On the road again

I've been a bad blogger. I'm sorry. I aim to be a better blogger from now on (subject to wifi access).

Just a quick update before bed... so I got back from India, had about ten days at home then took off again to visit friends in Madrid and Paris, coming back to London via Switzerland where GB was doing his annual Ironman 70.3 triathlon. I loved being back in familiar European cities after the chaos of Indian cities. I also loved the food and the weather. And I loved hanging out with GB. Being surrounded by triathletes for a weekend in Switzerland was good for me and has really motivated me to start my Great North Run training. Tomorrow, for sure...

I then had a few days at home before I hit the road again, this time heading north to Nottingham and Newcastle to visit my ever-loving family. It was great seeing everyone and spending some quality time with my little nephew. I got back to London on Sunday night and had until Saturday to pack my flat up, give it a thorough clean and pack my bags ready for my second summer in Italy. It was manic. I was manic. But I did it. With a LOT of help from my friends. Couldn't have done it without GB and me Ma, so thank you both.

On Saturday me and me Ma set off on our road trip to the Med. The first leg was from the UK to Metz, in France. It was a smooth journey but I was absolutely shattered and pleased to get to the hotel. The second leg was from Metz to near Strasbourg – only 1.5hrs – where we stayed with friends who we hadn't seen since 1998. It was lovely to catch up with them and, as you might expect, we ate and drank far too much, including five desserts (after a cheese course too). Not a good idea when you're en route to the Mediterranean.

Today we drove from Alsace to Lake Como. It was a beautiful drive and I love it here; I've had my first Aperol Spritz of the summer and an artichoke pizza. It's balmy and peaceful and my heart feels more at peace than it has for a few weeks. Now it's time to relax.

India 1 - 0 McRudders

Incessant. If I had to choose one word to sum up my experience of India it would be that. The smells and sounds. The dirt. The pollution. The colours. The hawkers. The beggars. The heat. The people don't stop; they are always so industrious. No chilling out in street cafes, watching the world go by, no leisurely drives to the shops. It's all honking horns, jostling and vying for your place on the road. Dodging cows and pigs and donkeys and people and tuk tuks and bikes and cars and buses. It's a country that assaults the senses.

Lonely Planet describes it thus:

Bamboozling. No other word better captures the enigma that is India. With its ability to inspire, frustrate, thrill and confound all at once, India presents an extraordinary spectrum of encounters for the traveller... India will jostle your entire being, and no matter where you go or what you do, it's a place that fires the imagination and stirs the soul like nowhere else on Earth.

India was an experience and it did jostle my entire being. I'm pleased I went and I enjoyed parts of it a lot but I was really pleased to get home last Saturday. More pleased than I've ever been to get back from a trip actually. Normally I'm wishing I was staying away a wee while longer. Admittedly, this was due in part to the fact that I was ill for the last week of the trip and still wasn't right when I arrived home. Being ill is never great. Being ill for a week in India was like a living hell, especially when you have to spend three days in Varanasi, a town on the Ganges where people go to (publicly) cremate their loved ones. I found the cremations particularly disturbing. I couldn't watch them and hated the public nature of them; boat-loads of tourists, both Indian and foreign, bobbing alongside the ghats (the steps that lead down to the river), so close you could feel the heat from the funeral pyre. I was in tears.

On the other hand, I had several magical experiences that will stay with me forever. The kite flying battle in Bikaner in one of them. It was exactly like the scenes described in the Kite Runner. As the sun began to set it seemed the entire town were out on their roof terraces flying paper kites. The sky was literally aflutter with them, as far as the eye could see. And they went high - higher than the average kite at home. The aim was to slice through the string of other kites, cheering as your opponent's kite suddenly lost altitude and drifted slowly to the ground. Sometimes you knew who your opponent was (we engaged in a particularly ferocious but good-natured battle with some locals on a neighbouring roof), but most of the time you had no clue. Finding a kite on the steps leading to my room made me happy.

