Anyone for a curry………

(Hannah here again)
Thought people might be interested in the food here. I’ve certainly haven’t yet had a bad meal in India (except for something very odd we had for breakfast at the airport). South India is famous world wide for its cuisine – lots of colours, flavours, aromas and textures. Coming from a culture where we eat vast amounts of meat, it’s amazing and beautiful to see how many different ways vegetables can be used in cooking, and how varied and even ‘meaty’ they can taste (if that makes sense).
We’ve tried many of the different dishes – somehow it’s not quite as scary to point at a dish in a language you don’t understand when there’s no chance it’s going to be some odd bit of animal, that now placed in front of you you have to eat (Nick would remember a few yak dishes we’ve had in the past!).
The South Indian Thali (as seen in pic) is very inexpensive (about £1) and you usually get rice, 3 different kinds of curry, breads, curd (yoghurt) and chutney. Refilled until you’re full. Mysore is famous for it’s Dosa – a large savoury pancake, usually served with a hot sauce and cooling coconut. Often eaten at breakfast with stuffed and spiced potato.   

We’ve found some good places to eat in Mysore. We discovered the Park Lane Hotel when we first arrived here. Staying in a hotel close by we noticed that it served porridge all day. Not very Indian you may say – but it means Nick and I can happily have a meal and the girls are happy too. They haven’t really taken to the cuisine (apart from the rice/bread and curd) and not many places have non-spicy food on the menu (this place also serves cheese sandwiches and chips!). My favourite for a very mad experience is the Indra Cafe’s Paras (near to the famous Devaraja market). It’s always absolutely packed and getting a table is a feat in itself – we’ve truly discovered that queuing is a very British thing! As in most excursions, the girls are centre of attention – Beth taking a picture of people taking their pictures. For once the girls having fun as opposed to burying their head in my lap!

We’re getting better at cooking at home having progressed from a one burner stove to a two
burner! Also managed to find a cook book section in the local bookshop so are having more success. We’ve had a few soggy and bitter veg dishes! (Thanks for those who have sent some recipes from home). I also managed to find a kids book on veg and their names  – sounds bizarre but it’s not that easy to cook dishes when you can’t actually find the ingredients. We’ve befriended a good veg stall and the guy who runs it is very helpful. The girls fill up the metal bowls, which all get weighed together, and smile sweetly so that they get a free banana!  Beth will happily eat all the sweet mangoes, lychee, papaya and pomegranates. Isla is more keen on her fill of peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate gems (smartie look-alikes).
To be fair I’ve trawled all the supermarkets and between them we’ve managed to find; pasta, peanut butter, marmite, cornflakes, weetabix (£4 for 24!!), cream, mayonnaise, ketchup, tuna, sliced bread, noodles and cheese. So we’re certainly not starving, but when we hear of people having BBQ’s at home, there is a serious salivation problem! We do manage to get chicken about once/ twice a week to cook at home. The supermarket supply is very sporadic and neither Nick or I have the balls to go to the butcher and choose our own live chicken (hypocritical I know). All fun – not sure the Sainsbury’s veg counter is going to be quite the same when we head home………

Since writing this a few days ago we have expanded our kitchen appliances to include an oven. Hooray. It’s very amusing and gives a whole new meaning to temperature control (it sits on top of the gas burner), but think it will be fun trying it out. I will let you know how we get on………






………given I still haven’t posted this blog yet ( we don’t seem very good at that!) I thought you might like to see Beth & Isla’s cake. Yes, it came from a cake mix packet, but it tasted good and it worked!!! Cheese soufflé next…….

Kabini Organics

My major project here at MYKAPS is to create a website to support the foundation of Kabini Organics. Kabini Organics is a farmer led, farmer owned producer company designed to maximise producer power for poor smallholder farmers. Farmers have increasingly found it difficult to make any money here, and there is a national problem of farmer suicide (here and here) due to high debt caused by interaction with money lenders and poor crop yields. Kabini Organics currently has about 1000 farmer members  (collectively about 3000 acres), and is supported by MYKAPS, ETC India, and funds from the Rabobank foundation.

