Sri Lanka, food fest and Dengue

It has been such a long time. We have a good excuse: no good internet connection for weeks and then we both caught Dengue (a strange tropical disease brought by mosquitoes that leads to high fever, joint pain and rashes...lovely). So we were in bed....

But we are in Sri Lanka and still alive ;-)

The first week in Colombo we stayed a Preethi, a friend of Mali who is super cool and super nice and Harriet made friend with her dog Mindy who plays 'the ball game' with H all the time.
Mindy and her ball.

And in Colombo we went on a food fest. Colombo has all the food of the world and after 5 months of Indian food, we just went like mad for junk food. We were joined by Laurie (our mate from the chidren's project) who came to Colombo to renew her Indian visa. She has been in India for even longer: 1 year! So we went crazy around Colombo and ate pizzas, milkshakes, cappucinos, sandwiches, pancakes, brownies, even Sushies. You can see Laurie's joy at the variety of food on offer after 1 year of a rice and curry only diet.


Laurie enjoying sandwiches, brownies, cappucinos and even Durian.


Harriet and Laurie in Unawatuna.

We went to the South to Unawatuna with Laurie for 3 days on the beach and now we are resting and recovering at Mali's estate in the countryside on her coconut plantation. Not recovering from too much junk food, oh no, but from Dengue. We both caught it! But I think we are getting better now and we should be fit for travel again next week.


Mali cooking and caring for the Dengue patients.

The Childrens' Project - playing with the kids!

From 1 to 12 June we actually did some 'work' on our trip.... just to check if we can still face a day of cooperation and activity ;-) Actually it didn't feel like 'work' really as we volunteered for the Children's Project in the Coorg (mountains in Karnataka, near Madikeri).

The site of the project after the monsoon rain.

We arrived there on a Sunday afternoon and were welcomed by Laurie, a lovely American woman who has been volunteering at the project for nearly a year now. We were introduced to all of the 40+ children ranging from 3 to about 17 years. The children gave us such a warm welcome! We were Harriet Auntie and Sylvia Auntie as the adults on the projects are referred to. The project is run as a big family and we are all Aunties and Uncles whilst the kids are sisters and brothers to each others. In fact some of the kids are actually brothers or sisters from the same family.

The 'Uncles and Aunties' team - left to right: David Uncle, Sylvia Auntie, Laurie Auntie, Peter Uncle and Will Uncle.

The project is run by a loving American couple, Michael and Aleli who gave everything up to dedicate their life to help these children. Some were street children, came from violent/poor families or have spent their early years begging on the streets. More info on the project's website: http://www.childrensproject.org/

The project is about 20 mins drive from Madikeri (the main town in the Coorg region) and based on a coffee plantation. Everything is on site: the school, accommodation for the kids, the kitchen, the office, etc. We shared the teacher's cottage, 100m up from the main site, with Laurie. Right in the middle of the forest and the coffee plantations with only the sound of the wind in trees and insects/birds at night. So nice!!!

The teacher's cottage in the middle of the coffee plantations where we stayed with Laurie.

All was well in our lovely little house until the rains came... and the buckets came out! Unfortunately it was a new roof and the builder explained that all new roofs leak... so nothing surprising there! We moved our beds around to avoid the leaks and slept in high level of humidity ;-) All this was fast overcome by the joy of being with the kids in the day.

The new school year started the day after we arrived and we were put straight to work and became teachers in an hour ;-) I taught Science, English grammar and reading, Environmental Science and Climate Change and sustainability to 5 classes, from 1st standard to 11th standard while Harriet taught French and English to lots of classes. A challenge to get our brains into gear after so long, but great to be working in a place with such a nice approach to learning - very laid back and emphasis firmly on the kids' development rather than getting through the books!

The kids were split in classes by standards and each class was no more than 7-8 children. We taught everywhere we could: outside, in the dorms, in front of our house.

Harriet teaching French in the office.

We learned so much about being flexible and adaptable through teaching and being with the kids. And we loved it! I have to confess that I now have a great respect for teachers as it is exhausting to be teaching all day!!!! I would have never thought how exhausting! In the afternoons we often had to pop by our cottage to get a sugar fix to help us stay awake in the afternoon. The chocolate bars were snuck in by Will Uncle who made essential trips into Madikeri to stock up on treats ;-)

Thanks Will!!!! unfortunately Nestle also made a mint out of us that week, all for a good cause though!

The survival kit for teachers.

