At home in Orissa

In the years that Roose has been in Koraput,she has trekked to several Maoist-affected villages along with the staff of her organisation,the Jacobs Well Foundation,to spread literacy and sink borewells in hilly villages where few government agencies have ventured.

I am not scared,though I am conscious of the problems. I believe the Maoists wont cause me any harm as I am working for the downtrodden and the underprivileged, says Roose.

She first came to India as a tourist in January 2004 along with a group of missionaries,and visited Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. While passing through a village in Dasmantpur block of Koraput,Roose,herself a grandmother by then,stood holding a baby the same age as her granddaughter,but half her size and weight.

The baby had a mouth full of thrush an infection,so much so that it looked like she had teeth. She also had jaundice. She had no muscle condition,no strength. She was only nine weeks old, recounts Roose,sitting in the verandah of Rejoice Orphanage,which she runs in Mastiput village of Koraput.

When Roose asked the local doctor who was showing her around whether he could give the baby some drops to clear up the thrush,the doctors said the baby would get reinfected as the mother did not wash her hands. So I asked him why the health workers couldnt teach her to wash. The doctor said there was no water for her to wash with. Though there was a borewell about 30 metres away,it was off limits for the lower castes. The doctor said the only water they could use was from a nearby stagnant pond.

This set Roose thinking about how much it would cost to sink a borewell. The doctor told her it would cost Rs 50,000. The village would never have been able to afford so much money. But I wanted to raise the money and provide clean,fresh water for the villagers, she says.

Roose went back to Australia but returned to Koraput a year later and started Jacobs Well Foundation,a not-for-profit organisation named after the Biblical character who dug wells on hilly land. Two months later,in July 2005,she rented a house in Semiliguda block where she taught 19 tribal children. In 2006,she shifted to Mastiput village,six km from Koraput,where she bought 20 acres to start Rejoice,an orphanage which now houses 104 children. She is now busy building a two-storeyed house near the orphanage for the children.

But Rooses heart was in Dasmantpur block where she had first come across the sick child in 2002. With some of her retirement savings and donations from friends in Australia,she got borewells dug in villages where the government could not reach. As these villages were on a hill,the officials could not transport the drilling rig machine on trucks. So we got diesel operated rigs and lugged them to those villages. The villagers were only too ready to work as labourers. It was tough,but we managed to drill down to around 140-150 feet and get clean water for the villagers. Now families here dont have to drink muddy,polluted water. No longer do families have to suffer from gastroenteritis because theyve learnt that they can keep it away by simply washing their hands, she says.

Deputy Inspector General of Police south-western range Soumendra Priyadarshi is all praise for her work. She is doing wonders despite the difficulties she has faced, says Priyadarshi. So far,Rooses organisation has dug over 40 wells in Dasmantpur block alone.

For five months in a year,Roose goes back to her home in Australia where her three children and five grandchildren live. Living in two countries is not easy but she doesnt plan to leave Orissa. Remember,I started in the hardest part of India. We plan to make a difference to other parts of Orissa, she says.

LEON MAHONEY,70,GOUDAGUDA,KORAPUT

Ask people on the Koraput-Laxmipur road for directions to Chandoori Sai,a guest house in Goudaguda,a tribal village in Koraput,and all you will get are blank stares. Ask them for the house where the foreigner saar lives and the directions will follow fast.

At an altitude of 3,000 ft above sea level,Chandoori Sai is a guest house run by Leon Mahoney,an Adelaide-born former oil industry technician. Mahoney,who first came to Orissa in 2005 with a group of travellers from Visakhapatnam,lost his way around and landed in Goudaguda. Though I had visited India around 50 times before this,I had never come to Orissa before. I liked the place,the mountains and the general ambience. So I decided to come back a couple of years later and build a guest house for outsiders, says Mahoney,who never had any previous experience in tourism.

He finally came to India four years ago and pooled most of his retirement savings to build a five-room cottage inside Goudaguda,a potters village inhabited by Paraja tribals.

I had to make my guesthouse unique. So the name also had to be unique. I named it Chandoori Sai as there is a big mango tree in the garden and the Paraja name for mango is Chandoori. Sai means a cluster of homes in a village. Besides,foreigners in India are familiar with the word tandoori. Chandoori and Tandoori rhymed well and I got an unique name, says Mahoney.

