India: "Players gonna play, play, play, play..."

This was a parade for a boy's first hair-cut! 

I've been in India a bit over 3 weeks now, and I can confirm that when people say it's full on, they aren't kidding.  I was in a car yesterday trying to find my guesthouse, and we were trying to navigate through the impossibly narrow streets of the old town. The driver didn't know where to go, it had just rained and there was water pouring down the street with rubbish and pigs and cows everywhere, and we had caused a little traffic jam so all these bikes were honking at us.

Then this guy leaned right in through my window as we were trying to get directions and asked over and over again in this wheedling little child's voice, "Madam photo? Photo madam? MADAM PLEEEASE PHOTO?!!", and I felt like turning to him and screaming in his face "F#%^ YOU AND YOUR WHOLE F$%^ COUNTRY WHERE IS THE NEAREST INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TAKE ME THERE RIGHT NOW!!" But, I didn't.

I can really see why travelers have meltdowns here. It's like the whole country is trying to game you, thinks it's hilarious, and you're always about 3 steps behind whatever game is going on. Sometimes it's to get money, but I'm starting to think they just all love screwing each other.

Laxmi the elephan was also trying to play me, I just don't know how. 

At the same time, I've met some really interesting people, and life is certainly not dull. So, I will hang in here for as long as my stomach will allow.  (I've already spent three nights awake with nausea and am on antibiotics...so I don't know how long that will be).

I moved to a new town a few days ago, and yesterday came across a store selling trumpets. I just stopped to ask for directions to the doctor, who just laughed at me (of course!) when I told him I accidentally drank some tap water. (Because stupid white people with nausea + diarrhea = hilarious). Anyway, the music store guys started talking to me...which ended up with me treating the main street to a rendition of "Danny Boy". 

So,  India is the place where you THINK you are going to the doctors, but are actually heading off to serenade 5 guys and a squashed rat on the pavement with an Irish ballad.

I stayed in Udaipur for 3 weeks, which is a gorgeous small city on man-made lakes with a palace in the middle and a castle overlooking it all. It was really stunning, as you can see...

My guesthouse was just next to the lake, so I had some nice morning walks. I didn't do much tourist stuff (being the world's worst tourist), but I had a quick trip out to a rural village to capture a monitor lizard in someone's loungeroom (they had to beat the lizard senseless with a hockey stick before it weakened its grip on the couch long enough to be stuffed into a bag). 

I spent a fair bit of time just helping people with marketing - the guesthouse I stayed at was new, so we put them on trip advisor and some other sites. And, another guy I met wanted some help doing a facebook page and a few other things for his tailoring business. 

Naresh the tailor, with some cushions I got made up. I went to the temple with him and his family so I gave them to him. 

Naresh's wife and gorgeous little daugher

One guy I met, Ansh, who does traditional massage and has best mustache in Rajasthan, funny guy. He spends most of his day working on his mo.

Something for the Melbourne hipsters to aspire to. 

I was talking to one of Ansh's friends one day in his store and he was saying he was getting married in a few months. I asked about his fiancee and he didn't have many details. He said his parents had chosen her for him and he could date her if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. "We can talk after the wedding," he said, "why would we want to talk now?"

So, arranged marriages are alive and well (-ish) in India. Even love matches seem fairly fraught. I'm staying at a guesthouse in a town called Bundi at the moment. The owners are away on a 5-day negotiation session with the parents of the girl their son wants to marry. It's a love match, but neither set of parents is particuarly happy with it, so they are on their second round of negotiations around the whole thing. She is a modern girl (an architect, doesn't wear a sari), and he's from a very old, established family in a small town. So, the guy's parents want her to give up her work and move to the country town (and wear a sari, I assume).

At a temple I went to in a little country town on the way to Bundi.
I was tying to take photos of the locals and they were trying to take them of me!

Beautiful local ladies, one of them asked if I wanted to try her nose ring.
 Their clothing and jewelry were just stunning.

The owners left their pot-smoking youngest son behind to (mis)manage the guesthouse while they're away. On the first morning I was here I walked through a cloud of smoke to ask him a question and he told me, "I'm high. But don't tell my grandmother." I thought that unless his grandmothers olfactory senses had completely died she probably knew, since she was sitting about 5 metres away. He then sent me off on an overpriced motorbike trip to a doctor whose office was closed. Later, when I went back, I payed $2 for to the doctor to laugh in my face. There is a lesson in there somewhere. I think the lesson might include a flight back to Nepal.

