suzanne in the sub continent

a woman travelling on her own in india definitely draws attention, especially a tall blonde one, and i was so grateful to be adopted by a nun during my 2 day journey to delhi! sister rosie befriended me on the platform before i boarded the kerala express and shared my bunk as she had no bed reserved, bringing me immediate respect (and safety) from the coach full of men we were sharing with.

i've now made it to dehra dun in the north of india and have started my new life as mother and english teacher to 25 children..! they are so lovely - selected by the asian pestalozzi foundation from poor families in india, nepal and tibet - and such a delight to live with. lucky really, because i have 16 hr days with them, starting at 5:45am... but it's not as bad as it sounds. once they're up i'm pretty free to read the paper, sip sweet sweet chai, and watch the families of local monkeys grooming each other and swinging form the trees (when they're not sneaking into the house to steal our food!). i give the children one or two hours of spoken english classes a day and am responsible, along with lobsang la maam (assistant house mother in the pic with me) for their general wellbeing.

coming from hot and humid kerala, where there is a temperature differntial of only 5 degrees c throughout the year, i am shocked at how cold it is here, and need to buy some more woollies quickly! it's as cold as wales here at night (and with no heating to speak of...), but hot in the sun during the day. january is the coldest month here, then from february it starts heating up towards a blistering april. the overnight train journey from delhi was painfully, sleeplessly cold, but now i have thick blankets and duvets to bury myself under.

everyone is so nice here. gayatri, a bubbly young indian woman who works in the pestalozzi office, has taken me under her wing and the two of will go clothes shopping, sight seeing and hiking on our one day off a week. i can't wait to explore the mountains, watch more hindi movies, and be measured by a tailor to have new frocks made to fit - what a treat!

so after the wonderful tranquility of thiru we headed north to chennai, which is a huge and horribly polluted city, and i suddenly realised what a 'developing country' means: concrete construction - everywhere - with noise, cars, and fumes... i was quite shocked by the reality of indian cities with all that they entail: whole families living on the street, and air pollution so bad it's hard to breathe. but i did have a great biriyani and we visited the J. Krishnamurti centre for the afternoon, which was a veritable haven. his philosophy on teaching is very interesting.

from there it was a delight to take the train to bangalore. the experience of travelling on an indian train lives up to all expectations: there is a constant stream of tastey dishes and beverages on offer, which change with the time of day and district you find yourself in, and i just love the freedom to sit in the open doorway and watch the world outside hurtle by. why would you want a seat when you can sit with your feet dangling outside the train???

bangalore is the silicon valley of the east, and far more 'developed' than chennai. although at first sight it may be more pleasant, there are reportedly 1,000 new cars in the city every day, and the traffic pollution is rocketing. the gurukula (ashram) we stayed in just outside bangalore was one of my favourite places to be of the whole trip. run by a charming couple, it was peaceful and surrounded by trees, where i could play the violin and thread flowers from the garden. i was even taught my first raga.

from there we headed through calicut back to the beautiful mountains of kerala. rain forest mixes with tea plantations and the most spectacular views of the western ghat mountains in an area called Wayanad, where we went for an early morning pedalo boating session on a lake, which we shared only with the water lillies for a while, before more tourists arrived.

the contrast between tamil nadu, karnataka and kerala was most apparent when we arrived back in kerala, where there are big flashy houses being built everywhere and the street life is far more organised and sanitised than in the east. it's also much hotter and more humid here, accompanied by those pesky mosquitoes which had been absent in the cool mountains.

