The things I do for pretty blonde girls...

Kite fighting is about as hard as it looks.

Alright, hello everyone! Sorry for my lax blogging. Work got crazy and I was behind, then there was dissertation to do. It’s still a little crazy and I’m still a little behind but tomorrow I’m off to Udaipur on the bus and a quick trip through Rajasthan so I’ll forget about it for a little while at least and tell you all about Phaltan.

Harry and David are two other Engineers without borders volunteers working for an NGO called ARTI who deal with agriculture and energy in rural areas. Supposedly they’re here to set up a biogas plant in a pretty remote village near Pune but as it rained there once this can apparently no longer happen. Well... actually that’s not quite fair. The village is about 2 hours walk from the nearest road and for India that’s a rare thing as the government is supposed to have built roads to every village in the 70s. A combination of bad weather (apparently diesel generators are heavy and so hard to carry up the side of small mountains during flash floods), bad organisation by their NGO (mainly due to lack of funds it seems) and a reluctance to let them stay in the accommodation nearby because it’s “not good enough for you” has put this on hold. Arti has too main offices – in Pune and in Phaltan and so it was to little rural Phaltan, before all this had turned out to be the case, to which we travelled a few weeks ago.

Finishing work early on Friday afternoon I wandered along to the nearby bus station to meet Harry and Dave. Martino had had the week off after being ill again and was only just recovering so just the three of us that weekend. After two hours of buses with either ‘no standing allowed!’ and every seat reserved, or too much standing and one or the other of us not managing to get on we decided to have a break and get some food at a cafe across the road. When we returned to the station the first bus was practically empty. Not too bad really so off we went and three hours later we were in Phaltan (despite a brief attempt by a drunk who seemed to be dressed like a cowboy attempting a mild hijacking.) We were picked up by Imtiyaz who works for ARTI – Harry and Dave’s NGO - and whisked to our hotel.

The next morning was the kite fighting festival, and after a brief tour of Imtiyaz’s son’s school (new uniform day!) we headed to the house of a friend of his. Roof full of men and kids, sky full of hundreds of kites with their strings coated in crushed glass and the sun beating down it was a spectacular scene (No women though and (for some people I'm saying this again, so you may skip ahead ; )) this bothers me. But I fear I can’t say much intelligent about it without sounding like a knob – “India needs a demographic shift similar to that caused by the second and first world wars in order to give the kind of sexual equality we have in the west a chance to develop” – see? Or I suppose exposing myself to being beaten up by historians...). Every second roof had a sound system or drummers and so followed a day of grown men playing with kites, deafening each other with firecrackers and generally acting like children. Taking the string once I quickly snagged another kite and in one fell swoop cut it out of the sky. Gracefully my kite powered into the roof of the building opposite and smashed to pieces and the guy next to me turned to look at me with a frown, his line holding nothing. I’m not sure you’re supposed to go for people on your own roof... It was an amazing, tiring day.

That night was dinner with Imtiyaz and some of the best food I’ve had in India at his house on the edge of town. While dinner was cooked we passed the time at the house of his relative who keeps chickens and spent a little while rounding up the chicks that had escaped their pen in a blackout, not certain what the link was here but it was certainly fun... The next day off we went into the hills by auto and walked upstream to a nearby waterfall for an afternoon of swimming, getting crushed by the force of the river, climbing into gaps in the rocks and diving into the water. Exhausted and breathless, sunburnt and still a little deaf in my left ear; we made our back the the village where Imtiyaz had parked his auto and set off back to Phaltan to stand on our bus back to Pune.

I’m writing this a few weeks later, after alot of work, and a couple more weekends in front of a laptop doing dissertation and dealing with Shelter’s website than I care to admit... Today was Eid and the start of the Ganesh festival. Two excellent excuses for renting sound systems and dancing in the street it seems. Tomorrow I’m off to Rajasthan with Dave until the 20th – Udaipur, Jodphur, Pushkar and Agra (though between Udaipur and Agra it’s up in the air...) but tonight I spent a little time in the streets of central Pune which are draped with lights, the air thick with music and incense as Ganesh idols are brought to temporary shrines and people flock to the temples, and where flags with the crescent moon fly in half the streets and outside every mosque alongside a dancing crowd. I missed the insane human pyramids 10 people high that went on for Krishna’s birthday but I’m glad I saw this. At one point some Shiv Sena looking guys turned up and did a dance with lances - a lance dance? You certainly don’t see the BNP doing that. (well, not to my knowledge...) Then I set out for Rishi’s for a kind of final dinner. Martino will be gone before I return. It’s all kind of coming to an end for this trip at least. No autos though! So I walked about half way, getting swept up with the drummers and processions bringing the Idols to shrines along the way. It was time well spent dancing and getting covered in paint. Found one in the end and after an alcohol free dinner (today was a dry day) we were back for the night an hour or so ago. I’ve still got red on me though...

