A day in India
Dec. 7th, 2012 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asreoninfusionThis was inspired partially by the fact I got my camera working briefly (it's died again since, but it lasted through one day, at least), and partially by the LJ community that was in the spotlight. The idea is that you go through the day taking photos of every thing that happens to create a pictorial record of a day in your life. I preferred to do my own thing rather than following the community guidelines, so this was essentially just for a bit of fun and because India is interesting.
(Sometimes, anyway. I did specifically choose a day I knew we would actually be going out and doing things; a lot of the time I spend most of the day in my room just reading or failing at drawing or dicking around on the interwebs, and it's not terribly exciting. >>)
Normal morning, wake up about 7, claw my way out of bed. The clawing is entirely necessary due to mosquito net, which is entirely necessary not due to mosquitoes - I'm very pedantic about keeping my door closed, and my little room is the one place that I'm safe - but due to geckos. They sit on the ceiling and poop, so the net's good for avoiding that. They also occasionally fall off the ceiling and splat onto the floor. (They're perfectly fine, though, so it's just hilarious when that happens.)
I go forth and locate the dog. This is Toffee, an Indian street dog that my mother and the kidlets adopted from a shelter. He's a funny looking thing. (To be fair, this particular photo doesn't help his looks.)
Toffee-butt on the beach for his morning walk.
It's quite a hazy morning. Nice calm sea though.
Upon our return the dog desperately gulps down some water, and I throw together some breakfast.
I have weird breakfasts, I know. I've taken to cutting out a lot of foods out of my diet as much as possible; nothing processed, no white flour, no added sugar, no grains, stuff like that. Which doesn't leave me a lot of choices in terms of traditional breakfasts, so... it's usually an egg, and then whatever random stuff I can find. ^^;; (In this case, broccoli and eggplant fried in coconut oil.)
Heading outside! We're going off across the road to the shop. This picture is just the view I receive when I step forth out my front door, which I am showing you because reasons.
(That low wall in the bottom left corner? That's a crocodile pit in there.)
This is when I turn around and look back at said front door. The door that's open is the side door leading into the main house, and the other door is for my room, yay. I'm staying in the adjoining guest house because there are only two bedrooms in the main house, and with Colin, my mum, and my two sisters already staying in there, there physically wasn't room for another bed anywhere.
We all live on site in the staff area of the Croc Bank. Thus, whenever we leave, we always come out through the 'no entry' gates. And everyone gives us funny looks wondering what on earth we're doing in the restricted area, since we don't exactly look like staff. >>
Crocodile Bank!
These are the little stalls that are set up right by the exit. Literally, right by, as you have to walk through them on your way out. These ones mostly sell pineapple, cucumber, and coconut (but not the variety with the edible flesh; these ones they chop the top off and you just drink the water).
We go further down and across the big main road to another little shop. This is our only really local food source, but there's not a terribly large variety. Their entire stock of vegetables is eggplant, carrot, tomatoes, onions, okra and potatoes (the latter of which I'm not eating either). My kingdom for some green leafy vegetables. ;_; (I've actually asked my mum for a lettuce for Christmas, they're that difficult to find!) We get eggs and milk here as well.
We then take the milk we just bought and feed it to some puppies. These little ones are orphans... their mummy got hit by a car. :( It's an unfortunately common occurrence because we're right next to a very busy road, and the Indians generally consider the dogs a menace. They usually won't bother to slow down at all if they see one in the road.
We keep gathering a bit of an audience whenever we go and feed the puppies. We're white people, and going completely against the usual tradition (the usual tradition is to hit the puppies with sticks if they get close), so everyone comes and stares at us. We've just acquired a few children in this photo, but more recently we've had a huge crowd of about twelve people come out to watch. -_- We're just so fascinating.
(Side note: for anyone who may know of my general description being dyed red hair and a tendency to wear all black, I would just like to clarify that is not me in this photo. That's one of the volunteers. I have short hair now, and also much more gingery because sun-bleaching and henna.)
They also have a lot of cows just wandering about freely. They also wander out into the middle of the road, but people tend to slow down and avoid the cows. Also, yes, it is standing in a big heap of rubbish. That sort of thing is a normal sight along the sides of roads; littering is extremely common and of little concern.
