Meeting in Kashipur and RamNagar

An early start got the travellers on the road to meet up with Jeff and Chris in Kashipur. We stopped for breakfast at a wayside stop called The Rajasthan Resort and picked up some souvenirs from the well-stocked shop. Then on with the long drive on good and bad roads, meeting up with the guys at EJ Bakery that served surprisingly good pizza. Tori and Jaime had their first Indian style bathroom experience (how do you do it?), then we went on to Ramnagar, staying at the state-run tourist guest house. Our spartan rooms looked out over a courtyard already filled with wedding guests -- the men awaiting the arrival of the groom, and the women applying mehendi to the hands and feet of the bride. Mr. Singh took us to the nearby state-run EcoCamp for a bonfire and dinner out of doors.

From 200902CorbettPark

We toured the camp, noting the comfortable looking tents and bathrooms –- perhaps a good location for a Woodstock School Activity Week group some year. We relaxed by the glow of the fire, then returned back to the guest house in time to hear the wedding groom being serenaded by a singer and a ravi band: a one man band kind of contraption with speakers, as well as some trumpet players and drummers. After a few LOUD songs, they moved up the street – their way lit by fluorescent tubes being carried by uniformed boys. Only in India!

From 200902CorbettPark

Agra and Surroundings

The next morning we met up with our driver, Manmohan Singh from Mussoorie, who drove Tori, Jaime, Barb and Cole to Agra. Chris and Jeff took a later train back to Mussoorie to finish financial aid and applications. The drive to Agra was nail-biting for Jaime & Tori, who were still getting used to Indian drivers! The trip took several hours, dodging bullock carts, camel carts, huge colorfully painted trucks, bicycles, motorcycles and many pedestrians! But the trip was worth it – the Taj Mahal was incredible! It was so much more amazing in person than we could ever have imagined! It was a beautiful day, the temperature was perfect, and the whole experience memorable. What a monument to a great love story . . . Hollywood (or Bollywood!) couldn’t have done it better! We learned about Pietra Dura (marble carving with semiprecious stone inlay) that is seen throughout the Taj when we stopped at a marble showroom following our visit. It is amazing how the workmen create even the smallest pieces, and how many tiny, tiny pieces go into the decoration! Boggles the mind! They actually calculate the price of each piece not by the size, but by the number of individual pieces in the inlay, the number of craftsmen, and the number of weeks it took to complete. Can you imagine if they had had to pay for the work in the Taj that way?! Caught an early bird special (lunch/dinner) on the way out of town, and headed to Bharatpur where we checked in at the Jungle Lodge for an early evening.

This morning we were up with (before!) the sun, and at the Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary by 7:00 a.m. We hooked up with a guide, “Jack”, don’t you know, a bicycle rickshaw for Tori and Barb, and Coleman and Jaime on bicycles (this is Jaime – I’m STILL feeling that seat on my bum!!!!!) for a wonderful bird sighting and watching experience. We can’t wait to show you our pictures. Ashok Singh, the owner of the Jungle Lodge, is also quite an amateur ornithologist, and helped us correctly name all of the beautiful birds in the pictures we took. Then back to the hotel for a late breakfast and off to Fatehpur Sikri, an amazing palace built in Uttar Pradesh where the Badshaah (king) had hoped to move his home and center of government, but his plans were foiled when the lake dried up! But it is another AMAZING palace. Oh, and did I forget to mention that he built it for his three wives – one Muslim, one Hindi and one Christian? Well, he did! From there we went to, believe it or not, another palace! The Deeg Palace, also known as the water palace, built between two lakes with ingenious methods of using water for “air conditioning”. There are 137 large and 200 small fountains (we can thank Cole for remembering that stat) throughout the palace, each more beautiful than the last. This place has not received the tourism money that the Taj or Fatehpur Sikri has, so has gone down from its glory days – but we can imagine what a pleasure palace it was. --Barb

