Life with the Hyde’s in India

 

Well it’s been a while!

We have intended writing a new blog many times over the last few months but didn’t. Our life here had become chaotic in many ways and we both felt that the blog was beginning to be nothing more than a monthly diary from us. Perhaps we just needed a break. 

Well whatever the case this is our new style blog, we will not publish on any given dates but when we feel we have something to say or something you might be interested in. It’s a look at our life in India and for this first blog we have included some background on us for new readers. If anyone wants to know more about us than please read our earlier blogs, there are plenty to choose from. Any comments are very welcome.

 

So welcome dear reader to;

  ‘Life with the Hyde’s in India’.

It’s now monsoon. If you have never experienced a monsoon rain storm trust me you have not seen rain, full on waterfall style rain! It’s an incredible experience to stand and literally be soaked to the skin within seconds with beautiful warm water. After months of dry heat half the population of India is in the streets dancing in the first heavy rain. It causes vast flooding, rivers burst their banks in fact rivers that don’t normally exist burst into life during monsoon. The amount of water that falls within these few months is quite literally all we shall have until next monsoon. It floods town’s roads houses anywhere where there isn’t sufficient run-off. Unfortunately this means that many of the works of man suffer. Roads are in some cases completely destroyed for the rainy season. The only sensible vehicle to have if you intend going out of town into the jungle areas in monsoon is a well-equipped Jeep.

Sadly we had to sell ours to cover some of the costs incurred when the NGO we were working for without notice ended our contracts. We try to forgive the way we were treated but forgiveness is difficult when you now have literally thousands of pounds to repay in debts incurred because of that action. If you want a few more details on this please read our previous blog. We are both committed Christians so we try and I think have almost succeeded in forgiving the owner. But we still don’t know why our contract was changed from 3 to 2 years, or why the owner did not contact us directly but passed the message through a third party by WhatsApp! Anyway enough of that….

Everything is green; everywhere you look life is bursting out. Nature just seems to explode at this time of year. 

visitors from Africa

They survive by eating decayed fruit

When we first came to India we were horrified to see people chopping major branches from trees leaving them as nothing more than a trunk and stubs of branches at the end of summer. It’s a classic example of not understanding the Indian way. For most people other than town and city dwellers, and that means at least 50% of the population wood has been their only fuel source for many generations. Even now when gas is available to all most tribal communities still depend on wood. At the end of summer trees are ‘pruned’ the wood is put away to dry for use during the winter months. As for the trees, two weeks later they are pushing out fresh growth.

By this point some six weeks or so into the monsoon the trees look very much as they did before pruning! The growth rate is amazing. We planted beans that honestly grew 8 inches per day until we had to start chopping the tops off.

If we have had continues wet days we light the fire
this then drys out the house

And the washing.   Hows that for old school!

This year we are trying an experiment. Everything we have been told says wait until after the monsoon before sowing seeds. Well we have tried that time and again we find that the growing season for some of the crops we wish to grow is too short. We usually have tomatoes still happily producing fruit when the sun gets too strong and the temperature too high for them despite shading they die. This year we had a sneaky plan.

Ignore everybody and plant within a week of the monsoon starting.

Well that’s our plan. We first began planting two weeks after the pre-monsoon storms that always precede the main monsoons arrival. We are predominantly using tubs to start the seeds off before transplanting them to their permanent positions in the garden. We have gone ahead and planted way way earlier than we would ever have tried. I can only say to date we have had incredible success. Germination rates we just can’t believe, in many cases I have over sown the containers because I am used to the low germination rates we normally get. Consequently we are having to do some thinning out! I think several of the neighbors will be in the queue for seedlings.

The big danger of course is the rain. We wondered if our delicate seedlings would survive the hammering of rain and the containers being regularly flooded. For the farmers this is a risk they have to bear every year so nobody is ever 100% certain of even getting a crop. Many farmers sadly lose their entire livelihoods because of monsoon storms flooding and washing away fields.

