Back to the Borderlands

I've already granted my “global best customer service award” for this year to the Zambians. What an amazingly welcoming, polite, courteous, helpful bunch of people they are. I love arriving at airports which are small enough for one to walk across the tarmac to immigrations…including Livingstone. I was greeted by a beaming official with Handel’s Messiah playing in the background. [Note that in the departure lounge, there’s a man who sells colourful Zambian postage stamps, including a recent set to commemorate Queen Elizabeth’s birthday (!), whilst at the Sesheke border post, the vehicle tax officials sit in the shade playing chess. Oh the postcolony.]

Through some strange coincidence – especially given Livingstone’s prolific herd of blue taxis – I ended up meeting one of the same drivers that I’d met previously. He took me to a café to wait for my Namibian NGO friend Friedrich. On that sweltering afternoon, the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, well, converged, as my friend Carol puts it. Amidst the rain showers we explored Livingstone’s huge Maramba market, hopping between muddy puddles and amused looks to buy sumptuous mangoes and bananas, and beans from Tanzania. Although dinner at the lodge bordered on disappointing, the fact that we were sitting right on the banks of the mighty Zambezi certainly made up for it. It rained hard much of the night; twinned with some particularly raucous frogs in all directions, my tent was quite the auditorium.

From Livingstone we drove 2 hours to Namibia, first to Katima and then on to West Caprivi. One of the first friends I made in West Cap, and one of the most dynamic women in her community, is dying of HIV/AIDS. Her illness was one of the main reasons for my visit. It’s easy to forget just how small a human skeleton is, until you see someone rendered unrecognisable in the advanced stages of this awful disease. Her limbs are the width of my wrists. Some of my feelings have been those of frustration and anger: why didn’t she take her ARVs properly? Why isn’t the hospital doing more, and why is there no doctor in sight? As another friend noted, it is impossible for the likes of us to know what it is like to be HIV positive and poor.

Overall, returning to West Cap for the first time in some twenty months, and for the first rainy season since ’06, was really special. I crossed paths with lots of old colleagues and friends. Life there goes on with the same old politics as ever. Friedrich’s garden in Buffalo is overflowing with herbs and his rather larger ‘back yard’ is frequented by two hippo, two bushbuck and an unusually tame francolin called Paul. There is a profound sense of earth, space and sky. It’s curious to find peace in a place which is a centuries-old trading route, a former military base, the site of land contestations, and currently a diamond prospecting zone. Something about it has drawn people from all walks of life, it seems!

Back on the Katima Fish Farm, which has expanded its quota of horses and goats, I shared a drink on the Zambezi with some of the new set and their plus ones – including an Afrikaans optometrist. A few years ago in Katima there was only one supermarket and one pharmacy, let alone an optometrist. I spent the night at Carol’s place in her absence. It can safely be described as its own ecosystem, an insect specialist’s paradise, in fact. Fortunately the American WWF lodger seems to have adapted very well. She drove me across the Namibia/Zambia border early the next morning. Her discussions with the border gate guards were hilariously minimal (“I’m just taking this lady across and then coming back, ok?”), met with a slightly bored laissez faire nod. No passport, no vehicle papers, no nothing. I love it.

The Mazhandu Family Bus from Sesheke back to Livingstone, as always, provided entertainment. In contrast to my earlier ‘African time’ departures, the Mazhandu Family Bus left promptly on this occasion at 7.07am. I was allocated a seat in the front row which, I later realised, appeared to be reserved for “special” passengers: an Indian doctor; a tall gent with a very bling necklace; my white self; and the two very stylish and made-up girlfriends of the bus driver and his trusty ticket collector. The girlfriends definitely didn’t look they hung out in dusty Sesheke too often and, having rapidly transitioned back to NGO-worker-with-grubby-sandals mode, I felt positively underdressed in their company.

