home

We got back safe and sound, after another joyful bus ride back to Delhi and a few days of calm before the long flight home.

I'm now back in Cambridge, and have a supervision in under two hours; it is, in some ways, good to be back, but I'm appreciating the summer from a distance now. It was a pretty self-serving trip, in a lot of ways - it focused me on exactly how much I have to learn about humanitarianism and development work before I can consider going into it, and it made me far more aware that I'm already capable of holding down a decent job and doing it respectably well.

However, I can't stop, as I need to get some books together. The original should be up and running again in a few days, depending on work and other things, so you might want to nose over there at the weekend sometime.

the Chamba Valley

Just a quick post, because I am on a "Vintron" computer in Chamba, which manages to register every key depression a second after you press it. It also is getting bored of the colour blue.
We're in Chamba! After whistlestop tours of Amritsar (where we saw the Golden Temple, the border ceremony with Pakistan at Wagah, and a riot over the burning of Dalit houses by some upper class men in retaliation for a previous murder... religion, fervent nationalism and class war in one day) and Dalhousie (which has less class war, but more oxygen, big mountains, waterfalls and monkeys - which are still evil even outside Delhi, i have developed a real complex) we arrived in Chamba this morning, and have been wandering around trying to decide whether it really is, as all the tourist boards opine, "like a Medieval Italian fortress town."
That was the longest sentence I think I have ever composed, and for that I apologise. Moving on: tomorrow we take another bus on the happy happy winding roads down the mountains further to McLeod Ganj, for a weekend of bitching about backpacker stereotypes, Tibetan Buddhism and the final few lungfuls of relatively clean air before we head back to Delhi on Sunday night.
Anyway, that's about it, as we are going to go and sit on the Chowgan (big field) with newspapers and juice, and be stared at ("ek photo") and generally relax.

And then there were two

Days left, that is.
Yea, for time has verily slipt away quite rapidly over the last week. After two days of pretty solid hard slog - I'm contributing a good four pages in this last issue, as well as an editing job - I'm down to my last two days at Down To Earth, winding up a few things on the imminent issue. Louise is coming tomorrow evening, and then we leave on our travels on Sunday night, if all goes to plan with the bus-ticket-buying tomorrow.
We've decided to go north - partly on the recommendations of most people, and mostly because I've found a valley we can get to - the Chamba Valley - which is supposed to be very beautiful, relatively away from backpackers, and very peaceful. The itinerary consists of a day in Amritsar seeing the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, then heading up to Dalhousie and Chamba in the valley for a few days, after which we'll head south to Dharamsala and from there back to Delhi.
Looking back, I've realised that I've managed to pack my entire social life for this next academic year into two months. But I think it's almost time to leave - the gaggle of French are slowly drifting off, travelling or returning to "ParrEEE", and I feel like I understand and have made a mark on the office here as well as getting a lot of journalistic understanding and environmental experience out of the whole thing. There will probably be a proper retrospective post about what I've thought out from this trip when I get home.
I'm sorry, also, for the lack of posting - please understand, it's because I'm working hard! Also, to do with the retrospective, this trip has been far more about working out what I'm going to do with myself in a year and a half's time, rather than for the experience itself. So that retrospective will be very useful, and I'm working on it internally already.
Anyway. Back to the grind! We're going swimming tonight, again - "we" means Anna, Diana, Julian and possibly Shams, Jacques and Emmanuel. I am muchly looking forward to it, since the office air-con has decided it's had enough this week, and wants to be a carburettor instead. I was being showered in a fine black dust before someone cut its power. No different from normal Delhi, then! Ta-ta.

ice skating hare krishnas

sorry for the long absence - family and then work have dominated over the past two weeks.
I spent a lovely relaxing weekend up in Rishikesh and Haridwar again with Dad and Pip, who have returned home in a haze of heat and sweat, and I'm now back at the slog at work. DTE is working me nice and hard, reaching the levels of slave labour earlier last week when I worked a whopping 28 hours in two days. I'm in bright and early today to finish off a report and an interview page, so all is going well. I haven't too much to report, really, other than the usual - it's sticky still, we seem to be going to a party every night (these French friends of ours just don't stop) and I finally learnt to ice skate on Sunday, after a brief visit to the Iskcon temple to see the Hare Rama Rama Hare Krishna Rama Krishnas.
Time is sliding away very, very fast - so much that I was faintly shocked to get Lou's email asking about visa references. Eek.
I will open this to the floor - for my last two week's travelling, should we go on a religious tour of the North - Amritsar, McLeod Ganj and Rishikesh - or should we go to Mumbai, then some beaches? I am entirely torn.

Taj-a-licious

Goodness! A whole Cambridge Union has sprung up in my comments box. How lovely.