We have included a series of photographs looking around the garden at present. As you can see there are lots of tubs with tiny green growth. Some crops, like our English runner beans have gone crazy I have never seen a bean so well named!

One of our two Cherry trees.Look at the path!

We have worked very hard to make our back garden a better environment for growing. We have role out shading, overhead misters and raised beds. Because of the way the walls and the building are positioned there is a constant cool draft being drawn through our roofed area we built to keep the bikes and winter fuel dry during the monsoon. 

We have a leak to fix next summer.

This seems to keep the back garden temperature down at least 2 and sometimes as much as 4 degrees C cooler. We are even looking at rebuilding an old cooler (so called Desert cooler, or evaporation cooler) and putting it on the wall to extend the growing season. After all it’s only a fan and a few filters so running costs will be negligible. The benefits could be huge. That just about sums up our attitude; recycle it, repair it or re-purpose it. With the composting system and the chickens, we have very little waste. Bottles and cans are collected by a very nice man who recycles them for money. That’s his entire business so we support him as much as we can by encouraging others not to just dump their recyclable waste.

Of the fruit in the garden it’s a mixture of failure and huge success. We have a grapevine now two years old that this summer had 18/20 bunches of soon to be lovely black grapes on it. We netted, moved the grapes so that they were not so accessible and we hoped that would be enough.

It wasn’t. Our grapes, the moment they started to turn black were decimated by the local bird and squirrel population, who I swear must have been keeping 24 hour watch on them. We did not even get to taste one, honestly that’s the truth the little buggers had the lot. Well at least we have the satisfaction of knowing we offer a better quality snack!

Now to a success story, as of today we have harvested over 12 kg of cherries from our two trees. Needless to say friends and family have benefited as well as our freezer. Cherry pie…. Yummy.

2 Kg of our own cherries, Amazing good  crop this year.

Jamun, a sort of Indian plum about the size of a gooseberry has also been prolific this year. Other fruit yet to deliver are oranges, custard apple, pomegranate, grapefruit, papaya and Blackberries (Indian) we have no idea when they will fruit as we were given them as a present by a really good friend this year. We also have various ‘I wonder what this is?’ Growing in various places. The mango was good this year, maybe 2 Kg of fruit. As it is growing every year the crop is increasing in proportion to the size of the tree.

I don’t think any of us have worked as hard before in our garden. Christine and Geeta have both been amazing. Geeta is especially looking forward to cropping the carrots… How many will make the kitchen remains to be seen. She understands the principles of recycling/reusing that we have adopted. When she is in the garden helping us weed she looks at it as collecting food for the chickens.

Geeta is doing well at school her teachers of very impressed by her determination. In some subjects such as Hindi writing and English writing she is a little behind but considering she is not using her natural arm and has to work left-handed we feel she is doing well. Her general knowledge far exceeds the ordinary student. We never ever fail to answer an enquiry from her the last one to me being ‘how heavy is the universe?’ Her love of science and biology in particular animal biology is we are convinced leading her to her stated ambition of being a vet. Animals just seem to love her. She has become fascinated by animal care. She has a way with her that animals respond to. She talks to birds and they call back to her. The street dogs all wag their tails at her. I haven’t seen an animal yet that did not respond favorably to her. She even has a friend called Barry, it is a water buffalo who comes to her for a head scratch and if he’s lucky a cucumber. She recently attended a one day course on basic animal care which she thoroughly enjoyed. There she met the head of animal aid Udaipur who is very impressed by her and has invited her to visit their hospital and see what the vets are doing there. Needless to say we are very happy about this because she has been talking about becoming a vet for at least a year now. She even has a book on animal anatomy given to her by a friend in the UK! She is quite knowledgeable and very keen to do practical work so we are encouraging her when we can to pursue this interest.

She is currently taking a break from her kickboxing to concentrate on school and because it’s monsoon but as soon as winter arrives she will be back to training three nights a week. I know I have told you this story before but I can’t help but tell you again because I just enjoy it. I hate bullies.

