The Adventures of Super-Cheep, the House Chicken

Well, a quick break from India now...back to life in Perth.

Preparations are now well underway for the keenly-anticipated arrival of Rachel, Adrian and little Max from Melbourne on Friday at around noon.

Shanks has been very busy this week working in the yard, tidying up and fixing his car. He has had with him a little helper, that doesn't leave his side even for a second...Super-Cheep, the House Chicken, left to itself after its mother and three siblings were gobbled up by a fox a couple of weeks ago. Now, well and truly imprinted on its new mother, wherever Shanks goes, it follows...take a look at these!!

Shanks hard at work fixing his car this morning!

Trying to surf the net is a bit hard these days!

Though reading the paper is a little bit easier...

OK...now that's just too much!

Aaah...mother chook and baby chook!

The earth from above

Well, it's been a while, but we're back again. This time, some photos with a difference...all taken from altitude. Who won the battle for the window seats? In the end, we settled the matter fairly reasonably and mostly just took turns (though I still think Andrew got more turns than me)! Enjoy the view!

Leaving Perth on the 7th December headed for Singapore. You can see the city skyline in the distance and the South Perth foreshore in the foreground

Flying from New Delhi to Istanbul on the 2nd January. Andrew estimates that this photo was taken while we were flying over Pakistan.

You can't really make out very much in this photo, but the colours of dusk were nice! Taken as we flew above Iran on our way to Istanbul.

Leaving Istanbul for Tel Aviv on 7th January, we had a chance to view the very busy port area on the eastern side of Istanbul, the Sea of Marmara.

Crossing over Turkey we passed some mountainous terrain with a dusting of snow...

...but it got colder than that! A large part of southern Turkey was covered in snow...we were glad that we had only visited the north!

A lake amidst the snowy scenery

And then we had left the shores of Turkey and flew over the Mediterranean...

All the time just waiting for our first glimpse of Israel and hoping to see Haifa from the plane. Alas, it was too cloudy for that. As we flew over Tel Aviv preparing to land, the ground glistened with pools of water and black clouds rolled away in the distance. That was the first and last we ever saw of ominous weather, much to our relief!

Life at home

The last 4 weeks have seen a number of changes start to creep into our lives...many stemming from our recent travels...

One of the first changes made was to our 'spare rooms' at the back of the house. The room on the left, the most recent occupant of which was Max, has now been transformed into Andrew's Music Studio. This is where he goes whenever he feels the need to make some noise (very frequently)...you can see his recent purchases from Istanbul in the photos below.

The rather cramped music room, with famous cymbals now incorporated into the medley!

Close-up of the largest cymbal, bashed into shape by no less that seven burly Turkish men!

This is also where any unsuspecting young 'uns end up when they come over for a visit...Max was the first one to get a drumming lesson from Uncle Shanks (aka Uncle Duck), but we have also had other friends' children experience the joy of noise-making on a grand scale since then. So much so, that I am almost tempted to place a sign at the front of the house offering toddler's percussion classes at $30 a pop as a nice little earner on the side!

Our visitors last weekend were friends Ivan & Nur, with their very gorgeous children, Nicholas (pictured) and newborn baby Nathan. Nicholas enjoyed his drumming lesson with Shanks as much as he enjoyed chasing the chooks around the backyard! Coincedentally, we discovered that Ivan & Nur were married the day after us in 2004!

With something of a penchant for technology, as soon as he saw me whip out the camera, Nicholas was up and racing towards me!

Opposite the music room, the other spare room has been transformed into something of a quiet zone, where our Turkish rug now takes pride of place. We now use this room whenever we need a peaceful place to say prayers or re-connect with the feelings of reflectiveness and tranquility that we experienced so often on pilgrimage.

The end result of a process of great deliberation and some haggling in a carpet shop in Istanbul!

What else is new? Well, as expected, there were new additions to the farmyard while we were away. Eight chicks hatched shortly after we left, with four more arriving about a week ago. If that wasn't bad enough, Andrew also decided that six ducks weren't nearly enough and bought 4 more Welsh Harlequins last week to add to the menagerie, which recently led a passer-by to politely enquire whether they were being fattened up for Easter lunch!