The philosophy of the project is a spiritual one. Much of their activity is led by the teachings and following of Swami Sathya Sai Baba, the actual incarnation of Shiva (you can learn more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba and http://www.sathyasai.org/). The many pictures, prayers, bhajans singing and altars to Sai Baba were a surprise, but we were very keen to understand more and Laurie was great at explaining more about spirituality to us in such a clear way! What we could feel was very positive: love. Love from the adults at the project towards the kids and in return love from the kids towards us. So many smiles, kind words and hugs! And it meant that the teaching and day to day chores went smoothly and with respect for each other, creating such a lovely environment and reflecting a lot of our beliefs about people and the world. How often do kids in French or British schools thank the teacher for the class before leaving ??? And the kids were so polite, always addressing you by so-and-so Auntie and not interrupting and showing you respect... well 99% of the time! they are kids after all!!!

As it is a big family, the children all help out with the chores, from cooking, cleaning and washing the dishes to making fires for the hot water or looking after the cows. We took part in these too: Harriet took on the challenge to make Couscous for 60 people! With the help of the children we made it and we had so much fun with our little helpers and showing them the magic of Couscous (in this case Rava) absorbing water.

Harriet and the team preparing dinner for 60 people?! And Sylv and her team of helpers doing the 'magic' for the rava.

Meals are eaten in the main hall and kids take turn in serving from big pots in the stainless steel plates. Then they all close their eyes for the prayer before eating.


Dinner time. Serving food from the big pots.


Prayer time before lunch.

We loved our time at the project and it was really hard to leave last Friday. We were very sad to leave the kids, the aunties and uncles, and even the dogs! We're missing the smiles and the laughter thinking about how to get back and teach more some time soon...

For now we're back in Pondicherry for 10 days of Yoga, meditation, reading and eating croissants. We're flying to Sri Lanka on the 26th... ready for the next adventure!

Madikeri and the Coorg

Post Goa we've climbed 1300m up into the mountains in the south of Karnataka to cool off and await the monsoon, umbrellas and poncho at the ready.
This is the most beautiful place - described in the guide we picked up as 'the Scotland of India' - there are rolling hills, coffee plantations with tall tall trees, waterfalls, wild elephants and a mini Tibet - just like Scotland ;o)

View from the park in Madikeri - complete with musical fountain (son, lumiere and eau!) every evening..

It's cool enough for picnics and walks here... so we trekked the 8km back from the waterfalls one day..


and wandered for hours in the Tibetan settlement yesterday, which was quite surreal and like being in another country - the landscape is so different (no plantations, just ploughed fields and prayer flags flapping in the breeze), monks fly past on Enfield motorbikes, robes flapping and the golden tips of temples are visible from miles away.
Arriving at the Golden Temple we stumbled into a courtyard of dancing men, slow, mournful dancing, wearing such colourful costumes and surrounded by an audience of hundreds of monks - many questions clarified it as a 10 day festival to chase evil spirits... beautiful and mesmerising scenes.

We managed to wander a little further to the temple itself - ornate, sparkling gold, colours, patterns and so different again from the Hindu temples. Such silks and paintings and light.. a feast!!!!

A reminder that the Tibetan settlement here dates from the 1960s, 10 years or more after the Chinese entered Tibet... many posters and reminders of the struggles for freedom and subsequent disappearances and imprisonments flutter alongside the prayer flags.

We're off tomorrow to work on a project here in the Coorg http://www.childrensproject.org/. More news when we reach Pondicherry again in a couple of weeks!

Chilling out in Goa + some culture...of course

Goa was meant to be a stop-off on the way down south, a little break and a chance to go to that nice hotel for Sylv's birthday...

It was so much more though and we were really captivated by the Portugese-Indian mix, the local specialties, the churches, verandah-ed houses, shell windows and everything.... Arriving in Goa was half arriving in Portugal for a week's holiday - women in bright summer dresses, holiday rents with kitchen and balconies, little churches everywhere and lots of bars and snack joints.

The beaches were beautiful, clean and populated with friendly dogs.


The mix of palm trees and churches surprises at every turn!


And traditional oyster shell windows.

We went for a day's exploring in the abandoned capital city of Old Goa, made up of religious buildings and a couple of arches celebrating Vasco da Gama

The Se Cathedral there is impressive and the swallows flying around inside too..

St Catherine's church was inspired by St Peter's in Rome and is set next to a beautiful old convent.

This is Bom Jesus, which houses the remains of St Francois Xavier who spent a while here on his conversions..

Then there's Panjim, the new capital, with a decidedly European small town feel, nice bakeries and beautiful old buildings..

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Panjim.

Traditional street of Panjim (capital of Goa).