The view from the roof of my guesthouse, I think that castle is about 500 years old. 

These are the young kids who work at the guesthouse I stay at, which is owned by an old artisocratic family that owns a lake and a temple as well as their 500 year-old-house. Anita and Ghopal are basically their young servants. They are both 14, and she, unfortunately has never been to school. The grandmother wants me to teach them some English, and I have to teach them sitting on the floor, because they aren't allowed to sit on chairs (being from a lower caste, or kids...I don't know the reason). Anyway, our conversations usually go like this:

Ghopal: Good morning mam!
Me: Good morning Ghopal, how are you?
Ghopal: Thankyou Ghopal!

So, my ESL skills have a ways to go. 

India

This was a parade for a boy's first hair-cut! 

I've been in India a bit over 3 weeks now, and I can confirm that when people say it's full on, they aren't kidding.  I was in a car yesterday trying to find my guesthouse, and we were trying to navigate through the impossibly narrow streets of the old town. The driver didn't know where to go, it had just rained and there was water pouring down the street with rubbish and pigs and cows everywhere, and we had caused a little traffic jam so all these bikes were honking at us. Then this guy leaned right in through my window as we were trying to get directions and asked over and over again, "Madam photo? Photo madam? MADAM PLEEEASE PHOTO?!!", and I felt like turning to him and screaming in his face "$#%^ YOU AND YOUR WHOLE #$%^ COUNTRY WHERE IS THE NEAREST INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TAKE ME THERE RIGHT NOW!!" But, I didn't.

I can really see why travelers have meltdowns here. It's like the whole country is trying to game you, thinks it's hilarious, and you're always about 3 steps behind whatever game is going on. Sometimes it's to get money, but I'm starting to think they just all love screwing each other.

Laxmi the elephan was also trying to play me, I just don't know how. 

At the same time, I've met some lovely, interesting people, and life is certainly not dull. So, I will hang in here for as long as my stomach will allow.  (I've already spent three nights awake with nausea and am on antibiotics...so I don't know how long that will be).

I moved to a new town a few days ago, and yesterday came across a store selling trumpets. I just stopped to ask for directions to the doctor (who just laughed at me (of course!) when I told him I accidentally drank some tap water). Anyway, the music store guys started talking to me...which ended up with me treating the main street to a rendition of "Danny Boy". 

So, I think India is the place where you THINK you are going to the doctors, but are actually heading off to serenade 5 guys and a squashed rat on the pavement with an Irish ballad.

I stayed in Udaipur for 3 weeks, which is a gorgeous small city on man-made lakes with a palace in the middle and a castle overlooking it all. It was really stunning, as you can see...

My guesthouse was just next to the lake, so I had some nice morning walks. I didn't do much tourist stuff (being the word's worst tourist), but I had a quick trip out to a rural village to capture a monitor lizard in someone's loungeroom (they had to beat the lizard senseless with a hockey stick before it weakened its grip on the couch long enough to be stuffed into a bag). 

I spent a fair bit of time just helping people with marketing - the guesthouse I stayed at was new, so we put them on trip advisor and some other sites. And, another guy I met wanted some help doing a facebook page and a few other things for his tailoring business. 

Naresh the tailor, with some cushions I got made up. I went to the temple with him and his family so I gave them to him. 

Naresh's wife and gorgeous little daugher

One guy I met, Ansh, who does traditional massage and has best mustache in Rajasthan, was asking about how to get his business to stay high in Google + rankings. I was explaning that google is nice to you if you pay it attention to it and give it lots of photos, reviews etc, and he said, "Ohhh...so google is like my girlfriend, if I pay her lots of attention and give her flowers she'll love me, but if i don't, I'll get nothing?"  He was a very funny guy. 

I was talking to one of Ansh's friends one day in his store and he was saying he was getting married in a few months. I asked about his fiancee and he didn't have many details! He said his parents had chosen her for him and he could date her if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. "We can talk after the wedding," he said, "why would we want to talk now?"

So, arranged marriages are alive and well (-ish) in India. Even love matches seem fairly fraught. I'm staying at a guesthouse in a town called Bundi at the moment. The owners are away on a 5-day negotiation session with the parents of the girl their son wants to marry. It's a love match, but neither set of parents is particuarly happy with it, so they are on their second round of negotiations around the whole thing. She is a modern girl (an architect, doesn't wear a sari), and he's from a very old, established family in a small town. So, the guy's parents want her to give up her work and move to the country town (and wear a sari, I assume).