We believe it is very important that she continues this is it something she can do on equal terms with other students. On a visit to her village she had a small confrontation……. ‘Disabled girl meets local bully’ it appears he tried to push her to the ground. In front of the other local kids she avoided his push hit him twice in the chest with two straight lefts then stepped in and leg swept him. End result bully sitting on ground asking ‘how did you do that?’ Geeta answered ‘with training’. Moral of the story don’t pick on apparently disabled people. Go Geeta.

                                        

Geeta with her Gold medal (in her weight class)
The scotch is mine!

She has been working very hard on her physiotherapy for her arm (extension). Since the operation she has at least doubled the movement that was available then. Her wrist is still locked but her fingers are all wriggling to some degree, more each day. If after the next appointment with the surgeon if he agrees we are hoping to arrange for surgery this winter on the wrist. Her arm does not impede her at school she has made lots of friends. She is chatty and friendly but understands about the dangers some adults could be to her especially now that she is growing into a young lady. Marriageable age in the villages is about 12. The legal minimum age to marry is 18 although this is ignored in some of the more isolated villages where marriage can occur as young as 12/14.

She is going to see the surgeon again soon to see if she can have the next (number 5) operation. This one will we hope free her wrist.

Christine has had a bit of a rough time since we came back from the UK. For the seven weeks we were in the UK Kris had to radically up her painkillers and other drugs she is on and still she suffered more than I have ever seen her suffer. By the time we came back she was one step short of using class A addictive drugs again. Since we have been back it has taken her a long time to recover. In fact she is still not fully recovered and of course the damp of the monsoon isn’t helping. 

Both of us suffered far more in the UK than we expected. We both nearly ended up in hospital with major breathing difficulties. The continuous cold and damp is something that we had forgotten. Looking back on our life before India we wonder how on Earth we coped, I suppose we were just used to it and now acclimatized to where we live. Just out of interest the first year we were in India we ran around all winter in T shirts thinking how lovely and warm the weather was. Now we wear jumpers and sometimes even coats… Just like everybody else!

The price of energy gas and petrol has skyrocketed. Our electricity bill has risen by an easy 25% despite our efforts to keep it under control. We already have solar water heating. We installed it not long after we moved into this is house. With three bathrooms and a (very unusual for an Indian house) hot supply in the kitchen all fed from individual wall mounted geysers there was our first huge cut in our electricity bill. When we bought it we specified the larger family -sized this has proved to have been a great choice we never run out of hot water. There are days in the monsoon when there is just not enough UV to heat sufficiently for Christine’s bath so she has to shower!   We are fitting LED lighting were ever possible. We can’t afford to do this all once but light by light they are being changed. Locally grown food although the price has increased it has been less noticeable. Food grown in other states that has to be transported the costs seem to go up every month and so does the price of the crop. Apples have become a luxury here.

We had one bit of excitement a couple of weeks ago. We were just heading for bed when our main inside trip box exploded into flames! Kris was off like a greyhound to the main outside isolator while I dealt with the fire. Got it repaired. Minor damage, Ho hum just another day in India.

mmmmm, smoke and flames....thats not normal is it!

We really can’t believe it but our road has been freshly tarred, first-time in 10 years and we have even had street lights put in… Wow.

Our very front garden much to the consternation of some of our neighbors has been covered with all of this year’s fallen leaves. This turned out to be a surprising amount. Nobody here seems to have heard of mulch. They have been on now for some months, a few weeds if any have shown themselves and with the monsoon the leaves are rotting very quickly. This area will be dedicated to our own brassicas.

Whilst we were in the UK we really wanted to visit our home church Emmanuel in Durham but it was just impossible for us with our financial constraints to travel half the length of the country and back for a week end. This is for us our spiritual home. I was baptized there, Christine has been a member of the church since 1987.

We confirmed our marriage there by a full proper wedding so that we were married legally as well as having married spiritually before God some six months prior at St Mary the Virgin church Lindisfarne (Holy Island). 

