The Train to Delhi

We're back in India! I feel like we've been somewhere else for a month!

As the pink ball of sun broke through the dawn sky, we lay in bed on our sleeper train watching the world go by. We've seen buffalo for the first time in weeks, bullock carts and peacocks, piles of poo drying in the sun and women carrying water on their heads in metals matkas.

We've just done another overnight train ride. Everyone was gorgeous and mellow after waking up. Now the kids are monkeying around, making us SO glad we didn't get on that 30 hour train to Goa! Fergus is like a caged animal.

I was sad to say goodbye to McLeod, but of course, I was ready to go. In hindsight, I'd have left a week earlier, but then we wouldn't have achieved so much at school. If I'd been there without the kids, I could have done in it in a much shorter time. It was a fascinating experience for all of us and I did feel quite emotional saying farewell to them all, but for me, it put the adventure of travelling on hold. I'm so much happier now we're on the move again.

One thing is certain, there's no way we can wait another decade to do this again.

The kids keep talking about their gap year. For them, it's as expected a part of life as losing your milk teeth. Before we set off, I worried that they'd react against this experience and only ever want to go on a package holiday. But no. It's had the opposite effect. We have successfully introduced them to the joys of living in another culture.

Staying in McLeod for so long gave them the opportunity to form relationships with people; although on a very basic level, it gave them a very powerful insight. Both Freya and Fergus had a strong desire to go off, independently, and explore or buy things. They felt incredibly safe and secure there. Rightly so. It's probably one of the safest places on Earth.

We're passing through a village as I write. Children are playing on their way to school. Herons are picking their way through the litter in a waterlogged patch of ground. Buffalo and cows are tethered outside almost every square, concrete block that is home to two or three generations of family. Huge fat pigs are snuffling through the garbage piled on the edge of the settlement. Always there's rubbish. India must have looked so different before plastic raised its convenient, ugly head.

Between them, the cows, monkeys, dogs and pigs can dispose of all paper, card and other degradable waste. But the plastic, and the foil wrappers of crisps and snack packets, well they defeat even the hungriest scavenger. And then there's the water bottles. In any place where tourists pass through, we leave this indelible curse.

McLeod was brilliant for having all the water filters, but even so there were the usual piles of discarded bottles. The Clean Up Dharamsala Project is making great efforts to educate people about recycling and disposing of waste properly, but it's tough. They don't have refuse collections like we do. There's no council workers coming to sort the recycling, just volunteers and the odd skip funded by donations. Crazy really. Yet another thing we take for granted at home.