Conquering the UK – The Official Rally Dress Rehersal

So here we sit. Day one. We’re in the car-park of Goodwood Motor Circuit in the UK, famous for racing high-class and high-powered vehicles. But not today. Today Goodwood is filled with hundreds of cars, vans and bikes that you wouldn’t even let your nanna drive. From 1968 wooden beasts to two-door Smart cars, and everything in between, Goodwood is littered with decorated rally cars and excited teams, anxiously awaiting their honorary lap of the Circuit before we head off in a mighty convoy to Dover where we cross over to the continent. And as we sit and take it all in, it’s hard to believe that yesterday our trusty steed “Matilda” broke down on the hill into Goodwood…

So how did we get this far? Surely we’ve been spending the last three weeks cautiously preparing for such an arduous adventure… right? Wrong. We faffed. We spent three weeks in the UK faffing about, camping and driving, and sleeping on couches. We became professional faffers, and part-time alcoholics. Don’t judge – it’s cold in Scotland! There’s nothing better to do!

From Shoreditch to Sussex… Settling in to the UK.

It happened. I hoped it wouldn’t, but it happened. I done gone and got myself settled. I tried to fight it, I tried to do touristy things while I was here in England to avoid it, but it crept up on me… unsuspectingly (probably while I was passed out after the Shoreditch Street Party).

The simple pleasures of being settled are highly underrated.

• No ants: I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again – I don’t care if it’s a couch, bed, mattress on the floor… the fact of knowing that there will not be ants where I sleep is absolute bliss.
• Grocery Shopping: Being able to buy fruit, muesli and yoghurt for breakfast has put a smile on my face every single morning since I arrived in the UK.
• Laundry: Not having to count how many “pieces” of laundry I have, not having to “weigh” my laundry to find out the cost. Simply putting my laundry in a washing machine and pressing buttons until it’s done.
• Exercise: No, I’m not talking about walking from Kensington to Westminster, or going on a day trek. I’m talking about going for a 6km run in the morning, or sneaking into the gym and going to a Body Sculpt class.
• Watching TV: “Yes Alana, great work. Quit your job at 25 to travel the world, and how do you spend your time? Watching TV.” But to be honest, the simple pleasure of being able to kick up your feet after a long day out and about and watching some trash TV like The Only Way is Essex is a real treat.
• Home Cooked Meals: Cooking! Buying groceries, chopping vegetables, cooking stir-fry, washing dishes… It’s healthy, it’s cheap and it’s not rice and curry for the first time in three months!
• Friends: While of course I have met some new people since being in the UK, the majority of the people I’m surrounding myself with are people from back home. And it’s nice. It’s nice to talk about the footy, or mutual friends, or reminisce on fun times. Rather than the stock standard hostel-chat of “Where are you from?”, “How long you travelling for?”. “Where have you been?”… Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made some life-long friends this way, but it’s nice to talk about normal things for a while. And finally…
• Routine: Get up in the morning, go for a run, have fruit for breakfast, have a bath, do some admin, run some errands, sight-see a bit, cook dinner, watch TV, get a good night sleep. It seems simple, it seems boring… but it’s easy. It doesn’t require any thinking, or planning. And it’s absolute bliss.

So what have I been doing in the UK then?

The transition back to “normal”…

There’s very few ants here. And absolutely no ants on the bed, which is weird. The dogs are on leads. Cars stay in their designated lanes. There are people exercising in the parks. And not a single person has asked me if “I want tuk tuk” for almost a week now.

This has been the slow transition back into “real-life” after four months of the developing world. I’m currently sitting on beautiful patio furniture in a tidy garden at the back of a nice modern apartment in London. I’ve got Triple J streaming and I can’t hear any honking. It’s a mild 21oC outside, which is almost Arctic compared to the 35oC+ temperatures we’ve endured for the past three months. So how did the transition go?

Absolutely Peaking…

My legs are throbbing. You know that aching, throbbing feeling you get after a long exhausting run, or when you’ve clocked about 6 hours straight on the dance-floor at the bar – that’s the feeling I’ve currently got. But it’s not from drunken dancing or enthusiastic ‘yogging’, it’s from about 4 days of walking through the hill-stations of Sri Lanka.

