It’s another holiday!  Today is Gandhi Jayanti, celebrating the mahatma’s birthday.

After a very long wait between Good Friday (6th April) and Independence Day (15th August) we’re now into the best season with 3 holidays in October and 2 in November this year.   It’s pretty disruptive to the teaching–our 4th term of the year starts in college this week–but very welcome nonetheless.

One of the big surprises about moving out to India is that I’ve become a morning person.  (Or it could be my middle-aged hormones kicking in.)  This morning I was suddenly wide-awake just before dawn, around 6 O’Clock, so I got up,  made a cup of coffee and enjoyed the spectacular sunrise.  And especially the peacefulness–being a holiday there wasn’t a single car on the roads, and not a honk to be heard.

I have a great East-facing flat here, usually filled with sunshine right after sun-up, and somehow I’ve got used to harnessing that energy.  Having a day off meant being able to do nothing, which today was pottering about in the small garden on my balcony.

I’m a big fan of gardening but before moving to India I ended up with 13 years of not having any outdoor living space at all. Mind you, with the Scottish weather that’s not such a big deal.  But moving out here and being able to enjoy Bangalore’s climate made me all the more enthusiastic to get my green fingers up and running again.

In my previous Bangalore flat I had a lot more space and grew quite a few vegetables, but here I’ve been mostly cultivating tomatoes and a few herbs.  Even then, the tomatoes haven’t been a huge success due to the troop of Macaques that hangs around, and comes raiding the apartments on a regular basis.  Once they’d discovered the tomatoes the same routine would play out again and again…  I would hear a thud as something obviously heavy lands on the garden table; I would look out the window to see a big fat grey-haired monkey chewing on a green tomato; I would open the doors to shoo it away, and it would just look at me as if I were insane; and then I would throw some water at it and it would leave, looking quite surly but not at all afraid.

A few weeks back the monkeys started to become quite a nuisance generally, and an e-mail debate raged on our residents’ association mailing list, with the subject “Monkey Menace”.  The “against” camp were suggesting that monkey-catchers should be called in to get rid of them (they’re in the phone book, as are snake-catchers).  Someone even recommended hiring Langurs–which are actually another type of monkey!  They are sometimes trained to scare away other, more mischievous primates, as with the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.  And the “for” camp were pointing out that they were god’s creatures and had every right to be here.

The residents’ main concern is that the monkeys will come into the apartments through any open doors or windows, usually to steal food.  And it appears that monkeys really do love bananas in real life, not just in cartoons.  Slightly more worrying if you have young children though.  A couple of weeks ago I heard shouting coming from next door and looked out the window to see a large male walking along my railings carrying a tupperware box.  (Tupperware is something else that features heavily on our mailing list.)   He sat down, oblivious to the shouting and stick-waving coming from next door, popped the top rather expertly from the tupperware box and started eating the nuts or biscuits or whatever was inside.

Watching the local wildlife is one of the great joys of sitting out here.  (As I’m writing this it’s now dusk, about 28 degrees, and I’m sitting outside with a glass of chilled rosé and hoping the Odomos and many incense sticks will keep the mosquitoes off–one side of the wildlife I’d rather do without, especially after that near-miss with Dengue a few months ago.)

In the past week the air during the day has been filled with hundreds of dragonflies, flitting back and forth right next to the balcony.  I can’t imagine where they come from… back home I would associate them with ponds, and even then you would only usually see one or two together.  I also get some amazing butterflies coming to visit, although they’re very difficult to photograph because they come and go so quickly, and never stay still for long.

Recently there’s been a little Palm Squirrel visiting, and he’s awe-inspiring to watch because he runs and leaps in such a death-defying way… considering he’s only 6 inches tall and I’m on the 7th floor, the view down from the handrail doesn’t seem to phase him at all.

And there are lots of birds too, particularly Kites, the large birds of prey that are often mistaken for Eagles, but which are actually scavengers rather than hunters.  A pair of Black Kites has just started building a precarious-looking nest in one of the generator-chimneys that’s next to where I live.  I’ve seen them foraging for twigs, some of them more like small branches, and swooping around carrying them in their talons.  I’m looking at the nest right now.  I don’t have a great zoom on my camera, but hopefully should be able to see any chicks when they arrive.

It’s been great having this outdoor space, and I will really miss it when I inevitably leave.  Still, I thoroughly enjoyed building up the garden from nothing in the previous flat, then shifting it all here and continuing to build my own little piece of jungle, even though it’s only temporary.