And the Taj Mahal. Wow. It's one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The guide books tell you that no matter how high your expectations are, the reality will exceed them. I was sceptical, but it was true. Not only is it a beautiful structure, but it was constructed with such love that just adds to the magic. (It was built by an emperor in memory of his third wife who died giving birth to their 14th, yes 14th, child.) And to think it was built in 1632 just makes the mind boggle: it's perfectly symmetrical; the Quaranic verses on the wall don't appear to decrease in size as they go up to the base of the dome because the letters were increased in size so that from the ground they appear equal in size and don't taper; its raised position means the only backdrop is sky; the minarets are not quite perpendicular but may have been designed to lean slightly outwards so in the event of an earthquake they fall away from the Taj. It's genius. And its beautiful too.

But yes, generally India has unsettled me. I have no real desire to return (well, I could probably be quite easily persuaded to venture to Kerala or Goa sometime...). I thought I'd get more from the country on a spiritual level, but I wasn't feeling it - the Pray part of my life wasn't to be found in India, or not in Rajhastan anyway. And maybe I feel that India is the first country to defeat me. But I'm OK with that. India 1, McRudders 0.

Some observations from my trip in no particular order, just the order in which I jotted them down while I was away:

- Women, saree-wearing women, can be seen doing hard, manual labour - building work often - alongside the men. These same women also benefit from a dedicated women only carriage on the metro.

- Men urinate wherever and whenever. Open urinals on narrow streets are particularly unpleasant.

- The station this morning was full of sleeping people; spread out on the ground on newspaper or sheets. Not homeless I don't think. Maybe just waiting for their early morning train.

- Some people live in abject poverty. Today I saw a family asleep at a very busy roundabout, lying on the concrete between four lanes of traffic. The youngest child had no nappy or pants on. That's hard to see, especially when we have so much.

- Curries in India are generally no better than at home, sometimes worse. That surprised me. I thought they would taste different - better - in India. Naans are only good when they've been cooked in the tandoor. Poppadums are slightly different to those you get at home - they're more like the spicy ones you can buy in the supermarket. There's no sign of bhajis on the menus in India.

- It's cold at home. Snow and frost are forecast in Newcastle. Difficult to imagine such extreme weather - it's currently 39 degrees here and it's 5pm... I love the heat though. I love eating outside and living outside. I love not having to think about what to wear every day or planning for varying weather conditions while I'm out. It's a very dry heat here which makes it much easier to cope with than the humid heat I experienced in Singapore and Saigon.

- If I came to India again I'd bring a nail brush. My nails are constantly filthy. I'd also bring some eye drops as the dust, dirt and pollution, as well as the aircon, make your eyes dry and sore. Otherwise I think this has been my most successful pack to date - I've used everything I brought and managed to travel light too, leaving plenty of room for my purchases.

As and when I feel the urge I may post some more about the specific things I did while I was away, but right now I'm off to have avocado on toast and I can think of nothing I want more right now! After being ill, it's heaven to be able to, well just eat for one, but also to be able to eat normal, familiar food - nothing too fussy or complex, just fresh and healthy. Interestingly I'm still off the coffee and alcohol though. Wonder how long that will last...

Hello India!!

In summary, as my phone isn't liking this for some reason... 1. All is well with McRudders in Delhi! Flight half empty so lots of space. Loved my banoffee Gü pot for dessert and my Moma bircher muesli for brek - great idea that more airlines should embrace. Met random English guy getting off plane (reminiscent of my Taken story at Saigon airport!), who pointed me in the right direction, told me how to work out the exchange rate and gave me his card in case of emergencies. Some people are very kind and no, before you ask, I don't think he had any ulterior motives! 2. Weather is good - about 33 today but with a nice breeze. Air-con and a fan in this hotel room - hurray! 3. Dozed then took myself off to Humayan's Tomb this afternoon. Took a tuk-tuk that cost me about £1.50 for the 30 min journey. It was a great way to see some of the city and get a feel for the place. I didn't really get hassles so was pleased I braved it on my own. 4. Group will total ten, including the guide. Two people arrive later tonight. All seem nice: an Irish couple, a lovely Dutch girl, a quiet Swiss girl and two young Danish girls. An American and a Belgian yet to meet. We all went out for a lovely curry this evening; made me feel at home! 5. It's gonna be a hectic trip and involve A LOT of travelling; starting with a 14-hour overnight train tomorrow afternoon. We arrive in Bikaner at 5.45am :( But tomorrow morning we're exploring Delhi together. That's all for now. More as and when I can. Thanks for all the love and support I've received, that is the only reason I'm saying goodnight from Delhi, India; wouldn't be here if I was doing this completely on my own xx

