Back to Bangalore

Manil needed to go to Bangalore to sort out an administrative issue, and I decided to ask if I could come along to get a change of scenery and to pick to up some knitting yarn as Manil had asked me to knit her a cardigan.

Basha, one of the long-term right-since-the-start employees who helps with these matters also came along, and Alex had a few things to pick up so he joined us too. Along with Ramanji the driver, we made a bit of a car-full for the approximately 150km journey to the city in the neighbouring state of Karnataka.

We arrived at Manil and Rajan's Bangalore house to unload - and there was a difficult delay when we found that a drainage ditch had been dug along the side of their road, so this trench meant that the cars couldn't get in or out of the driveway... Eventually we were ready to carry on, after Ramanji found somewhere to park the car and Manil ordered a labourer on the drain digging job to create some way for us to at least be able to walk across the trench to get to the house. I guess that Indian planning regulations are less strenuous than in some other countries.

Alex and I got dropped off at Commercial Street, where we went for lunch, then I went back to my favourite bangle seller to get bangles I had promised to the kitchen staff back at the farm, and then Alex and I went to see Baba and Mudasir briefly. Mudasir will soon be heading back to Kashmir for a month to visit his homeland and the family he has there. Baba could only stay for a short time because it was his daughter's birthday, and then Manil called us to meet up as she had completed her work.

Manil and I went to buy wool, then we headed back to the house. I spent some of the evening with Basha helping me to wind the wool from the loose, messy skeins into neat balls, before we order pizza and I had an unexpectedly nice evening with Manil (she had been very stressed and consequently short-tempered recently, due to lots of issues that keep arising) and we had some good heart to heart chats.

These pictures were taken by Alex - after I had my hair cut. The hairdressers didn't know how to cut women's hair short, so I ended up with a boy's haircut!

The next morning Manil and I went for pedicures and haircuts, then I did some more wool-winding with Basha until Ramanji brought lunch. I got to meet Rashna, Manil and Rajan's daughter, for the first time as well, as she had arrived with her boyfriend (another Alex) late last night.

The next highlight of the weekend came after dinner back at the farm. Sitting outside with Trisham, we suddenly saw a large scorpion strolling along. We watched it for a while before Trisham herded it into a bucket so that we could evict it from the farm.