The Mewar Express, overnight 28January

From Udaipur to Delhi, evidently only recently completed by standardizing the rail-line gauge … Various British (and other) rail companies built various types of train lines over the last 150 years; the government is gradually standardizing all the lines so as to connect the country more efficiently – and Indian Railways is still the largest single employer in the world! Our trip back to Delhi was in a recently-refurbished car with new curtains and bedlamps and working electrical outlets. The sisters watched part of a movie, Taare Zameen Par, then went to bed, as old hands at this railway bunk technique. More comings and goings (by other passengers) on this trip, along with some stomach discomfort –- wondering about that tasty chicken sandwich at lunchtime -– made for a tiring night. Arriving of a sudden at Nizamuddin Station, we fended off the porters and wrestled our bags up and down stairs, through crowds, around construction, finally meeting our driver Mr.Singh. He took us to the guest-house where we had left our extra suitcases earlier, for a quick change. Barb and Tori and Jaime and Coleman drove off to Agra –- Barbara can pick up that tale in a later entry -– and Chris and Jeff walked out to look for breakfast. We ended up on the jan-shatabdi express train back north (though the ride took 9 hours due to delays), back home to Sunnywood and the Woodstock library where we can print and copy and get official signatures on documents and scan and send the scholarship applications that are due 31 January. And check on other work pending, too. We hope to re-join the group in RamNagar on the 31st –- wending our way via a few trains –- and thence enjoy Corbett Park together, before the school semester starts anew.

Departing Udaipur

It’s Coleman’s 15th Birthday! The aunts took him on a Rajasthani horseback ride (English-saddle style!) through the countryside, while Jeff and Chris and Barb organized papers and packing.
Then we celebrated with a real decorated cake – fancy icing that smelled faintly of rose-water – in the courtyard of the Rang Niwas Hotel.

From 200901Udaipur

Afterwards we went for the hour-long royal boat ride on Lake Pichola, stopping at the JagMandir Island Hotel to enjoy the views of the lake and the City Palace.

From 200901Udaipur

The boat circles the Very Exclusive Lake Palace Hotel, that certainly looks romantic.

From 200901Udaipur

The weather is ideal this month, though the lake level is alarmingly low. It is hard to imagine the heat that envelops Udaipur much of the year.

From 200901Udaipur

Decision-time: because of a scholarship application due 31January, Jeff and Chris will go back to school to get papers and signatures, then hope to re-join the group later.

From 200901Udaipur

Delhi then Udaipur by train

Tori and Jaime went with Jeff and Barb to Apollo Hospital to see what premier Indian medical service looks like, then went off (rather bravely I thought) with Chris and Cole in a taxi to Connaught Place, a shopping area in the center of town built by the British – concentric circles of white buildings with columns. It is a mixture of upscale shops and local sellers on the sidewalks. We saw one woman and her Rajasthani handicrafts being taken away, presumably because she didn’t pay her baksheesh to the local mafia. After Jeff and Barb finished up our yearly physicals, we met the rest of the crew for a wonderful Indian meal at United Coffee House Restaurant. We took the modern and oh-so-clean Metro and then an auto-rickshaw to the Likir House, a Tibetan guest house with spartan but clean rooms.

The next Great Adventure was sightseeing in Delhi. We hired a driver for the day: driver Ranjit took Tori, Jaime and Barb around Delhi to see such sights as Qutub Minar, the Bahai Lotus Temple and Dilli Haat where we bought some beautiful handicrafts.

From 200901Udaipur

Meanwhile, Jeff, Chris and Cole had been at the American Embassy Club where Chris was taking a physical fitness test for his application into Marines ROTC. We met up at the Indira Gandhi house and museum – a great historical review of the political life and times of Indira and her family, as well as the country. We ended our day with a driveby of the India Gate – with preparations underway for the Republic Day parade the next day, then went to the train station to catch the Mewar overnight express to Udaipur.

We rode in 2nd class AC 2-tier open berths – two-level bunks in a compartment – only a curtain separated us from the hallway, with various vendors announcing sandwiches, chai, or tomato soup. None of us slept well, but it was an Indian adventure not to be missed. Tori and Barb watched the sun rise over the desert as the train chugged through Rajasthan in the early morning. Bleary-eyed, we were met by the hotel driver who brought us to the Rang Niwas Hotel in Udaipur, a former summer palace of a Maharajah in days gone by.

