Curry in a cold climate

So it is almost time for me to make the big trip back to India and I haven’t even finished telling you all about what happened before I left. Its official I am a bad blogger! Totally out of date! Anyway to try and rectify the situation here is a brief run-down of how I spent my last week in India before returning to our English summer. Where I left off Lucy and I were having an excellent and very relaxed time doing very little apart from enjoying the pace of life in rural India and each other’s company.

To be honest that is what we did spend a lot of the time doing looking back on it. On a couple of occasions we had to break from the self-imposed chill out to do something entertaining or practical but we tried to keep this at a minimum.

 In order for me to actually leave the country however there was at least one very practical thing which we could not get away without doing and that was travelling up to Ooty to apply for and collect my visa exit permit! Ooty as I have told you all before is our nearest hill station up in the blue mountains. Full of slightly decaying imperial Englishness, coach parties of Indian tourists and more than a few dead rats. When I first went to Ooty I thought it was awful, massively over hyped by the guide books and generally more than a bit unpleasant. As a town it is a bit of a crumbling mass of concrete buildings with very little in the way of architectural merit. Doubtless the surrounding scenery and countryside is stunning but so is a lot of the region and I never felt that Ooty itself was much of a draw. My opinion I must say has changed. In between the nondescript concrete buildings I now notice more of the eccentric old and higgledy piggledy  brick building with their warped and wobbly tiled roofs. I like the slightly hyped up over excitement of the Indian holiday makers, as long as it’s not high season obviously that is just too extreme. I like the obvious pride that Ooty takes in its little gems of tourist attractions, the bee museum, the massive botanical gardens, the charming little mountain railway on which you can tootle along to Cooinoor, the next hillstation on the line.

I am sure that some of my affection for Ooty is related to the fact that compared to my little back-of –beyond adopted Indian home town you can get a lot more creature comforts and exotic food, for example good quality chocolate and western style cheese. Not something one bothers about when you have only been in India a few weeks but I must admit after five months I was rather excited to sit in Café Coffee Day, a large Indian chain of coffee shops and drink Choccacino while polishing off some very sweet snacks (as me and Lucy did on a number of occasions).

The main thing to mention about Ooty apart from the chocolate is that it is cold. Really blimmin cold. As the bus climbs up the mountains towards its destination you find yourself slowly layering on more and more woollens. This creates a very amusing branch of Indian fashion which I like to refer to as the Ooty look. Many layers of chunky knit wool, waterproofs in rainy season, the obligatory umbrella topped off with some variety of slightly mismatched head wear, preferably slightly comedy earmuffs or a sort of woollen bonnet specific to the region! I love it.

On our trips to Ooty we did I feel make the most of it, we went to the bee museum (highly recommended), the botanical gardens (where we were photographed by a large number of over excited Indian holidaymakers) and even took a trip on the mountain railway. We only went as far as Cooinoor but it was lovely. We stayed in the YWCA which although run by slightly intimidating people (long story) is certainly clean and comfy and joy of joy had hot water! After months of cold water washing I ran myself a bucket of water to wash in that was so hot I ended up clean but looking very similar to cooked lobster.

All in all our adventures to Ooty were rather lovely in a cold and damp way, a little bit of proper old fashioned tourist fun. Slightly reminiscent of the faded glamour of the average little forgotten English sea side town but with crazy Indian over the top ness for added effect.

This little reminiscence is all I have time for now which is a shame because I wanted to tell you about the elephant ride. Ah well perhaps another time but until then much love and ever yours sincerely,

A x

So to make up for the lack of telling you all about my wonderful elephant ride, here are some pictures!

Getting "on board"

Prime position

Enjoying the view from the Ooty toy train.

 

Disneyland India

Hello all you lovely people. Well it feels like its been a long holiday for me since mid June when my lovely friend of many years came to visit me in the small town in south India which has become my home. This post is a little reminiscence for me about the couple of weeks that we spent out and about in the Nilgiri hills.

I had decided to head down to the bustling metropolis of Mysore to meet her. Partly for the sake of a pleasant feeling of symmetry, the first time I came to India in 2007 the very same friend had come out to visit me and we had met on the lawns of a the beautiful hotel we were staying in. Almost four years on we had booked a room in the same hotel, a restored colonial era palace for the princesses of Mysore currently run as a eco friendly luxury hang out spot. In a perfect re-enactment of our prior visit we met once again in the garden restaurant, both terribly happy to see each other in such exotic surroundings.

The 24 hours we spent in Mysore itself was a lovely haze of meandering around what seemed like our personal palace and gardens catching up on each others news. One particular high point was our Sunday evening trip to the city palace illuminations. Built in 1912 Mysore palace is a serious caricature of fairytale wonderment, when lit up in the evenings with its 96,000 glowing bulbs it looks unbelievably disneyfied.

I have added a photo taken while we were there to illustrate my point because I am sure you would otherwise think it an exaggeration.

