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Tuesday 28 February 2017

Malta

 
 Back from Malta, enjoying some precious rays of sunshine and mostly working the entire weekend - and coming back to more work in good old Brussels. I still enjoyed the change of air and even though it was only a short visit I'd love to go back. Nice island! This time of year the weather was perfect, not too hot, and everything was really lush and green.

Other than that I'm having a very boring life, but at least I'm getting a lot of knitting done because I need to de-stress from work in the evenings! I got quite a long way on one of my older projects, the Delft cardigan, which I started several times and never quite got the tension right. Now I've gotten into the project but then realized that I'm running out of the dark blue yarn.... Until I've found a solution for this, I have to take a little break on this one.

I also finished the testknit for Veronika and it's just being blocked, pictures will follow soon! To fill the sweater-shaped hole in my existance I quickly cast on my second Icelandic sweater for this year, the Birki that I've been looking forward to knitting for so long. At this rate of knitting I should be finished with it quite quickly, I think can finish a lopipeysa in about two weeks now that I've gotten some practise.



Sunday 12 February 2017

Getting back into the groove




Getting back to work in the middle of January was also a shock, similar to arriving in India, even though I had tried to prepare it before leaving for the Christmas break. We are in the middle of working on the development of an important new law on accessibility in Europe - this is of course very exciting but also a lot of work!

The first week back I actually hardly spent any time in the office because I had to go to two different meetings in France instead. I still hadn't caught up with all the e-mails in my inbox and there wasn't even wifi on the trains - gaaaaah! I don't think I have to explain how this multiplied my stress levels. Now I have settled back in but work is still very intense and I have a few more work trips lined up as well, which makes it both more exciting but also more stressful.

Other than that I enjoy being home and also having a bit of winter. The south of Belgium was having unusually much snow and even more unusually, it didn't melt straight away. It was even possible to go cross-country skiing! We preferred a leisurely walk up an icy hill instead, though. And as you can see from the pictures, we were lucky with the weather and it was sunny the entire weekend.

I have also started a new knitting project and ordered a whole box full of Létt-Lopi for two additional Icelandic sweaters - I couldn't hold back this time. During the holidays I only knitted socks and due to my bad planning I didn't take enough yarn of each colour which left me with 3 mismatching socks in my attempt to use the scrap yarn efficiently. Now I have to unravel another old pair of socks to use the yarn to make them match again. I'll never get rid of my scrap yarn like this...

Anyway, what you can see in the last pictures is the beginning of a new lopi peysa (I think this will become my new years' tradition) following a pattern by Veronika which I loved immediately when I saw it. It's a testknit and so far it's been going well - quick as usual - although I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with the colour. The Lopi palette doesn't have any decent shades of yellow so the one I picked in the end is not as nice as in the original pattern. But I'll see how the final outcome is, the dull February light can be deceiving sometimes.

What is left in the "magic box" is the material for a "Birki" sweater. I saw this colour combination by chomolhari on ravelry and I really like the red-brown main colour because I usually take grey - it makes the yoke come out nicer than darker colours. But this time I was convinced by the different scheme, looking forward to casting it on! 

Tuesday 7 February 2017

Nepal





After all the new impressions and the sensory overload in India, crossing the border to Nepal felt like going to an oasis of calm and quiet. Yes, it is a very poor country and ranks much lower than India in terms of GDP/capita but for some reason it is just so much more relaxed - it felt like our holidays were actually starting there.

As soon as we crossed the border from Gorakhpur in India (where we stayed in the worst hotel probably of the whole sub-continent) to Lumbini in Nepal, there was less traffic, the cars weren't honking constantly, there were less hawkers in the streets, and it was just generally cleaner. Maybe it is the influence of Buddhism, because as the writing on many buses told us "Buddha was born in Nepal!", but we definitely enjoyed a few calmer days to unwind and literally catch our breath. I think Pokhara was the first place on our entire trip where I could breathe properly and where my bronchitis finally cleared up. Having said that, Kathmandu is definitely an exception and rivals Delhi in terms of air pollution.

After enjoying a few of days of sun, western food, and lazing about in a lovely guest house in Pokhara we became active again and did a couple of day hikes in order to catch some good mountain views. It was actually cloudy most of the time and when we hiked to the Peace Pagoda on the other side of the lake we didn't see much of the Annapurna range. But the next day we woke up to perfectly clear sky so we decided to go to Sarangkot, another village near Pokhara, even before breakfast and - bingo! We had the perfect views and the perfect weather and got to enjoy the best breakfast ever on a terrace with the Himalaya as a backdrop.

Nepal turns out to be a great country for western backpackers: food and accommodation are dirt cheap (dinner for two for 7 - 8 €, a double room in a decent guest house for 9 €/night), people are friendly and laid-back, nature is beautiful, and the general traveler infrastructure is excellent. Although I should mention that the transport is an exception there: a 10 hour bus ride to cover less than 200 km is unfortunately normal. But in contrast to India, where you had to book the trains 3 months in advance, there are plenty of buses you can take and stay flexible.

While India was more of an adventure and you never know what you would see when you turned the next corner, Nepal was amazingly easy to navigate and required very little planning and organizing. I was surprised how different the two countries are, despite also having many things in common. I should maybe also add that we didn't do any serious trekking, which probably is more complicated to do since you need a guide, a license, etc. but it seemed like you could do all that while you were there. Also, we were slightly off-season (main trekking season is October-November I think) so again it might have been more quiet.

It's also funny to see what kind of tourists visit Nepal. After a while you recognize the different "categories" very easily: the serious hikers that come mainly for that purpose and wear their trekking outfits even in nice restaurants, the "hippies" that are mainly interested in the spiritual journey (and smoking weed), and finally the last category that we fall in, which is culture tourists and families with kids who come to visit temples and do some leisurely day hikes. All in all a very nice and pleasant mixture!

Of course, after almost a month you start missing home a bit, even on the most amazing trip. Therefore I was sad to leave but also looking forward to the little things that we take for granted in our everyday lives, like a hot shower, clean streets (well, relatively in Molenbeek), being able to drink the tap water, a soft mattress, heating, or electricity 24/7.

It also made me realize once again how privileged we are to live in such an equal society (again, relatively) where women can go out by themselves and wear the clothes they like, marry whom they want, and simply not being killed for being a girl or a woman - sex-selective abortion is still a thing in case you have forgotten.  Also, social security. Especially seeing a lot of homeless families with small children, old people, and persons with disabilities who were begging in the streets were shocking for me to see. It was less in Nepal than in India but still, it is very much  "in your face".

Fact is, that if your family cannot take care of you, there is no safety net. I read an interesting article in a local newspaper which showed perfectly how all of these problems are also linked together: It was about a family in a rural area, in which six people were blind and they were obviously very poor and couldn't access basic services. But the reason there were so many blind people in the family leaving basically only one of family members who was sighted to be the sole bread winner was not a hereditary disease or anything like that, it was because of the caste system which forced a blind man to marry another blind or disabled woman! I think this says so much about why those problems like poverty, inequality, and poor health persist.

All of this is true for both India and Nepal, actually for many places in the world. I knew it before in theory, but seeing it is a different thing. Still, I enjoyed our trip and loved Nepal with all its beauty and the kindness of the people, it was the perfect antidote to India's craziness and made for a nice end of our trip.

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While we were traveling in Nepal, a good friend of my sisters' who was there at the same time, died in a tragic hiking accident. This did not affect our trip directly but we were of course still very shaken up by those events. Therefore, I would like to dedicate this post to her and her family. My thoughts are with them.