Farmers for a Day

After Wildernest, the next great find of the year was Dirty Feet. I was on the verge of confirming us for their Birds and Bunnies day trip when an enterprising mum from Tarana's class got them to organise a customised farm trip for our little ones. I said yes before the question was fully out of her mouth :-)

Last Saturday morning saw us getting up uncharacteristically early (read: an hour earlier than the obscene hour the kids usually get up) to make our way to the designated pick-up point. Once all the kids, with their accompanying moms and siblings, had been picked up, we were served our breakfast of home-made sandwiches and set our course towards our destination.

After an hour in the bus (where none of my kids deigned to sleep a wink despite the early start) and 15 minutes in a tractor, we made our first stop at a sunflower farm, where we got to feast our eyes on some beautiful, not to mention huge, sunflowers. I am not kidding about the huge part - most of them were taller than my kids and had larger faces. Presenting evidence:

Ayaan's foraging instincts were instantly activated and he asked for a bag for his 'collections' and inaugurated it with some sunflower seeds and some lemons.

While Ayaan was getting up close and personal with the lemon tree, Tarana chose to have a staring contest with a rather baleful looking cow. Thankfully, it was tied and since looks have been firmly established as non-murderous, it was all good.

Our next stop was at the potato farm. Ayaan required no encouragement to fling his shoes and socks off and jump into the mud and start collecting potatoes.

While Ayaan had already filled his first basket to the brim, Tarana chose to be all princess-ey and baulked at having to take her shoes off. ('But the mud is so dirty, Mama'). Finally, I had to take my shoes off and clamber into the potato patch before she would even consider it. Once she was in, she was quite a happy camper though. Here you can see her 'harvesting' potatoes from a pile that someone has already collected :-)

When she was suitably involved, I was able to sneak off with Ayaan and get a taste of handling the plough.

The next order of business was the ultra-important task of climbing on to a haystack and frockling there. And you thought farming was all work and no play...

After checking out some cotton fields, we headed over to a nearby farmhouse for lunch. The organisers had brought lunch from Hyderabad and we all feasted on a child-friendly and relatively mess-free meal of theplas and puranpoli.

After lunch, the kids got to feed an assortment of bird and chicks hanging around the farm before boarding the bus to head back home.

Just when we thought we were done with the fun part of the day, we happened to cross a herd of goats and stopped to give them some loving, which they did not particularly appreciate.

Finally, some napping was done by one and all on the return bus journey and before we knew it, we were back home.

But the day was far from done, as far as Ayaan was concerned. He was keen to use up all the stuff he had collected during the day so he announced that we would have a 'farm party' in the evening and made a suitable banner to give the event even more weight. (If the comic above doesn't make any sense to you, you are not the only one. If does make sense to you, kindly explain :-p)

The party itself involved the following:

• Sunflower seeds were snacked upon.
• A minuscule quantity of lemonade was made
• There was a failed attempt at popping the corn and we were prevailed upon to crunch on hard, burnt corn kernels.
• The cotton was kept aside for a future project that involves making a pillow for a soft toy
• The potato was kept for the making of mashed potatoes some other day.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience. If you happen to have young kids and live in Hyderabad, you really ought to give the Dirty Feet experience a try.

The Mummification of a Car

Even if you can't spot its harried driver, you can tell a car belongs to a mother and is frequently used to ferry kids around when...

... there are dirty kid-sized socks in the coffee holder...

... and a  peek under the armrest reveals a lost Dora slipper that has been the cause of much whining in the recent past.

Of course, the car seats are a dead giveaway too.

On a related note: If you're hitching a ride with me and bringing your own coffee, you're probably better off hanging on it because the coffee holders have seen better days and often play host to a variety of suspect, not to mention smelly, objects.

Holidaying on the Wild Side

A few months ago, we found a long weekend looming large with no travel plans or plans of any other kind. Given that it was just around the corner, we were are at a loss to come up with something interesting that did not require advance planning or flight and hotel reservations. This had been the case for most of the long weekends that had flown by in the last few years and we decided that it was time we got more proactive about planning our mini-breaks. We opened the kids school almanacs and pinpointed the ideal dates, chose travel destinations, made all the necessary bookings and felt mighty pleased with ourselves.

The other factor we wanted to keep in mind was the nature of these holidays. Most of the holidays we have taken in the recent past have either been abroad or cookie-cutter trips like to a beach resort in Goa. We wanted to do something a little different, something that allowed us to give the children new experiences and given that we were looking at breaks of 3-5 days each, they had to be in India.

The Pongal weekend saw us embarking on the first of these planned trips of ours. The destination of choice was Wildnernest, an eco-tourism destination. Reaching their was less than fun - it was a long, winding two-hour drive from the Goa airport, followed by a bone-rattling 10-minute jeep drive off the highway and into the residential part of the property.

It was evening when we got there and we were first taken to our cottage. It was lovely. The cottages are spread out across the property so it almost feels like you are in the woods by yourself. The rooms (we took a 2-room cottage) have large glass windows and when you keep the blinds up, you just have a suffusion of light and greenery. Though fairly rustic and spartan, the rooms were well-appointed, clean and functional - most importantly, a clean toilet with running hot water. This was the view from our deck, just as the sun had set.