It surprised us how many of the members of the church had problems accepting that we were married after Lindisfarne. We knelt and gave our oath to each other and God before witnesses. Many however understood and blessed us for our decision and accepted our spiritual marriage. To make it legal in the site of man and to celebrate with all our friends and our church we had a really fun time getting married again. Our guests all contributed to a scheme to supply breeding goats to Indian families. Hence the theme of the wedding became ‘blue goats’ we even have them on the wedding cake!

When we were called by God to move to India it is where we held all our going away sales. We sold almost everything we owned and gave it to a needy cause in India. When we arrived here we had two large suitcases and three plastic boxes that contained everything we now owned.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.” Mark 10:21 ESV

People at the time asked us if we were mad! Two people in later life giving up everything to move to India and to live there on a pension working for an NGO? All we could say to them was that God had laid out a path for us that we had chosen to follow in faith. We have been here nearly 11 years and are still fully committed to following His word. Sometimes have been tough but he has never given us more than we could handle or targets that we could not achieve.

We have prayed many times to find a church here in India that worships as we do. That is not to say there aren’t churches here but they are not as lively as we are used to. We raise our hands and dance when we praise the Lord, we sing his praises certainly not what most Indian churches are used to. We used to attend a Baptist church here but it was 90% in Hindi so it was very difficult to join in or to understand what was being said. Since then we have tried one other small group but didn’t feel comfortable with some of the things they were doing.

We keep in touch with our home church Emmanuel but cannot take part in the service as it is not on line however they do publish the lesson (or word if you prefer) online.

While we were in Stafford we managed to attend a church that is spirit filled and progressive in their aims and worship. My daughter in the UK Francis was baptized there giving her life to Christ while we were able to attend. It was with great pride that I spoke at her baptism, she like me has walked a rough road to find the Lord. I am so proud of her. 

Francis and her long-time boyfriend are getting married in the autumn. May God bless them both. Kris and I stayed with them in the UK for the duration of our visit. It was supposed to be two perhaps three weeks, it was seven! We can both testify that we never felt we were a burden or not unconditionally welcome. And this was in a one bedroom flat. By the time we left we all knew each other very well and an unbreakable bond has formed. Unfortunately we can’t attend because we simply can’t afford it (remember those debts!) it is going to be shown online live so they will both know we are there and we can see the event happen.

Since being back in India we have attended ‘Rising brook community church Stafford’ who are on line for the full service every Sunday. It’s wonderful to be able to stand and sing the Lord’s praises with a live congregation it just fills us with so much joy. We can even comment or ask questions during the service or ask for prayer requests. We feel very much part of this church and so grateful to the Lord for giving us this opportunity we have longed for.

We will never leave Emmanuel Church Durham it is our spiritual home, they have supported us so much over the years especially since Geeta came to live with us so seriously injured. It is hard to look at her now happy bouncing around and remember the terrible state she was in. Without their prayers and blessings we could not have given her the opportunities she now has. May God bless them all.

So it would appear that we now have two churches in our lives. It’s all about gods timing isn’t it.

Our friends now know that 3 p.m. on a Sunday is worship time for the Hyde family. It surprises and pleases us when friends sometimes show up to join us….. Anybody is always welcome to the God spot on a Sunday; you may even get an invite to one of Christine’s famous roast dinners!

 

Our chicken coop and run has had a major pre-monsoon makeover. Last year the entire area they have turned into a smelly bog and the poor girls were looking very very sad. We have scraped everything level and put sand down and fitted a waterproof cover over the first third of the run. We then used every brick we could get our hands-on to lay the entire area. This year has been brilliant for them. They still have space, including a large bush and logs to play around on and under but now they are dry. Super improvement and they seem much happier.

  

 

Well there really isn’t much  more to tell you, it’s been a tough few months with covid and the cost of living increases but as ever our faith supports us. We never tire of telling people we are following a path that was laid out for us by our Lord the day he brought us together. He took two unhappy people, brought them together and made a new tool that will joyously serve him in anyway he requires of us for all our days. We know despite how difficult it can get we are never alone, we are never without him. Jesus is with us always.

