worldtour

India - Cut-ins, Cut-outs and stand-outs

We spent a couple of days in Aurangabad in Maharashtra (about a 30-minute plane ride from Bombay).  The reason was that we wanted to visit the Ajanta & Ellora caves...  It was quite a fantastic place - yet another nomination for the greatest wonders of the world! 

A very sad piece of news, though, was the earthquake in Sumatra and the resulting tidal wave (tsunami) that has killed over 24,000 people in South and South-east Asia.  India has been badly affected (over 7000 dead) and the country is in mourning.  We are going to Goa next and will try and stay away from the water as much as possible.  One of our next stops in January is Thailand which has been badly affected as well - we're currently keeping tabs on the situation to figure out whether we should just go to Bangkok or venture to southern Thailand (Ko Tao on the Gulf of Thailand is/was our destination).

Aurangabad itself has quite a history.  It was founded by Aurangzeb, one of the last Mughal emperors, as a base for his Deccan war campaigns.  Mohammed bin Tughlaq decided (for some reason) to move his capital from Delhi to Aurangabad (thanks to my dad for the correction!).  So he marched several hundreds of thousands of people 1400 kilometers (900 miles) from Delhi to Aurangabad - they dropped like flies along the way. 17 years later, he realized his mistake and marched the survivors back to Delhi!  Right now, it draws a large horde of tourists intent on seeing Ajanta & Ellora.  It also draws a large number of manufacturing companies (both Indian and multi-national).  Over the last decade, Aurangabad has become a hub for industrial activity, with factories from Bajaj and many other manufacturing companies.  Above, you see a photo of dawn breaking (literally) over Aurangabad.  All the dawns we've seen around the world (so far) have been completely different from each other and quite fantastic.

On the way to Ellora, we stopped at Daulatabad fort, built by Mohammad bin Tughlaq in the 10th/11th century (I think).  Nice fort with a steep climb to the top.  There were several dark passageways with lots of bats hanging from the ceiling and some even flying by.  These passages also smelt of bat guano... quite revolting!  One of the photos on the left shows the bridge over the moat around the fort.

On the first day, we visited Ellora. Ellora has a series of 32 Buddhist, Jain & Hindu caves which have been carved out of a mountainside.

  These were built from AD800 to AD1100 under the patronage of various kings of these 3 faiths.  The most impressive is the Kailash temple which took 150 years and 7000 people to build.  Kailash was literally cut-out of the mountain - the artistes started at the top of the mountain and carved their way in - they therefore did not need any scaffolding - the way they put it, they "freed" the temple from the mountain!  Just imagine starting with the side of a mountain and ending up with what you see in the photos above. Many of the other temples were cut-in i.e. the workers started cutting in from the side (not from the top).

On the second day, we visited Ajanta.  The Ajanta caves are all Buddhist and were built from AD300 to AD900.  As opposed to carvings, Ajanta is knows for its intricate wall paintings depicting the Buddha and his Boddhisattvas (or previous incarnations), including Padmapani and others.  The caves were discovered by a solder in 1858 who was tiger hunting around the Waghuri river and happened to chance upon a large doorway to one of the caves.  The paintings show how the artists of that time had proper knowledge of lighting and 3-D perspectivie in their paintings. The insides of the caves have been carved out into chambers which hold rooms for Buddhist monks to meditate in (chaityas) and rooms for the monks to live in (viharas).  With its The intricate paintings, great colours and patterned pillars, Ajanta was even more impressive than Ellora! 

While in Aurangabad, we also saw Aurangzeb's wife's tomb - Bibi ka maqbara.  It looks like a mini Taj Mahal!  Quite cool.

Anyway, this was a great visit.  On to Goa now for New Year's festivities!

-Dev

India - Maximum City?

Before travelling to Bombay, I read "Maximum City," a book by Suketu Mehta. Fantastic book - couldn't put it down. The book talks about Suketu's experiences in Bombay as an NRI - his experiences included getting deeply into the Bombay gangs, beer bars, slums, homeless migrants and other extreme communities!  It paints a very depressing view of Bombay although it is very interesting.  So I arrived in Bombay with a new viewpoint on what I was seeing on the street - the photo you see above is of the thousands of shacks that have been erected along each road.  The book talks about "shooters" or people who are contracted by the gangs to carry out killings - the book talks about how these shooters are just ordinary looking people who go home each evening to their wife and kids - I was seeing a shooter on every motorcycle that went by!

