After many hugs, high-5s, and handshakes we left the smiling (and very colourful, once we'd finished Holi'ing) kiddos of New Hope Community for a lengthy drive to Taptapani. Every village we went through was full of (almost exclusively) young men in various shades of red, yellow, purple, etc, either still throwing powder at each other (or Daisy the truck) or washing off in the local ghat or river. Holi is a really joyous celebration and one I'm truly glad to have celebrated in India. There are coloured powder-throwing events in London but I don't imagine it's really the same - much as Simon and I enjoyed our "Run or Dye" 5k last year. 
By the time we reached Taptapani the heat had struck me down and sadly I was too tired and headachy to make use of the palatial spa part of our multi-roomed bathroom. Laura tries to ensure that when possible everyone at some points gets a single room, but as a couple our special treat was the honeymoon suite of the government-run Panthanivas Taptapani guesthouse (probably the very room Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi stayed in during their visit). Tragically underutilised in our case as I spent most of our 18 hours there in bed nursing a heat-induced headache, missing breakfast and unable to summon the energy even for a shower, much less filling the enormous Romanesque tub. The next morning I did make myself join the group for a wander down to the small village to see the one sight, the famous public baths, next to the sacred springs. The Bath of England this is not. There is a men's tank and a ladies tank, and tank is definitely the right word- small concrete tubs filled with filthy water. I dipped in a couple of toes, and then went back to enjoying the sacred tree and rather flexibly erotic carvings of the attached temple.
Friday's drive took us to another coastal village, Gopalpur, where we stayed in a dive called the Mermaid Hotel. The pain wasn't lessening so again I lost most of the day to lying in bed. Finally I convinced myself that the sea air would be preferable to the mustiness of the room, the feel of the sand would be an improvement to the board of the bed, the views of the village might be more pleasant than staring at cracked paint, and late afternoon outdoors would be cooler than the sauna the bedroom had become. It was definitely the right choice, as Niranjan led us on a fascinating walk (which I was too busy experiencing to document photographically). We walked along the beach for a while, which had none of the Western-catering shops and restaurants of Palolem or even the tourist-focused seafront of Visakhapatnam- it's very much a working stretch of sand, covered in little shacks used by those ekeing out a living catching small prawns and tiny fish. After an hour or so on the sands where the men work, repairing their nets and hauling in their catch, we went into the village. Even by Indian standards (the country looks like it was designed by Lisa Frank there are so many bright colours on every temple and sari) this was a particularly colourful village. It was also teeming with life- the sort of happy smiling community that people have false nostalgia for. Laughing children sat piled out of doorways, a different book on each lap, taking lessons from volunteer teachers. Dogs and pigs and chickens and the odd cat all scurried about, and we were followed by a growing collection of excited kids who found the game of saying "hello" and shaking our hands as much as possible endlessly fascinating. Many residents came outside to chat with us (the standard of English was quite good) and we complimented their brightly painted homes. On one of the streets a man was pushing a food cart along, stopping it whenever a customer flagged him down. Having not eaten all day, I immediately ordered chat, a made on-the-spot bowl of lentils, veggies and fried crispy bits. Pretty damn filling for the equivalent of 20p, and Patrick quickly determined a few bites of mine weren't enough and ordered his own. This was the most pleasant, natural and un-awkward village visit I've had yet, in part because it never felt forced or like we were just there to stare at each other. People noted the surprising presence of 8 foreigners on their street and then happily got on with their lives. Though most of the villagers depend upon fishing for their livelihood and doubtless make little money, this walk didn't have the "poverty tourism" feel that some other visits have had an edge of. And despite forgetting my camera, I have the strongest visual memory of that village.
Lovely locals aside, there wasn't much keeping us in Gopalpur so Saturday morning we hit the road again (after a filling breakfast that cost about 35p in a hole in the wall cafe), bound for Puri, where we were reunited with WiFi, aircon and a pool for a fabulous three nights.
