Arcadia Hotel Kottayam

... images are quite startling with men and women that literally appear demented and demonised, becoming respectable people after a number of months/years rehabilitation. They not only care & provide medication for these 200 people, but also provide over 3,000 meals a day for the local hospital with a total running cost of £4,000 a day which is done entirely on donations & faith. Some of the patients have to be locked behind bars during most of the day otherwise ...

Sorry I've been slack again but should catch up again soon. After Kumily we went to a home-stay about 10km from Kottayam, right in the backwaters. If anyone has read "God of Small Things" by Arundati Roy, that is where it was set. It was a really picturesque place with a maze of narrow waterways lined with palm trees and paddy fields and a dotted with a few houses etc. Some of the kids here are ...

... knew we would see poverty, but I guess I was thinking that the Mother Teresa of Calcutta stories I grew up with were a thing of the past. Score one for baseless optimism. Our first evening in Mumbai, we decided to walk on the beach outside of our hotel. A group of children dressed in rags swarmed around us, asking for money. One of the women accompanying the children asked me to hold her infant. Since I ...

... to encounter any spiders over here, and am forcing myself into a state of denial over their very existence, but the one that they'd photographed earlier in their trip was quite possibly bigger than anything any of us are going to get to see in the wildlife sanctuary. Raju, from Trivandrum, was there on holiday with his charming family who, through work or educational commitments, are usually spread widely over southern India. As a mine of ...

Pooppally's, Alleppey - Friday 6th April to Tuesday 10th April 2007 We took our fist train ride in India, only two hours, but quite an experience for us all. The children's first encounter of beggars with hideous diseases and severe poverty, much discussion about this and life sprung from these encounters. Once we all had our seats we settled down to take in the amazing views as we headed towards the Kerala Backwaters, the colours and lushness was ...

... being the Taj Mahal. In the intervening centuries occasionally there was some European influence, primarily British with Portuguese colonies in Goa, and French in Pondicherry being the major exceptions. By the 1800's with the decline of the Mughals, and rising trade, India effectively came entirely under British control. British rule brought many mixed blessings, better infrastructure, economic development, and the creation of an organized ...

... a queen size bed while she slept on the extra matteress on the floor. In the morning we packed up and Brea pointed out my camera case as empty and thus began our ridiculous exit from Anjuna. Joycie had taken my iPod, camera and twenty American dollars out of my bag that night and after delicately looking around the room without accusation I suggested that we all unpack our bags "just in case it got wrapped up in something." Brea and Jeanne understood entirely and we all grudgingly ...

... hug and oft a struggle to get out of. Needless to say, he looks up to Dave, the master chef, and communicates this through elaborate hugs which Dave must wiggle out of. The Nepali Three- Working the same circuit as Sanju but as waiters; they are in Goa to make money during the Himalayan off-season. They are great guys but, in matters of business or cards, they are stern and even smug. The Nepalese run a tight ship that's usually courteous, clean and profitable and ...