Back home, there are random leftover vegetables that need to be used up.
So I cut them up and chuck them in a pot to boil down and make vegetable stock.
Amy (my littlest sister) decides she wants to play cooking too, and I need to use a blender, so we go up to the canteen. This is where all the volunteers and staff get their meals. We were originally supposed to eat there too, but it's all Indian food and very spicy, and the little girls didn't take too well to that. (I doubt I would have either; I don't like spicy food very much, and the few times I've eaten there the food has physically hurt my mouth and made it go numb. D:) So the mother acquired some cooking things of her own (an oven and the single hob gizmo you can see it in the previous photo) and makes our own meals for our family.
We still visit the canteen regularly, as they have the massive bottles of drinking water (because you don't want to drink the water from the tap; it's not very clean at the best of times, and has a habit of occasionally sputtering and spitting out black goop, which also means it's entirely possible to come out of a shower dirtier than you went in) and because the blender lives there. I use the blender fairly regularly in my new-fangled kitchen experiments.
Amy decides to make a banana smoothie; she apparently knows how because Tina (other sister) did it with her once. This is not the best idea in the world, because somehow it results in the blender exploding milk everywhere. Including over my camera. Was too busy cleaning up to take pictures of the aftermath. But eventually things were tidy (ish), and I managed to blend up my handful of almonds into a fine powder. I use that instead of flour in things like pizza bases and....
...pancakes, yay! See, my other ingredients are happy too. This probably should have been my breakfast instead, and my breakfast lunch, but we only bought the bananas while out feeding the puppies. I don't care, I'll eat pancakes whenever I want, bwahaha.
That said, I haven't quite mastered the art of a) flipping and b) not mildly burning the pancakes yet. >> I'm working on it; quite often, actually, I like my banana pancakes. I also like to sprinkle lemon juice on top, but since we never have any lemon juice...
Out to the back garden! There's a tree out there... I think it's an orange tree of some description, or other citrusy fruit. It doesn't actually produce anything, but will fairly regularly drop half-grown, sour, miniature orange-like things. Perfect replacement for lemon juice.
Also, yes. We don't have a fence between our garden and the neighbours, we have a line of cacti.
Pancake time! :D These pancakes are delicious guys. Banana-almond pancakes for everyone. Om nom nom.
And then washing up time. orz
After the lengthy epic of various cookings, lunches, and cleaning up afterwards, we head out again. (Usually we don't go outside of Croc Bank more than once a day; today was oddly busy.) On the way out; cacti. These cacti always amuse me in how flat they are. They look practically 2D.
First stop outside; the exit shop. (Next to the exit, instead of right in front of it like the stalls.) The kidlets get crisps and Pepsi and sweets from here. I am boycotting all of those things stop tempting me damnit.
Across the road is probably the equivalent of a very small village high street. You've already seen one of the shops where we went earlier; there's also a small shop with some hardware sort of things, a small clothing store, little food stands, etc. There is also a tailor. My mum had taken him a pattern and some fabric so he could make a dress for her, so we stopped by there to pick it up and pay.
Then we went across to another shop which sells a strange variety of miscellaneous things, and who's owner also does woodcarving in the room next door.
I actually brought a set of (extremely cheap; £1 on sale in The Works cheap) woodcarving tools from England, and Amy wanted to learn how to use them, so we'd arranged for lessons with the professional woodcarver.
I got bored and started taking random pictures of the random things lying around.
And then we spotted another tiny little puppy roaming around, all skin and bone. I still personally refer to this one as Gollum, even though it has since been name Lucy. (We have, in fact, now 'borrowed' this one. Mum wanted to take it home until it's a bit older and healthier and can survive on its own... we're supposed to be taking it back, but we'll see if that actually ever happens. >>)
Amy likes the puppy as well.
But despite the distraction from her lesson, she finishes her little crocodile. The woodcarver did all the final detail work, but she carved out the basic shape.