Sylv's birthday luxury in Goa

We indulged in a couple of nights luxury at Siolim house in Goa for our 2nd anniversary and Sylv's birthday. Rest, superb food, gigantic room, swimming pool.... it was sooooo nice!!
http://www.siolimhouse.com/


Siolim house is a traditional Goan house with a courtyard.

12m pool! (that's H swimming).


And the room.

And the 4-posters bed ;-)

A little luxury which was very welcome after 4 months on the road...

A taster of the North

From the middle of the south, where things were beginning to hot up - 40C and counting, we decided to make a forray further north and test whether we were up to two months visiting the cities of the Ragasthan desert! We're not - not in May and June anyway - it's toooo hot! So we're back down south awaiting the monsoon and relaxing!

Our forray took us to hot and dusty Bijapur though - right at the top of Karnataka - a city once surrounded by very impressive fortifications and littered with mausoleums (is this the plural?!) which we got a very good view of from the top of the biggest one, the Golgumbaz...

Our morning tour of the sites (before retreating to the relative cool of our room) also took us through to the Jami Masjid - an enormous mosque in the middle of the town, opening onto a courtyard where local children and women were collecting water for the day and cleaning their teeth.. through the remains of the citadel and later to the combined mausoleum and mosque outside the town, the Ibrahim Rauza -

Here we met lots of visitors from around India and spent lots of time talking to them in the beauty and symmetry of the two buildings. The architecture was such a change from the temples we've visted on the way - and the detail of the painting and carving were really special, letting light into the mausoleum through the walls..

From Bijapur we made the longest bus journey ever to Auragabad in Maharastra. The landscapes changed along the way as much as the clothes and approach of the poeple we met. We were the sole foreign visitors of Bid for a stopover night and only rarely did poeple's curiosity overflow into "why are you here?!" - those we did speak to were lovely and helpful. I hope the guy I was chatting to in the bus got the job he was going for and that the man who got us on the right bus to Ellora will continue being the bus garage angel for years to come... This tempered the effects of our worst room to date (scuttler free but indescribably grim in other ways..) and helped turn our attentions back to the views and colourful turbans outside.

Aurangabad is enormous! We used it as a base to see some lovely caves and also went on a consolation trip to the mini Taj Mahal as we won't make it to the real one before we leave in June.. as you can see, it's not a bad replacement!

From Aurangabad you get a bus (eventually!) to Ellora - tiny village next to an enormous complex of caves, dug into the rocks by various religious groups over the centuries. You may think there are only so many caves one person can take in a week - but you'd be wrong here - these are soo amazing, you'd like another week to take a better look!

To give you a taster - there's this Buddhist temple with musicians gallery and church like roof..

.. there's a two storey Jain temple with communicating corridor to the one next door which has a mini temple in the courtyard..

and this one, the 'whole hindu temple and little temples round the sides, with balconies and lifesize elephant sculptures all over it' took 8 generations of craftsmen over 150 years to complete.... breath-taking.


Not yet 'caved out' and still wondering how anyone could start tapping away at the rock and think it might turn into a monastry/temple... how they got the rubble out... how they could see in there... we made our way to Ajanta, another site, this time of only Buddhist caves - temples and monastries!... all lined along the ridge of a horse-shoe shaped valley....

The temples here had windows to let the light in.. and rather intricate decorations!

Lots were painted and you could still see the forms of so many buddhas on the walls, beautiful leaves and flowers, tales and animals.. and the columns were pretty pretty too!

The caves here were forgotten for 1000 years before they were stumbled upon by a British party in the 1800s.... hard to forget though!

From the heat of Ajanta we wove our way back to the outskirts of Mumbai and raced up a mountain for a breath of cool air - we'd read about a place called Matheran where there were no cars, where the air is cool and you can roam the mountain top on foot or on horseback.... and where the nights are cold enough for a blanket...

It wasn't quite what we expected, but was a laugh anyway and we did indeed get to go for a nice walk, had afternoon tea on the verandah of a lovely colonial era bungalow... and spent a lot of time watching the crowd from Mumbai in what turned out to be a sort of Las Vegas meets Disneyworld meets the wild west...but nicer and with mango fudge on sale!

We stayed at Hope Hall with our hosts, the devout Maria and Joseph (I kid not!), home to 27 cats, numerous dogs and some lovely puppies, ate wonderful scrambled eggs and toast and felt like we were on holiday!
Quelle vie!

Sylvia gets adventurous

Crossing of a valley, 900 feet long, on a cable... and I wasn't scared ;-)