As I’ve said before, working abroad is a bit like life… you arrive with nothing and you leave with nothing.  So you just make the most of what you have while you’re here.

Every face has the same expression, something like a contented grin. Sticking close together, they happily bob along the road, seemingly knowing exactly where they’re going—even though there’s nobody with them.

One of the things you first notice when arriving in a supposedly hi-tech, cosmopolitan, “top-tier metro” city like Bangalore is just how quasi-rural bits of it are, particularly animals roaming the streets full of the notorious traffic.  

(This bull, above, was sitting happily on the pavement next to a very busy intersection, when I was on my way to the supermarket a few days ago. There wasn’t much pavement left after he’d sat down, so we were all stepping carefully around him.)

As an animal-lover I’m always glad to see our 4-legged friends wandering about the place, although I do wonder sometimes what they think about all the noise and the terrible air pollution.  But Indians are well known for caring for animals — and to Hindus many of them are actually deities, with Hanuman the monkey-god and Lord Ganesha with the elephant’s head being particular favourites in this part of India.

Generally speaking, I think these are the animals I usually see wandering in the streets of Bangalore, in order of frequency.

photo: Fuckecha Nabil @ flickr

Dog

By far the most numerous street animals in Bangalore are the stray dogs. A recent article in the Times of India claimed there’s now 1 stray dog for every 37 residents here, or a pack of 5-6 on every street. When I walk home from work, the same dogs are always curled up in more-or-less the same spot, usually in some kind of bed-cum-nest, like a pile of sand or a mound of swept-up-leaves. Although most of them are the same generic-looking sandy-brown street pooch, they’re all very individual as many of them have scars from living and presumably fighting out on the street.

By and large they all seem subdued and friendly enough (if not rather wary of people), but rabies is endemic here, and so I always tend to keep an eye on any pooch nearby just to see how it’s behaving.  If the dog has a V-shaped notch cut out of its ear, this is supposed to mean it’s been vaccinated, and if it’s a bitch, sterilised as well.  Since Indians are such animal-lovers (trees as well), it seems there’s no question of culling the strays — or certainly not here.  One problem seems to be that the contractors who are supposed to be doing the sterilising don’t always actually do it, and since they can have a litter every 6 months, the population can continue to grow rapidly.

Cow

There are lots of cows here.  Apparently most of them belong to someone or other, but they do tend to wander about in the traffic.  Since they’re sacred to Hindus, they usually get quite a bit of leeway amongst the vehicles, although when they’re being a nuisance — such as helping themselves to the fruit and veg at a roadside grocer’s shop — they’re likely to get hit with a stick, or maybe stones thrown at them so they move on.

When I arrived I expected the “exotic” breeds like the ones with the big hump on the back (Brahman — the grey ones are really cool), plus the ubiquitous white ones you always see on documentaries about India, with the straight horns.   But I was also surprised to find Friesians here, and there are also some beautiful brown Jerseys knocking around near where I live.

Bullocks pulling carts are common here as well, usually for transporting heavy loads around the city.  Slightly more intriguing are the ones that get paraded from door to door brightly-decorated in a “costume”, led by a man playing a noisy reed-instrument and asking for money.

Buffalo

I hadn’t been expecting it when I arrived here, but there are lots of buffalo too — there seem to be a couple of small herds close to where I live (see picture above). Buffalo calves are really cute!  Maybe it’s something about their big floppy ears, but they also somehow seem to be grinning contentendly.  Walking home one night this week I saw a group of 6 older calves crossing the extremely busy road, which made me a bit nervous as always.

But they didn’t seem bothered by it… a couple of them stopped right in the middle of the road to have a poo, oblivious to the drivers honking their horns, and then carried on to the other side and onto the pavement right in front of me.  I detoured slightly — I’m not too worried by cattle, but I know enough about them not to get too close to the back end — and then had just got past them when I heard a man’s voice shouting “Hoy!  Hoy!”  When I looked round I realised they were his, and they had just run off down the road when he wasn’t looking.

Goat

Another surprise was the first time I saw goats here… not that they’re unusual animals, but they tend to be very localised, and from what I can tell mostly in Muslim areas.  Goat is eaten here, although I think it’s usually referred to as “Mutton”.

