Pushkar Part Two

Tags

Caste, cultural conditioning, culture, Diwali, Homelessness, India, Indian culture, Pushkar, Rajasthan, Travel, Travelling, UK culture

I loved Pushkar, home to Babas, gorgeous looking cows, and fun monkeys.

Just like in Varanasi, there were a lot of bikes, and they were annoying.  They made dust clouds from the desert roads, drove too fast through the streets, and parked outside where we had breakfast, spewing fumes and blocking the entrance.  But at least there were no cars (cars are banned from the main streets).  Bikes used to be banned too, but gradually everyone stopped obeying the rules.

There was good healthy food available in Pushkar.  Juice bars sold muesli with fruit salad and soya milk, and delicious soya milk smoothies with dates, you could even add cacao shavings and spirulina.  The portions of muesli and fruit salad for breakfast were almost too big to eat (almost.)

We had a regular muesli and juice place.  There was a small seating area, which gave a great view onto the main street full of shops selling Rajasthani goods: brightly coloured cushion covers, clothes and blankets.  We used to sit and watch the shop keepers getting ready for the day; sweeping the road outside the shop with one brush- everywhere was dusty due to the desert plus motorbikes- and beating the clothes hanging up outside the shop with another brush, sprinkling water on the potholes outside the shop, and then doing a ritual with incense and a flower garland.  It was a beautiful way to start the day.   One morning an Indian man sitting opposite us at the juice place was playing recorded music.  He told us that the singer he was listening to had just died, at three am that morning.

There was so much to see: the Rajasthani women’s clothes so beautiful; thin scarves in red, pink, or green, decorated with tiny mirrors.  A monkey nonchalantly climbing across the street along tinsel put up for Diwali.  More shops sold jewellery, drums, and masks.  Away from the main streets things were quieter with fewer shops, and small stalls selling water and basic provisions.  Women sat on the pavement making and selling beaded jewellery.  Some had small children and babies sleeping in cradles.  In the market, stalls sold bags, bangles and- surprisingly to us- huge gold swords.  We saw children in heavy theatrical makeup and ornate dresses, they looked like spooky living dolls.  Beyond the market was an Indian- not touristy- area, with more shops and stalls, cheap clothing and local restaurants, and beyond that the camel area.

We ate Sabje bhaji; a local curry, which was a rich red colour, made with peas and other vegetables and served with delicious fried bread which was puffy and chewy.  They also served real Italian strong black coffee and homemade brown bread toast with peanut butter.  A portion was four slices, we accidentally ordered a set each and couldn’t eat it all.  I wrapped it up and gave it to the cows at the rubbish dump on the way home near the guesthouse.

They had the main kitchen inside but outside they served street food with the ingredients all out in the open.  Like in Varanasi they did mosquito fogging (a scooter with kind of like a leaf blower at the back, blasting out grey clouds of insecticide).  One evening the mosquito fogging scooter came and we all rushed inside covering our mouths and noses with scarves or t-shirts until the worst had passed.  We looked out at the uncovered street food, some other tourists said, I’m not going to eat that.’  We felt really sorry for the cafes and street food stalls.  We saw mosquito fogging again, they came right along the road at the bottom of where the guesthouse was; we saw kids chasing along behind it.  Staff at the guesthouse told us that the kids take selfies in it.

We got to know a man with a textile shop and wholesale business who we bought a lot of stuff from and who sent it home for us.  We often sat and chatted with him.  He said, ‘Westerners going about like Indians, with their dress, meditation and yoga, and Indians dressing in jeans and forgetting about yoga and meditation.’  It was like Osho said, what was needed was a merge of East and West.  The man did meditation each morning, ‘Up at 5.30am, and sit.’  On business he said, ‘Business always good; feel good, business good, money come, money go.’

It was an honour to experience Diwali in India and especially in Pushkar.  We bought sweets for the staff at the guesthouse, and admired the layers upon layers of sweets in the shops, like terraces, so many that men had to climb around to get to them.  We went out for dinner and heard the fireworks going off all around. Kids threw bangers down onto the street that made our ears ring.  But the poojas go on indoors, in homes and businesses, so there aren’t things outdoors to join in with, but the restaurant owner, who was explaining all this, said that the priest was coming soon and we could join their blessing for the business.  There was me and my husband, two Western women, the father, the son who ran the restaurant, and a younger boy who was trying in vain to control a tied up Dalmatian dog who wanted to say hello to everyone.  Prayers were said into the fire and then the priest tied thread around our wrists, making a bracelet, as he did so he said, ‘Happy marriage, happy life.’  (I only cut mine off very recently April 1^st; Diwali was in November)

We went back to the guesthouse, running the gauntlet of the boys with their bangers.  The street where the guesthouse was was covered in the litter of fireworks, and there was smoke everywhere.  We went up to the rooftop and listened to the fireworks.  Later lying in bed, the fireworks nearby actually shook the room a little.

