Back to Work

A little while since we last updated the blog, but we haven’t given up writing yet.

We are now in India having spent a week with Dan’s mum in the UK (eating delicious roast dinners for the last time in 6+ months! Thanks mum) and a weekend courtesy of Craig and Karen in their lovely new home. Thanks so much for the hospitality and chance to prove that boys are always better at Trivial Pursuit than girls and somewhat less thanks for the new WII addiction guys.

We travelled to India with Virgin and got the last chance to use my Gold Card to get into the clubhouse. The clubhouse (Virgin’s lounge) is the only possible glam perk in any road warrior’s life. Free massages, a three course a la carte meal, wine, cocktails, plenty of goodies to ‘borrow’ and free hi-speed internet (a luxury when you know that you have months of crappy connections ahead). We arrived approx. 6 hours early to take full advantage! We looked the part too in our ‘functional’ clothing and walking shoes! Not sure the average backpacker starts their journey this way.

Delhi’s new airport met expectations in that the baggage belt constantly kept freezing. Had we not been knackered we could have been amused by the repetitive process of engineer coming over, moving a bag to unstick the belt, walking away, belt shifts two more bags, belt sticks,  wait three minutes for the engineer to notice..... then repeat the process for 199 passenger bags....welcome to India!!

The new terminal in Delhi as very nice. First of all (unless you fly budget) no longer do you have to play the lottery of ‘see if I can convince the airport employee that the internal bus (from international to domestic terminal) really needs to leave now if I want to catch a flight that leaves in the next hour’. Secondly, they seem to have done a fairly decent job of the new terminal with a good food hall, WH Smiths and even an M&S! However, the carpet throughout the terminal appears to have been modelled on a 1980’s British high street Indian restaurant (the type most often frequented at about 11.30pm on a Friday night) – I kept looking around for Del-boy.

Guwahati (capital of Assam) had not changed much in the 10 months since we left (still dusty, dirty, smelly and unfeasible busy). However, we didn’t care as 24 hours without sleep meant we dived under the mosquito net and slept for a good 12 hours.

With Uttam Teron, founder of Parijat Academy

We started our volunteering at Parijat Academy last Thursday (18^th) – more about that in the next blog, but you can visit www.parijatacademy.org if you are curious.

Our social life always gets much busier when we get to India – and it always amazes me how people manage to fit in earning a living when there are people to visit, events to attend, and three or four day marriages to celebrate. All of which are made more time consuming by placing a chaotic road system in between.

Our next blog will be dedicated to our volunteer work at the school – it is a heart warming organisation led by a very enthusiastic and impressive man!

So far we have been to...... the opening of an excellent new home entertainment / music centre (Ace music junction http://aceacoustics.co.in/home.htm) courtesy of Monali’s cousin who is a partner in the business – the local news photographers took as many pictures of the white man as they did of the pianos!


A trip to the Zoo (no this is not a sarcastic reference to the Guwahati town centre) with the entire family and maids! Sadly, the conditions are really not that great for the animals.

Gulliver and the Lilliputs at the Zoo

We have also been to a wedding – another lavish affair with plenty of ghee laced treats to give your heart a kicking. The particular highlight (if a little mean) was watching some other poor couple suffer the four or five hours of greeting and feeding distant relatives, long lost friends and other random people off the street. It seems that we are not the only couple in Guwahati to find this experience somewhat torturous – while the groom gratefully grasped and consumed a bottle of water like a man stumbling through a desert, his bride offered us some sweet supari (traditional Indian offering to freshen the breath) along with an attempt at a smile which rather resembled a painful grimace. Unfortunately for this particular couple-this was only their first reception (this one being for the bride’s family and friends). A second reception was to be held at the groom’s house the following day for his friends and family. Didn’t realise how lightly we managed to escape. Wedding fever is mad over here-looks like we have 4 more weddings to attend before we leave but think we might give them a miss as not sure how many more ‘happy’ couples we can bear to see suffering (not to mention they are a little bit boring). 

Greek Islands

TINOS

Tinos - pretty.......boring

Hello everyone-it's Monali writing for the first time. Dan finally got bored of writing the blog so he
decided it was my turn.To be honest,I was quite enjoying doing nothing!