Back in Jozi, the city is deep green from the rain, my potplants have just survived my absence, and the Hillbrow Tower seems to have unsurprisingly acquired some kind of giant football attachment. Life continues in Lonehill, surrounded as I am by complexes with names like ‘Plaisance’ and ‘Manhattan’, though my rather loud Shona-speaking and Nigerian neighbours regularly remind me that at least I’m in the African version of Wisteria Lane. Roll on 2010.

A Southern African Christmas: Zimbabwe & Mozambique

How pleasant to fly only 1.5 hours home instead of ten and, for the first time in a decade, not to be heading back into the frosty urban wilds of England. Needless to say, I bumped into old friends on the flight. We went straight from the airport for tea with friends on one of the few remaining white-owned farms, about 20km out of town. The road beyond Westgate is horribly pitted and potholed; another rainy season and many of the roads will look like Beira’s did at the end of the civil war. On the positive side, Harare is green and full of beautiful trees, fragrant blossoms, and the occasional road-crossing tortoise who, like other Zimbabweans, enjoys living life on the edge.

My parents hadn’t had any electricity for a few days. At first we thought it was ZESA trying to extort a Christmas-time bribe, but it turned out to be our uncooperative neighbours whose trees overhang the electricity lines, and which they refuse to cut. Anyway, it was back to the no-power routine which, because we can’t run the borehole pump using the generator at the same time as using any electrical appliances, means that the toilet cisterns have to be filled with buckets from the swimming pool. And/or if water needs to be pumped at night, the house mains need to be turned off. The family have it down to a fine art now…I just sit and watch, torch in hand.

The local economy is now fully converted to US Dollars and things are expensive – apparently it’s the only country in the world without its own currency. We didn’t spend much time mulling over politics. There are still lots of problems, and Mugabe lives on. I heard two first-hand accounts about him this trip, one hilarious and one shocking. That’s always the mix in Zim.

Anecdote 1: A white friend of my brother’s constructs carports. He received a call-out one day to take measurements for a carport in the Crowhill area. The woman on the other end told him to look for the blue gate on xyz road. Off he went, and drove up and down the road, but couldn’t find the place. He phoned the woman, saying, ‘I’ve driven up and down, but the only place with a blue gate is Bob’s [Mugabe’s] place’. She said casually, ‘Oh yes, that’s the one’. So off he went to Bob’s place, removing his shoes as instructed by the front door guards, only for Grace to enquire why he was barefoot.

Anecdote 2: Much less savoury. A black friend of mine who studies in the UK was driving in the same area a year ago, and failed to hear the president’s motorcade approaching a T-junction. The golden rule is that all plebs have to move completely off the road. The outriders had already driven past when she pulled into the road. The armed soldiers at the back of the entourage stopped, forced her out of her car and beat her before letting her go. She was due at a wedding two hours later as a bridesmaid.

Our departure for Mozambique turned out to be rather dramatic: we left at 4 in the morning, only to hit a huge rock on Harare Drive. Given the unlikelihood of a rock that size coincidentally appearing right in the middle of the road, and given that a car pulled out of a nearby road as soon as we stopped, we suspect it was some kind of near-hijack, but that they were discouraged by the fact that four of us then stepped out our vehicle. After a rocky start (no pun intended) we were able to borrow another vehicle and left a few hours later to navigate the Christmas kumusha traffic, with everyone returning to their rural homes for the holiday.

My brother smoothly negotiated our way across the Mutare borders with a good mix of Shona and Portuguese. We had expected a lot more bribe-seeking, but a friendly sandwich here and a packet of smokes there seemed to be the extent of it. In general all the officials were incredibly pleasant to deal with. The last time I crossed that border was in the opposite direction in 2002. There was no food in Zim and I was bringing in a big sack of maize meal for people at home, convinced that it was going to be confiscated. In those days the border searches were quite intense, but I just lay (literally) tight on my sack and grinned and it was all fine.

Mozambique’s roads now make Zimbabwe’s look run down…what a fast switching of circumstances. It was extremely hot. The bush there is lush and thick, with villagers on the roadsides selling cashews and pineapples in their multitude, plus a few trussed-up live chickens to add variety to the mix. And of course there are a few enormous lorries carrying loads of valuable indigenous hardwood – a pattern that is sadly now well established.