The morning after Diwali, the streets were all cleaned up. That such a big party could happen and then be tidied up so fast, was yet another thing I admired about India.  We sat outside a cafe and watched people all greeting each other and giving money in street.  When we’d finished our breakfast and the man was adding up our bill, he had to break off from his task suddenly to shoo a cow away down the road, another wonderful ‘Only in India’ moment.

The waiters tried to teach us Hindi, ‘Everyday you learn a new word.’  They would test us when they saw us on the stairs or back at the restaurant. Hi, how are you, okay, fine, etc. The owner, a Brahmin (the highest caste), corrected our responses; what we were saying was not correct for us, too casual, we should say xxx instead.  Obviously we’d learned the casual version with waiters, which we were fine with.  It felt rude that he said that in front of them.  ‘We don’t observe the caste system,’ was something I used to say in private to Anthony.  Meaning, I don’t observe the caste system myself.  We just talked to whoever talked to us.  We asked our friend with the textiles, a businessman, if he knew our friend from the guesthouse.  ‘But he is staff,’ he said, looking puzzled and dismissive at the same time.  Our favourite two people didn’t mix at all.

Northamptonshire April 2019  I recently read a blog by an Indian person from Bangalore, describing the pitiful life and death of someone of a lower caste, from her childhood- so not that long ago.  I was upset and initially judgemental.  Why was he treated that way, why didn’t anyone help or seem to care? 

But then I remembered before we left the UK, in March 2018, a very cold and snowy winter, just how many people were sleeping rough in Norwich- one of the most affluent cities in the UK.  And on our return to London, how many people were on the streets just the short distance from the tube station to our hotel.  And how people walk on by, and don’t want to touch them, and how it is accepted that there are people on the street.  We have a fully functioning Government in the UK, both national and local, a small population, and money to spend on other things, and yet we don’t provide enough shelter beds, and everyone just accepts that.  Society accepts that that is the homeless person’s lot- the lack of healthcare and the low life expectancy and ongoing risk of violence.  So in a way we have our own caste system.

We did read horror stories in the paper of Dalits (lower caste people) being attacked and killed.  But India is a huge country of over a billion people, and every state is different.  Our good friend Y from Tamil Nadu who is a college teacher, said that caste makes no difference within his classroom.  Places on courses are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribespeople, which guarantees that his classroom is open to all castes (this follows the legislation in place).  Of his students, he said, ‘Oh yes, they fight, usually about girls, but never about caste.’

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Pushkar Part One

Tags

Bhang Lassi, Incredible India, India, Indian culture, Indian culture and customs, Indian customs, Indian temples, Love India, Pushkar, Rajasthan, spirituality

I loved Pushkar, home to Babas, gorgeous looking cows, and fun monkeys.

Chapter extract about our time in Pushkar, Rajasthan, India, Oct-Nov 2018:

The Varanasi guesthouse had a rooftop area with amazing views, but here the rooftop was a restaurant and they had also done it up.  Indian parasols and quirky light shades hung down from the ceiling, the walls were decorated with Indian print bedspreads and round fabric rings in different colours like chunky padded bracelets, used to put between the head and the basket when carrying things on the head.

At the rooftop restaurant there were wicker tables and chairs and also day beds to sit or lounge comfortably on.  These doubled as beds for the kitchen staff.  During the day heavy blinds were lowered to keep the sun out, it came in through gaps at the edges and was anyway still too hot to hang around for too long up there in the middle of the day.  We’d go up and eat or have a drink, at least once most days:  Sprite, aloo jeera (perfectly done spiced potato), dal and rice; mushroom, olive and tomato toasted sandwiches; home made finger chips, and banana pancakes.

As in Varanassi, Bhang Lassis (a kind of weed milkshake) were legal and available everywhere, it was fun watching stoned people lounging on the beds and eating banana and Nutella pancakes one after the other…

The owner wasn’t there all the time, but most days he’d come up and talk to us for a bit.  We had an open and surprisingly easy conversation about periods, him talking about cooking, and explaining how in his house he cooks, as for five days the women don’t do any cooking.  ‘You know, on period,’ he said, in case I hadn’t understood.  ‘Good idea, I said, we should do that.’  He said to me and my husband, ‘Yes you should do in the UK in your home!’.

One evening he cooked for all the guests who were around, huge pots of food and round balls of bread cooked in tin foil in a cow dung fire, all of us sitting on floor outside, eating with our fingers, ‘My first time,’ a young Western man said, ‘I just did my best.’

