Are you ready to go to India?

Are you ready to go to India?

I should clarify one thing right away. This trip was to Northern India. I have several Indian friends that had encouraged me for over a period of years to go to India. After this trip, I was happy to tell them that I went to India. But when they heard where I went, they told me, “That’s not India, Southern India is India”. I guess I have to go back to India again, only next time to Southern India.

This trip was from October 27th to November 22, 2009. It was with Overseas Adventure Travel trip and it included five days in Bhutan.

I will just show a handful of photos to give some idea of our trip and the places that we saw.

The first photo was taken in Old Delhi. That’s a place that I will never forget. The whole time I was there I felt like I was on the set of a Spielberg movie. Old Delhi was pure adventure at its best.

The second photo is inside the main courtyard in the Amber Fort in Jaipur. The elephants have been in use there for centuries. Today, they are used to convey tourists. There was also music playing. This was a great visit for us, full of history, beauty, and mystique.

Below is the Taj Mahal. We had a disrupted visit there but it was still a great visit. The Taj Mahal might be a tourist trap but it’s a great one and worth every minute that we spent there plus every trinket hawker that we fought off there. The Taj was a trip highlight.

Below, we are in the village of Khajuraho. We visited some Chandelas Rajputs temples constructed back in the 9th to 12th centuries.  There were originally 85 temples but only 22 stand today, although there are still more large mounds that haven’t been excavated.  Each temple took 20 to 25 years to construct.

The last photo is in Varanasi, at the Aarti Ceremony. The ceremony and all of Varanasi were true trip highlights, including two boat trips out on the River Ganges.

Kolkata, India

Our first stop in India was Kolkata, formerly called Calcutta (British name).  The first paragraph below is a description that I cut and pasted from Wikipedia (with a few modifications).

Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal (an Indian state) and the second largest city in India (after Mumbai).  If Bangalore is the Seattle of India, than Kolkata is the sub-continent’s New York. It is an 'in your face' city that shocks and charms the unsuspecting visitor. Abject poverty mix inexplicably with crumbling British Raj-era gems, sprawling gardens and historical colleges. Long known as the cultural capital of India, Kolkata continues to spawn generations of poets, writers, film producers and Nobel Prize winners. If your trip only allows for a visit of one or two of India's metropolitan cities, than definitely consider placing Kolkata on your itinerary. Love it or hate it, you definitely won't forget the city on the River Hooghly.

Kolkata is located on the eastern edge of India near the Bay of Bengal.  Our guide said that the greater Kolkata area has around 15 million people but that some 4 million more people come into the area each day for work bringing the total to 19 million people.  Kolkata was the capital of India during the British Raj until 1911.  Kolkata was once the center of industry, education, science, culture, and politics in India.  It has since had intense political violence and clashes and has stagnated to a large degree since 1954.  The poverty, congestion, and pollution were more than a little hard to handle.

Our main Indian guide that we met in New Delhi said that “after we had seen Kolkata, the rest of India would not surprise us”.  He was right.

The first photo is the Victoria Memorial and museum, named in honor of Queen Victoria of England. It was constructed over a 20 year period and completed in 1921.  It’s a massive marble structure made with marble from the same quarry as the Taj Mahal.  It’s surrounded by extensive gardens and pools.  Many groups and families were having picnics and gatherings in the gardens.

The second photo was along the River Hooghly.  Our guide said that this river is a tributary river to the River Ganges.  We saw people bathing, as in soap and lather, in the river, but also just immersing themselves in the river as part of a spiritual cleansing and healing and getting blessings from the river.  I feel confident in suggesting that the river is very polluted.

In the third photo, you can see one of Kolkata’s famous hand-pulled rickshaws.  Our guide said that Kolkata is the only city in the world that still has hand-pulled rickshaws.  They have been outlawed or converted to bicycle rickshaws everywhere else due to the real or perceived hardship or inhumanity to the drivers.  The odd thing is that it appears extremely hard to pull a rickshaw by hand based on its construction, out-of-round wheels, heavy weight, uneven ground, hills, traffic, etc.  But almost every rickshaw puller we saw had a very slight build, looking something like Gandhi.

