Slumdog Shrink

First of all, many many apologies for taking so long to post this.  All I can say in my defence is that travelling is time consuming, and so is writing this blog!  This is the second time I have written it after the internet connection failed and wiped out my last effort.  Technology eh!  Sigh.  Right, here goes.

Have you ever seen the film Wall-E?  If not (and without spoiling it) the premise is that the human race has had to vacate the Earth because it is drowning in its own rubbish.  This apparently fantastical scenario is not dissimilar, however, to India, where seeing a rubbish bin is a rarity, where I never saw a dustbin lorry, where cows, dogs and other cattle root through the ubiquitous, rotting rubbish piles that blight the place.  It's quite hard to get used to at first, at least for me, although we started off in Delhi, which was by far the the worst of it.  Nonetheless even in apparently pristine and deserted countryside, the tops of mountains, waterfalls, anywhere you could imagine really, there is rubbish everywhere.  It's a shame really, because it's a beautiful, beautiful country.

If I'm starting on a negative note, it's largely because my initial experience of India was negative.  I think many people's is, if they are honest, and if they spend any time in an Indian metropolis.  We flew in to Delhi from the serenity of Hogsback in South Africa and it occurred to me on the plane that it might be a bit of a shock to the system.  My only misapprehension was the gravity of the shock.  I was caught and bowled by the sheer slam-it-in-your-face intensity of the place when I first arrived.  Everyone who's been to India speaks about the assault on the senses that it is.  All I can say is noting can prepare you for the reality.   When we passed through customs into the baggage collection hall I thought there might be something wrong with my eyes.  The haze of what it later became clear was pollution was making the far end of the hall a milky, opaque colour. 

The city hits you immediately.  Activity...everywhere.  There is this intense freneticism.  Everyone rushing about, competing for space, breath, position, everything.  It's like when you're really stressed at work, trying to juggle loads of stuff at once and then your neighbour calls you to say your boiler is flooding their kitchen.  Only it's that feeling all the time.  Chronic stress.  And you can do nothing accept accept it and learn to love it.

We took a while to negotiate a taxi.  Everything is weirdly bureaucratic.  You have to stand in line at one queue in order to get a piece of paper which allows you to join another queue, where the piece of paper gets stamped, and then you join another queue to get a taxi.  And all the time the taxi driver is standing 10 feet away from you.  And people are pushing in, jostling for position all the time.  In South Africa they use the word 'hectic' when they are describing stressful situations.  To me, hectic means fast-paced or frenetic.  But in both of these contexts it's a good word to describe Delhi and trying to do anything in Delhi.

Managing to negotiate a taxi, we were on the road. Driving on the roads in Delhi, and India generally, is like being in one of those crazy driving arcade games you see in amusement parks, with people, dogs, carts, rickshaws, cycles, cars and trucks all weaving in and out of each other's way, all blaring their horns.  Bedlam.  And cows of course, indolently chewing the cud, sometimes in the central reservation, sometimes on the pavement, or sometimes in the middle of the road.  Many of them look immaculately cared for, clean, fat and sometimes decorated with garlands.  Amongst the maelstrom of human filth and poverty, and the traffic, they add this oddly poetic, but surreal, element.  They take no notice of the traffic, which weaves around them.  And 10 feet away there's a family living by the side of the road.  Sacred indeed.

The two weeks in Delhi was earmarked for voluntary work with a charity called Asha, which provides healthcare, education and empowerment to the poorest people living in some of Delhi's slums.  If you contributed to my fundraising efforts then a very sincere thank you from me, and my assurances that your money is doing truly transformative work!  It was wonderful to see, and be a part of, and it made me realise what valuable work a charity can do in an environment like Delhi, where everyone is fending for themselves, nothing can be taken for granted and simple problems blight millions of people's lives.

The Asha staff and main building.