One day the owner pointed out across to a small temple.  It was hard for me to see at first, there was a red shiny temple, a Hare Krishna temple nearby, two mountains with temples, and other decorative buildings all around amongst the houses.  This was a small peachy orange and white temple.  He told us that his late father had built that temple; at the time his wife and children were not happy, especially his wife, as it cost a lot of money.  But the father went ahead and did it anyway.  On his deathbed he called his son to him and said, ‘You wanted to know why I built that temple, I shall tell you.  When I die and you have the guesthouse, you are going to make a lot of money.  You may be tempted to spend it on women, gambling…  If you get tempted, you look out there and see the temple that your father built.’

The owner told us how to reach it and we went one evening.  Along the way we passed several camels pulling carts with lots of people.  I felt bad for the camels, I didn’t want to look and turned away.  ‘Don’t turn your back on them,’ my husband said, ‘They need your support.  You can give them some love, show them that you acknowledge their pain.’

Up close the temple was much bigger than we’d expected, and was painted in a similar style to the guesthouse; multi coloured, some of the paint was slightly faded which had turned the colours into delicate pastels, with arches and small shrines with Gods. It was almost completely dark by the time we got there, and the crescent moon was beautifully framed by the outside arches.

The staff were not supposed to smoke marijuana at work, one day the owner appeared, like many bosses, quiet, like cat.  I tried to distract him by asking what he’d got in his bag; he’d arrived with bag of what looked like baby lemons.  I described what I’d seen in Varanasi; a tiny lemon and green beans hung from a doorway of a house.  ‘How to explain,’ he said, ‘Say someone jealous of you and Anthony’s relationship…’  ‘Like evil eye,’ I said, ‘Yes!’ he said, high-fiving me.  In Kerala we had seen black masks with scary faces for sale in shops and hung outside properties.  We had asked the man we bought lungis and bananas from what they were for, he said, ‘Someone break in, they break leg.’

One of the guesthouse staff said that in his village they still grind their own oil from seed using a bull, they grow the seed themselves and they give the residue of the oil to the bull.  People give seed to the pigeons; he described how each day one hundred pigeons go to his house to eat, then the next house, then the next.  ‘If you get God’s gifts, extra grain, seed, you give a big percentage to birds, pigeons, cows.’

In his village, if someone commits a crime or ‘makes a mistake,’ the police are not involved, instead everyone talks, together with both families.  They decide which family is in the wrong and they make restitution, offering x kilos of grass for cows, seed for pigeons.  ‘Pigeons are not very clever,’ he said, ‘If a cat comes, they shut their eyes and think the cat has gone away.’  ‘Pigeons are loved in India.  Not cats.  But I know tourists like cats, especially British, love cats, love animals.’  The pigeon as well as the cow are holy- hence the pigeon feeding station on Chennai beach, I realised.

April 2019, Northamptonshire:  About a week ago we went to our local town to pick up some shopping (and go to Greggs for vegan sausage rolls, of course).  In the town car park was a sign forbidding people to feed the birds.  I felt sad, and momentarily confused.  It’s all conditioning; This is acceptable here, This isn’t.  I get it, but still, I’d rather be somewhere where all the animals are fed.   

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Recently arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

For those interested in India check out Broken Traveller see post and link below

A Hippie’s Guide to Varanasi A Hippie’s guide to Varanasi If you think that a spiritual and holy city that is considered to be older than the history itself and holds the highest regards in the hearts of Indians has nothing to do with getting high then you may be in for a surprise. 857…

via All you need to know about Bhang Lassi of Varanasi — Broken Traveller

Sick and Tired in Delhi PART TWO

Tags

Cloth sanitary pads, Delhi, family, India bus journeys, Main Bazar, Parent child relationships, Periods, Periods and travelling in India, Pushkar, relationships

Sick and Tired in Delhi PART TWO
‘You took the red pill’

Extract from draft book chapter about our time in Delhi in October

I sent my son some money and a message, ‘Well done, we’re both so proud of you.’ At same time, cutting the cord. You can cut the cord and still be loving. In fact doing that, rather than being distant actually sets you free. It sets you both free.

Same with my mum- little messages with pics, and no angst from me. This sets me miles and miles away. I thought being distant does that, but it doesn’t necessarily do that

Being all cosy cosy can keep you emeshed. This isn’t emeshed. It’s kind, it’s nice, it’s fairly non emotional- as in, it’s happy but not riddled with guilt or upset like before or feeling trapped by my mother.

My son’s doing better set free from me. I’m doing better set free from my mum. But with no angst to hold us in conflict. It’s so simple put like that.

Is this the magic secret, all there is to it, the how to transition from child to adult relationships that I never previously understood? How to transition from anger ridden despair teen breakdown, and overly emeshed thirty something into own life?
Yes, yes, it’s just like this.