Our road journey to the tiny coastal town of Inhassoro took ten hours, and we arrived just in time for sunset. The coast is beautiful: mile after mile of blue water against terracotta cliffs, and then the Bazaruto Archipelago not far offshore, featuring brightly painted starfish, glittery reef fish and giant turtles. The next ten days were spent with some of the large number of white Zimbabweans who all flocked to Inhassoro for the holidays. [Apparently the Rhodesians used to do the same before Mozambique’s war]. All of them drive 4x4s of the nicest kind; in fact, too many Christmasses in Inhassoro and you would come to assume that a Toyota Landcruiser GX is a basic essential of daily life. I have to say the wealth-poverty mix (or, lack of mix) was all rather bizarre, though nothing new in Africa, and I doubt that tourism has established a good name there. That said, the local market was quite popular with visitors, and I indulged there in print fabrics and bagfulls of fresh coconut and pineapple.

We spent lazy hours in the 30+ degree heat sitting by the ocean with drinks in hand, children running and shrieking in the sand and tea-temperature waves. It was all so idyllic and yet from time to time I’d overhear disquieting words from the other end of the table: “Eight weeks in the intensive care unit”… “wounds to the head”… “brain damage”… “arm with wire”. There amidst the drinks and sound of the surf, Zimbabwe’s violent crisis continues for, amongst others, the Chegutu farmers who in my opinion have been foolhardy enough to stay on their land. It has now been ten years – whoever would have thought.

New Year’s Eve was also spent on the beach in the sultry night time air under a full moon and with a rising tide. How glorious it is to lead an outdoors life again. As for the white Zimbos, they were there en masse with more cooler boxes than ever before witnessed, some of which were inevitably acquired by the incoming tide whilst their distracted owners socialised. On leaving at 3am, our bakkie got stuck in beach sand, at which point those who were still standing all disembarked and, in true Zim fashion as if it were the most normal thing in the world, pushed the vehicle a hundred metres to the next exit road. In our inebriated state we failed to notice one of our crew fall flat on her face in the sand during this little endeavour. It was much funnier during the re-telling over breakfast the next morning. Finally, there was a fair bit of spilled vodka and coke sloshing around in the back of the bakkie which I unsuspectingly wallowed in all the way home -- in my white beach dress, naturally. A pre-dawn solo moonlight swim avec dress sorted out that little problem in no time.

Reading back through this post feels strange– the themes being decay, violence, inequality and alcohol, combined with exquisite natural beauty. Nevertheless, a window into the motherland and, in some ways, into the dying and insular gasps of white Zimbabwe…although history seems to show that they won’t ever actually disappear.

Month Three Begins: Unpacking, Exploring

Things have been pretty busy. A few weekends ago I went to the famous Drakensberg for the first time, with a group of Afro-Indo-internationals featuring a good smattering of McKinsey, De Beers and small children thrown in. Possibly the most vociferous group of people I've ever been on a trip with, in fact. We were stopped by a large-bellied policeman on the way for speeding. For some reason he decided to let us off. We consumed large amounts of good food and wine and debated (well, they debated; I wasn't loud enough to get a word in edgeways) everything under the sun.

The Wisteria Lane Frontier is fine. The dense Johannesburg forest has greened with the rain and my balcony is slowly being populated with plants. I've done quite a bit, now that I think about it, including an open air electro-jazz concert at Emmarentia dam, a concert by the Joburg Philharmonic, a Christmas Carols in one of the Fourways shopping centre theatres (yeah, it's early for that, that was my thought too) , and a party with some the city's urban black chic in a completely amazing refurbished refinery warehouse downtown. I've done work-related radio interviews for SABC Durban, a Jewish community station (random) and visited the SABC headquarters.

