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London Vet Show, Student Style!

London Vet Show, Student Style! So I found this doing a computer clear out and forgot I never posted it! Enjoy!

This year myself and Beth were lucky enough to score a free trip to London Vet Show courtesy of our Veterinary Practice family. We were invited down all expenses paid to assist on the veterinary practice stall, this was a fab opportunity to scope out the largest collection of vets, drugs companies and CPD providers in the UK and a great chance for us to network with future employers….. and come…

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Find Me On Bloglovin’

Find Me On Bloglovin’

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

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Smallies Rotations – Getting thrown in the Deep End

Smallies Rotations – Getting thrown in the Deep End

After the slog of fourth year exams, the uphill struggle to graduation begins and vet school presents us with yet another challenge, this time in the form of clinical rotations. Rotations are essentially a year and a half of being thrown in at the deep end to practice all the skills, and exercise all the knowledge we (should) have learnt during the four years of lectures. We are put to the test…

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I'm proud to present my first ever solo published baby!

I’m proud to present my first ever solo published baby!

I am incredibly excited to announce that my very first official job and solo publication was accepted and published by Travelicious world!!!! This piece is about doing London on the cheap where I have attempted to impart knowledge on how to get thrifty and survive London on a budget! If you want any wisdom about wandering London check out my article here…… A Cheapskate’s Guide to London…

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A Trip to the Dark-side...

A Trip to the Dark-side…

A little message to my readers…. As you all may know, I have been blogging on here now for five glorious months and I can honestly say I’ve loved every minute of it and have become quite hooked! To intensify my blogging fix I have decided to go over to the dark-side of paying for my blogging privilege. I have every intention of continuing to use this blog for all my vetty escapades and general…

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Camels and a culture shock

Camels and a culture shock

During my time at Help in Suffering, many of my favourite days were spent with Dr Swami on the camel clinic. I felt more at home with the preventative approach to veterinary care and enjoyed being around the good-natured humour of the camel team. I was allowed to get fairly hands-on, under the watchful eye of the vet and while I was injecting numerous bitterly protesting camels, I was being…

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On our final ‘day off’ while at HIS we began the day dog catching (can’t beat a good 5AM start!) and at 7AM got the fellas to drop us off in the city centre to search for breakfast. We came to discover that this was a horrendous idea as what we hadn’t realised at the time is that NOTHING in India opens until after 10AM. By 8 o’clock we were tired and absolutely ravenous, we had nothing to do but wander aimlessly around the pink city being harassed by little beggar children in the street which I always found to be incredibly distressing. We did a lot of trapesing up and down the battlement of streets in hope that something would be open early but found no success. It’s incredible what a bad mood being hungry and tired puts you in, all English niceties go out the window and every Indian who came up to bother us which we usually dealt with politely but firmly were getting glared and snarled at and we truly had reached the end of our tethers. It was times like that when in India, feeling tired, sweaty and emotionally drained when I really did feel desperately sorry for celebrities as I felt being a white person in India really gave you a taste of that in certain situations. People pull on you and leer at you, point, stare and come right up to your face to take pictures. Personal space is not allowed which we Brits value so dearly and it really got to the point where I struggled to be good natured about it.

At 9 o’clock the city slowly started to come alive so we went to the Palace of the Winds which had some great views over the city of Jaipur. We took a few token snaps but by this point, especially with all the walking and stair climbing the hunger shakes had really set in. We decided to try the City Palace in hopes of seeking out a café and despite the many entrances, we had to walk around the entire thing until we fund one that would let us in. Thankfully the palace restaurant took pity on us and opened a full hour early for us to grab some food (It was a very good job as I think we were both incredibly close to throwing a full-on hunger-driven temper tantrum by this point!). The restaurant was 5-star standard which equates to paying roughly the same as you would for dinner out at home, but the food was fantastic (I had a veggie burger and fries… for breakfast and it was the best thing ever!).