Delhi is known for being polluted, and while we were there the air quality was particularly bad. Bryan Adams did a show and tweeted a photograph of himself, barely visible beyond the smog. We wondered whether it was better to have the ac on or to leave it off and keep the windows closed. We researched it and discovered that ac only gives a false sense of security and doesn’t get all the dangerous particulates out. We came across adverts for companies selling bottled air in Delhi. My heart went out to the people who live there all the time.

After Delhi we were going to Rajasthan for a month, a week in each city, we had booked the trains ages ago. But at least one of those cities was as polluted as Delhi. We’d just experienced a lot of pollution in Varanasi. After Rajasthan we had flights booked to go to Kathmandu, also known for poor air quality.

And there was an outbreak of Zika virus in Jaipur, our first stop in Rajasthan. Although very dangerous only for pregnant women, neither of us wanted to risk getting ill with something else.

We procrastinated for ages, the two of us struggling to make a decision, too much choice, not feeling well. Balancing what we want to do/feel up to doing in the present with will we regret not going to all those places once the trip is over. In the end we ripped up the plan, cancelled all the trains and decided to just go to Pushkar, the smallest and least polluted place on our plan.

All the trains were sold out- which was why we’d booked them so far in advance- we could only get there by bus. As there are no loos on buses we had to wait until we were well. We felt trapped in Delhi; we felt like the food and the pollution made us ill, or at least didn’t help, yet we couldn’t leave until we were well. We stayed six nights in that room in Delhi.

On our last morning we ate breakfast at the hotel sitting out into the rooftop, porridge made with water, with banana. It was so nice being out together, it felt like an outing. The past few days had been mainly spent indoors, one of us only going out for food or drink or to the pharmacy over the road. Once or twice we went to the cafe downstairs, which was a bit sad; greasy and with doors that opened into the pollution of the street.

We watched a Westerner, he lived right at the top above the dirty kitchen, completing Hindu rituals, or possibly just washing with a water bottle, we weren’t sure. We watched him doing his laundry on the rooftop. What a life. We wondered what his story was? Divorced? Living on a pension? Hindu convert? Disappeared?

That night we got a rickshaw from the hotel to catch the night bus to Pushkar and saw the Delhi smog close up.

I tried to soak up the sights of Main Bazar, the neon lights, the mopeds, the cows, I saw a cow and a calf with big floppy ears; knowing it might be our last time. I lost concentration, and Main Bazar was gone.

We were into a different area, we saw veg restaurants, pure veg places, I thought, Why didn’t we go here? Oh, yes, we were sick and ill and indoors!

And then, utter craziness, ‘worse’ than Kolkata. Cows, thin cows, cows with floppy ears, cows trying to eat non existent grass in the middle of road, like the central reservation, and licking a stone in the middle of the barrier. A group of calves eating from a trough.

Everything grey, dust, dark, dust. Buildings that looked like they had been derelict for decades or were for demolition, by UK standards. Birds nest wiring amongst them and then, a few inflatable toys, bright pink balloons, and big brightly coloured teddies wrapped up in cellophane.

It looked like a market had finished and was packing up. There was every type of transport; lorries, cars, rickshaws, oxen and cart, men with carts, and men with sacks on their heads. Men pulling carts, some with another man pushing, but some alone, with huge loads. A man carrying a huge load on his shoulders, wrapped, two leg ends and castors poked out, a chair or a table, he carried it up to the top of a ladder to a vehicle alone, then men at the top took it.

Dust, dark, dust, and traffic jams. A sign said: Men at work. Oh God yes. If ever that sign was valid, it was there. And everything within a thick smog. It seemed unbelievable how anyone survives, does this every day. How there’s any old people in Delhi.

A cycle rickshaw got caught on our rickshaw. Everyone around just shouted instead of helping. Usually touching of vehicles, even a scrape, does not result in shouting, not like in the UK. Maybe this was because it held up the traffic, and maybe it was a status thing, with bicycle rickshaws considered lower in the pecking order than auto rickshaws.

On previous night bus journey I/we were worried about needing a pee, this time, that was eclipsed by worrying about diaorriah. And then, Oh great, blood, my period started as well.

The bus depot was dusty, with rows of numbered stalls of travel agents, each with a desk and a tiny office with seats. To get to the toilets we had to go down a path to the side of one of the stalls, then along another. There were lots of men hanging about, and big dogs, and next to the toilets there was a big room with men sleeping on the floor, like a paying homeless shelter or very low cost accommodation. There was a hand washing sink outside but nothing inside the loos, just Indian style toilets which was fine, but no sinks like in the trains and not very clean. Even if I had taken a bottle of water in with me like I would on the train, I’d not be confident enough with hand hygiene to use my moon cup so cloth sanitary pads and a lungi would have to suffice.

