isobelewing

[isobelewing]

SOMOS EXPLORADORES POLARES

“It’s backwards.”

That’s Garry from the New Zealand Alpine Club, neatly summarising the problem with the harness I’d tried on prior to a climbing session on Mt Ruapehu.

It’s been nearly a decade since I did any proper snowcraft and clearly I’ve become a bit rusty on a few key aspects.

Thankfully I’d got the humiliating backwards-harness display out of the way before our expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula to climb Mt Scott.

I was selected by the Antarctic Heritage Trust as part of a group of four: creator of award-winning film Paddle for the North Simon Lucas, RNZAF officer Sylvie Admore and that dude who lost his leg during Mt Ruapehu’s eruption in 2007 and now uses that experience to inspire and motivate kiwi kids, William Pike.

Today we arrived in Ushuaia, in South America’s Tierra del Fuego, the starting point of our voyage. Tomorrow we board the Akademik Ioffe with One Ocean Expeditions and sail for the Antarctic Peninsula.

We’re here to rediscover the spirit of exploration that pervades Antarctica’s history, and survives in the historic huts and sites dotted around the continent.

In attempting to summit the 880m peak named for Robert Falcon Scott, whose fateful Terra Nova expedition is one of the most widely-known tragic and heroic tales of exploration, we hope to continue the legacy of those hardy men and use our stories to stir adventure in the hearts of others, as the diaries of Shackleton and Scott have done for generations.

So I’ll take you back a few weeks to how I prepared for this trip, which starts with Garry on Mt Ruapehu.

We set off from Delta Corner Hut and spent the bluebird day brushing up on different cramponing techniques, honing my self-arrest skills (the first go resulted in my nose puncturing the snow rather than my axe pick – I can confirm it’s not as effective) and practising for a scenario you hope like hell you’ll never encounter in real life: trying to find someone buried in an avalanche using a transceiver.

I also visited Dome Shelter for the first time – the tiny A-frame perched above the crater lake where rocks rained down in 2007 and claimed William’s leg. (Watch my story on Newshub to get an idea of that terror).

A few weeks later I joined the Inspiring Explorers team in Christchurch where we travelled to Mt Cook to hone the specific skills we’ll need for our attempt of the heavily-glaciated Mt Scott.

Descending on Mt Cook’s Grand Plateau from the sky was a magnificent experience. The Plateau Hut was dwarfed by the scale of the Hochstetter ice fall and our helicopter was buffeted by strong gusts. For South Island iwi Ngai Tahu,  Aoraki is their most sacred of ancestors. They rarely scaled his slopes except to lay the bones of high ranking men or women.

The mountain was a place where spirits and “atua” resided and they regarded him with fear and deference – an attitude mountaineers would do well to emulate – Aoraki’s crisp white beauty is splendid, but the rumble of avalanches a constant reminder of his power.

We roped together in the fashion used for glacier travel – 10m apart in case someone drops through the often-thin layer of snow concealing a crevasse, and his companions either side can secure themselves in the snow to halt his fall.

I have a firm belief that the part of the brain responsible for maths is the same part used for knot-tying, because despite years of outdoor education learning the various types (and a refresher last year onboard a Navy ship) my fingers flounder with a mere figure eight. But after some patient instruction from our mountain guide Kev, I’m satisfied my teammates can rely on my abilities. A competition to rope up the fastest leaves me fumbling in the dust, but it soon transpires the quicker members of the group have compromised on technique, so my slow and painstaking approach wins out. There is nothing wrong with being the tortoise.

Kev picked out one of the less threatening crevasses – one without too much of an overhanging lip and which is about 15m deep. We built a snow anchor by digging a t-shaped slot in which a snow stake is inserted, and the rope tied on. I was first and I swing my legs over the ledge. There’s some slack in the rope so I drop a metre or two but our anchor holds solid and soon I’m dangling in the calm of the crevasse. The walls are crystal blue and down to my right turn a darker shade, gaping into the glacier’s depths.

An unintentional crevasse tumble will be much more unpleasant and most likely a longer free fall, but I’m confident our preparedness, combined years of experience and solid teamwork will serve us well when we reach Mt Scott.

The question I’ve fielded the most in recent weeks has been “Are you nervous?”

Yep, I am nervous that we won’t get the weather window we need to complete the climb. I am nervous I’ll suddenly forget how to tie an alpine butterfly knot. I am nervous my comparatively limited abilities may frustrate my companions. But mostly I feel anticipation, excitement and a massive sense of pride to share the company of three individuals whose achievements are an inspiration and whose stories reflect the kinds of attitudes of the early explorers: pluckiness, resilience, determination and an urge to discover.

As Sir Edmund Hillary said: “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

To reach great heights in any pursuit, we must conquer self-doubt, fear and nervousness, and any good adventure should push us to the edge of comfort.

And if nothing else, we’re going to have some great yarns.

[isobelewing]

A voyage to a far-flung kingdom

The New Zealand Government's released its 2016 consultation document for the management of threats to New Zealand sea lions. Most of the population of the critically endangered species lives in the subantarctic Auckland Islands, but it's in decline.

Isobel Ewing sailed to the archipelago and reflects on the fragility of its wildlife and ecosystems, and what the often-forgotten outpost of New Zealand can teach us about the changes faced by the planet.

They're the last trees you'll see when you sail towards the bottom of the globe.

Gnarled and wind-worn but blooming vibrant red, the southern rata epitomise the contrast of wildness and beauty of the subantarctic Auckland Islands.