In their particular areas surrounding the Kabini river (B Matakere), the farmers are surrounded on three sides by national parks and forestry. Whilst this is good for the conservation of elephants, it is less good for the farmers as animals have a habit of coming out of the forests and eating the crops. The normal way of stopping this is to use “solar wire” (electric fences powered by solar panels and car batteries) , but this is not available to poor smallholder farmers. So there is an arms race between the animals of the forest and the farmers; farmers are not able to grow ‘food’ crops easily.

On the upside, the soil is extremely good at growing ELS cotton (Extra Long Staple – longer cotton fibres and commanding a higher market price). Therefore they are experimenting with growing organic cotton here, and trying to ensure a solid and reliable purchase chain. By cutting out various middle men, by removing the moneylenders, and by removing various shennanigans relating to incorrect use of weighing scales, they are able, best case,  to save about 870Rs per quintal (a quintal is 100kg – with a market value of ~3200Rs) by becoming a producer company.

Being ‘organic’ requires compliance to the organic rules of the market you are trying to sell into. In the case of the EU, this means that you must have been growing organic produce for at least two years (3 years for the US), and there are various other regulations like:

• you have to have a map of your farm showing what is sown in which field
• you must keep a diary of what you do each day (what fertiliser etc., sowing, harvesting)
• you must only used allowable fertilisers etc.
• you must not mix organic and non organic crop (either in the field or in storage etc.)
• and a host of other rules.

All these things are required to be certified organic – a certification received from an independent certification agency (such as IMO).

Whilst there may sound achievable to you and me, there is a relatively high illiteracy rate here, and the concept of commitment to what may seem arbitrary long term rules is difficult when you do not have enough money to eat. Education of what the rules are, and audit (internal and external) to ensure compliance are therefore key.

My project, therefore, is to create a website to help explain the background, some the economics and the difficulties, and therefore help create some brand value and brand awareness for Kabini Organics. This is somewhat tricky as they won’t have any certified cotton until next year, and it is not entirely clear to me who we are trying to enlighten (ie who the website’s market is .. end consumer, or purchaser). But it is coming along and at least allows me to add some of my skill and experience into the mix.

If anyone has any questions, do ask me as it is all helpful to try and get the ‘story’ into an easily conveyable format ….

A month at MYKAPS

I’ve been chastised by a few of you for not posting any updates in the blog, so I am forthwith rectifying the situation. About two weeks ago I drafted some monstrously long entry about MYKAPS (the NGO I am working with) and what they do and what it means and what I think about it and blah blah blah.. On rereading it I bored myself silly. Not such a good sign. So I’ll write a shorter post about the work and I am doing here, and then backfill some of our exploits over the last month – GRS Fantasy Park (a waterslide park thing), Srirangapatna (temples), Chamundi Hill (more temples). A menu of delights.
I have now been working at MYKAPS (Myrada Kaveri Pradeshika Samsthe) for about a month. I tend to work Monday to Thursday and then spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday helping Hannah with the kids. The monsoons haven’t hit yet, but they are due any day now – maybe this week. Perhaps my commute will turn into a mudbath.

MYKAPS spun off from its parent organisation, MYRADA, in 2008. Originally the people working here (most people seem to have been here 15-20 years) worked with PLAN, a UK based charity focussing on the welfare of children. However Plan moved out of Southern India in 2008, leaving MYKAPS without its major sponsor. This prompted a significant directional change for MYKAPS, which now has a greater emphasis on domestic funding (ie from within India), and more farming and agricultural based projects. MYKAPS employs about 50 people in various different locations, with about 20 in the ‘head office’ where I work.
Their mission
Here is their mission statement:

• To build and strengthen livelihoods of farm and non farm rural house holds in such a way that all families are able to live in prosperity and with dignity.
• To spread the adoption of ecologically better practices so that soil, water and air are protected from further deterioration and nurtured back to healthy and optimally productive levels.
• To promote the development of agriculture as an enterprise, balancing productivity with environmental concerns and securing appropriate credit and market linkages
• To increase awareness and facilitate attitudinal and behavioral changes in the areas of health and sanitation so that health risks are reduced.
• To ensure that all the rights of children are respected at all times, and that children are groomed to contribute to the healthy growth of the community and the nation.
• To ensure that all the above are achieved with gender sensitivity and through building and strengthening local level people’s institutions, working with panchayats (local government), networking with other governmental and non governmental institutions and strategic partnerships with resource institutions.

