Stepping down....

I took a walk at 6.30 this morning to check where the bus to Champhai (we're booked for Thursday) picks up, and to check it out. Place and time fine, bus is far from luxury by European standards, but we should manage seven hours on terrible roads in it. Back at the hotel I received a phone call asking where we were - booking confused Tuesday and Thursday I guess.

After Google has translated:

Mizoram is subject to earthquakes and each small tremor tends to bring a few buildings down or even set a section of the hillside slipping completely. There are fears that a large 'quake could be an utter disaster and support from the rest of India would take days to begin trickling in, and, given to state of roads, would not be more than a trickle longer term. 

With a couple of errands to complete we decided to explore the markets and kept going down - in total about 250m of mostly steps. Very different mostly residential areas lower down, with churches and schools too. Poor school kids - dressed as I assume bairns were in the 1950s, and all uniforms seem to be brown. One of the Aizawl joys is that we could take a taxi back up! Best taxi yet, too - newish and cleanish.

Lunch was fruit (mangoes are just coming into season, satsumas just ending, grapes lovely), crisps and was great. 

After our routine naps we headed to the home of Dr Pallai and Dr Lalkailiani. On our first trip here we did some development work for a special school, they were on the board and we stayed in their house (had a lovely room on the roof, but the toilet was separate. My first experience of padding out barefoot in the dark and crushing cockroaches on the way - only once before I started using a torch!).

They're now well retired (they were both senior government doctors) but still involved with all sorts of charity work. 

For supper we ate at the highly rated Floria Hotel (much posher than ours) and the food was superb - again we've eaten too much.