 

God bless you all and keep you safe  

Chris, Kris and Geeta

Udaipur

Rajasthan

India.

 

 

Updates from India 96

 

It’s been a while since we last blogged but our lives have been in turmoil.  

In September 2019 we joined a well known NGO which seemed a good idea at the time. We originally asked for a five year contract but agreed in the end on a three-year contract. We explained that at the end of the three years we would become eligible to apply for citizenship having completed 12 years continuous employment in the country with an allowance made for us to return to the UK every five years to renew our employment visas.

The end of our second year with literally only days left before we had to submit forms for the third year the NGO announced it would not be renewing contracts. This left us in India with no employer in the middle of a covid epidemic.

To say that we were hurt and upset by their attitude would be an understatement. What upset as most was the manner in which we were informed. 

A WhatsApp message. The owner didn’t even have the good manners or integrity to inform us himself or speak to us directly, the WhatsApp message being relayed through another person. Treating us simply as a disposable asset left us both hurt and frankly insulted. It is customary to at least give the people in your employment notice of this sort of decision. We got none.

 This decision has literally cost us thousands of pounds in air flights and extra visa costs that we had not budgeted for. Consequently the credit card is maxed out, our jeep has had to be sold and we have had to borrow to be able to get to the UK and reapply for new visas. Needless to say a large proportion of our income must now go to paying these debts. To comply with Indian government rules we had to apply for an exit visa at that time. At the same time the Indian government closed its borders to all flights as did the UK. We were in the unenviable position of officially being told to go and officially being told we couldn’t because there were no flights. Needless to say trying to understand Indian bureaucracy is not a skill we were used to using!

Bye Bye Jeep, you were a good beast.

Quite what this has done to our citizenship eligibility we don’t know yet. It will probably mean putting it on hold for a few years but until we inquire we really just don’t know.

The Covid epidemic that has swept the world cost many lives in India. For a time here we were in complete isolation on government instructions because we were foreigners and because of our ages. Time after time lockdowns were imposed and gradually the death rate fell. I think it is fair to say that India has fared better than a lot of the European countries have and certainly far better than the USA. The habit of wearing a mask to prevent infection spreading has been accepted here. There were a lot of people who are one reason or another didn’t bother. By the time of the second wave most people had come to realise the danger having seen so many die in the first wave. Masks became compulsory wear with strict action taken against people who would not comply. We were finally able to get permission to fly in December on condition that we have full Covid tests before check-in.

 In one respect we have been very fortunate to find a reliable and trustworthy company here in India that was actively seeking people with exactly our skill sets to join them.

Sadly warm aid hasn’t happened because of the Covid epidemic. We were hoping to start again in 2022 but selling our jeep means we are without transport to deliver the blankets to the more outlying villages. This is a problem that we will have to look at and see if we can find a solution. Warm aid was a very successful enterprise helping many hundreds of the most desperate people stay warm in winter. Warm aid has already received recognition and an award from Udaipur collectorate (for UK read town Council) for our work in and around the city.

We have now returned from the UK and were shocked whilst we were there by the apathy of the general population with regards to preventing further infection by wearing masks. Some people we met with justify this by saying that they had chosen not to be inoculated against infection and were relying upon diet and other ways to ensure their safety. This attitude completely baffles us. By all means choose to take the chance personally but to then expose others to possible infection from you by not wearing a mask is totally irresponsible. I have no problem with the right to choose to be inoculated or not. My problem is with them not having the right to put us at risk by possibly spreading the infection by not wearing a mask. By all means gamble with your own life and the life of your family, but please do not gamble with other people’s lives.