Kerala

So here I am. Went off to Kerala for a week and this weekend was all sunburn and kites in Phaltan. Kerala first though, a whistle-stop account...

Kerala was beautiful, peaceful and in a sense very different from the India of the north. Not a slum (that I saw), and rarely a beggar it’s one of the wealthiest and most equal states and for that, and for whatever other reasons (low season?) it made a calm change. Still, they’re all filthy communists down there so they must be doing something wrong...

I arrived, after 30 hours of intense and train bound reading; dissertation work; and lying in my little bed, as Monday was dawning in Ernakulum and made my way to Fort Cochin. After a great deal of persuasion, my auto driver took me to the home stay I was looking for and after waiting a couple of hours for the room I checked in and passed out. For the first time in India I was in a room of my own. Amazing.

The next few days were spent generally obeying the lonely planet (or, as Rishi et al call it, the white guide) in all things, after getting a copy from one of the many people on the verge of leaving India. Kerala is apparently where you go at the end, not halfway through, but of course without the guidebook I wasn’t to know this. I felt very shoddy. Madness of madnesses (though I should have learnt by now) I met a a girl who had graduated in 2006 from University college on the first day and the week was full of French people, Danish, Irish, English, Dutch... Every European you can imagine as well as the occasionally Indian person.

Day one was spent exploring the shops and lanes, visiting the synagogue and the fishing nets and learning how to get around. This involved some cautious rickshaw driving of my own, something I got to do in exchange for visiting just two giftshops! (I managed to get him down from three) Apparently the drivers have something like a scam going on where they get petrol in exchange for bringing in tourists whether or not the tourists buy a thing. As a result you can travel for free in Fort Cochin if you can resist when it comes to shop owners. They only got me once but I in the end I developed a fairly effective if crude tactic - asking if they had an absurdly obscene sculpture I’d seen in a temple (they never did but I honestly would have bought it if they had!) and then if they still wouldn’t let me leave I’d just start describing it. It worked quite well really...

The second day was spent on a houseboat and canoe in the backwaters near Alleppey, the night spent on a little cooking course in the course of which I learnt why you apparently don’t let French or Israeli people stay at your hotel. A startling piece of wisdom but one shared by both our teacher who ran a home stay and two of the pupils (who believe it or not owned hotels in France...) Wednesday I picked up a Dane named Klaus at the bus station and headed into the mountains near Munnar. Real god damn rainforest, waterfalls valleys and mountain views; it was incredible and as there aren’t glass windows – just shutters – on Keralan buses I spent most of the time excitedly sticking my head into the rain.

Munnar claims to be some of the highest tea plantations in the world. I’m not too sure what this means considering there are places like Darjeeling in the Himalayas but no matter. TEA! There was a lot of tea. And it grows in a satisfyingly beautiful way considering the joy of the thing. Dinner, a little look around and an auto guy to take us to some kind of surreptitious backroom bar to purchase some beverages (strict licencing can make a beer hard to find in kerala) and the day was done. The next day we hiked through the butterflies and trees at Chinnar but it was sadly devoid of wildlife beyond a single huge cobra. The elephants, as is their way, always one step ahead... Friday it was all coming to a close and I set out early to return to Cochin for my Saturday train. Arriving back I went for lunch with some people I met on the ferry, found a new home stay, got a scorcher of a thirty rupee haircut and had dinner with a random French family. In the morning I rose at 5 am and caught a ferry, sun rising over India, back to the mainland for the train north. 32 hours later I was back in Pune and exchanging stories with Harry and Dave who’d spent the last couple of days in the village they’re working in. Two hours walk from the nearest road and no mains electricity. They still manage to have flat screen tvs in some houses apparently though, I will have to visit...

Anyway, a Phaltan post is in the works – it was an amazing weekend, after that I might write something more general about life in Pune. I will be faster, if anyone can find me a job starting in November and finish my dissertation for me : ).

Aurangabad?

Everyone is sick – pity us. First Martino was pretty spectacularly unwell and went to the doctor for all sorts of injections and illicit medication. Then the night before last, two other EWB volunteers turned up – Harry and Dave who are doing an electricity generation project out in a village near Pune. Out for dinner and a few beers and I start to ache and shiver. Now Harry has succumbed to this mysterious affliction and, in a daring act of one-upmanship, passed out when they were having dinner last night. So we’ve been sitting around in the flat and feeling generally sorry for ourselves. Good times.

