Pictures of India 2: Jaipur

Dangers of reading, part 1

Jacob is, to put it mildly, a voracious reader. He reads constantly and very quickly, which results in a continual need for new books. One of his main worries about travelling was how we would get enough books, especially as he is generally reading two or three books at once. "Explain again how we're going to get books when we're away." was a request repeated numerous times before we left. One of my main worries, on the other hand, was how we would carry all the books. India in general, and New Delhi in particular is well-supplied with bookshops carrying English-language titles, but even so we have run out of things to read on occasion. Even if you have books there are times when you don't have a books with you and must fall back on whatever reading material can be found in your vicinity.

Not long after our arrival in New Delhi, we (in this case Surya, Nicky, Sam, Jay, Sakhti, Muni, Heather, Jacob and Charles Massey (one of the two Charleses) paid a visit to the National Gallery of Modern Art. I was lagging behind as we moved through the gallery, with Jacob with some of the others up ahead. Every now and then I asked one of the others where Jacob and Heather were and each time was told they were with another group (by this time we'd fragmented into several groups.) By the time I'd reached the end of the exhibits most of the others were outside but there was no sign of Jacob. People remembered seeing him a few minutes previously but he seemed to have disappeared. I went back and walked through the exhibits again. Fortunately, it's not a very big museum. No sign of him. Next Surya and I walked through the place again, this time with rather more urgency. I checked all the washrooms, in the hope he was there, to no avail. By now I was feeling a bit panicky. The prospect of Jacob disappearing mysteriously in a huge, strange city where we didn't speak the language was very unsettling. Surya went to explain things to the gallery front desk staff, who also seemed worried by this turn of events, and our auto-rickshaw drivers were pressed into service to do another pass through the gallery. I went off to check the washrooms once more, hoping that perhaps he'd been taken ill and was stuck there. Leaving one of the washrooms after another fruitless check I noticed a door marked "Library." I peeked through the part of the door not obscured by signs about opening hours and restrictions on access and what items could not be brought into the library and who should I see? Jacob was leaning over one of the reading room tables studying what turned out to be a book on Indian art, oblivious to our nightmare. Of course, I should have started by looking for a library.

[Museum note: the exhibition on Benodebehari Mukherjee is very interesting. Mukherjee produced some fine landscape paintings, as well as murals, textile designs, etchings and woodcuts.]

Band on bicycles

I have to add a little more about the band in the groom's procession mentioned in the last post. The band wasn't actually in cars but in a parade of bicycle rickshaws (of the flatbed, load-carrying type rather than the people-carrying type.) All but the first of the rickshaws had canopies of fancy appliqué-work built up on them. The first, undecorated, rickshaw carried a big monster of a generator. The second had a mixing board, the sound man and a couple of speakers. The third rickshaw carried the percussion session and some more speakers, while the fourth, and last, carried the guitarist, a cool-looking dude with little spectacles, and the singer. The whole parade of cycle rickshaws was strung together with a bundle of power and audio cables.

There was actually a second band inside the marriage venue. When we first arrived, to find no guests and people still setting the place up (the sound system and lights were arriving on yet another of the useful cycle rickshaws) there were four guys fast asleep, wrapped in blankets, in an alcove by the main entrance. Later, after the guests arrived and things got going, music started up and it turned out that the four sleepers were in fact the house band. Perhaps they'd been sleeping off the previous wedding. This was a more traditional ensemble, with three types of drum and a short, reed horn with a flared bell. Later still, the groom's band reappeared on a stage outside the hall.

At some point, when I get a chance to download and organize some photos, I'll post some pictures of cycle rickshaws and other forms of cycle transport, either here or at the bicycle-oriented (but currently moribund) Rhinos and Lilos I seem to have taken more pictures of various aspects of Indian road traffic (bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, ox-carts) than of anything else.