The next day we tootled around the rather charming city itself, enjoying the  feeling of being tourists. I managed to spend more than a week or two of my average indian living costs on some truly lovely Mysore silk but hey, its an investment right? Then we finally clambered aboard the bus to make our way back to our little rural out posting. Eyes pealed along they way as we bumped our way through the wild life park, eager for the inevitable glimpses of deer, monkeys and elephants.

By happy coincidence there was a dinner party that night at the lovely home of our senior doctors,  a great opportunity for my school friend to meet all of the many and varied friends I have been lucky enough to accumulate in my time in India. From the long standing permanent members of society here to the newest batch of charming British medical elective students! Also a wonderful opportunity for us to enjoy the fabulous Indian home cooking to which I have grown so accustomed.

As we strolled home across the fields later on, navigating by thin beams of torch light through the treacly darkness that you only really get in the countryside, it occurred to me that it was really rather wonderful to be able to spend time with my oldest and my newest friends at once. I had been a little worried that it may not seem like enough of a holiday for my English visitor, as I was not planning to take much time out from my hospital duties. But on airing my concerns I was glad to realise that actually for her the quiet and beautiful green mountains outside her windows and the knowledge that work was very far away in england was likely to be holiday enough!

So it began, our rambling and relaxing and not terribly busy holiday. A lot of the time it just involved the very simple enjoyment of each others company and a cup of very sweet indian tea. However in my next post I will tell you a few of the more exciting things we got up to, including our visits to the very chilly hill station Ooty and our rather wonderful elephant ride.

Until then all my love,

A x

June Monsoon

Hi all you lovely people, so here is a catch up on what happened to during last month in India, that is to be precise the month of June.

June was when we suddenly all became very soggy in my particular green valley in the Nilgiri hills. It is something that I have never experienced before, the coming of a Monsoon. Everyone spoke about it for the weeks leading up, speculation on which day it would hit. Now for those of you like me who have lived the majority of their lives in Britain may in fact like me feel sceptical about the sudden coming of rains. In my corner of south west England we get at least our fair share of rain but seasons tend to gradually melt into one another. The spring slowly starts to warm your cockles, the summer arrives with its fair and sunny days but still the smattering of rain showers, you notice the nights drawing in and the air getting crisp and its autumn, the first frost of winter can snap and crackle but you will still get the occasional warmer ray of sun. Well in India it is a little different.

One day the skies are startlingly blue and you are sweating in the heat then before you even have a chance to think to yourself "gosh that cloud over there looks a bit ominous" woosh, it is quite literally like a tap being turned on above. I have never in all my time in the UK, even when I lived in Plymouth which is a pretty damp sort of city, found occasion to purchase an umbrella. But within the first day or two of the monsoon I hotfooted it up to town and purchased a rather fetching purple one.

Suddenly the forests are even greener than before, more green than I could have imagined. When the sun shines out from behind the cloud and catches the damp leaves rippling in the stormy winds it takes your breath away. The small stream in the valley which runs along past the hospital has swelled to a river and at night if the rain stops long enough I can lean out of my window and hear it roaring past.

During June as well as enjoying the sudden contrast in weather I also noticed a small change in myself. My Tamil skills are developing, still at a rather slow pace but I feel also that perhaps my clinical confidence has grown. Early in June I was caring for a woman in labour, it was her first child and she was coping well despite a very slow labour and what on palpation seemed to be a rather good size baby. The labour progressed all be it slowly and with an episiotomy and little bit of cheerleading when the time came she delivered a beautiful baby boy at the healthy birth weight of 3kg.

The problem arose after the placenta was delivered. In some ways it was similar to the monsoon, I knew that a few aspects of her case made her high risk for bleeding after delivery, the long labour, a well grown baby and a big placenta but I was still surprised when she started to lose blood. Her uterus didn't contract well and after a small pause, like the calm before the storm, she started to bleed. And I surprised myself to be honest, that with the assistance of the incredibly competent nurses I dealt with it. My first post partum haemorrhage that I have managed without another doctor in the hospital. After a flurry of activity, some medications, some common sense measures the tap was turned off and we controlled the bleeding. Once she was stable I phoned the senior obstetric doctor, this was late in the evening by this point. She was really supportive and it was great to hear that we had done the right stuff, she had a few other pieces of advice but overall we had done a good job.

The final note on the story is that when the time came for the lady and her very adorable baby to be discharged she came to see me at the hospital mess where I was having my 11 o'clock incredibly sweet cup of tea (a daily routine). She gave me this amazing smile and a little palms together greeting as is the tradition and in one way or another through our scrambled languages she told me that she was leaving, but that she was grateful for me being there for her and I hope I managed to convey how glad I was that she was well and that I had been able to help.

Anyway needless to say I was grinning from ear to ear all day. This is the end of my blog for now, leaving on a high. I will write again soon to let you know all the news about my wonderful visit from one of my oldest friends. Oh and I promise it will come with pictures!

Lots of love,

A x