After eating our fill and feeling much happier for it, it was time to meet the elephant vet. Both Beth and I are major exotic animal nerds and were keen to investigate the elephant’s plight in the Pink City. JEWEL, the Jaipur Elephant Welfare foundation were a team of vets who treated Jaipur’s working elephant population and strived to improve their working and husbandry conditions and we were keen to lend a hand and see what it was like to be an elephant vet in India. We got a taxi to Amer where we were dropped off at the police station where we were meant to meet one of the vets. In doing so we managed to cause quite the scene, all the passing Indians could be seen pointing and chattering animatedly – you could practically hear them making up elaborate stories as to why two white girls where sat at the police station. We had the dilemma of trying to spot the elephant vets and trying not to be too rude to any of the numerous men who approached us uninvited, just in case one of them was the vet who at this point we had only spoke to over the phone.

JEWL elephant project began with Dr Chowla at Help in Suffering some years previously before going solo in recent years and having the sole purpose of providing free veterinary care to the working elephants of Jaipur. We were incredibly excited when the truck rolled up to pick us up, especially when they said we were going to the elephant village. This was a government project which, like many things in India was started with great vigour in hopes of becoming a tourist hot spot but slowly dwindled as the funding dried up. The village housed 130 elephants with their Mahouts and their families and included a school for the village children and large airy garages to “park” your elephant attached to the keepers houses. There was a large lake for bathing the elephants and lots of greenery in the surrounding area. It was a shame the government hadn’t persevered as this settlement could have been a fabulous complex and with the help of JEWL who had worked to ensure the facilities were elephant friendly, it could have been incredibly mutually beneficial. The build had taken the elephant’s welfare into account; dipped floors were provided in the elephant garages to help distribute the elephants weight when they lie down (common myth squashed: elephants do not sleep standing up and need a comfy weight supporting substrate to lie on) and rubber matting to prevent pressure sores. We met a mahout who proudly introduced us to his elephant, Ginjai (interestingly all the working elephants are female as decreed by the government who consider males too dangerous and unpredictable) who had vitamin deficient cataracts due to her previous owner feeding an inappropriate diet. He was incredibly loving towards her and told us his last elephant had died four years previously who had been in his family his whole life. We chatted with him for quite a while and he told us his elephant ate 10kg of japatis a day ( because animals in India don’t seem to be able to function without japatis!) along with corn, sugar cane and hay and that she worked at the fort but had every other day off, which all things considering was quite nice working hours and that she knew 37 commands. We took a few obligatory photos with this lovely lady and got sprayed with water as she was cooling herself before moving on to the next elephant which had a wound to treat.

Rhavindra, an incredibly knowledgeable and kind natured man was an elephant para-vet. He told us lots about the elephants and their histories as we went around. He said the average life span for a working elephant in Jaipur was 75 years which was fantastic considering in UK zoos they struggle to get them to see their 50s. I guess despite the work sometimes being difficult and causing iitsown problems, it also keeps them moving and well stimulated which a zoo set up can’t provide as easily. We saw a number of wounds and abscesses, many of which were pressure sores from lying on inappropriate surfaces. Their skin is so unique we were told it takes a long time to heal so despite many of these elephants now being housed much more appropriately, the vets were still treating the sores caused by previous housing. On a slightly gross note, I have never seen such fantastic abscesses, the elephant team squeezed what seemed like a small hole and masses of cottage cheese like pus came rocketing out of them, incredibly satisfying and much better for the elephant to get rid of all that gunk!

We were also taken to see a male, despite now being unemployed as a tourist attraction, some of the mahouts had such strong bonds to their elephants they kept them anyway and used still  used them for weddings and other celebrations. We also had the chance to see a baby elephant. Despite births between working elephants being rare due to conditions not lending itself to reproductive success, sometimes breeding was successful and we got to see the product of one such success. The baby was about 3 years old and was parked with a foster mother to teach her the ropes. You could tell her manners were still a work in progress but she was incredibly curious and keen to touch us with her incredibly sensitive trunk.

