And boy, should Angela have taken that advice!

The sweep-up went very well, working in Madiphur for a couple of hours. We worked with the same people as yesterday, but in a different area. We visited the homes of the children known to the project – and that’s about every under-5 in the area – to innoculte the ones who didn’t turn up yesterday. It was very poor by our standards, but not bad by local ones. Again, everyone was welcoming and smiling and the kids followed us around in a huge pack. The odd thing is that nobody ever asks you for anything, except to take their photograph!

The trouble started as we were about to leave. There was a BBC film crew in the area, covering the event and at the same time doing some filming for Rotary as Eve, the director, just happened to be a Rotarian. As we weren’t in a hurry to get back to the hotel as the rest of our party was (they were heading for Jaipur that afternoon) we were ‘volunteered’ to go with them and be filmed doing the house to house work again, as the crew had arrived too late to do it in the morning.

So far, so good. Angela and I, and Chris, a fellow from Bungay, really didn’t mind going back and doing it again as it had been quite a pleasant experience. The film crew, however, wanted something a bit ‘special’.

We’d seen a huge rubbish dump as we had driven into Madiphur. What we hadn’t realised was that it is home to hundreds of people who make a living out of going through the rubbish –Delhi rubbish at that – and being, literally, a human recycling plant.

It’s five hours since we got back and I still can’t get the stink out of my nostrils. We wound our way through heaps of rubbish that are people’s homes. The paths were covered in mud and God knows what else. Flies were thick everywhere. Cows and buffalo were roaming around. And people lived there, in you can’t believe what kind of conditions. They brought their kids out, and we inoculated them. We didn’t find one that wasn’t crawling, but we just got on with it. I probably don’t want to say any more about it at this particular time.

And then we came back, and went off to a lovely middle-class craft fair at one of the Government buildings, where we bumped into the Chief Minister again. Isn’t it wonderful to be upwardly mobile?

Finally, we got to do what we came here for. It’s been a hectic day; 35 of us working on the inoculation programme in a place outside Delhi called Madiphur. We were expecting it to be quite poor, but I don’t think some of us expected it to be quite that poor.

It was described as a village; but it was town-sized by our reckoning. We drove out on a coach, met up with the local team consisting of Rotarians and health staff, split up into groups of 4 and went off to our locations.

Angela and I went off to what was, in effect, the local community centre. It was very decent, here, and the health care volunteers kept everything totally under control. The kids coming to be inoculated were all under 5; they were brought by parents, but most often by older siblings. The first thing we needed to learn was “Open your mouth, one, two, well done!” in Hindi. The children were incredibly well-behaved, especially when they realised that we’d got some little treats for them. The vaccine is dispensed orally, two drops into the child’s mouth. We took turns at doing this; I’ll try to get some pictures up.

Other teams weren’t half as lucky as us. Our part of town was pretty manky, but others found themselves literally working on street corners next to open sewers. The one thing we all noticed, however, was how welcoming everyone in Madiphur was. Nothing but smiles everywhere we went. I think we’ve become far too cynical, and assume that everyone wants something from you. It just isn’t true in India.

In our three-hour shift we got through 292 children. Honestly, we had it easy. One team (admittedly, larger than ours) inoculated 897 kids. Altogether, today we managed just under 10 thousand between us, but we’re expecting more that this tomorrow when we return to Madiphur to do a door-to-door sweep to get the ones that we’ve missed.

We’ll try to remember not to wear open-toed sandals next time!

Well. You could say that we’ve had a busy day. Met the Chief Minister for Delhi (a lady with a very unfortunate name) and her Health Chief, Angela taking great care to muscle up for publicity photos with them! We had a very pleasant breakfast on the Residency lawn and then took off on the tour de Delhi for the rest of the day, visiting Rotary projects.

I suppose you could say that we really saw what life was like for the 14 million people who live in the cities of Delhi and New Delhi (they’re right next to each other). First thing is the traffic. It takes you three times as long as you’d imagine it takes to get anywhere. The road system is good, but it’s completely snarled up, and it doesn’t help that they’re currently building huge sections of the Metro railway system just about everywhere. Oh, yes, and the cows wander about everywhere.

We rapidly learned to forget our western standards. The first place we visited was the Rotary Cancer Hospital: it looked old, clunky and, frankly, none too clean to us but they do an exceptional job. The land around the hospital was completely covered by relatives of the patients, literally camping out; they were there to support them, including cooking their meals on open fires.