Projects
They are involved in a number of projects, the main ones being:

• MSK (Mission Sunehra Kal) Project – helping farmers with watershed development, organic land use and sustainable farming
• CMRCs – Community Managed Resource Centres. 16 regional self help centres that help people do things like: understand what government schemes are available, fill in forms, submit forms, make links to banks, receive training (organisation forming, accounting,  computing etc.)
• Kabini Organics – a group of farmers who have got together to produce organic products (principally cotton). Getting certified as an organic producer takes at least two years (or three years for plantation crops) and requires strict adherence to a set of farming rules (you must not mix organic and non organic crops, you must write a log of everything you do each day, you must not use GM seed etc.)
• CIDOR - Centre for Institutional Development and Organizational Reforms. A training centre that teaches and facilitates in many areas, including a lot of ‘train the trainer’ work. Their courses include a range of organisational theory type courses (how to form and register a self help group, how to apply for funding, how to build good team dynamics), as well as training government officials, other NGOs etc.
• HIV /Aids prevention – supported by the CDC (US centre for disease control) helps in two areas: pre infection information (telling high risk groups about HIV) and helping people who already have it.

So what does it feel like?
The stuff I have just reeled off there sounds a bit like a promotional leaflet or a wordified powerpoint presentation. What does it all add up to? What does it feel like to be here?

The first thing to note is that it feels a lot like work. I don’t mean “OMG they are working me hard”, I mean that it is recognisably like other ‘commercial’ work I have done in my life. This may be violently obvious to anyone who has worked in a charity or an NGO before, but actually was quite surprising to me. I am not sure exactly what I expected. I think I thought it would feel fundamentally different somehow, more ‘holy’, more righteous. So the day is not shot through with beauty and radiance and ‘doing right’. It is shot  through with checking email, completing proposals, having meetings about progress on projects. I think I was incredibly naive about this and this is therefore perhaps a most important lesson.

Some people work here because they really believe in what they are doing. Some people  work here because they get paid. Some people play Solitaire when no-one is looking. There is the usual office stuff. Laughter, flirtations (although, this being India, somewhat muted), gossip (at least this is how I interpret it - humour me- my Kannada isn’t that hot). But all in all it feels like a place where things get done. Which is good.

 

 

 

This is all getting quite long, so I will tell you in another post what my primary project is. ….

 

One of the dogs who lives here. Apparently named after a terrorist. Some of this humour is a little lost on me.

“wash baby el’phant” (repeat endlessly……)

(A trip that Nick didn’t go on – so I realise this blog entry will not be quite as amusing but thought it might be of some interest!)

 

Fact 1: Isla likes washing baby elephants

Fact 2: The National Trust Home Farm (Wimpole) in Cambridge does not have elephants. This will be hard for Isla.

Fact 3: Did I mention that Isla likes washing baby elephants.

Mum arrived safely for her 2 week stay and without wasting much time we planned a 2 night trip to the Dubare Elephant Camp (90km west of Mysore). The Dubare Forest Reserve is on the banks of the Cauvery River and is where about 18 elephants retired from forest department work live on pension.

As with all adventures you have to get over the journey – me stuck in between 2 car seats in small taxi for 3 hours; arriving and trying to check in and being told that there is no reservation in our name and then realising thankfully that we were in the wrong hotel (after some communication break downs); finding that our lodge was the other side of the river and having to all get on small crowded boat with the normal 4 bags/all important peanut butter/2 travel cot tents malarky; and finally finding out our lodge does not take credit cards and me having to persuade another taxi (our one had left by then) to take me back down the road 30 mins, praying that my cash card would work (of course after crossing the river again).

 

Now breathe……….. The individual lodges were lovely. There was a hammock and a nice guide came to tell us what we were going to get up to. Starting with lunch, hence the necessity for peanut butter – the girls still haven’t quite got the taste-buds for south Indian cuisine and I have found a shop that sells peanut butter!

6.30pm we set off on our safari. I don’t think any of us had any preconceptions of what we expected to see (except of course Isla – el’phants). Mum and I had a bit of a giggle when the guide got immensely

excited about a squirrel he could see up a tree –  we then turned the corner and saw some cows! It did get better though – Indian Bison, peacock, water buffalo, spotted deer. The highlight had to be the elephants at the end. I shout ‘elephant’ excitedly, the guide just looks at me plainly and may as well have said “your point is what?”. Apparently these were the domestic ones and his reaction mimicked what ours would have been if he’d seen another squirrel!!!