On the bus a dreadlocked young woman across the aisle spread out a white lungi on the bus seat, it’s good to do for hygiene anyway. I did mine double layer just in case but my cloth sanitary pad didn’t let me down, as they say in the ads. The only thing it meant was not being sure if my pain, was urge to go to the loo, period pain, or hunger; we didn’t eat anything in the hours prior to the journey. But we managed the journey okay, we stopped for the loo and not eating beforehand worked.

We changed buses for the last part of the journey. Outside the window were bushy trees, mountains and desert. I saw a wall painted mauve, and another with delicate scalloped shapes cut out of the bricks, and then we were in Pushkar.

Thank you very much for reading

T2 Trainspotting

Tags

1990s, Choose life, Film, Irvine Welsh, T2 Trainspotting, Trainspotting

At last, a few weeks ago, we got around to watching T2 Trainspotting, released in 2017, the twenty-years-later sequel to Trainspotting, the 1996 film by Danny Boyle about a group of friends (Begbie, Spud, Simon and Renton) in Edinburgh living an alternative lifestyle, shall we say.     

My husband said afterwards, ‘Well if you hadn’t seen the first one that would have made no sense whatsoever.’  Which was absolutely true.  We enjoyed T2 because we loved Trainspotting and because it was such a big part of our culture in the 1990s (I mean watching the film; my life was not similar, I have to add.)  We forgave T2 the lack of much of a plot, forgave the plot holes, the obvious devices and contrivances*, and the unbelievable bits.  We forgave it all, and enjoyed it anyway, because we love Trainspotting and because it was them (the original cast of characters played by the same actors.) 

In T2 one of the things I enjoyed was Spud telling his stories (every day tales of mayhem from the first movie) to a new character Veronika.  ‘I like your stories,’ she says, inspiring him to write them down, by hand on A4, pasting the sheets up all over the walls of his council flat.

Simon and Renton laugh behind his back ‘Whose going to read them?’  ‘Well that’s just it, nobody.’  But Spud is shown with a sheaf of papers, a title is alluded to, the implication being that they become Trainspotting, the novel on which the first film is based (Irvine Welsh’s first novel.) 

*A good example is this, the updated Choose Life speech, which was delivered in such an unbelievable way.  But it was still good.  2017’s T2 Trainspotting speech above.  The original Choose Life speech from the 1996 Trainspotting film is below.  Both worth watching even if you otherwise have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.  Enjoy!

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Recently arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Sick and tired in Delhi Part One

Tags

Delhi, India, Indian train journeys, Main Bazar, meditation, Sickness, Taking the red pill, Travel, Travel sickness, Travel writing, Traveling, Travelling

Sick and Tired in Delhi
‘You took the red pill’

Extract from draft book chapter about our time in Delhi in October

People were in our seats, lying down; we had to ask them to move for us to sit down. They did so grudgingly, the woman still half laying down so that we were squashed up on half a seat, and the whole group seemingly thoroughly put out that we were there.

It was around eight pm. We’d planned to watch a couple of episodes we’d downloaded from Netflix, and I was going to do a bit of writing. But soon after they announced they all wanted to go to sleep meaning we couldn’t sit up. We were in three tier ac, when the middle bunk gets folded down no one can sit on the lower bunk anymore. We had one lower bunk and the top bunk on on the other side. The top bunks on three tier don’t have enough space to sit up.

Previously we’ve just all worked out when we wanted to go to bed and stayed up until then. But this time there was no negotiation.
And they had used all the pillows and a lot of the blankets.

Anthony had the lower bunk. I lay on the top bunk, meditated, and tried to sleep. Then someone put the big light on. At ten pm I gave up, went and crouched with Anthony for a bit, then went back to bed.

It was hard to climb up, there isn’t a ladder, just foot holds and a bar, and I am short. I woke up at 2.15 am and then at 4.30 am for good.
It’s always a bit noisy; people’s alarms go off and people get off and on at stops along the way. And from early morning there are men selling chai coming through the carriage saying loudly, ‘Chai chai coffee chai.’ Well I didn’t want any, because I was asleep, but now you’ve woken me up I actually do.

But this journey was particularly bad, with loud snoring and farting in the night; and in the morning one of the party sat doing really loud burps.

Of course the fact that we felt annoyed with the people we shared a space with and they didn’t seem that nice made it all the worse.
But as we arrived into Delhi station, the adult son of the family came up to my husband and shook his hand, ending any hard feelings (or at least most of them.)
So we arrived in Delhi very tired. My husband had started feeling ill in Varanasi, with a bad chest. ‘I’m never doing three tier again,’ he said.

