About Us

Welcome to our “Cultural Connections” blog. 

 Our family invites you to join us on our experiences and wonders of our trip from NZ to India.  This blog is for all our friends, family and amazing people with whom we come in contact with.   A huge shout out to the “Hautapu Globe Trotters”, who through their encouragement has inspired me to start this blog.  Their excitement and curiosity are the drivers for sharing this experience.

My intention is to provide a learning platform where diversity is embraced, and perspectives appreciated.  This is to allow our children to dream big, to be curious and expand into a globally connected world as well as creating a digital story for our own family to go back to in years to come.

In my family, my father has been the rangatira for us. His prime mission in retirement has been to research and compile a genealogy and history of his and his extended families before it is lost. He has always realised the importance of this, knowing that the spread of family around the world means that we need to work harder at connecting and appreciating our roots - who we are; where we come from and what this means for us going ahead into the future. (whanaungatanga). ‘We are who we are today because of our people before us.’  

Welcome to our “cultural Connections” blog.  Our family invites you to join us on the experiences and wonders of our trip from NZ to India.  This blog is for all our friends, family and amazing people with whom we connect to here daily.  A huge shout out to the “Hautapu Globetrotters”, who through their curiosity has inspired me to start this blog. 

It has been his wish for all of us as a family to go and visit India, where my mātua and tūpuna are from (parents/grandparents). So, this year our family (my two brothers and I) are sharing this learning with our children and relatives.

In 2018 I hope that this can be a resource to support Hautapu’s Maori Curriculum. In term 1 our tamariki (children) will be exploring ‘culture and identity’, with a bus tour led by nga rangatira (leaders) from our iwi here at Kemureti (Cambridge).  They will guide our tamariki and whānau through the many stories of our locality.

Our journey  will involve:

A glimpse in the History of places visited during our travels including Singapore, Cochin, Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi. Agra, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Vadodara (Baroda), Kanisa and Nadiad.

Ø  Visiting Dad’s village – Kanisa (approx. 3300 people) and my mum’s city Nadiad (approx. 225, 000 people).

Ø  Visit the orphanage my great great grandfather founded.

  At this point we will share the gifts our families here at Hautapu that may have been donated from under the Hautapu x-mas tree for the Hindu Anath Ashram - Nadiad

This trip is open to engaging those who are interested in experiencing this journey, while discovering our whanaungatanga and heritage; to experience new perspectives; to learn about new things/new knowledge; to understand how communities and organisations work; to see how people use their resources to live and to tell their story; share the wonderment of our Papatūānuku (planet); and to share the creativity of our people in our world.

 Some facts: 

Population=1.3 billion; 

Temperature in Dec to Jan = 22-33 Celsius; 

$1 NZ Dollar = 44 Indian Rupees (7 rupees buys a loaf of bread), so $ 20.00 NZ dollars is approx 1000 rupees.