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.

sunshine, shisha pipes and head-stands everywhere...

Picture this...a taxi careening down a high speed road being driven by a guy chatting on his mobile and narrowly avoiding serious collisions, with two sleep-deprived Australians in the back looking bleakly out the window into a night of sheet rain and lightning flashes. We are this scene's protagonists, it is our first night in Cyprus and as well as crossing all our fingers and toes in order to prevent death we are also keeping an eye out for some kind of electrical store, which is where we were told to alight in order to find this farm we would be volunteering on for the next month.

We get out of the taxi. It is still raining. And we are very confused. We seem to be in a town, surrounded by houses and shops; not exactly the type of area in which you would expect to find an organic farm. We wander around in the dark, following what look like the darkest, leafiest streets- using our very superior detective skills' we figure that the farm is probably not going to be somewhere well-lit and suburban- getting ever more drenched and irritated.

After about twenty minutes we accept the futility of wandering around this strange new town in the soaking night and seek help in the nearest open shop...the cashier speaks no English but thankfully the only other person inside does, and is more than willing to help us. She calls the guy who runs the farm, tells him where we are and then is on her way with a friendly wave from the car window.

Five minutes later a guy turns up outside and from under a hoody we hear in a very London accent "so you're who I'm s'posed to be meetin' then". Success!

The farm turns out to be the big fenced off area- well lit and suburban- that we've been wandering around scratching our heads about for the last half an hour; Mark (the guy) turns out to be very chatty and friendly and the other volunteers turn out to be some cool cats from Norway and Poland who we become very good friends with (so much so that we all end up staying at the farm only for as long as we are all there together).

The farm itself is a bit odd. It's a project started by somebody who has since left and now the point of the whole exercise is somewhat ambiguous...it is funded by the fanciest hotel in the area and provides said hotel with some vegetables a few days a week, as well as randomly growing other vegetables just for the hell of it (it seems), with two people who have some conflicting ideas trying to run it as a team without really communicating with each other. Some previous volunteers have apparently been disappointed by the rather 'un-permaculture' ethos of the farm, but as we had no expectations at all and only wanted to escape a British winter and do a bit of yoga, we were more than happy with what we found.
We even learnt what 'permaculture' means.

As well as rejuvenating our vitamin-D deprived skin and becoming the yoga teacher's favourite class ever (really, we gave her a goodbye card and she cried), we did do some things of actual use with our six weeks.

Lots and lots and lots of weeding. It became a bit of a source of tension between the two guys in charge about how much time we should spend on weeding and how much on other (more fun) projects. Thankfully, for the most part, the arrow swung more into the 'fun' part of the chart. But still, no chemicals means a lot of weeds...it is even almost theraputic sometimes- depending on how much you have already done and what is left stretching out in front of you.

We planted seeds and harvested sprouts and lettuces, watered plants and walked the dogs, took ourselves right back into the pioneer age with our 'incredible human-powered soil-sifting device' (think a huge metal sheet with holes in it which two people shake over a wheel barrow while somebody shovels dirt on it, all to a specially devised chant...it was very, very funny and very, very permaculture), cooked amazing vegetarian feasts everyday and did a few general maintenancy type jobs that every farm has a plethora of.

More memorably though...we built a very impressive outdoor kitchen, all the way from donning our architect hats and drawing up plans to eating some wonderfully alfresco lunches under the sun. We built the coolest pizza oven ever (after much trial and error and a little fire fiasco that left the cat's face a little blacker than it was when it was built) and had a very gourmet pizza party in honour of our wonderful yoga teacher, which concluded with us dancing on our kitchen bench (in order to test its strength, you understand). And we had the 'marmalade' day, which wasn't so much fun as memorable in the fact that the following night I actually dreamt I was still sitting at the table peeling mandarins and thereafter, whenever Peter (one of the founding members of the Goat Gang) offered us a mandarin it was always 'guys, who wants a piece of marmalade?'.

'After all this work you must have been exhausted' I hear you say, 'you know, all work and all that...'. Ahh, but you see...we worked only 5 hours a day 5 days a week, which left plenty of leisure time for things like...band practice:

fruit picking:

sunset gazing from the roof (our internet hotspot):

camping on the beach:

hanging with the Goat Gang (now I will explain...so called because two of the members- you can guess which- very, very earnestly spent a lot of (wasted) time trying to convince Mark that having goats on the farm was probably the best idea ever and also because we scaled the side of a mountain in the manner of monkeys...no no no sorry, goats)

and smoking the most deliberated over home-made shisha ever:

So. You can probably guess from the tone of this article but I will reiterate for you anyway: we really, really liked North Cyprus. It is super easy to travel around, all you have to do is stick out your thumb and wait for a minute or two (so easy in fact that we even had hitch-hiking races), the weather is amazing and the people we met were fantastic. The farm may not be quite as permaculturally, self-sufficiently organic as some volunteers expect but, as for us, we got to work in the garden everyday, do lots of yoga with the most awesome mini yoga teacher ever and just generally hang out with some very fun people. And for that we are very grateful.

lives in still...