Two things

1. They don't have toilet paper in India!!!! After all these years I didn't realise that the whole wiping your derriere with your left hand was so goddamn literal. Shit. Or crap. Or any other toilet related expletive that can be inserted at this moment. And I've got a dirty-toilet phobia. Waaaaaaaaaa. And there was me being so smug about my Shewee. That'll teach me. OK, I need to buy double stocks of hand sanitiser and wipes. And take my own toilet paper; lots of it for 20 days on the road.

2. The temperature in Delhi right now (that's 4.25am) is 22 degrees. During the day it's about 35 degrees. That's hot! But not as hot as the second place I visit after Delhi. There temperatures are forecast to reach 45 degrees. On my birthday in Jaisalmer, the current forecast is mostly sunny with highs of 40 and lows of 27. I may have made a mistake booking to go to Rajasthan in April and May. And I may have made an even bigger mistake shunning the air-conditioned private bus trips to experience the 'real' India using public transport. Oh my god. Really. And if that wasn't bad enough, just think of how gross the toilets are going to be in those temperatures. Help!!!!

Eat = done. Next up: Pray.

One week today I fly to Delhi to start a 20-day trip round Rajasthan. I'm excited, stressed, apprehensive and happy, all in one. I'll feel slightly better once my visa and passport arrive. And better still once I've figured out what to pack. And once I'm on my way I know I'll put my anxieties behind me and enjoy my next new adventure.

India fascinates me and I've been wanting to go for a few years now. In fact, I was due to go last summer but Italy stole my heart, and my India plans were put on hold while I embraced the Eat phase of my life. Big time. But now the time is right for the Pray phase (- time to pick that book up again, Luke). My (new, thanks Kari!) Lonely Planet book sums up what I'm expecting:

Bamboozling. No other word better captures the enigma that is India. With its ability to inspire, frustrate, thrill and confound all at once, India presents an extraordinary spectrum of encounters for the traveller. From rural serenity to big-city swirls of colour, from dizzyingly intricate carved temples to musicians playing ragas in the desert, from harlequin-bright elephants to gourmet restaurants in stylish cities, India will jostle your entire being, and no matter where you go or what you do, it's a place that fires the imagination and stirs the soul like nowhere else on Earth.

It sounds like it's a country that will test my resolve in more ways than one. But I'm hoping that forewarned is forearmed. Being on an organised group trip will also help. And its good to be challenged and pushed outside your comfort zone once in a while. It's also an opportunity for me to christen the as yet unused Shewee that T, knowing my public toilet phobia, bought me in preparation for a festival we were meant to go to ;)

For those of you who are interested, this is my itinerary. I got the best flavour of the places by Google imaging each one. Some of them look absolutely stunning:

Delhi
Bikaner (where I'll do a camel safari and overnight camp in the desert)
Jaisalmer (I think this is where I'll spend my birthday)
Jodhpur
Udaipur
Pushkar
Jaipur
Agra (home of the beautiful Taj Mahal)
Varanasi

There are several overnight sleeper trains involved, so hopefully it'll be a really authentic experience and another exciting chapter of my life.

But there's lots to do before I go. Aside from some shopping and then packing, I'm also getting the flat ready to rent out while I'm away in Italy for the summer. This weekend I tackled the small but jam-packed cupboard in the spare room. It's been a two-day job and it's still not finished. I've shredded two bin bags worth of old paperwork - bank statements, old payslips and the like. I've half-filled the paper recycling bin with leaflets, brochures, newspapers and envelopes.I've been reminded once again of how amazing my husband was: he had folders for digital photography, running, CISCO, music stuff, motorbike stuff. He was a man with many passions and a real interest in learning and developing (and accumulating the necessary magazines, newspaper articles, website print out etc etc to match!). It's been surprisingly therapeutic and maybe only something that I feel completely ready to do now, after all this time. But the practicalities of moving it all into storage are also helping me to be more ruthless. Half of me wishes I'd done it sooner so I could have enjoyed living in a clutter-free environment these past few months, but I guess that's what I've got to look forward to upon my return.