 

 

Next morning was the Elephant Interaction Programme and this was one of the most wonderful things I have ever done. First you walk down to the river where the elephants have their bath and you just help to wash them. Walk into the river and splash water and give them a good back scrub. The girls thought this was amazing, as did we, and the elephants were, as clichéd as it is to say, the most gentle of giants.  Then (trying not to think about the amount of elephant dung in the water and your very wet trousers (or full clothing in the case of Beth)) you go and watch them eat breakfast. Big round football size lumps of baked meal/vitamins etc. (They are then taken into the forest to munch for most of the rest of the day). Finally you get to have a ride. Something I thought the girls would be tentative about doing. Oh no – there is quite a lot of love for elephants in our house……….

 

We do another safari in the evening – with a few other people in our jeep this time. The man who’s in the back with us is from another lodge and keeps showing us pictures of tigers he’s seen there. Needless to say we didn’t see any tigers, no more squirrels either! Highlight of course were the ‘domestic’ elephants.

 

Next morning we arose about 6 am for a ride in a coracle canoe on the river. Quite good fun – although not sure Mum enjoyed the bit where we went round and round!  

 

 

 

We then went for a nature trail walk with another couple and our guide – girls climbing across stones on rivers. For those who know my propensity to break things, where was their father!!?! We also managed to go and “wash baby el’phants’ again, and got squirted as the mahoots made the elephants splash water through their trunks. Amazing couple of days.

That was the week that was – Kerala.

Waking up on Tuesday morning we discover three important things:

• The sun is shining. This is a relief. I had a suspicion that maybe we would be trapped in an overcast, drippy, dismal climate for the week
• We are not alone. After wandering into ‘town’ a bit we discover plenty of restaurants, shops .. (‘Please look. Looking is free’). It’s not like it’s heaving, but there are other humans around.
• They have croissants. And there are rumours of pork. And there are (and I must whisper it) rumours of beef. Cow meat.

Varkala is not at all like Mysore. Whilst Mysore is clearly an Indian place, full of cows and temples, Varkala is clearly aimed at relieving tourists of their money in many forms: upstairs bars with sea views with names like ‘Namaste’ play Cafe del Mar type music to young thin white people, and, more unusually, aged hippie types. The humidity is up, and the waves are surprisingly strong. There is a good rip here that wants to tear you downshore.

As we wander into town, fishermen dry their nets, and men wash their cows (as you do). “Make sure you wear suntan lotion” says the cow on the left. I laugh at her. Does she not realise I am already wearing Factor 30 Nivea colourless spray thingy.

There is a general indifference to us here that is a welcome change. Isla’s cheeks get some welcome rest and recovery. As we pass a restless fisherman, desperately searching for his tax return,  he says “It is hot here. Make sure you wear suntan lotion”. I attempt to explain that my suntan lotion will protect me even in the water. He seems disinterested.





And so we hit the beach. After mindless bargaining with the deckchair/umbrella gang, we huddle in the diminishing shade. The sand is too hot to walk on unprotected, but the kids are keen to get into the sea. So we rip off our clothes (or, more correctly, shuffle uncomfortably under towels) and into the sea we go. Hannah, sensibly, declines, and remains under the umbrella bearing a remarkable similarity to an extra in a Merchant Ivory film.
It is not until late afternoon that I begin to get that sneaking feeling, slow at first, that creeping tightening of the cheekbones, the overall temperature of the skin, and I realise I am BURNT TO A CRISP. Not in a good ‘You’ve caught the sun’, ho, ho kind of way. More in a ‘Oh My God did you work at a nuclear facility’ kind of way. And it’s a slow building disaster. As the evening draws on, it’s going to get worse and worse. It’s not the physical pain. It’s the humiliation. You might as well write “I am a pale English idiot” on your forehead. My shoulders are a disaster. You can actually see hand prints where I have and haven’t applied suntan lotion very well.
And so we drink beer, and I hide in the darkness and hope no-one notices my condition. And the warmth stays with me like an inappropriate and unloved electric blanket.

