Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation

Darjeeling, India; 5 - 15 Nov. 2011

After a two-hour internal flight and a four-hour jeep ride up a windy, bumpy road, I arrived in Darjeeling - my home for the next two and a half months. The last time I spent over a month in one place was last year in Ayacucho, Peru. Like Ayacucho, Darjeeling is a mountain town (it is at an altitude of 2100m) with a population of around 130,000 people (and scores of street dogs!).

And just as in Ayacucho, I am spending my time in Darjeeling doing volunteer work for a charity that helps street children, namely the Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation.

Edith, who hails from Cork, began working with street children in the Darjeeling area in 2003. With its night shelters, halfway houses, drop-in centres and outreach programmes, EWSCF currently deals directly with around 100 children, both boys and girls, who are mostly from very poor and often abusive backgrounds.

On my first day, after stopping on the walk to the centre to admire the spectacular view,I was given a tour before joining a group of the boys in a game of football. I spent a lot of my time in Ayacucho playing football, so this reinforced the view that kids are the same the world over.

My first week coincided with "Childrens' Day" in India. Two sports days were held to celebrate - one at the EWSCT centre and one in the town. These featured standard events like sprints, shot putt and long jump. But there were also many unusual races. These included variations on sprints, where the kids ran halfway and then either solved a maths problem,

put on and correctly tied their shoes and shirts or, most bizarrely, had to eat a small cake and drink a juice carton, before continuing onto the finish line.The prizes included badminton rackets and cricket bats. This worked out well for me when these sports (i.e. sports that I can give a decent stab at playing) temporarily replaced the boys' favoured activity of kicking a small "ball" (i.e. a bunch of rubber bands tied together) to each other without letting it touch the ground - an activity at which I'm useless, though I am improving!

Great Expectations Fulfilled

Delhi, Jaipur, Pushkar, Agra, INDIA: 27 Oct. - 4 Nov. 2011

I feel like I had been building up to coming to India for ages. Over the years I read lots of books about or set in India, I always questioned anyone I met who had been, and my career break plan had from the start, though somewhat vaguely, included it on my itinerary. So out of all the countries that I've visited, India was the one that I had built up the most and which therefore made me weirdly nervous.

The much-discussed gap between the rich and poor was immediately evident. Delhi's airport and new "airport express" metro are modern and clean; in contrast on exiting the metro station onto the Main Bazaar you are straight into a chaotic, dirty, food-hawker and cow-filled street.

I was in Delhi the same weekend as India's inaugural F1 Grand Prix. Although I didn't see any of that, while touring around the city to see some very impressive buildings, I saw and was in the middle of streams of horn-blowing traffic. This reminded me of Hanoi. In fact, of countries I've visited this year, one of my initial impressions on being in Delhi was that it is sort of a mix between Vietnam and Ethiopia (I was a little disappointed when I found a world map to see that a line between Addis Ababa and Hanoi cuts through south India rather than Delhi - I had thought that I was onto something).

But on going to the "Monkey Palace" in Jaipur (five hours south-east of Delhi) I saw that India is very much its own unique place. There I witnessed throngs of people (men and women in separate pools) bathing in crowded spiritually-important pools set amid temples built in between huge rocks that dozens of monkeys have made there home. It was an amazing spectacle, like nothing I've ever seen.

From there I headed out to Rajasthan's desert for another unique experience - the annual Pushkar camel fair, the largest in the world. I really enjoyed my time in Pushkar, which was spent sitting on the banks of its holy lake, and strolling around stumbling across things like a monkey riding a pig while a camel looked on.An overnight train (which left at 3:50am, meaning I spent hours in an Indian railway station - an experience in itself) brought me to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. It lived up to all the hype. It truly is breath-taking.I only spent a week hitting the much-visited stops on the tourist "Golden Triangle" of Delhi-Jaipur-Agra (with Pushkar thrown in as I was lucky enough to be nearby during the camel fair). Yet I really enjoyed what I saw and did. So in my first week, India certainly didn't disappoint.

Welcome to India!