We left for the UK at the beginning of December. We were really looking forward to being able to spend Christmas with my daughter and her partner. We made one attempt but problems with our exit Visa meant we had to reschedule. We had already told Frances and Sean that we were coming but had to disappoint them. We set up a new date and this time successfully left for the UK. We didn’t want to build them up just to disappoint them again so we didn’t tell them. The first they knew was when we telephoned them from a pub in the UK to tell them we were waiting for the bus from Heathrow to Stafford and that we were in the UK. They were blown away! I won’t tell you what Francis actually said but it wasn’t very polite! Anyway we arrived in Stafford at 4 AM. One minor problem, the coach dropped us 11 miles from Stafford at a bus stop in the middle of perishing nowhere. Pitch black and raining. Eventually we got a taxi to take us into Stafford to Frances and Sean’s place. Frances and Sean were both up and waiting for us and we had an amazing greeting. We cannot express how welcome they made us feel. Remember this was only the second time Frances and I had met for some considerable time and then only for a few days. There was no tension, no feeling like we were the visiting parents they had to behave differently in front of.

Christmas was brilliant, Christmas dinner and friends calling in although because of the Covid restrictions and of course our vulnerability to UK bugs having been away so long meant we had to be super careful who visited. Vicky, a friend of Frans from the flat downstairs was a regular visitor. She has a wicked sense of humour. She is a lady painter and decorator who has actually been on a television DIY program, can’t be certain but I think it was called DIY SOS.

Vikki, Frans neighbor and friend

Wheres the food?

Frances and Sean only have one bedroomed flat and insisted that we use their room. So the situation was four people living in a one bedroom flat, confined by Covid. This went on for seven weeks. Much longer than we had initially anticipated. For all this time we always felt welcome and a strong family bond has grown between all of us.

Sean with his new car..........he wishes

Ah Johns Smiths a decent beer
at long last

Frans dream car, she had
 a little trouble getting out ha ha

Yes that's the way to do it

Chris giving Fran a cookery lesson

You can never have too much wine

Brief outing a little cramped but welcome break

Kris and Seans mam
Carol at her home

Fran and Seans local shops, fabulous butcher
Fish and Chip shop, Chinese takeaway, post office,
grocery shops and Chemist

Christian community centre

Chris and Maggie

Local area where we stayed in 
Stafford

Vicki's parrots

London pub just before closing time, one of
our cases in the foreground

During our stay with Frances and Sean we had the opportunity to meet some of the members of the church she is attending. Because of Covid we are only able to attend the church twice but were made very welcome. It was quite a novelty to have people from India visiting them.

One of the highlights of our visit was the sheer joy of seeing my daughter baptised. She was in all senses born again. She has taken Christ as Saviour which obviously is a very big step in anybody’s life. It is taken as a decision made by an adult and is in no way the same as being christened as a baby. Christine and I are both born again Christians who have committed ourselves to following where God leads. We originally came to India following God’s Word so it was particularly poignant to see Frances commit herself to the same life during this visit. I had the honour to speak and to pray for her. I could not have been more proud.

Fran speaking before her baptism

Splendid testimony from Fran

Chris, Kris, Amanda, Carol and Sean getting
ready for Frans big moment at church

Chris speaking at 
Frans Baptism 
very moving occasion

She is now baptised, Praise the Lord

While we were in the UK we would have loved to visit friends and family both in Durham and in the south of the country. We couldn’t do this simply because we didn’t have the money.

It may be hard to understand just how short of money we were. Had it not been for Frances and Sean we could never have afforded anywhere to stay. Bear in mind that we were still paying rent and of course electricity and normal running costs for our house in India. For at least the next year plus a large proportion of our income will have to go to paying these debts we have incurred because of the situation we were put in. We have one great consolation, we are incredibly happy to be home again in our adopted country.

Christine suffered very badly from the damp cold weather. Her pain levels were such that she had to begin taking serious painkillers again just to get some margin of relief. I was also taking painkillers to a lesser extent because of my arthritis. We both contracted a lung infection during the first week in the UK. This was severe enough for an ambulance to be sent and the possibility of hospitalisation contemplated. We were however adamant that we were safer where we were and that we had a good relationship with the local doctors who are temporarily registered with. The infection itself was dealt with in about 10 days but the effects were much longer lasting as we were in a damp climate. We had both forgotten just how miserable grey and damp a UK winter can be, chilled you to the bone. We didn’t even get to see any snow so Christine couldn’t go sledding!