The next day we arrange to go on a canoe trip. Kerala is famed for its drifty backwaters. Had we had more time and/or less children, we might have hired one of these ‘houseboats’ and pottered around crashing into wildlife and riverbanks. But we opt for a canoe trip around Munroe Island, where we will allegedly see people making ropes out of coconuts and other tricks.
We travel up to Kollam on the train, and then on to at a travel agent near the dock. We then transfer into another rickshaw and head off north-east for about 45 minutes to our departure point. Here we see, briefly, 3 other white people, but they are destined for a different canoe and we soon lose them.


Our canoe driver (for want of a better term) tries out his English, and delights the girls by making them a necklace from a lily. He points out passing birds (black one, yellow one), and passing trees (big one, little one), as well as at least one water snake (small one, but beady). This is his village and it is populated by many small canals. Rather like Venice, but without the high prices, and the cholera (or was that just the film).

He shows us ladies making ropes out of coconut. They soak the coconut husks for three months, creating a mountain of coconut fibres (shown here in a heap in the foreground). They then somehow draw the fibres together into a rope using a bicycle wheel, powered by hand. All day.



Beth practises her modelling again, and then we are back in a rickshaw, back in another rickshaw, back on the train, back in a taxi and we are home to our hut. Rain commences (as ever in the evenings down here in Kerala) and food is eaten.


On our final day (Thursday) we patronise the beach again. This time I wear a T shirt and largely avoid cremation. Local indians marvel at the extent western ladies are prepared to jump and dance around on the beach, practically naked to their eyes.
And then it is Friday. We are flying back from Trivandrum to Bangalore, where all being well, we will meet Alison (Hannah’s mum) off the plane from England.


Arriving back in Trivandrum, a taxi takes us from the train station to the airport. There is a lot of traffic and we don’t seem to be going anywhere fast, so I engage in some light banter with the taxi driver. “Why is there so much traffic?”, I ask, in my humble foreigner abroad way. “Elephant tumble”, he replies, woefully. And I have to admit I am excited by this possibility. Whilst I wouldn’t wish a jackknifed elephant on anyone, it is nevertheless an unusual traffic situation and not one often encountered in Cambridge. I start to imagine various gory scenarios, but clearly the outright winner is one where the elephant is lying on his back, four mighty feet in the air, with a car lodged in one side.
Unfortunately (or, indeed, fortunately for the elephant), it appears there has been some miscommunication and in fact he is referring to the ‘Elephant temple’, a house of worship subscribing to the ubiquitous Ganesh, this one mightily black and not a little foreboding. So no elephant carnage today, but I make a mental note to be on the lookout for other large mammalian roadkill.
We are horribly early for the flight, and Trivandrum airport does not offer massive retail opportunities (duty free or otherwise). Isla and I amuse ourselves by weighing each other on the check in scales. Isla weighs a reasonable 12.8kg. When I step on the scales, the numbers increase rapidly and then dashes appear and flash. I withdraw rapidly lest an alarm go off somewhere. I fear I may exceed the single bag limit by some margin.
And so Kerala comes to an end. Goodbye Kerala – you cheeky area of fishermen, coconut palms, humidity and hint of beef (unrealised).
We arrive back at Bangalore and wait in the arrivals lounge for Alison’s flight, which is scheduled to arrive in an hour. A young Indian couple (on their long and tortuous multi leg way back from Australia) start talking to us. The conversation follows the now well established stereotype of the lady telling us how beautiful our children are, and the man (who, mysteriously, is wearing a tea towel over his shoulder) telling us what life in England is like.

Woman: Your children are very beautiful.
Me: Thank you. Do you want one? We have two of them, after all.
Woman: How are you finding India? Is it very different from England?
Me: Well, clearly it is fairly hot here. And using the trains can be somewhat tricky for us.
Man: Actually the trains here are exactly the same as in England. Everything here is exactly the same as in England. Do you not agree?
Me: Well. The food is quite different. Quite spicy.
Man: Yes. We have some of the greatest food in the world here (whilst playing with tea towel). We have just been to Australia. We are vegetarians, and there was not much food choice for us. Actually it was quite disgusting for us, to watch them eat all those meats. (looks accusingly at me).
Me: (apologetically) Well, yes, the Australians do eat a lot of animals.
Woman: Your children are very beautiful.

