Continuation........... 1st. op. day 39 2nd. op. day 18.

Hi again,
This will be short. The earlier blog was inadvertantly sent before it was finished!
This seems to be full of political comment but we can't finish without mentioning the Indian PM's visit to Washington. Narendra Modi is determined to rapidly increase the pace of India's modernisation and has been wooing US big business as well as establishing the most cordial relations India has ever had with the US. This is no doubt a good thing because the main threats to all of us in the world these days is firstly China with its expansionist policies and secondly militant Islam or Jihadism.
India is beset on both sides - in the north east by China and in the west by Pakistan. The latter has a long history of nurturing extreme Islamist factions like Al Qaeda and indeed was complicit in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008 when 164 people were killed and over 300 wounded, some seriously. There was a long period when Pakistan obstructed any information concerning the attacks from coming out of Pakistan, but in the end they were forced to reveal some very damaging and startling facts. Amongst those were the admission that Pakistani Army officers were involved in training the terrorists. All of this was referred to again by PM Modi in his address to the UN and the Pakistanis have taken umbrage in a big way. We saw a TV "debate" between Indian and Pakistani politicians and it was a shouting match trading insults from start to finish. And of course there's also the issue of Kashmir where there are conflicting claims for territory and indeed sovereignty. It's hard to see any accommodation between India and Pakistan in the foreseeable future.
Then there's the China issue which we've referred to before. During the recent visit to India by the Chinese President, he was assuring the Indian PM that China was pulling its troops back from disputed border positions and yet all the while the Chinese were advancing into NON DISPUTED Indian territory in Sikkim and building access roads into the bargain. The Indians have since demolished these roads. NZ might consider itself remote from these matters but in reality they could translate into something far more serious and closer to home. And in any case we are apparently considering sending troops to Iraq to fight ISIS and Iraq is even further away than India!
Just had a knock on the door from the housekeeping staff to announce "cleaning after coming". The language is a bit of an issue and one has to listen very carefully to elicit the correct meaning. Then one has to speak very slowly and simply to get one's meaning across. For instance one does not say "hot" when referring to food spiciness. One needs to say "not spicy" or "NO spices!". "Cleaning after coming" means that the room will be cleaned soon! But then we do not speak Tamil so cannot criticise too much.
The weather here is invariably warm but temperatures not as hot as Thailand before we left - mostly in the high 20's. There has been a shift in wind direction from constant SW to SE so possibly that means the change in the monsoon from SW to NE is imminent. Hope so because it will make our sail down to Langkawi much more pleasant - as long as we get any wind at all!
Well, that's it from us for now. The next blog will be from Pondicherry.
Cheers and lotsaluv......
Jim and Jean
Quality Inn Sabari,
Chennai
Tamil Nadu
INDIA

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