We sailed here from Devonport on board the HMNZS Otago. It's a four-day voyage, beginning at Auckland to allow voyagers to adjust to the ocean, rather than plunging straight into the southern ocean from Dunedin.

There are 28 of us in the Young Blake Expeditions group, 14 high school age - hand-picked by the Sir Peter Blake Trust for their proven environmental nous and leadership, and 14 of us mentors, including scientists, a doctor, Department of Conservation rangers and media.

In taking these young people to a part of the world dear to Sir Peter's heart and involving them in scientific research, the Trust hopes to continue his legacy: inspire young leaders who share what they learn about climate change and ocean health with other Kiwis.

The departure from Auckland Harbour is serene. On day two, the students hang off the stern to catch a glimpse of dolphins gliding on the wave we cut through the turquoise water.

In the evening a call comes across the ship comms: "The route will pass over the rich fishing grounds of Ranfurly Banks and the vessel will be capitalising on this by loitering in the vicinity. All ship's company wishing to cast a line should report to the bow at 0600 hours".

A gaggle of us are up an hour before wake-up call to watch the Navy crew reel in monster kingfish as the sun begins to touch the horizon.

That afternoon, the last scrap of 3G loads enough Google Map to show our dot sinking south of Stewart Island, and the sea turns hostile.

It's equally exhilarating and terrifying to stand on the bridge, surveying the plunging valleys and peaks of the sea ahead. We cling to anything solidly attached to the wall as the ship crashes down from towering waves and try to yogi-breathe through the nausea.

I ask one of the crew - who we only know as "Chief", a salty sea dog who joined the navy at 15 - what these 8m swells rate out of 10.

"This is a one, mate."

As is in one out of 10. He reckons they had 15m swells three months prior and the ship had listed to 43 degrees. He sleeps on his back and when he woke on his front he momentarily thought they had capsized.

At dinner in the officer's mess the captain lunges with a familiarity of habit as a carafe of water reels towards me.

After minimal sleep in a bunk that jolted like a night-long 4.1 earthquake, we wake to find we'd sailed through the Roaring Forties.

We're in the bottom fifth of the globe's latitude and the sea's quietened in the lee of the Auckland Islands.

Our time is to be spent on the eastern coast - the west is eaten into jagged, inhospitable cliffs by the relentless wind and ocean.

Director of the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute, Professor Gary Wilson, explains the Auckland Islands are one of the best places in the world to record changes in climate because of their location in the subtropical convergence zone, where the cold water of the Antarctic circumpolar current meets warm subtropical water. They also sit at the boundary of the polar easterly winds and the westerly winds.

The Trust hopes to develop a research station at the Auckland Islands so data can begin to be gathered and future changes in climate and the effects on the ecosystem recorded.

That means monitoring changes in the ocean, the intertidal zone and the atmosphere, as well as picking up any invasive species that may find their way here as the environment changes to form a more suitable habitat.

The first crunch of the stony shore underfoot as we step of the Navy's rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIBs) is a relief after four days at sea.

Almost immediately we have company - two smooth heads break the surface and beady black eyes peer at the foreign visitors. Roughly 70 percent of the New Zealand sea lion breeding population is at the Auckland Islands and unlike shy fur seals, they readily approach you. We're told if they charge - raise an arm in the air rather than attempt to flee. I do have occasion to test this technique and sure enough the boisterous juvenile male stops in his tracks and makes a waddling retreat.

The Government's threat management plan for sea lions is currently open for submissions. The main threats are identified as disease and bycatch from fishing, and the industry has introduced devices designed to push sea lions up and out of the nets before they drown. However there's increasing concern from scientists that these might be masking the deaths by either injuring them or allowing their dead bodies to be released from the net unaccounted for.

With just 10,000 left, they're the rarest species of sea lion on earth. Scientists think they could be wiped out by 2035 if their protection isn't improved.

Days are spent undertaking various scientific work; gathering data from a NIWA weather station, taking sediment core samples from the islands and floors of the glacial fjords, dragging a net for plankton and surveying the intertidal zone.

Marine scientist Rebecca McLeod picks out a bay tucked behind the aptly named Shag Rock, exposed to the open seas which means bountiful flora and fauna to examine.

We clamber ashore across slippery blankets of giant kelp just metres from where a fur seal colony doze. Aside from perhaps a sealer 100 years ago, it's likely we're the first to set foot on this particular stretch of coastline, and certainly the first to examine what lives here. Some of the algae we gather are bound for Te Papa's National Herbarium Collection, and Dr McLeod suspects some may be new species. The possibility we are making a new discovery feels remarkable in a world where virtually every peak and tiny cay has been explored. And it's a reminder of the mystery that still shrouds this archipelago, how much we can learn from it.

The students find out the last Blake Expedition crew went swimming, that is, they jumped from the flight deck into the 5 degC water. This prompted a lot of pleading with the captain to let them do the same, so after every safety measure had been extended, including a RHIB in the water for potential rescues and a Navy crew member in position with a shark rifle, a gaggle of shivering teenagers (and myself) are clinging to the outer railing. I'm slightly worried my body might shut down upon total immersion, and for a few seconds after the plunge the signals from brain to limb seem to shut off, before jerking back to life and I claw my way to the surface, gasping and grabbing for the rope ladder.