Goats are notorious for eating absolutely anything of course, which is presumably a bonus when you’re trying to raise animals that can live on whatever they find in the street.  Another contender for “The Best Photo I Never Took” has to be the goat munching away on a Bollywood film-poster that was fly-posted quite low down on a wall.

As with the buffalos, the young goats are really cute, and I’ve seem some really tiny ones that couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old, happily wandering around eating all kinds of rubbish.

Rat

There are lots of these, and they are big. The biggest rat I’ve ever seen in my life was in Calcutta, which at first I thought was a cat!   They usually seem to mind their own business though, and I’ve only really seen them running in and out of storm drains, and occasionally (and slightly more worrying) running around the wheels of the road-side hand-carts selling chaat.

Chicken

I don’t see many of these (I guess they’re slightly harder to spot than a buffalo anyway)… and again they’re usually in Muslim areas so I guess they’re for eating.   Somehow always funny to see them clucking and scratching around by the side of the road though.  They’re really skinny compared to breeds I was used to back home, and look like they’d be ready for a fight at a moment’s notice — maybe it’s because their claws looks so much bigger on a skinny body.

Horse/Pony

From time to time I see a horse pulling a wagon, or a smaller pony drawing a traditional Tanga with huge cartwheels.  In Mysore these are a bit of an attraction and tourists ride around in them, but all the ones I’ve seen in Bangalore are transporting stuff like building materials around the city.
 

Pig

This was another surprise… with the predominant religions being Hinduism and Islam, I never expected to see pigs here. They’re pretty rare, but there’s one rubbish tip close to where I live, and apart from the dogs, and a sizeable colony of loud, screeching fruitbats who only arrive after dusk, there’s also a herd of pigs.

They almost look like wild boar actually, with lots of bristly black hair.  Once again, very cute babies! The sows near me seem to have a litter every 3-4 months or so, and my auto drives past them on my way to work every day, so I almost always get to see how they’re progressing.

Donkey

I saw a donkey wandering through the rush-hour traffic on my way home from work today, which is pretty unusual. It’s only the second donkey I’ve seen in 18 months. The first one was braying loudly and running at full pelt down a busy 1-way street — thankfully, in the right direction, which wasn’t necessarily true of the 2-wheelers.

Like I said, there’s something not quite right about this mix of rural life with being in the fast-growing metropolis of Bangalore, but then again that’s one of the things I love about India — the contrasts and contradictions that you see every single day.  And if I see a new litter of piglets trotting about on my way to work, or a bunch of grinning buffalo calves on my way home, it always brings a smile to my face.

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 not really had anything serious.   Usually a day at home in bed and I’m ready to go back to work the next day.

But I started feeling properly sick about 10 days ago… woke up on a Monday morning with a raging fever and shivering like a maniac, like you might have with a bad flu, but also with terrible stabbing pains in my joints, which was a new experience for me.   Something jogged a memory of a friend telling me about the Dengue Fever she’d had in Brazil, and I realised I needed to go to find a doctor to check it out.

I have to admit that I wasn’t keen… so many services here are really hit-and-miss and unreliable, that the thought of going to the doctors for the first time (when, erm, properly ill) didn’t really fill me with confidence.   But in the end I went to somewhere nearby that was recommended by a work colleague, and  I have to say I was extremely impressed.  Very clean and professional, pretty fast service, and the physician who saw me was a genuinely lovely and helpful man.

Anyway, after 2 sets of sample tests (both with results back on the same day), and a couple of consultations, the diagnosis seemed to be that it wasn’t Malaria or Dengue, but some milder “Dengue-like” viral fever, which the doc said he’d had himself recently.

I’m now pretty much recovered I think… I’ve been back at work for a week anyway.  But the recent rains and the inevitable increase in mosquitoes have made me slightly more conscientious about using insect repellent and covering up.  Even in my own apartment!

So, in loving memory of one of my all-time heroes, the late and very-much missed John Peel, I’m going to write up my own “Festive 50” — in my case a list of 50 notable things about India — over the next few days.  Unlike Peel’s 50, these aren’t really in any particular order…

Anyway, 50-41 are Birds.

I’m a big nature-lover and one of the first things I noticed about moving to Bangalore was the local bird-life… there are quite a few species here that I’d never seen before, and some of the more common ones here are quite spectacular as well.

#50: Black Kite

A bird of prey, and surprisingly — especially for a new-comer like me — one of the most common birds you will see in most Indian cities, looking a bit like a small Eagle but easily identified by its forked tail.  Its cousin the Red Kite almost became extinct in the UK, being limited to a very small population in Wales, but in the last 10 years a conservation programme has managed to re-introduce them in Scotland and England.