We went out for breakfast at a rooftop cafe overlooking Main Bazar, my husband found us a hotel, we treated ourselves to ac as he was unwell and because of the pollution.

My husband got ill with an upset stomach almost immediately, funnily enough, immediately after eating at the same restaurant as he had before when he got sick last time. I went out on my own to eat in Main Bazar. A man said the usual, ‘Hi where are you from, I’m not trying to sell you anything’ (which was almost certainly not true). ‘No talk?’ Acting all offended. He was pushy, but I couldn’t talk very well anyway due to wearing a pollution mask. When he caught me again on the way back I said, ‘I must get home, my husband is ill,’ which worked a treat, and the man backed off. The people out in the street were pushy but not scary, the whole place just seemed touristy.

I wrote to a friend: Now back in Delhi, where we first arrived in March. Having been here before, and having since been to Varanasi and Kolkata both of which are much crazier it seems relatively tame. Polluted and dirty, but not intimidating. I have been out by myself for walks and to eat three times already. It’s interesting to see how my perspective has changed.

I also wrote: I struggled to get up on the top bunk on the train. I was out of breath going up three flights of stairs at the hotel. I probably need to do something, but not yet, and what? The English guy in Varanasi talked about going for a run at 4am but surely the air quality means that would do more harm than good? I have seen a yoga mat for sale. We’ll see. I wrote: Right now I’m just happy that I’m not currently ill, using time to rest and sleep, and catch up on writing.
Ha ha ha, said the forces of the universe, again.

Just as when we arrived in March, our room had a balcony which looked out over Main Bazar, standing out there, for brief periods only due to the pollution, was far better than watching television. I saw four adults and two kids on a scooter. Outside the restaurant opposite, a black and white dog was leaping up, wagging their tail in front of a man, the man acting cool, then the dog jumped up on the man and then he finally gave in and made a fuss of the dog, it was nice to watch.
I ate at the restaurant opposite, I had a masala dosa, it was okay, not as good as South India of course (the home of masala dosas) and chatted to the owner who was from Kashmir.

Later on I saw the kitchen, which was a couple of floors up, from our balcony. The table and walls were black with dirt and grease, and a man was wiping the table with a very dirty looking cloth.

I got sick just after my husband, after eating at the same place as last time, a different one to him. Not the masala dosa one, although it’s impossible to know where we actually got sick from.
‘I feel defeated by India,’ my husband said.

Our frequencies were really low, thinking about the UK, everything, the realisation that we took the red pill, there’s no going back, and what taking the red pill really means. Planning how we will go forward into our new life in the UK, beginning to turn 25% of our attention to the UK and what happens next, practically. ‘We don’t want to have a life changing experience and return to the same life;’ whilst still being present in India.

The room was medium sized, painted white, with a really cosy duvet that we both really appreciated in our sorry states. We watched a lot of old X Factor clips on YouTube, it’s not what I usually do but I enjoyed it. A priest sang REM’s Everybody hurts beautifully. In his introduction he said, ‘In my job I see a lot of pain… a lot of joy and happiness, but a lot of pain.’
I tried meditating, focussing on my out breath, feeling a sense of peace, enjoying the big duvet cosiness. Feeling almost chilly but knowing that my soft sweatpants I bought in Tokyo were nearby was such a sweet comforting sensation.

Meditation had possibly helped me deal better with sickness. I said ‘Oh God,’ a few times but felt calmer during vomiting; I really hate being sick and get a bit scared sometimes. I used to look at the little plastic seat in the bathroom, it was my favourite object in that place; opaque white, decorated with faded mauve and silver sparkly flowers. I had a dream about a silver palace. Waking up, the first thing I saw was the gold and silver leaf design of the curtains which were lit up by the sun.

Thank you very much for reading

Keeping the faith

Tags

Anything is possible, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, escape the matrix, family, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, guilt and forgiveness, India, Narrowboat, Netflix, parents, Technology, Travel memoir, writing

Photo:  our boat

So adjusting back, or rather into as we’re in a new life, has felt harder than we anticipated this week.  Especially technology.  E.g. My husband applying for jobs and doing CVs on his phone…

My trusty tablet failed me (Samsung S3) about which I’d kept saying, you just need to last the year, then I’ll get back and set up WiFi and go back to using a laptop.  Well we didn’t set up WiFi straight away, I thought perhaps I’d manage by going down the pub or hot spotting to my husband’s phone, not wanting to get bogged down in lots of contracts etc…. plus I’d got used to working on my tablet and thought I’d just get a keyboard for it…

I only lost a few hours of work- I religiously email everything to myself as often as I get a chance- it was more the shock when it suddenly decided to not recognise my password. I’ll need to factory reset it when I can face doing that.

