Author name: Liz

Joint owner @followtheboat Sailor, traveller, blogger, vlogger, storyteller.

Can I have a case, please? Wine tasting in Cochin

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Ever been to a wine tasting in India? Did you know that “terroir” is a term that has no English translation? It is like the fifth element, and is that “je ne c’est quoi” produced by the environment in which the vine grows: the fungus that grows in the soil, the insects which crawl in the soil, the strength of the sun and the amount of rainfall. They all affect the taste of the wine in your glass. Apparently.

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The long and winding road: finding Tibet in Darjeeling

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One or two inhabitants stood inside the gate observing our sweating, panting faces with dead-pan expressions. A wide and well-tended path stretched upwards to the main group of buildings. We had walked into another country: there were no plastic bottles, crisp wrappers, bright blue tangles of frayed nylon rope, plastic bags, sweet wrappers, turds or stinking puddles anywhere. Just nice green grassy borders either side of the well-trodden path, and a hand-built wooden stairway.

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The Best Train Set In The World?

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The sound of the hissing steam and shrill horn transported me to Britain in the 50s, The Railway Children, Murder on the Orient Express, Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, the railways that built America, George Stevenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Sometimes we were so close to the shops hewn out of the rock along Hill Cart Road I could have easily removed a speck of dust from the eye of a passing housewife, or handed a letter to a family of children.

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Kolkata, Kewpies and Kalighat

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“If you’re talking about a great place to live, I’d say Kolkata. It’s got everything: great restaurants, historic buildings, the Maidan, an excellent transport service and friendly people.” Upon this great bit of advice from a seasoned visitor to India we spent a few days in Kolkata and in this post we visit the untouristic Kalighat to view a few burning bodies.

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A Murder of Crows

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For all their jingoism and arrogance, I felt humbled by their intrepidness. We call ourselves travellers today, but catching a flight over to the other side of the world for a quick jaunt up to Machu Picchu, or a guided tour round a wildlife park, doesn’t compare to the terrifying adventure into the unknown these individuals must have endured for the sake of commerce.

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The Kites of Kolkata

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As the sun began its rapid descent, the sky began to fill with black kites, some of them tiny specks a mile high. At first we took them to be of the raptor variety, but as we emerged from the undergrowth into wide grassland we saw a hundred boys and men wrestling with long twine stretching into the distance.

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Arrival at ‘The Queen of Hills’

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And they’re off! This is the introduction to our trek into the Himalayan foothills. “Cold and travel weary by 5pm, we stumbled across Joey’s pub… with its cosy bar, ramshackle tables and faded posters it felt immediately like home.” All that Buddhist culture and we end up in a pub. Typical. Lots of atmospheric photographs and an argument with an Indian tourist in this blog entry…

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Unique Udaipur

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This is our final entry of our Rajathan trip, written by Octopussy…I mean Liz. Why Octopussy? Because we’re in Romantic Udaipur, where the rather kitch 1983 Bond movie was filmed. However, as Liz writes: “shunning the ‘antiques’, carpets, and tailoring being thrust at us we ended up by the water, watching the sun go down over Udaipur from the best viewpoint in town, in the company of professional photographers and the homeless.”

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Sambhali Trust: Charity begins in a Rajput Home

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“We teach them about their appearance, good dress sense. Most don’t know where Jodhpur is, or even that they live in Rajasthan. Their lives are simply this: get up, brew tea for Dad, do the dishes, clean the house, cook lunch, sleep, clean the household, make dinner, go to bed. Every single day of their lives. They have no weekends, no holidays. They are married at 15, and then have the exact same life with a husband who probably rapes and certainly beats them.” This is the account of one man’s mission to ’empower’ disadvantaged women from Rajasthan, in a superb write-up by Liz that is packed with first-hand accounts, facts, sad stories and, ultimately, the positive action of the Sambhali Trust.

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