We were in Bombay for over a week, just before going to Aurangabad.  Our time in Bombay was completely filled up with social events, including meeting friends and family.  We also walked around Bombay a lot - something I have not done before - it is very different to see a city on foot as compared to driving through it.  We saw cricket being played at the Oval ground, went to the Oxford bookstore and did various other non-productive things!  The photo to the left shows a Parsi structure of some kind, bang in the middle of a market!

A quick side-note: One thing that was definitely reinforced in us by our stay in Bombay was that India is booming in a big way.  Compared to so many of the other countries we have been to on this trip, India is humming along quite nicely, on a scale that does not exist anywhere else other than in China.  For example, the retail, hospitality and tourism sectors are growing fast - over 300 malls are being built right now in India, several cinema multiplexes have come up, hotels are available for the mid-tier also now and many tourist attractions are packaged up nicely now.  Also, places like Reliance's Webworld are offering a great Internet experience - we have not seen this anywhere else we've been so far (Europe, Africa, Asia).  Financial services companies are growing nicely.  Construction is going on everywhere in India.  Durable goods are flying off the shelves.  New car models are being introduced every month.  India is now the fastest growing market for mobile phones - we even used voice-enabled services here (such as booking movie tickets, getting train timetables etc.)!

On the other hand, there is some messiness in this large democracy - witness the several high-profile legal cases that are going on, including the murder investigation involving the Kanchi Shankaracharya, the police focus on pornography (MMS video,  arrests at various Internet cafes, focus on porn movies etc.) and the Best Bakery trial (riots between Hindus and Muslims after the Godhra train burning), etc.  What is amazing to see is that the media seems to be getting inside every story  - what is correspondingly depressing is that many of the legal cases involve money, pay-offs and questionable usage of political connections.  Also exciting to see is the growth of the middle-class in the cities, although the majority of the rural population has been left behind in this globalization effort.

Anyway, on with the rest of the blog...

Our one and only tourist activity was going to Elephanta - this is an island about 1 hour away from the Gateway of India.  Elephanta has caves with some very nice statues of Shiva.   We wouldn't recommend this to anybody as there are very few statues to see and most of the island and caves are covered in cow-dung.  I've come to expect this but not inside historical monuments!

The nightlife in Bombay is happening, especially this time of the year, when lots of people converge to this city to party!  A number of friends were visiting the city from San Francisco, Singapore, New York etc.  We met up with them as well as friends living in Bombay.  We went to Indigo (in Colaba) one too many times, Lush and Provogue Lounge (at Phoenix Mills) one too many times, Tendulkar's (the bar), Hawaii Shack (in Bandra), the Bombay Gym, US Club, NSCI club and a few other places.  We also went to various house-parties.  I had a few too many nights staying out till 6am...

It was interesting to note how Delhi'ites and Bombay-ites view each other.  At one party, we had one Bombay'ite say that they think Bombay is much much more open and cosmopolitan that Delhi and that it is very easy for a newcomer to get to know people in Bombay.  Just a few minutes later, another Bombay-ite said that there are many cliques in Bombay and that it is very hard to break in.  And yet another person said that both Bombay and Delhi are very cliquey and that it is generally hard to get to know people in both these cities, unless one already knows somebody!

We did manage to get to a few restaurants, some good, some bad.  The good restaurants included Basilico's (light salads, soups and sandwiches) in Colaba, Mahesh Lunch Room (great sea-food, including a fantastic tandoori pomfret) in Fort and Thai Pavilion (great Thai food) at the Taj Presidency.  Topping our list of bad restaurants is Tendulkar's which is quite over-rated. It has very tight seating inside and bad service! 

We spent a lot of time visiting relatives.  Most of Smruti's extended family lives in Bombay. It was great to see everybody!  Here're some of the photos from our visits:

-Dev

India - Pilgrimage to Palitana

We drove from Ahmedabad to Palitana, starting out at 5:30am in the morning! 