The Asha centre is a good sized building, and surrounding it are the chaotic, flimsy slum dwellings where so many Indians live.  We were not destined to be exposed to the slums immediately.  In fact the staff at Asha treated us with a lot of care and attention, at least initially.  They are lovely people, but for a short while I felt like a medical student again.  There was an element of not knowing how things work, but also this feeling of being treated slightly like an inexperienced kid.  Which in some ways I suppose I was.  The staff were very particular about advising us to eat in Western restaurants and not to do certain things when we were outside the Asha centre.  It dawned on me after a while that this was because they felt an element of responsibility for us, since we werre working for them, and also because we were no use to them if we became ill (indeed we would have been a burden).  So they were keen for us not to eat potentially dodgy food or venture into potentially unsafe situations.  I felt this for myself as they had booked clinics for me every day and the word was out that I was available.  There hasn't been a shrink since early 2010 when the last one volunteered.  They can of course access psychiatric services in the government hospitals, just so long as they are prepared to wait in line with the thousands of other people who swamp them every day.  They are unlikely to be seen.  Or they can go private if they can afford it, which none of them can.  So, these things being the case I was considered a valuable commodity since I was giving my services free of charge.  The next day I was seeing my first patients.

My consultation desk at one of the slum centres.  A touch basic, but it did the job.

In the UK we have lots of medications to treat mental health problems, and reasonable and increasingly available access to psychotherapy and social workers.  Here there is no psychotherapy of any kind and hardly any social work (if Asha wasn't there there would be none).  Even at Asha the patients have to pay for their investigations and medications.  I was presented with two novel challenges.  Firstly I had a list of prices for blood tests, so I had to make a balanced decision about value for money for any test I wanted (say, a blood count or a thyroid test, as these rule out important causes of mental health problems).  Secondly my choice of psychiatric drugs was limited to three.  Fluoxetine, Diazepam and Alprazolam.  Over the next two weeks these drugs became my allies. 

Every day I went to a different slum and every day had a line of people patiently waiting to see me. Their problems were often familiar, although usually bound within a cultural and social identity that made them harder to get to grips with. Depression and somatisation (the manifestation of psychological problems with physical symptoms) were very common, as were alcohol problems. Psychotic patients were brought in by their desperate neighbours. Learning disabled children by their bewildered mothers.  Head-injured and chronically disabled husbands by their despairing wives.  Sometimes all I could offer was reassurance and education. I became very aware of, comparatively, how much we have to offer in the UK. And how, removed from the supportive structure of social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists and other agencies, I was relatively powerless to help the often desperate problems I was seeing.  And yet they were so grateful! In one clinic I was decorated with a garland. 

Everyone was polite and friendly. The staff endlessly accommodating and helpful. It really is a wonderful organisation doing great works. And I considered myself very fortunate to be able to see it first hand.

On some days we went into the slums to visit people.  We saw both the poverty and conditions people have to live in, and also the changes that Asha have helped to implement over the years.  

A view from the Seelampur slum.  Brick buildings were less common when you got further into the slums.  But everywhere, piles and piles of rubbish.

The key has been the empowerment of the women in the slums.  Asha has organised them into groups with a defined purpose and supported them to approach their governmental leaders to request and ensure improvements to their lives.  Simple things.  A toilet block.  An electricity supply.  Sewerage.  Access to banks.  Things we never think of in the UK, but without which we would not be able to go about our comfortable daily lives.  Sobering.

A meeting of the Seelampur slum women's group at the Asha centre, with the associated children's group in the foreground.

Inside one of the more luxurious slum dwellings we were invited into.  A family of eight live here.  In two rooms.

A view out over the rooftops of some slum dwellings.  The roof is made of anything people can find.  It is amazing that it all holds together really.  Sometimes it doesn't.

