The Phoenix Abroad

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2005-10-05T08:24:00.000+01:00

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

2005-09-08T10:26:00.000+01:00

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

2005-08-31T09:40:00.000+01:00

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

2005-08-23T05:06:00.000+01:00

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

2005-08-10T07:07:00.000+01:00

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

2005-08-05T05:52:00.000+01:00

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

2005-07-27T05:56:00.000+01:00

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.

yogis, ghats and karma, oh my

2005-07-22T10:28:00.000+01:00

we're off to Rishikesh! tonight! for three days - we're taking monday off! - if I finish the Factsheets page, Pradip (editor) says! (in saying which he reminds me a lot of middle-school parenting; yes you can watch TV tonight if you finish all your homework.)

we're taking an exciting bus (read: non-air-conditioned, seven hour's journey) overnight up into the foothills of the Himalayas, to Rishikesh, a place very close to the source of the Ganges and full of ashrams and yogis. We've isolated some ashrams and hostels that put on yoga classes, packed t-shirts and shorts for a dunk in the Ganges - which is conveniently upstream from Delhi and Varanasi, and thus non-septic and far less risky - and stored up karma in the form of not killing any mosquitoes today. so three days of conforming to backpacker stereotypes, although i haven't bought any books by the Dalai Lama, the Bhagavad Gita, or anything by Hemingway or Joyce to read, which seem to be the most-read books by backpackers here, judging by what gets left in backpackers cafes in Paha Ganj.

I've had a good week, too - met up with Jem et family at the beginning of the week, and remembered how good it is to see a face from home; the film festival continues strong, with a very depressing (in film-festival terms, "moving") Inner Mongolian film about horse herders, and the British film Yasmin yesterday; and I've nearly completed a good five articles, three of which are full-page.

So yes, all continues well. I'm looking forward to getting out of the smog - ingrained dirt in exposed skin is all very well, but I've seen a few pictures of the condition called "Delhi Lung", and it's not pretty. It's also getting steamy in Delhi at the moment, as the rains haven't come for a good five days or more. So foothills it is, if this page gets done. Cheerio.

the weekend in sight

2005-07-16T08:44:00.000+01:00

feeling much better today, sorry for scaring everyone yesterday. a cathartic post, i think. and the men aren't so bad - I think traditional views of women hold strong all across Asia among certain men. and it didn't turn out to be the policemen intimidating us: our broker was just trying to get more money out of us for our registration that he should have paid for himself. a few official-looking letters (with as many CSE stamps as we could find) and plenty of smiling put paid to that, and we're now stocked up with about five phone numbers to call if we ever get stopped by policemen again. mum, you can stop going white and shaky now.

so yes - work is going well, i have a fun deadline to meet this afternoon which will require some good solid slog, and a whole week of the India Film Festival to follow. And an exciting interview with the Director of Water Resources or such at Coca-Cola on Monday, which'll be - interesting, if I can get something naughty out of him.

right, back to the deadline...

scam, scam, scam...

2005-07-15T05:54:00.000+01:00

ugh. i'm losing a large amount of respect for a proportion of Indians over here; not all by any means, we have a wonderful landlady and great workmates, and the majority of people we meet are fine. but i'm getting very fed up with:

a) the fact that, on wednesday night, coming home from a bar, we were stopped by two power-crazy and very frightening severely corrupt policemen, who obviously spoke english but jabbered at us in Hindi to frighten us; we persuaded them to let us go home by showing them the address of our broker, and explaining that we were working for an NGO. now, apparently, they showed up at the broker's last night, demanding money for no reason (well, "registration"); the broker now wants us to pay him, and we're scared the policemen know where we live. but we're sorting it out, mum and dad - we've got documentation from CSE, we're going to fax the embassy today asking for a random document proving we're here legally, and get cards with our names on them from CSE. fight corrupt bureaucracy with bureaucracy. and we're also going to make a show of writing down their names and their badge numbers, which apparently scares them off.

b) being seen as a walking dollar sign. yes, i completely understand that i am very well off in comparison to 90% of the people here; yes, every day i'm here i get reminded of how lucky and grateful i am; yes, every day here i feel guilty for being western and having money; yes, i don't mind paying slightly more for rickshaw rides or for things at markets. BUT i have a problem with people demanding i pay twenty times the local price for entrance fees, i have a problem with rickshaw drivers demanding triple the price to get somewhere, and i have a problem with corrupt officials seeing me as a way to augment their salary.

c) being seen as a prostitute. no, i will wear a t-shirt if i'm hot. i will keep my hair the colour it is, and not be scared into dying it black to try and stop people grabbing it. i will not tolerate men asking me for "kiss kiss" (the best one was a very rich guy pulling up on a nice bike beside me, and saying "kiss kiss." when i yelled, "NO!! go away!" in a shocked and angry voice, he drove up again, looking very affronted. "ok, ok, just one?") i am fed up with guys touching me, and i am fed up with slapping them away. and i am fed up with being stared at - i can cope with people looking at my face, but not at my tits and arse.