After settling in to our digs, we were taken for a brief tour of the property and then we headed to the restaurant where they were airing a wildlife film about the tigers of Bandhavgarh, which Ayaan was entranced by. Dinner followed soon after and it was fantastic. It was a simple buffet comprised of fresh, local ingredients cooked home style but it was some of the best food I have eaten in a while.

The next day, we were went on a boat cruise with these guys in the Goan backwaters. The crew was reasonably knowledgable about the avian life in the area and we managed to see quite a few birds with our binoculars.

The boat ride was quite a novel experience for Tarana who wanted to know why there was soap coming out of the boat (thus revealing herself to be a full-on city kid). She was also  especially taken with the binoculars and spent much of the boat ride in this position:

We also got to see two ends of the technology spectrum in riverine commerce. At one end, we saw these huge coal barges being unloaded with a mechanised life. Just a few metres away, we sailed past teams of boats hard at work at the incredibly labour intensive business of dredging mud from the bottom of the river. Ayaan was equally fascinated by both.

We docked and were driven to the spice plantation in a pick-up. This was one of my cribs with the cruise. There was a typically Indian approach to travel safety - there were no life jackets on the boat and the road travel was all in jeeps and pick-ups. The kids thought it was all wildly adventurous though and expecting western standards of safety precautions would just limit us in our exploration of our own country. So, we followed the age-old advice, kept calm and carried on.

The spice plantation was fun. We went for a guided stroll around the verdant woods and were introduced to a variety of spices in their natural form including cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom, allspice, ginger, and a whole host of other stuff. Ayaan was quite engaged but Tarana wasn't too interested in a botany lesson and generally spent her time trampling around, splashing in puddles and trying her luck at convincing us to carry her.

The guided tour was followed by lunch which was a huge spread of delicacies from the Saraswat cuisine. Organic ingredients, fresh seafood and faultless preparation - it all added up to a fantastic meal and despite my resolution to eat light (given the impending return by boat), I stuffed myself to the gills.

The heavy lunch, combined with the harsh afternoon sun, made return journey far less fun. And we were all feeling something like this halfway through:

The clever crew, probably having dealt with this in the past, had kept the best for the last though - the crocodile sightings! Energy levels immediately spiked when the first croc was spotted. It was amazing that the crew was able to see them at all, given how they seemed to blend into the twigs and rocks in their surroundings but I guess these guys have years of experience. Even after they pointed out the crocodile to us, it took us a few minutes to spot it.

Once we got back, the kids were keen to explore the swimming pool. The water was freezing cold though so they spent most of their time dipping their toes in and generally fooling around at the pool side. It was a great place to unwind after a long, tiring day and the pool itself was a gorgeous infinity pool, with a small waterfall at one end and surrounded by trees and greenery on all sides.

The next day, we signed up for the waterfall trek. This was somewhat brave of us since we had been told that it was a 45-minute trek either way over hilly, rocky terrain. I was worried that both the children would have trouble going the distance. As it turned out, I needn't have worried about Ayaan, who turned out to be quite the champion trekker and managed to keep pace with the leader throughout the trek, while we lagged behind the group with Tarana. It was expectedly a bit too much for Tarana and she spent at least half the trek in my arms or on Jai's shoulders.

The waterfall itself was more of a trickle but it was novelty enough for my city-bred kids who were thrilled to bits. There was also a coracle at the bank and we all took turns boating to the waterfall and back. The kids 'helped'.

Not ones to let one trek with a reluctant toddler in tow discourage us, we signed up for another, albeit easier, trek in the evening. After an afternoon nap (Jai and Tarana) and some more poolside chilling (Ayaan and myself), we set out for a short trek up a hill to watch the sunset. Tarana was on Jai's shoulders most of the way, but Ayaan did the brief hike effortlessly. The spot they had picked was lovely and allowed us a bird's eye view of the property, one of its unique features being that it spans three states - Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

As we spent our last evening there, my body reminded me just how unfit I am. I might have lost all the pregnancy weight thanks to the extended maid-less stint I suffered, but my stamina and fitness levels are pretty much at rock bottom. Tarana was carried most of the way so she was unaffected and Jai has been gymming regularly. But even on Ayaan, the only notable effect was a longer and deeper sleep that night. I, on the other hand, had achy thighs for days after. It really brought home to me the need for me to sign up for an organised fitness regimen of some sort.

The next day, it was time to bid goodbye to Wildernest. We said goodbye to the folks we had befriended there. It's amazing how much more you end up interacting with fellow travelers when you don't have television or internet connectivity. Of course, there were some ugly Indian types who blasted their stereo at the poolside and threw one of my kids' toys over the edge of the pool (and did not even bother to apologise - and these were adults). But by and large, our fellow guests were an interesting lot. We even ran into and send some fun hours with the homeopathy doctor we had consulted with back in Mumbai!

Overall, it was a fantastic break and I hope to do this sort of thing much more often. Some time away from this over-connected, over-stimulating city life of ours is just what the doctor ordered.