Part 2: Settling down for a few months (Living away from civilization, almost)

If you are interested in knowing more about why we decided to stay here and how we found this place, read our previous blog post - Part 1: Settling down for a few months (Finding the place)

We knew that we won't be able to have fresh food for a day or two after we arrived at our stay. As both of us had to carry our backpacks & a day bag (and these bags contained almost all our life's belongings), and Nora was with us too, so we knew that we won't be able to go shopping for food or other things during our journey. We'd also be busy cleaning the place and setting it up once we arrived there. So, we packed food for two days - boiled eggs, raw vegetables, fruits, and oats until we had the kitchen setup to cook our meals. Water was another topic to think about as we didn't had any large containers to carry and store drinking water. So, we carried three 1L bottles with us and filled them with drinking water on our way to the place.

We also packed our lunch for the afternoon. Once we arrived, before we did anything else, we had our lunch under the trees. Once our stomachs were full, we started working on setting up the house. Luckily, the house needed just a few hours of cleaning. We spent the next few hours moving the furniture and setting it up. As the house of our owners was about 150 metres away, we had to carry all the furniture from there one by one. It was physically challenging for both of us. But our excitement of moving there made us forget about the intensity of the work we were doing. We finished all the work before sunset and moved our bags in. The bed was setup for the night. We had our raw vegetables, boiled eggs, and oats for dinner and retired for the night, completely exhausted.

We almost forgot how serene it was to sleep with the sounds of only nature, no vehicle sounds, no air pollution, and no artificial lights. We even came out after dark to see the clear stars in the sky and the milky way bright and clear above us. It was exhilarating to know that we'd be living here for a month or possibly more.

We woke up in the morning to the noises of a lot of children playing sports at a far distance. It was a Sunday morning and the nearby school had their sports class from 5am till 7am. The community where we lived was behind a local residential school with over 700 students, both boys and girls, with ages ranging from 9 to 16. All the students lived on the campus. Teachers lived in their staff apartments with their families. All the maintenance staff had their own shelters where they lived with their families. The school campus was about 500 metres away from our home. We had to pass through the school security gate to enter our community or to go outside. We passed by many students, teachers, support staff and their families and they were eager to know who we were, what we were doing there, what we studied, what our profession was, why we were not working, and so on. The questions were never ending. So, it was a nice a balance to be close to civilization but far enough to have our own quiet place where we don't have to meet anyone for as long as we wanted to and without anyone interrupting our peace for as long as we wanted.

The first order of business was to buy groceries, vegetables, fruits, and a container to store drinking water. We emptied one of our backpacks and took it with us for shopping. Along the way, as we passed through the school, rode the local bus, shopped at the local farmers market, bought groceries, eggs, and yoghurt at the stores, everyone was curious who we were and what we were doing in that area. Ibrahimpatnam being a small town surrounded by tiny villages, everyone was curious about us. And we repeated the summary of our life story at leats a few dozen times before we came back home on that day.

We were pleasantly surprised by the prices of food and travel. We bought lots of fresh vegetables for just about Rs.140 (€1.78/$1.97) which lasted for about 4 days. The local bus ride was Rs.10 (0.13/$0.14) per person per ride. A full tray of 30 eggs costed Rs.110 (€1.44/$1.55). We could buy almost everything we needed from the markets (which was about 200 metres from our bus/tuk-tuk drop off point). It was exciting to have a place to cook again on our own with fresh vegetables and leafy greens and this excitement did not fade for the entire time we stayed here.

As we didn't have internet connection or phone signal, our days were mostly driven by the natural cycles of sun, hunger, our need to rest, and Nora's need to play and have fun. Whenever there was a possibility, we went for long walks with our neighbour traveler couple (Jayathi and Lohi), met our home owners as they were also very eager to spend time with Nora, experimented with cooking, read books on Kindle/laptop, and just took time to workout, do yoga, and meditate. Our days were as peaceful as they can get and as unplanned as they could be.

Nora had a lot of entertainment and interactions with people around us. There were a group of support staff who washed clothes for all the students by hand. We heard the sounds of clothes being hit on the washing stones starting at 5 in the morning few times a week. Washermen lived with their families in shelters nearby. Their children also used to interact and play with Nora whenever they could.

Every few days, there was a shepherd who brought along about 200 goat and sheep. They used to make their presence known with their loud noises while they wandered and grazed on the weeds and grasses nearby our home. One day, we got to experience an amazing thing. A goat just gave birth to a baby. The shepherd brought the baby to Nora so she could touch it. It was just a few minutes old with its umbilical cord still attached to it. It was an amazing moment to see that small baby and also experience Nora interacting with that newly born goat baby.

As there was a lot of free land and ample ground water supply on-demand, we wanted to experiment with growing vegetables on our own in a dry area like this and see what we could learn from it. As the days were cold during this month and the nights were about 12ºC, we decided to start our experiments with farming when we are back next time.

We had a wonderful month here. As we had a friend from Austria visiting us in Rishikesh and Sam's cousin was getting married in early January, so we packed our bags and went away from here for a month. We came back again in mid-January and stayed here for another 4 months. This time, we had the opportunity to stay at the high roof Kerala architecture home. More about this stay and the experiments we did with growing food and improving vegetation around the area in our next blog.