Sunday 13th January

Sunday 13^th January

Lovely days on the beach in sunny, if slightly windy, Bicheno.

We have all learned to play a killer game called Sequence and now everyone over ten just wants to do that – any children too young to play, well they can just surge around beneath table-level…

Angus (10  years) was fascinated watched Rose (10 months) on the beach.  She crawled around very completely and found a big handful of slimy, sandy, wet seaweed, which she stuffed, in large chunks into her mouth.  “No, Rose, oh NO, that is SO wrong!” he said, laughing in spite of his disgust.  Then he turned to us and said, Doesn’t Rose have any tastes buds yet?”

India #68

We were very sad to be spending our last night with Larry and Lorraine.  We sat up till after midnight enjoying the last minutes of their company, although we knew all too well we would have to be up at 4.30 to catch the Rajastan Express, which Jassi told us was the BEST train in all of India.

         

Jassi was right.  This train (Delhi to Jaipur) was comfortable!  We had reclining seats, modest in appearance, vinyl covered, but they did recline and there were footrests – bliss!  We all sat back very happily.  The train left at 6.30 am; by 7 Mary and Hana were fast asleep, the picture of contentment.  We had about an hour travelling through the outskirts of Delhi.  It is so dirty, so smelly and polluted, it is hard to believe people live and breathe there.  We were going through the slums at breakfast time, so we were treated to mile upon mile of men squatting for their morning poo along the train line.  It is sensible for them to poo here; the poo all gets cleaned up by pigs and rats, and they aren’t contaminating their own little laneways.  The men all carried their own water bottles with them; this answered the question of how do they clean up… But we still don’t know – where do the women poo??  Or do they have a different designated time along the train line??

         

The slums are just dreadful, so very dirty, squalid, small, insubstantial.  But from many of the horrid little dwellings along the train track emerged dear little schoolchildren, all clean and gleaming, with bright white shirts, ties, neat hair.  How is this possible?  From the slums also came a steady stream of workers, walking in single file along the railway tracks, across the sparse grassland, over towards the huge, teeming, filthy city.  Dozens, hundreds, thousands of them, all clean and neatly dressed like the schoolchildren, off to try to earn a few rupees.

Once out of Delhi the scenery was quite different.  We were travelling now through flat, dry country.  In Goa a crowd of hardworking women in colourful saris, busily weeding and digging, populated every field.  We decided that fruit and vegetables in India are probably much healthier than in Australian because they don’t need to use herbicides or pesticides – they use flocks of women to do it all by hand!  In Rajastan there was still evidence of manual labour, but every field seemed to have a resident camel, elegantly ploughing.  As we approached Jaipur – the Pink City – we saw pink hills, and a different style of house, more Middle Eastern in appearance, with flat roofs.

         

Breakfast on the Rajastan Express made me very happy.  In our individual baskets we had little tea-kits – NO CHAI!!  Well the makings of chai… But I could in fact make my very own cup of weak back tea.  I was so happy I almost cried.  The rest of the kit wasn’t so desirable to me, so I made up a package of goodies to give to a beggar of my choice: Marie biscuits, milk powder, sugar, butterpats, tubes of ketchup, veggie patties.  I extracted all such unwanted goods from my travelling companions.  My notes say “those still awake…”  (As for the beggar – was it easy to find one once we arrived in Jaipur?  Ofcourse not!  Usually at railway station there a swarms of desperate looking young mothers or ancient toothless crones (probably aged 42) and blind old men, who would weep with joy at getting a little food package from the Rajastan Express.  This time I could see NOBODY.  There was a very dodgy little boy skulking around, probably waiting to pick our pockets, so I called him over and put the big paper bag in his hands.  He probably was not happy at all but never mind, I tried, and I’m sure his mum would have been pleased with the chai ingredients.)