Our 5 days in the Odisha tribal areas were a very unique experience. It is eye-opening to see how so many people still live in such a comparatively archaic way, very isolated from the wider world. Watching the potters at work in Goudaguda, seeing bartering in action for spices, vegetables and dried fish, or knowing that mentally challenged children are still abandoned by their families, it's easy to forget that it's 2016. For those of us from Europe and Australia, we pass through and share a moment of our lives- the villagers going about their daily activities and us observing, perhaps even interacting if we engage in some commerce or a chat. For a brief moment we see a man throwing a pot or a woman selling bangles, then we move on, privileged in our ability to explore any corner of the globe we put our minds to, whereas for people here, this is what the majority of their lives will consist of. No luxury of a career change, no liberty to try out different religions, unlikely to ever leave the state, when the weekly market is their main interaction with anyone outside their immediate village. The difference between those of us who flit around the globe till it feels small, changing aspects of our lives on a whim, and people whose reality moves in a tight radius, is a regular dichotomy in many travels, but particularly stark here. As Patrick has mused on in other posts, the romanticised - almost fetishised - vision of "the rural life" is naïve at best, undoubtedly contains an element of racism, and keeps people oppressed at worst. Why should people live without clean water, literacy, or the ability to see at night due to an electricity hookup because we think it's charming to have an image of village life fulfilled? On the flip side, rapid development can be dangerous. Niranjan discussed how since getting a decent education, many young people from villages have decided they're too good for the farming life and have gone to the city to make their fortune- only to plunge into urban poverty and end up swelling numbers of the slums and begging on the streets, without the social structure of their home community or family support. How will these tribal regions change in the future, as the effects of government policies are seen? So far it looks positive- organic farming is encouraged so hopefully the horrendous cycle of dependency on pesticides, fertiliser and seeds from western agribusinesses which have caused so many thousands of farmers to commit suicide in the north will be avoided. The government has also pushed maternal health, so with a vastly improved infant mortality rate, the birth rate has also decreased to about 3 children per woman. Unglamorous as it is, the country cannot survive without farmers. Minding the goats and ploughing the fields hundreds of miles away from anywhere built-up doesn't quite have the appeal of a salaried IT job in the city, and therein lies the rub.
Alas, the answer is not to be found in the late-night ramblings of an Anglo-American blog. We return to our regularly scheduled descriptions of temples and witty observations of fellow travellers when we return, in the Puri post!
Note: The Orissa week of our journey was with Dragoman, but run by a local company, Grass Routes, which specialises in this region, delving into the cultural heritage and interacting with the local daily life of an infrequently visited area. If their other guides are half as competent as Niranjan, they're doing well!
Friday's drive took us to another coastal village, Gopalpur, where we stayed in a dive called the Mermaid Hotel. The pain wasn't lessening so again I lost most of the day to lying in bed. Finally I convinced myself that the sea air would be preferable to the mustiness of the room, the feel of the sand would be an improvement to the board of the bed, the views of the village might be more pleasant than staring at cracked paint, and late afternoon outdoors would be cooler than the sauna the bedroom had become. It was definitely the right choice, as Niranjan led us on a fascinating walk (which I was too busy experiencing to document photographically). We walked along the beach for a while, which had none of the Western-catering shops and restaurants of Palolem or even the tourist-focused seafront of Visakhapatnam- it's very much a working stretch of sand, covered in little shacks used by those ekeing out a living catching small prawns and tiny fish. After an hour or so on the sands where the men work, repairing their nets and hauling in their catch, we went into the village. Even by Indian standards (the country looks like it was designed by Lisa Frank there are so many bright colours on every temple and sari) this was a particularly colourful village. It was also teeming with life- the sort of happy smiling community that people have false nostalgia for. Laughing children sat piled out of doorways, a different book on each lap, taking lessons from volunteer teachers. Dogs and pigs and chickens and the odd cat all scurried about, and we were followed by a growing collection of excited kids who found the game of saying "hello" and shaking our hands as much as possible endlessly fascinating. Many residents came outside to chat with us (the standard of English was quite good) and we complimented their brightly painted homes. On one of the streets a man was pushing a food cart along, stopping it whenever a customer flagged him down. Having not eaten all day, I immediately ordered chat, a made on-the-spot bowl of lentils, veggies and fried crispy bits. Pretty damn filling for the equivalent of 20p, and Patrick quickly determined a few bites of mine weren't enough and ordered his own. This was the most pleasant, natural and un-awkward village visit I've had yet, in part because it never felt forced or like we were just there to stare at each other. People noted the surprising presence of 8 foreigners on their street and then happily got on with their lives. Though most of the villagers depend upon fishing for their livelihood and doubtless make little money, this walk didn't have the "poverty tourism" feel that some other visits have had an edge of. And despite forgetting my camera, I have the strongest visual memory of that village.