Singapore, SINGAPORE & Delhi, INDIA: 25 - 27 Oct. 2011

On my way from New Zealand to India, I spent two nights in Singapore. I liked it more than I thought I would. While I didn't have much time there (just one full day), I feel I made the most of it. In between heavy thunderstorms, I checked out some interesting temples, the modern waterfront and ate some tasty food. A successful stopover.

My flight to Delhi arrived in the evening during the celebrations for Diwali, the Hindu "festival of lights" which is one of India's biggest festivals. This meant that my first sight of India was looking down from the airplane at fireworks going off all over the huge city. It was my best welcome to a country since landing in Dublin Airport at the same time as the Triple Crown-winning Irish rugby team where I exited the arrivals area to a crowd of welcoming television cameras and flag-waving supporters. It was a great start to my three months in India. (I had planned to spend six months in India - five months volunteering and one month travelling. But, to cut a long story of my dramas dealing with the Indian embassy in New Zealand short, I could only get a 90 day visa. So I've had to cut my travel time down to a week and my volunteering to two and half months, which is a pity. But on the bright side, that gives me more time for Nepal, so its all good!)

All Blacks abú!

Wanganui, Lake Waikaremoana, National Park, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND: 11 - 25 Oct. 2011

With Ireland out of the World Cup, my focus shifted from following the rugby to doing activities in scenic parts of New Zealand - a much healthier way of life. I spent ten days working my way from Wellington to Auckland by criss-crossing the North Island. My travels brought me to: Wanganui, where I did a boat and walking day-trip on and around the historically-interesting Whanganui River; the stunning Lake Waikaremoana, where I enjoyed a peaceful three-day walk; and Tongariro National Park, where I went mountain-biking rather than hiking as the majestic snow-capped mountains were shrouded in mist.
Having gotten off the rugby circuit, I met a number of backpackers (e.g. some Germans, Israelis and Americans) who hadn't come to New Zealand for the RWC. I was dismayed to learn that many hadn't done any rugby-related activities. While I fully understand that rugby is barely known, let alone popular, in many countries, to me it beggars belief that you could be in NZ during the World Cup and not get into the spirit of the whole thing. I thought it would be impossible to avoid, given all the flags flying, the "Backing Black" campaign and the special events happening which all gave a great vibe to traveling around the country. But I realised that plenty of tourists had somehow managed to miss it all.

I made it back to Auckland on the Thursday for the buildup to the Final, where I very gratefully again stayed with my friends Sinead and Gavin. We went to the "Taste of Auckland" the evening before the Final, which was very enjoyable.
For the Final, as Gavin and his father headed to the game, I joined Sinead and a gang of their friends in one of the fanzones. It was an extremely tense match, but thankfully the All Blacks held on for victory! There was a fantastic buzz in the city and it was the perfect end to the World Cup and to my time in New Zealand.

Ireland v. Wales

Wellington, NEW ZEALAND: 5 - 10 Oct. 2011

After the fantastic atmosphere at the Italy match in Dunedin, I really hoped that I could find an affordable ticket for Ireland's quarterfinal against Wales in Wellington. Luckily a small number of "impeded view" tickets were released in the days before the game, so I got a pitch-side seat which turned out to have quite a good view.

So in total for the four pool games and the quarterfinal I paid NZ$400 (around €230), which I think is very good value.

It was a busy weekend in Wellington with Irish, Welsh, South African and Australian fans filling the city (all accommodation was full so it was great, for many reasons, that I could again stay with my aunt Jacqueline). I spent a few days seeing the sights, which included walking up Mt. Victoria for a view of the city

and visiting the many rugby-related attractions like an art exhibition featuring faces of rugby stars made from toast.
Unfortunately Wales brought the dream of an Ireland - All Blacks final to an end. It was very disappointing, but I've had a great five weeks following the Irish team. It was a new experience for me and, while it was bizarre at times to constantly being surrounded by other Irish people, it was fun and something I would definitely recommend.

