are rarely told – and you can only speculate as to the state of the nation’s psychological health.

Tourist experience

Forget Angkor, forget Khmer culture – for our kids, the Dr Fish foot massage was the highlight of their trip to Cambodia so far... They sat with their feet dangling into a tank of callous nibbling minnows (not piranhas, but a local slightly less voracious local variant).  L enjoyed the experience so much that she wanted to come back with her swimming costume so she could get even closer to the little fishes.

I didn’t do the fish pedicure but I did go to the Bliss Spa for ‘beach-ready’ waxing and I had my hair cut and high-lighted by a Parisian stylist – ‘because I’m worth it’.  This may confound those who were betting I’d come home with dreads or at least some permanent matted bits.  Whilst I was at it, I also took the children for haircuts. W got to sit on a high stool with built in racing car wheel and watch cartoons whilst his haircut was underway, so he was happy.  L wanted her hair even shorter, but the Khmer guy refused to go as short as she wanted as he thought ‘it wouldn’t look nice for a girl!’  Actually our children are causing some degree of gender confusion here – ‘A boy? A girl?’ – but when they’ve got it straight they appreciate them big time ‘Cute Boy!’ and, unlike India, appreciate the girls too M’s age flummoxes all since she’s taller than most adults here already.  The hairdresser managed to get L's hair cut straight and layered it through which looks really good on her. M wondered about extensions.

Thank you Nick and Kerensa and Annabelle for all your recommendations – they’ve been marvellous with the sole exception of the Dead Fish Tower. Maybe the name should have given us a clue or maybe the complete emptiness of the saloon – but what was obviously once a thriving and cool bar and restaurant, was now definitely a dead squib, with the crocodile sold off and the waitresses having to take turns to do the dancing.  The waiter returned to tell us we couldn’t have shrimp in our dish as they had no more left, but was desperate for us to return the next night but the sympathy vote was not enough to draw us back I’m afraid...

The Angkor experience is streamlined – dollars are removed seamlessly for laminated passes (happily the children were free) with photos done digitally on the spot.  It’s a commercial operation despite being a UNESCO World Heritage site (with a Vietnamese company holding the current contract to run things), and very little of the tourist dollars make it back into local development.  It’s all very slick compared to Agra (which must be the obvious comparison), and yes there are bus loads of tourists (currently mainly Japanese and Korean) but they do melt away given the vastness of the site and if you don’t follow the obvious schedule. 

Food 

Fruit!  Exotic fruit!  We’ve hit mango season here so are thrilled to be eating these every day, the orange juice dripping down the children’s chins.  But let’s not forget rambutans, dragon-fruit, milk fruit, jack fruit, durian, rose apples, longans, pomello, passion fruit, sweet limes, as well as the everyday delights of pineapple, watermelon and fun-sized bananas.  Fruit in India is never this good – neither the variety nor the quality.

[W: I loved the fruit like mango and apple.  They have plastic fruit which looks just the same and the grapes are rubber with water inside so they feel squashy and sometimes they burst.  The mangos are delicious and I don’t think that we’re coming back to India in time for the mango season.  I don’t mind because it was the mango season in Cambodia so I’ve eaten loads and loads here.]

Baguettes and pork, spag bol with minced beef, raw vegetables and salads with proper dressing, grilled fish, prawns the size of my index finger, cheese (feta, hallumi, cheddar, blue cheeses) – all the things that we’d been indefinably missing... Plus new food - bowls of clear Khmer noodle soup – with coriander, basil, chilli, lemongrass, lime leaves and galangal - to refresh, rehydrate and make you sweat some more.  And Amok (a local baked fish curry) made by Kim San that is so delicious that even the more suspicious members of the family tried and devoured it.  And we’ve eaten out so well, as well – from amazing Japanese at a place called Yummi, where everyone ate and loved the spare ribs and sushi, to delis serving fantastic salads and sandwiches to exceptional coffee shops (both for the coffee and the children’s play areas that are almost standard).

We denied M the chance to win her donkey dare when the fried tarantula and cricket was extortionate at the bus stop – sorry, my love!

After increasing despair of wanting to eat anything on the menu in India, it’s a total and unexpected calamity of choice here. We went to the Lucky Supermarket and found that Weetabix cost $7 a packet, so imported foods remain expensive but the variety available...  As WD declared, we’ll have to go back to our rice and watery dal diet in the mountains next week, to atone for all this amazing eating. 

Handicraps

Whilst not as clichéd as the Indian equivalent (think mirrored cushion cover, Kashmiri ‘pashmina’, dancing Shiva carving and bong), we have realised that one way and another, we’ve seen quite a bit of the Cambodian Craft pantheon (think silk cushion covers, checked scarves, gecko lights and soap stone Buddha heads) over the last few years with lovely presents from family and friends who’ve been here.  What’s different though is the penetration of NGO effort into empowerment and development through handicraft or service industry or music or other imaginative variants.  You can go to cafes rehabilitating disabled Cambodians through patisserie, listen to buskers (all amputees seeking a ‘dignified life’) playing Khmer music around the temple sites or buy quilts made by abused women or orphans’ artwork. 

Even amongst the children on the street, you see few beggars, most are hawking postcards or bangles for ‘wun dull-haar’, some evidently smart (one recited every British PM back to Jim Callaghan for us and would have gone further I have no doubt) and claiming to need the money for schooling. 