One of the new chicks...

...and the four new ducks. There'll be plenty to spare for anyone who doesn't mind wielding the axe!

Andrew has been busy indoors, cleaning out the study (at last!) and outdoors, today putting a towbar on his ute (ready to hit Wongan Hills early in March for a clearing sale). He made a day-trip to York last week for another clearing sale where he bought a roll-cage for the tractor. I have been busy every day at school, getting to know my new kids and sorting out my classroom after we moved classes at the end of last year.

The newly-installed towbar!

On one of the first few days after we arrived back home, we spotted our friendly native quenda again, but since then haven't seen it. We are hoping this has nothing to do with recent sightings of cats around the yard or the small falcon that was happily perched on the garden shed eyeing off the chooks last week!

Quenda, quenda, where art thou?

Finally, Andrew has also been busy tending his garden. This meal below - a delicious frittata - was made entirely from garden produce as well as freshly-laid eggs from our spoiled chooks! Our shopping habits have also changed, once we finally braved our local Coles again that is! After our time in India witnessing the daily lives of hardship lived by countless millions, we are pleased to be able to say that our resolution at the time to re-consider what we spend our money on and to cut out unnecessary items has been adhered to (however, for our purposes, as a direct product of the cacao tree, chocolate has been placed in the "fruit and vegetable" category)!

The delicious frittata made from the fruits (well, the vegetables) of Andrew's labours in his garden!

All in all, we feel much more settled, focused and happier and have been discussing the possibilities of another international adventure with friends to South America in a couple of years time (Chile, Bolivia and Peru are high on the list of attractions)! This year I suppose will be largely focused on preparing for the big move to Wongan Hills and looking forward to having some visitors from the east soon (the spare rooms will be re-transformed into pleasant accommodation just as quickly)!

Adios!

Bazaars, buses and baklava

OK...I'm afraid I just can't hold on any longer...I'm not trying to overshadow Andrew's impending narrative, I'm just trying to put off doing some school-work! More photos and stories from Turkey...

Wandering the cobbled streets of Sultanahmet at night-time was always a lovely experience...well, apart from being harangued by a multitude of carpet-shop owners and waiters doing their utmost to get passer-bys to come into their respective establishments!

We arrived in Istanbul late in the evening on Tuesday 2nd January. We went straight from the airport to our hotel and once we had dumped our bags in our room we took off again straight into the cold night air to find ourselves some dinner. We managed to locate a place fairly close by - a tiny little cafe with about three tables and a huge gas heater taking up most of the room inside! Here we tasted the first of what was to become our staple diet in Istanbul - chicken and vegetable kebabs. Istanbul was much, much colder than New Delhi. After the first night, we hurriedly dug out our gloves, scarves and beanies before we ventured outdoors again. The next day we decided to just explore the part of the city we were staying in...a thoroughly beautiful area called Sultanahmet, which is home to the major tourist attractions of Istanbul as well as most of the tourist accommodation. This part of Istanbul really felt like an old, exotic city: the cobbled streets, mosques and churches, dazzling shopfronts and the sounds of traditional music wafting into the night air late in the evenings really set the scene for what was a most enjoyable, though all-too-brief visit.

Crossing a large courtyard on the way from Sultanahmet to Fatih

On the third day, we decided to spend the morning walking to another part of the city called Fatih, where Baha'u'llah had spent four months in 1863, after being forced to leave Baghdad. We found some of the places that He had visited and spent some time just wandering around and taking in the sights. We came back to Fatih the next day, when we had an opportunity to visit one of the houses that Baha'u'llah actually stayed in during His time in this city. There we happened to meet a Baha'i family from Queensland who had just returned from their pilgrimage in Haifa and were stopping in Turkey en route to Australia - doing much the same as we were. We discovered from them that the weather had been terrible during their time in Haifa - apart from the first day of blue sky and sunshine, it poured down torrentially for the following nine days! This got us a little bit worried about the conditions awaiting us in Israel, but we ended up having all the luck with ten days of perfect weather!