We were really happy to be able to report that the majority of elephants were really well cared for and in good condition. It was nice to see what a difference education and a foundation like JEWL can make such a difference. All Jaipur elephants could receive free veterinary care including; worming, vaccinations against rabies, tetanus and foot and mouth, wound care and education for Mahouts on how to best care for their elephants. It was also incredibly humbling to see that most of these people really did care deeply about their elephants and wanted the best for them. However, towards the end of the day we did see the darker side of elephant handling. We went to see an elephant who at just 43 years old had completely given up on life. She was skinny, dehydrated and hunched with pain and fear, her owner was a nasty little man who clearly enjoyed having control over what should be such a magnificent creature. She had sores all over her and it was clear she had suffered at the hands of this man who brandished a large, metal ankur, a hook which has largely been banned and moved away from as a medieval method of control. She had foot rot on both hind limbs, filled with pus and necrotic tissue despite the months of treatment JEWL had dedicated to it.  It was a sobering lesson for us to see that work most definitely still needed to be done in elephant welfare.

Meeting the Elephant Doctors On our final ‘day off’ while at HIS we began the day dog catching (can’t beat a good 5AM start!) and at 7AM got the fellas to drop us off in the city centre to search for breakfast.

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During my time in India I came to the conclusion that I was cursed when it came to surgery…. Every time I picked up a scalpel, nothing went smoothly, thankfully not due to my surgical skill I might add! On one particularly unlucky day which springs to mind, we had a power cut half way through my first surgery which resulted in me fumbling around inside a dog in the dark trying to find my suture material by torch light, which did a fantastic job of blending in. Once power was restored after a lot of angry hollering at the staff by Jack who was also wrist deep in a dog’s abdomen, the next surgery I came to had already had a visit from the “phantom spayer” ( This was the name which we invented for the organisation which seemed to be “helpfully” spaying dogs without notching their ears to indicate they’d been sterilised, making life quite frustrating for the people at HIS) so I spent 20 minutes feeling incredibly incompetent fishing around in this poor dog’s abdomen trying in vain to find it’s uterus (before everyone with any surgical experience thinks I’m an absolute moron for not being able to find the uterine stump, the dogs at HIS were spayed via a flank incision as there was deemed to be less risk of infection and wound breakdown when they released the dogs so the abdomen could not be visualised). Once I’d given up, one of the more experienced compounders came to have a poke and then finally Jack was called to confirm that this dog had in fact already been spayed. This did make me feel slightly better as at least it wasn’t just me being useless! I guess looking back now it did all add an element of excitement to the occasion.

I actually managed to get a bit of a tan from the previous day spent with the camels which I was quite excited about. The 10 gallons of sun cream I was convinced I would need, remained packed in my rucksack as the air is so clogged with filth and pollution (which I’d rather not think about) that the UV barely makes a dent in it. I have to admit that I naively thought I would return from India with a beautiful sun tan, the reality is I came back just as chalky white as when I left, much to my family’s amusement. I still find the notion of the Indians, especially the women wanting to be pale quite baffling though, they seem to worship Western skin yet we do the complete opposite and go to hot countries with the aim to bake ourselves.  Ranjna said that her mother encouraged her to stay inside “or no one would want to marry her” which is ridiculous, heck, she’s so beautiful I’d have married her! It’s so sad that women feel they have to subject themselves to extensive waxing and hiding from the glorious sun in the name of beauty and in order to get a husband. Beth and I rocked our horrendously hairy legs with pride during our time in India with no shame at all!

The number of operations attempted outside the ABC clinic improved substantially during our time at HIS due to our persistent endeavours to kick the over-relaxed vets into gear and make them do something useful. We felt incredibly strongly about this as many of the animals which would have been euthanised on the spot are left to die naturally due to the strong ethical beliefs of the community. In my opinion this is far from ideal as I am very pro-euthanasia when needed, however I feel in cases like those, an incredibly pro-active approach to their care and pain management should be taken , and this was what I found was often missing at HIS.

Incidents as Jack called them were incredibly easy to cause as a Westerner and we fast learnt that as two white girls we were under constant watch, and therefore couldn’t get away with doing anything embarrassing without everybody noticing. One particular incident I caused was when I forgot to wear a belt. I didn’t consider the excitement I would cause when I bent down and everyone could see the top of my bright pink knickers. Naveen, one of the vets chose to tell me this after the entire morning had passed with many excited Indian gentleman following me round to stare at the flash of pink while I was busying myself poking around with people’s pets. I did wonder at the time why they were all stood so close! It’s both hilarious and frustrating how easy it is to cause a scene in India. I found the whole place was a bit of an oxymoron; on the one hand they are the creators of the karma sutra, a concept adopted whole heartedly by the sex loving west and depict many naked women in their artwork yet, they seem so shy and embarrassed by even the slightest hint of nakedness and we heard that even with their own partners it is uncommon for them to undress in front of each other and they commonly get it on with their saris on!