Our final day is spent on Enderby Island, the only island in the group that's entirely pest-free. It's known for its megaherbs, giant fleshy plants related to carrots and celery. Sadly we've missed their prime, the landscape's peppered with dead, wilted flowers. But we are here at the right time to observe the lively courtship rituals of young male albatross, shrieking at the sky and swooping overhead like a demented puppet show.

Sea lion pups play in a stream while their mothers gather food at sea. It's entertaining to watch them flop and roll in the mud, but sobering to remember many will starve when their mothers are attacked by sharks or caught in fishing nets. Down the far end of the beach a line of tiny figures totter up the hillside. They're yellow-eyed penguins, another species in decline on the mainland with disease, set netting and suspected changes to their feeding areas due to climate change to blame. If they die out in New Zealand, scientists think it unlikely the population here in the subantarctic will fortify the species, it's simply too far away

The only sign of past human endeavour other than the cluster of DOC huts at Enderby is the old coastwatchers hut at Ranui Cove, on the main island. A sea lion lolls inside one of the sheds and the thick canopy of rata is a chorus of kakariki, bellbirds and pipits. These islands are a treasure. I'm acutely aware of the privilege it is to be one of the few New Zealanders to make it to this southern outpost, and I look forward to seeing what it teaches us.

Isobel Ewing sailed to the Auckland Islands with the Sir Peter Blake Trust and the Royal New Zealand Navy.

Watch the video:

http://www.newshub.co.nz/environmentsci/the-auckland-islands-a-journey-to-an-isolated-kingdom-2016070516#ixzz4E46jGh7S

[isobelewing]

"Travel in India is not for the faint-hearted, especially if you are a woman."

My impressions on being a woman in India, and an attempt to make sense of the treatment of both foreign and Indian women in a country that defies generalisation.

[isobelewing]

It’s early morning. A warm orange light is just beginning to tinge the tops of the palm trees and highlight the crayon-coloured houses that line the narrow, walled roads in Varkala. Blue, pink, lime green, purple.

Our rickshaw with our surfboards tied to the roof splutters around the blind corners, the string of fresh jasmine flowers swinging like a pendulum. That smell will always remind me of these mornings.

We get to Edava, the beach populated by Muslim fishermen and their chai shack, wooden boats, huge fishing nets and yelling-which-sounds-angry-but-isn’t-really and now shared by surfers.

Brits Ed and Sofie, founders of surf and yoga haven Soul & Surf have brought their neighbourly ethos to Edava. You don’t surf here without helping a gang of fishermen haul in their catch or lend a hand heaving the heavy skiff up the beach.

A cup of steaming chai from the shack - the fishermen’s equivalent of a smoko room - has become a mid-surf ritual.

Women wear t-shirts in the water out of respect to the local culture.

The fishermen recognise some of crew from Soul & Surf, faces breaking into grins and friendly greetings.

They had never seen a surf board before the surfers discovered this place, but they were in no way unfamiliar with riding waves and reading the sets - cross-legged men on surfboard-shaped logs were consistently getting better rides than me.

A learn-to-surf club teaching local boys the basics of surfing is part of the Soul & Surf spirit of integrating with, not alienating the local community.

The teenage boys are piled into the back of the jeep with the beginners’ soft longboards tied on the top. They’re all smiles and excited chatter. Some of them have been surfing since this time last year, but only once a week and with a three month break over the monsoon.

Part of the deal is that the boys fill a rubbish bag with pieces of plastic from the beach before they grab a board.

It’s a task they grudgingly accept, but dutifully carry out.

As we walk around in the harsh 3pm sun bending to pluck from the neverending carpet of plastic bits, the fishermen peering at us from the shade of their shacks, I feel that this small act might just leave an impression.

The boys are eager to get in and after a quick session on the beach practising pop ups, they’re galloping into the choppy mid-afternoon water.

A team of us from Soul & Surf stand waist-deep giving encouragement/making sure they don't plough eachother down.

Equipped with rubbery limbs and a fearlessness I envy, these kids surf like they have more than just one session a week.

When it's time to go in our increasingly stern calls of "last one!" are disregarded with a nod and grin as they turn their boards around for "just one more!"

It's tough work being thrashed around in white capped water under the harsh 3pm sun, issuing pointers and reminders of "paddle paddle paddle!" but the volunteers from Soul & Surf soldier on. The sessions might one day inspire a couple of the boys to persevere with surfing and perhaps become instructors.

Now that I'm back on the pristine shores of west coast New Zealand, it's hard to tell if my fond memories of Varkala are born of the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia because I'm back in the world of washing machines and waste management.

But I think it was the melting pot of strange, wonderful, enchanting, frustrating and gross that made my time in Varkala so special.

I do remember the not-so-romantic aspects, vividly actually. Such as growing accustomed to the sight of a fisherman's bare bottom as he splashes water on it after pooing on the sand, and the resulting piles scattered over the rocks next to the surf spot.

- The shop owners and their tenacious efforts at selling a pashmina to a profusely sweating girl who is clearly running and in no need of a woollen shawl.

- The plastic bags or pieces of clothing embracing your leg as it dangles from your surfboard.

- The young male amateur photographers who seem to spring from behind rocks at the sight of a bikini-clad body.

But then there were the dinners with newly-made friends at the place where the waiter came to recognise us, greeting us with his signature "Yes please!"

Illegally ordering beer that arrives, feebly disguised in mugs, and listed as "pop" on the receipt. (licences to serve liquor are expensive, so no one has one. Beer isn't on the menu but readily available to those who ask.)