On the way back across the road, we encountered a bus. It had just stopped off at the bus stop, unfortunately, so I didn't get a picture of when people where literally hanging off the sides. (Those metal bars on the window? They hold onto those and just hang.) You see that sort of thing quite often; you get butts hanging out of car windows and things too. First rule of India is there's always room for more people.
We snuck in the delivery entrance into Croc Bank this time. Basically just a long, overgrown driveway that goes the entire length of the park and doubles round into the staff area.
We pass some crocodile enclosures along the way, and it just wouldn't be a day in my life without a crocodile photo somewhere.
Finally, a chance to sit down and mess around wasting time on the computer! I did also attempt to be slightly productive. I'm planning on growing a bunch of my own vegetables when I get back to England in March (it's not like I've got anything better to do), so I've been trawling through catalogs of seeds, making graphs of planting and harvesting times, cross-referencing with companion planting charts to draw up a layout plan, creating a schedule based on lunar planting charts, etc. (I really don't have anything better to do.)
Oh, oh, and this thing. Is pretty much irrelevant, but isn't it cute? It's going to go in my straw bale house. When I get some land and build one.
Eventually, Mr Director arrives home. He'd been out doing a lecture at a university in the city. They give him strange gifts when he goes and does lectures... this time he got a toucan.
But now that he's home, it's time to get ready to go out again! One of the volunteers is leaving today, so a small group of us are going out to the nearby town for a last meal together.
I go and have a shower in my somewhat dodgy ensuite bathroom. There isn't even an option for hot water, so cold showers everyday. You don't really notice it when it's 30oC though. Also, the toilet doesn't flush (you have to toss a bucket of water down it instead) and there's a bidet which I haven't ever used for its intended purpose, but which is very useful for washing sand off my feet and spraying ants down the drain when an entire colony decides they want to migrate into my shower.
Once we're all cleaned up and ready to go, we head out to the road. Normally we catch a bus, but, unfortunately, we're a lot later leaving than we usually are. We've now ventured into what is probably a rush hour equivalent, which means that the buses will all be full to bursting. Like the people hanging out the doors and onto the sides level from earlier. (That one was busy because of hundreds of school kids having just finished for the day.)
So we got a rickshaw, alternatively known as a tuk-tuk. And piled eight of us into one, because there's always room! :D
This is a very blurry picture of somewhere in the town, Mamallapuram. Also known as Mahabalipuram, or Mahabs, because no one seems to quite be able to make up their mind what places are called. Anyway, it's moderately well known as a tourist destination, so there are a lot of crafty shops around, and they usually rip you off, as places do for tourists.
A more in-focus example of some shops.
An approximate rule of thumb in Mahabs is that if it is a proper shop (i.e. one where you go inside and look at things on shelves all pretty-like) it will probably be higher-priced to cater for the tourists, and if the shop itself is more like a garage/working area and it's just a few tables outside with the finished goods and self-drawn signs, it'll probably be more reasonable. This stone-carving shop is one of the latter, and this is where I got my custom amulets done. 300 rupees per amulet, which is about US$6 or £4, I think?
We actually went and picked up some more of said custom amulets. Skyrim ones; amulet of Akatosh, Ancient Nord Amulet, and amulet of Kynareth. However, I don't think I'll be doing any more. They're pretty awesome, but there seems to be a bit of a language barrier, and our stone carver doesn't quite register and/or remember when I explain what colours I actually want them. -_- Also, we appear to have lost a bottom point on the amulet of Akatosh somehow, which is a pain because that one was a request by my brother and is supposed to be his Christmas present.
We head back up the street and encounter another doggy. This one is known as Tang and lives in Mahabs, but mum and the kidlets always go and see her and play with her for a bit.
Eventually we make it to the restaurant! We go here fairly often.
It's rather pretty inside.
Lots of random statues and carvings and paintings everywhere.
We were too busy eating to take any photos of the food. >>
Their toilet is hilarious though. This photo doesn't do it justice. It's this thin little room with the toilet at the end, but the room is so ridiculously long. It's like in the Sims... imagine making a room that's one square wide, but six squares long, and putting a door at one end and the toilet at the other. That is this room.
After the meal, we all pile back into the tuk-tuk for the journey home.