Enroute, we wanted to see Lothal, a site from the Indus Valley civilization circa 3000BC.  Gujarat has many such Indus Valley civilization sites, including at Lothal and Dholaveera.  Related sites include Mohenjodaro and Harappa which are now inside the borders of Pakistan.  Having been to these sites in Pakistan, I was looking forward to picking up some shards and ceramic remains from the site.  Unfortunately, we started out so early from Ahmedabad that we reach Lothal before dawn and therefore could not see it! 

Anyway, we moved on to Palitana... or wait... how do we get there?  It turned out that our driver was illiterate... an unfortunate problem for a driver since he could not read any of the road signs!  Anyway, I read the signs in Gujarati (similar to Hindi script, thankfully).  Our driver also refused to eat all day except at truck-stops which he knew from his truck-driving days... The photo shows dawn on the road to Palitana.

We finally reached Palitana and had lunch at one of the many dharamshalas or religious hostels there.  Palitana is a very important Jain religious site with 863 temples on a hilltop.  The earliest of these temples was built in 900AD but was then destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni. Since 1100AD, many new temples have been built, each of them more intricate than the next.

We walked up the 3000 steps, seeing many Jain monks, nuns, and just regular folks climbing up and down.  For the weary or elderly, there are also chairs or dolis that were carried by four strong men (and sometimes women) going up and down the stairs. We noticed that we saw some people running up and down- some were attempting to ascend 99 times in one day! After walking through the temples, we walked down, realizing too late that we had walked down the opposite side of the mountain.  We both had a very uncomfortable ride back to Palitana from the other side of the mountain (over 10 kilometers away)!

The experience of seeing Palitana was great and we were now ready to move on to Kutch in Gujarat...

-Dev

India - Sun and "Wav"es

After visiting sights within Ahmedabad, we headed outside the city for a look at various sites, including wells and temples. Due to the unpredictable amount of rainfall in the dry areas of Gujarat and Rajasthan, water is continuously collected in underground tanks and wells for later use.  In Gujarat, a number of intricately carved stepwells or 'wav'es can be found. Adelaj has a beautiful example of a stepwell built in 1499.  Popular legend (according to these two locals who told us the story) has it that the 5 Pandava brothers built 7 wells, including this one around Gujarat in one night. This type of stepwell has a large vertical shaft going down into the well.

Built around this shaft are beautifully carved columns and patios.  We scrambled up to the top of a crumbling winding staircase to peer down into the well  and edged around the very narrow sides of the shaft.  A very shady resting place!   

We then drove to the Sun Temple at Modhera.  If Adalaj, this place was even more spectacular. It covers an area of 100 square meters and is in a rectangular shape with triangular steps at the water level, while up above are 108 (considered an auspicious number) shrines with carvings of stories of Shiva, the Mahabharat, and the Ramayana. This temple preceded the Konarak temple in Orissa by 200 years.

The Sun Temple is an example of one of the many temples that are no longer in active use but still exude a powerful presence. Everywhere we went in restuarants and hotels in the area, we saw posters  advertising the Sun Temple, but when we were there, the only other people were some restoration workers.  It's quite a shame that such sights don't attract more visitors. as the temple facade and interiors is heavily carved with picture of gods, goddesses, animals and humans. Inside the temple, the arches are beautifully carved torans and on the ceilings are lifelike lotus flowers.

In contrast to the silence at Modhera, we also went to a very much in use temple at Akshardan. Akshardan sprawls over 23 acres and includes a huge Swaminarayan temple, an educational facility dedicated to peace and the power of positive thought, a children's part, and the ultimate 'edu-tainment' experience- walking in Swami Narayan's footsteps and understanding how he came to espouse his beliefs and how his teachings have brought peace to humanity.

There are hundreds of people queued in line to walk through the air conditioned rooms that having animatronic figures and voice-overs telling the story of Swami Narayan's life.  It all felt kinda Disneyland-ish to me! And, true to form, the last stop on the tour was the book/souvenir shop.   

-Smruti

India - Kutch Kutch Hota Hai

We visited the town of Mandvi, where Smruti's family used to live before moving to Bombay!  We saw the shipyard where wooden boats are built to this day.  We also visited the beach and toured the erstwhile king's residence (Vijay Vilas) where some scenes from Lagaan were shot.