The general public definitely lack education when it comes to their animals in India. It was my experience that most of them were incredibly well-meaning and wanted to help but also absolutely clueless. One particular incident which springs to mind was when a concerned member of the public had found a tortoise wandering about on the high-street. They had rightly brought it in to HIS for help, however had perceived it to be a turtle and the well-meaning fellow had promptly submerged it in water where it had been for 45 minutes until it arrived at HIS. Thankfully tortoises can hold their breath for a significant while and a very panicked Jardice had recognised the problem and scooped it out. After a bit of TLC in a less watery environment the tortoise got over its ordeal quite spectacularly.

That evening we went to an Indian craft market with Ranjna who had some exciting/ frankly terrifying news for us. She had become engaged to the son of a family friend. On paper he sounded fairly nice; he was in banking and came from a wealthy background, he was a few years older ( which was definitely a good thing as from walking through the streets of Jaipur you fast discovered that the 30 and 40 year old men are still acting like intolerable horny teenagers so there was no hope at all for the younger ones!) and their family had agreed to let Ranjna finish her studies before she got married. However, I couldn’t help but still have a problem with arranged marriages, there seemed to be something just so medieval and suffocating about it all to not have your own choice of husband or wife and to marry for convenience and social status rather than love (what can I say, I’m a romantic!). It seemed sad really when all the Indians talk about and watch on TV, both men and women is love and yet they spend their days trying to convince both themselves and us westerners that arranged marriages are much more preferable. I think that is largely why they make such a big deal out of the weddings to try and mask some of the uneasiness about the whole affair and make it seem a much happier occasion than it often is. Undoubtedly it sometimes works, Ranjna’s parents were lucky in that they found a great match in each other but I couldn’t help but think this was rare and what largely happens in most circumstances is husband and wife learn to cohabit together, with each knowing their role in the agreement. Both Beth and I felt a bit protective over Ranjna as she was a really intelligent girl, aspiring to be a vet and really could make something of herself if she was given the opportunity. It was difficult for us to accept that she was facing a life where essentially her husband and his family could dictate what she was allowed to be, which I found incredibly frustrating on her part. I hope sincerely that this match works as well as her parent’s did ….. well in three years’ time I have a wedding invitation and I am incredibly keen to see how things turn out (and more selfishly I can’t deny being incredibly keen to experience an Indian wedding myself).

Who submerged the tortoise!? During my time in India I came to the conclusion that I was cursed when it came to surgery....

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Man Vs Dog

On a few select occasions we made the difficult decision to drag ourselves from our already disturbed sleep to go dog catching at 5AM. One saving grace of being up so horrendously early was the temperature, the harsh heat of the day had not yet set in and there was a welcome breeze. Another advantage was the lack of traffic and the relative tranquillity…. At least by India standards! We set off…

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A Dose of Delhi Belly!

A Dose of Delhi Belly!

After having the worst night’s sleep I think I had since the start of our Indian excursions due to waking up feeling an unfamiliar chill in the night (one thing I did not expect to be feeling in India) and being kept awake by the howling, honking fanfare that surrounded my apartment every night, I woke up and fished out my last pair of clean knickers (I really needed to commit to doing more…

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We had a glorious lie in after the best night’s sleep we had had since we reached India. Amy and Charlotte practically dragged us to a pancake house for breakfast ( incredibly Western I know but by this point we were desperately craving variety). The food was amazing, we had banana pancakes with honey and freshly squeezed fruit juice which was glorious. However yet again customer service in India (or lack there of!)struck again and none of our meals came out at the same time and it took the staff several attempts to bring the order right despite having wrote it down and there only being 2 other tables aside from us to serve. What was particularly amusing was when they began to insist the order they had decided to bring out was ours, and tutted furiously at us when we refused to make their lives easy for them, and just accept whatever random dish they’d brought to our table. We were seeing the funny side of this much more, having been in India for over three weeks by this point, we were starting to chill out and let the chips fall where the Indians wanted them to! This was probably a self-protection mechanism as I fear we’d have gone mad otherwise.