I've been to an art exhibit by a Nigerian collector in Parkhurst, hosted by a very elegant Zambian woman. And I've been beekeeping with the crazy French-Portuguese man and one of my botanist friends in a sprawling grove of blue gums in the grounds of a nuclear research station in Westonaria (yeah, I know, how bizarre does it get). We picnicked with white wine and quiche and argued considerably about gender relations, marriage, and nature versus nurture. I've experimented with a few yoga classes, sadly none of which I like. I've started one-to-one sessions with a trainer at the gym, and could barely walk this past week, needless to say. This morning I met this Polish immigrant woman with a great sense of humour who runs a ramshackle organic farm in Kyalami. I brought preserves and gem squash for eight rand a kilo. You can't really go wrong on that. Last but not least, I hired domestic labour for the first time two weeks ago -- not sure how I feel about it. The lady took some of my cardboard boxes back to Diepsloot - to board up her broken windows, she said.

My crate arrived, finally. They sent it on the back of a ridiculously oversize truck completely disproportionate to the crate - the kind of truck that's used to carry several tonnes of black granite across the Zimbabwean countryside. Anyway, this truck was so big that the complex guards wouldn't let it in. Fair enough, it probably wouldn't have rounded all the corners of the maze. So the truck had to park outside, and then we ferried boxes in my little car backwards and forwards. It was quite amusing. More amusing because whilst all this was going on, a small and shabby white van was parked downstairs from my flat with two cat-catchers in it. I kid you not. These guys go around catching cats which appear to be homeless, and sterilising them in a humane fashion.

I have been a firm supporter of Gumtree since arriving in South Africa: one washing machine, one fridge, one coffee table, one futon, two lamps, one disaster of a SatNav device, crockery...and one dining table with benches. The latter was quite a mission. I called up the man at the brickyard who sold me the dodgy SatNav to get a recommendation for a truck, praying that this time the truck would be smaller than the one which delivered the crate. Truck, driver and two accomplices duly followed me to the table owner's house. Loading and travel went fine; getting it up my stairs and inside the front door was a whole other story. It took all four of us to carry it, and I had to remind them that they couldn't just dump it on the bricks whenever they felt tired. Then it wouldn't fit through the door, so we had to take the coasters off (sixteen screws later). Anyway, it all worked out in the end and I am delighted to now have a nice big wooden table to eat and work on.

My flat is finally looking vaguely under control and virtually all my boxes are unpacked. It feels pretty good, I have to say. I had a little birthday-come-housewarming gathering last night to celebrate. And my wormery arrived - yes, in the post! Despite my concerns, the worms did not go to worm heaven en route and are now speedily fattening themselves on my veggie peelings. Bring on the compost...

The Wisteria Lane Frontier

At the intersection of Sandton Drive and William Nicol last night was a man displaying a handwritten cardboard sign, not an unusual mode of begging here, except that this one said something along the lines of: ‘My donkey ate Robert Mugabe’s chicken soup and now I’m in trouble so please help me out’. If he’d been anywhere near my car, he certainly would have won a donation for creativity, though I’m ever so curious to know about the inspiration for the sign. There are plenty of Zimbabweans about, and many of them very bitter about what’s happened…but I won’t go into that just yet.

I forget that it’s October and that October means hot in southern Africa. It’s been pretty hot during the daytimes, with enormous cloud formations building up in the late afternoon. The mauve jacarandas are coming out in full bloom, and the mornings and evenings on the Wisteria Lane Frontier are filled with the raucous cries of a bird whose name I can’t remember… but basically they sound like something out of the Jurassic period.

The Wisteria Lane Frontier is what I’ve renamed my little part of Lonehill. It is affluent, artificial, high-walled, and filled with mostly whites and young professionals of all races. There is nothing organic or unplanned about its geography or architecture at all. The only redeeming factor, as I’ve mentioned before, is the view over the undulating landscape of the northern frontier of the city. The Lonehill kopje reminds me a lot of Zim. The colours in the early mornings and late afternoons are just beautiful, and as long as I don’t look too close to where I stand (!), then I have a strong sense of being in an African landscape, which you wouldn’t find in other parts of the city. There’s also loads of space in my apartment, which feels like heaven after London. It’s theoretically one of the safest parts of Jo’burg, but even so, on Friday night I heard my first gunshots in the distance, closely followed by a barrage of police sirens. Anyway, I’ll be on the Wisteria Lane Frontier for a few months and then re-assess the situation. It's not all bad...just takes some getting used to!