(Repeat ad infinitum).
And then Alison arrives (early, in fact). But that is another story.

Varkala, Kerala. That’s a lot of vowels.

A number of factors convince us that we should pop down to Kerala for a week, namely that I am starting work on 1st May, and the evil monsoon rains are approaching and will beat the living daylights out of Kerala first.

We flirt with a number of possibilities. Should we hire a cab and get him to drive us to Kannur in northern Kerala? Or should we fly to Kochi (formerly Cochin) or fly to the catchily named Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum). We umm and ahhh over each option. We rule out driving to Kannur quite quickly. Although it looks close enough it will apparently take 8 hours in the car. I suspect this will not fill the children with rays of joy.

So then we get into one of those comparisons that lovers of Easyjet and Ryanair are all too familiar with: what if I fly into that airport with that airline, and then fly out of that airport x days later? What about if we do the whole thing one day later, or three days later? If I leave my booking one day, will it get more expensive or less? And how far is Kochi airport from Kochi  (quite far, it turns out)? But all done on slow internet connections. Click. Wait. Click. Wait. Did I leave the gas on?

In the end we plump for a return flight to Trivandrum with Indian Airlines, now part of Air India. We commit to this plan on the Friday night, looking to fly out from Bangalore airport on the Monday morning. I happily type all our details into their website – names, passport numbers. We get to that bit with the credit card. I type it all in. The machine haughtily remarks “Foreign cards can not be accepted less than 72 hours before departure”. I cry.

The next day we go to some Indian Airlines booking office in a 60s decorated small room in the basement of a hotel. Needless to say the 10% online booking discount goes out of the window, but hurrah hurrah they can book it, and they can take our card. Hannah sticks her debit card (which has been quite happily been pumping money out of cashpoints) into their gadget, and it is rudely rejected. We try again. No, says the machine. I shall reject you for some random reason I shall keep veiled.

So I use a credit card I have with me (oh god there’s another 2%) and we defeat all the Indian administrative restrictions they have attempted to throw at us and woo hoo, we’re off to the beach.

I speak to my favourite taxi man and he says that to get to Bangalore airport for 9am, we need to leave Mysore at, wait for it, 4.30am. That’s Banaglore traffic for you. Kind of reduces the non-planned sheer ‘whoosh’ of flying, but hey.

4.30am on Monday arrives and Salim waits silently and patiently outside our front door. We fit the kids’ car seat into the Indicar, and Hannah wedges herself between the car seats in the back, and I sit in the question zone passenger seat. Everyone is wearing some form of crash protection except Salim (his choice), and Hannah. Doesn’t quite seem fair, but there is not much to be done about it. The kids sing ‘Happy Birthday’ (they have been doing this a lot recently) and the utter tedium of driving to Bangalore airport begins. I resolve to watch the sun come up, but I think I must have been asleep when that finally happens. Salim yawns largely and often which is a little scary, but suddenly we are at the airport. We’ve arranged for Salim to keep the car seats for the week, so off he drives with our car seats still nailed into the back of his car. We hope he doesn’t sell them. Or go joyriding in them.

We check in. The Air India computer, in its mighty wisdom, has preallocated us seats: 13c, 18D and 27F. Thanks for that. There is much rapid talking on telephones and the word ‘baby’ is bandied around a lot. The man pulls out his pen and crosses out the assigned seats and writes three new ones on them. I could have done that.

We have to split up for the X ray thing into queues of men and women. The women are scanned inside some curtained structure to preserve their modesty. We decide to have some breakfast. Isla decides to redecorate the airport by throwing her unadorned-by-milk strawberry cornflakes all over the floor. People walk past us and I pretend I cannot hear them as they crunch, crunch, crunch past us. Isla, not yet finished, pours a cup of water all over my crotch.

Hannah wisely suggests we get something more substantial as we don’t know when next we shall find food. The airport has one of those ‘pay-at-some-till before you can get the food in case you STEAL, STEAL all our food’ systems, so I look down the list and plump for the only one I think I can safely pronounce (it’s name escapes me right now). Everyone in front of me is getting what I now know to be idli – spongy fermented rice cakes. I assume I will be gifted something in this vein. Mmm. Not quite.

