First steps in West Bengal

Djohar! (The quizz from the previous post is still going on!!)

What I will remember from my first steps in West Bengal...

- the elegance of women dressed in glistening and colourful saris. When they sit in group, they are as beaming as a rainbow!

Most inhabitants of the villages we visited are Santals, which form the largest tribal group in East India. Farmers grow rice during summer and most of them also keep animals, mainly goats, indigenous cows, buffaloes, sheep, pigs and poultry.

Grazing livestock in recently harvested fields:

Rice production only covers 6 months of food needs on average. Thus, farmers are commonly engaged in seasonal off-farm work, e.g. in construction works, stone crushing or coal mining.

- water scarcity in a region where annual rainfall ranges from 1400-1600 mm. But rainfall is concentrated during 4 months of the year and there is not enough water during winter to grow grain crops or vegetables.

In Jogradihi, the last village we visited, there is no tube well for drinking water. So women go to fetch water at the nearby stream between 2 to 5 times a day. They have dug holes on the bank of the stream to get cleaner water (see picture). They collect water after filtering it through a shawl.

Discussion with villagers in Jogradihi

A few anecdotal souvenirs...

During this trip I also met:

- the most crazy (but incredibly skilled!) taxi driver ... Every day, Sreedhar and I were travelling 3h between Bankura, the main town of the district, and Saltora, 40 km away, where we were visiting villages. Within 5 days, we almost hit 12 bicyles riders, 16 goats, 27 dogs and 40 chickens (I noticed chickens always decide to cross the road when you arrive).

- a lot of new friends...

It seems these guys have a strong preference for French blood!

Escaping from the ICRISAT campus!!

From Hyderabad to West Bengal

As I described in my first post, ICRISAT campus where I work and live is a quiet place... very quiet place.... And between quiet and boring, there is not a big step....

So you can imagine how happy I was to have the chance to travel 11 days on a field trip to West Bengal and Haryana!!

See where these two States are on the map enclosed (as you have certainly noticed, this is an instructive blog, so if you read this post during your working hours, don't feel guilty, you actually expand your knowledge, which is for sure very beneficial for your work).

First, Sreedhar (one of my IWMI colleagues) and I headed to West Bengal. Our mission was to visit and select villages, establish a friendly contact with the district authorities and collect some maps, statistics, and whatever local officials were willing to provide us.

Our first stopover was Kolkata*. From the airport, we took a taxi to the railway station to catch the train that would lead us to Bankura, a small town 230 km northeast from Kolkata.

* "Kolkata" replaced "Calcutta", the former anglicised name of the city, in 2001 to reflect the Bengali pronunciation.

Some pictures taken on the way from the cab...

Howrah bridge

Snapshots - streets of Kolkata

I wish I could have stopped a few days in the City of Joy. I found it fascinating - despite of the noise, agitation and traffic, there is a kind of nonchalance that fills the air which magnetised me!

It is late here already - in the next post I will tell you about the mysteries of Bankura - I am sure all of you are impatient to know about it...

Djohar!

To enhance the interactivity of this blog, I launch a little quizz on this post: what does "djohar" mean and in which language? Some Indian sweets to win for the first right guess (only one of these will fill your stomach till the next quizz ...)!!!

Une viree a Bidar!

Allez aujourd'hui ce sera en francais! (mais sans les accents, du au clavier qwerty....)

Voici quelques photos de mon week-end a Bidar, une petite ville a 3h de bus d'Hyderabad.

A gauche, des ecoliers qui venaient avec leurs professeurs admirer le fort de Bidar, bati au XVe siecle. Il parait que c'est le 2e plus grand fort d'Inde. Comme vous pouvez peut-etre le distinguer, certains enfants portent des gilets en laine et des chaussettes remontees jusqu'au genou! Eh oui, je vous rappelle que c'est l'hiver ici.... meme quand il fait 28C, les mamans ont peur que leurs enfants n'attrappent froid!

Le fort est immense en effet, on peut se promener des heures dans l'enceinte des fortifications. Et si l'on a de la chance, on peut meme rencontrer au detour des ruines d'un palais, un guide indien qui nous ouvrira une porte secrete pour nous montrer quelques merveilles cachees...

de jolies colonnes sculptees.... qui parait-il ornaient la salle de bal (oui tout de suite, on imagine bien...)

(ndla: avec vue sur la mosquee en arriere plan)

un plafond en bois richement cisele....

une jolie fleur ...

...dans une peau de vache...

mais moi, ce que je prefere, ce sont les canons obstrues par les fleurs...!!

How do birthdays look like in Hyderabad ??

Today I will elaborate on a very crucial question I am sure many of you have been concerned by in the last days: how do birthdays look like in Hyderabad???

It started for me yesterday at 7.15 am by a Tahitian danse on the screen of my laptop. There were also some polar bears and penguins all sending their very best wishes. Mmmmmh. Quite unusual, I would not have expected Tahitian dancers and arctic animals to come over here. There was even an enigmatic lalalalalalaaaa email which - despite the early hour and my reduced brain capacities (yes, one year older and so many neurons less) - I immediately recognised to be the "joyeux anniversaire" song. It was not a bad start.