And once again we are saying hello from this dark little northern island, searching for the sun and shivering in our goosepimpled skins; our time in Cyprus could be a dream but for our slightly browner skin, blonder hair, and these pictures...

After I made a very successful little batch of mandarin marmalade from some of the farm's glut of citrus, we all somehow found ourselves spending an entire day peeling and deseeding mandarins for a massive batch to sell at the English market. Then we spent the evening boiling it over an open fire in a huge cauldron. Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble...

The fruit (haha) of our labour.

And trying to convince all the English expats that they need our marmalade... 

                    Cooking our dinner while we camp...there seems to be a bit of a theme here...                                

This is what happens when you leave Will in charge of the campfire. 

The alien landscapes of this amazing camping spot. Gaudi in nature I thought.

The beginnings of what is to be the coolest pizza oven in the history of the universe.

Have you ever seen a pizza oven with footprints on the roof?

The fire-breathing hell cat that spits out pizzas of all kinds

And our outside kitchen continues to grow...from an empty grassy patch near the herb garden to benches, swivel stools, a pizza oven and a VERY perma-culture bamboo floor. Aren't we amazing?

The first supper.

An old monastery that our wonderful yoga teacher recommended. Nothing remarkable here, though a hitch-hiking race meant that we arrived crammed in the back of a very rickety old van whose doors were held closed with wire- and we didn't win the race...

           See those cliffs there? We climbed 'em. We call ourselves The Goat Gang and we are               the coolest. Once we got to the top of the mountain, for want of anything else to do, we decided to climb over a wall we found. Then we discovered we had accidently broken into the castle that sits atop the rocks, and that it was closed and that we had to break out of it again in order to hitch-hike back into town.

We need sustenance before we make the very impressive climb up the rock face.

The weekly lettuce harvest. Not too interesting so I tried to get artistic.

Keeping bees in the mountains of North Cyprus.

We come from all over to play guitar and smoke from a hand-made shisha...

Bathe in herbs?

Chamomile made walking around the farm a very pretty exercise.

'The Guru's Apprentices' doing yoga on the roof. 

So it was real after all...in a minute I will tell you some stories about it. 

stinge-ing out in paris and london. part one

The creme de la creme of famous dangles

 We are no luxury travelers, but we have certainly not been down and out in Paris and London. Stinging out though? Yeah, a little bit.

Our journey from Chatellerault to Paris only cost us a few hours of slightly awkward small talk with strangers- we even learnt something. Did you know that 80% of France's power is nuclear? Neither did we.

We arrived in the city of love and, with our stingy hats firmly upon our heads, bought two children's tickets for the train to the 'burbs and our first night of Parisian couchsurfing. Which turned out to be more about celebrating the multicultural side of Paris than the 'stripey-shirted man with a croissant and a cigarette' side. We were staying with an Asian guy who lived with a family hailing from somewhere in Africa and we dined on Vietnamese pho (which was so good we were back in Vietnam for a minute).

We came round a bend on the river and saw this...

We had a far too brief 2 days in Paris and I'm sure we walked at least 100 kilometres in our efforts to see as much as possible (as well as, the metro is kind of expensive). And we saw a lot...of course the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysee (which meant I had that song stuck in my head for far too long), and Moulin Rouge. Also the final resting places of Oscar Wilde (Egyptian themed and covered in red kisses), Jim Morrison (covered in flowers) and George Melies (unfortunately no magic tricks were to be found) in the too big to be believed Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. It is a wending, winding, tree-lined 110 acres with over a million "customers", that has been a fixture in Paris since 1804. I don't know if this is appropriate in a cemetery but I had to giggle when we came across a huge mausoleum housing somebody called 'Stroggonoff".

Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise

 The fantastic thing about Paris is that you don't really need to know where you're going (excellent for us, as we will often study a map, decide where we need to go and head off in exactly the wrong direction) because there is usually something to see around every corner. On our first morning's stroll we stumbled upon the Notre Dame! (Though if you fail to see that whilst walking around Paris I don't know...you may not have eyes). You will often be walking along a street, admiring the elegant old apartment buildings, and you'll turn a corner and be in front of a wonderful little park strewn with statues or a grand old municipal building or a shop window beckoning with its rainbows of macarons or, much to our literary delight, one of Ernest Hemingway's past homes.

For some reason, me kissing fish has become a theme.

We were walking along the river one rainy afternoon and as we passed the Musee D'Orsay we noticed an enticing lack of crowds so went inside and whiled away a couple of hours admiring Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin and lots of other people that aren't so famous and therefore aren't so easily recalled. Ahhh, Paris. They also gave us discounted tickets for the museum as we are under 26. It is actually surprisingly easy being in Paris with very little money (as long as you have somewhere free to sleep and can resist the very strong temptation to buy everything) because you can look for free and there are many, many things to see. Also croissants aren't very expensive.

