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Published: January 28th 2011
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As the saliva continued to pool at the back of my throat, the gag-reflex eventually proved too strong and I gulped and felt my Adam’s apple bump up against the cut-throat razor … ouch! I looked across and saw William slump forward as someone else took a cut-throat to the back of his neck … the noise from the street just outside suddenly seemed a very long way away …
What better way of celebrating Republic Day, commemorating the start of ‘getting rid’ of the British, than to risk a wet shave (and haircut and massage) in a street-side shack? We were staying with Paul and Jane Carling in Kolkatta and Paul had taken us to his barber-shop of choice, the Fashion Saloon. We all squeezed into a tiny little room with the other queuing customers and what seemed like dozens of barbers. As Diana and Emily looked on we were rubbed, powdered, sprayed, snipped, shaved, massaged (assaulted, more-like) and hair-oiled all for 80p for two! Diana and Paul noticed that the last ‘treatment’ available was the most expensive, the ‘Lorial’ for £12, and wondered if this involved something special in the back room? It turned out to be one of
the red hair-tints we had seen far too many of in the last few weeks.
Our couple of days with the Carlings, who are running Future Hope School, gave us so many different perspectives of India from those that we had already seen. Suddenly, the pestering and the begging became much less of an issue now that we were with people who had a better sense of life here. Paul’s fluency in all languages (no matter how much of them he actually knows!) also proved helpful when negotiating with/bludgeoning into submission tuk-tuk and taxi drivers. Trips to the markets, with their colourful displays, a delicious Bengali meal, setting the world to rights over a few beers at the CCRC (the second oldest cricket club in the world!), walking the narrow streets and the wide open spaces of Kolkatta and the opportunity to have all our questions answered; it became easier to see how foreigners might fall in love with this amazing country. Of course, for all of the pull it might have on one there are also the repulsions; the squalor, the huge poverty gap, the struggling infrastructure, the very different rules of society and the dreadful lives some people
live.
Paul and Jane are fully immersed in this end of life in India, trying to change for better the lives of children and young adults collected off the streets and station platforms of Kolkatta. Education and especially teaching English is just a part of what they achieve; raising self-esteem and giving love and care to those from whose lives it has previously been absent will hopefully have just as important an impact. Frustrated as they are that the new school campus is slow to come on-line they are clearly achieving marvellous things in the middle of Kolkatta – the smiles of joy on the faces of the children as they started school in the morning were pretty convincing to us. Can India, the economic superpower, avoid leaving behind a Third World underclass? Projects like Future Hope, and many others like it, show that this might be possible but that it will need a lot more people, especially Indians, to be as generous with their resources, their time and their love as Paul and Jane are being.
Two taxis, two flights, one train journey, five time zones and thirty degrees Celsius difference of temperature later and we arrived, miraculously having
Republic Day
... spot the flags and the lack of children (holiday) lost only one book during the whole trip, shivering, back at Bath Spa station where our adventure began ten long weeks ago. Exhausted? Yes. Dirty? Yes. Glad to be back home? Yes … but I am sure that we all feel that we have left a little bit of ourselves in all the places we have visited … I am sure that I, for one, will go back to India in the future. The scratch we made in its surface is already beginning to itch … and on that rather confused metaphor this travel blog comes to an end.
Peter, Diana, William and Emily
aka The Fat Russian and friends
PS
Number of km flown RTW 42,000
Number of km driven in NZ 3800
Number of km driven in Australia 2900
Number of miles travelled in India 3700
Number of MacDonalds passed 80
Number of MacDonalds eaten in 4
Number of memory sticks offered for purchase in India 100+
Number of memory sticks used in ten weeks 1
Number of days of sunshine per year in Queensland 300+ (Source; Queensland Tourism Agency)
Number of days sunshine per ten days in Queensland 3 (Source; Diana Watts)
Number of times New Zealanders discussed rugby with us 100+
Number of times Australians discussed cricket with us 1
Hottest temperature encountered 35 deg celsius (Mumbai)
Coldest temperature encountered -2 deg celsius (NYC)
Max rainfall in one day encountered 225 mm (Sunshine Coast, Australia)
Total number of journeys:
Flights 9
Trains 5
Camper trips 2
Car trips 15
Boat trips 10
Greatest delay 1 hour (NZ to Australia)
Bags lost 0
Items lost 1 (India travel book in car at New Delhi station)
Items disposed of 2 (P’s too-stinky sandals, E’s swimsuit)
First aid used 3 plasters, itch and ulcer creams, 4 paracetamol
Worst purchase £6 – pack of biscuits (Udaipur airport)
Best purchase 20p – back massage
Worst meal Mexicali, Auckland, NZ
Best meal The Fig Tree, Eumundi, Queensland
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Giles and Kate
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Welcome home! Supper and desire for full blown account offered! Kate & Giles