Anyway now we have WiFi, there was a special offer on and we got a super cheap deal.  Setting it up was hard, then resigning in to everything, computer doing updates, blah blah blah, all was stressful.  But once I had put on all my emailed work, seeing all my chapters laid out on a big screen was nice and I’m sure it will be much easier to work where I can flit between documents easily.

And we watched Netflix (Quicksand, recommended by a friend of my husband, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles from Google Play) on the laptop; it was like being in the cinema!  After a year of watching everything on a phone or at most a tablet, it was amazing, I couldn’t get over how big the writing was!

Boat news:  I am now fully competent at emptying the cassette toilet and filling the water tank. We got a second futon off the secondhand site, and went to collect it one evening, and went out for a curry.

We were excited to chat to Indian people, the place was called Delhi something, but the people were from Bangladesh and hadn’t been to India.  We had a nice chat anyway.  We decided we don’t need to go out to eat after a year of doing it all the time, but I did enjoy putting on earrings, a nice top and a jacket (I have turned into a bit of a slob on the boat); and I did feel really happy:  evidence, see below:

Big walks have continued, I have almost made it into the next village (I go a bit further each time). Greggs vegan sausage rolls have continued.  I have a correction to last week’s post; there were not anti vegan sausage roll protests outside Greggs, everyone just thought there was.  A group of protesters had been hemmed in by police, just happened to be outside a Greggs…

We went to Norfolk and got spoiled with a lovely dinner, use of a luxury shower and luxury smoothies, and went to an event for my son showcasing his work prior to his exhibition in New York.

In the year that I’ve been away he’s bonded with my nephew who is younger.  My son did his CV and my son and his friends all helped prep him for the interview- he just got his first job- as well as providing socialising and fun.  I also got to meet my son’s new girlfriend, his agent and some new friends, who were all lovely people.

My son also sent me a lovely Mother’s Day email filled with memories of good things he remembers me doing when he was a child and teenager, and I think we’ve both put the past behind us (he was a troubled teen and I couldn’t manage his behaviour, or live with him by the time he was eighteen; he is almost thirty now).

So all good there.

I saw my mum, she was restrained in not asking me a lot of questions and I seem to have, for now, created better boundaries. However, my son and nephew told me that she had said (re me going off to India,) that I had had a mental breakdown/mid life crisis, so I’ll probably need to stay strong to ensure that that relationship stays within certain limits.

Has anyone watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer?  Do you remember the episode that fans hate, where she is shown in a mental hospital, having doubts as to whether any of the being a slayer world is real.  It’s never fully explained- she has been spiked with poison and could be just having visions- which is why fans hate it.  ‘What’s more real,’ she says to her best friend Willow, ‘A scared young girl in a mental hospital, or some kind of superhero slayer and vampires?’

In the mental hospital, her mum keeps saying, ‘Believe in yourself, believe in yourself,’ meaning come back to there.  After a lot of conflict, Buffy chooses to say goodbye to her parents and go back into the Buffy world.

Photos:

We have a beautiful location

There is also a caravan and camping area.  See loo emptying point on the right by the bins, a short wheelbarrow walk from our boat!

Sheep opposite our boat

Beyond the caravan area, a pond and trees

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Just arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Geography Of The Moon

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, Geography of the moon, Ho Chi Minh, Minimalism, Music, Travel, Traveling, Travelling, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity

The man at the bus stop in Da Lat asked us if we lived in Ho Chi Minh City.  It seemed strange to imagine the possibility.  The following evening in the taxi on the way to the gig, we admired the city.  Tall skinny blocks of matching buildings, square blocks of flats with outlines almost drawn around them in white light, a collection of buildings lit in various neon lights, and best of all Building 81, the second tallest in South East Asia (the tallest is in Malaysia apparently.)

We had seen it coming in on the coach, like a child’s building block tower, the stacks narrower and narrower until a thin point.  Interesting in the day, and spectacular at night, lit up like a computer motherboard, and in front of it chunky blocks of flats looming black out of the darkness, lit in patches, like something out of The Matrix or Bladerunner.

I’m disappointed that I can’t find the clip of this; I thought YouTube had everything.  I’ll describe it as accurately as I can from memory.  In Billions, Taylor begins a romance with Oscar.  Taylor and Oscar go back to Oscar’s after their first proper date.  He has a classy apartment and a great sound system.  He presses a button or whatever and on comes The Killing Moon, by Echo and the Bunnymen.

‘Is this okay?’  Oscar asks.  ‘It’s what I would have hoped for, had I thought about it.’  Taylor answers.

Much is written about how as people get older they stop listening to new music.  It’s hard for anything new to compete with things that are so loved.  Or for things not to remind you of something you already know, and prefer.  And sometimes it’s about wanting to lean on someone older, even though they were young when they made it.  And having seen so much music, been to so many gigs, it’s easier to get picky and hard to impress.

