Another rainy Sunday

It's raining. Again.just like last Sunday. It's cold, wet and windy. Amazingly, I don't  feel as depressed by it as you might expect. I've been out shopping with Martha, carried her and the provisions up 142 steps in the driving rain, then done the washing on the blustery balcony. Martha, who never has accidents, wet the bed last night. Brilliant timing.

We're cooped up in this tiny apartment, with three kids and a mattress propped up in front of our little radiator. Oh and Martha's just posted something into one of the ventilation slots on said heater, so part of me is waiting for the smoke and flames. 

Poor old Freya is now full of cold and feeling grotty. Throughout everything, she is the one whose always stayed upbeat and cheerful, consistently skipping her way to school when Gus has been positively dragging his heels.

But in spite of all that, it's OK. Yesterday was not a great day. Hamish and I had simultaneously lost our joy and enthusiasm for the whole thing. We'd had a disaster with booking our trains for the next leg of our journey. Last Sunday, we'd checked the times and had decided which routes to take. Hamish was going to book it on Monday, but the storm left us with no electricity. The modem played up for the rest of the week and we didn't feel the urgency to book online in an Internet cafe - we didn't want to put our credit card details into a computer there.

When we finally got back on line on Thursday, it was too late. All the trains were full. This sent us both into a spin, but for very different reasons. Hamish decided that if he couldn't look after his own family, then he shouldn't be working in the travel business anymore. Dramatic, I know, but things can get a bit intense when you're travelling. I meanwhile felt, irrationally I admit, that I was trapped, never to leave these cold, harsh mountains, never to sink my toes into the warm sands of a Goan beach.

All sounds a bit silly now, but at the time, it made us both miserable. This compounded my gloom - we hadn't come all this way to waste a single second feeling rubbish. We were meant to be savouring every moment. I didn't want to be willing the days to pass, but that's exactly what I was doing. At least for 24 hours.

I also found myself questioning my own part in all of this. I came here to try and make life a bit better for the kids at St Mary's, especially those who live in the hostel run by a mean minded Buddhist monk, and who only get to see their far away families in the summer holidays. And all I could think about was how I was going to get to the beach.

McLeod is full of well intentioned westerners doing volunteer work. I was comparing myself to them, resenting their earnest selflessness as they willingly gave up their time for the benefit of others. I was wishing I was surrounded by the colourful wasters with their sparkly bindis who line the streets of Pushkar, instead of these sincere, drably dressed do-gooders, with better hearts than mine.

In addition to all this negative thinking, I was also sad to be missing a close friend's 40th birthday. I should have been dancing the night away with some of my oldest and most treasured mates, instead of being stuck here in the cold.

I'm happy to say that, a day later, and despite the dreary weather, a poorly Freya and a soggy mattress, our spirits are restored. The kids, picking up on our darkness, were brilliant. I am so filled with respect for them, for their responses to every situation we have exposed them to. They have their moments of bickering and getting frustrated with each other, but that's it. Nothing else has phased them. Not going to school where the kids speak a different language and the teachers pull your hair, nor the long journeys, nothing has been a problem for them.

So much so that we actually planned to do a 30 hour train journey. I'd never in a million years have thought we'd have considered it. This was the train that we couldn't book and we were all disappointed to miss out on the adventure.

The alternative is to take a flight to cover such a huge distance. Before we set off, this was always our plan. But since we've been away, our perspectives have changed. We were all excited at the prospect of cosying up in our carriage, reading books, playing chess and Pooface (our child's version of a favourite adult card game!), watching films on the iPad and seeing the world go by as we passed through a large part of India.

Ah well. We'll know for next time. It's still pouring down with rain. We can't go out and explore our surroundings. Instead we have to continue the exploration into our relationships, working out how to be that 'Happy family', even in the rain.