If you want to read about how we decided to stay in this part of India, how we found this place, and how we spent our first month here, you can read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of posts.
After spending a month in Rishikesh and South India, we came back to Ibrahimpatnam without an end date, to live and experiment with gardening and other things. Last time we lived here for a month, we stayed in a row house. We expected to come back to the same place in January as well. However, two weeks before we were planning to come back, we heard the news that the traveler couple (Jayathi and Lohi) decided to continue their travels with their dog (Whitey) and move out of their current residence. We reached out to the owners of the house and asked if they had any plans to rent their house to others or if it was free for us to move in. They offered us to move into that place at the same rent we paid earlier.
The place was a high roof Kerala architecture home with two domed rooms and two concrete roofed rooms. The large room, octagon shaped, with dome roof, had an area of about 40 sq m. It was the living/kitchen/dining room all combined into one. It also had a nice seating area with glass roof. The second dome roofed room, which was hexagonal in shape and had an area of about 10 sq m. was the bedroom. The first concrete roofed room was used more like a storage area but it was the only room where we could store our clothes, documents, or anything valuable that we didn't want animals to have access to. And the last room was the bathroom combined with a toilet. There was a nice octagon shaped raised seating area outside the house that was surrounded by bamboo and neem trees. The house was in a very secluded area surrounded by many types of trees and plants. That means, it also invited a lot of animals and birds towards the area and into the house. Inside the house, there was no dearth of ants, lizards, spiders, many types of worms and insects. We had squirrels/chipmunks jump into the house through the roof a few times. A few rats visited us each night to grab a bite of anything we might have left in the kitchen. There were two owls that lived in the roof of our bedroom. They made noises at night and we had to shush them regularly. And most of the times it worked and they kept quiet afterwards :)
Outside the house, it was home to even more natural habitat. We had 10s of exotic birds visiting us each day and there were groups of squirrels/chipmunks running around the house all day. We woke up to the birds singing and it continued all the way until evening, when it was slowly taken over by the sounds of crickets as the sun went down and the night approached. We found peeled skin of snakes on a regular basis, and we believe they hung out around the house at night and shed (slough) their skin when it was time for them to allow new growth. Mosquitoes were everywhere, especially when the sun went down or when the dark clouds hid the sun light. Luckily, most of the windows of the house we lived in had mosquito meshes fitted to them; however, the roof was not completely sealed, so quite a few mosquitoes came in during sunset (that is the time most of the mosquitoes seem to come inside the house). Our evenings inside the house were spent mostly under a mosquito net that we tied inside the living room to escape from their bites; however, we couldn't escape from 10-20 mosquito bites each day. We got used to it very quickly and it didn't bother us much. We had a hare/rabbit visit us one day. And there were peacocks around our home and they came by regularly to catch worms in the area. We heard them most of the day from far away. These peacocks we had around were very shy of humans. They ran/flew away (yes, they fly) whenever we approached them. We took pictures of the nature around us, and here are a few pictures we posted on Sam's facebook - Facebook Link.
The nearby school students had events and celebrations on a regular basis. Sometimes they were practicing dance, music, and sports for their upcoming celebrations. Whenever we had a chance, we went there and watched the students perform and practice. One incident where we got a bit more closer to student activities was when Kathi offered to train the students to improve their running style. As Kathi is a certified running instructor, she offered the students to improve their running style and endurance. Students showed a lot of enthusiasm and excitement to be trained by Kathi and she enjoyed training the students with equal enthusiasm.
All of us, including Nora enjoyed our stay here. We had a lot of time on our hands, but at the same time very little time, as we had taken on a lot of experiments and projects during our stay here. We were physically and mentally exhausted by evening almost every day. It was very satisfying having days full of exciting and creative outlets that mentally and physically exhausted us each day. And each night we all had good night sleep with the sounds of insects and birds around us.
As the months passed, the weather started becoming drier and hotter. The area around our house, which was once a dense guava and orange farm, was now an open area as all the trees were cut down due to lack of rains the pervious years and the harvest was not making economical sense to the costs of maintaining the farms. The hot air and wind was intense and the temperature sometimes was above 40ºC (105F). We took on some projects to windshield the house and cool down the exposed sandy soil around the house so it was liveable for us. We will share more details about these projects in our upcoming blogs. From April onwards, the temperature was already above 32ºC (90F) by the time we woke up, and it only went up during the day. As the roof was made of shingles (tiles), we watered them few times a day to cool them down, especially, during the peak heat time between 11am and 3pm. We used a fan to pump out the hot air from the house to cool it down. We also borrowed a water cooler from our home owners and it kept us cool during the day and night. Another thing we had to deal with immediately was the presence of rats inside the house. They chewed on anything and everything edible we had outside. So, we got creative and and created a vegetable box from an old water cooler stand. We covered the sides of the stand with left over mosquito mesh and sealed the bottom with an old wood board. It worked nicely as the vegetables were protected from animals and they had air to breathe.