What would we have wanted that night, had we thought of it?  Turns out it was Geography Of The Moon.

Timing:  The day before I’d read Des’s post about going to a very special show in Seattle.  Before the first song was finished… play for me my Lord a song that I can sing… I realised I was going to do a post about going to a gig too.  Psychedelic enough for my husband.  Mournful enough for me, with the kinds of lines I like such as, the taste of a thousand dirty mouths.  

Timing, again: a song that could have been written just for us at that time: wanderlust… the future is unknown… the universe will provide… remember you will die make this an interesting ride…

We’d been in a temporary slump, experiencing a lack of confidence, and then we meet these two.  They had lived on a boat in London, and were now on the road touring Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, just the two of them.

It was good for me and my husband to have a night out.  We were out until 2am and up much later, the noisiest ones in the hostel (except for the staff downstairs who were smoking marijuana, listening to loud music and hugging inflatable balls…)

 

Thank you very much for reading

Welcome to my world!

Tags

coming home after travelling, Greggs, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, Life on a narrowboat, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, plant based diet, reverse culture shock, Tags and cats, Travel memoir, Vegan, veganism, writing

photo- where I work

photo- space: the final frontier. We’ve been scouring Gumtree (second hand site) for suitable seating. Furniture has to be multifunctional, narrow, foldable flat to get in, or all three! This is a Futon Company single futon

photo- when we get a second futon that will be our second chair and the folding chairs can just come out when we have visitors, or want to sit in the garden. It’s too hot with the wood burner if it’s a mild day so my husband bought an electric heater from Aldi for when a little heat is needed but not a roaring stove.  And then of course it turned cold again!

Welcome to my world

Right now, my ‘routine’ is as follows: Get up (not very early) (my husband has lit the fire and sometimes brought me tea in bed), do yoga, get dressed, do very minor chores e.g. sweep the floor, fill up drinking water bottles, do a few bits of hand washing, then have breakfast and go for a big walk.

In the afternoon I write for a couple of hours, then cook dinner. Breakfast is sugar free muesli with cacao, maca, linseed, chia seeds, a chopped apple or pear and soya milk. For dinner I cook something plant based from scratch; lentils, chickpeas, beans, vegetables, rice, potatoes, rice noodles, and coconut milk are all staple cupboard ingredients.

(In the interests of full transparency, during the day I often eat two iced buns or a Pot Noodle. I used to chastise my husband for living on Pot Noodles and cereal when he lived on a boat when we first met, but maybe there’s just something about boat life.)

In the evenings we listen to the radio- it’s so funny listening to Radio 4 again, it took a bit of fiddling to get the radio to work in the boat which is all metal, but it does, (as long as nobody moves); share a limited amount of data on my husband’s phone, listen to music, eat oranges, and talk. We have nothing to watch on Netflix, any recommendations please tell us!

Even though there are some nice footpath walks around, I’m currently doing a route along the A5 (a main road but it is quiet), with a good path along the side. I do this on average every other day and every time I go a little further. This is where my OCD tendencies come in handy! I am enjoying wrapping up and going for a walk. In SE Asia it was often too hot and the pavements in very poor condition, so this is a definite plus for the UK. I can already feel the benefit.

I have noticed how unfit I am from not having done anything much for a year. I can feel my arms and wrists working when I chop vegetables (admittedly my knives are rubbish, but still), or wringing out clothes, and I ached after emptying the cassette toilet even though I did it a day earlier than my husband would. (That would be a good fitness programme, empty the toilet after two days, then three, and so on…)

Up until now my husband has been doing the boat chores and DIY, as well as emptying the loo, filling the water tank, changing the gas bottle, chopping wood, fetching coal and lighting the fire, as well as all shopping, errands and all driving, as he wants me to be able to concentrate on writing. (I have a wonderful husband, I know.)

However I am going to make sure I learn how to do everything over the next few weeks. Today I plan to empty the toilet by myself, just as soon as I’ve had that iced bun…

PS My husband just arrived back with Greggs vegan sausage rolls! Greggs (a cheap and cheerful high street bakery) introducing a vegan sausage roll is big news in the UK. Actually we even heard about it when we were in South East Asia. Some meat eaters have been protesting (even though their pork sausage rolls have not been taken away); Piers Morgan, a presenter, spat it out after trying one on national breakfast television (even though according to my husband who can remember eating the meat ones the vegan ones don’t taste any different). So, civil war between vegans and non vegans, leavers and remainers, remind me again why we came back?!

photo- the kitchen, complete with iced buns!  The keys hanging up have a float, everything that can go into the canal, will go into the canal, they say

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Just arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony