Just three months ago I completed my first full Marathon and I am already looking for something new, possible? Yes this very much me! This time I didn’t have to go far to find a sport, it just hit me. No, not in a metaphorical way, I was walking on Rose Street while a messenger on a road bike nearly took me down. That was the sign, my next endeavour will be CYCLYNG. So soon after I was looking around for information and I also came across a bike race that was taking place in the Grassmarket. Seeing fast cyclist sprinting with the shiny kit was even more of a push. So the day after I got a bike … First impression: much harder than it looks. If you are used to your heavy MTB or commuting bike it will take a wee while to get used to this! I’ll post something later on with my training achievements.
It is not a secret that the most notorious drink in the homeland of Robert Burns is a wee glass of whiskey – a dram. There are several ways to enjoy the amber spirit, but the most exclusive is by asking one to the bartender of the Whiskey Society. A close friend recently joined the exclusive club so we went for to The Vault to be introduce to the real deal. After signing it at the entrance, you enter is this phenomenal place that I can only describe as a large Georgian Living room with two fire places and a lovely warmth to it. Seven or eight tables and sofas are all there is, so even of the room is packed it cannot accommodate more than 25. This is important to retain the cosiness and quietness of this retreat. So what do you do in the Whiskey Society centre? It has a restaurant, serving a limited number of Scottish old style dishes, but most importantly there are bottles of whiskey everywhere! Every dish in the food menu comes with a whiskey recommended, but here we are not talking about brands. In fact all whiskeys here have a number for example I had a drum of 22.12 and one 66.32 – the reason behind it is that the Whiskey Society buys casks directly before bottling takes place. In this way the variety of drams you can have is almost infinite, but on the other hand some supply are limited (casks from distilleries that are now close). To this place I can only give 5-Stars with the capital “S” – more info here.
The wind was blowing from the east coast of Loch Lomond but we decided to remain on the deck of the tiny boat. You could recognise the circular shape of the sun but the thick layer of clouds was stopping its warm rays from getting through. The wee one hour tour was OK, maybe just only saved by the funny captain that was also the guide commenting the sights. After the cruise and a nice meal in the local pub we went for a paddle, yes we decided to get a closer look at the lake by getting on a canoe. What a brilliant idea, by that time the sun was shining and the wind was just a breeze. We spent an hour in the deep water of the loch paddling our way around. One truly nice spot is the Cameron House. This used to be the residence of a very rich local noble, few years back it was transformed into a luxurius 5 star hotel. For some picture just follow the link …
I was tempted to begin this post with the usual “I has been a long time…” or “Here I am back…” cr*p. But then why? It wouldn’t really add nothing to what you already know, I didn’t post a single line of text for the past three months.
The reasons behind it could be multiple; tired (after posting so much stuff about the Honeymoon), tired (because I took on the challenge of running the Edinburgh Marathon) or maybe with less time in my hand (the good season always makes my social life blossom). But my favorite excuse is that I had a Writer Block. Anyway fact is that I have been doing some pretty cool things since May; a bit of car racing in a real circuit, run a marathon and went on holiday in an exotic destination. These are just few of the things I’ve been up. Even if I didn’t write any post I took pictures and jotted down notes, so now that the summer is coming to an end I’ve got time to pick up on my blog writing.
It’s funny but sometimes I compare my blog entry with others’ blogs and I find to write a bit too much …. isn’t it ? Well from now on I’ll try to keep it to my posts to the point without faffing about too much … promise.
After two and a half weeks travelling we were pretty tired. During the tour we cover a LOT of miles and visited MANY projects and farmers. Our stay in Delhi was more about taking our time doing things, but still to arrange/book things in this country is not that easy! Maybe we’re spoiled over here with telephone and online booking, but sometimes having to finding things are not open/not working when you get there is annoying.