Ireland v. Italy

Dunedin, Invercargill, NEW ZEALAND: 29 Sept. - 5 Oct. 2011

To paraphrase the Black Eyed Peas' song that gets played in the stadium before each RWC match, as I boarded the plane in Wellington to fly south to Dunedin I got a feeling that the weekend was going to be a good weekend. And so it turned out to be. Everything worked out perfectly for my four days, starting with that flight (as we flew over Wellington Harbour I could see the NZ Navy sailing in to mark its seventieth anniversary; then I spent the rest of the flight looking down on the string of snow-capped mountains that stretched down the South Island) and ending with a fun night celebrating Ireland's 36 - 6 win over Italy.

Dunedin had everything necessary for a memorable long weekend:

sunshine (thankfully the repeated warnings that Dunedin would be freezing in September proved incorrect);

attractions ranging from the sophisticated (I was impressed by the city centre art gallery) and historical to the touristy (I walked up "the world's steepest street") and fun (on my tour of Cadbury's chocolate factory I had to wear two hairnets - one for my head, the other for my beard);

a festival (I scored a free ticket to the Port Chalmers' Seafood Festival);

lots of friends (Jen and Patrick also made it down from the previous game in Rotorua and Elaine and her posse flew in from Melbourne for the weekend); and

generous locals (I stayed with Ros and Mike, a couple I met briefly over beers in Vietnam, who fed me and provided a plentiful supply of beer and whiskey).

When you then add in the fact that thousands of Irish were in town for what turned out to be a game with a fantastic atmosphere in a state of the art stadium, you'll see why I left Dunedin with a very favourable impression.I headed further south to Invercargill, which when I arrived at 6:30pm on the Monday seemed like a ghost town, especially when compared to the bustling Octagon city centre of Dunedin over the weekend. I drove around the Caitlins area, with its green fields full of lambs and its rugged coast full with a history of shipwrecks, and onto Bluff, the southern end of the Highway 1 that runs the length of New Zealand from Cape Reinga in the north (where I was back in February), to complete a memorable week in the South Island. From Invercargill, whose airport is the closest to a town centre that I've ever seen, I flew back up to Wellington where Ireland will play Wales for a place in the semi-final.

Ireland v. Russia

Paihia, Waipu, Rotorua, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND: 19 - 28 Sept. 2011

To the many modes of transport I've taken, which include a milk truck in Ecuador and a horse-drawn gari in Ethiopia, I can now finally add the bane of all other motorists, i.e. a campervan. I joined Sinéad, Audrey and Laura in the campervan that they had driven over the past three weeks up from Queenstown and we headed north of Auckland to the Bay of Islands. We were not alone in this plan; the car park in Paihia where we spent two nights was full of Irish-occupied vehicles. I'm getting used to being surrounded by Irish people (and to hearing the Fields of Athenry sung on repeat), but I think it is a bit of a shock for the unprepared locals (the bar we drank in our first night ran out of beer; such an unheard of occurrence happened to us again later in the week in Rotorua). It was a nice couple of days, which included getting the ferry to historic Russel, walking along the coastal path, and doing a short hike up for a view of the scenic bay.

We hit back south, stopping in Whangarei to soak up the atmosphere for the Tonga-Japan match that was happening there that evening. It wasn't quite the same buzz as when Ireland are in town, but we did see a flash-mob haka (although to be fair it wasn't as good as this haka in the centre of Auckland).

Following a very welcome night in beds in a friend's holiday home in Waipu (much appreciated after two nights in a campervan in a car park), the girls returned the van and I hit for Rotorua for that weekend's game against Russia. From our big family trip to New Zealand to visit our relations when I was five, one of the things that I always remembered were the bubbling mud pools in Rotorua. It was nice to see that they are still as mesmerising and smelly as ever.

Then the Irish began rolling into town: the three girls arrived the day after me and we stayed in a ten-bed dorm (with six other Irish people); I went to a Maori cultural performance and meal with two friends from Bishopstown, Jen and Patrick; and I went to the match with a friend from UCC, Colm. The stadium, with its single stand and grassy terraces, was a big change from last week in Eden Park in Auckland, but the atmosphere was jovial, Ireland won and there were lots of tries, so there were plenty of reasons to party that evening (not that many reasons were needed).

The next day I took a bus south to Wellington for a few relaxing, recuperative days staying with my aunt Jacqueline before flying to Dunedin for the crucial game against Italy.