The sensational Saharia Organic Farm

So...New Years Eve. Our normal experiences are parties with friends, lots of food, lots of noise, and perhaps a drink or two. Picture if you can a mud brick shack with thatched roof sitting amongst fields of wheat and mustard, with the resident camel keeping an eye on things from out the back. This was where we found ourselves on Sunday night after taking a bit of a risk in Melbourne and booking a few days at a farm 28kms from Jaipur.
We passed the new year, strangely enough, sitting in a thatched room, watching Narnia in Hindi on a laptop, through the smoke of a fire set at our feet. Similar to last year but different!! (We watched Narnia in Canberra with Paul and Amber just on a year ago when it came out). We were joined with some of the local families, and Bill, a volunteer from England who's Woofiing his way through India. (http://www.wwoof.com.au/)

Saharia turned out to be an amazing experience of connecting with some local organic farming families, and being let into their simple yet amazing lives. Saharia allowed us to relax after some pretty intense days in the city and on trains, as well as giving us the opportunity to share a chai squatting in an outdoor kitchen with local families, taste the most amazing chapatti straight of the fire(drizzled with gee...hmmm), and walk through the fields and learn about their organic techniques. Did you know Cow's urine is great for polishing wood?? Harley...you'll have to give that a try on your next project!! We were thrown in the deep end at a village school nearby, where we were expected to teach 4 rowdy classes English in 20 minutes. Needless to say, we wont be giving up our day jobs in a hurry. It definitely gave us a good taste in preperation for Kolkata. We're stuffed!

We were blessed to spend some time with amazing people at Saharia who shared their lives and their wisdom with us, with inspiring integrity. It was a really grassroots example of community and communal living in action. The families all lived completely self sufficiently from the farm, and the happy contentedness that emerged from this simple living was contagious.

We were sad to leave this amazing place after only a few days. It encouraged us to give Wwoofing a try sometime, and challenged us about living more simply in Melbourne.
We left Saharia on the Camel Cart, a sensationally slow way to tear ourselves away from the place. We caught a local bus to Jaipur, took a wander, and prepared for our train trip to Agra.