Although we were sad to see India go, we couldn’t help but notice how easy life was in Sri Lanka in comparison. Everything was as it should be, everyone was helpful and happy, and we could see the sky – it was BLUE! We had arrived on Poya, a monthly religious-based full-moon holiday which was particularly special this month, and subsequently meant that you couldn’t buy alcohol for 24 hours. While this was almost enough for us to book a direct flight out of Sri Lanka, it was made up for by the fact that we got a free icy-pole on the train from Colombo to Kandy.

HOW GOOD IS SRI LANKA!? FREE ICY POLE!!!

Tea, Tantrums and Tauts… The final week.

“Only 500m up the road” he said.

We arrived into the mountainous tea plantations of Munnar tired and weary after a long overnight public bus journey. As per India, the bus dropped us off about 2kms away from where it was supposed to. We trudged along the roadside with 25kgs on our back, and made our way towards JJ’s Cottages. The scenery was stunning, but that didn’t help us to escape from the black fumes coming out the back of the passing buses and the constant honking that rings deep within your ear-drum. With patience at an all-time low, we arrived at JJ’s Cottage only to discover that they were full, and we needed to go to their sister guesthouse – Zina’s.

“Only 500m up the road”. Well, yes. I guess it was about 500m up the main road.

“Oh, that is a niiiiiice boulder!”

I don’t know how Hampi came into existence. How giant boulders randomly appeared in the middle of a baron desert, it’s like giants were playing marbles and then decided to decorate by scattering lakes and palm trees everywhere. It’s a real-life Bedrock, you can’t help but picture Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble making their way to the bowling alley. When we asked a local how it came about, we got the stock standard answer… “Shiva”. Shiva is the answer to everything here. Why do women wear bindi’s? Shiva. Why are there boulders? Shiva. How do I get from Hampi to Bangalore? Shiva.

Our escape from the Jungle to paradise…

“Just one more night” would be the phrase echoing it’s way across Jungle Hostel in Vagator, North Goa. With bleary-eyed backpackers extending their stays from one day to one week and often more. After our fourth time of extending, we decided to change our tact to “How about we just tell you when we’re leaving…”.

We’d been party-starved. We’d been sober for as long as we could remember. We hadn’t seen past 10 o’clock at night for months… and we were absolutely hanging for the infamous party-scene Goa had to offer. The whole way south we’d heard various off-puts: “It’s too hot down south now”, “It’s off-season, there’ll be no one there”, “It’s just full of young stupid backpackers who do nothing but party”…

It wasn’t “too hot”. Due to the off-season, it meant that the few people in North Goa were all crammed into one hostel. And yes, we were all there to party.

Sweating our way from Handicapped Heaven

Sometimes it’s the little things in India that you start to notice. You notice the fact they never have change, anywhere, for anything. You notice that there’s signs everywhere for “Clean India is Green India” and yet there’s not a single rubbish bin to be found. But perhaps one of the more obvious things you start to notice is that you can walk down the street and in a single stretch of road you will have come across cows, pigs, cats, donkeys, camels, goats and dogs. Animals are everywhere in India, and for a somewhat “animal enthusiast” (read: obsessed with animals and will pat everything she can including a dog who was eating a used diaper), India is a great place to be.

So this is how, after spotting a sign in a trendy little café in Udaipur, we ended up volunteering for half a day at Animal Aid Unlimited.

Jajyfer Hughesy – Queens of the Desert

It’s funny how after travelling for so long, you kind of forget you’re a “tourist”. You’re eating in the same places as the locals, you’re sleeping on the same trains as the locals, and yet… you’re not a local. You are a tourist… And never has that been more apparent than when I had to pay 750INR to enter the Taj Mahal as a foreigner, compared to the 30INR required for Indians.

What. A. Joke.

The Snowman Who Burned to Ash…

We’re in India now. Actual, legitimate, cows-on-the-road India. Only moments ago I was sitting inside a tiny little shop, drinking lassi out of a clay pot, while five dead bodies were carried through the tiny laneway towards the Ganga. And yet, less than a week ago I was building a snowman in the Indian Himalayas….