Sat, 12 Mar, 2005

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO.............here I am again with another bulletin from the road.

It's now Sat 12th March and we've been here 2 weeks. It's been a bit mad and has turned our plans on their head a bit, BUT it's all fine and working out well. As these things tend to do!

We left Delhi and took a train to Jaipur - were planning to stay just 1 night at the hostel but then Rob got ill and then 3 days later I did too. Nothing much with me apart from the runs, but poor Robbie had it baaaaaaaad. Fever and the whole thing. So we rested up and had one day in particular when we laid in our sick bed and watched Back to the Future at about 9.30 in the morning and then they obliged by showing Gladiator at night! So we ate chocolate and drank....well, water really...... So that was the day of hell and then we went to see the doc next door, about 70 years old and used to be the Senior Medical Advisor to the Indian Air Force. We were in good hands. He sorted us out with medication and we were soon all better.
Had some good times in Jaipur, but didn't make it to the farm. We got there (middle of nowhere) and found where we were staying - a real, live mud hut! That would have been fine really, we weren't expecting comfortable accommodation, but it was as basic as basic can be really. One other WWOOFer was there, a guy called Alexis from Belgium, and he'd spent 3 or 4 days alone, as the couple who went there with him had left the next morning, and none of the farm workers had spoken to him. (Not their fault - they couldn't speak anyhting but Hindi, so there was no way for them to communicate.) There was no one on the farm to co-ordinate the WWOOF workers and give things any structure - to say "hello, welcome to the farm, here's where you'll be sleeping, this is the rooutine of the day".....etc. Just nothing really. We had a conversation with a painter-decorator bloke who was there, by finding phrases in our phrase book - that went quite well.........UNTIL he got his mate to take Rob over "to look at his bike", so that he and I were left alone in the room. He got the idea that as Rob and I weren't married, it was open season - he pointed to his cheek and said "kiss?", which was NOT happening, and offered me a massage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which was also not happening! It was all just very uncomfortable and out of order, and I made a hasty exit from the room - Rob came bounding over, as he hadn't liked the way things were going, and we thought about what to do. All things considered, we decided to just leave - there was just no structure there and it was so, so different from what we'd been expecting. The owneer of the farm, who we'd been in quite close contact with by email for the past few months, wasn't even there - he lived 500 or so miles away! So it was all a bit of a farce.
No worries - we made our decision and set off to the main road to get a bus back to Jaipur, hitching a lift to the road on the back of a pick-up truck - bit of a godsend! We did get the bus, and on the journey Rob realised he'd left his wallet containing passport, credit card and a wad of money at the farm. Shit! So the next morning we got a lift back there with this old Brigadier who was the farm's agricultural consultant - he was going there, as it happened. Got the wallet back - all intact.
Now that the farm was out of the question, we decided to go to Bharatpur (consult atlas) as it sounded nice and less hectic than where we'd been so far. So we did go there, and we met some great people at our lovely guest house - Joy & Luke, in their 20s, from Vermont, USA, and another couple, Val & Ken in their late 50s from NZ. We had so much fun with them - great chats and laughs and telling of stories around the dinner table. We shared music from Rob's iPod too - that proved very popular. The Muppettes d'Amour may like to note that I played them the recording of us that I made that night, and they said they will buy our CD when we are famous!!
We had fun in Bharatpur cycling around a national park tho I nearly broke my bum on the crossbar of one of the bikes I got on! Ow!
And now, after 14 hours on the train (1st class!!!!!!!!) yesterday, we are in Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple - we're staying in a nice guest house after checking in and then straight back out of a scummy (to say the least) hotel down the road from this one. It was GROSS. We tried to get a refund as we'd paid for a night upfront, but they would NOT refund us not matter how hard we tried. So we walked 5 mins down the road and checked in here instead - we stayed here last night and tonight too and then tomorrow we're going to the Golden Temple to visit there and stay the night in one of their gurudwaras (Sikh temples) - you can stay there for free, tho it's meant for bona fide pilgrims - but they open their doors to anyone. (If you saw the Michael Palin "Himalaya" series, you probably remember him staying there.)
Then on to Dharamsala in a couple of days to see the Dalai Lama, and we may be leaving India sooner than we thought for THAILAND - we shall see.