The power in the house was not always there. We didn't have our life fully dependent on electricity as we didn't own a refrigerator, TV, or other appliances that needed continuous electric supply. Our phone and computer were charged when we had power. During power outages at night, we used the torchlight app on our phone as a light. As the summer approached, we depended more on the water cooler and indirectly on electricity. However, there were many days when the power went off during peak hot times (> 40ºC) of the day, and we just learned to manage either by sitting under the trees around the house or using wet cloths to cool us down. But like everything else, when we learned to accept the situations around us and lower our expectations of comfort, power cuts did not bother us much and sometimes we didn't even realise that there was no power in the house until a few hours later.
One big change at this home from the previous row house was that we had a cable high speed internet. We were able to do a lot of research, study online, get back in touch with friends and relatives.
One of Kathi's cousins visited us and stayed with us for a few days. It was really nice to show someone close to us how we lived here and share with excitement the experiments we were doing.
We stayed here until it was getting too hot for us where the mid day temperatures were crossing 43ºC (110F). We packed our bags and went on to cooler parts of the world for a few months before coming back again. We will write more about these journeys in our upcoming blogs.
This place was everything we wanted for Nora and for us with unimaginable amount of nature and peace around us. The only thing we had to focus here was on our own needs and discovering what we wanted from life and what made us happy. This place gave us the ideal environment to do all of this and much more. More soon...
After spending a month in Rishikesh and South India, we came back to Ibrahimpatnam without an end date, to live and experiment with gardening and other things. Last time we lived here for a month, we stayed in a row house. We expected to come back to the same place in January as well. However, two weeks before we were planning to come back, we heard the news that the traveler couple (Jayathi and Lohi) decided to continue their travels with their dog (Whitey) and move out of their current residence. We reached out to the owners of the house and asked if they had any plans to rent their house to others or if it was free for us to move in. They offered us to move into that place at the same rent we paid earlier.
The place was a high roof Kerala architecture home with two domed rooms and two concrete roofed rooms. The large room, octagon shaped, with dome roof, had an area of about 40 sq m. It was the living/kitchen/dining room all combined into one. It also had a nice seating area with glass roof. The second dome roofed room, which was hexagonal in shape and had an area of about 10 sq m. was the bedroom. The first concrete roofed room was used more like a storage area but it was the only room where we could store our clothes, documents, or anything valuable that we didn't want animals to have access to. And the last room was the bathroom combined with a toilet. There was a nice octagon shaped raised seating area outside the house that was surrounded by bamboo and neem trees. The house was in a very secluded area surrounded by many types of trees and plants. That means, it also invited a lot of animals and birds towards the area and into the house. Inside the house, there was no dearth of ants, lizards, spiders, many types of worms and insects. We had squirrels/chipmunks jump into the house through the roof a few times. A few rats visited us each night to grab a bite of anything we might have left in the kitchen. There were two owls that lived in the roof of our bedroom. They made noises at night and we had to shush them regularly. And most of the times it worked and they kept quiet afterwards :)
Outside the house, it was home to even more natural habitat. We had 10s of exotic birds visiting us each day and there were groups of squirrels/chipmunks running around the house all day. We woke up to the birds singing and it continued all the way until evening, when it was slowly taken over by the sounds of crickets as the sun went down and the night approached. We found peeled skin of snakes on a regular basis, and we believe they hung out around the house at night and shed (slough) their skin when it was time for them to allow new growth. Mosquitoes were everywhere, especially when the sun went down or when the dark clouds hid the sun light. Luckily, most of the windows of the house we lived in had mosquito meshes fitted to them; however, the roof was not completely sealed, so quite a few mosquitoes came in during sunset (that is the time most of the mosquitoes seem to come inside the house). Our evenings inside the house were spent mostly under a mosquito net that we tied inside the living room to escape from their bites; however, we couldn't escape from 10-20 mosquito bites each day. We got used to it very quickly and it didn't bother us much. We had a hare/rabbit visit us one day. And there were peacocks around our home and they came by regularly to catch worms in the area. We heard them most of the day from far away. These peacocks we had around were very shy of humans. They ran/flew away (yes, they fly) whenever we approached them. We took pictures of the nature around us, and here are a few pictures we posted on Sam's facebook - Facebook Link.