I am now the not-so-proud owner of a car. I slightly resent having to spend my hard- earned savings on a car which, to the frustration of some of my male friends, I see as nothing more than functional. I also feel like a sell-out on the environmental front. I have been commuting across town quite a bit for social stuff. Excluding the time taken when I get lost, which is often, it’s about thirty minutes for me to travel to the older part of the city (Parkhurst/Melrose/Rosebank/Saxonwold). I cannot believe that the government here has not been more interventionist or top-down in terms of vehicle usage and traffic congestion. In the mornings the highways are crammed with 1-person-per-car. Maybe someone can explain to me how it got this bad. In order for my journey to work to take seven minutes, I either have to leave at 6.15am or 8.45am…otherwise it can easily take 45 minutes. Can’t wait to get a bicycle. In the meanwhile I seriously need to work on my parking skills.

I went to the Bryanston Organic Market on Saturday morning. Like other parts of this part of Jo’burg, very little about the market felt spontaneous. With the well-heeled clientele, it felt a bit like Kings Road in Chelsea, minus the high street brand names. Nevertheless, there were a few interesting characters around, including a seventy-something French-speaking Portuguese beekeeper and honey purveyor who read my palm and flirted outrageously. And a South African potter t who told me about the floods of Zimbabweans trying to get a job at his studio. And then there was the gluten-and-lactose-free stall (*obviously*, it’s the Joburg equivalent of Chelsea) with the man who proudly told me he also sold bottled water imported from Italy. I didn’t hold back on giving him a piece of my mind about that.

Saturday also included a visit to some second-hand furniture shops on Bram Fischer in Randburg. That was much more real and much more interesting. People were bemused by a white girl wearing an African-java-print skirt (as they probably were at the organic market) and did a few double-takes. I didn’t have much luck on the furniture front, but I did come away with contact details for a dressmaker, some hilarious LP covers from the ‘70s, and a plan to buy an antique milk pail.

I think I have a navigation curse on me, which is unfortunate, given that even to start with, I seem to be missing the DNA for geographic orientation. My TomTom GPS thingy keeps seizing up on me at the wrong times. And I still haven’t bought myself a map book which is silly. The biggest drama was on Wednesday morning when I ended up having to take friends to the airport for their London flight because the taxi didn’t arrive on time. We got stuck in hideous traffic, but we made it in good time in the end. Then on leaving the airport I managed to take a wrong turning and ended up going into Bedfordview and then all the way south, via Yeoville and Houghton on my way back to Bryanston. For those who don’t know Jo’burg, that would be like going from Canary Wharf to Marble Arch via Kew Gardens. Except that the Kew Gardens wouldn’t be Kew Gardens, it would be more like a dodgy part of Brixton. Yeah, so I was in the car for FOUR HOURS that morning, and not a happy bunny.

What else? I finally have some crockery and cutlery, two folding chairs and, as of today, a coffee table bought on Gumtree. The sellers delivered it to me, and extended an invitation to be my surrogate parents if I ever needed any support. So cute – and only in southern Africa! It feels like it’s going to take forever to furnish my place but I guess I just need to stop being so impatient, and instead be grateful (and sometimes amused) to be in a place where people are so open, friendly, and casual-familiar. Did I mention the mattress man, who I’ve only spoken to once or twice over the phone? “Oh yah hi Jules…oh yes your mattress. You know what, Jules, it won’t be delivered today. No yah, sorry Jules. Nothing I can do, my angel, nothing I can do. Ok angel….Take care.”