I don't suppose I could ever really impart the unpleasant nature of the slums to you in words, or even pictures.  The smell, the flies, the human and animal waste, the grim look in the adult's eyes much of the time (although with many smiles too).  It made me realise there is nothing pleasant about poverty.  I think I had naively thought that people kind of get used to it; learn to like it.  I think they get used to it, but that doesn't mean it's pleasant in any way at all.  I visited lots of slum dwellings.  They are cobbled together from bricks, corrugated iron, bits of plastic, anything really.  Often a family of ten will be living in a space a quarter the size of the smallest flat in London.  It's amazing that they manage to make it work.  They have to.  I felt humbled.  

I met some of the kids that Asha is helping to go to university.  Bright sparks, shining through the adversity.  I have no idea how or where they manage to study, but they are getting good marks, sometimes at the top of their class, and they take nothing for granted.  They relish every experience, seize their opportunities when they come along and generally were inspiring people to talk to. I visited 5 slums in all.  Each had a different feel, but in all the problems were the same.  Profound problems with simple solutions that Asha is helping the people to tackle.  So I can report that, if you donated to my fundraising efforts, that it is being spent very well.  Real change.  And a genuine sense of hope.  Thank you, thank you, thank you! :)

Aside from my clinics, I also taught the community health volunteers about how to spot mental health problems, especially in women of child-bearing age and simple steps in treatment and support.  I hope it was helpful.  A drop in the ocean, but a drop nonetheless.

And before I knew it, the Asha experience was over.  That it passed so quickly was probably because I was so busy.  They used me well, worked me hard, and I treasure the experience, difficult though I often found it.  I felt that here was a cause where money was really going far, making a difference to people's lives and genuinely improving prospects.  But truly there is a mountain of work to do in this city, where the daily reality is such a huge number of people, and their needs, that you find yourself being actually swept along in the crush.

I found after a while I started to screen the nasty bits of Delhi out.  The incessant noise, pollution, rubbish and filth.  But to a certain extent the city just forced me to accept the reality of it.  There's nothing you can do but get on with it and make the best.  Objectively it is a bit of a hell-hole.  You can look directly at the sun during the day the pollution is so bad.  There's rubbish everywhere.  Everything is dirty.  Organised gangs of beggars, often kids, harass you regularly.  Sometimes the ringleaders purposefully beat the children up so people are more likely to give them money.  It was so heart-wrenching to see!  And genuine beggars too, often paralysed and wasted by simple, easy-to-treat diseases you never see in the UK (polio especially).  I had never seen a case of polio before coming to India.  All I can say is, if you're a parent, get your kids vaccinated.

The Indians are a lovely bunch.  Charming, friendly and absolutely unoffendable!  Even when they're trying to fleece you, and they do that regularly, it is done with such friendly, enthusiastic charm it is impossible to hold it against them.  Everyone is fighting for their position here, much more than I am used to in London, and that they can do it with such camaraderie is very much a credit to them.

During the weekends of the two weeks in Delhi we were free to see the sights and do a bit of travelling.  We visited Agra, Jaipur and did some sightseeing around Delhi.  It was also the Hindu festival of Diwali, so we were witness to the festival of lights, which essentially combines much of what we experience at Christmas and fireworks night into a few days of brightly coloured lights and decorations, presents, food and fireworks that make the city sound like a war-zone.  No health and safety regulations here.

So first weekend we went Agra, the red city.  Awful six hour bus journey there on terrible roads in a ramshackle old bus which had a repertoire of horn tunes that wouldn't be out of place at a circus, and driven at break neck speed by a crazy driver, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, cattle. dogs, people etc etc.  We sat at the back, partly because there were seats there and partly in deference to the fact that having any sort of view of the oncoming traffic in India makes you fear for your life.  I also concluded that, if we did crash, perhaps the back was a safer place to be.   About 200 kms from Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh, this city is home to the inestimable Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort, both world heritage sights.  The Taj Mahal was built by the Shah Jahan in 1653 after 20,000 workmen had worked on it for 22 years.  It was a palace devoted to his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. And it is every bit as fabulous as that manpower might imply.  Sumptuous, soaring, symmetrical marble structures with the most beautiful intricate inlays of semi precious stones and verses from the Koran.  The peace and tranquility of the place were palpable despite the hordes of visitors treading the sample path as us, and millions before us.  Go if you can.  It is simply stunning.

