an indian moment.

When you have been here for a while, you start to notice these moments. They are unique to the sub-continent and if you are in good spirits they make you laugh. If you are having a bad day they can tip you over the edge. They are called 'Indian moments'. 

The other morning, after a night of relentless head scratching, I begged mum to check my hair, yet again, for creepy crawlies. So we were sitting outside the hut, in the sun, and she was diligently searching my scalp. And then some of the older boys wandered up, for whatever reason, saw what we were doing, and stood and watched. They said nothing. Just stared for five minutes or so until they got bored. Then they left. Mum and I just looked at each other in acknowledgement of this Indian moment. 

We went shopping the other day. Just because. When you live in the jungle anrd spend every day covered in dirt (and recently oil, thanks to an ill-conceived idea to rust  proof a fence) it is sometimes nice to be around things that are clean and new. So we went shopping. 

Traditional Indian clothes stores tend to avoid coat hangers, so to browse you must lean over the counter and point to what you want to look at and then the assistant will pull it out. You have a quick look, realise it isn't really you and then the scene begins all over again. This makes shopping for a top quite an investment of your time, but it is certainly an interactive activity. It also means that in most clothes shops the counters are piled high with colourful rejects. 

We went into one of these shops. I found a scarf, mum found some leggings and just as we were going to pay, she spotted something bright pink sticking out from the fabric mountain on the counter. They were cotton pants, exactly what she was looking for. She pulled them out and decided she would like them, they would go perfectly with a tunic that had not yet been paired (wearing a dress with no pants or leggings underneath is simply unheard of in rural India). She took them to the counter with our other choices, ready to leave happy and satisfied, and then this happened...

"Oh no madam, not those pants".

"Oh yes, I would like these please. Just these three."

"No madam. You can't buy those pants."

"I can't buy these pants?"

"Correct."

"Why? This is a clothes shop and I have selected these clothes and I now wish to pay for them."

(I suspect some of her responses may have been lost on the three men behind the counter, but they certainly amused us).

"No madam. They are part of a set. You cannot buy them alone."

"Right. I don't want a top, but where is it? I'll have a look anyway."

The two underlings then spent a good fifteen minutes hunting for the matching top. They rummaged through cupboards, scanned all the shelves and sifted through the fabric mountains. At one point they pulled out a new dress, with bright green pants and suggested mum might prefer those. She did not. We were all in fits of laughter by now, commentating on their fruitless search as they doggedly pursued it. They realised she wanted pink pants and pulled out numerous other pants of different shades and fabric and tried to convince us they were the same. 

After this had gone on for some time I thought we may be there all day if nobody said anything and I asked if, in fact, there even was a top that went with these pants.

I was met with laughter and renewed searching. 

"I don't actually want the top guys. If there is no top why can I not simply buy the pants?"

"No, no, no. It is part of a set you see."

"Uhhhhh huh. But you haven't got the set, the pants are all alone and why. Simply why."

"Ahhh, they are our last pair of cotton pants this colour. We have no more."

Finally we understood (sort of). The pants had no top but they were the last of their breed in store. So if someone happened to come in and want a top that these pants would match, the clerks would be in quite the pickle.

"Ok fine. That doesn't make sense but fine. We will just take these two."

And as we were paying, one of the underlings held up the offending pair of pink cotton pants and said "stitch?"

This set us off. We were in hysterics. We had just spent well over half an hour discussing the sale of these pants, which was 'not possible' as they were the last pair and now they were telling us they could stitch us some...

They did not understand why this was funny. We paid, thanked the men, and left the shop laughing incredulously over our Indian moment. 

You could go mad in this country. So sometimes it is wise just to sit and stare at the skies. Thankfully, they are often magnificent.

the city of vowels and marrakech.

From Rabat we had a very long bus ride down to Morocco's "windy city", Essaouira. The city of vowels. Unfortunately it was the week of the sheep slaughter and subsequent feast, which meant several sheep were also on the bus, in the luggage hold, which meant when we arrived in Essaouira our bags smelt like sheep wee. Which is exactly what you don't want the really heavy thing you have to strap to your back to smell like...roses or vanilla or something is far more preferable. Bit of backpacking trivia for you there.

Anyway, the point is, we arrived in Essaouira. The same deal as all the other cities, a medina and a ville nouvelle, but a wander out of the medina walls here brought you to a very long, sandy beach, perfect for swimming and windsurfing, kite surfing and regular surfing...the windy city. This was also the town where the tout at the bus station begged us to let him lead us to a hotel then demanded a tip, which is how we ended up with our wicked penthouse suite. Complete with a balcony perfect for yahtzee games and airing out our urine soaked backpacks.

