A few Darjeeling animals

I put aside my prejudices about zoos to visit the zoological park in Darjeeling.  I don't like seeing big animals caged up with little to do and getting stressed by visitors shouting at them but this zoo has some rare Himalayan species with captive breeding programmes for snow leopards, red pandas, Tibetan wolves and others and a couple of Bengal tigers that were rescued from circuses and it was really interesting.  Darjeeling has a fair number of other animals wandering round including the inevitable street dogs and monkeys that seem to live happily alongside each other.

A great holiday but I have now left the cool of the Darjeeling hills to head back for the heat of Orissa. It will be hotter than ever.  It will be good to get back to work to try to finish off as much as I can before leaving India at the end of my placement.  I did after all come here to work, not to be a tourist.

A few days away from Koraput

I'm very lucky to have been on a wonderful holiday in Darjeeling.  It is a beautiful and fascinating place, a mix of Nepali, Indian, Tibetan, Gorkha, British and other cultures with Buddhist, Hindu and Christian followers.  The town is spread across steep hillsides with clear evidence of it's colonial past and is surrounded by tea plantations.  The gradient of the roads with their narrow, winding course must make things a bit tricky especially during monsoon or winter ice and snow. Porters carry huge loads up the hills, reaching places impossible for road vehicles.  All sorts of ingenious solutions seem to be found to deal with the difficulties of getting big, heavy kit up the mountainside and I was particularly taken with the sight of a tractor-powered road roller.  Although it is currently in the state of West Bengal it may not have much in common with cities like Kolkata.  There has been a drive for the Darjeeling area, along with several other areas in this part of North East India to split away from the current political boundaries and become a separate state, Gorkhaland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorkhaland.  

We had decided to treat ourselves to a really nice holiday in a good hotel as it was our 30th wedding anniversary. In the past, the majority our holidays have been camping or self-catering but this time we decided to treat ourselves.  It was particularly luxurious for me after spending months in the rural town of Koraput which has limited choice of foods and for me, everything has to be done by hand. The luxury of showers with hot water, a laundry service and all our meals (including afternoon tea with scones and cream) was bliss. I stayed briefly in a hotel in Delhi last week which had a pair of scales in the bathroom. I knew I had lost a lot of weight during the first 3-4 months - or 'reduced' as one of my colleagues keeps telling me but hadn't weighed myself since I left the UK last July.  I have put on a little weight in the last couple of months and I was surprised to find that I'm 12kg lighter than before I came to India but have been working hard on changing that by stuffing myself with excellent food on holiday and trying out lots of lovely Darjeeling teas.

The first few days in Darjeeling we were rewarded with clear days and good views of some of the Himalayan peaks.  We got up early one morning to go to Tiger Hill to watch the sun rise and enjoyed the sight of the sunlight on Kanchenjunga turning the snow first to dark red, gradually turning brighter then gold before glowing white when the sun was fully risen. Great start to the day. I think we caught a glimpse of Everest but am not entirely sure.

The Himalayan Darjeeling Railway or Toy Train just had to be tried http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darjeeling_Himalayan_Railway.  We had great fun while the narrow guage steam train chugged it's way up impossibly steep gradients, causing chaos among the cars with road and track following the same route up the hills, criss-crossing each other numerous times.  The track zigzags backwards and forwards and loops round to gain height and I got covered in soot while I leant out of the window taking photos.  I could turn into a train nerd traveling on trains like that.  Being in Darjeeling we did of course have to visit to a tea plantation, followed by a cup of what we were assured is the best tea in the world.  It was very good tea.

A week in Puri

All the VSO India volunteers + representatives from their partner NGOs were invited to attend an annual conference.  The last time I joined a VSO conference I had to travel all the way to Delhi but this one was held in Puri in Orissa.  The number of VSO volunteers placed in Orissa has increased significantly since I arrived here last year so it seemed a good state to choose to minimise the number of volunteers having to travel too far.  We were lucky that the chosen venue was a very nice seaside town with interesting places to visit nearby but there were probably other constraints in that there had to be a hotel big enough to host 50 volunteers + 50 partners and appropriate conference facilities.  Some of the volunteers may have felt that it was a long way to have to travel but at least I didn't have too long a journey this time.  

