Ev Star

Mad and I are now in Jaisalmer, our most westernly destination on this trip.  So far I have really liked it here!  It might have a lot to do with feeling better and also with having a swimming pool at our hostel.  It’s pretty sweet!  It gets super hot here (40 degrees or so) so we have taken to going out in the morning, resting/swimming for a couple hours, and then going out at 4 or 5pm again. 

One of the things that was first obvious upon our arrival here is that half the cow population that normally ambles along the streets has been traded for camels and the palm trees have been exchanged for cactus plants and small shrubbery.  It really is desert like!  Either tonight or tomorrow night Mad and I will go on a camel ride in the sand dunes.  We’ve chosen to do the sunset trip with the hopes that we won’t be in the middle of the desert in the extreme heat of the day.  Although I am not fond of horseback riding or elephant riding, I am still feeling optimistic about camel riding.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll just backtrack a little now as it’s been some time since I’ve put up a real post.   Before we arrived in Jaisalmer we spent one evening in Jodhpur.   The city was not really one that either of us was dying to go to, but there was no train directly to Jaisalmer from Udaipur so we had to spend a night somewhere.  We actually both enjoyed our stay in Jodhpur though.  We stayed in a guesthouse located right underneath the city palace/fort.  We spent several hours exploring the palace/fort and altogether enjoyed our day there. 

Prior to Jodhpur, we spent a few days in Udaipur.  I also enjoyed our time in Udaipur.  I took a cooking class there.  I almost didn’t because it was sort of expensive, but I’m glad I did, I got some nice recipes (everyone will have to come over for indian food when we’re back!)  Udaipur’s big claim to fame is that bits of the James Bond film ‘Octopussy’ were filmed there.  Almost all the restaurants play the film every single evening.  Mad and I and Amy and Paul (couple from England) went and watched it one night.  It was actually more entertaining than we expected!  The poor people who work at those restaurants must be SO sick of it though.

bye for now!

Ev

It’s been awhile since my last update and I choose to blame it on being sick.  Mad and I have both been sick for the last week or so and we really haven’t done much of anything besides sleep and rest and drink water and other such thrilling things. 

 We’re feeling better now though and even went out on Lake Pichola in Udaipur today.  We met a British couple and went out in peddle boats which was lots of fun.  It was really hot out eventhough we went in the morning, but I had a good time anyway. 

Anyway, I will update again soon with more interesting things to tell. 

xo Ev

So here we are in Kolkata.  Actually, it wasnt as easy as all that.  Our flight left bright and early yesterday morning and we had no electricity in our room!  Made for interesting (read: somewhat stressful) packing.  Anyway, we made it!

 So last I left off we were in Cochin.  After our evening there, the owner brought us to the bus station and we journeyed down to Alleppey.  Our accomodation in Alleppey was on an island.  We went  to the dock and got picked up in a long wooden canoe.  It was pretty funny to travel along with all our bags in this big old canoe.  The giant canoe had a motor and so with that we travelled to the island.  The place we were staying at was built kind of like a tree house.  We had decided to economize by staying in an 8 person dorm.  It didnt end up mattering at all as we were the ONLY guests in the entire resort.  It was kind of weird.  The place was pretty nice though.  One of our windows looked out at a lake and the other to giant rice fields. 

The next day we got on a boat (it was called a ferry but it was more like a big boat with a canopy with garden chairs set up underneath) and headed toward Kollam.  It is an 8 hour journey by boat and our guide book had said that you could get off half way and stay at an ashram for a night and then get back on and finish the journey the next day.  We decided to do that.  We both found the ashram experience interesting but also pretty weird.  The ashram was set up by this woman called Amma and her thing is all about loving everyone and she’s supposed to have healing hugs.  Anyway, there are huge apartment buildings at the ashram and a lot of the rooms are used by people or families who have moved to the ashram.  Everyday they gather several times for chanting, meditating and singing of songs written by Amma.  A few hours of the day are reserved for doing “seva” (volunteer work) and the rest of the time i think they just hang out around the ashram (it is designed to be it’s own community and you are not encouraged to leave the gates unless you are actually leaving).  It was mostly weird because these people seem to have deifyied Amma.  There are HUGE pictures of her everywhere (our apartment room was absolutely plastered with images of her), when they do the chanting and what not they do it in front of a throne like chair with a big portrait of her seated on it, and when they talk, most of their sentences start with “Amma says…”.  Actually the group has done a lot of good humanitarian work, so that is good, but the deification thing is still pretty weird to me.  Oh and also everything is sex segregated and you are not supposed to show any outward affection to other people, which seems a little strange as Amma’s whole thing is about love.  In any case, it was an interesting experience, but I think one night was enough for me!

After our night at the ashram, we took the boat down to Kollam and from there we took the bus to Varkala.  Varkala was gorgeous!  I wish we could have stayed longer.  We stayed in a little guest house really close to the beach.  When we woke up the next morning (we actually get up pretty early here…i guess because it starts to get hot pretty early) we walked to the beach.  There are huge cliffs leading down to the water.  We walked down a set of stairs to the water and went for a swim.  It was great!  Warm water, nice waves, beautiful sand leading up to the fantastic cliffs and not too many people (i think only because it was early in the morning)!