From 200901Udaipur

From 200901Udaipur

First Day, First City

All Aunts Arrived safely. The airport arrival area is under construction (inconvenience regretted), but they still found us without problem by 1:20am. The airport highways are mostly finished, so the drive there and back to town was easy, except for the truck traffic that is consigned to night-time deliveries. We were all back home and in bed by 2am; then up at 8:30 for breakfast at the guest house. Everybody’s fine, though the electricity was out from 10:30 to 12:30 – evidently caused by some tree-trimmers in the public courtyard nearby -- putting a crimp in our plans to upload this to the blog.

Starting in Delhi

We splurged: because Barb and Jeff were scheduled to get full physical exams on Thursday morning, and we were taking the overnight train to Delhi, we bought first-class berths so that we could get a full night’s sleep. A thousand rupees a piece is quite expensive by local standards. Because there were four of us, we got a whole compartment to ourselves, with sliding door and curtain to insulate our compartment from the outside world. The beds were already made up for us, and the compartment was carpeted and clean, and most of the lights worked. There was one reminder of the unregulated world, in that a nice young man helped us with our luggage and guided us to the cabin, and asked if we wanted bottled water. Barb thought it came with our ticket, so she said “yes please”. He returned with 4 bottles, asked for 48 rupees, then disappeared. And we all realized that we weren’t in Kansas any more – he was just a guy running a little unofficial sideline. Barb worried whether the water was actually factory-packaged, or simple refills from the local tap. I thought it looked legit, so I drank it, with no ill effect.
The night passed, with a good solid sleep. The train arrived at 8am, only 15 minutes late. We surrendered to a Sikh taxi tout, who overcharged us for a ride to the guest house and then hospital, but he was quite pleasant and chatty throughout. We dropped off the suitcases and sons at the guest house, where our rooms were mercifully ready for us early. We taxi’d on to the hospital where we spent the day – until 5pm – on blood tests and treadmill stress-tests and cardiograms and interviews and poking and prodding. We must go back on Saturday for test results and more consultations – but so far, we seem quite healthy.

Friday the 23rd, the film Slumdog Millionaire was officially released in India, a week after it had been front page news following the Golden Globe awards and commentary wondering whether it presented “India” fairly. We saw the first showing, and we marveled at the impact of the film – noting that they did not have to fake any of the buildings or the slums or the traffic. Aside from the string of remarkable coincidences throughout the film, we felt it was realistic. It shows the remarkable and irrepressible urge to enjoy and make the best of life. And it has a Hollywood ending in the plot, and a Bollywood ending in the final dance number! Go see it.

And now, we await the arrival of “the Aunties”. They are, after all, truly the aunts of Chris and Cole. But also, “Aunty” is one of the loan-words from English that has most saturated this subcontinent. Any older woman – that is, any woman older than me – is addressed as Aunty. (and, correspondingly, any older man is addressed as “Uncle”) So, we await the arrival of Aunty Tori and Aunty Jaime at the airport, in another hour or so. More later, with photos if we can…

Happy New Year 2009!

We welcomed in the new year on Witches' Hill (local name: Pari Tibba) most likely named because of the inordinate number of lightning strikes here (the mountain is full of phosphate.) I sit writing to you in a burned out area -- the rest is covered with a type of dried flowering grass. I have a 180-degree view of the Himalayans ranges before me. Even in the morning haze, I can see five consecutive ranges. I hear dogs barking and a cow lowing from a farmhouse on the next mountain. A swallow is swirling overhead. I see smoke rising from a terraced village behind the next ridge. It is serenely beautiful.
Only the charred remains give testimony to the five-foot high pile of dried grass that Cole and his friend Dan ignited at midnight. The bonfire burned ferociously and quickly - a fitting ritual in this primordial area of the Himalayan foothills we call home.