We spent a few days in and around Bhuj, a city that was devastated by the 2001 earthquake in which over 20,000 people died.  Bhuj is being rebuilt, in part, but many of the historical monuments have become unstable.  We visited the Prag Mahal which was the home of the king of Kutch, once upon a time.  Prag Mahal was used (prior to the earthquake) as a site for the shooting of Lagaan, a hit Bollywood movie released in 2001.  The insides of the Prag mahal are filled with bird droppings and dusty animal trophies, including the hippo that's threatening to bit of Smruti's arm in this photo.  The nearby Aina mahal is in somewhat better shape. 

About 50 kilometers north of Bhuj is the Rann of Kutch, a large marshy region in Gujarat that borders the Sindh region of Pakistan.  The Rann consists of vaste swathes of flat arid land.  The main attraction is the wild ass of the Rann of Kutch, seen here in all its glory.  I could swear that I see a horn on its nose in this photo , which would, of course, turn the ass into a unicorn and make me the first person in the history of mankind to see a unicorn.

We visited Hudka, a village in the Rann, to look for good Kutchee embroidered pieces.  The government and NGO's are encouraging the local handicraft industry.  While Hudka did not turn up anything that we wanted to get, we ended up getting another piece from a place in Bhuj that had 16 types of embroidery on it (photo above).  We also visited a women's cooperative (WAMA) which was taking these local designs, modernizing them and then selling various items (handbags, clothes, cushion covers etc.) into the European and US markets.  Apparently, the local designs only have a niche market whereas the modernized designs have a very broad market in the West.

We wished we could have visited Dholavira also, a site from the Indus Valley Civilazation from 3000BC.  Unfortunately, Dholavira over 200 kilometers away and we did not have enough time to go there.

- Dev

India - Veerayatan

Halfway between Bhuj and Mandvi in Gujarat is Veerayatan, a school that was originally set up to provide education for children affected by the Gujarat earthquake in 2001 (measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale) in which over 20,000 people died and 1 million people were made homeless.  Currently this campus has expanded to include a vocational training center, residential hall, medical facilities and both Gujarati and English medium education for children that had lost both parents, a single parent, or those children whose families could not afford to send them elsewhere for an education.  The campus is administrated by a whole host of talented and committed staff such as Mataji (Sadhviji Shilapiji), a dynamic Jain nun who also lectures extensively on an international basis about Jainism and non-violence.   

Several years ago at a YJP (Young Jain Professionals) conference, I had heard Sadhviji speak about Veerayatan and the work being done there. Dev and I decided to spend some time volunteering at Veerayatan in any way we could.  We showed up and took on the tasks on helping write a proposal and translate some website and brochure documents into English.  Also working at Veerayatan were people from England,  various parts of the US, Bihar, as well as local people.  It was fantastic to see such energy towards grant development, teaching classes in various subjects, running a NGO on a daily basis, and working to meet children's emotional, educational, mental, and physical needs.

And the kids!  Almost immediately, we were surrounded by curious girls and boys ranging from ages 7 to 14 calling me 'Didi' and Dev, 'Bhaiya'.  For some reason, they all thought I was from India, and Dev was from America...that is, until they heard my accent!  All the girls kept wanting to know how Dev and I met and whether it was a love marriage, and all the boys talked to Dev about cricket!  Some things are constant round the world!  In the short time that we were there, we spent a lot of time with them, either in the computer lab, playing with  and just talking with the kids.  When we talked with some of the staff members, we learned that some of the children had had very traumatic experiences from the earthquake. One had been buried under the rubble of his house and could hear his mother screaming for help, but couldn't help her, but today he was smiling and very happy.   Other kids maybe had not lost parents, but were not suited to formal education and so were being encouraged to learn useful vocational skills so that they wouldn't be left behind their peers. Veeraytan was alos providing training for adults in such skill areas as weaving and graphic printing. When we left, the staff presented me with a lovely hand woven piece of cloth.

Here are some of the children at Veeryatan- they loved getting their pictures taken!

We also got a chance to see the new campus at Rudrani which has a sizeable Kutchi population. I got to practice the few words of Kutch that I know: Keiyano (how are you!)

-Smruti

India - G-U-J-J-U!

From Delhi, we flew to Gujarat for a few weeks of travelling around . Although we don't have any direct family still living in Gujarat, we luckily have close family friends scattered around.  We started in Ahmedabad, a busy, frenetic, and lively city.  We picked a place to stay out of the travel guide and ended up at the Gandhi Ashram (also called the Sabarmati Ashram) where Mahatma Gandhi spent a large part of his life!

