We always wanted to learn to look after horses and the season of Covid seemed to present a good opportunity to isolate in the middle of nowhere with lots of horses and barely any humans. We are coming to the end now of our two month stay on a horse breeding farm in the Belgium…
Pet Sitting and Meowndering Spending July in the Netherlands was a real joy. So clean and peaceful, a perfect break in these Covid times, in complete contrast to noisy car-jammed cities and the crowded beaches of the Med. The Weird and Wonderful Cyclists of all ages are everywhere and are #1 priority when it comes to town planning. We…
As Covid19 spread, it made sense for Governments to tell the public to “Stay at Home”, but what do you do if you don’t have a home? As our house has been rented out and hotels have been closed, we have had to depend on the generosity of family and, as Vivien Leigh famously said…
Farewell Seva Mandir As expected, we did not lift thousands of people out of poverty – this is likely to take generations and the continued efforts of our charity and many others – but we did what we could for our charity, helping them to develop a village tour and edit publications. We actually loved…
The weird and wonderful We will definitely miss the surprises around every corner. For example:—Queueing at a motorway toll booth, we saw a lady dressed in a beautiful sari knocking on car windows and being given coins by most of the drivers. In fact, those who do this are eunuchs – an age old tradition…
Diwali India’s festival of lights has its origins in Hinduism but is really celebrated by everyone. It was wonderful to see our rubbish laden, open guttered and rat infested street sparkle for once. The shopkeepers and residents worked hard to clean everywhere and they rightly took a real pride in the end result, marking the…
Our flight into Ahmedabad was perfect. After a quick visit to Gandhi’s Ashram which was serene and really interesting, we made our way by bus to Udaipur (Rajasthan, NE India). Here, we will be volunteering with an NGO for two months before we spend a few weeks backpacking on the road to some spots around…
Since returning from our Camino de Santiago in June, we have been catching up with family and friends and done quite a few “pet sits”: living in family homes to look after pets while the house owners are on holiday. We use the website “trustedhousesitters.com” which is the largest global petsitting website although there are…
We did it! We finally arrived in Santiago after walking for 260km. Over 1500 pilgrims arrived on the same day. We saw many of them crying from spiritual reawakening, religious fervour or just sheer relief to have made it in one piece. For our own arrival, we certainly felt excited, proud, relieved, moved, physically tired…
The Camino is a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela which started in the 10th Century and is now walked by pilgrims for all sorts of reasons, religious, spiritual, cultural or just for fitness. The routes to Santiago start from various places, including among others Le Puy, Geneva and Lisbon. We started our Camino in Porto….