My offering has a white vomit like consistency, peppered with something like sweetcorn. I think it based on rice. This is a fair guess – everything is based on rice. I return sheepishly to where Hannah and the kids are sitting. Hannah laughs derisively. Standing on a carpet of cornflakes, huge wet patch on my shorts, holding a plate of vomit. It is not my best moment.

But we eat it and it isn’t as bad as it looks. I would, however, avoid ordering it again (if only I could remember what is was called). The Japanese man next to me has idli too (how come he can order correctly), and as soon as he leaves I lean across and steal his receipt so that I can work out what it is called.

After usual airport meanderings we board the plane. None of that ‘those with children board first’ PC behaviour. Just rush for the gate, rush at the gate. Our plane looks like a hasn’t had a refit since the 70s. And there are none of those infant lap seat belts. “Hold her tightly”, they say, and smile. Babies are curiously absent from the flight safety card.

A worried looking flight attendant says to us “Does the baby not have a seat?”. And we say no, she is an infant, a lap held creature. And they say “There are not enough oxygen masks for you all”. Which is a fair consideration. So they encourage me to move the row behind, leaving Beth, Isla and Hannah in three seats, and therefore three oxygen masks. This would all be very sensible if the row they move me to does not already hold a man, his wife, and their infant stretched out across their laps. I try not to think to hard about how many oxygen masks there might be for us all, should we need them, and hope that this must be a special infant row. Maybe.

Arriving at Trivandrum, we take a taxi to the train station. We get tickets for the 2.30pm train to Varkala and wait. And wait (It’s only 1pm). I walk up and down the station to try and find food, and find, instead, a bat, dead, lying in the middle of the platform, wings out, half its thorax missing. I neglect to tell the girls. Our train leaves bang on time and off we poddle to Varkala.

 

Varkala is increasingly developed. In the high season people pour out of Trivandrum airport into Kovalam and now also Varkala. We take a bamboo hut at Pink Aana at Odiyam Beach, a little way off the main ‘strip’, for 650Rs a night (about £10). And all is good. The sea makes appropriate sea like noises. There are coconut palms. It is the SEA SIDE. We waltz along the beach and stop at a bar and have a beer. It’s all a bit quiet. A bit too quiet. Like the City at the weekend. Or Cleethorpes in November. We have dinner and go to bed.

Isla humours us for about 20 minutes in her travel cot, and then begins to wail. We all end up on our double bed, mosquito net in place. Some sleep is achieved. Mainly by the small people.

Mysore market revisited

It is Thursday afternoon, and after a lunch of banana porridge and omelette at the Park Lane hotel (as you may have guessed, we still struggle to find things the kids will eat when we are out and about), and we decide to swing by the market again.

Mysore is famed for its bustling market. We had already been once when we first arrived, but at the time it was all a bit hot and bustly and a little intimidating. This time we return in the confidence that a) the only robbery likely to occur will be in the haggling b)  we have a vague layout of where everything is.

Mysore’s streets are always chock a block with people selling things:

Fruit like items. The umbrellas are for protection against the sun, not the rain. I am uncertain as to the origin of the fire. Something is always on fire round here. It’s like a law.

“Garlic”, says this man. “No problems with vampires at your house then”, I say, with a nod to the current vampire frenzy in both written and cinematic media. “Garlic”, he says again. It appears he may have  missed my witty zeitgeist observation.

And then we are plunged once again into the semi covered alleyways. 

We buy Beth another jasmine necklace and the old ladies crowd around her to attach it. I tell Beth that if she smiles sweetly at the stall owners (rather than wailing “nnnnnoooo” every time they approach her) they will give her free stuff. Which she does and they do. Beth is showered with flowers (pink), flowers (white), and a banana (small). She seems ecstatic at having extracted value from people for free. I fear that I have set her up for a lifetime of grifting.

Get up. Get up. Watch that fountain dance.

Brindavan Gardens. Set some 17 km from Mysore, Brindavan Gardens is a garden complex nestling beneath the walls of some great big dam. Frequently used as the backdrop for Bollywood set piece dance manoeuvres, it is network of concrete paths, interspersed with concrete steps, and occasionally playgrounds for children (concrete animals), and a lot of grass. The star attraction is the range of fountains on offer, including, wait for it, a fountain that allegedly dances to music. Oh yes, everyone loves a dancing fountain.