We met with family friends Bharti maasi and Dharmendra maasa - at their home, we were treated to the full-on Gujarati vegetarian home cooking thali- farsan (savory snacks), rotli (chapatis), dal (lentils), bhat (rice), and shak (vegetables), and sweet dishes (shrikand), heaven after eating out all the time.  Dev heroically tried to come to terms with Gujarati eating habits like eating sweet dishes like shrikand with the meal and eating rice afterwards instead of with the meal!   

We had heard that Ahmedabad and the surrounding areas has some fascinating sights. Lucky for us, we had friends help us arrange a car, so getting around the crazy traffic was relatively painless.  Within Ahmedabad itself, we took a heritage walking tour within the old part of the city (Heritage Walking Tours).  Starting in the walled part of the city, we walked through some of the pols (neighborhoods) and saw how each one essentially had its own temples, markets and colorful bird feeders called chabootars!

We also learned about its varied history and how the influences of the British, Muslims, Marathas, and Gujaratis had shaped the architecture and culture of the area. The tour ended at the Jama Masjid with its lovely columns and hall.

Another must-see if you are in Ahmedabad is the Calico Museum of Textiles. It's actually housed in a very old intricately decorated wooden haveli.  Some of the displays include many rare textiles, some of which date back to the 17th century. Unfortunately, photographs weren't allowed, otherwise, we could have happily snapped pictures of all the exquisite works we saw. Quite by accident, we stumbled onto a tour being led around the museum- it was a tour on how textiles  played an imprtant role in the daily practice of Hindusim by depicting stories from the Mahabaharat or stories about Krishna's life.  Because many of the faithful could not read, the stories and lessons were woven into cloth, into pictures that everyone could understand.  The grounds of the museum are beautiful as well, there are shady gardens, pools and patios with some peacocks wandering around. A great relief from the dry heat of Ahmedabad! 

Finally, we went to visit an NGO called the Blind People's Association. We received a very warm welcome from various staff who took us around the campus to show all the rehabiiltation training that the students were learning.   It's quite amazing to hear some of the individual stories of students and see how far they have come in re-integrating into society with the new skills they have learned.  Some of the students were using the Internet through a program called Jaws for Windows that translated everything into voice cues.  Other students were building furniture, operating printing presses, designing greeting cards, stitching clothes and much much more.  Quite an inspiration!

-Smruti

India - Delhi Diary

We arrived in New Delhi, after leaving South Africa and transiting for a few hours through Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) and Bombay.  On the flight from Addis Ababa to Bombay, we sat next to several soldiers from the Indian army - apparently, about 1500 Indian soldiers had been stationed on the Ethiopia/Eritrea border for several months as part of a UN peacekeeping force.  The soldiers on our plane were going back to India for a couple of weeks on vacation.  They were happy to be stationed outside of India as the UN pays them a higher salary compared to what they got paid by the Indian army. We also bought a great CD by Aster Aweke whose style is kinda jazzy or Afrofunky. If you live in or around Wash DC, she plays there quite often.

In Delhi, we had our final wedding reception.  It was wonderful to see so many family members and friends.

A good time was had and we all got appropriately drunk... Here're some of the photos from our reception:

We went out several nights in Delhi - the amount of nightclubs, lounges and pubs has increased dramatically over the past few years - there are a bunch of places now that cater to all sorts of crowds.  Some of the nightlife we sampled - Turquoise Cottage (rock/grunge- Coldplay, Hoobastank, Nirvana and the cig lighters held up high were in effect), F-Bar (affiliated with Fashion TV-house music, great caipiroshkas, jam-packed on weekends) and Shalom (chilled out lounge & restaurant with great music).  We also went to several great restaurants, such as Olive (Mediterranean), Casbah/Spago(Italian-great tiramisu). 

Here's a video of F-Bar:

We also attended the wedding and reception of Dev's cousin Abhinav, and his wife Sonal.  It was great fun although Dev proceeded to imbibe a little too much alcohol! Here's a photo of Abhinav, Sonal, Smruti and me.

We attempted to be tourists in Delhi as well although social activities tended to take up most of our time!  We visited the Museum of Modern Art (next to India Gate) which had a good exhibition on 50 years of modern art in India - some of painters represented there were Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Shergil, Jatin Das and lots of others. 

