I rather enjoyed re-visiting India via my blog the other week. So I went and dug out the diary I faithfully kept. The events it describes have never yet seen the light of day. For the first ten days I was with the group of people my ex-brother-in-law had put together, to explore aspects of rural Indian life, focussing on small producers working in traditional and organic ways. We had no internet access during that period.
I’ve decided to share my diary with you. This will take several Fridays. I’m pleased that I kept such a detailed record of a piece of personal history, and of a country I’d never visited. I wonder how dated this account would seem to the current traveller?
Last Day at the Rainforest Retreat
Wednesday 14th November
Dhosas with potato curry and scrambled egg Indian style (i.e. spicy) for breakfast. Then off with Ravi and Nak for the Ridge Walk. This involved serious climbing through the rainforest till we rose above it to the hilltops with pasture, bracken and smaller foliage plats. Wonderfully bright acid green paddy fields below – such a contrast with the darker green of the plantation trees. One or two cattle here too. More of the same, passing a few settlements on the way down……
….. Later, M, C, L I had a few jobs to do in town so we had a lift in. We enjoyed pootling around. I left an answerphone message for Malcolm and spent Rs60 on a hat (about 54 pence). We bought chocolates for Sujata and A (Cadbury’s, made in Poona and unavailable in England) and waited and waited for our photos to be downloaded.
It was dark by now, and we started to worry we wouldn’t be back for 8.00 and our farewell dinner, but M made friends with someone in a shop who took my letter which I’d found no postbox for, and got us an auto-rickshaw. Well! Health and Safety need not apply. 4 of us plus luggage somehow squeezed in with L on M’s knee and all of us bulging out all over. We admired the artificial flowers decorating the driver’s dashboard while M negotiated the price (Rs 150 – £1.35 – for a 10 km. ride) and off we hurtled, through puddles and over potholes (easier perhaps in a rick, with its smaller wheelbase) only grinding to a halt once.
Home just in time to make the journey up the hill to S&A’s house where we sat round a bonfire with A’s blues music in the background, eating dish after dish of all kinds of curry. Ludwig was there too. Home by 10.30, looking at a sky fuller by far of stars than we can ever manage in light-polluted Europe.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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