Apologies for this.  It had to be done...! 

Second the Agra Fort, sometimes called the red fort because of the red sandstone its exterior is built of, which the Shah Jahan spent the last eight years of his life in after he was incarcerated there by his own son, Aurangzeb.  Much older than the Taj Mahal, maybe dating back to 1000AD it was converted from a fort to a palace by Shah Jahan, and so the inside is much more decorative than the outside would have you believe.  Not the spectacle of it's neighbour it was anyway a good place to visit.  The history of India starts to gain substance when you visit such places.

The outside of the red fort. 

The gardens inside.

The architectural style. 

The inner courtyard. 

Over the next week we had a day off for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.  The Asha staff had a party which we were invited to.  Lots of yummy food, fireworks, bangers and excited kids!

Whilst everyone else was off with their families, we took the chance to do a bit of sightseeing.

First the Lotus Temple, one of the most stunning houses of worship I have ever had the privilege of seeing.  Built to look like a closed Lotus flower, and the seat of the Baha'i faith, it is a serene, quiet and meditative haven where we took some time out of the chaos reigning outside.

Second, the tomb of the second Mughal emperor Humayun, who ruled much of northern India in the 15th century.  

The India Gate, not to be confused with the gateway of India (in Mumbai).

And lastly the Laxminarayan Hindu Temple.  Buzzing with activity for Diwali and looking a bit like Harrod's in London, although that might be a sacrilegious simile... 

Phew!

Second weekend was spent in Jaipur, aka the pink city.  It was a whistle-stop tour of the Amber fort and Jaigarh fort, which overlooks the Amber Fort, and the city palace.  Well worth a visit if you're around that neck of the woods.  Agra, Jaipur and Delhi form the so-called Golden Triangle of northern India, and are rich in culture.  We left exhilarated, but a bit rushed...we were booked on a train out of Delhi that Sunday evening.  

 Entry into Jaigarh fort.  We were the first inside, the result of a quintessentially Indian fluke of bureaucracy.

 Apparently this is the largest cannon in the world.  It was only ever fired once, as a test and took so long to build that the war it was built for was over by the time it was completed.  The cannonball it fires weighs 100kg!

Jaigarh fort.

The Amber Fort, as seen from Jaigarh Fort.  You can see the elephants on their daily parade inside.

One of the brightly decorated (we called them 'rave' (elephants) returning from a day's work in Jaipur.

And that Sunday we rushed back to Delhi, via some spectacularly delicious curry from the most dilapidated looking roadside restaurant ever, and hurried to the train station where we had managed, through fluke or some sort of other witchcraft, to get a first class train ticket on the overnight sleeper to Mumbai.  India trains are an experience in themselves.  Perhaps I'll leave that description for another time though.  We wended our way out of Delhi along the same train line as I had been standing on a week before, chatting to the people who lived in the slums directly beside it.  Several get killed every year because they have to cross the tracks to find somewhere to defecate.  And that, I think, is probably the image I'll leave you with.  This part of my journey said something to me about the state of the world some people have to live in, and I found myself often feeling sad, even slightly despairing, even though I was grateful for the experience.  The chaos, the day-to-day hardships, the random, simple, yet often preventable things that blight people's lives.  But tempering it the humanity and kindness of people doing what they can to share the burden, to alleviate the suffering.  I salute you.  And offer you an enormous, compassionate and loving hug as well.  I suppose, sometimes, that's all we have to offer.  But in many ways it is the most important thing of all.

xxx

South Africa - A Randy Rag Bag

I originally started writing this post over two months ago, when we first came to South Africa.  But now I find myself reading it back to myself in India, after we've left, and it doesn't quite seem to make sense.  I don't know why.  Perhaps my feelings about the place have changed or perhaps, immersed in the mire of the place, I had no overall perspective on the experience.  Or maybe it's the beard.  Yes, I expect it is that.  I am not shaving very much these days.