Don't get me wrong though, it's also been emotional. Today I found an old cheque book that contained stubs for cheques for my hen do accommodation in Barcelona; our wedding venue and catering; and T's funeral. Seeing it all laid out sequentially like that was tough. And thinking of myself writing a cheque to pay for my own husband's funeral less than two weeks after he died was just incomprehensible. God knows how I even functioned at that time, nevermind went through mindless everyday functions like writing a cheque.

Anyway, it's all good. These are all yet more steps on my journey - my journey of recovery and my journey of life. It's an interesting journey and I'm grateful to be on it.

Round the corner of the world I turn,
More and more about the world I learn;
All the new things that I see
You'll be looking at along with me. 
(Sydney Carter)

A wee update

Life has been busy for me recently, hence my lack of posts. I'm never as inspired to write when I'm working either, but I thought it was about time for an update.

I don't know where this year is going; it seems like just yesterday that I was celebrating new year in Tuscany and now I'm starting to think about my next trip there at Easter. In April – the fourth month of the year. That's incredible. Since my last trip to Italy I've spent weekends in Northumberland, Krakow and Madrid. I've also had an Italian friend over one weekend, had Graeme to stay for two nights, visited my godson and his new baby sister, had a Saturday night out with friends from Monaco, taken a 10-week Italian language course and started having some life coaching. This weekend another Italian friend is visiting, and the weekend after my lovely sister is coming to visit for the first time in 15 months – yay! Recent travel has been restricted as my passport is away being renewed, but an enforced period in the UK has also been nice.

So, another chapter of my life is coming to a close; 30 March is the last day of my current contract. At this moment in time, apart from my trip to Italy at the start of April, I don't have any definite plans but the vague plan consists of a trip to India in April/May, a long weekend in Switzerland with Graeme at the start of June then hopefully some QT with my family before I head to Italy for the summer. I initially thought I'd like to go and spend six months in Italy, but the reality of that didn't appeal quite as much as I originally thought; there's only so much sitting on a beach on your own you can do before it becomes a tad lonely. So I think I'll go for July and August and see how it goes. If I can pick up some teaching work or something to keep me busy then that would be ideal. I'm also looking forward to having an opportunity to improve my Italian – both speaking and cooking!

I am a little nervous about giving up a good job/career again, and leaving behind my lovely colleagues. Work, as much as it pains me to say it, gives me some much-needed stability in my life. I enjoy having a routine and it gives my life some purpose – one big thing that's lacking in my life. My colleagues make my working life an absolute pleasure, especially Luke who, in the past week, has surprised me with bunches of daffodils and a beautiful necklace from Amsterdam. That, combined with a surprise Graze box from my lovely sister and a box of beautiful Belgian chocolates from Graeme, have made for a lovely week of unexpected presents that have brought a smile to my face. Thank you all xx

Emotionally, I'm in a really good place at the moment. I feel really strong and positive and am enjoying my life. I'm feeling unsettled about the immediate future, including the prospect of packing all my stuff away and renting out my flat, but I know that the benefits of some time out will outweigh all that. I was saddened by what happened to Fabrice Muamba at the weekend – that brought back some memories of my time in the ICU at the hospital after Tim's accident. It also made me think about how hard it must be for the family when something like that happens to people in the public eye.

Anyway, I think that's all my news, or a summary of it anyway. Hopefully you can expect to see more posts from me in the near future. Hopefully from some more exotic places than London too...

