We're COMING...

Well, our hour has nearly come.

It is lunch time here in Beijing, and in a couple of hours we'll be leaving for the airport. Bangkok is our destination. We have only to eat breakfast and lunch, and play in the pool for a few hours, then we'll be on the plane home. A long overnight plane to Sydney and then a short trip to Adelaide. Arriving Monday 29th Dec. Qantas flight QF751 from Sydney arriving Adelaide at 2.15pm. Bring your banners. No fanatics please....

By the time we touch down we'll have travelled over 75,000 km, been in 16 countries [including Australia], been for 24 plane flights [only 2 of which have had personal tv screens!], visited with 11 sets of friends, eaten in cafes, restaurants, hostel rooms, from street carts, sports stadiums, train stations, airport lounges, and subways. Been to western loos, eastern loos, and natural loos, flushing, non-flushing, and supposed to be flushing but not... dragged and pushed the kids [and each other] to museums, lookouts and departure lounges. Been to amusement parks, thai boxing gyms, temples, shopping centres, all-hours doctors, natural icons, world icons and curious little shops. Swum in pools, lakes and beaches. Skated on frozen ponds, tobogganned down iceflows, seen frozen waterfalls, and waterfalls inside mountains, walked through rainforests and up volcanoes. Climbed skyscrapers in Manhatten and been in mudhuts in Mozambique. Ridden in trains, taxis, buses, cable cars, rickshaws, planes, shuppas, tuk tuks, sumos, minivans, bicycles and skate-cycles, elevators and escalators. Been below ground, on ground and above ground. Had smooth flights, short flights, rough flights and long flights. Been called Whitey, Farang, Hauli, Gora and Muzoongoo. Had fantastic times and very low times, missed you and not missed you. Taken about 9000 photos and nearly 12 hours of video [I'm not even sure if I'm game!].
And so much more.

We are SO ready to be home. I hope our tennants haven't changed the locks... ha
For those of you who've been keeping up with my ravings all these months, thank you. For those of you in Adelaide, we'll see you all very soon, and for those of you who live in other less fortunate places, thanks for being in touch with us since we left in July.
From him and her.

Beijing.... jing... jing

It was positively summery here today at 3C, up from a high of -7 yesterday when we flew in... actually it was about -12 when we got in at 6pm. Just about died.... Aaron was the only one in the Beijing airport in shorts... he was cold, but he certainly turned heads...
We went to Tian'men Sq today as it's just on the next block, but Zoe's new shoes [read: don't buy cheap in Thailand!] were giving her blisters... so we then decided to bump the Forbidden City to the end of the week and go shoe shopping... can't have everything! The Sq is huge by the way, but so was the shoe shop... it is China after all... ha
Tomorrow we're going somewhere else famous, I can't remember where exactly... feel like I'm dropping the ball a bit... may be the temp... temp... tt tt tt emp.
We are really looking forward to being home. We are excited at seeing the Great Wall on Wed, and our friend Joy, who we are seeing for Christmas Day. We might not get our snow, but we certainly are getting a COLD Christmas.
Remember, there are still a few shopping days for our welcome home presents... ha
[that was a joke by the way] [you know, the bit about not knowing where we're going tomorrow...]

Mumbai-Bangkok: 2 Airport Hotspots

We got through Mumbai airport and Bangkok airport fine last night... Somehow, perhaps God, our luggage arrived at Mumbai airport at the same time the taxi did... perched unsecured on the roof racks... 'Will they be ok like that' I was heard to ask [foolishly, I deduced by the tilt of his head].... 'No problem sahib...' Well, he was right.

The flow through both airports was pretty good: Bangkok seems back to normal after the protests of a couple of weeks ago. Security was very tight in Mumbai, but flow was still good. We allowed 4 hours to get through instead of 2. Made for a long night, but better safe than sorry.

We left Mumbai at 1130pm and arrived Bangkok at 430am, then caught another plane to ChiangMai. All in all no sleep for me, but Zoe had 3 hours, Aaron and Jude both 2 hours. We're pretty stuffed now.