After breakfast we wandered through the market stalls and did a lot more shopping. Amy was fabulous at bartering by using all the sellers own techniques against them. This was incredibly entertaining to watch, in particular when she started talking in Hindi-English “For me, your friend, you give best price, yes?” We all sounded utterly ridiculous but after several weeks of talking in simpleton English with wild hand gestures so the Indians could understand, you do begin to inadvertently talk like that everyday, even to fellow Englishmen! We went down to the Holy lake (something to do with one of the gods dropping lotus flowers which turned into lakes) which was beautiful but the view kept being disturbed by irritating Brahmans who try to give you “free” flowers and blessings but then curse you if you refuse to pay, I can’t say I really believe in curses and all that jazz but I could do without any bad luck if I could avoid it! We then went to a Sikh temple in the city which was a beautiful white building set several stories up from the rest of the city and had fantastic views of the mountains.

The drive home was long and I have to say quite stressful, we was tired after our long couple of days but couldn’t bring ourselves to fall asleep in the back of the taxi with no seatbelts, while our taxi driver was weaving in and out of giant American style lorries. What made me even more on edge was he, despite making these manoeuvres seemed as unsure as we were about what he was doing and regularly had to slam the breaks on and pull back in after trying his luck at squeezing between two lorries, nearly pancaking us. Despite the dubious driving ( which we learnt did not require a test in India, just enough money to pay for a licence) we did make it home in one piece. I rolled in to bed and for the first time in India, had to put more substantial clothes on as I was cold, which was definitely a first which I was not quite prepared for!

Vets on Tour! Pancakes in Pushkar We had a glorious lie in after the best night’s sleep we had had since we reached India.

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Bank Holiday at Knowsley Safari Park

A day of casual road rage, baboons dismantling cars and the expected bank holiday rain! As 4 vet students ( and one boyfriend imposter), as long as there are animals involve we are easily pleased! 

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Halfway Weekend Shinnanigans 

To the more observant reader, you will have noticed that this was almost a year ago. However, as it was a big mile-stone in my vet school career, I feel it is still worthy of a blog post ( even if it is a little late)! So, to all you non-vets out there, half way weekend is a tradition at Liverpool vet school which celebrates conquering the three year slog of anatomy, physiology, histology and…

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What better way to wind down after a hectic first week getting to grips with rotations than to go and work our brains harder by attending a conference!?

I’ll keep it short and sweet as I am currently meant to be preparing for today’s behaviour seminar not faffing about on my blog! Myself and two of my housemates; Beth and Sasha pottered down to Birmingham to attend the British Small Animal Veterinary Association congress. Ironically none of us actually have a particular affinity for small animal work, but we’re a little bit geeky and like conferences so went along anyway! Personally I was hoping it might help shed some light on the various body systems I feel I should know more about and help me get through my first block of rotations which is predominantly small animal based.

…..I’ll skip the bit about what I actually learnt at the conference as though I find the ins and outs of chronic diarrhoea in dogs riveting, I can appreciate to the general public this may not be blogging material!

We were all a little bit disgruntled that we found ourselves stuck inside in lectures rather than outside in the glorious Mediterranean heatwave Birmingham had decided to throw at us. Though as vet students, spending most of our lives inside sat at a desk, we were used to having to sacrifice sunbathing for books. We did take full advantage of the freebies being given out by the exhibitors though, and I am the proud owner of 26 pens and I am sure I have put on about 6 pounds due to the sheer amount of chocolate I inhaled.

On the Saturday evening the venue was transformed into a fairground with street food, comedy acts, circus performers, live bands and of course…. face painting! I inadvertently got myself into a weird man sandwich with a number of the performers, much to the amusement of everyone else. We did some incredibly energetic jigging to a folk band with a lot of Irish influence and drank a lot of cheap wine. Though I have to say the majority of my alcohol intake was actually influenced by Sasha’s mum who had an excellent supply of port!