rant over. i promise, this country is incredibly interesting, as well as incredibly frustrating. i am having a lot of fun in trying and failing to understand it, making friends with the people, working out social relations and places to go and see and eat. but i'm ending up, at the end of each week, needing a holiday. i think it was mainly the policemen thing that's got to me this morning, as well as feeling afraid of men in broad daylight in busy places. (parents, i have a whistle with me, a heavy torch to use as a club, and anna has a rape alarm that will burst the eardrums of an assailant. we've also gone over all our self-defence training together.)

grrr. otherwise, i'm having a fun time! honest! we've got a great group of NGO workers, from America, Ireland, France (some lovely French guys), the Phillipines as well as Indians that we're going out with a lot. We're off to the Biggest Club in Asia, either tonight or tomorrow, which should be an experience (again, mother, rape alarm and heavy torch, and men to drop us home.) Also, I managed to call out a plumber and fix our water tank supply yesterday morning, all my my lonesome! With no help from either of the engineers. This place is the best and the worst at the same time.

today, internet connection willing, i'm going to do a big pile of research for my page, and then learn Hindi over lunch. i'm learning some key phrases, including "too much", "I am a student", "I work here", and "go away."

Swimming with Monkeys

2005-07-13T05:59:00.000+01:00

hello again from faintly-sunny Delhi.
after a well-needed break over our first long weekend, we're back to the smog and the desk; I've just finished editing a piece and am about to start work on researching and designing a page for the kid's section of the magazine, the Gobar Times (the Poo Times, directly translated.)
Jaipur is a beautiful city - the Pink City, as the faintly mad Maharaja Ram Singh ordered it to be painted in 1876. We rolled in at a pleasant 11:30am (after getting on the train at Delhi at an un-Krishna-ly hour), got thumped in the face by the heat as we got off - Jaipur is in Rajasthan, towards Pakistan, in the middle of desert - and made our way past the swarms of touts to find an autorickshaw to our hostel.
Cunningly, I'd searched the trusty IndiaBible beforehand and emailed a promising place that had beds for an apparent £1 a night and supposedly a swimming pool. Well, it was only a half-full small 10-metre square-ish tiled hole in the rooftop patio, but it was right next to our room. Despite the French backpackers hogging the deckchairs, we spent a very long time enjoying the fact that the layer of smog was thin enough to let the sun through.
The afternoon was taken up with shopping through the dozens of bazaars in the old walled city. Jaipur is famous for its gemstones, and infamous for its gem scams - hundreds of tourists a year get conned into paying large amounts of cash "in advance" for gems that will apparently arrive in England for them to sell on for profit. Needless to say, we met a lot of nice young men that were obviously in the business - a pair even convinced us, briefly, that they were altruistically taking us to a cafe, but instead attempted to get us into their Gems Emporium. Otherwise, though, I spent a whole £14 on a big heap of gems and silver, after a good hard haggle and lots of talk of "discounts" and "students". I managed to buy all the bits and bobs I've been staring at on silver stalls in Cambridge for the past year, at 1/20th of the price, usually. Almost worth the plane ticket.
I got up early Sunday morning, lured by the call of the pool; unfortunately it had been taken over by four monkeys and a hawk. Three of the monkeys were lounging happily on the deckchairs, whilst the third was having a good doggy-paddle, eating all the drowned bugs. I decided not to Swim With Monkeys (since the massive male was giving me evils whilst pulling a bin apart and eating the remains of some mangoes) but waited until they'd wandered off.
We spent the rest of the day, before heading back on the train, looking around Hawa Mahal - the Palace of the Winds - built by another slightly odd Maharaja in the 18th century. The front is a five-storey carved edifice, one room deep, with fancy lattices so that the women of the house could observe the town without being stared at.
Back in Smelly Delhi, however, the monsoon has hit with a vengeance, after a great storm yesterday night. I'm not sure whether I prefer Jaipur's heat and relatively clean air, or Delhi's massive pollution but relative coolness.

photos of Jaipur

2005-07-13T05:58:00.000+01:00

http://www.bebo.com/pt1/2442582a262420590b63670724c792136657d63
photos of our Jaipur trip can be found here.

London

2005-07-07T12:35:00.000+01:00

just a quick post to say, I hope everyone's safe back at home. Whoever it is got their timing perfect.

over here, all is pretty calm - we're off on a trip to Jaipur this weekend, work is picking up and the monsoon has really come - we have Lake Baikal outside our doorstep, unfortunately. You know you're working for an NGO when you scream curses at the "infrastructure" every morning.

housewarming

2005-07-04T12:49:00.000+01:00

After dead bodies, cobras, getting lost in slums at night and an interesting case of Delhi-belly, we seemed to have settled in here in Delhi.

So much that, tonight, we move into our flat! Yes, parents, I've moved out, please forward all mail to South Delhi, etc. My first flat is costing me a whole £60 per month, including brokerage charges, has marble floors, a large living room, is furnished and includes another dodgy fridge, reminiscent of the room in Moscow last year. I'll take some pictures with Anna's digi camera as soon as we finalise everything tonight.