You can see these absolutely everywhere, and one of the big surprises for me was that they flock together in big groups, almost like gulls do.  It’s not uncommon to see large groups circling around the roof of some place, either in search of food or a thermal air current to glide on.  The one pictured hangs around my current flat and has been building a nest at the top of a ridiculously tall and wobbly tree.  The call is notable too — very distinctive and quite haunting, and I recognised it from samples on tracks by Indian musicians.  Despite being so gregarious they’re definitely hunters, and I’ve seen a couple land on my roof only a few feet away and get stuck into eating some small mammal they had just caught.  (There’s definitely no shortage of rats here.)

(pic by krayker@flickr)

A close relative is the Brahminy Kite with its distinctive white head, and which looks a bit like a small version of the American Bald Eagle, as depicted on the seal of the president of the USA. These are almost as common as the Black Kites where I live, and I regularly see them competing with/fighting/chasing each other, as well as crows, for food and nesting places.

#49: Red-Whiskered Bulbul

In contrast to the kite, these guys are small and very chirpy. A pair of Red-Whiskered Bulbul regularly visit my balcony and they invariably sing away — quite melodic, and surprisingly loud for a small bird. Immediately recognisable due to their punky haircut and red cheeks, they’re related to the Nightingale and used to be kept as cage-birds in India for their singing.

#48: Ring-Necked Parakeet

These bright green birds have an unmistakeable loud SCREECH as they fly overhead, usually in groups of a dozen or two.  Anyone who’s ever lived in South-West London will recognise them, since there’s a sizeable feral population there.  I used to see (and hear) them regularly when walking to college through Hyde Park.

I ‘clicked’ this one (as we say here) at Amer Fort in Jaipur, but I’ve seen them everywhere I’ve travelled.  I haven’t investigated at all, but they seem to be used to by fortune-tellers who sit by the side of the road with a parakeet in a small cage…. it looks like they come out and pick cards from a pack, which are then used in the fortune telling.  I’ve seen this in Pondicherry, Mysore and Jaipur, so I’m guessing it’s common everywhere.

#47: White-cheeked Barbet

(pic by sandeepak@flickr)

There are several of these living around my flat, but I’ve found them almost impossible to photograph.  A small, chunky bird with striking green plumage, I usually see them as they whizz by in a flash of colour, zooming from one tree to another.  Usually heard rather than seen, they have a very distinctive song, starting with a slow but loud repeating “chirrup” which gets faster and seemingly louder.  Often I hear two together, which results in an interesting cross-rhythm.

#46: Greater Coucal

A bit of an oddity this one, big but extremely shy — I took this pic of one on my neighbour’s balcony just after sun-up.  The Greater Coucal is a member of the cuckoo family, but is bigger than a crow, and has a distinctive curved end to its tail.  Its call is a low booming whoop that has “Jungle” written all over it, and can be so loud that I’ve been woken up by them early in the morning.

#45: Purple Swamphen

I spotted this chap by a lake in Mysore, which supposedly also has crocodiles, although I didn’t see any.  Bears an obvious resemblance to a typical Moorhen that you’d find in Europe, but rather more colourful.

#44: Bee-Eater

From the same lake in Mysore.  Loads of these flitting around.  Very pretty and elegant birds.

#43: Indian Black Ibis

And the last of 3 from that same lake in Mysore.  Similar to the Ibis you would see in Europe, but very dark and with a distinctive red spot on the head.

#42: Purple Sunbird

(pic: J. M. Gard @ Wikimedia Foundation.)

Another one that’s almost impossible to photograph, mainly because it’s so small and fast.  I regularly see a pair of these knocking around on my balcony, or on the African Tulip Tree in front of the flat.  They seem to be on good terms with the Bulbuls and I often see them together.

These are really tiny creatures who feed on nectar from flowers, and as such they resemble Humming Birds.

#41: Drongo

(pic by yeliseev@flickr)

Another really shy bird… I’ve only recently started to spot these.  Easily identified by the very long and forked tail, Drongos flit around catching flies, with movements reminiscent of a Lark.