And from these photos you can see we were all a little more drunk than we thought we were……

BSAVA Congress 2017 What better way to wind down after a hectic first week getting to grips with rotations than to go and work our brains harder by attending a conference!?

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Horsing Around

After a week working with a number of unruly pooches in dispensary, I was ready for a change of species and was glad that on that particular day there was an influx of horses to entertain myself with. I had noticed during my time on dispensary that the Indians seemed to be superb at controlling camels, donkeys, horses, cows, sheep, goats, basically anything classed as a “large animal” yet were…

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After days of threateningly ominous looking clouds hanging over Jaipur, the rain finally came and we were blessed with a full day of the “wet stuff” we Brits try desperately to avoid. As a result, I was soon to discover my little apartment was in desperate need of plastering as a number of small leaks sprung up to create my very own indoor water feature. The fun continued as I was sat on the toilet minding my own business when plaster from the roof began falling on my head, which I think even in India is a bad sign!

The rain did not dampen our spirits as I was due to go out with the camel vet, a very cool character called Dr. Swami. He was incredibly well educated and spoke brilliant English so conversation was easy and entertaining. Though it became clear that I would be the entertainment for most of the villagers while on the ambulatory clinic. When we pulled up in a lay-by at the side of the road ( a seemingly India appropriate place to host a veterinary clinic) a steadily growing crowd of people gathered until, they were actually blocking the majority of the busy highway. I naively thought it was the camel vet causing all the fuss but Swami pointed out that it was in fact me! So I unwittingly became quite the pasty celebrity for the day and everyone wanted me to treat their camel (despite me knowing nothing about them except that in Hindi they are called Uuht). I managed to had a full conversation with one man in Hindi getting by with furious nodding and hand gestures alongside the few phrases I actually knew, which he seemed very impressed with and Dr Swami found hilarious. The camel owner was jabbering away at me and gesturing to his camels eye which even to my untrained eye I could see was very sore and I just kept nodding and saying Hann (which is yes in Hindi), Swami then passed me the eye drops and I popped them in the camel’s eye gave the fellow the rest of the bottle and he looked incredibly pleased, shook my hand and went on his way.

The villagers were very generous with their chai and I actually think I may have drank my weight in it! Dr Swami said that my presence had a lot to do with the intense generosity of the villagers which I found myself feeling quite embarrassed about and felt a little guilty about not paying. Nonetheless, people kept bringing more out for me every time my cup was empty, Swami said I had clearly made a good impression! Camels, I discovered are funny things as, unlike horses and donkeys they are never fully tame. Only the bulls are used for pulling the carts and during their mating season can be incredibly aggressive and dangerous. Not only can they kick with all 4 feet, they can swing their neck like a battering ram and they have terrifyingly sharp canines. Apparently in breeding season the camel owners wear giant turbans so if the camels bite them, they bite the turban not their heads which I think is pretty clever really!

The camel clinic was incredibly well run, they gave out halters in replacement of nose pegs for the younger camels or if nose pegs have to be used they gave small plastic ones which were much cleaner than the wooden ones commonly seen, they gave out reflectors for the back of carts to reduce road accidents at night and they gave monthly wormers and tick treatment, all for free. It was a very pro-active, preventative approach that I have to say I couldn’t fault, the camel team worked with the locals to give the best welfare for their camels and they were respected and trusted by the people. I feel this was definitely reflected in the fact that an average non-working camel lives 25 years while the working ones live to around 20 which are pretty good stats in the grand scheme of things.