- Running along a deserted clifftop traversed only by goats and chickens, weaving between cows herded along the beach or ducking under the rope held by 10 fishermen pulling their net in.

- Practising yoga on a rooftop overlooking the Arabian Sea without a care in the world except whether to break composure and slap the mosquito on my thigh.

- The way the Soul & Surf boys made me feel like catching a tiny wave was an awesome achievement, grinning at my delight.

- Discussions over morning pancakes or evening beer with souls from all over the globe, drinking in their contrasting ways of thinking, world views, values, talents and tales.

A journal entry dated 23/01/14 gives you an idea of my charmed state:

"feel like Varkala has cast a spell on me. Days, hours, have melted away. Amazing people have come and gone. I feel so lucky to have ended up here."

There was the good and the bad but it was all colourful and I'll never forget it.

Below are some snippets taken verbatim from my journals throughout my trip. 

- "This morning for breakfast I'm having something that sounded like 'niggly', it's rice cake things with spicy sauce." (Later discovered this was Idly)

- "Went up to a restaurant at 10am which said 'open at 11.30am', there were Indian tourists waiting outside to be let in. On seeing me however, a man rushed to the door and ushered me inside, saying, 'You from Paris?'"

- "I have quite a few mozzie bites. Hopefully this is not a malarial area"

- "Yoga teacher observed my dimples and said they were a 'sign of love' then said 'you must have a lot of love in your life'."

- "Rickshaw driver in Kochi named his rickshaw 'Denis Alan' after two friends from Chicago who come here every year for New Year. His mate's rickshaw is called 'Lovely Jably'."

- "just saw a snake skin under a tree."

- "Prawns for lunch on the houseboat. Dad thinks they're out of a tin. Discovers they are actually out of the lake we are travelling across. Cue horrified expression"

- "Not just anywhere would I put up with an airport security lady running her hands over EVERY body part then patting my stomach and pronouncing: 'very slim, nice body'."

India dazzled and astonished me, fired my imagination, instilled fear and anger and stirred me like no other place I've been on earth. I hope to return.

Thanks for following my adventure.

[isobelewing]

Dad sits upright in bed reading a book about India 150 years ago, from his iPad, while sipping Kingfisher from a teacup, in a little wooden Keralan house built 150 years ago.

It's our homestay near Kumily which perches on a cliff which starts as Kerala at the top and tumbles down to become Tamil Nadu below.

In the mornings thick mist billows up from the huge valley over the invisible border and into the spice garden where the little house is nestled.

A corridor of tall cardamom opens out to a courtyard of orchids, papaya and banana, a playground for kingfishers and woodpeckers in the hour after sunrise.

The farmer/homestay manager (who trained as a physicist but returned to run the family farm) is the softly spoken Thomas, a Syrian Christian, whose two daughters intend to study astronomy.

The 16-year-old tells us her aim is to study in the UK, so she needs to secure a scholarship of which just 50 are handed out in the entire country.

The house we're put up in, set in the garden behind Thomas's family home, is built entirely of glossy Malabar teak, including the door hinges.

We have to stoop to enter the tiny doorway.

The house has been in the family 150 years and was dismantled and transported to the current site where it was reassembled.

Thomas takes us on a tour of the spice farm, pointing out pepper vines, ginger and turmeric, peeling off cinnamon bark for us to taste, plucking nutmeg from the tree and demonstrating the back-bending task of picking cardamom from the pods which sprout from the base of the plant.

Thomas has some wonderful turns of phrase, made all the more charming by his gentle, articulate delivery.

He explains the peppercorn bunches have "many vacancies" due to less rain these days.

He and his wife give us a cooking demonstration that evening, and Thomas tells us about a tiny chili with a powerful heat that belies its diminutive appearance.

"We have a word in Malayalam - kanthari - means: small thing is sufficient to make many troubles."

"I can think of a lot of those," Dad replies.

[isobelewing]

In a narrow street in Edava, near Varkala in India’s lush and self-named “God’s Own Country”, a man uses a stick to prod the powerlines up so a truck can get through.

This sort of improvisation doesn’t normally warrant a second glance in India, where all types of ingenuity to solve mundane problems can be observed on a daily basis. I was recently told about a truck driver who had his two kids assisting the broken radiator en route - one tipping water in and the other catching it.

The difference here was that the truck’s cargo was several young boys painted in festive colours, some with metal skewers poked through their cheeks and dangling from wooden poles by metal hooks pushed through their skin.

It’s the Hindu festival Thaipusam, which I have since learnt is celebrated by the Tamil community on the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai (January/February). Thanks Wikipedia.

At the time I was with the manager of my homestay, who, although had helpfully transported me to the festival on the back of his motorbike, provided little information to satisfy my flabbergasted enquiries as to WHY there were teenage boys threaded on sticks like Tandoori kebabs while hundreds of people danced around shouting.

So there I am, the only foreigner in a sea of revelling Hindus, waiting for the powerlines to be moved so the truck with its limp (and decidedly unimpressed at the hold-up) cargo can continue snailing towards the temple.

Some of the suspended boys look close to passing out and are propping themselves up on a friend’s head who stands on the road. Others wave tree branches half-heartedly and look bored.

A friend who comes from a small local village tells me he’s participated in the festival twice with skewers through his cheeks.

You start on a modest length, working your way longer and longer until you’re teetering along trying to balance a metre of rod projecting from each side of your face.