Sitting outside a mosque in Fatih, we posed for a photo (I think we only took about three photos of ourselves together during our entire trip!).

On the way back from Fatih we stopped to look in the window of yet another sweet shop, but suprisingly we didn't go in (maybe because we hadn't actually finished the box of sweets that we had purchased earlier that morning!).

Yum...dozens of varieties of melt-in-your-mouth pastries and baklava! We resisted for once, but made up for it in Haifa where we bought a half-kilo box which we promptly polished off in about 2 days!

It was also on the way back from Fatih that we decided to venture into the Grand Bazaar to escape the biting cold of the elements outside. The place was huge and very different from our experience of market-shopping in India. We went in pursuit of cushion covers of a particular size and shape, but would you believe, couldn't find any - though we had many offers from shop owners who said they could whip some up to our particular specifications in a matter of hours!

Beautiful mosaic glass lamps at the Grand Bazaar

The next day, Saturday, we decided to go to Edirne and back - a one-way journey by bus would be about two and a half hours. We caught a taxi to the bus station and our eyes boggled at the sight of literally hundreds and hundreds of individual bus companies all offering trips to various parts of Turkey. Luckily, we knew which bus companies we had to find and we managed to buy our tickets fairly quickly and board our bus about half an hour later. The buses were a huge surprise. Brand new, sleek and comfortable and staffed with two attendants who handed out beverages and food throughout the journey - it was more like a plane trip than a bus ride, but far more comfortable! It was here that I got my first taste of 'simit' - a bagel-like bread that is sold on every street corner and tastes every bit as good as it looks! The highway from Istanbul to Edirne was as good as the vehicles that traversed it. We sped onwards at over 100km an hour and were at our destination in no time at all...what a remarkable change from travelling in India!

Some of the residential areas of Istanbul that really made us appreciate what we have at home

One of the saddest things that we observed as we travelled, were scenes such as the one above. As soon as we had left the heart of the city, for kilometres into the distance all we could see were masses and masses of tall apartment buildings, squashed in so tightly together that there was no room for trees, parks or even a blade of grass. Istanbul is home to over 20 million people and the only affordable housing for the majority of people are such multi-storey apartments. It made us think of how very lucky we are in Australia. Even with the cost of housing going through the roof, homes still have gardens and trees and even those who live in small apartments still have tree-lined streets and parks around the corner. These people had nothing natural at all left in their environment. We asked the owner of the carpet shop where we purchased our rug about this: where do children play and run? The young lad who was also working in the shop told us that when he was growing up, he used to play soccer in the streets with his friends, but now, there was too much traffic even for this.

The Salim Mosque in Edirne

We reached Edirne and walked to the Salim Mosque shown above. Near this mosque was another house that Baha'u'llah had stayed in during His five year stay in this city. The caretaker of the house met us at the mosque and we walked to the house which was a few minutes away. Here we were shown around the house, which had been beautifully restored, and we were also shown the site of another house that Baha'u'llah had stayed in. All that remained were the foundations - but work is starting this year to rebuild the house in its original form. We then wandered around Edirne for a couple of hours before returning on the bus to Istanbul once again.

Shanks purchasing some carob in Edirne

We arrived back in Istanbul at around 8:00pm. We came back to the hotel briefly and were just about to head out the door to find some dinner when the family who ran the hotel we were staying at persuaded us to join them for dinner instead. We had already spent a few hours talking to Bulent and his wife and their gorgeous, cheeky daughter Yasmin. We ate a simple meal of fried fish, salad and bread and then talked away long and late into the night about so many things, including food, schooling, Islam and carpets! We kept them amused by teaching them various Aussie phrases ("G'day mate" being the standard one), but we also had a chance to try to understand more about life in Istanbul from their perspective. There, like here, it has become almost impossible to afford a house and, again, like Australia, many people are leaving the rural areas to come to the cities for work - no-one wants to work on the land anymore. We also asked them about their impressions of the many Australians who come to Istanbul en route to Gallipoli (known as Gelibolu in Turkey). Luckily the reputation of Aussies here appears to be pretty good, which may explain the warm reception we received! Once again, spending time with this family was one of the highlights of our time in Istanbul...connecting with people from a different culture and religion, discovering so many commonalities in the lives that we lead and being treated with so much hospitality and warmth - this for us is really what travel is all about and where its influence has the most positive effect.

