A day in the life (India Edition)

Hi all, I hope that this finds you having a good start to 2011? Let's face it – we won the Ashes so as far as national sport goes it's already better than 2010, right?!?

I'm beginning to settle into a bit of a routine over here now, so I thought I'd try and give you all a bit of an insight into how a typical day in India goes for me....

05:00 – The Mosque Disco (as I've termed it) kicks off, waking me from my slumber. Damnit.

05:45 – Mosque Disco finally stops and I can grab another precious hour of sleep

07:00 – Roll out of bed and, if I'm feeling energetic I put my running gear and head out the door. Inevitably the sight of a white man running down the street attracts a few looks. Some people even try and start conversations during my run. Obviously the thought that I might actually not want to stop during my exercise and say hello to a random stranger doesn't occur to them....anyway, 1 or 2 laps of the Jheel (map for those of you interested in such things) and then back to the flat.

07:45 – No kettle, so it's water in a saucepan on the gas hob while I jump into the “shower”. I still think of it as having a shower, although whether throwing a bucket of water over yourself on your balcony counts, I'll leave to you to decide...

07:50 – Get dressed, make a coffee (powdered milk – nice) and some brekkie. Either porridge or toast. Nice and simple. Washing up depends on whether the water has run out yet or not....

08:00 – 09:00 – Sweep the floor, do some Hindi practice on the laptop, or listen to some music and read. If it's laundry day, I have to do that out on the balcony with a couple of buckets of water....no washing machines here...

09:00 – Walk the 2mins down the road to the office. Inevitably stopped by or joined on my walk by someone random who wants to say hello! Spend the rest of the morning normally in the office.

13:00 – Head out for lunch, normally I go back to the flat and make a sandwich or something, but sometimes I head to the Chowk (square) and grab some samosas and sauce (yummy!), then it's back to the office

17:30 – 18:00 – leave the office. Head down to the main crossroads to get some veg for dinner. It's so cheap here. I can get two big bags of veg for about £1.50 (even with this alleged onion shortage!). If I need something a bit more unusual, like porridge, honey, jam etc. I have to head all the way into town. I also don't like the fruit stalls here, so I tend to get that in other areas too.

18:30 – Back to the flat. It's pitch black outside now, so not a lot to be done – no chance of an evening run unfortunately! We get a fair few power outages as well during the evenings, so a good supply of candles comes in useful here (or a wind-up torch – thanks mum!).

19:00 – Cook some dinner. I've been trying my hand at Indian flatbreads, which are actually pretty easy to make. Or, at least, I haven't completely ruined them so far! I've also got quite good at apple fritters and pancakes for a bit of dessert and my aubergine curry is coming on quite well!

20:00 – Watch a film or something with dinner, maybe do some reading, write in my journal or something like that. Thankfully my phone allows me to get online too – so I can use Skype and things like that to talk to people after work.

22:00 – Off to bed – after all, I'll undoubtedly be woken up at 5am by the Mosque Disco tomorrow....

It's not a glamorous life – but I'm enjoying it! It's very chilled and slow, which is obviously nothing like how I normally live, but that's ok (at the moment!). I'm enjoying the lack of stress in the job and the way everyone is so friendly.

This weekend I'm heading back to Ranchi for a bit of a party on Sunday, then on Thursday it's the first proper trip. A few of us are heading North up to Nepal. The plan is to head into Nepal from the South and then cut East before coming back down into India. A nice 5 day trip...obviously I promise to take lots of photos and bore you all to death with them on my return!

Have a good weekend everyone....

Tim