He says you enter a state in which you don’t feel the pain. I find this incomprehensible given even in my most tranquil mid-yoga state I can’t fight the urge to slap a mosquito.

In the lead-up to the festival the devotees undergo a vegetarian fast, maintain abstinence and sleep on basic grass mats as a means of cleansing themselves in preparation.

Acts of devotion can include carrying heavy burdens, shaving the head or piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers.

I ask my homestay manager if eating is a problem for metal skewer-through-face enduring devotees in the days following the festival.

"No, spicy food maybe a small problem, but not bad."

He laughs at my look of astonishment.

On another truck a guy is pushed back and forward, suspended by the hooks threaded through the backs of his legs and back. He grins widely as his body swings in a wince-worthy arc, and women pass up their babies for him to cradle.

It was one of those moments in India when, despite being caught up in a scene I’d normally glimpse only on the pages of National Geographic, I’m reminded that for the participants peering at my camera, this isn’t some exotic spectacle, it’s just life.

[isobelewing]

A long bus trip from our homestay in the hills at last delivers us to the riverbank where we’re to board our houseboat.

Our driver, Uni, has spent just over a week with us but has an uncanny handle on Dad's character.

To Dad: “Mr Mark, would like to buy beer?”

Dad: “No thanks Uni, we’re fine.”

Uni: “Three days on boat, Mr Mark.”

Dad agrees we should stop and buy beer.

Shared by a cook, captain and first mate, the little houseboat would be home for three days while we drift down the tangle of backwaters stretching like a cobweb over the vast rice paddies.

Little brother is still under the weather following a bout of Delhi Belly that razed the entire family the night before. But our captain is confident we're almost out of the woods.

“My request, everbody is a little, little eating, then tomorrow, everybody is good. I am going to prayer to the God.”

Sure enough, tomorrow we are good.

The riverbanks are teeming with life. Kingfishers dart among the reeds and coconut trees, mothers bathe chuckling babes, young boys whoop as they take turns leaping into the water and fishermen crouch in quiet concentration.

The constant whir of the diesel generator mars the romance and serenity of the experience, but captain tells me turning it off means sacrificing the air conditioning. I say I’d prefer to sweat than breath in diesel fumes, but he’s adamant the generator stays on.

We have fried bananas with cumin seeds for afternoon tea.

Mum spots a water snake and we drift past masses of ducks clustered together. Purple flowers float by. So do chicken carcasses. Mango trees droop.

We arrive at a village where we consider an umbrella hat as a present for Dad’s sister. The men wear them when they work in the rice paddies. We look in a shop filled with carved effigies of Jesus Christ. Dad tries on a shirt, sweats in it, then puts it back, apologising to the surly Kashmiri shopowner.

We go ashore at dusk at a place that sounds like “Pull in canoe”. The church overflows with the first Sunday mass of January, people prepare offerings on the roadside.

The next morning we pass a group of villagers clustered around the water’s edge as policemen pull something from the water. Captain says someone might have drowned.

[isobelewing]

Love story in Kerala

In the heart of Trivandrum, a slightly shabby-around-the-edges city in south India, there is a charming 160-year-old bungalow hidden behind a large gate.

You’d never know it was there. Shielded from the hectic streets, it’s a haven of antique rosewood furniture, hunting trophies and hanging pots sprouting orchid flowers.

The house is the family home of retired Colonel Kuncheria and has been converted to a wonderful homestay where we enjoyed homecooked dahl, okra, chicken masala and chappatis in the airy dining room.

But it’s the history of the place, which still lingers beneath the wood-panelled ceilings which strikes a chord.

Ms Blanket was a young woman who fell in love with an English tea planter when they met in a Yorkshire country club.

In 1850, after he had returned to the hill station Munnar in Kerala, India, love-struck Ms Blanket resolved to follow her heart across the globe.

This was an admirable feat when you consider the trip entailed six months of sailing with no Skype, Facebook or Viber to find out if he was already married or actually just not that keen.

Her voyage brought her to Trivandrum, where she bought a plot of land and built her dream house combining 19th century architectural styles of the East and West, with tiled roofs, spacious verandahs, granary and courtyard.

The only information she possessed of mystery tea planter was his name and the fact he was a manager in a tea estate in Munnar, which at that time was accessible only on horseback along tracks through the jungle.

At church she met a soldier who, on hearing her romantic tale, offered to take up the role of Cupid. On holiday in Munnar, he found the reportedly tall and handsome Mr Brown entertaining the ladies in the Planters Club with his stories.

The soldier told Mr Brown of a lady who had crossed oceans to meet him, and probably through a mixture of curiosity about this spirited lass and a degree of apprehension Mr Brown agreed to travel with him back to Trivandrum.

Luckily, when he landed on her doorstep all went well and they were later married. 

The information booklet at the homestay waxes in an endearingly lyrical fashion about the “sublime love that found fruition in the sepia toned times of the Raj.”

It can’t have all been rosy however, as jealousy on the part of the young bride caused by the ‘ladies’ man’ tendencies of her new husband, while he lived in Munnar and she in Trivandrum eventually resulted in her whisking him back to England.

Sadly, this meant letting go of her beautiful home.

She sought the help of an Indian lawyer friend in selling the property, who enquired about the sum of money she expected. She told him her expectations, and the kindly Mr Abraham, great-grandfather of Colonel Kuncheria, said the words committed to the family’s collective memory: “Madam, the house is sold”.