We helped out as much as we could and contributed what little money we had to the common fund. Frances and Sean were absolutely brilliant taking it all in their stride. We both remarked privately that we had never visited anyone before who made us feel so welcome and so at home. We wish that we had had enough money to take them out, wine and dine them but it was not to be. We did however manage to take them out to a pub for a roast Sunday lunch and a beer or two.

Local wildlife in the park

Downtown Stafford, not much 
activity these days

At least the buses were usually 
regular and comfortable

Local park and castle
Popular visitors 
attraction

Dukie and Maggie 
out on their walk

Photos to show Gita that cars all drive in the same
direction 

Gita wanted photos of English
animals

More sheep

Local graveyard as
Gita only knows about
burning on pyre when a 
loved one passes

Local church

At last a whopper from Burger King for Kris, 
Fran having a subway on our journey to heathrow

The castle a local attraction worth
a visit 

A few more photos of the castle inside and out

We met Santaa

Local pub great carvery

Park with lots of wildlife really nicely done

The highstreet is becoming deserted 
just like so many other towns and 
cities nowadays

More clicks of the Castles grounds below

Shop in Stafford 

Yes they have a great selection of the oldies
but goodies 

More impressive in person, Delhi
Airport sculpture

Sculpture at Delhi airport, amazing

The journey home was fairly uneventful. My granddaughter took us to Heathrow. 

Amanda and Carol

From there it was the big silver bird to Delhi and then the overnight train to Udaipur. I should also mention that before we could leave we had to have Covid tests and again when we arrived in India the same process was repeated before we could leave the airport. I have to admit that the Indian authorities at the airport seemed to be far more concerned about infection than we had noticed at Heathrow. It was wonderful to feel the wheels hit the runway and know that most of a very long journey was over with only the rail trip to go.

We arrived at Delhi railway station to catch the overnight train back to Udaipur. I needed to find a toilet as probably due to stress my IBS was misbehaving. Heading up a long flight of stairs, a walk and then a flight down I finally arrived on the platform that Kris and I knew had a bathroom. Meanwhile Christine was sorting out porters and luggage and would meet me on the platform. It sounded like a good plan.... It wasn’t. To begin with the directions we had for the platform we wanted were wrong or misunderstood so I ended up on entirely the wrong side of the station. After a good deal of searching I found a toilet block looked after by little man who charged me five rupees to use it. Being an Asian toilet you have to crouch. This is where things started to go badly wrong. As I began stand after finishing my foot slipped on the wet floor I grabbed a valve on the wall for support and ended in a heap on the floor with water pouring from a pipe that now didn’t have the valve on it, but was in my hand! Struggling and flapping around like a wet fish I finally got back to my feet by now I was completely soaked. Mumbling apologies and giving the guy ₹50 I set off back towards the flight of stairs I had come down. By now I was tired, wet and very cold. I had reached the point where I could not go on wandering around any longer and had decided to head for one of the station offices and ask for help. It was at that moment that a porter and Christine saw me and both shouted. It seems she had realised that the directions were wrong and had been searching for me. I cannot praise the people at Delhi too much it seems there were at least four may be five people out searching for me. I spent the remainder of our time at the station wrapped in blankets. I don’t think I have ever been so cold. The combination of the cool weather and soaking clothes completely sapped any energy I had. In retrospect it’s quite funny, especially the look on the guys face as I offered him the valve back! I guess it must have come off before because all he did was Ram it on to the pipe and hit it. Repaired.

During our time away Deloo, Geta’s mother, my second rakhi sister lived at our home to take care of her and the house and gardens. She has done a brilliant job. The gardens are all looking good other than one area that hasn’t had enough water. We didn’t know what to expect when we got back and it was a very pleasant experience to see how well our gardens had been looked after.

Gita spoke with us every day via Skype, this helped an awful lot. As soon as she knew we had got our Visa’s she started a countdown to us coming home. When we got here crazy excited does not really cover her reaction she hasn’t stopped cuddling us since.

