Recepy for Goan Mud-crab:
• buy a mud crab of app 1,2 kilo at the local fish market
• break it's claws off and chop them into pieces while the crab is still alive, and then slice it (still alive!) horizontally in two...
• then, if you haven't thrown up all over the kitchen, fry chopped onions, garlic and tomato in some coconut oil, add garam masala, chopped green chili and fresh curry leaves, end then add the chopped crab
• simmer for app 2 minutes and add a cup of coconut milk
• simmer a few minutes more, add fresh coriander and serve in a bowl with naan. Make sure you do NOT serve any cutlery as the crab definitely tastes better when eaten with your hands....according to local customs, that is. Do serve extra napkins. (And for those who wonder....that's me in the infinity pool, not the mud-crab).

Ok, so we are back from Goa....
We had a surprisingly good trip with Indigo Airlines, who claim to be "the punctual airline"...and indeed they were both ways! Which in India is a miracle in itself!

The hotel, the Alila Diwa Goa, was not as sereen as the Alila Manggis in Bali where we spent T's last birthday, but we had great a room with a fantastic bed and an even better bath-for-two....and after having a drink or two at the Edge bar (on the edge of the infinity pool, hence the name) during happy hour, we would come back to a room with the curtains drawn and the scented candles near the bathtub lit, the bath-salt invitingly placed on the little wooden tray that was placed strategically over the bath....well, what can one do but take a bath?

For the rest we did almost nothing. We spent our mornings swimming in the gorgious infinity pool, gazing at the palmtrees beyond, until at app. 11 a.m. the Indian families would show up, lazily strolling around, usually with dad in front, followed by mother and one or two kids, with grandmother clad in Sari at the end....all on slippers and all not raising their feet as they would walk. One wonders how they manage to keep their balance at that speed...

Some would actually take a swim and then would choose the corner right in front of our chairs (RIGHT in front!) to hold their social morning talks, preferrably with some screaming kids joining them (always with balls) and some nearby husband who would be screaming into his telephone....usually the sign for us to disappear to have lunch and then head to our room for an afternoon nap.

In the afternoon, after our naps, we would take a drink or two at the Edge bar during happy hour, then head back to take a bath in our gorgious bath tub, then have a wonderful dinner with slain mud-crab or something similarly delicious (and no doubt tortured equally) and then it would be time to sleep.....

Been there, done nothing, did not get the t-shirt but had a wonderful three lazy days!

We planned to go to Darjeeling to celebrate T's birthday and as a bonus escape Delhi's heat. We were going to leave on tuesday the 25th....

...but as fate would have it, on friday the 21st Madan Tamang, President of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League, was killed in Darjeeling. This photograph is typical for Indian media....all the gruesome details are displayed for anyone who takes interest in them.

As a result the shops were kept closed and the government sent extra troups to the area to insure the peace in the hills.....the hills that we were planning to hike in! Not that it would have been much fun anyway, because it apparantly is raining in Darjeeling!

No mountain vieuws of the Himalayas, no trekking in the hills, no shopping, but the risk of being stuck in the hotel for 5 days and another rist of being stuck in Darjeeling alltogether because in India tempers are explosive....and once they expload a primitive force is released that you really do NOT want to get stuck in!

We could have gone, the hotel assured us things were peaceful and quiet...but in India, one never knows. Because in India life seems to be worth very little to so many.... you live, you die. It is as if death, or the fact that you will die one day, is so much part of every day life that it is not even given a second thought!

The son of the neighbour of our masseuse (yes...this is how in India relations go) was very ill, he had TB in his bones (!?!). He was on the verge of dying and his mother, a single mother who is very poor, could not afford a decent doctor. So our masseuse chipped in and in the end, so did we.
Because for us life IS worth something, and if our money helps save someone, even if it is for one more day, then it is money well spent. And at the same time, thank God not everyone in India who is very ill lives, or there would be 1,5 billion people, most of whom below poverty-line, instead of 1,2 billion.
But do I dare think this, or worse...say it? Because I am a lucky one, with fairly good health and money to pay for a decent doctor, instead of having to go to a government hospital where grossly underpaid doctord consider their lunch more important than their patients. After all, what's another life, if tehre are 1,2 billion others to care for?

Incredible India. Beautiful, crazy, cruel India. Full of spitting, honking and peeing people. Full of injustice and corruption. And yet it grabs you.....

So for now, we are going to Goa. We will forget about life and death for a while. No hills there and no Gorkha's....though, knowing T, the monsoon will probably start once we land. (Money could be made off this man! I am sure that in the Sahara they will pay a fortune for him!)
But for now we are looking forward to fish and coctails and an infinity pool.....and we will worry about injustice tomorrow....or will we?

We are in the middle of summer now, and the usual problems occur....powercuts, electricity fluctuations (causing half the house to shut down) and water shortages.

Watertankers like these can be seen everywhere, either pumping liters of sort of drinkable water into the roof-tanks of hotels, expats and affluent Indians, or dripping and leaking on the streets while street-dwellers fill their buckets and bottles and whatever else they have managed to obtain.

The "government" water that is delivered into underground tanks of the various houses (and then pumped up into the roof tanks, that is, if there is electricity) is not very dependable these days....our staff complain frequently that "no water came" or that water is trickling in veeeeery slowly...not sufficient obviously for the increased needs. Because Delhi is HOT. Today the weather forecast predicts 49 degrees Celcius, and we have not yet reached the hottest point of summer!
Apparantly it is the hottest summer in a hundred years....

We had planned to go a few days to Darjeeling, to celebrate T's birthday, but yesterday a Gorkha leader was stabbed to death in Darjeeling, and the shops have closed, there are roadblocks, and uproar is feared....so I think we will have to cancel our trip and face more of Delhi's sweltering heat.

The heat is making me slow and grouchy. I have to resist slamming a dent in the roof of a car everytime they feel the need to honk when driving right beside me....a favourite pasttime at Khan Market! I suspect that the nouveau riche in their big cars do not do this out of concern for us pedestrians but merely to draw attention to themselves and their big cars.....
I also cannot stand the slow wobbling fat ladies that take up all the space on the pavement, chatting away on their mobile phones while deciding in which establishment to gobble down the next cake, pie or chocolate....and most of all I cannot stand the spitting and peeing which is going on everywhere!
Even the indians start to notice that India is being used but not cared for, as our masseuse puts it. She does not "have a lot of english" but she certainly has a sharp ability for observation!

Now we are hoping for the monsoon. It is predicted for the 30th of May and apparantly has already started in the south...we cross our fingers because last year the monsoon was 1,5 month late and very little, and the normal febuary rains also did not come, so we are facing drought and failing crops....may the Gods be with us!