In other news, the four of us wandered over to Agra on Sunday to see the Taj Mahal. After a very fun conversation with a poor, poor man from the Archaeological Survey of India (Nicki: "Could you please explain why I have to pay 750Rs and Indian Nationals only have to pay 20Rs please? Because your excuse that tourists are eroding the Taj and so we have to pay more doesn't stand up to the fact that there are 150 Indians here for every tourist. I feel this is verging on full discrimination, and I would like to know why my student card, which lets me in free to other UNESCO World Heritage Sites, doesn't get me in here." ASI guy: "erm.") I eventually paid my abysmally high entrance fee, got highly peed off with the huge queues and jobsworths everywhere, and then was completely cheered, relaxed and made giggly by the stupid lump that is the Taj Mahal.

I love sights that feel like someone's just rolled down the ol' backdrop, and there's a load of scaffolding behind it and a guy in dungarees patching up the canvas with duct-tape. The Taj was one of them; amazing building (although I would like to point out that it it not wide enough at the base, and I demand at least 100Rs of my fee back for that) and not as cheesy as I thought it would be. The symmetry got to me (I think I'm a bit like Constable, I like my things to come in threes or fives at most) but the satisfaction on finally getting inside and finding that - joy of joys! - Shah Jahan's tomb was beautifully whacked next to his wife's, completely ruining the whole effect, meant I could cope with seeing reflections of things everywhere.

I also enjoyed the fact that, to get that serene shot of you standing alone and proud in front of the Taj Mahal, you have to forcibly beat off the other 200 people who also want that shot. Eventually, everyone just stood like line-dancers in front of the vista, forming a sort of human wall, which was actually funnier than just posing alone.

The people watching was excellent too. Full marks to the woman in the purple Chanel velour (in 35 degrees!) matching tracksuit, with five-inch platform heels and huge bug-sunglasses. How we laughed when she refused to take off her heels and thus had to put on the stupid pixie-dust-shoes over the top. ha ha ha.

So yes, a fun day had by all; we also managed to get an auto around over the Yamuna to see the view over the back of the Taj from the other bank, which was impressive and somewhat special-er.

What was also special this weekend was our delightful visit to the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets. The guided tour around the museum of different types of ancient and modern latrines, and the outdoor exhibits of modern rotating-bucket, composting toilets in various shapes and sizes for different areas and prices was truly interesting, I kid you not. Even Kit was impressed, and learnt why we have U-bends. A special afternoon was had by all.

So yes, I had a great week with Kit (thank you for coming, dear, it was much fun). The sudden realisation at 4am this morning (when the electricity cuts out, my fan clunks off, and the sudden rise in temperature makes me wake up) that I only have under four more weeks of work, and only five and a half weeks of India left, has put me slightly in a panic. My swift social turnover (Kit left 11pm last night, Dad and Sister flew in 11pm last night) has also made the weeks fly by. Not to mention that work is so quick-paced that the weeks just disappear. We're now frantically planning out our weekends, when we're actually going to buy all the things we keep saying we'll buy before we leave, and whether we're going to splash out on a weekend in Goa to satiate our desire for blue sea and white sand.

Anyway, since I proposed the story that's running as the front page this fortnight, I am a busy woman and must get back to work. Love you all.

it's all about the technology

well, a slow week at the office researching news stories and editing articles. i am now a published journalist, with a review in my name, a page written and researched by me, and a page edited (rewritten entirely) by me.

other than work, kit has finally arrived, in a boat from Mumbai (well, after battling against monsoon floods to get through Mumbai) and is finding Delhi... interesting. i didn't really expect him to like it (note my reaction to the place for the first two weeks) and letting him loose in Delhi yesterday, still slightly jetlagged, was a little cruel. to say nothing of the fact that it monsooned yesterday afternoon so badly that roads were closed, kit got soaked, and all four of us had to wade through knee-deep muddy typhoidy water to make it home.

after one afternoon of solid downpour, a large proportion of the roads in South Delhi were a foot and a half underwater, traffic was stuck, and houses were flooded. This country is just waiting to break down. There's no such thing as maintenance, it's all about the technology. The PM has just announced a Knowledge Council for India, to advise him on how to further India's "knowledge power" - how about, while you're building the swanky new subway (which, to me, is like a flashing red beacon for all the Nepalese Maoists, Kashmiri rebels et al) why don't you use the great big holes you're digging everywhere to put in SEWERS? oh no, because that's too easy. Some brain also decided that India needed some Water Laws, to govern water quality, disposal etc. Good idea, except then they went and copied them word-for-word from 1970s British regulations, not even bothering to make them applicable for India. What a bright spark, give him a bonus. Anna and Diana visited a water treatment works two days ago that showed them proudly how clean their processed water was - not particularly surprising, since they were pumping it back into the water supply above where they were collecting it to filter. A lovely little circle of very clean water. This country is all ready for a breakdown. Just as soon as India and Pakistan open fire, and Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are consumed underneath floodwater because they forgot to build basic sewerage, and when Delhi finally runs out of clean drinking water and depletes its aquifer to zero.