Next port of call, after another short-distance but long-duration journey, was the Rotary Blood Bank. Fortunately they didn’t ask us for a deposit, and nobody needed to make a withdrawal. It’s a very impressive organisation, and up-to-date even by our standards. We met one of the founders; he’d served on various RI committees, and told us he’d been a Governor. We assumed that he meant a Rotary District Governor, but no, he meant a State Governor, (Nepal, actually) and was a genuine Your Excellency!

Our journey back to the hotel took us through the main commercial district at rush hour. Maybe you can imagine what it was like. They were selling just about everything you can think of. Really. We were able to get a really good look at the shops as we were doing about 2mph.

And the day still wasn’t over. We’d been invited to a social evening with one of the Delhi Clubs. All right, if you live in a country where tourists expect to pay £4 for a bottle of beer and £5 for a glass of wine, how might you get visiting Rotarians to make a big, big donation? That’s right, you feed them up, get them absolutely slaughtered then bring out the raffle tickets! And what a win-win situation! We could learn a lot about Rotary fellowship from the Indians.

Tomorrow, of course, is National Immunisation Day, so hopefully there won’t be too many sore heads. I can’t believe I’ve managed to type this and keep the lines straight.

I’ll try to post some pictures, but to be honest I’m having a bit of trouble working out how to do it nicely and neatly!

What a day. Or days, rather. Made it to the airport with three hours to spare. Decent flight with Emirates out to Dubai apart from me having to sit next to Precious Ramotswe; made eating with a knife and fork an interesting activity! Great airline food, though, and lots of wine. Angela was in her element.

At 10pm (or was it 12am or 2am? We just kept crossing time zones) we had the totally surreal experience of walking through the Dubai Airport Duty Free area – I hope I can manage to download a picture – then joining the flight on to Delhi. Curry for breakfast, including the hottest chilli I’ve ever eaten in my life. Honestly, I thought I was going to die!

Arrived at New Delhi airport (which isn’t half as bad as we’d been led to believe) around 9am, started to meet up with all the others who have come. There’s about ninety of us in all, with maybe a dozen from our District. Had a very slow drive to our hotel – you wouldn’t believe the traffic. I’ll try to post some pictures of the bikes, buses and trucks; anyone with a passing interest in Health and Safety will have kittens.

Had a briefing meeting with local project managers and met the fellow who’s going to be RI President in 2011. Don’t ask me his name, we’d been awake for about 24 hours by this time!

Hotel is very decent, staff perhaps over attentive; we’ve already had two lots of towels even though we’ve only been here a few hours, but I suppose that it keeps people in jobs. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to post this, but the internet arrangements are a bit wobbly and, amazingly, three times the price you’d expect in Europe.

We’ve a busy day tomorrow, starting with a publicity breakfast meeting with the Chief Minister of Delhi, then visits to a couple of local Rotary projects. We seem to be free in the afternoon, so we’re going to try to visit the Red Fort or something similar.

I’ll try to post this, then, AT LAST, we’ll get some sleep.

Off in two hours, so we're going through all those last-minute panics. Remember, we are those people who leave their passports at home! Decided to play it safe, so Angela's sitting outside Boots the Chemists, waiting for them to open so that she can buy some Immodium.

Children have been briefed: no parties, feed the cats, no parties, lock the doors, no parties etc. etc.

Just remembered that I haven't booked the car parking at Heathrow.......

We're off to Delhi in three days' time, to take part in Rotary's National Immunisation Day against polio. It's a long way to go, but we think it's worth it: we felt as if we really wanted to do something about this project, so we just put our hands in our pockets, shelled out for the air fares and hotel and off we go for five days of really hard work.

We didn't think that we were going to get our visas in time, due to the postal strike, so we made a personal application to the Indian High Commission in Birmingham. It involves a lot of queueing (and travelling, for us!) but the whole process was really very efficient - our visas were ready for collection within 48 hours. The on-line application form is a bit clunky, but once you understand how it works, everything is fine.

Had to include a picture of the High Commission - very attractive spot and a bit of a home away from home for me. I'm on very good terms with the security guard!

Just got to find something to wear, now, and get ourselves off to Heathrow in time......