DELHI - A Light That Never Goes Out

The Colonel left for Punjab again yesterday, just days after getting back after his last epic journey. "My man there tells me that he wants to leave," he explained with exasperation, "I do not understand it. He said he was lonley so I bought him a cow and a bullock, and yet still he wants to leave..." With aspirations of hotel ownership for this particular propety and the thought of leaving it unattended in bandit country for any amount of time not a pleasant one, the Colonel decided to head back north and try to resolve the problem. Will he be back in time to bid us adieu next week before we too head for the hills? Head nods side to side...


A Study in Torchlights. Or: How to amuse one's self during a blackout.

Delhi's increasingly fragile power supply has reached breaking point this week. The city's aging power plants have been randomly causing outages ever since we arrived but now, with temperatures settled on the ridiculously high mid forties, the Government has been forced to take drastic action to stop persistent six hour outages and much freezer defrosting/roasting in non air conditioned homes. Their brilliant solutions? Force all shops to close at 7.30pm, encourage air conditioning to be switched on only after 9.30pm and stop industrial production during the night. So after sweltering in their offices all day, the workers will not be able to buy anything because the shops will be closed at the only time of day cool enough to shop during, they'll have to boil for two hours before the AC kicks in and there won't be anything for them to buy, anyway, because industrial output is going to fall. Oh, and I haven't even mentionned the water shortage yet. (Which we've miraculously avoided as the Colonel proudly claims to have the deepest well in the whole of Delhi.) Delhi has a campaign on at the moment to become a world city by the time it hosts the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Which means complete overhauls of the city's transport, green areas, sports facilities and entire infastructure in less than four years. It's chances based on current inability to even light and water itself? Comical.


Nice thing about Akshay Pratishthan: everyone really helps each other out. Even if they're actually to small to realistically push wheelchairs around.

One week left at Akshay and, although I'm rapidly running out of amusing hacky-sack related diversions, it'll be sad to leave my special needs kids. Life upstairs in the resource room, where I spend the second half of my day, has become more frantic of late thanks to the efforts of Usha, the resident fifty something force of nature who dictates work which needs carrying out like nobody I've ever met before. And I include Germans in that assessment. Usha is one of those old birds who has not a clue how or why computers do what they do but knows *exactly* what they can achieve, and so therefore can ask for all sorts of bizarre slideshows and font shadings with a smile on her face and leave you to bang your head against a wall for ten minutes thinking how you can possibly give her the results she wants within the hour. I now have an understanding why life is tough for Hollywood producers. And also plumbers: as soon as the clock strikes one, we're out of that office and down to the canteen faster than you can say 'biryiani.'

Next week we head five hours north and, more importantly, five degrees cooler for the final month of the Phworld tour in the foothills of the Himylayas. I can already begin to hear Britain calling me: it's saying "Don't worry, I'll never get anywhere near forty degrees. And don't forget that the World Cup's starting as soon as you can get back."