Alright, so I think i’ve pretty much done caves now. It’s enough I think. Aurangabad was our last weekend off and it was pretty amazing. Ajanta and Ellora caves as well as passing by the spectacular Dalautabad fort. Ajanta was peaceful and remote. Blazing sun and then pouring rain and amazing almost 2000 year old Buddhist cave paintings. In contrast, at one of the stops on the way I met a man who I was sure was selling something but no. He just wanted to profess his deep love for the cruder aspects of Ali G. He was pretty gangster. Ellora was also beautiful, though rammed because of a Shiva festival at the nearby temple. Spent the day being shown round and then bought half our guides giftshop for about 1000 rupees. Rishi went to temple and we took a packed jeep back to his village. I counted 24 people but evidently there were one or two on the roof... A couple of hours there – making us very late for our bus and then back to Pune and a pretty inefficient day of work!

I’m off to Kerala for the week tomorrow while Martino sorts his visa in Bombay and Harry and Dave start work (possibly, somewhere). No stop off in Goa in the end as we're saving it for when all the Bombay ppls can make it. My temperature’s dropped back to normal now but this trip may be an interesting one. I'm sure you'll all enjoy the exciting blog installment when I write it up 2 or 3 weeks after the fact ; ).

Sunday at Karla caves:

Pune lies on a plateau a little way east of Bombay and on the road between the two you climb into some spectacular mist-covered mountains. These are full of old forts, hill stations, lakes, caves and temples and so to take advantage of this, and after being unable to make it away for the whole weekend, we made up our minds to go and see some sights nearer home. Off we went then, taking a local train to Lonavala and then an auto, we aimed for the caves near Karla village.

As we pulled onto the road leading to the village it began to rain, then pour and the traffic stretched up the road as far as we could see. Our driver pointed to the cliff face above and explained that we could walk from here. Having already badly negotiated a pretty high price and without the meter running the driver didn’t mind and we were happy too – Pune is still dry a month after the what is meant to be the start of the monsoon and we could do with getting soaked.

Getting out we could see that traffic was backed up behind a truck a couple of hundred meters ahead. The source, it turns out, of a bass thump and the beat of drums that’s steadily been getting louder as we drive into the village. As we approach, walking through the traffic and stalls lining a road which is now a stream, we can see the truck is full of people, followed by twenty or thirty young-ish, drunk and dancing guys and when we reach them a cry goes up and in we’re dragged for an intense few minutes of throwing shapes and bad imitation Bollywood dancing. And so it continued, up and up in the rain past stalls grilling corn and selling temple offerings, pulled in again at each new sound system to dance and with frequent stopping and starting to be questioned and shake hands.

Soaked through and muddy we reached the caves after an hour or two. Cut into a sheer cliff down which streams poured and overlooking the plain below it was pretty spectacular with echoing drums and more people dancing, this time under the small waterfalls, in the streams running down the rock and in the windows of some of the higher caves all alongside families on day trips. After the second or third group of guys had approached us to shake hands, ask questions and pose for pictures we set out to explore heading to what looked like the main entrance. Shoes off we joined what seemed like the queue.

As queues go this was a good one. We entered a kind of queuing cage welded from metal bars to shoulder height forcing the queue to single file and, once the first 15 minutes or so were done, this became completely enclosed by an outer cage. Not long after we started we were joined by a cricket team chanting Marathi nationalist slogans, drunk as hell and carrying a friend who had passed out. Not friendly drunks this time though. The guy between us and the group explained that the team and some (though a minority) of the rest of the queue who were joining the chants didn’t really like outsiders. The nationalists had arrived apparently. Though they were only a little annoying at first at first it was getting nastier by the time the queue was done and it was clear they were trying to provoke us – pushing forward, shouting and telling us we should speak Marathi and only Marathi. Despite this though, something about the situation made sure it was never too far from being a little comical, not least when they briefly stole Martino’s sunglasses, when someone (though we were never sure who...) kept pulling Rishi’s hair and when the drums started just beyond the cage and it looked like they were trying to start a dance off. It seems that some combination of genuine curiosity and the language barrier meant most attempts to get a rise out of us never lasted long as everyone just ended up rather confused... At one point we asked our new friend what the occasion was for the crowds, the dancing, drinking and the queue and he replied “it’s like this every day”. It seems we’re pretty hardcore in Maharashtra...