So we left Athens after a few days to head off to Tinos  (a very tiny Greek Island). We had initially picked
this Island for the exact reason of it being small, and we thought we could hang out on the beach, grill fish,
read our books and do absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas.....welcome
to the Island of gail force winds, rain and near freezing temperatures. We were picked up by a lovely Greek
lady named Nikoleta who took us to her guest house (Nikoleta's Rooms) and showed us a very nice room with a very disgusting bathroom. Now I am sure every woman will agree with me-it does not matter where you sleep, but a clean bathroom is essential. Luckily while another room was available, it did not seem to come with any heating. So i spent the first night sleeping with about 5 layers of clothes. This is crazy-I thought Greece was warm!!!!!!

Enjoying the Greek warmth!

We awoke the nex morning feeling more positive and decided to take a walk, only to find myself literally swept off my feet when I stepped out (unfortunately it was not Dan, but the wind that was responsible). The next few days were pretty uneventful as we tried not to go out at all due to the cold and got very, very, very bored. There are only so many books that one can read and we eventually tried sleeping for long periods of time just to get through the days (and to think some of you were jealous).

The only interesting information regarding Tinos is the fact that it houses one of the most famous icons in Greece in the Church of Panagia. The icon was found in 1822 and there are mass pilgramages from all over Greece to come to this Church. The church is situated at the top of hill and there is a rubber strip down the side or the road so that worshippers can crawl up to the church on their knees. Dan and I took the heathen approach and simply walked up to the church only to find out that no-one is actually allowed to see this supposed icon- instead you have to pray to some golden doors in the knowledge that the icon sits safely behind them. Call us cynics but we were really left wondering how special this major attraction is considering the following: it was found around 100 yrs ago; no-one will actually state the age of the icon; it appears to draw alot of tourist business that the island would otherwise not have and it was found on a remote Greek Island fairly far removed from where JC used to hang out.

Crawling on hands and knees to the Icon

Oh, one other interesting fact on Greece which I never knew about-you can not flush toilet paper in the toilet  but have to put it in a bin near the toilet as Greek plumbing is notoroiously bad. Going to the bathroom was not my favourite Greek experience as a result.

We almost ran onto the ferry for Naxos 5 days later. It is safe to say we will never return to this Island!!

NAXOS

The first thing you see arriving in Naxos is magnificent  (the ancient temple of Apollo, not the idiot in the foreground)

Naxos was a breath of fresh air after our Tinos experience and definitely somewhere we would come back to. This was mainly due to our accommodation which really made the whole experience. We stayed at the Pension Sofi which was an inexpensive guest house rated #1 by Tripadvisor. We soon found out why. It is a family establishment run by a man by Panos and in all our travels, it has been the best place we have EVER stayed. It wasn't that it was luxurious (although it was extremely clean), it was the fact that Panos treated us as guests of the family. There was no restaurant but there was a small kitchen / reception and every morning one of the family would insist on feeding us fruits and making us greek coffee. In fact, Theodoros (one of
the family), showed me how to make his special Greek Coffee.

Starbucks, Greece

Panos would try and feed us wine and olives and salads every day. When I innocently voiced that I liked the oranges sold in Naxos, we were bundled into their car and they took us to their private orchard some distance away so that we could pick as many oranges and figs as we liked. This was then followed by a trip to visit the pigs and sheep (who aren't looking forward to Christmas and Easter feasts). It was better service than a 5 star hotel and I look forward to returning. They even gave us a goodbye gift (a fridge magnet) which was really touching.

Pigging out at the orchard

As far as wondering around Naxos itself, we headed to the mountains for day and visited a 'Kitron' distillery which is a local drink distilled from the leaves of the Kitron plant. Being out of season there was not much else going on out in the countryside so we settled on walking around and relaxing in the main town for the rest of the time. Naxos itself is a very nice town with and old labyrinth style set of streets built into castle walls as well as the usual sea front full of cafes and tavernas. Of course our main hobby was eating and we found great Mexican food (via Brazil) and chicken gyros.

We also spent much of the week planning our trip and now finally have our round the world trip tickets in hand!!! We are currently sitting on the boat taking the 5 hour trip back to Athens. We then fly back to the UK where I will proceed with getting my Indian visa and then off to start our volunteering in India.