I can't bring myself to say I like this place, but it's incredibly enlightening and fascinating. Even Kit said credulously yesterday, "they've had ages since Independence. how does this place still function?" There are so many Indians here desperately working to try to turn the city around, but they're working against built-up habit, working and living patterns, ingrained corruption, intense over-population and the desperate love of technology.

The best summary I've managed to give Kit so far is that this place is historically confused. Its infrastructure is in the 14th century, its industrial development and pollution is in the 1870s and its love of capitalism and desire for technology and development is in the 1960s. Its fashion is furthest ahead, stuck as it is in the early 1990s boy-band look (bring on the greasy curtains, tight shirts and designer faded jeans, boys.) Aaah, this is a great summer.

In other news, the four of us are off to Agra on Sunday for a day trip to the Taj. Stay posted for cheesy photos.

Om sweet Om

Rishikesh, and Haridwar, were excellent, but by Krishna, I never want to see another orange person again.

By orange, I mean gaggles of young men chanting yelling "BHUM BOOM", and "hare OM" and other such holy words, giggling frantically at the western girls, and jabbering "one photo? ek photo??" There are limits, and my limits were being prodded with a big stick by having a camera shoved in my face. Who in their right minds wants a picture of me covering my face with my hand and looking intensely peed off? Mind you, they were creative. Sitting behind me on steps and then getting your mate to run in front and take a snap before the silly woman could yell was a quick move. I tried explaining that they were stealing parts of my soul, but it didn't work. Eventually we all resorted to the good ol' crossed-eyes-and-tongue-out method, and it worked fine. Not even orange people wanted photos of deranged western girls. What do they tell people when they develop the photos, though? "Here's my three western brides I picked up in Rishikesh?" "Here's a picture of me with three really peed-off women who're covering up their faces and walking out of frame?"

Anyway, we had a fantastic long weekend, spent a whopping two quid on accommodation, 17 hours in total on buses, including a local loony-bus on the way back - going 60mph down a mountain road with gorges on either side and 80-degree bends on the wrong side of the road round blind corners is my idea of a good time - and I am now proudly holy, after being dunked rather unceremoniously in the Ganges at Haridwar (mm, taste the tang of the pesticide factories upstream) by two rather large and motherly Indian women, who fought off the naked men who were alternatively trying to splash us and touch us up, or both at once. It was the best fun I've had in ages. We also made puja, and today I'm going to look up what it is. It involved touching various sacred objects, lighting those floating candle-and-flower baskets in the Ganges, giving coconuts and incense to Haruman the monkey-god (who is my current favourite, with Shiva coming up fast on the inside) and being splatted on the head with red stuff. I'll check what it means, if anyone here can't tell me. I think I was just being a Good Hindu, prompted by the Two Fat Ladies.

But yes. A great weekend. Rishikesh is backpacker-central, so we spent a hilarious lunch laughing into our lassis listening to some of them; the obligatory arrogant and too-cool-for-India Frenchman with long hair, the over-loud English teenager trying to prove himself by boasting (and saying he's looking forward to going back to London - mmm, I love people who haven't read the newspapers for weeks) and the token Aussies who try to talk about Kant and fail. Yes, we were being hideously shameful ourselves laughing at them, but we are now token Delhi-wallahs and thus can giggle.

We also did yoga, and now we all hurt, all over. Our Swami was lovely - "be happy, laugh, yes", whilst pulling our legs behind our heads. If I can do the splits and put my feet on my back when I'm his age, I'll be happy and laughing too, though.

So yes. Photos will be up online as soon as I finish a few things here. Back at work now, a slack week as the magazine's going to print soon and it's all in the last stages of production. Just tidying bits up. Coca-Cola has finally answered my questions, too - they are all stinking b*stards, and if you want to know why, email me. As soon as I'd arranged a conversation with a head honcho, they asked me what questions I was going to ask; I told them I wanted to talk about human rights abuses in Columbia and water shortages in India, and suddenly everything was cancelled and they're being very quiet and giving me a big steaming heap of PR straight from their website. And not answering any of my very carefully worded questions, that are both hard to wriggle out of and include a lot of "allegedly"s. So poo to them. Boycott Coke, for not only are they mass-murderers, they are arrogant, slimy fools.

Yay for journalism! It's not my future career, but I get something good to rant about every day. And if anyone has any fun environmental stories they can dish up for me (I've already got the ones about Eco-Sex and McGowan's tap) please email them.