First Flight - 22nd April

This is my first flight. Before I left, every experienced flier supplied me with a little nugget of what to expect, and what to do, but all this carefully logged information naturally went up in smoke, or ash, as everybody ‘played it by ear’. But as I said …… jammy, - we’re airborne.
Oddly, it didn’t feel that strange, looking down on the world. London looked amazingly beautiful in the morning sunshine, a fact remarked upon by several seasoned travelers. I think I've spent too much time on Google Earth to find the bird's-eye view that unusual.
So glad I opted for a window seat. Hundreds of miles of barren tracts of land below, as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan morph into one. Mountains, rocky outcrops and sand form fantastic geographical features, outlining gorges and tributaries - and I wish I knew how they were all formed. I could be looking at the surface of mars, but this is the same planet from where I started and I’m looking down on my global neighbours. They must be down there somewhere, although they leave very few signs. Two straight apparently parallel lines run below; roads going to somewhere, from somewhere, but no sign of habitation or life in general. Then, suddenly, there's a patchwork of green & brown quadrilaterals; for somewhere in this wasteland is water, and this is a farm. These enclaves appear sporadically, and then peter out after less than 300 miles. And the 2 roads weren’t parallel – they met, or maybe we’re flying over infinity now.

It was all going so well, but then airport congestion had us pirouetting 150 miles east of Mumbai, making us an hour late. My first landing was a horrendously bumpy affair which caused the odd scream and a ripple of nervous laughter throughout the plane. Maybe the pilot was as tired as I was.

Carolyn (1) Volcano (0)

Couldn’t believe it – what jam. Suddenly the planes are allowed to fly, somehow some things caught up with themselves, and flight 9w 0119 left Heathrow with only a 30 minute delay, and I am now flying over the Black Sea with Louis Armstrong on my headphones (dad would have been so proud), having just eaten a fantastic chicken meal. My first curry of many I assume. And incidentally, we’re bang on time.
Can’t thank my children enough for their support, particularly Nikki last night, getting a little lost on the rubbish directions to the hotel. And Mum of course.

It’s hard to realize this is actually happening. I made a tongue in cheek remark to my internet-friend, Manish from Sintex, during one of our numerous email exchanges, that if the big pot of funding available to green schemes like the one I was involved in really wanted to get their money’s worth, they’d pay to have someone do research in India. And how long ago was that? Two years? It never occurred to me it would actually come to pass.

Eyjafjallajoekull

Am I down? You bet. Smugly I missed the snow-bound airports, the BA strike .. but a stupid volcano which has deposited a tiny, tiny amount of grey dust on my van, has closed air travel down in Europe. And my flight goes Thursday morning.

Worse things happen at sea, and I'd rather stay here than fall from the sky due to engine failure, but even so .....

And, it's difficult to curse a volcano which you struggle to spell and can't pronounce.

So I suppose it's fair to say I am a little grumpy at the moment.

The biogas dream

It all started years and years ago on a visit to an embryonic C.A.T. in Wales http://www.cat.org.uk/index.tmpl?refer=index&init=1

I met a chap there who said his claim to fame was that he was the first person in the UK to have a shower in water heated by his own waste, and showed us the rear of the latrine block. Buckets of festering goodness knows what was happily making biogas for these guys to use. Once the organic material has been processed by the relevant bacteria, it is compost and can be returned to the land. Fascinating. Well I thought so.

Having lived all my life in the country, and for the last 21 years without mains drainage or mains gas, and as a card carrying environmentalist, the idea of using waste to provide energy has always been always lurking somewhere in the recesses of my mind (sad, yeah I know). I'd already done a fair bit of research on small-scale biogas production in recent years for a work related project, and had come to the conclusion that China or India were the places to go if you really wanted to know anything in detail. I spent a good deal of time exchanging emails with a plastics manufaturing company in India, who make small plastic biogas digesters in varying sizes and types. They could not have been more helpul. If you look here you'll see what I'm on about. http://www.sintex-plastics.com/deenabandu.htm

In the beginning.....

I've never been a traveller. Not that I didn't want to travel - I did, I really did - but it just never happened. But suddenly here I am, preparing for a month away in India. I thought my children would say 'Moth-er! At your age' but they didn't, and remain supportive, supplying me with kit of their own or scrounged from friends.

I have two months to get sorted