So I recently reached the End of India. I have just spent the first two weeks of December travelling around Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the South, mostly by train, and taking in Ooty, Madurai and Kochi, with a stop in the middle at Kanyakumari (pictured), the Southern-most point in India. The end of the line. And then five days ago I left India. It was four years ago today that I arrived in Bangalore at the start of that adventure, eventually […]
Somehow time has been flying by, and I’ve been neglecting this blog… Not sure whether it’s because I’ve been extremely busy at work, or because I don’t have quite so much to say about India these days. Possibly both. Anyway, Monsoon is over and now it’s Autumn. Sort of. A couple of weeks back, Monday morning was suddenly cooler and slightly hazy. The day-time maximum is now less than 30 degrees every day, and overnight it’s comfortably below 20 and […]
Time really does seem to be flying by. It’s two years ago today since I set up this blog, just after buying my “one way ticket to India”. Looking back now it’s hard to recall the trepidation of making such a commitment to jumping into the deep end, applying for the visa without understanding how it all worked, wondering about how I would find somewhere to live, and what it would be like to live and work in a […]
I had my first brush with Tropical Diseases recently. As I’ve moaned about regularly since arriving in Bangalore 17 months ago, I’ve been mildly sick quite often here… I mainly put this down to a combination of unfamiliar cold-like viruses and the terrible air pollution here, along with large amounts of dust during the dry parts of the year. (Whereas local people often seem to blame any sickness on “the change in the weather”.) But up to now, I’d […]
1st January, 8.30am. Woken by the sun streaming in through the bedroom sky-light, and the silence being shattered by some very loud shouting in the street. Hangover-free and glad to see that the sky is blue and the sunshine is back, after 3 days of cold, grey, wet and windy weather caused by the tail end of Cyclone Thane, which had been causing destruction and even some deaths over on the East coast. Shorts and trainers on, I put the recycling […]
It’s exactly a year since I arrived in India. Almost impossible to believe that 12 months can fly by so quickly.
So, after being in my current apartment for nearly 11 months, I’m going to have to move again — or “shift” in the local vernacular — partly because the landlord wanted to put the rent up, and partly because I’ve realised I need to move somewhere cheaper anyway. The place I’m in now has been great, but it’s huge and I only use half of it. It’s also way more expensive than what I’d been budgeting for, but I was […]
Moong Daal is one year old today. On 2nd November last year I bought my one-way plane ticket and decided to start this blog to document the adventure I was about to embark upon. Today also marks my first visit — at long last — to the cinema here. A friend from the UK is staying with me just now, so we went along to the big multiplex next to college to see Ra.One, Shahrukh Khan‘s new block-buster Bollywood/SciFi crossover […]
It’s 17th September, which means it’s exactly 9 months since I came out to India. At the college where I teach, we’re just reaching the end of Term 3, and will start Term 4 in a couple of weeks. It’s also 21 years to the day since I started my first teaching job, as a lecturer at what was then Leicester Polytechnic, later De Montfort University. Like many people, I got into teaching by accident. But here I am 21 […]
Happy Solstice! Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere — as good a time as any to reflect on the last half year. Last Friday it was 6 months since I came out to India. Obviously, daily life is now quite different in many ways. I now live in a big flat with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 3 balconies. (But still practically zero furniture!) More to the point, I have space for a garden outside which is […]