Mahoney went to great lengths to blend his guesthouse into its tribal surroundings. He browsed the Internet to learn cheaper ways of making floor tiles. With the help of 60 Paraja tribals,he burnt the floor tiles using local soil and then gave it a glossy coat. He used organic colours to paint the earthen walls. The main lobby is dressed in colourful sarees and there is pottery in all parts of the guesthouse. Mahoney also got local blacksmiths to make artefacts out of wrought iron.

Though Australian in scale and facilities,the guest rooms give the guests a feeling that they are living in the house of a Paraja or a Kandha tribal. It is about as close as you can get to a brief assimilation into the vibrant adivasi way of life, says Mahoney. It is my way of tribal tourism that does not interfere with their lives while indirectly bringing much needed attention and opportunities to these indigenous people and their habitat. My guest house is not for someone who wants to come to a tribal area and go snap,snap,snap.

Though he is yet to break even,Mahoney takes great effort to keep the Chandoori Sai experience unique for visitors who pay Rs 5,000 couple or Rs 3,500 single a day. There is no air conditioning as Koraput remains cool even in the summers. As guests sit in the lounge area,they can see the kitchen where Mahoney is found often,either whipping up coffee grounded from locally grown beans or making mango pies. We serve vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals using local organic produce as far as we can. The food is predominantly seasonal and organic. Mahoney grows basil,thyme,parsley and asparagus in the guesthouse garden. I make my own bread,pasta and ice cream while local tribal girls Rita,Jema and Pratima,cook other dishes, says Mahoney.

Though Mahoney is enjoying his stay in Orissa,the last few months have been tough. The tour operators in Puri and Bhubaneswar dont like to tell the tourists about my cottage. All the tourists I get are through my listing in Lonely Planet and websites. Now with the ban on foreigners visiting tribal districts like Koraput and Rayagada,I dont know how long I can survive, he says.

Is he scared of the Naxal violence in Koraput? If I were a government person or a contractor,I would have been afraid. A prospective guest recently asked me if there is a possibility that he would be abducted while travelling around here. I joked that he should be more scared of mosquitoes. But one needs to be cautious as this is not a five-star boulevard in Mumbai, he says.

CLAIRE PREST,34,PURI

Born in Melbourne,Claire Prest,34,first came to India in 1998 as a tourist. Travelling was a family passion. Along with her sister and her parents,Claire spent all her school holidays camping in national parks across Australia.

My father would coordinate the camping equipment and my mother would make provisions for food. It wasnt long before we operated smoothly as a team,pitching tents in record time. We would go for walks during the day,swim in the river or ocean and return to the camp at dusk to build a fire,cook dinner and share stories. It was during those days that I also learnt something about basic bush survivallearning to read and understand the environment and respond accordingly, recounts Prest,now a tour operator who runs a successful agency called Grass Routes Journeys at Chakratirtha Road in Puri.

After touring India for two years,Claire returned to Australia in 2000 to work for a leading adventure travel company where she got the opportunity to travel to India. She visited Orissa three times during this period but it wasnt until 2008 that she founded Grass Routes along with a local resident Pulak Mohanty,whom she married later. Pulak too shared Claires passion for travel and both would spend days cycling through the country roads,exploring villages.

Grass Routes was born out of our desire to bring responsible tourism to local communities. Between the two of us,we have 25 years of experience in the tourism industry,working as tour guides,product developers and destination managers for international travel companies. With Grass Routes,we are implementing our global tourism expertise in a local context, says Claire.

At Grass Routes,Claire believes the best way to promote tourism is to be responsible and to help tourists understand a place better. We always tell tourists visiting tribal areas to smile more and we train them in basic body language. Travellers are also surprised to learn about the various ingenious ways in which simple raw materials found in the forest are used. We encourage them to make things like plates,ropes and baskets from leaves,sticks and bark, says Claire.

For Claire,living in Orissa has been a wonderful experience. Taking the train through the Eastern Ghats and watching the landscape change at every bend is always magic. Watching the sunrise on Chilika Lake,cycling through lush paddy fields and helping facilitate the precious newborn Olive Ridleys journey to the sea are always highlights. But the most meaningful moments are those when you connect with local people, she says.