Back at Croc Bank, we actually go in the main entrance. This is the ticket counter by night.
One last trip to the canteen in the dark to refill my water bottle. Then it's off to bed, and I can stop harassing you poor people with photos, hurrah!
(Sometimes, anyway. I did specifically choose a day I knew we would actually be going out and doing things; a lot of the time I spend most of the day in my room just reading or failing at drawing or dicking around on the interwebs, and it's not terribly exciting. >>)
Normal morning, wake up about 7, claw my way out of bed. The clawing is entirely necessary due to mosquito net, which is entirely necessary not due to mosquitoes - I'm very pedantic about keeping my door closed, and my little room is the one place that I'm safe - but due to geckos. They sit on the ceiling and poop, so the net's good for avoiding that. They also occasionally fall off the ceiling and splat onto the floor. (They're perfectly fine, though, so it's just hilarious when that happens.)
I go forth and locate the dog. This is Toffee, an Indian street dog that my mother and the kidlets adopted from a shelter. He's a funny looking thing. (To be fair, this particular photo doesn't help his looks.)
Toffee-butt on the beach for his morning walk.
It's quite a hazy morning. Nice calm sea though.
Upon our return the dog desperately gulps down some water, and I throw together some breakfast.
I have weird breakfasts, I know. I've taken to cutting out a lot of foods out of my diet as much as possible; nothing processed, no white flour, no added sugar, no grains, stuff like that. Which doesn't leave me a lot of choices in terms of traditional breakfasts, so... it's usually an egg, and then whatever random stuff I can find. ^^;; (In this case, broccoli and eggplant fried in coconut oil.)
Heading outside! We're going off across the road to the shop. This picture is just the view I receive when I step forth out my front door, which I am showing you because reasons.
(That low wall in the bottom left corner? That's a crocodile pit in there.)
This is when I turn around and look back at said front door. The door that's open is the side door leading into the main house, and the other door is for my room, yay. I'm staying in the adjoining guest house because there are only two bedrooms in the main house, and with Colin, my mum, and my two sisters already staying in there, there physically wasn't room for another bed anywhere.
We all live on site in the staff area of the Croc Bank. Thus, whenever we leave, we always come out through the 'no entry' gates. And everyone gives us funny looks wondering what on earth we're doing in the restricted area, since we don't exactly look like staff. >>
Crocodile Bank!
These are the little stalls that are set up right by the exit. Literally, right by, as you have to walk through them on your way out. These ones mostly sell pineapple, cucumber, and coconut (but not the variety with the edible flesh; these ones they chop the top off and you just drink the water).
We go further down and across the big main road to another little shop. This is our only really local food source, but there's not a terribly large variety. Their entire stock of vegetables is eggplant, carrot, tomatoes, onions, okra and potatoes (the latter of which I'm not eating either). My kingdom for some green leafy vegetables. ;_; (I've actually asked my mum for a lettuce for Christmas, they're that difficult to find!) We get eggs and milk here as well.
We then take the milk we just bought and feed it to some puppies. These little ones are orphans... their mummy got hit by a car. :( It's an unfortunately common occurrence because we're right next to a very busy road, and the Indians generally consider the dogs a menace. They usually won't bother to slow down at all if they see one in the road.
We keep gathering a bit of an audience whenever we go and feed the puppies. We're white people, and going completely against the usual tradition (the usual tradition is to hit the puppies with sticks if they get close), so everyone comes and stares at us. We've just acquired a few children in this photo, but more recently we've had a huge crowd of about twelve people come out to watch. -_- We're just so fascinating.
(Side note: for anyone who may know of my general description being dyed red hair and a tendency to wear all black, I would just like to clarify that is not me in this photo. That's one of the volunteers. I have short hair now, and also much more gingery because sun-bleaching and henna.)
They also have a lot of cows just wandering about freely. They also wander out into the middle of the road, but people tend to slow down and avoid the cows. Also, yes, it is standing in a big heap of rubbish. That sort of thing is a normal sight along the sides of roads; littering is extremely common and of little concern.
Back home, there are random leftover vegetables that need to be used up.
So I cut them up and chuck them in a pot to boil down and make vegetable stock.
