For those of you following this journey from the beginning, you’ll know this moment has been a long time coming. We are delighted to announce we have arrived in India, and we have several weeks here to immerse, listen, observe, engage and play. So we have more sharing to come. But first, let us go back a little, and unpack how we got here from Nepal.

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We bumped and bounced and crazy’d all the way from Pokhara back to Kathmandu,

passing many intersections of wild, cultivated and industrial Nepal.

We didn’t want to arrive to India by air, we wanted to cross the terra,

but we were given no choice. The Indian government disallows overland travel as first time E-visa applicants. So we reluctantly caught a flight to New Delhi,

spent nearly two hours at the airport going through immigration, enduring invasive biometrics and interrogation, attempting without success to withdraw some rupees, and setting up an Indian SIM card with a US$10 note we had stuffed away in a bag for just such a moment like this. After all the airport hubbub and alienating processing we soft landed into a car

with Manjit, who was sent for us by Jashan’s family. For those who haven’t listened to our podcast with Jashan and Bei, it will give you some context for why we have come here, and where we are going now.

We began this journey hitch hiking, now we have our own driver. Mixed feelings ranging from gratitude to defeat sit with us in the car, as we are transported through the streets of Delhi.

Delhi, where cows freely wander the streets and no one moves or harms them,

where egotistical architecture

punctuates the streets,

where, in the intensity of the heat and traffic, beauty appears in many forms,

and where, on the outskirts of this city, which holds the same population of humans as the entire human population of Australia, a mountain of anthropogenic waste grows day by day.

After a few hours of travelling we stopped at a fast masala dosa joint for lunch. Woody has struggled on this trip with hot spicy food, despite his parent’s encouragement to push through to the pleasure and health side of such gastronomy. After we get the guarantee from the staff that the dish he has ordered is not spicy, it almost always is.

This lunch occurred at 5pm, and we drove on into the early evening, sitting on about 50km/hr due to the roads, which were full of people, animals and machines,

crossing into Punjab state around 7pm, and arriving at Jashan’s family’s farm at 9pm, exhausted and ready for bed. Our friend Jashan, who lives in Melbourne was not there. With little shared language we were embraced by his family and immediately treated to a beautiful meal that we sedentary travellers did not need. We found it difficult to refuse. Patrick struggled the most as the late lunch dosa went to war with his microbiome, but the meal had been lovingly prepared by Jashan’s mother, Paramjeet (left), and aunties (another) Paramjeet and Rajinder (right).

We felt awkward we couldn’t fully honour the love and care that had gone into it.

In the morning before the heat of the day we were taken on a farm tour, stopping first at the produce garden, which feeds the six families who live here.

Jashan’s cousin, who we call girl-Jashan, led the tour. The chilli patch was abundant.

The family is vegetarian; their main source of animal protein is from cow and buffalo milk, from which they make curd (yoghurt) and paneer (semi hard cheese). The cows and buffaloes are given fresh cut fodder twice a day. The fodder iys jowar, a relative of corn grown for cow feed. It is grown in small stands throughout the farms (see right of below photo)

Throughout the district farmers cut jowar and transport it on shoulders or by bicycle,

by bullock cart,

or by tractor.

The jowar is brought to the dairy to be threshed,

to turn it into fresh feed,

and given it to the cows and buffaloes, who have fans above them to keep them cool and keep mosquitoes and flies off them.

Mosquito nets are drawn across the dairy from before dusk to after dawn, and the buffaloes bathe for an hour every morning and afternoon.

We found the husbandry of the cows and buffaloes immensely respectful, providing cool and protective shelter, nutritious food, and herd companionship,

in exchange for milk,

for both the family and the local market,

manure for fertiliser, cooking,

and for methane gas production.

The main crops that support the family both in the monetary and subsistence economies are rice and wheat. The grain that makes the chapati bread is dried the traditional way,

and accompanies each delicious meal.

But it is currently rice growing season.

On this 15 acre farm, some of the rice fields are bordered by medicine plants such as turmeric.

Cannabis grows wild on the road verges,

as do medicine trees such as neem and various fruit trees. Many of the activities during the day are manual. Bodies are used often, not just machines, and as a result of this and the fresh farmed food, people are well here.

With Patrick’s unhappy gut, Karamjeet, Jashan’s father, pictured here with Woody in nearby Patiala,

put him on a strict diet of pomegranate from the garden,

and peeled apple for a few days. The apples come from cooler Manali, north of Punjab. The diet worked a treat and we were all then able to enjoy the wonderful dishes that we were served each day.

Jashan’s boy cousins, Harsh and Harmission, played endless hours of cricket with Woody,

from 6-9am in the morning and from 4pm until dark in the evenings.

Friends of Harsh’s came to join in, and the ball sometimes took some time to find when it was hooked or ramped over the wall into the rice fields.

Finally in India, Woody just couldn’t get enough cricket.

This game that came to the subcontinent with the elite of British colonialism has been hacked, enjoyed and claimed by Indians across the economic spectrum. It is a game that brings people together, and is a language itself.

On our last evening Jashan’s uncle, Hakam, took us to other farms in the district. At this farm a clutch of puppies had been born,

and although feral, the farmer (below left) had been feeding and looking out for the mother.

We are enjoying the reverence for life here, and the connections we are making with Jashan’s beautiful family and neighbourhood,

We have had so many sweet moments in Nanansu, Punjab.

We were treated with such respect and care. While change is in the air with the young generation – meet the delightful Jaskirat –

there is beauty in the old ways that is solid and noble in the culture.

We are sad to be leaving this family farm community. We’ve had a wonderful first week of landing in India in such a supported way.

We are now well nourished, landed, rested and ready for the next leg of our adventure.