The owners left their pot-smoking youngest son behind to (mis)manage the guesthouse while they're away. On the first morning I was here I walked through a cloud of smoke to ask him a question and he told me, "Actually, I'm high. But don't tell my grandmother." I thought that unless his grandmothers olfactory senses had completely died she probably knew, since she was sitting about 5 metres away. 

A lot of whinging from Nepal.

Hi!

I thought coming to Nepal again would give me a relaxing few weeks where I could catch up on the sleep I lost because of the rats having a nightly party in my bungalow in Indonesia...but I was wrong!
                 

Playing the local trumpet as a form of stress relief! Interestingly, only members of one of the lower casts can play this instrument. So, some of the teenagers at the school got into trouble with their mothers after they heard them playing around with it, because they are from a higher caste! 

 I came back into a storm of problems with the  volunteers up in the school. We had three volunteers  wanting to teach, but no-one had told them (or me) that the school holidays in Nepal don't really end when they're supposed to, and that it takes around 2 weeks for the parents to get themselves organized enough to send their kids back to school for the beginning of the school year.

So, we had volunteers stuck in Saping in the most miserable time of the year -- hot, dusty, flies and bugs everywhere, and a terrible water shortage -- with nothing to do!  It was so frustrating. Particularly so because one of the volunteers was well-connected with some foundations in the US who were looking to put money into an educational organisation in Nepal or India, and had asked her to scout around to find a good place. She told me that she just couldn't recommend the school, because it wasn't organized well enough. Argh! I couldn't disagree with her.

It's true that life in Nepal is disorganized chaos.  No-one thinks or plans ahead, which is why they didn't think to tell me of these 'unofficial' school holidays so that I could tell the volunteers.  But, the irony of this is that the terrible education system -- which doesn't enourage children to develop critical thinking, planning, or creative skills -- is the reason WHY pretty much no-one here can plan or think ahead. Everything just lurches from the chaos of today to the chaos of tomorrow with no big-picture thinking around how anything can be improved.

Chris painting some murals on the school wall...

...which were smashed a few days later in the earthquake repairs!

So, by improving the standard of education at the school, the capacity of the local population to effectively strategize and deal with problems will also improve. But, the education can't get without some money being put into it. Catch 22.

And, that well-connected volunteer was also told how fat she was over and over again by school teachers, who didn't realise that it wasn't a compliment in America. She told me that she knew it was cultural, and they didn't mean to hurt her, but that it just started to wear on her after a few days.  So, I had to ask Uttam if he could PLEASE ask the teachers never to comment on anyone's body size.  I told him that "beautiful" was the only safe word.

Some beautiful local ladies.

The earthquake seems to have moved the water table up in Saping, so now, on top of all the other normal problems in in Saping, now there is hardly any water.  We had a couple of hardy Canadian volunteers (who thankfully are into camping), who went up to Saping last week in the heat and dust and then had to wait FOUR days for enough water to shower with. The problem with this is that it's not just uncomfortable but really unhygienic, so Uttam and I have had to cancel a whole lot of volunteers coming in the next 2 months, because we just can't ask them to live in these conditions. Argh! Argh! Argh!

The Canadian volunteers - our first father/daughter volunteer team.

The good news is that the earthquake repairs are going quite well, and a new kitchen is also going to be built for volunteers, as well as three separate bedrooms. So living conditions should improve soon, especially as the monsooon is coming in July.

Two of the volunteers, Chris and Rachel, came down to the guesthouse where I'm at a few days ago, and it's been great to spend time with them. Somehow they managed to endure 6 weeks in Saping!

Rachel and me on a little day-trip to Panauti

We went on a little day-trip yesterday to a lovely town near here called Panauti. we were really lucky to arrive when there was a big celebration on at the temple. When girls are around 7 years old here, they have their first marriage...to a fruit!  The fruit  symbolize God. They then have a second marriage when they are around 12, to the sun. Then, when they are older they have their third (and final!) marriage to a man. So, we were there for the fruit marriage. We met these two gorgeous girls who had the most amazing hair-styles!

Check out that Elizabethan-style collar on the girl in the middle!

As part of the ceremony, some of the local men do a little ritual where they sacrifice a goat to the hindu Gods. You can see the goat's head in front of them in these photos and also the intestines strung out in front of them!