The first two days we were here everyone was gearing up for the sheep slaughter feast (it is obvious now that I have no idea what the actual holiday is called), so the main shopping street in the medina was packed, constantly. Trying to merge onto it from a side alley- keep in mind it is a pedestrian, and occasional bike, thoroughfare only- was a matter of inserting yourself into whatever tiny space you could and waiting for the crowd to slowly project you forward. It took about 1/2 an hour to get from one end of the street to the other (when the festival was in full swing and everyone was home, we managed it in under 10 minutes). It was full on. Luckily there were only 2 days of this and then it magically changed into a christmas morning town...silent, empty streets bar a few families on their way to parties, laden with food, or boys running to and fro with little trailers filled with sheep skins. A happy, festive air without anyhting really going on. Still and quiet, in a good way. Just hordes of tourists wandering around, disconcerted because no shops were open and they didn't know where to get breakfast from.

When we weren't battling the crowds and refusing touts who offered us drugs, merchandise or restaurants, we spent a bit of time wandering along the old city walls, around the harbour and up along the beach. Will practised his backflips on the sand and instantly became a camel enthusiast when we spotted some further up the beach. (Plans are in motion...if anyone knows how big a camel exercise yard should be, get in touch).

We also spent a few hours one morning surfing. My very first time ever, so I was looking very cool stumbling down  the beach with my enormous foam longboard...Will is getting better now, he had the grown-up's neat little fibreglass number. (And he also now has the bragging rights of having surfed on 4 different continents). But once we were in the water the conditions were perfect for learning. I was right near a group who were having a lesson, so I didn't have to worry about looking spastic in front of them, and it was so bizarrely foggy that I was invisible to all of the real surfers further out in the big terrifying waves. And so, I managed to stand up! Several times! And made it nearly to shore without falling off! It was a big moment for me. After our morning of exertion, we spent the rest of the day resting and drinking coffee.

We left the lovely little town of Essaouira rather reluctantly, but short of more surfing we had done all we could think of doing there. So onward and upward, to Marrakech.

Marrakech, where we had planned to couchsurf, found a host and had even talked to him over the phone. Marrakech, where we ended up staying in probably the fanciest hotel we have yet stayed in, on this trip (not that I was complaining). The couchsurfing fell through and by this time it was about 10pm, we had no map and this hotel was open and had a room free (a scarcity in Marrakech, the most popular city in Morroco), so we collapsed on the king-sized bed with relief.

Marrakech is like the other places we went, amped up. The medina is huge, the souk is an insane maze of piles of shiny things just begging to be bought...filigree and glass lamps shimmering from floor to ceiling, racks and racks of sparkly bags and shoes, little counters piled high with sticky, colourful apples, oranges and all made out of marzipan, and clothes and souvenirs and leather-work and wood-work...and touts just begging you to buy them. A very interesting little square was home to the herbists, who had discovered that putting cages with turtles, chameleons and salamanders in front of their stores was the perfect tourist lure. It makes for very innocuous opening conversation. We met one fellow who had a very curious chameleon, it only changed colour when it was in his shop, surrounded by things we could buy...but ignoring all this, it was interesting to find out what all the mountains of spices and colours were for. Did you know khol comes from a really heavy, silver rock? And that when you rub nigella seeds together they smell like eucalypt? And musk comes in small chunks, like soap, that you rub on your wrists to impress the ladies? All very interesting. And the shops that sold jars upon jars of coloured powders...I have no idea what it was but looking at the shelves filled with jars brought to mind a very colourful apothecary.

The other big focal point in this medina was the massive square in the middle. During the day it is home to dozens of fresh orange juice men and dried fruite vendors and snake charmers who grab unsuspecting tourists, coerce them into taking pictures, then charge (we heard) $80AU for the pleasure! But at night (when it cools down) the sqaure becomes a huge open air restaurant, performance area and meeting place. It fills up with hundreds of people, buskers, "side-show" games and rows of little stalls selling fried meat, stew, soup...lots. We spread dinner between three stalls, with soup and some kind of deep-fried sugar snack (every culture has a version of deep-fried sugar, it would seem) first, a delicious, melty lamb stew and bread second and some kind of cinnamon flavoured something with strong ginger tea for dessert. Then a coffee and some people watching.

We did a few tourist things here. Visited a museum in an old riad with beautiful tile work and orange trees, visited a palace with similar attributes, only grander, visited the tombs of Saadian princes. The thing I remember most though is when we were sitting in horse and carriage square, having a bit of a rest, and a man clutching a plastic bottle of moonshine and a frame made out of old tyres, swayed over to us, told us he had several shops ad tried to sell us carpets, spices and tyre frames. A successful business man, for one who appeared to be a very drunk homeless man.

And with that memory, we left Marrakech, and Morocco, and after several days of travel flund ourselves in Tavira, southern Portugal.