two surprises are better than none.

Where have you been? I hear you asking. What have you been doing? You wonder aloud.

Well.

Everyone.

If I don't have some news for you.

You may be able to sense what is coming, spider-sense style (that and the title of this post...). Surprises! Two of them! Hurray!

Everybody...most people...OK, some people like surprises. (I hope. It's what I'm basing this post around). Anyway, here goes:

Surprise the first: Some people already know this (in fact, I had to wait to post this til some people found this out, hence the gap between posts) but...WE ARE HOME. Really and truly and for serious. I am writing this in my lounge room; my recently reunited cat skulking around the bedrooms and my Dad completing his TESOL course in front of the fire. The fire! Because it is freaking freezing and not at all the sunshiny spring weather I was hoping to step breezily (how I thought I would be stepping breezily anywhere after a 36 hour flight-transit pancake I don't know) into from the plane. But no problem (maybe a little problem). We are back!* Back in Radelaide. Back in our normal lives- sans money, jobs and routine. Back.

Surprise! Gotcha, right? Good.

Because now it is time for surprise the second. Except this is more the announcement of a surprise that will be coming to you shortly, a surprise in the making. But it is thus: I have made a book! I spent three months in HutLand cooking, scribbling, writing, drawing and painting and now I have a book. It is a book of the Keralan food that we ate all the time at Our Home (it happens to be delicious so this was a good thing) and I am going to be selling it to raise money for my favourite bunch of Indian kids. Except that right now, I only have the one copy. The original, definitely not for sale, it took me so long to do that it is bizarrely precious to me now copy. We were going to get it printed in India but because I enjoy the rush of leaving things to the last minute and this doesn't work in India because it is India, it didn't happen. So we are making a plan. When that plan is made, I shall let you know.
Keralan food for everyone!

But now here are some pictures of our house at Our Home. Our favourite place in India and a place that wasn't as sad as I thought it would be to leave because we know for certain we will be back within the year. Except when we told some of the small boys we were leaving and they stood and stared at us with the blank faces of the 'just-awoken', tinged with sadness (I'm sure I didn't imagine it), I thought I might cry. But I didn't. So I win.

It feels strange to be back at home so suddenly. Whisked from the busy dirtiness and chaotic noise of the Indian streets and planted in the staid quiet of an Adelaide Tuesday. It's odd. It feels like I am on a little break from Our Home and I will be back there, building a toilet, playing chasey and sleeping in our bamboo hut in a day or two. I miss HutLand already but I am glad to be home. I think. I am pretty deliriously tired from some stupid long airport-y travel so I don't really know how I feel just yet. Except that I am happy to hang out with my dad and my cat. And my bed is reeeeaaallllyyyyyy comfortable.

Welcome home us!

*There is a little delay between when this post was written and when I published it. There is a reason though, not laziness I assure you. I wrote on the eve of my homecoming, so everything would be fresh and true. But I had to wait to post, because I had decided to surprise certain people and I can be a bit stubborn so there was no way I was giving this up, so this could only be posted after said surprises had been surprised.

P.S. Yes, I really did light a campfire inside the bamboo hut. Because I was halfway through cooking a curry when we ran out of gas in the HutLand kitchen and the daily downpour was about to start. And I was NOT giving up on that curry.

the train post.

The trains. Oh the trains.

I feel about train travel in India the same way I feel about going into a fancy cheese shop at home. The thought of both experiences inspires happiness tinged with apprehension, for very different reasons. I love cheese- and therefore cheese shops- but I do not love how light my wallet feels whenever I am going back through those doors with a bag of cheese in my hungry little hands. I love travelling by train in India- it is ever so much more comfortable than buses, and there are roaming snack men for goodness sake!- but I do not love the hassle that appears to be an inevitable part of train travel in India.

So both experiences are bittersweet. No, not bittersweet...happily frustrating.