Refurbished to preserve its British Raj character, the homestay is an oasis in a busy city with its lush garden of bamboo and spices, family heirlooms and warm hospitality of Colonel Kuncheria (a former Ghurka), who even showed us the curved knife he used in two battles to (we speculated) slice off foes’ heads.

Sitting in a rocking chair on the verandah you can be spirited back to the time of Ms Blanket, arriving in a steamy exotic land, enduring monster malaria-filled mosquitos, dangling tree snakes and sweaty thighs in search of her sweetheart.

That’s love.

[isobelewing]

An electric fence 3m high surrounds a cardamom plantation in a mountain village.

Deer? Cardamom pod thieves? The infamous wild boar, that marauder responsible for Lonely Planet’s warnings against venturing out after dark?

The answer reveals itself in a sign on the roadside.

‘Elephants crossing’.

Munnar is a hill station 2000m up in the Western Ghats, where veils of mist cling to mountain peaks. A treacherous ascent in our lurching bus on steep dirt roads finally breaks into a valley carpeted with tea gardens.

Emerald green, closely cropped by the nimble hands of local women workers and dotted with granite outcrops and silver oaks entwined by pepper vines.

Elephants, we are told by our local guide, have corridors they follow that have been passed down genetically for hundreds of years.

Now, when the landscape is taken over by human farms and fences and roads and houses, the elephants don’t deviate from their historical route.

They just plough on through.

Hence the need for investing in 3m-high electric fences around precious cardamom plantations.

As we walk through the tea plantations our guide points out giant piles of dung and freshly eroded hillsides left by lumbering beasts in search of juicy grasses. Maybe two days ago, he thinks.

Elephants can’t run fast down hills, but don’t think this will make your escape any easier, they just sit down on their bums and slide.

The daughter of our host at the homestay says many people are killed by elephants in the area.

Picked up with the trunk and tossed, or trampled.

On New Year’s day we set out on a morning walk, but about a km down the road a local man on a motorbike yells out to stop. Around 6am a big, lone male elephant was spotted roaming nearby.

The stroll is aborted.

We’re high enough that the temperature requires an extra blanket on the bed, and an evening jog is a pleasant excursion rather than a sweating slog.

There’s nothing like an imaginary porcine squeal in dim undergrowth at dusk to propel the legs uphill.

[isobelewing]

Like the apocalypse and Genesis in one

Hampi is a magical little place and every bit deserving all the recommendations I received from travellers far and wide.

It’s up with the Milford Sound and Aitutaki on the most-beautiful-places-I-have-seen list.

The fact I nearly didn’t arrive there at all only increased the gratitude with which I drank in the mystical landscape.

My near non-arrival can be put down to a quite nonchalant attitude towards catching a sleeper bus at 10pm in an unfamiliar part of Bangalore.

Arriving at Anand Rao Circle (not a small roundabout but a huge, hectic criss crossing of roads) where I was to catch the bus, I find there were several different areas from which buses were coming and going.

None had big signs on the top saying “Hospet”.

Lugging my pack and making panicked enquiries I finally locate the office (didn’t help I was quoting the name of the third party booking agency, not the actual bus company) and am told to wait “outside the Krishna temple”.

I find it, but it doesn’t seem to be an established bus stop and as the 10.30pm departure time inched closer then came and went I become increasingly haranged and sweaty.

When a bus pulls up and the conductor yells “Hospet!” I jump aboard without a second thought.

The driver nods at my ticket and all seems breezy.

I am piling my things onto a top bunk and admiring the red velvet curtains when I get a phonecall from the number I’d been frantically calling moments earlier when I couldn’t locate the Krishna temple.

It’s the conductor of the bus that is meant to be taking me to Hospet.

I am on the wrong bus.

“WHERE ARE YOU!” He bellows irately.

“I don’t know! On a bus!” I shriek back.

“GET OFF! IT IS NOT YOUR BUS! YOU ARE ON THE WRONG BUS!”

“I can’t get off, it’s moving! I don’t know where we are!”

This conversation continues for about five minutes despite my hanging up (I am on a bus to Hospet after all and the conductor doesn’t seem fussed to have acquired an extra passenger) and I hand my phone to the driver.

They exchange some more heated words and eventually it is resolved they will drop me at MY bus.

After half an hour (while I contemplate a plan B for when they chuck me off and no bus is waiting) through the Bangalore traffic we arrive at the Majestic stop and by some miracle, my bus is waiting.

I clamber off and am met by a throng of men half demanding an explanation for my stupidity in getting on the wrong bus and half laughing at my frazzled appearance.

Safely on the right bus (sans red velvet curtains) I’m handed a water bottle and I curl up in my berth for the next 8 hours.

Puntuated only by small bouts of claustrophobia and a 3am toilet stop (in which I squat on a pile of rubbish behind some scrubby bushes while the men all piddle freely next to the bus) the ride sails by and we arrive to morning light in Hospet, the dirty little transit town 20 minutes from Hampi.

A Facebook friend summarised the place well when he said, “It’s like the apocalypse and Genesis in one”. (I wish I’d thought of that). Because it is.

Despite the hordes of tourists it’s other-worldly, bewitching and strangely quiet.

I wander down through the old bazaar to Mathanga hill, where hippies perch with their hash to watch the sun go down, and weave my way through boulders sprouting like magic mushrooms across the dreamscape.

I feel like the last person on earth. It’s eerily quiet, the entire place bathed in the orange light that falls for an hour before the sun begins to sink into the haze.