India is one of those places that when you are there you are a bit stressed out by the noise, the smell and the overwhelmingly crowd everywhere. But when you are back home you’re planning when to go back – in other words all the niggles disappears from you memory and you only remember the many positives. This is also reflected in the number of Westerns going back more than once and even living over there. We do not make exception to this and we’re already thinking about our next visit, maybe this time travelling the south and the east of the country.
India is a special country, visit it if you haven’t done it yet – you won’t be disappointed.
Fairtrade is the most powerful tool that consumers around the world have to change for the better trade practices. By buying Fairtrade product you really make a difference in the life of the producers – we witnessed it first hand. BUY FAIRTRADE
Organic is again a choice that you can make in order to achieve two goals. The first is to consume or wear products that haven’t been chemically fertilised hence healthier. Additionally the Organic standard takes care of our eco-system – by phasing out the use of aggressive pesticide and mass scale production it promotes the natural and sustainable development of the world’s flora and fauna. GO ORGANIC
PS: getting used to the normal routine was a nightmare. It took us about a week to recover from jet lag (very bad) and temperature difference (about 20.C !).
PPS: as every spring I am very upbeat at the moment with a lot of activities planned … stay tuned!
We are about to reach the final destination of our two-week journey, the capital of India Delhi. This final trip by coach was an experience in its own; to cover 150km (100miles) it took us 5 hours! No surprise that people travel by train!
Arriving in Delhi was incredible, the level of traffic even with very wide streets extremely high – crossing the road here is impossible, even local have to wait for the “green man”. Is good to see a number of green spaces and monuments everywhere. This to say that without the slightliest doubt this is the place to go if you can only visit one Indian city.
After two long weeks spent as part of a group of tourists, it was time to leave the nest. Even if we have some reserve about our guide ability to carry out his job, as a whole we enjoyed the experience very much. The group worked as a team together, always participanting as actively as possible to the visits.
So after the “gala” dinner in a western style live music restaurant, we said Bye to our travel mates. It was time for us to bridge our massive bags into our new accommodation. The latter is something that I came across in IndiaMike, the internet forum that I viewed to gather information about India. This was a very nice idea, the Guest House is brand new and located in a nice and quite residential area of the city. The K One One has all the amenities and is just 10min away (by autorichshaw) from the city centre. The owner Parul is very kind and her boys (the guys working in the house) are incredibly efficient.
Visiting the city is a pretty straighforward business – guide book, sun cream and some water and you can see all the marvelous sights of this historical city.
Below a selection of some shots – for the complete gallery click HERE [under Honeymoon > Golden Triangle]
For an alternative experience we warmly recommend a tour with Reality tours and travel, this organisation covers a variety of routes to show you the “real” Delhi. We did the tour covering the Dharavi Slum that was focused on Street Children. The 2.5h walk was extremely interesting with the guide deeply involved in the issue (he used to be a street child). It is refreshing to see how people help each other in a “natural” way, we’ve seen the darkest corners of the Slum but also the various ways in which street children are helped. The latter includes everything from a daily showering session, to watching TV and painting. Everything is very well prepared so you don’t feel that being there is too intrusive and also the money paid toward the tour and any donations are used for the same services that you see. Don’t miss out on this if you’re in town!
Now let’s talks about Agra, this is a place like no other. It is unique in a strange way, normally big monuments are built into an already established centre (city/town). Here things worked the other way around, in fact less than 50 years from its foundation the works started to build what it will later be one of the seven wonders of the world – The Taj Mahal.
This incredible building monopolised the main industry of the city from early day – tourism. This results in a very vast city with a number of well kept (but busy) roads arranged in a grid. All sort of services for tourists are available and hotels and B&B are appearing everywhere. My impression of this place is that it lacks character – The Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort are absolutely amazing, but anything else is a bit of a let down.
Fortunately in the outskirts of the city we had our last Fairtrade visit – TARA stone carving. This was very interesting and a bit different from the previous textile visits. Carving stones is a fascinating art, is amazing how is possible to achieve with a little patience.