Oh Egoli: First Week in Johannesburg

It’s the end of my first week in Jo’burg, and I am struck by this contented sense of relief to be back in southern Africa. The size of the city and all its highways are a tad intimidating, but my relocation agent has been drumming the geography into me consistently since day one, so I pretty much know where most suburbs are now. Everyone has been incredibly helpful and welcoming here, ranging from the kitchen lady at the office (who gave me an enormous bear hug the day I arrived) to relatives and friends of friends, and, less surprisingly, the car salesman. I’m staying with an ex-Oxford friend in Sandton in a modest complex with a lovely big garden. It’s sunny, the air is filled with blossom scent, and there are lots of birds – shrikes, parrots, robins, babblers, barbets, wood hoopoes, and more.

I’ve seen loads of accommodation options, and think I probably perplexed the Google-assigned property agent with my non-corporate leanings. Despite my wannabe-Bohemian tendencies, in the end it came down to the convenience and proximity of Lonehill up in the north near the office, albeit with its artificial ‘Wisteria Lane kitsch’ feel versus the older and more atmospheric Parkhurst with its streetside restaurants and cafes, which are quite unusual for Jo’burg and its shopping mall culture. I’ve opted for Lonehill in the short term, for the loft space and the upstairs terrace view, which will be awesome after the claustrophobia of London. Let’s see how it goes. My neighbours probably wouldn’t appreciate chickens and a beehive, but I should be able to do veggies and a solar oven on the terrace at least! I am looking forward to my crate arriving so that I can start decorating.

There’s been a lot of admin alongside just staying on top of the day job, but I have been out and about one or twice. Last weekend I spent Sunday afternoon on Freedom Square in Soweto, with a political analyst friend, listening to new candidates for the Constitutional Court being interviewed by the Judicial Services Committee. It was fascinating, and all the 'heavies' were there, including the Chief Justice, the Justice Minister, MP Patricia de Lille, and more. Although it was open to the public, there were surprisingly few people watching (40-50) and apparently virtually no security at all. I was struck by the relative informality of it. I was also struck by how the questioning was still weighed down by race -- I would have expected that ten years ago, but curious to find it still so prevalent.

This weekend I went out with friends in mixed and cosmopolitan Melville. It turned out to be a really entertaining evening, including a brief bar encounter with a group who only spoke sign language. The evening concluded with driving to a club up north with some buff Nigerians, with the Jai Ho soundtrack blaring loud and on repeat. Unexpected yet fun. The latest good news is that I'm finally going solo to and from work, in a hired car. I only know two routes... but, as I like to say, a girl's gotta grow up sooner or later.

Departing the Metropole

After almost exactly a decade based in England, I have decided to return to southern Africa. Packing up is a pretty momentous time, and a chance to reflect on what has passed, or at least some of it. I sift through papers, find fragments of notes taken during my Zimbabwe travels -- fragments of chaos and desperation. I find photographs of my other world in Namibia, a Khwe woman weaving in the late afternoon shade of Mashambo, and satellite images of Caprivi and the ever-stretching sandveld. I find frantic to-do lists from the office -- yet again an other world, one of ambition and self-betterment and money. Cards from my mother on the southern oceans. A ribbon from Liz, 10 years ago in India just before we left, now fallen behind a bookshelf and retrieved, covered in dust. I have been using it to tie one of my scrapbooks. This time I tuck it into my hand luggage, because I can't bring myself to let it go. The "Cash Caviar and Champagne" dress is dug up from underneath the bed, no doubt ready for its Jozi debut.

I paste things rather frantically into my scrapbooks. It's hard to slow down. I vacuum, and again. I gather all my fieldnotes, those special and wordy rite-de-passage collections, and add them to the 'special box' pile, which includes photographs, my childhood stamp collection (yup, don’t laugh), my diaries. All my files from university are going too, including my first year anthro lecture notes, carefully dictated in green and purple ink. It’s debatable whether I should really be taking those, admittedly. My cello is de-bridged and de-sound-posted. We pack him up carefully and then into a coffin-like crate which is loaded into a cavernous van during an uncharacteristically heavy downpour. It’s really happening, this move.