We also did the India Gate thing... brought back some memories of going there for ice-cream 20 years ago. Also watched cricket being played on the maidans around India Gate.  Smruti got some henna done on her hand from a couple of girls from Rajasthan. 

We visited the Nehru museum at Trimurti Bhavan which is where Jawaharlal Nehru used to stay and work when he was Prime Minister of India in the late 40's and 50's.  The house itself had an interesting set of exhibits on the independence movement, including a couple of mentions of my grand-uncle, Deshapriya Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, and his wife, Nellie Sengupta. Click here for a short 1-page biography on the two. 

We made the mistake of going for a show to the Nehru Planetarium - we ended up sitting in the middle of 300 screaming 10 year olds watching a really bad production overhead.  I kept getting tickled on the head by the kids sitting behind me.  The person running the screening kept screaming at the kids to shut-up and all the school-teachers were too busy talking on their mobile phones to keep the kids in order.

And finally, we also went to see a polo match at the Delhi Racecourse grounds.  Surprisingly action-packed game with horses racing around a huge field.  The Maharaja of Kashmir was there.  Apparently, the Indian team does reasonably well on the global polo scene, along with other countries such as Argentina.  The players had names such as Haunchy and Brigadier Singh.  We also saw the distinctly Raj-era sight of a group of Sikh bagpipers playing ridiculously bad Indian filmi tunes at the end of each chukker.  The British legacy is alive and well in India (I guess)...

We also visited a gold shop. Lots of bling bling..
We also visited a mall for some shopping... 400 malls being built in India right now...

-Dev

India - Sudden Invincibility Syndrome (SISsy-ness)

One thing that has remained constant in Delhi is the madness of driving. For those of you who have been on the roads in Delhi, you will know what it is like. For those who haven't driven in Delhi (or India), here're the basic tenets of driving:

1) lanes do not exist;
2) your aim is to kill other people on the street - you will get more karma points for each person killed or knocked over;
3) use the car-horn liberally - at least once every two minutes;
4) do not wear your seat-belt - it's such a fashion faux-pas and it's more exciting!;
5) pack at least 7 people into each car - the more the merrier!;
6) drive with no more than 1 litre (1/2 gallon) of petrol in the tank - why not take a risk? it's good exercise to push the car to the nearest gas stationor you ca always call your personal driver to rescue you at 3am/from the club/the National Stadium (this happened to us) ; and, finally;
7) do not use your rear-view or side-view mirrors - this will make you liable for your own safety...a bad practice in Delhi (see below)!

In my opinion, there is a governing philosophy that somehow prevents a mass carnage of accidents from happening - this philosophy is called "Sudden Invincibility Syndrome" or SISsyness. It consists of three rules:

1) Survival of the largest - the larger the vehicle is, the more it can do what it wants, such as swerving into the middle of traffic without looking. Consequently, everybody lower down in the size hierarchy has to keep watching out for any larger vehicle. The only exception is animals which are always avoided. The hierarchy (from largest to smallest): any animal, truck, bus, SUV, car, three-wheeler, scooter, bicycle, pedestrian.

2) The ostrich or head-in-the-sand maneouver- If you don't look to see where you are going, then somebody else is totally responsible for making sure that they don't crash into you. Sample activities include buses joining traffic circles from the left without looking to see if there is anybody else already coming that way (forcing anybody already on the road to watch out for a sudden appearance of traffic from the left), pedestrians walking across the street without looking to see if there is any traffic about to run them over, and cars moving into oncoming traffic to overtake the car in front of them.

3) No-space-left-behind or the "getting to know your neighbor really well" syndrome- All available space on the road has to be taken up. For example, at a traffic light, if you leave even half a yard between your car and the car in front of you, then several bicyclists and scooters will edge into that space while you are waiting.

Note: This also applies to queues for movie tickets, train tickets, and bars.  When you shoot the offending person the "Smruti look of death (TM)" because they have encroached in your personal space, they look back blankly, as if they don't know they have totally cut in front of you (the 2nd grade rule of 'no cutting' doesn' t seem to be in effect here) or they will steadily ignore you by staring straight ahead, dodging your daggers-of-evil stares.

