My year in India : December/January

Ooops I haven't updated this in a while.. the last month has been very busy!

Going back to December; we had the christmas play a few days before christmas, which didn't quite go as planned but was really funny. The songs got all messed up so whilst they were sorting it one of the men working here put on 'gangnam style' - there were priests and nuns and the owners of the school present watching the play and this comes on full blast on the speakers during the play, it was so funny! The play was so difficult for the children because, being blind, they don't know where to go on stage, who to face when saying their lines and so on, and on top of that there were microphone leads all over the floor which they could have tripped up on so we had to lead them all on and off stage. But despite that they all really enjoyed it, and their costumes were great.. Yes the kings do have lipstick on in the photos! And don't ask why Joseph is dressed in tiger print...

Then we had Christmas day itself; we met up with one of the other volunteers called Katy and dressed up in saris and went to a posh 5* hotel at the end of our road to treat ourselves for christmas dinner. We normally pay around 50 rupees each for a meal if we eat out (around 60p), but because it was a posh hotel we expected to pay a lot more so we were thinking it would be maybe 600/700 rupees, which we'd be happy to pay. So we turned up and asked how much it was..... 2500 rupees per person!!! It was the most awkward thing ever, we'd come all dressed up and were too embarrassed to walk straight out but we couldn't afford that much, we only get 2400 rupees a month as our allowance! Sooo in probably the most awkward conversation of my life I asked for the manager and explained to him that we are volunteer teachers in the school down the road and we get less than that a month etc... and got the price down to 1200! So we happily paid that because it was Christmas, and it was so good to have western food for the first time in a few months. And I can now say that I haggled in a 5* hotel! :P It's going to be a nightmare coming back to the UK and having to pay set prices for everything!

Katy, Holly and me in the Taj hotel!

We spent New Years Eve in school with the kids which was really nice. We got to help do rangoli patterns which is a traditional Indian thing they do at festivals, drawing patterns on the floor with paint. Then some of the older kids sang songs and things and one of them did impressions of the other teachers which was really funny, even though they were speaking in Telegu we could tell who they were impersonating! The younger children spent the night dancing to music which, not meaning to be horrible, but is the funniest dancing I've ever seen, me and Holly were crying from laughing so much!! Then there was a countdown to midnight and then about 10 cakes! In India there is a tradition of feeding other people pieces of cake on special occassions, so if its your birthday everyone feeds you a piece of cake and on new years everyone feeds everyone cake, I've never had so much cake in my life!! So we had a really nice night :)

Me helping out!

Rangoli

Midnight cheers!

January:

On the 10th Jan we went on holiday to Kerala. We got an overnight bus again, which i thought was about 14 hours, but 18 hours later we arrived in a place called Cochin! We got a ferry across to Fort Cochin which is a really nice chilled out place, it was nice to get out of busy noisy Hyderabad and have some calm! In Cochin there are some Chinese fishing nets, which are massive contraptions on the shore which basically lower a big net into the water to catch fish. Most of them aren't used much but luckily the day we were there, there were some men working one, so we sat watching for a while because its really interesting. Then one of them called us up on to it and let us have a go at pulling it in.. there are these massive ropes which need about 5 men to pull up the wooden poles which hold the net and we got to have a go at pulling them in!

I had been craving fish for months, so that evening I bought a fish from the fishmongers which you can take to a local restaurant to be cooked... it was delicious!

The next day we went to the backwaters, which Kerala is famous for. There are miles of rivers, big and small, which are lined with coconut trees and so serene! We went in a small boat which didn't have an engine, but punters at the back and the front with really long bamboo sticks to push the boat along. We went along the rivers for a few hours, stopping along the way at a place where they dry coconuts for coconut oil, and at a small spice plantation where we had a traditional Keralan lunch on a banana leaf. In the afternoon we went to the back of the boat and one of the men let us have a go at punting! They make it look so easy but it's really difficult because the bamboo stick is about 5 meters long! We nearly made the boat go into the river bank so we didn't last long at it but it was fun!

The next day we got a bus up into the mountains to a place called Munnar, where there are tea plantations covering the mountains. I hadn't quite thought what a tea plantation would look like, but it makes the landscape beautiful! The mountains were covered in bushes different shades of green that had been planted in rows across the mountains, it looked amazing! The next day we caught a bus from Munnar to the top station, which is a viewpoint at 1880m which looks out onto the Western Ghats. The view was stunning, we arrived early and sat on a rock for a couple of hours in the morning sun never wanting to leave! The photos don't really do it justice but I think the area around Munnar is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been!

Next up we had to go back to Fort Cochin for a night, we went to a cute little cafe which had Indian rarebit on the menu which was strange! Then we got some buses up to the mountains north of Kerala to a place called Wayanad, which was again another beautiful place. We stayed in a cheap hotel that had cockroaches but I had my first hot shower in months - I wouldn't have cared if there were 50 cockroaches in the room I would still have stayed there for that hot shower!! The next day we went to a wildlife reserve where we got taken around in a jeep and saw some elephants, a bison, monkeys and loads of really cute little bambi deer! our guide said that earlier the other visitors had seen a tiger but it was no where to be seen for us! But it was still a really good trip :)

That afternoon we went to some caves which have carvings in them from the stone age, around 3000-8000 years ago, there were carvings of men and peacocks and some writing which has been translated as saying 'there was one man who killed lots of tigers, his name in Nandu'! So that trip was really interesting.

On the way back from the caves we saw a baby gollum-monkey!!

We spent our last couple of days in the city of Mysore, everyone we have met has said we must go to Mysore, and it was on the way back to Hyderabad, so we did! It's so different to any other Indian city, its green and peaceful and in the morning we came out of the hotel and we couldn't believe the road was clear - in Hyderabad the roads are always congested! Also on the bus in we saw loads of bright yellow cows, and one yellow dog! There's a festival called Sankranthi (which is why we had a school holiday) and in Mysore they dip all of the cows in yellow dye, it looks so strange. In Mysore we visited a temple - and got ripped off by a guide who we though was just being nice and then wanted loads of money -_- , and went to the Maharaja's Palace which was beautiful, but we weren't allowed to take any photos so i can't show you! We also got to see incense being made, and got to have a go ourselves ( I was better than Holly ;) ) but it was so diffcult... but the girl who was doing it makes 8000 sticks a day!!