The nearby school students had events and celebrations on a regular basis. Sometimes they were practicing dance, music, and sports for their upcoming celebrations. Whenever we had a chance, we went there and watched the students perform and practice. One incident where we got a bit more closer to student activities was when Kathi offered to train the students to improve their running style. As Kathi is a certified running instructor, she offered the students to improve their running style and endurance. Students showed a lot of enthusiasm and excitement to be trained by Kathi and she enjoyed training the students with equal enthusiasm.
All of us, including Nora enjoyed our stay here. We had a lot of time on our hands, but at the same time very little time, as we had taken on a lot of experiments and projects during our stay here. We were physically and mentally exhausted by evening almost every day. It was very satisfying having days full of exciting and creative outlets that mentally and physically exhausted us each day. And each night we all had good night sleep with the sounds of insects and birds around us.
As the months passed, the weather started becoming drier and hotter. The area around our house, which was once a dense guava and orange farm, was now an open area as all the trees were cut down due to lack of rains the pervious years and the harvest was not making economical sense to the costs of maintaining the farms. The hot air and wind was intense and the temperature sometimes was above 40ºC (105F). We took on some projects to windshield the house and cool down the exposed sandy soil around the house so it was liveable for us. We will share more details about these projects in our upcoming blogs. From April onwards, the temperature was already above 32ºC (90F) by the time we woke up, and it only went up during the day. As the roof was made of shingles (tiles), we watered them few times a day to cool them down, especially, during the peak heat time between 11am and 3pm. We used a fan to pump out the hot air from the house to cool it down. We also borrowed a water cooler from our home owners and it kept us cool during the day and night. Another thing we had to deal with immediately was the presence of rats inside the house. They chewed on anything and everything edible we had outside. So, we got creative and and created a vegetable box from an old water cooler stand. We covered the sides of the stand with left over mosquito mesh and sealed the bottom with an old wood board. It worked nicely as the vegetables were protected from animals and they had air to breathe.
The power in the house was not always there. We didn't have our life fully dependent on electricity as we didn't own a refrigerator, TV, or other appliances that needed continuous electric supply. Our phone and computer were charged when we had power. During power outages at night, we used the torchlight app on our phone as a light. As the summer approached, we depended more on the water cooler and indirectly on electricity. However, there were many days when the power went off during peak hot times (> 40ºC) of the day, and we just learned to manage either by sitting under the trees around the house or using wet cloths to cool us down. But like everything else, when we learned to accept the situations around us and lower our expectations of comfort, power cuts did not bother us much and sometimes we didn't even realise that there was no power in the house until a few hours later.
One big change at this home from the previous row house was that we had a cable high speed internet. We were able to do a lot of research, study online, get back in touch with friends and relatives.
One of Kathi's cousins visited us and stayed with us for a few days. It was really nice to show someone close to us how we lived here and share with excitement the experiments we were doing.
We stayed here until it was getting too hot for us where the mid day temperatures were crossing 43ºC (110F). We packed our bags and went on to cooler parts of the world for a few months before coming back again. We will write more about these journeys in our upcoming blogs.
This place was everything we wanted for Nora and for us with unimaginable amount of nature and peace around us. The only thing we had to focus here was on our own needs and discovering what we wanted from life and what made us happy. This place gave us the ideal environment to do all of this and much more. More soon...
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| Sam and Nora sitting on the glass roof of the house |
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| One of many honey combs around our house. This one was in our front yard on the neem tree. |
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| A peacock wandering around our house |
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| A plane flying low above our house on a cloudy day |
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| A school employee helping us pick coconuts from the trees in our backyard by climbing with bare hands and feet as Nora and Kathi watch him. |
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| Nora sitting on the vegetable box we made out of an old water cooler stand |
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| Kathi helping Nora climb an old mango tree in-front of our house |
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| Kathi training school kids how to improve their running technique and endurance |
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| A kingfisher eating a lizard in front of our hose |
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| Nora playing with water in our front seating area after a rain |
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| Nora exploring our garden on a warm day |
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| Nora playing with water during rain |
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| Nora playing with a frog that lives around our house |
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| One of the owls watching us on a bright morning. It lives inside the roof of our bedroom |
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| Snake skin that Nora collected from around the house |
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| Stars above our house on a dark clear night |
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| Students at the nearby school celebrating Indian republic day |
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| Sunrise as seen from our front yard |
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| Our house for a few months |
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| Kathi, Nora, and Kathi's cousin sitting on a rock watching sunset near our home |
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