ello ello

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Ello ello, so where did we leave off? Aaaah I remember, t’was our last night in Zainabad and we were having a phat party with the akaash ganga kids & much fun music. We have been missing Zainabad very much; the area is beautiful, the wildlife stunning, and the people are lovely, especially our akaash ganga family, who me and kids have been thinking about a lot…..I also miss having a bike at my disposal(even if it was an ancient hero Honda), to scoot around the village with the kids; one on the front, one on the back, in true Indian style! Was even giving the kids motorbike lessons(don’t worry, I was on the bike too!); Akashi got the hang of accelerating steadily, but Shivum was a lot more dangerous at first, zooming the thing forward suddenly……!
So, from Zainabad we sleeper trained it to Bombay, to stay with family who I haven’t seen in about 9 years, in Parle district, a completely un-tourist part of the city. I remember going to stay there when I was small, and distintly remember the well outside their house; it’s still there, and much to the kids’ excitement, there’s a family of turtles living in there – Shivum spent many moments watching the turtles paddling about in there. Aaah Bombay and all her splendour and gandhgi (dirtiness)….where we are living, there are huge and posh sari shops, lined with fruit and veg sellers sitting on the pavement in front, with various wallahs hustling their way through the day going past, amidst street dogs dodging the never-ending traffic lines of rickshaws and motorbikes whooshing past, all to a soundtrack of people shouting, Bollywood songs and honking horns…..loving it!
In Bombay, we also find spiv and robby, who I book into a nearby hotel, only to find out when we arrive that the hotel doesn’t accept foreigners. Luckily a friendly rickshaw driver takes us to one in which foreigners are welcome, although at extortionate Bombay prices(most expensive accommodation in India for real). The next day, Mary arrives, and spiv and robby go to the airport to get her; she calls that night to say she’s at the airport and there’s no sign of anyone! After various phonecalls here and there we manage to get mary to the hotel, but no sign of the boys; it turns out they went to the wrong airport (the domestic airport, not the international one!), and they find each other in the end! The next day, we jump onto a sleeper bus to Goa(even though it’s 2 hours late, and we all have to run for it with all our luggage and 2 kids when it finally arrives, because it didn’t stop where it was supposed to)…..while running with the kids, I look around and suddenly there’s no Akashi; ‘Meri beti kaha he?’ I cry to the man next to me in Hindi (some random from the street who I asked to help with my bags in the rush)….I can’t believe I let my eyes of Akashi in Bombay, a city known for kids being nicked to be sold for trafficking……I look harder for her, and see that mary has stopped a bit further back, and is busily faffing with her bag, and look! Who has stopped to wait for mary while she faffs, my lovely little Akashi! It’s all good!
So we reach goa the next morning, the scenery around us changes to beautiful tall swaying palm trees and nuff lush greenery; we jet to arambol, a chilled village in north goa, where I spent some time a few years back with James, dump our bags in a nearby guesthouse, head to the beach for lunch and then me and the kids jump straight into the sea at the first opportunity, and stay there until sunset! Being at the beach is just gorgeous, oh how I love the warm Arabian sea, dipping in and out of it, playing in the sand, shivum making intricate patterns and shapes in the sand, Akashi making beautiful castles, shivum waving a piece of wood in my face saying ‘This is the fossilized remains of a sea snake mummy……’, Akashi running after the coconut wallah who pedals up and down the beach on his bike all day (after climbing trees for coconuts early in the morn) so that we can drink trophoo (fresh coconut milk drink)… there’s also a strawberry wallah who comes by every day (kids love their ital. vitals!), selling strawbs from mahabaleshwar near pune, the worlds biggest producer of strawberries. The kids have been learning a new skill aswell; bodyboarding. The first time, me and a mate take them out, and they want us to stay close and hold onto the boards, but the next day is a completely different story; they both rush into the shallows and are riding waves confidently by thensleves(under my ever attentive aye!) leaving me free to hoop on the beach, lounge in the sun, or enjoy a cooling sweet lassi! The kids get more and more confident, until a wave takes Akashi under; ‘Im NEVER doing bodyboarding again’ (in tears), a while later, she’s back on the board….lol!