Mother Teresa, MC

Our first stop in Kolkata was at Mother Teresa, MC (Missionaries of Charity).  This was actually Mother Teresa’s second home for dying people.  Our guide said that her idea was just to provide a place for people who were dying to be at peace and have some comfort.  This place was started in 1953.  You duck down a narrow street or alley off a more main street to get to the door.  It’s not an easy place to find.  Once you walk down the alley and around a corner or two, you come to the door which you can see in the first photo.

It’s a four or five story building which is very simple and the whole building looks like what you see in the first photo.  Once inside the door, we were in a courtyard.  We were only allowed to take photos in the courtyard and in Mother Teresa’s tomb area which is inside a room right off the courtyard.  You can see mother Teresa’s tomb in the second photo.

We were also allowed to see Mother Teresa’s bedroom which was very small and very plain.  There is a statue of Mother Teresa in the courtyard.  We noticed local people stopping at the statue for a blessing, so I had Vicky do as the locals were doing, which you can see in the third photo. 

After a day in Kolkata, Vicky said she understood why Mother Teresa picked Kolkata. Vicky said, “You can’t walk out the door without seeing someone in desperate need of help”.  From my journal after our second day in Kolkata, I wrote, “The destitute state of so many millions of people was depressing.  They need thousands of Mother Teresas here.”

British East India Company

This next stop might seem rather insignificant, but historically, it’s really interesting.  The British East India Company was an English joint-stock company.  It was granted an English royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600.  Some people consider it the world’s first corporation.  It was originally planning to trade in spices but that didn’t work out too well as the Dutch were well entrenched in that trade.  They competed with the Dutch, Portuguese and French in the East Indies and China.  Eventually, they traded in cotton, silk, indigo dye, tea, saltpeter, and opium.  The company merged and changed over the years, but eventually, the East India Company went on to rule the entire country of India.  It had its ups and downs but was a major force in India for over 200 years. 

Our guide said that the office of the British East India Company was in St. John’s Church.  We found that strange, but he said that the East India Company built St. John’s Church.  The church was one of the first public buildings in Kolkata.  So with few options for a place to locate their offices and since the church was the Anglican Church or Church of England, it only made sense.  If you look at the first photo, you can see St. John’s Church.  If you look at the sign to the right of the St. John’s Church sign, the window right behind that sign is the window of the East India company office.

The second photo is the office of the British East India Company.  I looked online on the computer and only found a reference to this office being the office of Warren Hastings.  He worked for the East India Company and was the first governor-general of British India.  It also looked like they played a little bit of cards at the table when they weren’t conducting East India Company business.

St. John’s Church was often called the Stone Church and it included a 174 foot stone tower modeled after a church tower in England.  You can see the tower in the third photo which was taken from the roof of the church.

Oh! Calcutta

Kolkata was a wild and crazy place.  It was hard to capture it in pictures.  By the time I saw a photo, it was usually too late to take it.  The whole town seemed to be in motion all the time.  It seemed like there was always a million people trying to get to the same place as us.  Kolkata also has its very wealthy people and very nice areas.  Kolkata has a tremendous history which includes many remains of the British empire.  We arrived at night and left the airport for our hotel at 11:00 pm.  We were shocked to see hundreds or maybe thousands of people sleeping in the streets, mostly in rows like cordwood.  People were also sleeping on the sidewalks, on cars, on fences, boxes and thousands were sleeping at the train station which was closed for the night.  People ignored traffic and road signs, drove in any direction they wanted, and all honked their horns almost constantly.  The air in Kolkata smells bad, acrid and unpleasant.  Trash and garbage was everywhere.  Animals went everywhere.  People bathed and shaved and urinated in the gutters and streets without any hint of embarrassment.  After all, there was no place else to do these things for these people.  There was lots of smoke from cooking fires and incense.  People sold food and goods everywhere, even to us at intersections while we were in our bus.  We went to a mall in Kolkata and the security to get into the mall was as good or better than it is to get into a U.S. airport.  They had X-ray machines, hand pat downs, metal detector wands, and searched every bag including my camera.  We had the best meal of our entire trip in Kolkata at a Bengali restaurant called “Oh! Calcutta”.  Our meal included mocha (banana flour) which was very spicy and very tasty, rice, coconut chicken curry, dal (lentils), shoestring potatoes, a fresh pea dish, boneless beckti fish cooked in a banana leaf with a tangy mustard-horseradish sauce that was absolutely excellent, plus vanilla ice crème and tea. 