I retrace the steps of my last day or two in London. Alice helps me clean the flat, vacuuming in her pencil skirt and heels. Even that she manages to do stylishly. I finally meet the proprietor of the coffee shop downstairs. I think he's Jamaican. I ask him for a bin bag, as I've run out. He gives me two, saying I might need more. I go to the gym on my final morning, and sit on the bike listening to Kaleen’s old playlists. God, I will be relieved not to go back to those gyms in the winter. I go to the British Library to renew my card. I’m not sure why. I suppose I have a small hope that I’ll want to come and absorb and reflect on knowledge again sometime. I remind some girl that she can’t go into the reading rooms carrying a cup of coffee, which she seems to find surprising, and then I go for bhel puri at the Indian restaurant on Drummond St where Ed and I used to eat.

Mary comes to pick me up. I heave those heavy cumbersome bags into her car and off we go to Heathrow. I tell her about Mishek's death last week, and how I had hoped one day we would sit together round the fire in Murehwa -- where I've never been because of my skin colour -- free of fear and the dark shadows of the past, him an old man, and me still listening. She tells me about one of her African clients who has been beaten in detention in the UK. I dispatch several copies of Chikwava’s ‘Harare North’ to friends. At the airport I am ever so tired. There is endless possibility now, and I don't know where to begin.

Passage to India, July 2009

In July I returned to India for the first time in five years, and spent a week travelling before our much-awaited college reunion. I left London in a frazzled but expectant state and flew into Delhi, where we spent a surreal and humid day exploring the Red Fort, the million winding alleys of Chandi Chowk market, the sparkling new metro, and reacquainting our senses with India. We caught a night train that evening, with the Delhi station bringing back so many memories.

The Kalka Mail train which starts in Calcutta/Kolkata laid on an easy, hassle-free journey in 2nd class AC to Kalka, where we arrived at about 4.30am and drank steaming sweet chai in clay cups on the station platform. Then onto the ‘toy train’ up into the hills of Shimla, on the old British narrow gauge railway that was built in 1903. It was the loveliest of journeys, with stops at tiny and beautifully maintained stations along the way. Shimla was definitely worth the visit -- forested and full of colonial administrative buildings, most of which are delapidated and decaying, but rich with history and character.

We took a room at Hotel Classic, with a view overlooking the former Annandale racecourse and polo field. It's now used as a helipad by the army. The next few days were spent exploring Shimla by foot, eating dosas and pao bhaji, and admiring the unexpected gardening and potplanting skills of the locals. The highlight was undoubtedly the Viceroy Lodge, an extraordinary Oxbridgesque mansion decked out in teak and walnut, which used to have 800 staff, and where some of the penultimate decisions about India’s tumultuous Partition with Pakistan were made.

From Shimla we hired a jeep and driver to travel up to McLeod Ganj via Mandi, Palampur and Chamunda Devi. With several monsoon downpours along the way, winding mountain roads with heavy traffic, and a few stops for food and temples, the journey of about 250km took us 11 hours. India amazes me with how productive everyone is. People are always busy doing something: worshipping, travelling to worship, building roads, building bridges, trading food, working the rice paddies, carrying wood. Just everywhere you look from the road, people are busy with activities. It always just strikes me as a lot busier than Africa somehow! Though maybe it's just to do with population density.

Our arrival in steamy McLeod Ganj, which has one of the highest monsoon rainfalls in the country, coincided with an enormous traffic jam in the tiny central crossroads. Eventually we found our way to the Tibetan-run Pema Thang Guest House, which was full of foreigners. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj are the seat of the Dalai Lama in exile. McCleod Ganj proved to be a fascinating if not bizarre community of Tibetan refugees, pilgrims of all religions including Buddhism, do-good Westerners, Indians cashing in on the economic opportunities, and all sorts of alternative hangouts. For the most part, the town was submerged in cloud and monsoon haze but one early morning after a restless and mosquito-filled night, a little sun opened up new parts of the valley, lighting up some distant cliffs and mountains that I hadn't noticed before. The views must be wonderful on clear days.