The dancing fountain is not scheduled to strut its funky stuff until 7pm, so we arrive early to savour the wonders of the gardens themselves whilst it is still light. The usual rounds of cheek pinching and hair stroking commence with alarming speed.  Beth and Hannah stand, unexpectedly, on an ants’ nest and learn that, although they may be small, they can hurt quite a lot if they put their mind to it.

The kids are getting ratty by the time 7pm rolls around, and Hannah, sacrilegiously, suggests we leave without seeing the magical fountain. It is over a long bridge, currently hoarded by millions of Indians desperately ambling towards the magical dancing. And there are beasties in the air. In case you are wondering what this image is, it is a photo of winged beasties attacking a floodlight. Looks a bit like one of those diagrams from CERN. 

 

Anyway, I persuade Hannah that we cannot leave without seeing the dancing fountain. There are brief negotiations about who will carry which children, and then we cross the water and head up towards the fountain in a modern day haj. It glows in the darkness a bit like the final scene in the original ‘Star Trek – The Motion Picture’ when Kirk and his buddies go to meet VGER. I realise this is a fairly niche reference.

When we get there the fountain is clamoured, swamped, dripping if you will, with people. They have set up auditorium seating on three sides of it. I shouldn’t understate the disproportionality here. The fountain, at peak, is probably 10 meters high, and 4 metres wide -  not a huge fountain. There are approximately 2000 people watching the fountain. As the music swells, so does the fountain, pumping and dancing, lights glowing to the overloud Indian pop music crashing out.

I’m not saying it wasn’t a great fountain. Perhaps it could have been a momentary diversion at Disneyland, or a novelty in Milton Keynes. But these people love the fountain. There are oohs and aahs as the fountain alters state. There is something approaching religious mania as the fountain reaches its fervent, tallest, most magnificent state.

We stay for 2 minutes but get irritated by a guard incessantly blowing his whistle at people (and, more unusually, occasionally hitting them with a stick) and leave. Isla sleeps like a rock as we attempt to find our taxi man.

Gokulam. I spy another white person.

We  have now taken up residence in an apartment in Gokulam, a suburb of Mysore. It is becomingly increasingly famous for offering yoga studies, which means on average I now see one other white person a day (whereas previously it was none). It does mean some of the shops cater towards more children friendly foodstuffs.

A quick recap on the last week. We found this flat through an idle conversation with a rickshaw driver. Everyone knows someone here, so needless to say he ended up taking us on a ride of apartments he happened to know. Given these are all cash deals, I am not embarrassed to admit that it is fairly scary giving wodges of cash to people you barely know. Felt remarkably like a huge drug deal (or how I imagine huge drug deals feel). But we are installed now and all seems good.  We don’t have aircon, but we do have fans all over the place, and the heat doesn’t seem to be quite as horrendous these last few days. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have also employed the services of a cleaning lady. She washes our clothes (by hand, up on the roof), cleans the flat, does the washing up and takes the rubbish out. Every day. For 1500 rupees a month (about £22). I feel like a slave driver, but everyone seems quite happy with the arrangement.

The other day we went to Mysore zoo. We had certain fears about the state some of these animals might be in, or the enclosures they might be living in, but these proved to be unfounded. Occasional mobbing of the children once again. Isla and Beth have developed different defensive strategies: Beth goes all shy and tries to hide behind our legs. Isla says “No, man” irrespective of gender, and tries to hit them. I am trying to train Isla to say “1 rupee” to photo requests but so far it is not working.

 Transport everywhere is by autorickshaw (or tuk tuk if you are of a Thailand persuasion). These career through traffic, fighting against bicycles and pedestrians and cars and trucks. Rules of the road are definitely in size order. Haggling for the fares has become a lot easier now that we know roughly what we are talking about. To go in from Gokulam (where we live) into Mysore City (approx 12 mins), to go to the supermarket (poddle around for 30 mins), got to the bookshop (poddle around for 20 minutes) and then back again costs 100-120 rupees (about £1.70). 

The girls await outside the Airtel mobile phone shop whilst I sort out the SIMs. The ladies have given them these Disney balloons (to shut them up). Snow White bears a remarkable resemblance to Laura … Now we know what she was doing all that time in Calcutta.