The very special family who ran the hotel we stayed at in Istanbul

We were very sad to be leaving Istanbul just five days after having arrived, but also tremendously excited about the last leg of our journey. In the end, we were so busy at the airport trying to change our tickets for the return leg that we ended up having to run to our gate just before they shut the doors, and slightly embarassed about being the last passengers on to the plane, we plonked ourselves in our seats and spent the rest of the flight looking out the window at scenes such as the one below, thankful for our time in Istanbul and awaiting the next leg of our adventure with mounting anticipation.

Snow covered mountains in southern Turkey as we flew towards our final destination

Full circle

Forty-five days, nine flights, four currencies, eight languages (Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Konkani, Hindi, Turkish, Hebrew and Arabic) and thousands of kilometres later, we are back where we started from...tired and weary but not yet in bed - just the way we began our adventure!

Our flight to Perth touched down on time at 3:30pm, but by the time we went through immigration and customs it was past 5:00pm (Shanks had a little seed collection to declare, consisting of date palms, holm oaks, carobs and avocadoes pilfered while we were in Israel). Unfortunately they were all seized, but the customs inspector was very helpful and told Shanks the best way to get such things through next time.

It was a bit strange to be back in our own home at first - everything looked a bit odd - but soon enough we were right back in the comfort zone - eating a delicious Indian meal prepared by my mum and relaxing on the couch watching The Bill (some things will never change!).

Tomorrow we will unpack and progressively start getting ourselves back in order again...both of us will have to start work again shortly (Shanks' boss even tried calling him when we were in Israel!). But right now, we may have a quick look through some of our photos and go to sleep with very pleasant memories circulating in our tired brains!

Good Night!

Counting down again...

We have almost come full circle. We are once again sitting here at Ben Gurion Airport, trying to keep steadily ordering small things from the cafe here which offers free internet to its customers. We have a very long wait ahead of us...our plane leaves at 6:45am, but we have been warned countless of times that it takes over 3 hours to clear all the security checks and that the Israeli airport officials turn your suitcase inside out! So...we're in for the long haul.

We fly from here to Istanbul, stay there for half a day (where Shanks will go in search of the magical Bosphorous cymbals), then to New Delhi where we have an 8 hour stop (enough time to scoff down a few masala dosas), before the flight to Singapore and then, finally, home.

There are so many stories to tell and photos to share...even though we will soon be home, we will keep the posts going so that all you who have been following our journey can follow it right to the end...there are many, many gaps to fill in. We hope that you have enoyed the story so far.

Going bananas

(Another belated India post, and more still to come)

Warning

We wish to advise that some Australian readers may be disturbed by the following post - you may wish to stop reading now!

For those of you who love your bananas and who are still paying grossly inflated prices as a result of a cyclone that happened long, long ago, you may want to consider movıng to India. About 50 cents Australian will buy you a kilogram of bananas and there are many varieties to choose from. Varieties range from very small and very sweet yellow bananas to large red-skinned ones to foot-long monsters!

Enjoy!

The drivers of this banana-laden truck were happy to pose with the tall Australian chap!

Feast your eyes on this!

This variety of banana is ripe when green and is very sweet!

This variety, called 'gonja', is best eaten...

fried and sprinkled with sugar! A perfect breakfast!

Astrid making a purchase in Mysore

Remembering Kochi

Lorraine:
Years ago I faintly remember travelling to Kochi (Cochin) with my family as a young girl. My memories were pleasant ones...mainly of sipping fresh pineapple juice by the beach and taking a cruise along the river at sunset. My anticipation was great. The Lonely Planet guide also painted a picture-perfect scene...winding alleys, spice markets, Chinese cantilevered fishing nets gracing the shoreline...