At any rate, I trashed it (the post that is, not the beard) and here we go again.

We flew back from Madagascar and spent three days chilling in Johannesburg.  The weather was glorious and there was no need to do anything.  It felt like the right thing to do after such an immersive and exotic, but tiring, trip to Madagascar and we met this bluff old Glaswegian guy called Malcolm who entertained us with his comedy hobble and stories of running casinos all over Africa throughout his career.  Tough life, but exciting it all sounded.  He ended up being with us in Cape Town too so we got to know him a bit.  I guess he was in his seventies.  Living off his pension.  Long, hippy like hair.  Only one eye working but never misses a thing.  Looks a bit like a pirate really now I come to think about it.  Drinks in the morning and smokes like a chimney.  A real character.  Extroverted.  Loquacious.  A bit intense sometimes.  Lots of stories.  Believes he has a rare psychiatric condition when he probably doesn't.  Loved pineapple flavour Fanta.......

Why am I talking about him?  I guess because he was there.  And he stood out from the crowd.  I quite liked him.  Backpacking in your seventies.  Hobbling about, telling stories, drinking, smoking and quietly slipping into old age amongst a gaggle of young, know-it-alls.  It's not a bad way to do it I think.

We travelled on the Greyhound bus from Johannesburg to Cape Town after a few days relaxing at the Gandhi.  Armed with a robust supply of Zolpidem, the 18 hour coach trip passed in a soporific haze and we felt quite good getting off the bus.  So much so that when we arrived in Cape Town we almost immediately hiked up Table Mountain.  It was a glorious day and we met a random chap called Brendon who offered to be our guide.  Nice guy. Tall, lanky, attractive, full of the zeal of someone in their early twenties.  But without the forward planning, as we discovered half way up the mountain when those coming down remarked that if we didn't get a move on we would miss the last cable car down.  Not wishing to be picking our way down the, at times, precarious and stoney path we were on in the dark, we hot-footed it up the mountain, getting to the top as the sirens blared alerting all to get the hell to the cable car station.  Quick photos.  No time to appreciate the view.  And back down in the cable car which revolves as it descends.  Phew!

We ended up staying at a place called Long Street Backpackers (http://www.longstreetbackpackers.co.za) which dubs itself 'The Cradle Of Civilisation', which, now I write this sometime after leaving, really makes perfect sense.  Long Street I suppose is the equivalent of somewhere like Soho in London.  Frenetic, noisy, in the centre of things.  It tires you out after a while but you meet loads of different people and generally spend lots of money you didn't mean to on booze, not an insubstantial proportion of it on their very own shot, the Long Street Love.

Anyway, so I can cut out a lot of typing by just saying there were lots of drunken nights out (and in) and we got to know the place so well we even started serving people behind the bar (because they thought we worked there).  Good times.

On a rare sober day we visited Robben Island, prison to Nelson Mandela for the best part of two decades. Easily reachable by boat from the waterfront in Cape Town, it is now no longer a prison but a museum, although even in this guise the perversion continues in the form of our museum guide who was a former prisoner but now lives on the island with his former guards, who are also now his friends. Mental! It was sobering to see the harsh life they had to put up with, the punishments they had to endure in the name of their fight. Whilst society is never going to be equitable in a utopian way, we are nonetheless blessed to be able to get on with our lives in relative freedom (or at least in the absence of persecution).  Glorious views of Table Mountain from Robben Island!

Our ugly mugs obscuring it!

Nelson Mandela's prison cell for 18 years...

 Our tour guide at the prison, a former inmate!

The prison itself, from the front.

We tried, and failed to go to Cape Point, mostly because we were hungover, stopped for a long lunch and then got diverted by the Boulder's Beach penguin sanctuary.  Lots of penguins.  Ro was in his element as he loves them.  I thought they were a bit smelly really, although their antics were funny- bossing and shoving each other about and playing in the breakers on the beach.