I'm currently at work, abusing the dodgy internet facilities to write this; work has kicked off in a big way. I've just finished researching an article for the next issue, on Michigan University pulling its contract with Coca-Cola in response to claims of abuses in Columbia and India; very interesting stuff, and I enjoyed writing an email to the spokeswoman for Coke among others, asking some very evil questions. I've also been given a review to write; I saw a new short film on village healers in India at the India Habitat Centre last Friday, which I'll write up tomorrow and hopefully get published in a week and a half! Not bad for the first month, at this rate I'll be editing the Delhi Times by September.

So yes, work is going well. We're managing to fit in a few things in the evening, like toddling around markets, finding obscure cafes, and getting lost. I'm glad we're in the south of Delhi, as the touristy area around Pahaganj boasts high levels of AHS (Aging Hippie Syndrome); lots of men and women in their early thirties, drooping dreadlocks and tribal tattoos, deep carcinogenic wrinkly tans, making many references to how many places they've been to in the past week.

I'm also starting to think of where I want to go while I'm here. We're working from 10-6, Monday to Friday, and also on the first and third Saturdays of each month, leaving us only three days a fortnight to do some sightseeing; I've decided to leave work just over a week early, so that I can travel with Louise (if she wants to), either to Mcleod Ganj and Daramasala, or Rasjasthan, or to Varanasi. We've also been told about this place close to the source of the Ganges (before it becomes septic and people start floating their dead down it) which sounds fantastic.

Anyway, I should get back to my review, and then get ready to move in to the flat. Its a really good neighbourhood, with three very good supermarkets, lots of tailors, a pharmacy, bank, and household appliances shacks, as well as the obligatory mango stalls, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun. There's also a famous sweet shop with massive chocolate cakes for £2 - we're buying a housewarming cake.

namaste

2005-06-26T15:36:00.000+01:00

as a true colonial, i am now going to spend my entire first paragraph writing about the weather.

we arrived yesterday, after an interesting flight from Munich airport (where we had to scarper across miles of boarding gates to catch the flight to Delhi, because we were delayed at Heathrow) into a pretty 38 degrees and 100% humidity. With our bags having an extended holiday at Munich, it was a lot easier squashing into an autorickshaw and being driven in an interesting fashion to -eventually- Jamia Hamdard University, where we're in the Scholar's House. The driving's more creative, actually. Highly artistic. Many moments of "he's-not-going-to-get-us-through-that-gap-is-he-oh-yes-he-is-oh-lordy".

After a nap through the hottest part of the day (peaking at 41) we ventured out in search of clothing and fodder, with the nice 2000 rupees each the Lufthansa people had given us in lieu of our backpacks. With a stop-off at India Gate (where we saw dressed-up monkeys being made to dance, and we all lost it after a guy sat down in front of us, opened his bag and pulled out a cobra) we eventually made it, after passing an elephant on a fly-over and numerous cows, to Connaught Place. After a quick and satisfying haggle, we stopped in a cafe for some thalis, drank four litres of water between us and headed home.

The monsoon happily came this morning - not bucketing yet, but thunderstorms tonight, we think - and the local lavatories are smelling so pretty already. It'll also bring the mosquitos out, but with the air conditioning, fan and mossie net, I think I'll be ok, despite the fact there are Things living in my bed. My only worry is the Guinea worms; there's no way I can help getting muddy feet, and I can vividly imagine the worms burrowing into my feet already.

Anna, Diana and I are now off to a food-and-sari market (it's almost 3.30, and starting to cool - the rain also meant the temperature dropped to almost pleasant this morning). The food's great here, but we're going to play it safe until our immune systems can cope. Anna's managed to get Delhi-belli already (don't trust the watermelon juice), and the highly chlorinated water is hard to adjust to. (Note to Mother: I am fine, rabid monkeys, dogs and cobras aside.) We start work tomorrow, so hopefully we'll be back on track with meals and sleep, and find out where the local food market is, and start looking for a flat.

From what I've seen of Delhi so far (the South, mainly), without sounding too patronising, the people are working incredibly hard. Everyone we've met - especially the women - are friendly, talkative, interested and quick. I'm glad we're living and working in the South, too: the majority of the slums are around here and to the West, and the rudimentary tents, shacks and beds along the sides of the road - as well as the incredible smog, rubbish and pollution - bring the costs of fasttrack 'development' home, as well as giving me a reality check.

Ready, Steady...

2005-06-24T09:43:00.000+01:00

I'm off! This afternoon, at any rate. I am sitting here in my dressing gown, my backpack not packed, documents not photocopied, friends not rung, unshowered and unready. But I'm just about getting excited. The past couple of weeks have been so hectic that I haven't had much time to get excited; the forecast for Delhi tomorrow being 40 degrees, too, I've been too worried about all the things that could go wrong, infect me, bite me, devour me or kill me to really start thinking about actually being in India.

I don't even know how to say hello. Erk.

testing, testing...

2005-06-23T21:27:00.000+01:00

ok, it works. i'll do a fuller pre-jetsetting post tomorrow, because i'm completely and utterly knackered.