That evening we went to Chokki Dhani, meaning ‘special village’. This was a fake Rhajastani village where tourists could go and experience different aspects of the state’s culture all in the same location. We took Ranjana, who seemed like she was long overdue a girl’s night after spending her days surrounded by the men from the compound who she wasn’t really allowed to socialise with. Her father kindly offered to take us/ chaperone us so we couldn’t sneak out clubbing instead and we met up with Ella and two of her housemates – a Spanish brother and sister who seemed to prefer their own company to ours. Chokki Dhnai itself was truly beautiful, there were numerous extravagantly painted huts, each with something going on in them, there were lanterns everywhere lighting the way and men and women swanning around dressed in traditional outfits, glittering from head to toe in extravagant jewellery. Fantastic smells wafted through the air from the numerous stalls of free tasters of Rhajastani fare and elephants and camels wandered past with their Mahouts carrying giggling tourists. The whole atmosphere was really something to behold.  We first wandered over to a puppet show where a very punch and judy-esque performance ensued. However, then things did start to take a twist away from the usual when one of the puppeteers began balancing various things on his head, chin and in his mouth which we all found very impressive but I did find myself wondering how someone discovered they had such a useless but entertaining talent? Next we went and watched some of the traditional Rhajastni dancing, we spent a large amount of time trying to figure out if one of the dancers was just a rather ugly woman or was in fact a man….. It turned out that in Rhajastani tradition men dressed up as women to dance (sounds a bit odd to me but who am I to judge how someone chooses to express themselves). Well those fellas could certainly wiggle better than we all could, which was later proven when volunteers were asked to join them on stage and we all got up to have a dance. In the village centre was a large gong which was attracting a lot of tourist attention, men were showing off their brute strength all competing to make the biggest noise and hold the (genuinely rather heavy) hammer the highest above their heads. We all couldn’t resist and had a go too and laughably us girls put a lot of the men to shame!

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Dinner was served in traditional Indian fashion; bare foot, on cushions on the ground. I have honestly never seen so much food in my life! We had a traditional Rhajastani Thali (basically tapas) where the waiters came around an extraordinary number of times piling your plates high with multiple styles of japhatti and naan, different curries and sauces (garlic chutney was an absolute favourite of mine I must add), finger food, pastries and rice. It was incredibly exciting to try it all and most of the food was absolutely delicious though admittedly there were a few things that did not suit the western pallet. First was curried water (it basically tasted like incredibly strong sea water with cumin thrown in) which was absolutely vile. Another unusual drink was chatch which was buffalo buttermilk, this also had an interesting texture and to us, kind of tasted like slightly off milk but Ranjana swore would give you the best night sleep after drinking. The final clash of cultural palates came from a dish called citcheri which was basically a green vegetable dhal, which was all well and good, nothing unusual there until they came and dumped a table spoon of sugar on top, this texture was incredibly strange to us, as was the taste and it’s not one I think I could ever get on board with!

After a bit more wandering (or should I say waddling by this point) around with incredibly full stomachs we came to the Bazaar which we thought would be extortionately priced (as many tourist traps are in the UK) but we were pleasantly surprised that it was really rather cheap! After picking up some bling which turned out to be a tremendously complicated process ( the man we gave our purchases to added them up under the supervision of another man who then took our money, we then had to march across the bazaar to a little hut where a man with a cash register sat and the whole adding up process started again with more counting and spectatorship, then we paid this man who gave us a receipt which had to be checked by another man and then FINALLY we were allowed to leave ) as everything in India seemed to take time and be incredibly longwinded, we finally got picked up by our chauffeur (Ranjana’s dad) and went home with a number of funny photos to commemorate our journey.

That evening as we crept back into the compound we went to get water from the dispenser (the only trusted source for the sensitive stomachs of the westerners) and literally nearly fell over a man who was spread out across the porch snoring his head off! I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the fact that Indians seem to be able to sleep anywhere and as many people wished to stay with their animals while they have treatment it was common place to see unidentified individuals snoozing around the compound first thing in the morning. This fellow though was the first one I nearly tripped over!

  Some photos taken by Beth Dixon :)

An Evening at Chokki Dhani After days of threateningly ominous looking clouds hanging over Jaipur, the rain finally came and we were blessed with a full day of the “wet stuff” we Brits try desperately to avoid.

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A Question of Culture

A Question of Culture

I apologise for how horrifically long it has been since I have last posted anything, I have been whizzing between my hometown and Liverpool on placements (sticking my hand up cow’s backsides and all that lark that vet students do). But I found out yesterday that I passed my exams so I officially have a year left until I graduate as a full-blown vet (if all goes well!), which means I have a bit of…