We have now done a fair bit of train travel in this baffling country, and we have also travelled almost the entire spectrum of classes (except first class...prohibitively expensive as it is), so we have experienced a fair few different hassles. Like ticket men refusing to sell us tickets because we are tourists and that means having to hit a few extra buttons on their ticket machines and they have already hit so many buttons today, they really just don't feel like it; or being charged white man tax and paying two hundred percent too much for tickets that allow us to cram into a booth with sixteen other people; or being so unorganised we are only able to buy general class tickets and spending five hours sitting on a luggage rack with all of our bags and some other people's bags and a really old lady who I feel should have been at home with a blanket over her knees, not shoved on top of slatted metal 6 feet above the floor on an Indian train.

It's always an experience, I really am not complaining.

But last week, with mounds of luggage and my mum and an intense desire to be strolling the red clifftops of beachside Varkala (our much-anticipated destination), we had a whole new Indian train experience. We got to play 'Darjeeling Limited'.

Who has seen that film? Who remembers the part where every single time the three brothers got off the train for a smoke or some shopping or some bizarre convoluted spiritual ritual, they were always on the brink of missing it as it took off once again and had to run and run and run and jump?

That is what we had to do. And it was really fun(ny). And I love the feeling of running through a train station- you feel so...entitled. To step on feet accidently, or push past errant elbows in your haste...to look hopeful and desperate and important all at once.

So this is what happened...
There we were, sitting at the platform we were told to sit at and waiting waiting, very patiently (ok, I wasn't waiting patiently), for our train which was becoming more delayed with every passing moment. We played cards, we took selfies, we made faces at small staring Indian children. And after we almost boarded the wrong train because we were so sick of waiting and we were at the right platform and surely this is our train , it's been ages!, Mum and I went illuminate ourselves at the information booth. Where we found a crowd ten deep and an incredibly harried informer. Indian style, we elbowed our way to the front of the swarm, shoved our ticket at the man behind the desk and yelled "platform! Varkala!" to which he yelled "one! platform one! go go now! go!", his eyes wide with disbelief that we were not settled in our seats on our train that was apparently minutes from departing.

And so we ran. We ran back to Will on platform four (who was sitting on his bag knitting, the picture of serenity), garbled something like "train leaving now go quick leaving hurry!", grabbed our bags and tried to strap them up as we pushed and dragged and puffed our way back to platform one.

As we collapsed, red-faced and sweating, into the coach of some unimpressed looking Indian men, the train pulled out of the station.

Train travel in India. I love it. 

our odyssey

in a house in the hills

lived Will and Jordan

they worked all the time

causing no end of boredom

then came the day

when one of them said

"let's quit our dumb jobs

and go traveling instead"

so they packed all their bags

and headed northwest

up to nepal

where the trekking is best

they trekked through hills

mountains and snow

and then headed south

to glimpse a rhino

then yet further south

across a border

to a place where corpses

are burnt beside water

they went on to hampi

goa 

mumbai

then down to meet chacko

a mad indian guy

they surfed to sri lanka

the island of tea

of big rocks 

tall stairs

and  thieving monkey

they jumped on a plane

and flew really far

to the land of olives

vino

and a fine tapas bar

and they met jordan's sister

to share in their mirth

while they hung in barcelona

greatest city on earth

then off to the finca

of cathy and james

a farm of thirty cats

all with different names

morocco was next

with casbas and medinas

a rather nice place

for our wandering dreamers

a bus took them then

on to portugal

a marvellous country

for one so small

they couchsurfed

ate fish

met many a friend

but like all things do

it came to an end

so they hitch-hiked through france

to chatellerault

where aunt virginia lives

and tall sunflowers grow

they made it to paris

using only a sign

the city of love

they thought it sublime

some days later

they reluctantly left

for the island of ice

and depsite the bad weather

will's cousins were nice

they marvelled at london

had devonshire tea

and met an old friend

in cantebury

after two months of wet

they began to feel glum

so they headed for cyprus

the isle of sun

they farmed in a town

they planted and weeded

their time in the sun

gave them just what they needed

then before they knew it

they were back in nepal

this time with will's brothers

one loud and one tall

they hiked through the mountains

and spied a high lake

at one point they feared

their lives were at stake

they went back to india

pumped for round two

and spent a whole month

in tamil nadu

they swam in the rivers

and worked on the land

e-spied many elephants

the beasts are quite grand

their trip so far

is what i have told

but who knows what new adventures

are yet to unfold...

by will.