Varanasi and Jaipur

Were on the road.... it's great! The first few days were weird as we wondered around not quite knowing what to do with ourselves, still having thoughts for the hospice and other bits of work... but we took it easy, ate a lot and drank much chai and now we are well and truly in doing sod all traveler mode! (it's a hard life i know)

Our first stop was Varanasi. The holiest place in India. It was interesting. A great deal smaller than Kolkata which was nice, we went on a boat on the holy Ganges at sun rise, it was very beautiful. There was mist covering it and it definitely felt holy. There were people bathing, swimming, washing clothes and drinking the water all side by side (next to a sewage pump.) it was crazy to see. After hearing the horror stories of how polluted the water was i am pleased to say i didn't fall in, even though our boat was a little unstable!

We wondered around the bazars (markets) and i fell in love with everything i saw (for a shock!) i had a skirt made out of a sari and a dress made. I was in my element and James was happy as every shop we went in, he was given chai.

Then we headed on a night train, (which turned out to be a night and half a day train) to Jaipur, Rajasthan. It is gorgeous here. It's a little hotter and has a Middle Eastern feel to it. I love it.

Jaipur is named the pink city as a lot of the buildings are a beautiful shade of... pink. There is so much detail on all of the buildings. I have become obsessed with photographing the patterns and details of the buildings. (and I'm wanting to recreate them in our house at home... when we get one!)

It is so relaxed here, the LP says its 'Rajasthan's most polluted and pushy city'. To James and i who have just spent 3 months in Kolkata, it's a town, no it's better than that, it's a village!

So were heading onto Jaisalmer tonight to ride camels in the desert, then making a B line for the beaches. I hope everyone at home is well and happy. Quite often our conversation out here turns to coming home. It feels very strange but kind of exciting. I just hope we bring the weather home with us... BUT this is still 5ish weeks off and we have got a lot more land to cover here in India, so for now Namaste xx

Goodbye Kolkata :(

Woah. It’s been an age since i last wrote. So much has been happening. We only have a few days left in Kolkata before we hit the road and i feel so sad. Both James and I feel settled and just like in Uganda, we feel we could stay longer.

We are wrapping up our work for the hospice but there is still so much more we want to do. We have realised that 3 months is just enough time to get settled in a place. I feel like i know how to handle Kolkata now and that i could really get stuck in to some long term work.... But (don’t worry mum) were not going to stay. We weighed up staying for a few more weeks and cut down our time traveling but we realised that would be silly. What more can we do in a few weeks. Plus I have wanted to travel India for as long as I can remember and here we are on the verge of it. It will be silly to pass it up. So we head off on Tuesday to Varanasi, the holiest place in India. That’s pretty exciting!

But to fill you in on the last few weeks... We have had lots of new volunteers to keep us company. It’s been ace to be around motivated people. We spent last week end at the Sundarbans. This is where ‘The Jungle Book’ was based. Unfortunately we did not bump into Balloo (much to my disappointment) in fact we spent 2 nights in a tiger reserve and didn’t see any tigers. We weren’t really expecting to though as there are approximately only 100 left. So sad.

Still an interesting fact... the tigers are man eating tigers and each day when the men in the local villages head off to work, the woman do not put on the ‘marriage gear’ until the men return. They see them selves as widows as they are not sure there husbands will return.

We spent 2 nights on a boat with a bunch of middle class Bengali's. It was great fun and interesting to see what the Bengali's do for entertainment. At night we were split into two groups (males and females) and had a ‘sing off’! We had a microphone and had to sing a song beginning with the last letter of the song the men’s group had just sung. It was hilarious. James got up and sang ‘lady in red’ and I rocked out to ‘rockin robin’. In fact I sang a few songs, there was no stopping me. I’m not a great singer but I definitely/hopefully was not as bad as some of the others there!

About work... I have set up the blog site for our Hospice. It is www.friendsofarunima.blogspot.com but we are hoping to get a website set up as I’ve been doing a bit of emailing around and we will hopefully we have some help on board! James has been writing up all our research information from the hospice and has report info coming out of his ears. However we had a day off today to go on a cooking course. It was great fun. We learnt how to make chapattis, chana masala (chickpea curry) aloo dum (potato and tomatoes) and some aubergine dish. It was great as the cooks were showing us what spices go well together. Were looking forward to trying them out when were home. We also bought a book called ‘the Calcutta Kitchen’ so when were back we’d love some ginuepigs to try our recipes out on! (Don’t all message me at once will you :)

So our last few days here will consist of saying goodbye to our friends we’ve made, visiting some last sights and finishing off our work. Its all very emotional but I’m sure when were packed and traveling we’ll be very happy we decided not to stay longer! Speak soon Amy xxx