As we made our way down to the Eiffel Tower on our first Parisian day we crossed a bridge covered in engraved padlocks, proclaiming the love of thousands of couples (it is called 'Love Lock Bridge', I later learnt from eavesdropping on two American girls of questionable intelligence- they were certain 2 days would be enough in Paris as there was really only 3 things to see: the Louvre, the tower and this bridge...). Anyway we posed for a couple-y photo and were continuing on down the river when Will, in nervous earnest, told me not to expect a proposal at the Eiffel Tower, as there were no engagement ring sized surprises in store. He must have been growing ever more anxious about how to avoid becoming engaged without hurting my feelings ever since we arrived in the most cliched romantic city of them all (indeed, we saw two separate brides posing for photographs at the Eiffel Tower). I told him not to worry- I wasn't interested in marrying him until he could provide me with a house, a car and 2.5 children.

Love Lock Bridge

So the city of art, love, shopping, food (pastries for breakfast and cheese and wine for dinner anyone? How Parisians stay so thin when there endless displays of incredible food everywhere, I have no idea.) and wandering...we did so much walking in our time there that my ankles actually swelled up and I was rocking some serious cankles for the next week. It was also freezing, freezing cold while we were there but this did nothing to deter us from our hours of exploring the streets. In fact, if you can handle the cold- which all the Parisians said was completely normal and not actually very cold at all- this is the best time to visit because the places which I'm sure are over-run with tourists in the summer are completely empty now.

The Sacre Coeur at Mont Martre

And then, abruptly, our little Parisian sojourn was at its end. We had morning bus tickets booked for London, our bags were packed and we were ready to go (physically, if not mentally). We said goodbye to our wonderful host Pierre, an incredibly friendly and open-minded man who couchsurfs around the world with his 3 children and spends his Sundays giving food and conversation to the homeless of Paris, and made our way to a bookshop I wanted to have a quick look around before I left. The famous Shakespeare and Company has been a fixture of the Latin Quarter since 1951 and is a literary institution. Unfortunately the shop only opens at 10 and we had to catch our bus at 11 so we could only have a very, very quick browse. This, as I should have known, was impossible. We found ourselves still immersed in the tiny corners and bursting shelves of this densely packed space at 10.20. Thus ensued an incredibly stressful and frantic race between metro stations all the way across the city to make our bus, our tickets for which, if we missed it, would not be refunded. As you have probably guessed, we missed the bus.

While this made for a stressful morning (and a realization that we would not be winning any sprinting medals any time soon) it actually worked out rather well for us. Thanks pretty much entirely to two of mum's good friends who happened to be staying in Paris as well. We had come to our last 20 euros and Pierre was in the country visiting his children, so if it wasn't for Christine and Melvin's incredible generosity we may have spent the evening getting to know the ins and outs of the Paris metro stations. As it was, we stayed in an amazing apartment with a view of Notre Dame. We also found ourselves with an afternoon of bonus exploring time which we used to watch bocce in the park, stare greedily at incredible chocolate creations in shop windows (and succumb to two of the best macarons I've ever eaten), admire expensive chess sets in a charming old toy shop and climb (i.e. ride an elevator) up the tallest building in Paris, the Montparnasse Tower. From here we could visually retrace our steps all over the city and I have to say, I was very impressed.

But the next morning we really did have to leave and in a responsible, grown-up manner we arrived at the bus station a whole hour early. The bus ride was very boring, as they often are. The two moments of anticipation came upon leaving France- we had stayed a whole two days over our allowed time in Europe and didn't know what to expect from the officials...as it turned out, they didn't even check our dates and I'm sure we could have stayed weeks over and they wouldn't have cared- and entering the UK. I have previously gone through a horrible barrage of questioning at UK border control and wasn't really surprised when the official at this border was less than friendly. I kept so cool under all his ridiculous questioning that he gave up and with narrowed eyes -I'm sure- and a sigh of resignation, he stamped me in. Will, on the other hand, was expecting to be welcomed in with open arms being almost English himself, and was completely thrown off by the manner in which Australians are now dealt with. It was only after 15 minutes of questioning, bank cards and phone numbers of English family members offered for inspection and a lecture about return tickets that he was allowed to enter, shaking his head in disbelief, the little island of cold.

Parisian dusk.

happy snaps from cheerful chaps.

And off we go again, up through Europe and into central France.

Will finally grabbed a bull by the horns in Belem (and then rode it into the pit of hell...)

Porto. The best city in Portugal.

Porto's river at dusk.

So happy to be in Bordeaux that we stayed the night.

Pretty Bordeaux.

Please take us. Please.

The cottage and the countryside.

It's freezing but don't worry I have a tree.

Autumn.

You get a prize if you can guess who we're channelling. 

A chateau. 

Casually stealing sunflowers.

This was at the castle in which Joan of Arc met the king. We found egg stools and did the natural thing.

The French countryside.

And that's what we've been doing the last couple of months.