My elective isn't far off - only seven months away. Basically, during the summer between fourth and fifth year at med school, we get to go anywhere in the world to study medicine (or to drink cheap alcohol on an Asian beach whilst reassuring the medical school office by e-mail that we are, indeed, learning about the management of neurocysticercosis ( Read more... )

With only two days having passed since the agonizing waits to get into Gulmarg were ingrained into our frighteningly short memories, this time we were clever enough to leave the sleepy village at exactly 4 AM for a two-hour ride into Srinagar, the capital of the state ( Read more... )

We left Pahalgam at 8 AM, which was four hours too late. We were advised by our drivers to leave at 4 AM in order to avoid the stone-pelting mobs of village folk on the way to Gulmarg, our next destination. We learnt our lesson when we were stopped on the road a couple of times by people telling us that there were indeed mobs blockading the road ( Read more... )

I've got a couple of weeks off for Easter, so I came home on Monday. The week leading up to my departure from Newcastle was unbearably long. The days went really slowly. My folks gave me a little fright on Wednesday, when they told me my visa hadn't been sorted and I'd probably have to delay my departure which meant I'd get fewer days at home. I ( Read more... )

My friends Josh and Jess stopped in Dubai on their way home from China to England, almost two weeks ago. They were here only three days. We went to the Dubai Museum with them, to the Atlantis Hotel to wow at the ice-cream tossing skills of the staff at the Coldstone Creamery there (and then proceeded to eat said ice cream) and to stare at the fish ( Read more... )

I came home last Thursday. I hadn't told anyone that I was coming on Thursday, except Papa coz he had to sort out the visa ( Read more... )

I'm back in Newcastle from Dubai. I landed in Heathrow early on Monday morning on a runway lined with snow and waited at the airport for a couple of hours before getting on the plane to Newcastle. We got trapped in the baggage reclaim area because the automatic doors wouldn't open to let us out. Then some bearded man got really annoyed and started ( Read more... )

Yesterday afternoon, I landed in Dubai after a 3 hour flight from Nagpur ( Read more... )

The other day, I was at my aunt's place in Itwari here in Nagpur. There was supposed to have been a lunar eclipse that night but I missed it. Anyway, my cousin's wife who's pregnant told me that she was going to her mum's. I told her to stay for a bit and go later but she insisted on leaving because she was sure that the eclipse would affect her ( ( Read more... )

Yesterday morning, we caught a train to Mumbai from Puna. It took about 4 hours, the train was quite full and I sat on someone else's seat who fortunately didn't show up. The countryside was mostly rain, farmland, rain, slums, rain and oh, rain ( Read more... )