Our visit to the UK has left us both exhausted and because of the cold damp weather our arthritis and rheumatism is very bad at the moment. We are both in considerable pain. Every day we are keeping a log burner going. Although it is much warmer here than the UK (15° C) the extra heat is helping. Sleeping is still a problem as our body clocks are completely out of sync! Slowly we are getting back to normal. Lots of friends have been calling in and wishing us well. What was going to be a few quiet days has been anything but! It’s been brilliant.

It’s at times when you are having the greatest difficulties that you find who your friends truly are. We are both blown away by how hard everybody worked to look after Gita and ensure her education continued and to make certain that our house was looked after properly. In particular I cannot thank Peter, Melissa and Tush (sorry I may not have spent this correctly, but that’s how it sounds) enough for all they did and to the many other friends and neighbors who contributed their help whilst we were away. Knowing our home was being looked after and Gita was safe lifted a huge weight of worry from us.

Tush and Peter enjoying
a traditional Christmas Turkey meal

Mel and the snowman

I have come to the conclusion that I hate Windows 10! I was quite happy with Windows 7 but 10 had some features that I thought might be useful to my writing. I have never had so many problems as I have had since loading Windows 10. The PC I use is quite powerful with plenty of memory and a very fast processor so it can cope with anything that I throw at it including speech to word which demands a lot from the processor. The latest problem… When I load photographs to the blog simply put it won’t. Windows 10 saves pictures in a different format than a simple JPEG. This may seem to be a very good idea and probably has some advantages however, it is no use to me at all for our use. To cut a long story short Windows 10 will be departing shortly from this computer! My apologies for the lateness of this blog but I am at the moment unable to load any of the photographs we want to show you. Fingers crossed we can get this sorted out fairly rapidly. Lost some of our pictures in the process.

Well I have made it another year! I was 71 on February 16. Friends called in which was lovely with food and congratulations. I also gained two bottles of whiskey. All in all a very good night.

I mentioned a while ago that I had published a book to Amazon ‘The time traveller’ and believe it or not at RS40 I seem to have sold some copies. A review by a well-known author was very positive. He liked the story and the struggle the main character has to retain his identity but did criticize sentence structure and punctuation, never has been my strong point! I only write for my own amusement. So saying I am in the middle of ‘tales from the forest’ a book of short stories for children centered on the animals and characters within a forest. I am getting rave reviews from Gita so this may be another one that will end up being available on Amazon. The book is dedicated to her and her love of bedtime stories. Maybe one day she will read ‘grandpa’s book’ to her own children. (:

Chris wrote these superb
stories for Gita 
she loves them so much

So here I sit writing this blog looking out on the sun shining across our garden and the blue skies above. It is a wonderful feeling to be home again although it’s a bitter sweet feeling as we both miss Frances and Sean. They have promised to try and save enough money for the airfares to be able to visit us. Perhaps in two years it is us who will be giving them our hospitality. If you’re reading this guy’s start saving the sooner you can come the happier we will be.

We haven’t covered everything that has happened to us since we lost our jobs at the NGO but I think this blog gives you a flavor of the chaos which has been our life for the past few months. Those who know us well will understand that we are still in our boat paddling with Jesus steering. The course we are on is his. There are times when we have no idea where our life is going but we never lose faith in the fact that Jesus never gives you more to handle then you can cope with. No doubt in later blogs we will refer to different things that happened that we have not mentioned here.

One more important thing

Christmas Mk2

when we got back home because we missed Christmas with Gita we decided to have another one! Tree Christmas dinner and presents.

Gita decorated the tree

Gita twirling in her new dress

Gita loves dump trucks so Santa got her one

Whatever

Her first train set

She wants to be a vet when
she grows up and Vicki bought
her these books

Christmas no 2 with some of
her gifts

Ah Turkey dinner what could be nicer

So for now,

May the Lord bless you and keep you, we send all our love from India.

Chris, Kris and Gita. February, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.