Amy (my littlest sister) decides she wants to play cooking too, and I need to use a blender, so we go up to the canteen. This is where all the volunteers and staff get their meals. We were originally supposed to eat there too, but it's all Indian food and very spicy, and the little girls didn't take too well to that. (I doubt I would have either; I don't like spicy food very much, and the few times I've eaten there the food has physically hurt my mouth and made it go numb. D:) So the mother acquired some cooking things of her own (an oven and the single hob gizmo you can see it in the previous photo) and makes our own meals for our family.
We still visit the canteen regularly, as they have the massive bottles of drinking water (because you don't want to drink the water from the tap; it's not very clean at the best of times, and has a habit of occasionally sputtering and spitting out black goop, which also means it's entirely possible to come out of a shower dirtier than you went in) and because the blender lives there. I use the blender fairly regularly in my new-fangled kitchen experiments.
Amy decides to make a banana smoothie; she apparently knows how because Tina (other sister) did it with her once. This is not the best idea in the world, because somehow it results in the blender exploding milk everywhere. Including over my camera. Was too busy cleaning up to take pictures of the aftermath. But eventually things were tidy (ish), and I managed to blend up my handful of almonds into a fine powder. I use that instead of flour in things like pizza bases and....
...pancakes, yay! See, my other ingredients are happy too. This probably should have been my breakfast instead, and my breakfast lunch, but we only bought the bananas while out feeding the puppies. I don't care, I'll eat pancakes whenever I want, bwahaha.
That said, I haven't quite mastered the art of a) flipping and b) not mildly burning the pancakes yet. >> I'm working on it; quite often, actually, I like my banana pancakes. I also like to sprinkle lemon juice on top, but since we never have any lemon juice...
Out to the back garden! There's a tree out there... I think it's an orange tree of some description, or other citrusy fruit. It doesn't actually produce anything, but will fairly regularly drop half-grown, sour, miniature orange-like things. Perfect replacement for lemon juice.
Also, yes. We don't have a fence between our garden and the neighbours, we have a line of cacti.
Pancake time! :D These pancakes are delicious guys. Banana-almond pancakes for everyone. Om nom nom.
And then washing up time. orz
After the lengthy epic of various cookings, lunches, and cleaning up afterwards, we head out again. (Usually we don't go outside of Croc Bank more than once a day; today was oddly busy.) On the way out; cacti. These cacti always amuse me in how flat they are. They look practically 2D.
First stop outside; the exit shop. (Next to the exit, instead of right in front of it like the stalls.) The kidlets get crisps and Pepsi and sweets from here. I am boycotting all of those things stop tempting me damnit.
Across the road is probably the equivalent of a very small village high street. You've already seen one of the shops where we went earlier; there's also a small shop with some hardware sort of things, a small clothing store, little food stands, etc. There is also a tailor. My mum had taken him a pattern and some fabric so he could make a dress for her, so we stopped by there to pick it up and pay.
Then we went across to another shop which sells a strange variety of miscellaneous things, and who's owner also does woodcarving in the room next door.
I actually brought a set of (extremely cheap; £1 on sale in The Works cheap) woodcarving tools from England, and Amy wanted to learn how to use them, so we'd arranged for lessons with the professional woodcarver.
I got bored and started taking random pictures of the random things lying around.
And then we spotted another tiny little puppy roaming around, all skin and bone. I still personally refer to this one as Gollum, even though it has since been name Lucy. (We have, in fact, now 'borrowed' this one. Mum wanted to take it home until it's a bit older and healthier and can survive on its own... we're supposed to be taking it back, but we'll see if that actually ever happens. >>)
Amy likes the puppy as well.
But despite the distraction from her lesson, she finishes her little crocodile. The woodcarver did all the final detail work, but she carved out the basic shape.
On the way back across the road, we encountered a bus. It had just stopped off at the bus stop, unfortunately, so I didn't get a picture of when people where literally hanging off the sides. (Those metal bars on the window? They hold onto those and just hang.) You see that sort of thing quite often; you get butts hanging out of car windows and things too. First rule of India is there's always room for more people.
