Day trippin' across the universe...

Sometimes the staff need to visit another town to carry out some administrative task and we've gone along for the ride - here are some of the places we've been.

Khatima

This was our first trip out and about – Gail (one of the staff-members here) took us into a largish town about 30 minutes from the farm.

Gail studies computing here towards a certificate so we went to see where she studies, unfortunately the power was off (as it is 50% of the time) so her class was cancelled. This highlighted a difference in the way they handle things over here, Gail merely accepted the situation whereas I got really outraged that she had made the half-hour, bumpy journey for nothing.

(click here for larger map)

Gail took us to the hospital where two of her friends work, one is a doctor and the other the chief administrator. We were brought into the doctors consulting room where we felt very uncomfortable as he continued chatting to us through about 5 or 6 consults. Can you imagine in Australia if you went to the doctors and he was chatting with friends and drinking tea whilst examining you!

Champawat

One of the managers needed to submit some documents for the new school in this hill station region and took us along for the ride, we climbed through many winding, dangerous roads where in some parts half the road had been destroyed in landslides. Luckily for us there was a thick fog reducing our visibility to almost nothing for most of the journey so we felt much safer than we actually were.

When the fog did clear we were treated to some great scenery with deep ravines and mountain-fed rivers below us. As we reached Champawat, the driver pointed out tea growing on the mountain side, it might sound good but in reality it just looked like another shade of green from where we were sitting. We chanced our first "Outside" meal at a restaurant here before heading back and I tempted fate by having a chocolate milkshake, something all the guidebooks says never to do but it didn't have any dire consequences.

Naini Tal

We had to pick up Clifton, one of the managers who had gone to see a guest off in Delhi, in Haldwani and we decided to make a day of it and head to a tourist town called Naini Tal which is Hindi for "Lake City". Luckily there is actually a lake here otherwise the name would be quite stupid, it was made by the British a while ago and is about 2km long nestled in between some large mountains. Ashish, a manager and teacher at the farm decided it would be a great idea to climb one of these large mountains, something we all agreed to...a little too quickly.

He had said that it was only a 45 minute walk and he was probably right, the only fact he forgot to mention is that it was straight up. I was surprised though that Miriam and I fared the best on the walk, blitzing the international competition of Kiwis & Indians. When we (finally) reached the summit we were treated to some spectacular views of the mountain ranges which are the foothills to the Himalayas. On a really clear day (it wasn't) you can see the snow peaks and China. A helpful tout there suggested that you could even see the great wall of China - a claim I was very sceptical of due to it being on the opposite side of the country.

The Boom

A short distance from here is a place they call “The Boom” – It’s a bit like Bonnie Doon in “The Castle” – a little place they like to get away to. The only difference is that it is on a river that is the border between India and Nepal and has rapids. It was a pretty cool place – the river isn’t that wide – maybe 50 metres across but is very deep (about 10m at the deepest point) and flows very fast. One of the guys who runs the mission is 25 and a bit crazy – a few years ago he swam across it for a dare – supposedly he was the first person to do this.