* * *

Moving to a country with such different flora and fauna is one of the things that makes it feel so different, even exotic. There really is proper jungle around here, and even the part of Bangalore where I live used to be a forest only 30 years ago. Trees are dramatic and colourful, and the birdsong sounds really different to anything I’ve been used to — although it’s pretty hard to hear it most of the time because of the incessant car horns. Early on Sunday morning can be magical, though…

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 persuaded by the fact that it has 2 large balconies and a roof terrace. I was really keen to get back into gardening after a 12-year hiatus (gardens are almost impossible to find in the centre of Edinburgh), and the balconies clinched it.

When I moved here in February the flat was completely unfurnished except for a fridge and washing machine, and of course the balconies were completely empty.  I very quickly set about turning the balcony outside the kitchen door into a container garden… foraging plants locally via nocturnal walks around the neighbourhood with a pair of scissors and a carrier bag ;-) as well as making weekly visits to the Gardener’s Co-op at the Lalbagh, Bangalore’s botanic gardens, and coming home in an auto full of plants and compost.

Here’s after I’d been in the place for 2 weeks:

… and here’s a couple of weeks ago:

The climate and the seasons here have taken some getting used to, but basically it feels like I can grow anything I want to, at any time!  I guess this is one reason why Bangalore used to be known as “Garden City” before the big IT companies moved in, and rapid expansion saw large-scale road-widening at the expense of many trees.  Anyway I started growing tomatoes about 5-6 months ago and I’ve had 2 harvests so far.  One of the plants that looked like it was just about to give up has just perked up and started flowering for a second time, so it looks like I’ll have another batch before I leave as well.

The slightly wonky bamboo structure was meant to be a support for some shade netting, because there’s no shade at all in the afternoon and some of the plants didn’t like it.  I haven’t yet managed to find anywhere to buy the netting, but it seems pointless looking for any now, until I know where I’ll be moving to.  Still, I had fun for a weekend looking up lashing techniques on various Boy Scout websites and teaching myself timber hitch and clove hitch from YouTube…

And the 3-tier ceramic thing you can see is a Kambha, a composter I bought from Daily Dump, a local firm who are promoting composting as well as the understanding of waste management, which in India is a really big issue. (And more people composting their own waste is A Good Thing.)  The Kambha works really well — you add kitchen and garden waste to the pot at the top, and then swap it with the middle one after a month or so.  Rinse and repeat.  And after 3 months you get usable compost which you can transfer to the bottom pot and start again.  Making the ceramics employs local artisan potters, and the design is open source so that anyone who wants to can start up a “clone” business making and selling the composters.  It’s a pretty inspiring project.

It’s been fantastic having a garden again after such a long time and I will be sad to move on, but I’m reminded that I arrived in India with 2 suitcases and I will have to leave with the same at some point.  It feels like a reminder of the saying about arriving in the world with nothing, and leaving with nothing…

Having to shift has also meant I’ve been thinking ahead about what it will be like to leave India. I’ve been here almost a year now, and my current contract expires at the end of 2012 — although it should be possible to extend it.  My conclusion is that despite all the difficulties of living here, I will be really sad to leave when it eventually happens — life here is so vivid, intense, colourful and crazy most of the time.  Returning to cold, grey Britain doesn’t really seem very appealing right now, especially with the economic difficulties, the state of the job market, and particularly the utter shambles the current government has made while trying to reform Higher Education.

Still, who knows how things will change over the next year — as we come to the end of 2011, the world is a very different place to what it was in January.

Today is the September Equinox, and back home this would be considered the start of Autumn. September makes me think of long shadows, bright but cooler days, and the evenings starting to shorten quite noticeably.  Leaves are changing colour, and there’s a melancholic feel in the air. It’s almost the start of another academic year.

Not so here in Bangalore… I think we’re coming to the end of the Monsoon. The lack of recognisable seasons is one of the things that still makes me feel a bit lost here, but I guess once I’ve been through the cycles once or twice it will start to make sense.

While August and early September were pretty wet, with a sizeable downpour most days, the last week has been mostly dry, the nights have been getting noticeably warmer again, and I’ve had to put the air conditioning on a couple of times.

Out on the balcony, my second batch of tomatoes are just coming through with lots of flowers and a few fruit already, plus a surprise melon appeared in a pot with a couple of cuttings that had perished.  I don’t remember planting it, but then I’m pretty slack at labelling anything and tend to shove seeds and seedlings into any pot I can find. I must have planted some seeds from a cantaloupe I’d eaten. I don’t have much space for things spreading out horizontally, so I’m trying to train it vertically.

