An interesting last Sunday

I was up bright and early as Lakshman was taking me to the vegetable market so off we set on our chosen mode of transport.

Stopping en route to buy my breakfast .

Pawpaw.

Then it was onto the market .

All sorts of spinach.

This man was selling mushroom soup of all things ,not what. I would choose to have at 8am. but it was delicious .

I then headed off to the Gandhi Museum.

It all looks very grand from the outside .

Sandals he wore

It was all quite disappointing really but I was glad I went.

Now getting home was interesting , I had an argument with the auto driver and he refused to take me so he beckoned a cycle rickshaw and he took me for the price .

A pretty rickety journey but. I felt sorry for all his efforts and ended up giving him more .

No gears on his bike and having to pull me poor soul .

After a rest from the heat we set off for a trip to the family farm. I thought it was only going to be the three of us but no the cook and Anithas mother ( the farm owner) came along too. The cook armed with the masala tea.

And Anithas Mum eating these peculiar looking fruits that we stopped for en route .

Not poetising at all. The white bit you see has a stone inside so you eat round that.

The road to the farm.

Some of the farm hands.

$100 rooster which is a fighter and was bought to breed but hasn't come up with the goods yet.

Off to inspect the fruit trees which are suffering dreadfully from 2 yrs. drought . They grow mangoes orange trees ,lemon trees  lime trees and lots more until the drought . It really has decimated their crops. There is no money coming in from the sale of fruit ,workers need to be paid so it's not a very happy place right now . I was also told that this generation does not to work on farms , instead they are going off to Malaysia and Dubai to do manual labour which pays more than in India on a farm !

This is an orchard of Indian gooseberry trees all dried and dying.

Then we paid a visit to a farm hands house where we had coconut milk / water.

That's Anitha's Mum in the picture .

Not sure how many people live in that wee house but it's fair few.

And this gloopy mixture of wheat , rice Dahl ground down and is cooked daily to feed these noisy brutes as there isn't enough grazing left due to drought .

We then set off for a walk up a hill to see the view .the light was just perfect as we walked along .

My wee camera doesn't really do this justice , but it was beautiful. It quite reminded me of Egypt actually.

Just to let you see that all of India is not flat.

So once at the top the picnic came out .

A box full of these stuffed bread rolls lovingly made by Lakshman this morning . The smell was wonderful as they were cooking .

And that's what the inside looked like.

The breeze was warm and it was so quiet and peaceful.

I had no idea that Indians lived in huts like the Africans but we stopped and these people very kindly let me take a picture .

Back to the humdrum of the suburbs and we stopped opposit this Christian church which looked lovely in the dark.

This next picture is totally unrelated but Janet asked for a picture of Kumar my driver so here he is .

That pretty much sums up my Sunday, it's been a lovely interesting day and now I have to prepare myself for my last week with all my lovely babies but also to see my lovely husband next Saturday .