Starting as I mean to go on

I've been feeling peculiar in recent weeks. I've had a feeling that I could neither shake off nor identify. Sometimes it's an excited feeling – going to work this morning in the gale-force winds and drizzle, this is how I felt. Sometimes it's a calm feeling – being at ease and relaxed about things, even things like a Saturday night home alone with a steak, glass of wine and a DVD (which previously would have driven me to the depths of despair). Sometimes it's a feeling that's brim-full of anticipation of what's to come. Sometimes it's a feeling of immense gratitude for how incredibly blessed I am to be surrounded by loving family and friends and to be able to live the life I'm living. Sometimes it's a heart-bursting feeling of love for said family and friends. It varies from day-to-day but whatever it is, it's overwhelmingly positive. Every week in our team meeting at work we write down our scores out of ten for the following areas of our life: personal, family, organisation and peers. In recent weeks my average scores are probably 9-10 across the board. My colleagues think I'm crazy and are waiting for the bubble to burst, but thankfully so far it hasn't.

Today I think I identified what I'm feeling. I think I'm feeling happy again. That incredible lightness of being that I maybe haven't been able to experience fully since T died. Yes, there's been happy moments during the past two and a half years, and slowly but surely I learnt to smile and enjoy life again. But I think I was still being constantly dragged backwards by my grief during these moments. Now (well today anyway and that, afterall, is all we have), I don't feel the backwards pull of that grief on a daily basis. I look forward much more than I look back. I rarely cry and I embrace the time I have on my own. I enjoy being able to do what I want to do, when and with whom I want to do it. My anxiety has gone for the most part. I worry far less about things that would have consumed me in the past, even before T died. (On New Year's Day, for example, I went horse riding without a hard hat as there wasn't a hard hat to wear. Before, I may well have refused to ride without a hat, but I didn't give it a second thought. The same with my scooter riding last summer.). I feel liberated and more confident and more like me than I maybe ever have in my life. And I love it!

I had the best Christmas: spending time with some of T's family and my own, and celebrating the first birthday of my gorgeous nephew. It was so nice to escape London and breathe in the fresh air of the NE and just have some quality family time. I also visited T's grave, which I haven't done for a long long time. I was worried about going. Aside from reliving the awful awful details of the day of T's accident (I think I will forever struggle with hospitals), thinking of T's body in the ground is another thing I don't cope very well with, understandably. But I'm pleased I went. When I visit T, I talk to him and tell him what I've been up to, even though I know he somehow knows. I told him all about my very enjoyable and very drunken weekend at the start of December with my bestest friend, Graeme. I told T the latest about his family, and mine. I told him about my summer and my friends – old and new. I told him about what I might do this coming year. I told him I missed him and that I will love him forever and ever.

After Christmas I flew to Nice and spent a lovely few days in Italy with my Italian friends. We had a big night out in Monaco on Thursday night, which was great fun (paying €52 for three drinks in one bar wasn't quite as much fun, however.) Friday was lunch in Monaco in the sunshine, followed by a lovely night out in Genova – dinner with friends then to our favourite bar in the old town. Then on Saturday we drove to Tuscany and stayed in a small agriturismo in the hills. It was so peaceful and chilled out. We had lunch in a village in the mountains that's famous for both its marble and its lardo (very thin slices of fat, cured with rosemary and other herbs between slabs of marble). The marble makes the mountains look like they're covered in snow. It was fascinating. NYE itself was spent in the farmhouse, eating! We sat at communal tables and shared the most delicious homemade rustic cooking. The meal lasted for about 2.5 hours, with the mains finishing at around 11.30pm, just in time for some midnight champagne toasts before dessert was brought out! It was really special and my kind of celebration. After some dancing we walked through the star-lit forest to a viewpoint and admired the lights of the plain below, which was reminiscent of Los Angeles, not that I've ever been. The vast quantities of food on NYE meant I wasn't an inebriated as I might otherwise have been, so I was able to enjoy a horse ride through the forest the following day, before another big meal at the farmhouse. It was the most perfect start to the new year.

Who knows what this year will bring. All I do know is that I'm starting it with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. And, as always, I'm so very grateful to T for being my inspiration. I wouldn't be where I am without him, or the support of my family and friends. So big love to you all, and to all a very healthy, happy, fun-filled 2012.