Shanks, Christian & Astrid talking to one of the fishermen who operates the Chinese fishing nets at Fort Cochin

And then we arrived, and the realisation struck hard and fast that all the other Western tourists in Southern India must have been thinking the exact same thing as us! The roads leading to our chosen hotel were literally overflowing with tourists - something that we neither anticipated nor were prepared for.

One of the joys for us as tourists (or 'travellers' as Shanks prefers to describe himself), is that as much as we enjoy looking at the locals, they also enjoy looking at us! We are as curious to them as they may be to us! So we have enjoyed being considered something of an oddment and being asked various questions - the most common one is "Which country you are coming from sir/madam?", to which we reply, and then the mandatory association is made to various members of the Australian cricket team! We have enjoyed chatting with the locals, eating at tiny little restaurants tucked away in side alleys where the entire restaurant grinds to a halt as they gaze upon this hapless bunch of foreigners trying to master the art of eating food only with the right hand and work out the correct ways of doing things (often to be met with a shake of the head or a smile). So in a way, there is a little bit of give-and-take - there is enjoyment and fun on both sides.

Not so in Kochi. Or to be more exact, Fort Cochi, a peninsula, away from mainland Ernakulam. Here, tourists are a commodity, not a curiosity. Here, Western tourists seem to outnumber the local population by 4:1. It is not altogether unexpected that where large groups of tourists gather, they tend to associate predominantly with one another and so slowly the restaurants and businesses start to cater for Western tastes and culture, and so slowly the real experience of India is obliterated. Going out for dinner the first night was the first time that when we placed our order the waiter politely enquired "No spice?" to which he was met with four equally aghast faces as we all tried to signal "NO! Lots of spice - Indian style not Western style"!

On the bright side, Kochi was our first experience of traditional classical Indian music and the Kathakali music/theatre/dance phenomenon. Although the shows attracted a wholly-tourist crowd, the evening was well worth it. We particularly enjoyed one evening concert featuring flute and two traditional Indian drums (which names we have now forgotten). The performances of the three musicians as they played together were nothing but superb and their mastery of their instruments was enough to send our senses soaring.

On our second day, Shanks and I headed away from Tourist-ville over to the mainland on a ferry. There we engaged in one of our favourite activities - visiting the maze of markets that every Indian town or village can lay claim to. The scenes in these markets are always so bright and colourful that I did away with my embarassment and whipped out my camera to take a few photos. This was what many stall-holders were waiting for as they eagerly asked for us to take pictures of them, and better still, pictures of them with the tall Westerner accompanying me! Shanks and Christian are big hits wherever they go...they even managed a game of cricket with some lads in one of the playing fields in Fort Cochin...I just hope they did Australia proud!

Some on field action from the Aussie contingent in Fort Cochin!

Chennai experiences...filling in the gaps

While we are here in Kollam (Quillon) passing time before our trip to the backwaters this afternoon, we thought we would try to fill in some of the gaps since our time here. Photos will have to come later though as we are having difficulty finding a computer with a working CD drive!

We arrived in Chennai shortly after 10pm on Thursday 7th December. Without any problems getting through immigration, we collected our bags and headed out the doors for our first whiff of the Indian atmosphere. We were pleased to find that the air was not quite as humid and stinky as we were expecting, and we went in search of a taxi to our hotel. This was of course going to be the first haggling experience of the journey, so Lorraine confidently assumed her air of "Indian authority" and quickly proceeded to get the best deal available (so she thinks!) and shortly after we clambered into our taxi headed for a hotel. The first hotel we went to was fully booked, the second wasn't, but upon investigation of the rooms, we beat a hasty retreat back to the taxi. Even in India, there have to be some standards! We finally settled on one further down the road, and the lengthy check-in process became our first introduction to the at-times extraordinarily frustrating Indian bureaucracy! After what seemed like half an hour in the hotel lobby, we finally managed to reach our rooms where we all collapsed gratefully into bed.