It was really nice to have the opportunity to meet up with so many other people and find out more about what's happening in other parts of the country.  Volunteers based in Delhi have the advantage of seeing colleagues who are passing through the city which is the home of VSO India Programme Office, they.  The Delhi vols get to meet the new volunteers arriving and to say goodbye to the people leaving at the end of their placement but those of out in the more remote parts of India rarely see other volunteers so gatherings like that in Puri are really valuable to us, helping to remind us that we are not alone.  Places like Koraput have little in the way of social life or other outsiders and apart from trying to get to know our neighbours with our limited ability to communicate in each other's languages and meeting up with any other colleagues nearby we don't have the same opportunities to meet other people.  The conference went the way of most conferences, some bits inspiring and some less so but overall, it was a good week for me, giving me the chance to catch up with colleagues, meet some of the other NGOs and hear more about VSO India plans for the year.  

Orissa is famous for its fish and seafood but Koraput is too far from the sea and too poor to get any of these delicacies so I made the most of the local catch while I was there as I love seafood along with other things hard to find in rural areas - muesli for example!  Puri is a coastal resort with what looks like a lovely beach with waves rolling in from the Bay of Bengal.  I got up early in the mornings to go for walks with my camera while the light was good and not too bright.  The beach was full of people playing cricket and fishermen either pulling their boats into or out of the water or sorting out their nets.   Some friendly fishermen spotted Jim and I taking photos of them coiling their nets and insisted that we posed with them and their nets.  I suspect that Jim has a similar photo of me 'helping' with the nets. I did however have to watch my step when walking north along the shore as there is a fishing village at the top of the beach without sanitation.  Given the location the appropriate solution is for the people to use the littoral (the area between high and low water) as their latrine so that the water cleans the area twice a day and disperses the debris into a dilute state.  Sensible but not so great for paddling through the waves.  The pigs seemed to be enjoy it though.  I love swimming in the sea but decided not to swim on that beach but later in the day the sea was full of life and people having fun.  I managed to pick up some rather unpleasant gastro-intestinal bug that afflicted a good many of us from the conference.  I suspect that we all fell prey to a virus as we gradually went down with the bug and didn't all fall ill at the same time.

Puri seems to be a popular place for backpackers and felt a bit like it should be on the hippy trail.  The conference was held in the only hotel big enough for the numbers but I added a few days onto the conference to have a break from work and the delights of Koraput.  I struck lucky with the hotel I chose for my extra days, a delightful place called the Z Hotel, apparently the former home of a maharajah with wonderfully big, clean, airy rooms and a communal balcony area with breeze blowing in and the sound of the sea just a few hundred metres away.  We met some really interesting people staying there, it seemed to be one of the places that attracts some eccentrics as well as the more ordinary like me.  

I took a day trip with my volunteer friend Sheila to Konark a few kilometres north of Puri to see the Sun Temple, a Unesco World Heritage site.  This was fascinating with some extraordinary stone carvings and was built in the form a chariot for the sun god Surya with 12  pairs of wheels and pulled by 7 pairs of horses.  Much of the stone has crumbled  away through erosion of other damage but it is still a tremendous piece of architecture.  What I hadn't realised until I saw the place and heard the guide's descriptions was that many of the sculptures appear to be inspired by the Karma Sutra.  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konark_Sun_Temple"> Sun Temple <\a>.  

Festival of Colours

I've just emerged from one of the maddest and most colourful days of my life.  Today, Koraput celebrated Holi, the festival of colours.  I've tried to find out what Holi is all about.  Some say it is to celebrate the change from winter to spring, some say it's the triumph of good over evil, some refer to the legend of Prahalad and Holika.  It probably has a combination of roots and is celebrated in many parts of India by people smearing each other with paint and throwing coloured powder and dye over anyone and anything in their path.

Whatever the reason, it has been a good excuse to relax and have fun for many people in Koraput.  I went out for the day with my new friend Anne Heslop, a professional photograper based in London who funds various small projects here in Orissa (Anne Heslop).  Annie's charity, Goats and Hopes has a number projects including the funding of 2 schools near the town of Koraput.  These schools were built and run for a few years by the Save the Children Fund.  When they withdrew their funding, the schools were threatened with closure until Anne managed to find sponsors to help her fund the continued running of the schools.  Annie also raises funds for mosquito nets and malaria education, Koraput being a high risk area (30% of India's malaria cases are here in Orissa and of those, 90% of those cases are the most dangerous sort, cerebral malaria) and she has projects running to supply solar lights to remote villages without electricity.  Anne spends a few weeks in Koraput each year visiting her projects and doing photography to help with her fundraising.  I was lucky enough to meet her last week and we soon made friends.

Annie has been videoing children at the schools to create a film to send to her sponsors and to try to attract new sponsors and asked me if I would like to spend the day with her while she worked at the schools.   Little did I know what people mean when they talk about celebrating Holi.