Intrepid Journeys - India

After the fun times aboard, village life is rapidly wearing thin. Boredom flood has arrived. Figure I’m also drowning in a sea of oestrogen at the moment. All up there are now 5 females (with another on the way from NZ) and only my grandfather and me. There’s even talk of an impending Shopping Trip north to the centres of Ahmedevad and Surat…“thrilling”. In an attempt to keep my head above water I embarked on a solo walk and hangout at Vajifa this morning.

More sickness in the camp at HQ. J was physically ill yesterday and I’m avoiding food at the moment, no prizes for guessing why. The tummy’s feeling all good but lets just say there are issues in other departments. The EVIL Giardia strikes again perhaps? We’ve switched back to drinking only bottled water instead of tap water (which is sourced from a well) coz of what it may contain.

As for further trips, I’m way keen to train it to Ahmedavad, spend a night or two, fly to Delhi, check it out and possibly get a car down to Jaipur, Agra (Taj Mahal) and Pushkar. If there were constant trains and planes it’d be sweet, but a number of factors are working against me. Granddad’s book-launch is now officially scheduled for Feb16th at Dandee Beach, we’re off to Bombay and NZ after that and even going to the travel agent and finding out about fares/timings is at least a half-day mission! Not to mention courting the support of the shopping-brigade... If planes/trains line up, I’d possibly do the trip solo. But even finding that is gonna tine…. Where’s the internet when you need it?!

Had to do some very rapid RVDR (Routine Visiting of Distant Relations) in the arvo in a neighbouring village, the one where Dad’s originally from. There was an absolute plethora of olds ladies we had to call upon! I was kept amused though, as Indian people are soooo funny. I’ve also sussed that old ladies are the same wherever you go… all about the talking, tea and gossip. I’m pretty sure we got through at least 7 households in two hours, every single one of them ULTRA hospitable, consistently ignoring our requests not to serve us tea / pepsi / etc! Left with no less than 4 invitations to stay for dinner too. As I said, the oldies were funny as, all of them marvelling over how much I’d grown since last here age 3 and insisting I let them find me a good wife as they knew lots of nice girls. Baha!

The girls (now 3 of them) rickshawed to Dandee beach and managed to score some camel rides…nice for some!