It's a total mystery why this only seems to bother non-locals.

Addendum: Now that we've also spent a considerable amount of time in Bombay, we have evidence to support the existence of Immediate Death Syndrome (IDS or Idiots) in the taxi-drivers of Bombay.  A condition of Idiots has just one key symptom - at all intersections, especially when there is a red-light signalling the taxi-driver to stop, he (mostly he's rather than she's) will gun the engine and accelerate into the pedestrians who have swarmed across the road in the blithe (yet, in Bombay, completely wrong) assumption that a green pedestrian signal means that they have the right to cross without being killed.  Of course, this sudden course of action by the taxi-driver (sometimes several taxi-drivers together in a sort of killer phalanx) results in the immediate scattering of the pedestrian crowd in the quest of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

-Dev

India - Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright

For those of you neophytes who do not know which poem this phrase is from, you will be pleased to know that the answer is at the bottom of this blog. You will also be pleased to know that I belonged to this class of neophytes until I typed the above phrase into Google two minutes ago.

Anyway, on with the blog.  After the rafting trip, we decided to take another trip from Delhi, this time to Ranthambore National Park, the hunting grounds of the Maharajas of Madhopur, in the state of Rajasthan.  Our train ride from Delhi's Nizamuddin station took 5 hours and passed quite peacefully.  It was quite phenomenal to be able to book the railway tickets online (at http://www.irctc.co.in) and have the tickets arrive by mail the next day! We did meet a Punjabi couple also going to Ranthambore who insisted that Delhi was going to become the greatest city in India and this would be 100% due to the Punjabis of Delhi who, according to them, liked to spend and were driving the economy of India. Anyway...

In Ranthambore, we stayed at the Tiger Safari Resort.  Quite a funny experience actually.  We realized that we were on the Lonely Planet trail here.  Everybody staying at the hotel was non-Indian and the hotel staff were quite surprised to have to talk to a guest in Hindi.  The dining room at the hotel was the funniest place - 100% Europeans, each person sitting with the same India Lonely Planet guide.  How depressing!  We have to get off of this Lonely Planet trail soon - even Lonely Planet has a name for its most-often-used routes - in Peru, they call it the Gringo Trail! The photo here is of the dawn at Ranthambore - beautiful (and cold!).

Next morning, at 6am, we set off on a canter which is a bus that has been sawed in half (i.e. the top half has been taken off), leaving a nice open air viewing platform for the game drive.  Again, our canter had 100% Europeans on it.  When I asked the driver why this was the case, he said that it was pure chance .. somehow I don't believe what he said.

We set off for the park - at the entrance to the park, we stopped for a half-hour as the driver went to get the permit to enter the park.  The canter was surrounded by vendors trying to sell warm clothes, balaclavas, hats, sunglasses and park souvenirs.  As we approached the park entrance, I heard one of the vendors say in Hindi, "Here come the European donkeys, let's go get them." The canters with Indian guests were left alone by the vendors - instead, the vendors focused on the canters with the Europeans.  And another vendor had an argument with an American on our canter as the American tried to correct the vendor's pronunciation of "sweater", which the vendor pronounced as "shooter." Both sides were in the wrong for arguing about this but perhaps it was too early in the morning for everybody. It didn't help that the drivers did not know any English whatsoever. Anyway...

Both game drives lasted about 3-4 hours each.  The Ranthambore reserve is very picturesque.  The fort dominates the area (as you can see in the photo to the left).  The area is mostly sparsely forested.  There are several lakes/ponds that surround the fort - at this time of the year, so many months after the monsoons, many of the lakes/ponds have started drying up and so the animals have to all congregate in a crowded manner at the water areas.  It makes for interesting viewing.

We were disappointed not to see any tigers on our two trips.  The closest we got was tiger pugmarks that had already been circled by another guide (see photo to the left).. But we saw a number of other interesting animals, including several ungulates (pardon the SAT word.. :-) ) such as sambar, neelgai and cheetal plus many other animals such as crocodiles, peacocks, monkeys (langoors), wild boar, ..  Here are some of the photos from our game drives:

The phrase in the title of this blog is from a poem by William Blake.  Click here to see the full text of the poem.  For those of you who are wondering why this phrase has been picked by Smruti, please email her because I DO NOT KNOW! :-)

-Dev