We snuck in the delivery entrance into Croc Bank this time. Basically just a long, overgrown driveway that goes the entire length of the park and doubles round into the staff area.
We pass some crocodile enclosures along the way, and it just wouldn't be a day in my life without a crocodile photo somewhere.
Finally, a chance to sit down and mess around wasting time on the computer! I did also attempt to be slightly productive. I'm planning on growing a bunch of my own vegetables when I get back to England in March (it's not like I've got anything better to do), so I've been trawling through catalogs of seeds, making graphs of planting and harvesting times, cross-referencing with companion planting charts to draw up a layout plan, creating a schedule based on lunar planting charts, etc. (I really don't have anything better to do.)
Oh, oh, and this thing. Is pretty much irrelevant, but isn't it cute? It's going to go in my straw bale house. When I get some land and build one.
Eventually, Mr Director arrives home. He'd been out doing a lecture at a university in the city. They give him strange gifts when he goes and does lectures... this time he got a toucan.
But now that he's home, it's time to get ready to go out again! One of the volunteers is leaving today, so a small group of us are going out to the nearby town for a last meal together.
I go and have a shower in my somewhat dodgy ensuite bathroom. There isn't even an option for hot water, so cold showers everyday. You don't really notice it when it's 30oC though. Also, the toilet doesn't flush (you have to toss a bucket of water down it instead) and there's a bidet which I haven't ever used for its intended purpose, but which is very useful for washing sand off my feet and spraying ants down the drain when an entire colony decides they want to migrate into my shower.
Once we're all cleaned up and ready to go, we head out to the road. Normally we catch a bus, but, unfortunately, we're a lot later leaving than we usually are. We've now ventured into what is probably a rush hour equivalent, which means that the buses will all be full to bursting. Like the people hanging out the doors and onto the sides level from earlier. (That one was busy because of hundreds of school kids having just finished for the day.)
So we got a rickshaw, alternatively known as a tuk-tuk. And piled eight of us into one, because there's always room! :D
This is a very blurry picture of somewhere in the town, Mamallapuram. Also known as Mahabalipuram, or Mahabs, because no one seems to quite be able to make up their mind what places are called. Anyway, it's moderately well known as a tourist destination, so there are a lot of crafty shops around, and they usually rip you off, as places do for tourists.
A more in-focus example of some shops.
An approximate rule of thumb in Mahabs is that if it is a proper shop (i.e. one where you go inside and look at things on shelves all pretty-like) it will probably be higher-priced to cater for the tourists, and if the shop itself is more like a garage/working area and it's just a few tables outside with the finished goods and self-drawn signs, it'll probably be more reasonable. This stone-carving shop is one of the latter, and this is where I got my custom amulets done. 300 rupees per amulet, which is about US$6 or £4, I think?
We actually went and picked up some more of said custom amulets. Skyrim ones; amulet of Akatosh, Ancient Nord Amulet, and amulet of Kynareth. However, I don't think I'll be doing any more. They're pretty awesome, but there seems to be a bit of a language barrier, and our stone carver doesn't quite register and/or remember when I explain what colours I actually want them. -_- Also, we appear to have lost a bottom point on the amulet of Akatosh somehow, which is a pain because that one was a request by my brother and is supposed to be his Christmas present.
We head back up the street and encounter another doggy. This one is known as Tang and lives in Mahabs, but mum and the kidlets always go and see her and play with her for a bit.
Eventually we make it to the restaurant! We go here fairly often.
It's rather pretty inside.
Lots of random statues and carvings and paintings everywhere.
We were too busy eating to take any photos of the food. >>
Their toilet is hilarious though. This photo doesn't do it justice. It's this thin little room with the toilet at the end, but the room is so ridiculously long. It's like in the Sims... imagine making a room that's one square wide, but six squares long, and putting a door at one end and the toilet at the other. That is this room.
After the meal, we all pile back into the tuk-tuk for the journey home.
Back at Croc Bank, we actually go in the main entrance. This is the ticket counter by night.
One last trip to the canteen in the dark to refill my water bottle. Then it's off to bed, and I can stop harassing you poor people with photos, hurrah!
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Date: 2012-12-08 12:32 am (UTC)