Lovely locals aside, there wasn't much keeping us in Gopalpur so Saturday morning we hit the road again (after a filling breakfast that cost about 35p in a hole in the wall cafe), bound for Puri, where we were reunited with WiFi, aircon and a pool for a fabulous three nights.
Our 5 days in the Odisha tribal areas were a very unique experience. It is eye-opening to see how so many people still live in such a comparatively archaic way, very isolated from the wider world. Watching the potters at work in Goudaguda, seeing bartering in action for spices, vegetables and dried fish, or knowing that mentally challenged children are still abandoned by their families, it's easy to forget that it's 2016. For those of us from Europe and Australia, we pass through and share a moment of our lives- the villagers going about their daily activities and us observing, perhaps even interacting if we engage in some commerce or a chat. For a brief moment we see a man throwing a pot or a woman selling bangles, then we move on, privileged in our ability to explore any corner of the globe we put our minds to, whereas for people here, this is what the majority of their lives will consist of. No luxury of a career change, no liberty to try out different religions, unlikely to ever leave the state, when the weekly market is their main interaction with anyone outside their immediate village. The difference between those of us who flit around the globe till it feels small, changing aspects of our lives on a whim, and people whose reality moves in a tight radius, is a regular dichotomy in many travels, but particularly stark here. As Patrick has mused on in other posts, the romanticised - almost fetishised - vision of "the rural life" is naïve at best, undoubtedly contains an element of racism, and keeps people oppressed at worst. Why should people live without clean water, literacy, or the ability to see at night due to an electricity hookup because we think it's charming to have an image of village life fulfilled? On the flip side, rapid development can be dangerous. Niranjan discussed how since getting a decent education, many young people from villages have decided they're too good for the farming life and have gone to the city to make their fortune- only to plunge into urban poverty and end up swelling numbers of the slums and begging on the streets, without the social structure of their home community or family support. How will these tribal regions change in the future, as the effects of government policies are seen? So far it looks positive- organic farming is encouraged so hopefully the horrendous cycle of dependency on pesticides, fertiliser and seeds from western agribusinesses which have caused so many thousands of farmers to commit suicide in the north will be avoided. The government has also pushed maternal health, so with a vastly improved infant mortality rate, the birth rate has also decreased to about 3 children per woman. Unglamorous as it is, the country cannot survive without farmers. Minding the goats and ploughing the fields hundreds of miles away from anywhere built-up doesn't quite have the appeal of a salaried IT job in the city, and therein lies the rub.
Alas, the answer is not to be found in the late-night ramblings of an Anglo-American blog. We return to our regularly scheduled descriptions of temples and witty observations of fellow travellers when we return, in the Puri post!
Note: The Orissa week of our journey was with Dragoman, but run by a local company, Grass Routes, which specialises in this region, delving into the cultural heritage and interacting with the local daily life of an infrequently visited area. If their other guides are half as competent as Niranjan, they're doing well!
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