We pottered in and around McCleod Ganj for a few days, exploring the temples, the nearby monasteries, the museum with its very firm Tibetan versions of history, the hippy cafes, and feasting on the most delicious malai kofta on the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Kareri. I learned my first about Buddhism and the Free Tibet cause, now somewhat passé in the west, I think, and also found a great Japanese masseuse who lived in a building for the political prisoners' association. The stairwell was full of framed, very graphic depictions of Chinese torture of Tibetans. Pretty horrific stuff.

We flew out of Dharamsala on a 30-seater plane which had been grounded overnight for repairs (!), so we took a deep breath and crossed our fingers. It was amazing to see monsoon India underwing - vast rivers and settlement and cultivation as far as the eye can see. From Delhi we took a taxi to the traveler section, Paharganj, and whilst on the main highway into town, in the rush hour traffic, someone that we'd met on the Kalka-Shimla train pulled up next to us. To re-meet a random acqutaintance in a country of over a billion people felt pretty surreal, it has to be said! And then into the guts of Paharganj - possibly one of the most intense traffic experiences I've had in India. Narrow streets with a huge amount of activity - motorbikes, cyclists, load-pulling wallahs, rickshaws, cars, taxis, pedestrians, all going in different directions. And everyone trying to make it work, squeezing through the gaps, with horns and noise and cows and dirt and everything else. We were kind of lost and our driver tried to do a u-turn to find the hotel, and knocked over a motorcyclist in the process, who then came round and slapped him across the face. Despite my fears about a big fight breaking out, in the thick of this crowded craziness, their conflict resolution was swift. So unlike the completely unnecessary road rage that one sees regularly in Britain. And what was also interesting was that afterwards, at least 2 people helped our driver reverse out the muddle. Again, everyone seemed willing to make the chaos functional. India works. We finally found the comically-named Major's Den before heading out for some market shopping and food at a particularly grubby traveller cafe.

From there we went down to Mumbai, this time on the Rajdhani Express. India’s trains never fails to impress, and my admiration for the railways is endless. The service was excellent and the food was better than British Airways. We took ourselves on the local train to Bhandra to find Anokhi's new apartment, where Maura had also just arrived. After I had a facial in a men’s-only salon by mistake, and after stuffing ourselves on dosa at the corner restaurant, we sandwiched the ourselves and our luggage into a car and headed for the monsoon hills of Pune and the college.

Being back on the hill was like going home, surrounded by people who care and count, and by the warbling-gurgling birds. We talked and danced the nights away, and absorbed the lush greenness during the day. It’s so easy to forget the oppression of the hot months during the rains. We walked up to the high ridge overlooking Mulshi. It was splendid: emerald-wet, dotted with ancient shrines, and valleys dipping and dropping in all directions. It was India as I recall it from my very first days there in '97. The mists rolling in and out, the camaraderie of the group, and a sense of space that makes me feel whole. Before I left I also climbed the other hill, the one on the Paud side, to look across those valleys in some wonder, my eyes falling on new detail every minute, the light rising and subsiding, pushing its way through monsoon clouds, falling on the hamlets, and the temples with their triangular rooves that have sprung up all over. It's a view I have missed.

There’s not much else to say besides that it was a very special few days, and for the first time in ages I felt my restlessness subside. Afterwards a good number of us went to Pune for a few days. Pune is as busy as I recall, but its new geographies pass me by somewhat. I realise now with some surprise that I never looked at a map of Pune whilst I lived in India. We never had that much time to explore, I guess. I am still somewhat blind to the layout of the city. There are new developments, expansion and roads.

We stayed just down the street from the German Bakery, that old hippie-international haunt, ate enormous paper dosas at Madhubahn and bhel puri outside some new cinema complex somewhere, and drank cold coffee with the dwarf proprietor at Coffee House. Pune is changing, but in many ways it was all as it should be. Thank you India.