That weekend we went to a South African Trance party, which in the UK would fall under the guise of an electronic music festival, although here they focus much more on psychedelic trance music than in the UK, where it is quite underground.  Since I love psychedelic trance I was a happy bunny, and the setting was definitely stunning!

They had this cute stand where you could pick up a clothes peg which had an inscription on it and peg it to yourself or someone else, so Ro pegged '"I am blessed" to me and I pegged "I am huggable" to him.  And then we had a hug.  Awwww.  How sweet ;-)

The music was epic.

As was the wind the next day.  To such an extent that I was forced to use my sarong as a dust mask!

We retreated back to Long Street with our stomping shoes sated and over the next couple of days did some walks around the hills surrounding Table Mountain and I took a trip to Camps Bay and walked up Signal Hill (Ro had painful neck spasms that day).

The view from Signal Hill.  Camps bay in the distance.  Stunning view.  I quite like the photo too as it has the added bonus of looking like I took it just as a thermonuclear warhead was detonated out to sea.

We were lucky as the flowers were also out :)

Camps bay.  Lots of pretty people.

The sunset from the beach at Llandudnow, with two dogs taking advantage of the romantic ambience.

We also went to another random Trance party called the Village, which turned out to be set in the winelands nestled into a little valley behind a dam.  Beautiful!

A couple of days later we were off up north towards Namibia. Lots of driving to come. We stopped over in a bizarre place called Citrusdal in the Cederberg mountains, which attracted us because of its hot springs. In reality, and although the hot springs were very pleasant, it's the sort of place that makes you feel uneasy but you're not really sure why, and then you realise that the whole place feels like some sort of weird cult, with slightly syndromal men and women regarding you suspiciously, the woman at reception clearly some sort of despotic overlord, and a copy of the bible in your room, which itself is so bare and austere that it feels like it might have been used for some sort of atrocity in the past. We left quickly the next day and powered our way up through Springbok, and across the Namibian border. The verdant pastures of the Western Cape were long gone, replaced with the arid scrub of the fast approaching desert.  See my post on Namibia for the lowdown on this epic country.  Two weeks later however we were crossing back over the border and drove all the way back to Cape Town in one fell swoop from the Namibian border.  A behemodrive!

Inevitably we spent a few days in Long Street...it was starting to feel like home.  But time was ticking on and we were keen to see the wine country and garden route before getting back to Johannesburg to fly to Delhi on the 2nd November.  We took off up to Stellenbosch, which has something like 250 vineyards surrounding it, and spent a pleasant couple of days sampling wines.  The scenery here is particularly stunning.  Vineyards with a backdrop of green hills!  The wine probably improved my perceptions too!

After a couple of days we headed south east towards a place called Wilderness, out first stop along the Garden Route.  The drive was long and the weather was appalling.  We seemed to be caught in a storm which, given that it washed away part of the road we were driving along, was pretty severe by all accounts.  We rode out the storm at our first Garden Route hostel, a place called Fairy Knowe Backpackers (http://www.wildernessbackpackers.com).  We have, I note, tended to choose backpackers with a eco-friendly, peace and love theme.  Lots of greenery, hammocks, chilled vibes, weed-smoking hippies and that sort of enchanted forest feel.  Suits me very well at this time of my life.  The only disadvantage is that you can sometimes spend entire days not doing anything.  But since it's meant to be a holiday I don't judge myself for that.  Yet.  Anyway, when the weather cleared we went on a gorgeous walk into the Wilderness national path, wending our way through the forest, over a floating bridge...

...and on up to a stunning waterfall, where the water runs the colour of Red bush tea from all the tannins in the soil.

Another walk took us down the disused railway track to Victoria Bay, on the way visiting a man who had made his home in a cave.