Gillian's first post

India is India. Filthy yet fascinating. My lungs crapped out completely between Delhi and Agra and I was trying to eke out the doses on my puffer so I could breathe but didn't go over the daily limit. My cpap machine filters are supposed to last a month or so. After 1 night in Delhi, it was literally BLACK. Not any shade of grey mind you, but black as night, black as coal as the Rolling Stones are fond of saying. You are supposed to take off your shoes everywhere and walk around in your socks at temples, internet cafes, houses etc. There is about 1/4-1/2" of dirt everywhere so the old socks make some dandy brown wash water. Heather is just getting better after about 5 days sick. Poor kid I hope she is OK for a while now. Jacob got bitten by a monkey and has to have rabies shots. 2 down and 4 to go. It is OK here with Suja running interference for us, but I am not looking forward to trying to get it done in Thailand and Australia later to finish up the shots. He still claims that feeding the monkeys is the highlight of his trip so far.... We went on a camel ride in Rajastan. The camel wouldn't get down for me to get off so I had to jump off. Heather missed it because even is he had got it to kneel down again for her to get on, I wouldn't have trusted it to let her off again. She was REALLY pissed. Luckily I persuaded a guy with a camel pulling a cart near the Taj Mahal to carry her across the struts holding the cart and put her up on the camel's back. After 5 steps, she deemed the experience complete. Believe me, I concur. I am glad I got up on the camel (even if I had to make an undignified egress), but I sure wouldn't want to travel any distance on the back of one. Talk about a bumpy ride. We decided to save the elephant rides for Thailand. Al and I have already done that long ago anyway. My own favourite thing so far is the trip to the brackish lake two days ago. We rented this very ethnic boat (huge bow and stern that several people could lie on) with two benches down the sides under a canopy. The outboard motor was rigged up so the prop was on the end of a long pole. It went at about 2 mph I think. We went from the village out past a bunch of shy dolphins (there were lots of them but you never saw any one of them for longer than it took to get a breath) to the estuary where the lake met the ocean. There were a whole lot of "restaurants" on the beach selling tea, coffee and seafood. The "ladies urinal" was a cardboard box set out in the middle of the sandbar. You had to pay for the privelege. Luckily my bladder is still made of cast iron. The sun was setting in front of us in the hour it took to get back from the restaurant to where our driver was. It was full dark when we got back. It was beautiful and peaceful on the water for 4 hours. The only boats we saw were others like ours and some that were being poled along. There were fishing areas cordonned off with bamboo stakes all over the place. Picturesque as all get out. I rememered then why it was I love to travel so much. | | | | | Inbox

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A quick, and incomplete, update

Thanks for the comments and sorry for the long delay in posting anything. I hope to get back here to post some real descriptions but I have to run off in a second so here are some quick answers to questions:
Jaipur - yes. We rented a Tempo (a 12 seat van + driver) and went to Jaipur and Agra. Jaipur was great although our late arrival on New Year's Eve landed us in a rather grubby hotel which, in the morning, turned out to have a spectacular view from the roof. Camel rides were also had by various people except Heather because the camel started to refuse to kneel to allow people off. Gillian had to resort to a spectacular flying dismount (to cheers from bystanders) in order to escape.
Curry - on the whole great (at least for some of us.) Indian restaurants are full of surprises.
Food for Heather - naan, the odd banana, fresh lime soda (except when it comes with salt), Limca, sometimes chicken ("fried chicken half" in the words of the Hotel Chanchal room service menu.) We went to McDonalds in New Delhi, which was popular with Heather. The McAlloo Tikka is superior to anything in a North American McDonalds but still nothing to shout about. Heather has actually been sick for the last few days, although she seems to be better today after a course of antibiotics.
Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bakhshan - they remain elusive. Apparently Dalton McGinty is in New Delhi, according to a newspaper we saw in the open air reading room of the Puri library (from the roof of which, after an appropriate donation, one can look down into the Jagganath temple.)
Shredding - thank you very much
Dominio and Shadow - good and good. Domino is fonder of children than of adults (at least fonder of our children than of us.) Shadow may be become more sociable but she is sociable at a distance. Eventually she may come up and look at you.

[Update to previous entry - I've corrected the dates for our stay in New Zealand - March not May. Who's a bad proofreader?]