mungbean in india
 

Author Archives: Chris

The End of India

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 […]

Looking Back…

So somehow this blog seems to have fallen off my radar this year. For most of it I’ve been incredibly busy at work, including studying for my PGCHE as well as leading a re-write of our undergraduate curriculum. It feels like I had barely any time to do anything outside of work until September. I’ve been planning a trip in the first half of December, so I’ve also been looking back at where I’ve already been over the last 4 years. […]

Challenges

So I’ve hardly posted anything here since the start of the year… partly due to being unbelievably busy at work for the last 3-4 months, and when you spend most of your day writing documentation, going home and writing more stuff doesn’t really appeal. Plus I’ve been in India for 3½ years now, and I think I’ve probably reached the point where I’ve already said most of the things I wanted to say about the country, and reported most of my observations about how […]

India on Wheels

Testing slideshow from Flickr.

Ek Saal Dilli Mein

Yet another anniversary… today is one year since I arrived in Delhi. The last 3 weeks have seen cold, grey, damp, foggy weather, and even some rain on Friday, the first for a couple of months. (It was even cold rain—a first for me in India.) But thankfully the weather was great today, with clear blue skies and enough sun to get the temperature up to about 17C. Meanwhile at night it’s still down to around 7-8 degrees, and I’ve […]

A New Broom Sweeps Clean?

So here we are on the verge of 2014, and quite a historic day in Delhi.  A new Chief Minister and his cabinet were sworn in today, after their party did well in the state elections here earlier in December. It’s historic for a number of reasons… firstly the party, the Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man Party), was only officially launched a couple of weeks before the elections.  Even so, they managed to take 28 of the 70 seats on […]

Three Years in India

THREE YEARS IN INDIA! Today, 17 December, is three years to the day since I arrived in Bangalore with 2 suitcases, and no idea of what to expect from living and working in India.  Because I had never been here before. Hard to believe it’s 3 years already–2013 has gone by so quickly.  I’m loving my job at Pearl Academy, which is just the right balance of challenging and rewarding.  And I have a great flat in South Delhi, with […]

Happy Diwali

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 […]

Small Things #9

9.15pm, Delhi.  It’s after dark, a warm and humid evening, and I’m walking to the shops near my apartment. At the side of a residential road, three men—one of them a security guard—are sitting next to each other on plastic chairs, looking at the side of a parked car, laughing and smiling. As I walk past them, I can see that they’ve placed a mobile phone in the recessed door-handle of the car next to them, so that it’s suspended […]