Only in the further temple sites, did one sense a degree of desperation in the clamour among the village women waiting at the exits for you to buy from them but even then the sassy sales and chat was very different from the relentlessness and shouting of the same Indian scenario.  I realise I could not stay long in SE Asia for fear of a total collapse in my self-esteem, when these same ladies yell at me across car parks, “Come and visit my stall, I have good clothes and extra-large sizes for you!”  Maybe the pitch needs refining but again Cambodia is anticipating my needs...

At the top end of the market, Artisans d’Angkor have a fine line in taking you on a tour around their workshops (where they are re-invigorating craft industries such as stone and wood carving, silk weaving and painting, lacquer work and silver plating) that all but died during the 1970s and 80s, ensuring the survival of local skills and providing many with a livelihood, ending at the fabulously classy and expensive shop.  We went out on a trip to their silk workshops to see the silk worms munching mulberry leaves, the cocoons being boiled to extract the raw and fine silk, spinning, dyeing, and ultimately weaving on hand looms.  I have refrained from buying silk cushion covers as I know Keith (our cat) would just vom on them at home, so the death of so many silk chrysalises and the pain-staking labour of so many people would be pointlessly in vain.

Toilets

Cambodia is soooo clean.  Almost every toilet we go into is pristine with liquid hand soap (our Indian marker of a posh establishment) and fresh towels, with the very worst we’ve experienced here not so dissimilar to the good to excellent standard in India.  And no one demands money off you to use them although a tip is appreciated. How our expectations have been reset... Laura says Cambodians are very clean, washing at least twice a day (any less suggests an active psychotic illness) with an absolute abhorrence of body odour. 

We love the picture diagrams explaining that western style toilets should not be squatted on (see W for an illustration, in the previous blog entry).

Hassle

ATMs emptied of dollars by Vietnamese on a widespread currency exchange scam is about the extent of annoyance we can think of....

Climate

We had been warned by a number of people that we would melt in hot season temperatures and humidity.  Not so.  Actually we have brought unseasonal cold and early ‘mango showers’ and much of our time over the last week has actually been spent beneath overcast skies, and feeling cold (yes, we have even had goose bumps away from the AC), shivering in the back of tuk-tuks or sheltering from the wind.  I hadn’t packed warm layers, not anticipating this climatic aberration, blamed variously by locals on the Japanese earthquake/nuclear accident, or their traditional enemies, the Thais or Vietnamese. M has bought a gorgeous fair-trade cotton krama with her pocket money, after extensive deliberation (those who know her, will know she finds spending money extremely difficult). She wraps herself artfully in this to keep warm.

The first few days in PP, there were tremendous thunderstorms and the kids rushed out, shedding all their clothes and inhibitions (not that my offspring appear to have many of these) to play in the rain – wild Bacchanalian scenes of naked children riding round the garden on trikes in the dark, beating each other with wet banana leaves!  M was heard to crow triumphantly, “At last, I’ve seen Jack naked!”

The Wolfgang’s education

So have we got beyond the simple equation that Cambodia = temples + Khmer Rouge legacy? 

Well, the crowning achievement of Khmer culture, Angkor Wat, definitely lived up to our expectations.  We spent days seeing top temples, identifying Hindu deities in another context, climbing temple mountains (well the WolfPs at least, children under 12 were not allowed up much to M’s disgust – WM braved her fear of heights to achieve the glorious views  and 15 minutes’ peace!), exploring jungle temples overgrown with trees and creepers. WD is reading Cambodian histories and comparing/contrasting the Temple City here with India....Sadly he has an esteemed colleague who covers South East Asia, so the possibilities for career expansionism in this direction are limited. 

As far as the children’s broader education goes, we’ve discussed copyright and intellectual property (there is no copyright law here so everything from Crocs to academic guidebooks to DVDs is knock-off), Genocide (and how it differs from Genesis, bland prog-rock band or the first chapter of the Old Testament), land mines, conservation issues and sex workers...Buddhism too, in a small way – L was worrying about how you reach enlightenment and WM still doesn’t understand what it is that is reincarnated, if there is no soul (central Buddhist tenet).

WM and WD have had to confront their memories of Blue Peter Special Appeal to (as-then) Kampuchea – saving milk bottle tops to help starving children in 1979 (remember doing ‘Cambodia tummies’, anyone? I know it wasn’t just me!) and we’re sure that the Blue Peter team went intrepidly to the Killing Fields, bravely exposing the horror of stacks of skulls and femurs to our 10 year old selves, as the images are burnt deep.  The WPs went to the S21 Genocide museum (but left the children behind) in Phnom Penh.  Still unsure about how these sorts of memorials should relate to the tourist industry (especially the ubiquitous souvenir shop on the way out?) but... Apparently the Government did close down a Khmer Rouge-themed café that sought to provide an authentic labour camp experience for the discerning tourist.

WD: All this novelty makes our far too brief visit to Cambodia rather wonderful. But the downside is that we’re not feeling quite so enthusiastic about returning to India, even if only briefly. M has been telling us off for being critical of India, so we must behave and try in future blogs to be more appreciative of Mother India. All three of children are delighted that India won the Cricket World Cup (beating Sri Lanka) so we know where their loyalties lie. Fortunately Cambodia doesn’t play cricket (luckily) – volley ball being their national thing. However, we’re going back to a new part of India, to the Himalayas, which we’ll endeavour to see with fresh eyes.  We’ll be back to Cambodia too. As Laura advised M, it’s always worth leaving something you want to see to bring you back next time – and there’s a few branches of the Blue Pumpkin we haven’t yet visited (and buns on their menu not yet tested) and some temples for WD to visit, and lots more river-swimming and whole regions of the country to explore....