But Claire admits local residents often have misconceptions about foreigners. The one misconception I always face is that we are rich and sexually promiscuous, she says.

As a young adult,I had many questions and the wonderful thing about travel is that as you encounter different beliefs,you begin to reflect on your own value systems. Travel in India has definitely shaped who I am today, she says.

ESPOSITO MATTEO,53,PURI

Italian Esposito Matteo takes each day as it comes. Matteo spent two years in jail after being accused of rape. In 2004,he was acquitted,but,he says,the taint on his character refuses to go away. He now does odd jobs to support his family in Puri. Its such a dreary life. I am almost living in penury, says Matteo,sitting on his motorcycle in Puri.

The Naples-born Matteo,a former truck driver in the Italian Army,first came to India in 1978 like scores of foreigners to discover himself. Matteo,who was born a Christian,had found solace in Hinduism and became a vegetarian,which,he says,earned him much ridicule in the Army. He quit the Army within one year of joining.

While in India,he toured Himachal Pradesh and in 1981,when he returned to Italy,he joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness ISKCON. In 1990,he was assigned by ISKCON officials to travel to Puri to set up a branch in the Sipasarubali area. I chose to live in India and to perform Bhakti Yoga, he says. Three years later,he married a Puri girl,Brundabati Suara.

However,the Puri project of ISKCON did not take off due to some infrastructural hitches. But Matteo,who assumed the name of Mandali Bhadra Dasa,stayed put,helping foreigners go around the Jagannath temple.

As the ISKCON project did not materialise,I was thinking of starting an Italian restaurant to support my family. But all my calculations went awry, says Matteo,recounting the incident that changed his life forever.

In 2000,a Slovak woman,also an ISKCON devote,accused Matteo and seven others,including a US national and an Italian national,of raping her daughter. I was not even named in the original FIR filed in the Sea Beach police station. The woman was putting pressure on me to help her get married to a local boy. When I said I could not help her,she told the police that I was involved in the case, says Matteo.

Two subsequent medical examinations proved that the allegations of rape were false. In 2002,I was acquitted along with the others as the assistant sessions judge of Puri did not find a shred of evidence in the allegations, says Matteo. But even the acquittal could not salvage his reputation. My two sons and daughter were ridiculed in school. Even when I had gone to Italy after the acquittal,a close friend of mine did not invite me to his house as he had two daughters, says Matteo.

In 2007,the CID reopened the case and filed an appeal in the court of Puri district and sessions judge but Matteo managed to get bail. These days,he roams aimlessly in Puri looking for jobs in local ITIs so that he can pay his childrens school fees. At times,I take tourists around the Jagannath temple and get a few hundred rupees, he says.

Orissas travel story: falling tourist numbers

The kidnapping of Italian tour operator Paolo Bosusco and another Italian tourist in the jungles of Kandhamal last month,turned the spotlight on foreigners living in Orissa.

Bosusco had been living in the temple town of Puri for the last 19 years on a business visa,taking foreign tourists to the tribal hinterland to experience a style of life they had never seen before. As most of the foreigners visiting Orissa either wanted to go to tribal areas to see tribals,especially the Bondas in Malkangiri and the Dongaria Kondhs in Rayagada,or to see the temples in Puri,Bhubaneswar and Konark,many like Bosusco built successful careers catering to these specific demands.

But in the last four to five years,the number of foreigners visiting Orissa has been declining. At present,foreigners visiting Orissa hardly constitute 1 per cent of the total number of foreigners visiting the country.

Lack of infrastructure and poor air connectivity are cited as reasons behind the falling numbers. In February,the Orissa government made things more difficult for foreigners,putting several curbs on their visit to tribal areas following allegations that they were taking photographs of tribals.

Curbs apart,Orissa continues to be home to several foreigners. Despite the killing of missionary Graham Staines in 1999 and the Kandhamal riots in 2008,they have chosen not to return to their countries. Some of them run travel agencies,others run charitable institutions,often in Naxal-hit areas. None of them had had any run-ins with the Maoists. In fact,Paolo Bosuscos kidnapping was the first time Naxals took a foreign national hostage.