He was an interesting, eccentric chap who claimed to have been guided to the cave by the Holy Spirit, which had also told him to get away from all his friends and family.  I don't remember the story too well now I come to write it, but the essence was quite ironic, since on the face of it he was seeking a life of solitude tucked away in his cave, whereas in fact he is now a local celebrity and gets visitors all the time.  He also provides accommodation for homeless people passing through the area, and they eat on this long table and chairs set out on the railway tracks by the sea.  I don't think he was seeking solitude at all really.  He was actually quite vain and seemed to like all the attention whilst professing his love of solitude.  I took it to be a curious sort of self-effacing self-obssession, but since that's not a million miles form my own personality (or so I believe) I was probably projecting a bit too.   Still, the whole style of the place was a sort of fascinating macabre burlesque.  It felt as though a ghost train should pull in any second and all sorts of disembodied souls in bloodied wedding dresses and tuxedos pour out ready for a night of despicable frivolity.  It was entertaining!

The next day it was a truly glorious day and we seized the opportunity to go tandem paragliding, leaping off a hill overlooking the bay and spending about 40 minutes swooping through the air, catching thermals up high and then careening downwards again in long, nausea inducing spirals.  Massive fun!  Stunning views.  

That afternoon we took out a couple of canoes and paddled up-river with some of the other guys at the hostel.  Quite hard work actually, but rewarding as we glided into the national park and stopped for a sun bathe and a dip in the reddy-coloured river.

And, to complete our bucolic experience, we spent a morning horse riding, ending with a slightly bizarre dip in a pond with the horse.  The horse really didn't want to go in, but it was all part of the package apparently, so with a lot of quite harsh persuasion we finally ended up in the water together, where he decided to refuse to move.  Still, it was perhaps better than the antics of Ro's horse, who ended up depositing him into the water very ungraciously.  Heh heh heh! ;)  I didn't get a picture unfortunately...far too entrancing a scene to miss behind a camera lens.

That was Wilderness over and done with.  We bid a fond farewell and moved on about 100kms down the road to The Crags and, I can confidently say, one of the best backpacking lodges I have ever been too.  It was basically a hippy commune, the scenery and setting so stunning, the people so relaxed and friendly and the food and accommodation so good, that I really could not fault it in anyway.  And I usually find it easy to fault!  It was called Wild Spirit, and I thoroughly recommend a visit if you're in the area (http://www.wildspiritlodge.co.za).

This was the view from the dormitory...!

And views from the communal areas.

A beautiful walk through an enchanted feeling forest led to a stunning waterfall where I took a skinny dip in the pool!  Fresh.

Lots of positive messages :)

And they even had a yoga studio for fuck's sake!  So I did some yoga too.  Such a peaceful, restorative place.  There weren't even any mosquitoes to speak of.  It was a shame we only stayed a few days.  Time was running short and the weather looked like it was going to close in again.  We took the auspices of more wet weather as an omen to move on one morning (and indeed it pummelled it down the whole day) and drove the long winding road to Away with the Fairies Backpackers (http://awaywiththefairies.co.za) and our final destination in South Africa, Hogsback.

Now this place really is straight out of the Lord of the Rings novels.  They even name the rooms things like "Bilbo's Rest".

It really could be the shire.  Take a look at the website if you doubt me.  We ended up spending the rest of our time in South Africa here, partly because it was gorgeous and the people friendly and partly because an uncommon amount of rain fell all over South Africa that week, and what with its comforting hot meals and open log fires, there really were many worse places to ride out the bad weather.  They also had the cutest Jack Russell puppy called Ziggy, and he alone was a reason to stay in my book :)

This place had one of the more extraordinary, and cool, installations I've seen in my life; an outdoor bath installed at the edge of a cliff with a view that makes you swoon!

Simply amayyyyyyzing!

And on the final day of nice weather we went mountain biking through the forests, stopping at waterfalls and admiring views.  I leave you with a series of shots.   I'm aware I'm ending this with relative short shrift.  Apologies.  All I can say in my defence is that writing these posts is quite hard work!  India next, and the squalor of the Delhi slums.  Could there be a starker contrast?

Lots of love

DrJ xx