The next morning, after a little sleep-in, Astrid and Lorraine were ready to hit the streets (seasoned Indian adventurers that they are)! As the boys were still asleep, we decided to go on a reconnaissance mission to check out good eating places nearby. Having found a restaurant dishing up the local cuisine, we went back for Shanks and Christian, who were by now fully roused. This was to be their first "taste" of India, and we all decided to settle on a firm favourite - masala dosa. I remember getting a masala dosa with Shanks at a restaurant in Perth once - this set us back about $AU25! Here in India, for the authentic version, we paid about 50c! The price of food, and everything else, still amazes us all sometimes. We eat out 3 times a day, and the most we have ever had to pay to feed all four of us is $AU6.00! India is still the place to be for the budget traveller!

Later in the day we checked out a large modern shopping complex called Spencer Plaza, as Astrid was trying to find a camera battery for the digital camera she purchased in Singapore. On the way back to our hotel we looked at another hotel and decided to switch, as the latter one was cheaper and much nicer! On our second day in Chennai we went to George Town, a bazaar area in the older part of Chennai, then T. Nagar - another market area, where we had lots of fun haggling for some nice cool cotton tops. Later in the day it was time to start thinking about organising a car and driver for the remainder of our trip. We decided that it would be a good idea, given our short time here, to hire a car and driver, rather than relying on public transport to get us around. This gives us 100% flexibility with our plans and our timings, and the total cost for a 17-day trip for the four of us came to Rs 25 000 or $AU10.50 each per day!

One thing that has touched all of us is the warmth, friendliness and helpfulness of all the people we meet. Sometimes we may meet with curious glances (especially Lorraine), sometimes with excited shouts of "Hallo" from little children eager to shake the boys' hands, but when the people realise that we are also friendly, keen to eat the local food and observe the local customs, we are treated almost as VIPs and people, especially at restaurants, bend over backwards to ensure that we are being well looked after. We have all decided that we are going to try to fit in as much as possible with the locals - whether this is learning some phrases in the local language, abandoning cutlery and eating with our right hands only, and eating where the locals eat - not the flashier upmarket places which tend all too often to end up becoming clustered with non-Indians!

We will attempt to fill in the trip from Chennai to Trichy in the next post!

Three days to go...

In the words of a great Australian "Crikey" - we've entered the zone of those last few days before travelling that meld together into a blur of packing and panic as the 'last minute' jobs live up to their name and jump out to drag at your heels just when you had those departure gates in your sights. It makes wrestling crocodiles look like fun!

Sorry about the short post - here's a link to another travellers blog with some great photo's of India to tide you over until we have our own. http://lucidtravels.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_lucidtravels_archive.html

Eleven days to go...

In Memoriam
Zabi Hashemi

Zabi was a beautiful elderly Persian gentleman who recently passed away. A builder by trade, he had the great honour and privelege of looking after some sacred Baha'i places in Iran, before he and his family moved to Australia. Zabi loved his garden and would work in it every day - his sunflowers were magnificent. Although he spoke little English, Zabi could communicate with everyone through his wonderful smile and the mischeivous twinkle in his eyes.

Nineteen days to go...

Traffic Indian style!

When we woke up this morning, we thought that somehow we were already in India. From just outside our window, came the sounds that one is used to hearing on any busy street anywhere in India at any time of day or night - cars and trucks were racing by tooting their horns in a variety of melodies and the noise was non-stop! It took a few moments for us to register exactly what was going on...turns out that the hardware store across the road was having a sale and to attract customers, two chaps dressed up in dog suits were prancing along the side of the road waving to all the passing traffic!

Tonight we met up with one of the other members of our travelling party - Astrid. She has just returned to Perth after three and a half years living in Alice Springs, the real heartland of Australia. The other member of the 'awesome foursome' is Christian, who is currently in Indonesia visiting his sister. We will all meet up for a pre-India Bollywood night (minus the Bollywood) in a couple of weeks, just days before we all board our first flight together!