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).