For the last few months, I’ve been steadily realising how much my hair annoys me. During the freezing London winter, it’s always too long, getting stuck underneath scarves or bag straps, turning into a static flyaway mess. It seems to be becoming drier and more foreign when I see it in the mirror – so much so that I don’t think my hair suits my face anymore, which is not the most enjoyable place to be. So what happens when…
Going abroad is great. Within no time, you seem to have forgotten what day it is, and it doesn’t even seem to matter. Time begins to evaporate, and you’ll spend hours in a rooftop cafe, sipping a lassi, listening to the birds chirp and the dogs bark… Unfortunately, the difficulty with this disassociation between you and time starts to become apparent when you spend way too long sleeping, turn up late to group meetings, and get panicked in Indian fortresses when you’re…
On the morning of my 24th birthday, I awoke to red ants crawling in my toothpaste and a broken toilet seat. I turned over and groaned; after a few days respite, my stomach was making its ridiculous gurgling noises again. A very strange place for a birthday… Our group of intrepid travellers was in a little village located in Madhya Pradesh named Mandu, and the unexpected location of a tribal wedding fair that succeeded in being both terrifying and exciting in equal…
A steaming glass sat in front of me on the kitchen table. I eyed it dubiously. The woman in the chair opposite had just poured a heaped spoonful of black powder into the boiling water, where the majority of it still sat floating happily on the surface. ‘That’s because it’s so light,’ she said, resealing her vacuum pack plastic bag, and shaking the powder within. ‘Your stomach’s probably too acidic, so the charcoal will help balance it out…’ ‘…because it’s…
Have you ever tried to wash in Kathmandu? Rolling electrical blackouts and an erratic work schedule can only mean one thing when it comes to showering; no matter how hard you try, the water is always going to be cold. Before I arrived in Nepal I used to think water had three temperatures – and how much gradation can you really get between hot, lukewarm and cold? Turns out solar panels can provide you with water that’s heated to such…
Nepal Volunteering
Cold Feet: a Day in the Life of a Nepal Orphanage Volunteer
Posted on February 16, 2012Despite researching India a mammoth amount over the last month, I somehow neglected to discover a number of things about Nepal. For instance, the fact that the temperature drops drastically between day and night. Plus the fact that no Nepali building has heating, and that the country’s daily rolling electricity cuts mean a constant lack of hot water, lighting, and the ability to cook – unless someone queues to buy gas every day. I also managed to avoid considering the…
Having lived in London for most of my life, I’ve never been that enthusiastic about snow. Although the first fall looks picturesque enough, it only takes a few hours of trampling feet and car tyres to turn that lovely whiteness into channels of grey slush. And the accompanying ice, snow’s completely unwelcome cousin, also manages to bring the country’s transport to a total standstill. Last year’s winter reached its peak when I was in Norwich, and the student body was…
When you tell people you’re going travelling, one of the first things they ask you is who you’re going with. It’s a standard question; who’s going to be taking your photo in front of the respective famous landmarks? Who are you going to share those long plane/bus/train journeys with? And, perhaps most importantly, who’ll be watching your bags when you need the toilet?…
It can be a confusing and demoralising place. In the last year of university, the sudden discovery that people are applying for grad schemes and entry-level jobs is enough to shake up even the laziest of students. I had also watched recently graduated friends spend months angsting over applications and mourning rejections; despite not wanting a confining job straight out of uni, I also knew that padding out my CV was a good idea – at least while I had no other…
I always vowed to myself, throughout school and university, that I would never end up working the typical 9 to 5 in an office. It was mainly the ‘dull’ office environment that, despite having had no exposure to it, I decided was never going to suit me. This decision stemmed partly from my love of lie-ins; partly because I had only heard boring stories about office work; and partly from my immediate opposition to the idea of spending every day in a…