Hampi is small enough to see everything in three days, but I wish I’d stayed longer.

[isobelewing]

Refer to post below.

At the top is the class of 4 and 5-year-olds after we got them out of the classroom to play the running game. We drew circles in the dirt as 'houses' and when we stopped clapping they all had to run to their 'house'. A group of boys started yelling in Tamil as we got in the car to leave, burrowing underneath the bonnet they retrieved two puppies sleeping under the tyres which we were about to squash!

[isobelewing]

"That's why we're put here, to help those with less than us"

On the red dirt of a compound contained by a crumbled concrete wall, kids take turns on a slide, twirl around holding hands, sit together engrossed in a newspaper or play cricket.

They’re an eclectic mix, from all over Tamil Nadu and of ages ranging from 4 to 17.

But there is one thing all have in common - their parents are dead as a result of HIV.

The House of Hope is an orphanage started by an NGO in rural South India for kids affected by HIV. 100 children. Fifty of whom are HIV-infected, the other fifty brothers or sisters left behind after their caregivers died.

We arrive (I’m with French woman Benjamine who fundraises for the NGO) and are shown the progress on the new dormitories for the kids, being built on top of the existing classrooms. The kids currently sleep directly on the concrete floors, girls in one classroom, boys in another.

Benjamine unveils the foundation stone of the building, in a room which has been colourfully painted in childish pictures of dolphins and flowers by French volunteers.

There is a donation of one towel and one blanket for each child, which as a foreign visitor I am spontaneously given the honour of handing out despite having had no part in organising it. Each child grasps the gift with wide-eyed gratitude and a “thanks!”

I speak to the elderly doctor who started the NGO which his son now runs. I ask him if doing this kind of work is to do with religion. He immediately shakes his head, "No, this is why we're put here, on this earth. We're meant to help those with less than us."

Living here is far better than the alternative for these kids, and Benjamine says there are hundreds of HIV orphans gathered up from villages around Tamil Nadu all the time who would do anything for a place within these walls, but their resources are stretched to cope with just 100.

She wants to arrange special care for the younger ones because she says 4-year-olds shouldn’t be washing their own clothes. The two or three caregivers at the orphanage are tender and affectionate with the children, but trying to dispense maternal and paternal love to so many must be tiring.

The teachers here are trained, but barely speak English so 4 and 5-year-olds are plonked in front of a TV in the 3pm heat watching an animated figure shrilly cry out English words. Benjamine gets them outside playing a running game where they repeat “run run run run” then “STOP!” They all relish the physical activity. This is how they should be taught, Benajmine explains to the teacher. But first the teacher needs to learn the words herself, and that takes time, and someone to train her, and that costs money.

For these kids to have a shot at further education they must learn English. It’s their only way to climb out of the world they know into one where they can gain a good job.

English-speaking volunteers willing to spare two months are the only real hope. The NGO can’t afford to pay teachers who can speak English.

If you're interested in volunteering, or know someone who might be, please email me at iso.ewing@gmail.com, I wrote an advert for the NGO and have all the details.

Volunteer tourism is a booming industry these days. While it’s not turtles in Costa Rica or endangered orangutans in Borneo, in terms of “making a difference” …. It doesn't get better than this.

[isobelewing]

Watching eyes

This morning I arrived in soupy, jungly Calangute, Goa, by sleeper bus from Hampi.

I alternated dozing and reading and the 11 hours drifted by easily. Thankfully the bus wasn’t full so I had a double mattress to myself to sprawl out on.

Then I woke up at 3am and rolled over to find an Indian man sitting upright staring at me from his bed across the aisle.

It was obvious from his relaxed posture he had been watching me sleep. 

To set the scene, sleeper buses are like rectangular tin cans lined with two levels of double mattresses. They quickly fill with the heat of closely-packed sleeping bodies.

The aisle is narrow enough to allow you to reach over and touch your neighbour’s face. You don’t see fat people on sleeper buses.

I immediately pulled my curtain shut, but the lurching bus meant it didn’t stay in place, leaving a thin slot through which he continued to stare, unfazed at being caught. I pulled it tighter and weighed it with my book.

Five minutes later, through the corner of my eye I watched him carefully slide the curtain aside so there was a staring-sized gap again. I yanked it shut and tucked it firmly under my pillow, but could still hear his breath through the flimsy fabric.

I didn’t sleep again until we arrived in Panjim.

Even now, as I sit in a beach shack surrounded by tourists, covered from ankles to wrists in a shalwar kameez despite the torrid air (still feel uncomfortable baring skin despite the over-tanned and under-clad fleshy lumps draped on the beach chairs nearby) a man stares from the shack next door. That familiar emotionless, unwavering and very unnerving stare.

[isobelewing]

"You need hand wax?"

Beauty parlours are a dime a dozen here in Bangalore.

And it's not just the Indian ladies getting pampered, neighbour Shruthi told me she often sits next to men getting their brows done.

Men-only and unisex beauty parlours abound too.

Another novel concept I encountered today is that of hairless arms.

After the beautician had waxed my legs (every inch of my feet and toes included) she asks "arms too madam?"

I politely decline but a couple of minutes later she persists: "You need hand wax?"

Perturbed by her apparent disapproval I closely inspect my hands for offensive hairiness. They seem fine so again I decline.

Afterwards, the same woman is threading my eyebrows and asks, "Whole face threaded madam?"

"Just eyebrows," I reply firmly.

Minutes later I feel a fingertip traversing my upper lip, and before I know it the moustache I didn't know I had is being painfully ripped out!