Surprisingly [for us anyhow] this our 18th flight of the trek, and our first Jumbo... and for a flight of only 55 minutes! Still have'nt had an upgrade to business class. Don't they know who we are? Perhaps they do! Don't let anyone tell you that all aeroplanes have personal entertainment systems... we've only had 2 out of 18. Both of them were South African Airlines. One of them fortunately was our longest flight... 12.5 hours Germany to South Africa.

Anyhow, Thailand this week, and Beijing next week. Then home. Probably a 2-week dream holiday for some, but it feels like the last nervous twitches of a dying pet for us. Sorry to seem ungrateful, but we are tired, and we can't wait to get home and show you our 7000 photos and 6.5 hours of video. [And Terry, we still have 2 countries to go....]

The Battle of Pratapgarh

[click on the slide show on the left to see new photos]

Chhatrapati Shivaji Raje Bhosle [known as 'Shivaji'], born 1630, is considered a great hero in India, especially in the present-day state of Maharashtra [the state we are in now].

At the age of 17, Shivaji carried out his first military action by attacking and capturing Torna Fort of the Bijapur kingdom in 1645. By 1647 he had captured Kondana and Rajgad forts and had complete control of the Pune region. [Pune is the closest large town to Panchgani.] By 1654 Shivaji had captured forts in the Western Ghats and along the Konkan coast.

In a bid to sabotage this move of the Marathas under Shivaji's able leadership, Adilshah had his father arrested, and he sent an army against Shivaji's elder brother at Bangalore and another against Shivaji at Purandhar. However both the brothers defeated the invading armies and secured the release of their father.

Thereafter, Afzal Khan, a seasoned commander and an accomplished warrior, was then sent to destroy Shivaji, in an effort to put down what was seen by Bijapur as a regional revolt.

Afzal Khan, after leaving Bijapur to confront Shivaji, first desecrated temples of goddess Bhavani. The intent was to get a roiled, disturbed, and shaken Shivaji out in the open to face him in battle. Instead, Shivaji sent a letter saying he was not eager to face Afzal Khan and sought some type of understanding. Shivaji strategically decided to surprise Afzal Khan under the guise of diplomatic negotiations. A meeting was arranged between Afzal Khan and Shivaji at the foothills of Fort Pratapgad. Shivaji got word that Afzal Khan planned to slay him during the meeting.

Shivaji, armed himself with a weapon called 'wagh nakh' (tiger claw), and armour prior to the meeting. Afzal Khan attempted to stab Shivaji in the back with a dagger as they embraced at the onset of their meeting. Shivaji was unscathed due to the armour he wore under his clothes, and he counter attacked Afzal Khan with the tiger claw spilling his blood and entrails on the ground. Afzal Khan's deputy, Krishnaji and his bodyguard attacked Shivaji with swords but Shivaji's bodyguard fatally struck them down.

Afzal Khan managed to stumble out of the tent to get help but was slain by a soldier of Shivaji's before he could alert his commanders or raise an alarm.

In the ensuing battle of Pratapgarh in the dense forests, which was fought in November 1659, Shivaji's armies attacked Bijapur's (Afzal Khan's) forces and engaged them in swift flanking maneuvers. Immediately after slaying Afzal Khan, Shivaji galloped up the slope towards the fortress with his lieutenants and ordered cannons to be fired signaling his infantry, which had been strategically placed under the cover of the densely covered valley, to immediately attack Afzal Khan's forces.

They swept down on Afzal Khan's 1,500 musketeers resulting in a complete rout of the musketeers at the foothills of the fort. The suddenness of this attack on Afzal Khan's artillery at close quarters made them ineffective in providing artillery cover for the main portion of their troops. As a result the rest of their troops rapidly succumbed to an all-out Maratha attack.