So, after a few blissful days in lovely but expensive(by indian standards) goa, we scoot down to cochin, kerala, where mary went the day before, to meet up with her and her parents. Her mum and dad are great, and within minutes of meeting them, her dad’s chasing the kids around the hotel, and her mum is ever attentive to the kids’ needs……we get treated to some amazing dinners, one is an all you can eat buffet (the BEST type of meal in my book!), and we positively stuff our faces and bellies, only to polish it off with 3 helpings of icecream and much caramel custard….mmmmmm! We have various fits of giggles throughout the meal, and definitely make a spectacle of ourselves in what’s otherwise a quiet restaurant! The giggles has been a bit of a theme with mary; on a bus to the backwaters tour filled with tourists who aren’t chatting to each other, we drive past a phat rig set up at a crossroads, blasting music(political parties advertise themselves in this way, or with speakers strapped onto cars driving around the city)…me and mare just look at each other on spate sides of the bus and crack up! Even something simple like going down to hotel reception to see if maryu’s laundry has been done ends up in us not being able to string a full sentance together without cracking up, then one of us tries to get serious to chat to the dudes on reception and we just crack up again like 11 year old school girls…..jokes! The boys on reception quite obviously think we’re crazy……So yeah, me and mary take the kids on a backwaters boat tour the next day, with is a shanti journey on a calm waters, meandering it’s way through the lives of some well peaceful people, living sustainably with the land around them; eating mussels from the water surrounding their island, making beer from the coconuts of the palm trees above their heads, trees from which they also use the fallen leaves to make their houses……beautiful and shanti styles….after acouple of days in cochin, I decide to head back to goa with the kids for afew days before pune, our next stop, where my brother lives. Me and mary enjoy some great sisterly chats once the kids are in bed, and have fun singing and playing songs to each other, and having general laughs and talks about life, the universe and everything!
So back to Goa; I’m pleased to find that robby and spiv are still there, in the same room, and we go back to the same room, which is comforting for the kids; was just thinking the other day how mad this trip must be for them, as well as being lovely, it’s just like turning their whole life upside down; away from the routine of home, and our family, and all their stuff, and mealtimes and bedtimes as they’ve always known it….they’re doing really well and are great companions to travel with (most of the time…..there are stressful times as well for sure!) They’ve been so good at waking up when we arrive at a place at 5am, and carrying their own little backpacks up and down huge flights of stairs at railway stations, being proper little troopers! We have lots of fun in goa, and have some lovely dinners with spiv and rob, enjoying goa’s culinary delights. They’ve been booked for some paid gigs aswell at a local venue, which I don’t make it to cos the kids are too knackered to trek about by those times……we have fun ingoa, much fun but alas we have to move on, so onto the sleeper bus again!
Next stop; Pune, where my cousin bro and his family live. We’ve spent the last few days relaxing in his plush apartment, and being fed all sorts of delights(overeating while visiting family has become a bit of a habit….!), and the kids have had fun rekindling their friendship with Pari, age 3, who they met a couple of months ago in Gujerat; can’t believe two months have flown by already! Shivum had great fun running after Pari and Akashi last night pretending to be a ghost (“bhut”), running around with my woollen shawl over his head (pure Tibetan wool, bought in Ahmedabad for only Rs300, bargain!…..comes in handy on overnight train journeys!) In pune we visited the snake park; since I told shivum about this is uk, he hasn’t stopped asking about it, so he was well pleased! A friend of a friend works there, and he’s pune’s leading snake expert (heptatologist or something is the word I think), and he was a great guy to meet; we bought a little book from him about the snakes of maharastra, goa and Karnataka, which shivum has been studying profusely! Also, we saw a king cobra for the first time ever, a rock python, a sand boa and loads of common cobras, most of which have been caught in the city, to be brought to the snake park, and then released into the wild……
So that’s enough typing for now, this is the second time I wrote this blog cos yesterday I wrote it up and then lost it  but for now, we carry on our adventures; getting a night train to katni tonight, near bandhargavh national park, to find tigers…..its a 30 hour journey, so I’m interested to see how that goes; we leave at 11.20pm tonight and arrive 2.30 am the day after tomorrow…….! So much love to all you lovely peeps, blessedness and equanimity….over & out! x

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