Tea time at work was also special. I had brought a few biscuits bought the day before at the local supermarket in the closest town, Chanda Nagar. I had chosen some local Indian biscuits - but all my colleagues asked me if they were French... ok next time I will bring French biscuits. The Indian ones were not that great although the cashew sweets (a very hard and very sweet thin squared piece of sugary-very sugary-cashew paste) did not last long.

I was glad to hear during the day that the phone communication quality between the Limousin, Olivet and Hyderabad was good...

Then, I went out for dinner with a few friends. To test if they were really good friends I had booked a small 4-seat taxi for 5 at the traffic peak-time. I had booked the taxi for 8h to be sure we would not get a larger and more comfortable taxi to come back. My friends successfully passed the test and we arrived after one hour drive to Chutneys - the best Indian restaurant I have never been so far. I promise to whoever come to visit me we will go there!

Then we ended up in a trendy fashion bar - where they serve alcohol. And sizzling chocolate brownies. Just see the picture of the brownies - and a picture of me ready to attack the chocolate cake with my spoon. We had to join our forces - of five people - to defeat it. Oufff.

So now you know how birthdays look like in Hyderabad. If you want to share your birthday experience from other parts of the world, this is the time and place to send your comments!

First days in Hyderabad

Waouh! Already one week I have been here in Hyderabad.

I am staying for the moment at the ICRISAT campus where IWMI offices are located. It is a beautiful, very very quiet and peaceful place. ICRISAT is a large research centre on agriculture, the campus is 3500 ha large and around 2000 people work here.

And the best swimming-pool of Andhra Pradesh is here !

It has been quite a busy week, settling at the office, getting a computer, a printer, doing a lot of paper work... I have a nice desk luminous and with a lot of space to spread my papers! We are around 15 people at the office, the atmosphere is very friendly. There is a chat/tea break in the afternoon and we go together for lunch. Almost all my colleagues are Indian - except Paul, an Australian hydrogeologist who arrived 3 weeks ago, and Samad, the director, who is from Sri Lanka. Otherwise, I have met on ICRISAT campus a German postdoc Simone, who is also starting a postdoc and two French students in agronomy, Amandine and Paul, doing an internship .

Evenings and week-ends have also been busy!! I have been to the city centre and in a few places around the campus:

- buying some Indian outfit - it is good to look Indian here as there are not many westerners,

- going to the theatre,

There was a theatre festival with plays from everywhere in the world. The one I saw "Ouch" was about three Indian girls making a cast for a TV-show. It was fun - but not always easy to understand the jokes (I need to get used to the Indian accent)

- going to a jazz concert at the very porsh and exclusive Secunderabad club (a kind of Rotary club). It was the rendez-vous of expats and very upper class Indian society...

- visiting the marvellous marble Birla temple from which there is a fantastic view of the city (it is on the top of a hill, the view looks a bit like when you are up in Montmartre),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birla_Mandir_(Hyderabad,_Andhra_Pradesh)

- visiting an Indian family for dinner, I was invited by an Indian woman I met in the train.

It was funny, all the children of the building came over to speak English with me. I was actually surprised how well they can speak already - they start learning English at school at 6 here!

- seeing the gigantic statue of Buddha on the lake,

(see a photo of the statue and an introduction to Hyderabad on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabad,_Andhra_Pradesh)

- visiting flats in the city centre, (I will talk more about this later on!)

- enjoying Indian food...

गरम गरम मसाला डोसा ! (masala dosa) it is a kind of pancake... miam miam.
I heard the food in Andhra Pradesh is the most spicy of India... so far I am doing ok, but I think I have not eaten yet the real spicy stuff!

To go to anywhere in town from the campus it is minimum 1h transportation, either taking the bus, train or rickshaw (also called auto) .

The rickshaw is a fantastic vehicle, it is like a vespa with a roof and two wheels at the back... It is very flexible , you can make a U-turn in 30 s and avoid the holes, motorbikes and dogs very quickly with a sharp turn of the steering-wheel. Hyderabad is said to have the worst traffic in India... It might be true!

I hope it gave you a little taste of my new life in India and of Hyderabad... Anyone wants to come for a visit??

India, here I am!

Namaskar! नमस्कार !

Hi, this is my first post from India!

I am in Chennai airport, coming from Colombo where I spent four days for the annual research meeting of IWMI and waiting a few hours for my plane to Hyderabad.

You can see my way from Colombo to Chennai (formerly known as Madras) and Chennai to Hyderabad in purple on the map.

So, my very very first impressions of the country I am gonna spend the next two years of my life...

The surroundings of the airport looked beautiful from the sky... The vegetation is of a very bright green and there are so many palm trees everywhere in the city around that it was difficult from above to know if it was a city with trees or a forest with houses!

I am feeling at ease here, strangely as if I was coming back to a familiar country. As I was walking with my luggage from the international to the domestic airport, a guy with a T-shirt "Jet Airways", the low cost company I am flying with, proposed to help me with my luggage. He is a small guy and managed to jump all the queues, making his way between the big guys. He led me to the lounge of the company - though I did not have any lounge ticket, a white-neonlight cafeteria where I have been offered coffee, snacks and whatever my stomach feels to eat and drink. I was happily surprised to find a plug with 6 different holes to fit for all foreign electrical equipment, including French one, to connect my laptop. And here I am, writing my blog...

Next episode when I am in Hyderabad...