Moving on up. Moving on in.

It’s been a long silence, for which apologies. That’s at least partly down to the fact that I’ve joined the fantastical world of 140 character messages, hashtags and retweeting (@DHC_Chennai if you’re interested). I’ve managed to get up to 44 followers in 2 weeks (it was 45, but a management consultant from Nebraska gave up on me after just 14 hours!), and feel as if it’s starting to make sense. Which means it probably isn’t.

There are 2 questions I’ve heard almost since I arrived in Chennai. The first is: “How do you like Chennai?”, often with a slightly plaintive lilt, as if the interrogator is worried that we’ll refer to

(i) the weather (hot, but not yet unbearable and we did do 2 years in Qatar!),

(ii) the traffic (can be grim, but much less anarchic than Cameroon and less tiresome than Mumbai which has traditionally been our Indian home)

(iii) or the food (amazingly good, especially for vegetarians);

We’ve answered that question with total honesty: we love Chennai and there’s nowhere else that we would rather be right now. And the approaching elections make it more exciting still.

The second is “How are you settling?”

In the last few weeks I’ve realised that I’ve been – unintentionally – misleading people. While I thought we’d settled in fairly well, it’s begun to dawn on me that living in transit accommodation out of a few suitcases for 4 months has been wearing us down. It’s hard to identify a particular issue – more that we just missed our ‘stuff’.

The kids were yearning for everything from the Wii to the cuddly toys that didn’t make the cut for hand baggage. Bhakti missed her books, photos and artwork that reminds her of all the great places we’ve been and the wonderful people we’ve met. I missed my music, tennis racquet and cricket whites, the latter which got limited use in Cameroon but which I’ve already worn in battle, albeit with limited honour.

As always, the unpacking was a chore. Packing and unpacking every few years – unbelievably, we’ve done it eight times in as many years – is our pet hate. After 5 months in storage everything smells musty and there was water damage to two crates, one of which – heart-breakingly – contained Bhakti’s silk wedding saris. But we’re pretty philosophical: even the best job in the world has its downsides.

So it’s great to finally move into rather grand old Cottingley, even if we still don’t have a functional kitchen. It’s a beautiful old house that will soon start getting a good work-out, receiving guests who will contribute to delivery of our wide-ranging objectives here. That starts with our first QBP in just two weeks.