we spent our last night on the raod in a town called allepey, where there was a temple festival taking place, involving many flashing lights, a full fun fair with big wheel and snake shows, and streets crammed with stalls and people. in the morning we took a boat ride down the popular kerelan back waters to kotayam, which was heavenly. i then went back to the kuriakose home to get ready for christmas with jaise's sister jainy, while jaise took more bumpy buses south to meet some friends. it has been wonderful to stop with the family for a few days, although there is hardly a moment to get bored, with neighbours to visit, food to be prepared, 3 year olds to entertain, and meals to eat! i decided to make swiss chocolate truffles as a contribution from my family christmas tradition, but didn't factor in the heat issue.... there is a reason why india doesn't really have any chocolate, and that's because it melts, very quickly. so i have made strange looking frozen chocolate things, which are popular nevertheless.

christmas day was lovely, beinning with papaya fruit and chillie curry for breakfast, and ending with a trip to the local cinema, which was a hoot. although the film was in malayalam, i enjoyed the whole experience of slidy cinema seats, spicy peanuts and booming bollywood music, in a space at least twice the size of any british cinema i've ever been in. film is huge here and there are 10 cinema complexes with half an hour of each other!

i'm off to delhi tomorrow afternoon and feel a bit nervous about the big city... fingers crossed, and happy new year everyone!

it took us two whole days to cross from the west coast to the east side of India, on what seemed to be a never ending stream of bumpy, noisy buses. but looking out the window is always a treat, and there was much to take in, as Tamil Nadu is very different to Kerala. it is much poorer, and the huge, concrete houses that you can see springing up all over Kerala were replaced by small mud huts on the side of the road, with bicycles and motor bikes rather than cars. so many motor bikes! and so much plastic rubbish everywhere (which the cows, goats, pigs and monkeys chomp through looking for tid bits). i feel this compulsion to want to tidy up all the time, but jaise explains that many have tried and it is apparently a futile task. but the people are warm and friendly and full of smiles and waves. such beautiful open faces.

we spent a day and a night in Pondicherry - a former French colonial town, with French restaurants and bakeries still, and a long beach front promenade. From there we were taken to Auroville where we were extremely well looked after, with guest house, food and scooter all laid on. Auroville is huge, covering 12 square kms. The goal is to have 50,000 permanent residents, but in its 40th year there are still only 2,000, and the water table won't support many more. nevertheless, they are building all over the place (largely in concrete...) and hope to attract more people, even though the acceptance process to become an Aurovillian is quite challenging.

In the centre of Auroville is the 'Matrimandir' (mother's temple) - an enormous golden 'temple', dedicated to the woman known as The Mother who founded Auroville. After 35 years construction, it is almost completed, and we were privileged enough to be allowed entry... i can't say i was impressed. architecturally it is unique, but in my opinion it is nothing more than a big 'ego ball'; an embarrassment at the heart of an otherwise quite interesting project. it is like something straight off a James Bond film set, to match the [very impressive] solar cooker - a parabolic solar concentrator producing steam - which looks like a big zapper that Bond's enemy might have created in an attempt to destroy the world!

we did meet some fascinating people in Auroville, especially a man called Balu who is running an instrument making project with local school drop outs - the 16/17 year old boys live together, making instruments during the day, and rehearsing music/dance performances in the evening. they will be performing in Delhi when I go through on my way to Dera Dun, and the plan is that i will play with them in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram there.

jaise and i did our presentation about CAT and renewable energy, which went well despite the rather shambolic arrangements, and there is definitely potential for CAT and Auroville to work together in some way.

we're now north west of Auroville, in a town called Thiruvanamalai, staying in an Ashram a few miles out of town, close to a friend of Jaise, who spends half of every year living on a farm with a local family. it is so fascinating to spend time with them: they cook outside still using wood, work their land for a living, and all sleep together in one small room, yet have a huge television with a sky dish outside, motorbikes, fancy clothes and laptops! it's quite a combination to get used to, but they are so welcoming and i manage to communicate with the mother with smiles and hugs and flowers, as she knows only a few words in English and my Tamil is non existent. i definitely intend to learn some Hindi for when i am up north.

up early early tomorrow morning to climb Arunachala - the sacred mountain that draws so many tourists here from all over the world - before going to a function at lunchtime to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of the death of someone's mother, which we've been invited to attend. everything is celebrated here, and in style!