Checking my bill I find I wasn't charged for the impromptu moustache removal. The beautician must have felt it her duty not to let me out in public sporting a cluster of fine blonde hairs on my lip which risk catching the light and causing me terrible embarrassment.

I have since been inspecting the arms of women on the street. There seems to be hairless and au naturale in equal numbers, so I think I'm safe.

[isobelewing]

Here's me, clearly with mixed feelings about partaking in the exploitation of a majestic wild animal in a paddock behind Mysore Palace.

Robbed of their dignity and trussed up in riding apparatus, two elephants trudge around the compound with the weariness of giant, crinkly-skinned robots.

You put Rs10 in the elephant's trunk and he passes it up to a mean-faced man with a barbed stick sitting on his neck.

In return you get a "blessing" where the animal touches your head with his trunk and for a moment you can look into his sad eyes.

It was a moral dilemma as to whether I encourage the exploitation by partaking, but in the end I thought the more money he can collect from gormless tourists the happier his master might be, which might result in kinder treatment.

It was slightly heart-breaking to watch this regal beast reduced to using his high level of intelligence for begging a meagre sum then performing a circus trick.

For an animal that can reportedly understand people pointing with their arms, distinguish between different languages, and recognise more than 100 individual voices, you have to wonder what this guy would say about his circumstances if he could speak to us.

It's better to imagine the years have numbed him to the daily humiliation, and in his mind's eye he's on a grassy plain somewhere in the Western Ghats.

[isobelewing]

iPhones save lives

Something didn't feel quite right.

A shadow was cast over his face and he was lurking at the back of the rickshaw queue, but it was midnight and I wanted to get home to bed.

Catching an auto at this time of night is not an ideal situation but I'd just got off a bus from a day trip to Mysore and there was no other option.

"Benson Town," I tell him, and he seems to nod in understanding.

We set off in the right direction but after about 10 minutes I look up from my phone and don't recognise the street.

I'd made enough trips from the centre of town to my apartment now to know vaguely what the right roads looked like and we definitely weren't taking them.

This street is dark and empty except for the occasional figure moving from one shadow to the next.

My driver is going slow to the point of almost idling, and peering down dark alleys as if looking for something.

In the dawdling rickshaw with open sides I feel extremely vulnerable.

I open Google Maps on my phone to find we're heading off in a north west direction away from Benson Town.

"Benson Town? You know where?" I question.

Irritated, he gestures with his hand in the wrong direction.

"No, wrong way, Benson, BENSON Town," I say in my best non-Nu Ziland vernacular, while snapping a photo of the registration plate all drivers display on the back on their seat and sending it to a friend who'd left the bus station at the same time. Rickshaw life insurance.

He's angry now and muttering aggressively in Kannada, but despite having no visual clue as to where we are, I can clearly see our location as a little blue dot on my phone screen.

He stops at an intersection and starts to turn right, at which point I repeat "LEFT!" in an almost-yell until he finally complies. 

After several "left" and "right" commands from me we are back on well-lit roads with a couple of vehicles around and he seems to have realised I'm right.

He then has the audacity to demand Rs300 (the ride was about Rs110) because it has taken so long.

"You didn't even know where Benson Town was!" I nearly shriek. But he ends up getting 200 Rs because I have no change.

If I didn't have my iPhone, I honestly don't know how that trip would have transpired or where I could have ended up.

A slightly hostile driver, no language crossover except "left" and "right" and all happening in the middle of the night is dicey to say the least.

But I lived to tell the tale, thank you Steve Jobs but mostly thank you Larry Page and Sergey Brin because the iPhone maps app is shite (case in point: confuses New Plymouth with Palmerston North) and would have left me just as far up the proverbial creek.

On a lighter note, our trip to Mysore was a whirlwind of silk emporiums, personal space-invasions and of course the ever-reliable hawkers on hand to sell you anything from a "music flute" to keyrings, postcards and rides on malnourished horses.

Sometimes hawkers are so earnest in their desire to sell you their assorted knick knacks you can't help but admire their tenacity.

Like the guy who approached us outside Mysore Palace with a handful of those head-massaging wire claw things.

"No thanks" I say abruptly.

Not about to give up on a bunch of foreigners that easily, the man turns to Boris, an Australian med student, and flourishes the head scratcher.

When he gets no response he ventures closer and gives Boris a little trial shoulder scratch with the gadget.

"No."

The man finally wanders off.

"He told me it would help with my menstruation," Boris says as we shake with laughter. "I think something was lost in translation."

[isobelewing]

On the way back to Bangalore we stopped to visit a beautiful little temple at the base of a rock fort in Namakkal.

It was only when we wandered inside to the sound of nadhaswaram booming off the stone walls and the smell of wafting incense we realised we'd crashed a wedding.

I was grabbed and pulled to the front of the crowd to observe the ceremony, rice and pink flower petals stuffed in my hand.

The father of the bride was shocked at the discovery I wasn't married and immediately began whispering to surrounding family members, presumably about the availability of any eligible sons.

After I had clumsily flung my handful at the bride and groom's faces I was thrust into their photos, wishing I had washed my hair more than once in the last four days.

Despite their steadfast poker faces I was assured the couple were thrilled at the unforeseen addition of a white woman to the wedding party because it was a good omen for the marriage.

When we walked outside a man pointed up at the fort where an eagle was circling. Another good omen. This union is clearly a match made in heaven.