I've also been driving Uttam's car a little bit -- but only in a straight line down to the bus-stop. There are so many people, chickens and dogs on the road that I usually don't get out of first gear the whole way.

"Where's ya burka?" - Pulau Weh, Indonesia

Maz and I have had a great time on Pulau Weh, which is a little island in the north of Indonesia.  It's just off Banda Aceh, where the tsunami came through.  From the plane, it was easy to see why the tsunami had such a devastating effect here, the whole city is so flat that the wave would have just rolled across it for about 10 kms until the mountains started to rise. 

It hasn't exactly been an action-packed holiday. Maz went diving for a record-breaking drama-filled 6 minutes, and has been competing with a local guy to see who can get to town faster by bike.  The first day took her 50 minutes, and when she got into competitive mode she got it down to 32 minutes.  So, it's probably a good thing she is leaving, because I'm fairly sure her travel insurance doesn't cover kamikazee motobike accidents (or any motorbike accidents). As she was roaring through the jungle yesterday one guy yelled out, 'Where's ya burka?!' which is obvously what constitutes heckling under shariah law. 

Maz in her almost appropriate clothing (you're meant to cover your shoulders).

I had some extra English teaching materials that I couldn't lug all the way to Nepal, so we dropped in at the local primary school to give them some books and flashcards.  The kids were very cute and did a little impromtu dance performance for us (well...I think it was for us, we had no idea what was going on). 

Me in my extremely innaproriate clothing (bra strap showing and you could also see my undies from the back. Big shariah fail for me).

The sea here is blue...very blue. And, the snorkeling is great. This is me qualifiing for lifetime membership of the snorkeling nerds club by blu-tacing my old lenses to the insides of the mask so I can see underwater. The variety of fish here is just amazing, I just went for a snorkel in the middle of writing this and saw starfish, sea anemones and heaps of really bright colored fish...right off the deck where Maz is staying. 

Too cool for schools (of fish)

Maz at her luxury accommodation

Ummm...what else? Maz got told she had a big nose today by a woman trying to convince her to haave a massage. It didn't work. The same woman said that i was 'cantik sekali' (very beautiful), which worked. However, she didn't have time to do the massage right away because she had to go kill and chop up a goat. I hope there was a bit of handwashing in between the goat-slaughtering and massaging components of her day. 

Bu Fatima, sister of the goat killer and monkey murderer...

Fatima using a sling-shot against the monkeys!
(is that monkey blood on the tree behind her?)

There are a lot of Malaysians and Indonesians who come here to snorkel, but because they can't swim, they wear life-jackets over all their clothing...including their hijabs. I am amazed more people don't drown, it is really crazy.  When they are out in the sea, they can hardly move, because they don't know how to propel themselves through the water, so if one of the was drowning you wouldn't even be able to tell.

Here is Maz wondering if she has the stamina to swim to Malaysia for a decent coffee. There was a lot of coffee-related trauma during her stay. Next holiday we will be going to Colombia or West Africa. 

Nepal: HelpX

En la última publicación , escribí de mis experiencias quedándome en un pueblo cerca de Katmandú, que se llama Changu Narayan. La casa familia  en que me quedé por tres semanas fue interesante porque, además de ofrecer alojamiento a viajeros, los dueños aceptaban a voluntarios a través de un sitio de Internet que se llama Helpx.

Usando Helpx, viajeros (en su mayoría mochileros) pueden buscar a oportunidades para hacer trabajo voluntario a lo largo del mundo. Helpx es un sitio de "trabajo intercambio",  y bajo esta idea mochileros pueden trabajar para un hostal, un negocio (como un restaurante o algo similar) o para organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro (como escuelas). Los voluntarios suelen trabajar cuatro o cinco horas por día, por comida y una habitación.

Una captura pantalla de la página principal de HelpX. 

El dueño quería tener más huéspedes y voluntarios, quiene trabajaban en su granja (él tenía una granja cerca de su casa). Así, decidí quedarme más tiempo en su lugar para ayudarlo atraer más voluntarios. Me metí en el Internet y encontré dos sitios similares a Helpx -- Workaway y HelpStay. Durante dos semanas, escribí listados en estos dos sitios, y me ocupé de contestar correos de voluntarios y arreglar  el calendario de reservas para voluntarios. Fue trabajo muy interesante, y aprendí mucho durante mi estancia.

Un listado de Workaway.