hello!

gosh, what a lot has happened in just one week. it has been a blessedly soft landing into india as i have been extremely well looked after by jaise and the kuriakose family, and i feel somewhat superior to the other white western tourists on the street, who might not know where to go or what to do ..! we have visited, and been visited by, about a million relatives and neighbours and friends, who come to stare at me and try and pursuade jaise to get married. lots and lots of 'very tasty' food - everyone wants to feed us, and if we're visiting say six homes in a day, it becomes hard to please everyone! such vast quantities of rice are consumed at every sitting!!!! there seem to be two types of people in india: the very thin and the very fat. i'm staying with the sareed bellies at the moment - lots of material and curves everywhere!!!

apparently, i am the best person to be driving the family around (!!!) which means that i've been braving the absoulutely insane roads, into the city of Cochin, and up into the Western Ghat mountains. there are pot holes everywhere, sometimes cunningly disguised, it seems, and no-one adheres to the signs that everywhere say 'live and let live; obey traffic rules'. there are goats, cows, people bikes, auto rick shaws, "super fast" buses (as they proudly name themselves), trucks with bamboo piled metres high, leaning precariously round sharp bends.... in fact precarious is a very good word for india. cars hurtle at you from every direction, without ever indicating, and it's a wonder that the death toll isn't higher than it is.

i'm never quite sure what's happening until it happens. i was awoken one morning to be told that that i was expected at the local school to play violin to the kids at their sports' day and talk to them about global warming, oh and we're leaving now. ok, i guess i'm awake! so a whole field of young innocent faces attentively listened to me, nodding furiously in agreement. i've also played for the local Fine Arts Society and been interview by the local paper about CAT and carbon and india. this afternoon we're presenting to the local college, before heading east over the mountains into Tamil Nadu, starting the journey towards Auroville. 5am bus tomorrow morning. at least this time i'll be inside the super speedy bus, and not trying to avoid it.

kerala is very green, with coconut and banana trees everywhere. there are many different types of each: small bananas, fat bananas, green bananas, white bananas, and they have a thousands different ways of preparing dishes withrice, cococut, chillies!!!! and spices. tasty tasty.

i've seen a couple of elephants - not wild, although they do exist around here up in the hills - but am more afraid of being squashed by a super speedy bus than an elephant!

don't know when i'll next get near a working computer with working internet. nothing is as straight forward as in the uk, but it's great!

as well as giving conversational english classes at the Pestalozzi village in Dehradun (6 hours north of Delhi), i have been asked if i would take on the role of House Mother... the woman who is currently doing it is leaving early and so they need someone from the middle of December. the job involves running a house of 25 eleven year olds - from India, Nepal and Tibet - and speaking only English with them (i don't have much choice there anyway). i will be up with them from 6a.m. until 9p.m. and be responsible for the ordering and collecting of food, fuel etc. and their general well being. it sounds pretty intense as the children have their lessons in the same house that they live in and it's a long working week (one day off a week), but it's a paid position (about £100 a month!) and the most fantastic opportunity to immerse myself in the local community and form real relationships with people.

but before all that i have a month of sun and adventure with Jaise in the south, and we're getting on the plane this evening!

i've had a lovely last week in Bristol, catching up with old friends and being pampered by my mum, whose birthday it was on Saturday. it's a big thing for her only child to travel to the other side of the world, and i'm really grateful for all her support and encouragement.

i've got my rucksack and my violin (thank you Pippa!) and a huge sense of excitement - next stop Colombo, Sri Lanka!

i am going to miss my friends in wales so much. thank you and i love you all.

i'm living in the city now, with locks and keys and cars and Thai restaurants! in a week jaise and i will have arrived in cochin, where the temperature is 31oc, mmmmm.

i somehow did manage to forget my toothbrush in wales - molly, are you still offering to bring it to me..?