This great victory made Shivaji a hero of Maratha folklore and a legendary figure among his people. The large quantities of captured weapons, horses, armour and other materials helped to strengthen the emerging Maratha army.

To the loser the spoils...

Adam and I have been guiding the Interns through a Creative Week this week. A lot of problem solving, lateral thinking exercises, and examples from life of how imaginitive thinking can often produce startling results.
One of the projects we did was called Eggs Crash Benedict. The aim was, in 45 min, using only a piece of A4 paper, a piece of A4 card, a short length of string, a rubber band and a paper clip, to design a structure that would protect an egg from breaking when dropped from the roof of a building.
Well, everyone including the children, got thinking, designing and making, coming up with quite incredible structures... strips of paper and card rolled into coils and packed around the egg and held in place by rubber bands [360 degree crumple zone], to a basket and parachute, to an 'icecream cone' contraption with the egg suspended in the top [slowing the fall], to a toilet roll kind of thing that held the egg in the middle in suspension, and Zoe's... which was just a messy christmas-wrapping kind of setup.
Well, at the appointed time - afternoon tea, when all the conference delegates where on hand to view and cheer - we made our way out onto the balcony of the dining room. One by one, Adam introduced the contraptions and their contraptors, and proceeded to 'test' them by dropping them to a target zone below.
One by one, the crowd cheered in anticipation, and oohhhed in condolence as we made more and more a raw scrambled egg mix on the pavement below. I must confess, after being very confident of my magnificent fluted, parachuted, triple crumple-zoned and rubber band-suspended egg nobel prize winning creation, mine too joined the congealing mass of broken yolk and albumen in the target zone. It may have been my imagination, but I think the crowd's grief was longer and more despairing at the oozing of my broken magnificence... I had promised so much... they had believed.... alas.

Zoe's was one of the last, and Adam held the poor thing momentarily aloft, before releasing the string. It dropped. It dropped. We held each other's breath. It meet the ground in silence. It made a sound unlike like others.... everyone raced over to it and pawed at the wrapping, wanting, hoping, willing that it would be whole.... IT WAS.... we have a WINNER!

Zoe fairly leapt into the air with the cheers of the crowd lifting her to olympian heights. Much cheering, thigh-slapping, and 'I never expected that' -ing. I nearly wept with the very joy of it.

A 6 year old girl. Caution to the wind. Physics and engineering be damned. Just wrap it.

[Oh, by the way, there was another winner, though he doesn't count. Pempa. He's an adult, and he's from Tibet. And he's not my fantastic daughter.]

There's been shooting at the Basillica

Coming only hours after the Mumbai attacks we had our own cause for consternation... Jude, Bek and Zhanna had planned to go to the nearby hotel/restaurant for dinner. It is only about 50m from our front gate, but the front gate is about 200m from the dining room. They had come up to dinner with us to help with the kids, and then disappeared off into the night. It get's dark here just after 6pm, so they set off, in the dark, for the Basillica.

As the three of them approached the front gate of the Basillica, one of their guards had held his finger up to his lips and 'ssshhhhh'ed them. 'They are shooting up there,' he said. 'You come back in 15min or 30 minutes'...

Whaaat!

'If there's someone up there with a gun, I'm not going anywhere near it'... and in a moment of inexorable unity, the girls decided to beat a very hasty retreat...

We were only a few forkfulls into our Rogan Josh, when in came the girls, blabbering about someone with a gun, and there being a shooting at the Basillica.... you could hear a papadum drop.

As the story unfolded some of the local staff began to chuckle. 'I can't believe they're laughing, given that 'Mumbai' is so fresh in all our thoughts. Especially with Jude being a potential target'.
The chuckles gave way to laughter, and so the adventure found it's merry [not to mention 'safe'] end. The Basillica is a well known hotel, and numerous television/film directors love to use it for 'shooting' scenes from their top floor. The views down the valley are spectacular!

Needless to say, the girls gathered their dignity and their now swollen appetites and marched off to the Basillica - again. All's well that ends well.