I’ve also got coriander, mint and basil out there, as well as various palms, bamboos and stuff.  Several bougainvilleas I’ve grown from cuttings, and gardenias too — although they don’t seem interested in flowering yet.  This is the trickiest part of gardening here for me… I’ve no idea how plants respond to the seasons in this part of the world.  There won’t be any frost, even in December or January, and the daylight will only reduce by about an hour a day at the most.  How do they know what to do?

I leapt out of bed this morning at 6am, as I often seem to do these days (totally out of character for my previous life).  A Coucal was calling loudly right outside my window — an exotic, jungly-type sound — and I could see the sky was blue and it was going to be a warm, sunny morning.  Just after dawn is my favourite time here. It’s cool, relatively quiet before the traffic starts, and generally quite peaceful.

It also gives me time before going to work when I can potter about on the balcony a bit and water some plants, check how everything’s doing and continue my on-going battle against Mealy Bug by spraying vulnerable plants with Neem oil.  This morning I also noticed that a large plant-pot full of standing water had lots of mosquitoe larvae floating in it.  Pretty glad I spotted that.

I spotted this tiny pot-like thing on my kitchen window-sill yesterday, about 1.5cm across. As soon as I saw it I thought “wasp!” — not sure why. The entrance with the lip around it is amazing.

Shortly after noticing this, sure enough a wasp or a hornet-type thing appeared and went to the entrance. Strange-looking, with loads of green bits hanging underneath….

It went away and came back after a few minutes. It was only then that I realised the green bits underneath was actually a live caterpillar that it was carrying.

It placed it at the entrance, seemingly head-first, and buzzed around.

Amazingly it got hold of the caterpillar and stuffed it inside. It had done this with at least two of them.

I was a bit wary of the wasp because I was trying to get really close to photograph it, but a couple of times it came after me.

The third time I saw it come back, instead of a caterpillar it had some more of the grey material in its jaws. It sealed up the entrance.

It went away a couple more times and and came back with more material to shore up the structure.

I’ve never seen anything like this… felt like having my own private nature documentary laid on for me right next to where I was eating my lunch!

I’m assuming the wasp had laid eggs in the caterpillars, and was storing them away so the larvae have a ready source of food when they hatch. Wasps do horrible stuff like that, don’t they?

OK so my last post was titled “A place in the sun” and I ended by talking about the Monsoon. I might’ve known that would bring the rain…

It’s 9pm, pitch black, and it’s bouncing down just now — a proper tropical downpour. Apart from a few drops once in January, this is the first time it’s rained since I arrived over 2 months ago. Not only is it throwing it down, but the electricity went off around 7.30 so the streets are really dark, other than the car headlights, and a bit of light coming from houses with backup power.

I myself am running on my UPS just now… it has a big lead-acid battery, about twice the size of a typical car battery, and I was told it will last 8 hours, but we’ll see. Power-cuts are commonplace here, but the longest I’ve seen so far has been an hour.

[ Edit: Just after posting this the UPS battery died, almost exactly 2 hours… Power finally came back on at 5:45am, so that was a pretty long outage. ]

The rain will be a relief to my plants. Just yesterday I visited a real, live garden centre and bought some plants, seeds and pots so I can get started on establishing a garden or two in my outside space. I’ve also been out stalking the neighbourghood after dark with a bag and a pair of scissors, to see what I can collect in the way of cuttings. I have a lot of space to use, so I’m keen to establish as much as I can really quickly.

I feel typically British for even mentioning the weather! But of course back in the UK the weather is unpredictable, coming off the Atlantic ocean, and so it’s the ideal daily topic for chat. I found it quite strange to have very uniform weather here in Bangalore — up until about 3 days ago it’s been around 30 degrees and sunny all day every day, except for the occasional morning mist which anyway burned off quite quickly.

We have another 3 months before the monsoon arrives, so I’m curious to see what the weather’s like between now and then. One thing’s for certain — the seasons I’ve known all my life don’t exist here.

“Officially”, the seasons are as follows, although in a country the size of India there’s a wide range of different climates.

• Winter (Dec – early April)
• Summer / pre-monsoon (April – June)
• Monsoon (June – Sept)
• Post-monsoon / Returning Monsoon (Oct – Dec)

Given that I’m planting seeds just now and taking cuttings, I find it quite difficult to know whether the timing is right or not. But it’s February and to me it feels like the right time to be starting things off.