That afternoon we took the train down to Trivandrum.  The administrator, Shanti, at Shanti Bhavan school has a son who has an apartment in Trivandrum that he was not using and she had said that we could probably stay in it.  When we arrived in Trivandrum, we gave her son, Rajeev, a call and he kindly came and picked us up and drove us to his apartment.  What Shanti had not told us was that it was a two storey penthouse suite in an apartment building in downtown Trivandrum!  It was pretty awesome.  There was even a swimming pool!  Anyway, he showed us around the apartment and gave his friend a call and asked him to drive us down to Kanyakumari (the tip of India where 3 seas meet) the next day.  Altogether we had a pretty great time there!  Well, minus the power outage the next morning!

xoxoEv

Our last week at Shanti Bhavan has come to an end and we now find ourselves at a lovely homestay in Cochin , Kerala.  Our first real “travel” segment has begun!  Hopefully we will master the art of backpacking soon.  We have so much stuff that it’s like backpacking plus several bags.  Oh well, i guess it is early on yet and after a few days of lugging our stuff around we will start to weed out things we really don’t need.The last week of school went on as usual.  On my last day of class with my grade 3 kids, the students got to ask me anything they wanted about me and Canada and so on.  There were some nice questions like: ”Miss Evy, are there any shops where you live?”  ”Yes” ”do you sometimes buy bubblegums at the shops?” ”Yes, sometimes”Other questions included wanting to know what my parents names are (a lot of kids wanted to know!  mom and dad, you are kind of famous at Shanti Bhavan now!), they wanted to know about my ‘baby’ brother (i tried to explain you weren’t quite a baby Al…)And they wanted to know about silly things I used to do when I was a kid (they greatly enjoyed hearing about how Al and I used to have flying practice where we would tape highly aerodynamic wings to our arms, jump off our beds and flap wildly…practice makes perfect, right?!) On Sunday night, our last night at the school, I went to the school kitchen and helped make dinner.  It was fun!  I rolled out millions of naans with the other kitchen staff members.  If I get a chance to go back to Shanti Bhavan, I would try to help out in the kitchen more often.On Monday morning, after the school assembly, Mad and I got to go to see Baldev Medical clinic.  I’m so glad we got to go see it!  It is another one of the George foundation projects.  Pretty much it is a clinic for all the rural village people in the area.  There are government health centers in India, but they are not run very well and people do not get the medical care they need especially as it is rare that a doctor is even there!  At Baldev, they are using a computer program that was invented by Dr George.  It is called EDPS.  The program is kind of like a big flow chart.  The technician using the computer asks the patient basic questions about their symptoms, once those have been put into the program, the computer comes up with more pertinent questions.  The computer keeps coming up with more questions to ask until a general diagnosis can be made.  It will then give suggestons on how to treat the ailment with over-the-counter drugs which can be given to the patient without a doctor’s prescription.  If the patient needs to see a doctor, the computer will say that and so an appointment can be set up when the doctor will actually be there.  It seems to have been quite successful so far.  Furthermore, the clinic has field workers that specifically work with pregnant women and children under the age of 3.  The field workers go from village to village to collect information on these people.  Then the field worker brings the information back and puts it into the computer.  The computer then notifies when children need to get their immunizations, it shows if a pregnant woman has not gained as much weight as she should have, etc. Then the next time the worker goes out, she can focus on the patients who need the most care (ie by bringing high protein supplements to underweight pregnant women, etc).  It was very interesting!  Again, if I go back to Shanti Bhavan, I’d be very interested in helping out there as well.As I was saying earlier, Mad and I are currently in Cochin.  We are staying at a homestay and the family has been very nice and helpful!  We arrived by train at 4 30 in the morning yesterday and one of the owners came to pick us up (so nice we didnt have to try to figure out how to get to their place at that time!).  After resting for a few hours, we went downstairs and were served idlies with chutney, bananas and chai.  Then the grandparents (there are 3 generations living here) drove us out to their beach home (we had a choice of staying there as well but it would have been more expensive).  The view from their beach home was fantastic!  The only other people on the beach were fishermen.  It’s neat because there were two larger fishing boats (by larger i mean like oversize wooden canoes) that stayed out at sea.  When they caught enough fish to warrant a trip back to shore, 2 or 3 men got into a small wooden boat with the catch and paddled back to shore.  We could watch the action from the balcony.  We were also able to go for a swim!  It was great!  We had a giant beach pretty much to ourselves!  After our swim, the grandparents cut up a watermelon for us which we ate and then they put us on a bus to get to Fort Cochin.  Actually that required a bus trip and then a ferry ride (a ferry ride on which i lost my hat to the wind).  We spent the rest of the day walking around Fort Cochin (I especially enjoyed seeing the chinese fishing nets!) and then in the evening we watched an unfortunately fairly poor dance show.  After the show we took a ferry back to the mainland and then took a rickshaw back to our homestay. Today we are off to Alleppey by bus.  It should take about an hour and a half to get there and then we will have to take a boat to get to our accomodation. Ev