Finally, and after well over an hour, we reached the last tunnel and the object of all this fervour and drunken passion was before us - an 8 foot by 8 foot room with a small shrine and two overweight temple guards. The caves, it turned out, were through a small gateway we’d passed just before entering the cage. Perhaps it’s not always fair to rely on Rishi when he’s around just because he speaks Hindi... Leaving our belligerent friends to be slapped into submission by the red robed guards we emerged into the light, picked up our (now soaked) shoes and walked round to the spectacular, empty, main cave.

After seeing the sights, climbing into the cliff to look out over the plain below, and taking childish pictures of each other we set off for Lonavala, dinner as the sun set and then home to Pune but just as we left we noticed the team again, shouting; and squaring up to another similar group as the rain poured down.

Anyway! Time for a beer and a little sit out on the balcony - they’re having some kind of rave in the slum below... It’s been a moderately hectic week, but hopefully some regularity (if not too much frequency) with the blog now, promise.

A long first post.

So! Arrived at Bombay/Mumbai airport on the 28th at around 11 am and, after some kind of bus ride into Pune, arrived at Rishi’s flat.

The story here is that Martino (who is from northern Italy but has recently been studying in Glasgow...) went to an international school in Singapore on a scholarship (one of those IB nelson Mandela run deals like atlantic college in Cardiff) and so knows everyone from the world. Rishi’s flat is quite a good deal as accommodation goes. Though we’re sharing a room it’s an air conditioned affair on the 8th floor. It’s free to live and eat (thank you Rishi! Though we need to repay you some how...) and we have the amazing Prakash who is... A helper? Servant? He basically makes our lunch and cleans up after us (and so makes Martino and me feel fairly uncomfortable and un-pc : )). Still, we’ll have to get used to it I think - on the first night we went out with another old school friend who we’ll call Viraj. Basically the areas of Indian cities, at least where we are, are Nagars and one of the ones in Pune may well be named after Viraj’s family. He’s rather wealthy, as I realised when he picked us up (with a driver along just in case we drank too much) in a brand new Audi a8. So this was our first day. Kind of makes your book recommendation all the more prescient Dave...

A day off to sort our lives out and then work! Work is in a 10 or so person office in an old flat near then centre of town. 10 til 6 and work every other Saturday too. At the moment it’s mainly GIS mapping stuff and if you’re interested in a fairly one sided depiction of what this might entail (and some shameless self promotion) please do click here. Later we’ll be setting up a server, improving a couple of websites and hopefully streamlining their data entry. I’d quite like to do some analysis but they’ve just done some new surveys of Nashik up the road so we’re dealing with that for now.

Basically there are two parts to what shelter does – data collection on slums to inform future development and impress the government who ultimately finance this, and actually dealing with construction – designing the apartments and getting the contractors. As these things go it’s not the worst slum redevelopment in the world – they try and keep communities together and the redevelopments rarely get above 4 stories but obviously there’s another side. Some of the slum land is government owned and among the most valuable - hence an incentive to clear it. Also many of the buildings that are eventually demolished are more than just shacks – painted, decorated and well looked after (though, you know, no running water and that). There were riots against one redevelopment in Nashik incited by a local political party (described to us by other volunteers as like the BNP but for Maharashtra) as shop keepers felt they were being closed down for good. It got pretty hairy according to the other volunteers – Adam and Wendy who are here until the end of this week. Still as we’re almost entirely in the office (they were only in Pune for 3 weeks of the 3 months) people who might worry don’t need to : ). Plus we’ll have Pratima (who is in the video) when we do head to Sangli for a day in a couple of weeks and she doesn’t mess around...

Birthday was good – I had cake smeared on my face twice (Indian tradition was the excuse). Saturday night we was robbed! Well not really - the valet stole a thousand rupees from our car and the moment you start that sentence you realise you probably deserve to be stolen from...

I write this as the internet comes back to Rishi’s place after a few days without and today we’re on strike! Yes, us unloved volunteers are finally standing up for our rights. Also we can’t go to work because everyone else is on strike (fuel prices) and they’re smashing up buses in the town centre but still. It’s been a nice couple of days off but itching to get out and as there are no Auto’s and Rishi doesn’t get up until 5 most days (so no car) it’s been quite dull doing dissertation stuff most of the day. I did manage to go for a wander earlier though, and met the guys in the picture below who are also on strike apparently and they asked me to take a picture. Anyway, strike off at 6 and back to reality!

Not much rain yet but hopefully monsoon soon? Turn down those thermostats guys and I’ll walk back...

Hope all is well and people got the results they wanted. Laters!