Some of you are maybe wondering why it took me one month to conclude the Honeymoon report. Well the reason is simple, I wrote everything up until the last post directly in India. But from now on I am writing from home since we’ve been back from some weeks now. This is due to a mix of things; the last part of the trip was much more pure tourism, in other words a lot of sightseeing with a very tight schedule. Additionally by joining the “Golden Triangle”, we are officially joined the tourist track and this is a little less diverse from the early part of our journey. This is not to say that Jaipur, Agra and Delhi are ugly – quite the opposite – but writing about those places is less of a groundbreaking experience.
Below few shots of Jaipur, an interesting city that retains a lot of its magic. Tourism allowed it to develop but much of it is still authentic.
Day ten of our trip was a stupid day – for some reason back in the UK it was not possible to get the tickets for the 45min flight to Jaipur. Instead we had to flight down to Mumbai and up again to Jaipur. In doing so we’ve lost the afternoon and evening. Fortunately the morning was free and we went around by ourselves to do some little shopping.
Our accommodation for the three night in Jaipur is going to be Loharu House. This is the residence of a local political person that decided to turn this huge colonial building into a Guest House. This place is jaw dropping, fantastic garden and very well kept building. The wife of the politician is in charge here – we are under election! She is very courteous and her English is brilliant.- the perfect host.
Jaipur sees the group arriving into the first real tourist destination. This city in fact is part of the golden triangle that also includes Agra (Taj Mahal) and Delhi. This place has a different feel to it altogether, streets are much cleaner and white faces are not as uncommon here as in the villages we’ve been. On the other hand these factors attract a number of less pleasant characters; not only limited to beggars but also people trying to selling things to you near the major sights. This wouldn’t be a problem if we were talking about one or two sellers but when you are approached but 10-12 at the time is a bit annoying.
Today is another important day we’re going to pay a long visit to highly regarded project – St Mary’s Mahila Shikshan Kendra. We heard a lot about it and everyone in the group is willing to meet the nun and talk to the women. St Mary’s is a christian congregation of francescan nuns that instead that spending the whole day praying is doing something for the community. This project is based in one of the poor neighbourhood of the Ahmedabad (Gontipur) and they are employing local women to do embroydery work on items that are then sold through Traidcraft and other FT organisations.
St Mary’s home is a three storeis building that includes between other things a schools and a hospital. This place is very welcoming; as soon as you step in your feel home. We walked up to the top floor to meet the founder – sister Lucia. This lovely spaniard was sent here 50 years ago and through sweat and tears she was able to create this productive iniciative. She is now helped and supported by sister Sylvia and a local designer.
The way in which St.Mary’s works is fairly simple, they contact various FairTrade wholesalers and agree on items and quantities. Once the orders are finalised they prepare the so call sets, these include the fabric, printed, and the tread to complete the embroidery according to specification. Women are free to carry out the work wherever they like – this is done to allow them to run their household. They are welcome to work in the workshop too, the same place where if they are asked to produce a new embroidery they can go to have help and support.
While there, we met few of the ladies working and we had a chat with the sisters. What an interesting work they’re doing! This has totally changed my attitude toward nuns. What I came to realise is that the ones working on the field are nothing like classic clericals, just praying and with little or no ability to help with the practical things in life.
Sister Lucia and Sylvia are truly ispiring in what they are doing and the local community believe in what they are doing. At the same time they are running this project properly making real planning and costing. And at the end of the year after “fairly” paying all the women working, if there’s any profit left they prepare a gift pack for each woman.
We concluded this visit by going into some workers’ houses. They all look very happy to have us there even if they didn’t seem to have any question for us. The things that they wanted to say was like “please order more” – so I can only amplify their message through this blog by publishing links to various e-shops that are stocking their products.
Back at the hotel we all feel very happy to have visited the project and met the lovely people that are working there. For our surprise we had dinner with the sisters at a local restaurant. They were both wearing a Saree and is so refreshing seeing nuns doing common things. I hope that we’ll keep in contact with both sisters via email – Lucia didn’t lose any of her spanish and Sylvia has a very good english.