I’m just going to throw out a few photos to stress the variety of what we saw in Kolkata.  The first photo was the Paresnath Temple, a Jain (religion) Temple.  It was built in 1867 and stood out like a diamond in a garbage dump.  It was in the middle of a very dodgy area but it was extremely flashy and clean.  This temple had inlaid mirror pillars, fancy chandeliers, marble floors, and a gilded dome.  It had other brightly colored buildings and a nice central garden area.  The whole place just defied its surroundings.

The next photo is a roadblock that we ran into on our drive.  The intersection got closed down by a protest march.  Our guide said that they had protest marches every single day in Kolkata.  This one was by the Communist Party.  You can see them with their red flags in the back left of the intersection.  Kolkata has lots of political unrest and I could see why.  In fact, we were in Kolkata on both ends of our trip to Bhutan and the Communists were protesting both times. 

The third photo was taken at the Indian Botanical Gardens.  It is across the Hooghly River in Howrah, not in Kolkata.  The gardens are massive with 273 acres of land and were first opened in 1786.  The gardens aren’t what they once were, but they were still a nice place to visit.  Darjeeling and Assam teas were developed here in these botanical gardens.  Gardens include extensive numbers of plants with over 12,000 trees and bushes with many bamboos, citrus, jasmine, bougainvilleas, palms, water lilies, creepers, ferns, and orchids.  The highlight for me of the gardens was what you see in the third photo.  It’s The Great Banyan Tree which is over 250 years old and has some 2800 prop roots.  The main trunk of this tree died in 1925.  The whole tree looks to be the size and shape of a pro football stadium.  Aerial roots keep dropping down and taking root and the tree just keeps on expanding.  The Great Banyan covers something over 161,000 square feet of ground.  I don’t think Vicky got but around half of it in the photo.

Black Hole of Calcutta

The Black Hole of Calcutta was the guard room in the old Fort William.  This was a British East India Company Fort built to strengthen and protect the company’s holdings from other nations like the French, Dutch, and Portuguese.  But the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah (think local king) didn’t like the British taking such control.  He warned the British, but they just ignored him.  Eventually, the Nawab made his point by attacking the fort.  The Bengalese captured Fort William on June 19, 1756 and held the British prisoners of war inside the guard room.  The claim is that the British and Anglo-Indian soldiers and civilians were held overnight in conditions so cramped that many died from suffocation, heat exhaustion and crushing.  It’s claimed that 123 prisoners died out of 146 prisoners held.  Some historians have questioned this incident as well as the numbers of deaths and so on, but it is nonetheless the source of the phrase “the black hole of Calcutta”.

I can remember hearing the phrase “black hole of Calcutta” for my entire life, so I was elated to be able to actually see it.  That was not possible.  The fort has long since been torn down.  The Kolkata Library now stands in its place.  While the library is itself an impressive building, it doesn’t have a “black hole” guard room inside it.  What we did get to see was a Memorial built to commemorate the incident, not that far from the original location.  The memorial sits beside St. John’s Church.  You can see the memorial in the first photo.  The second photo is just one of the marble pieces that describes the famous event.

We went to our hotel after this long day of touring Kolkata.  We checked into the Park Hotel.  The hotel was sort of a cross between a modern art building, a strip mall, and I’m not sure what else.  At any rate, we got our key and headed up to the third floor.  We came out of the elevator, turned down the hall and stopped in our tracks.  We were in near shock.  For some unknown reason, we had been assigned a room in the Park Hotel that was located in the Black Hall of Calcutta.  You can see for yourself in the third photo.  The whole hall was done in black marble.  Our bathroom was flooded on our arrival and we had various other problems.  We survived the night, but I don’t mind telling you, it was a very long night.

Baha'i House of Worship

We got to Delhi (or New Delhi as it’s known) in the afternoon and didn’t have a chance to get out until late afternoon.  We only had time for one stop (traffic being horrendous) and our one stop was the Baha’i House of Worship.  This religion invites all people and all religions and all races to worship here.  They honor the Creator of the Universe and express love between God and man.  I was very impressed with their philosophy and approach to religion which includes science and equality.

Their house of worship design was inspired by the lotus which is a beautiful flower and a symbol of purity that is associated with worship and religion in India.  The building actually looks like a lotus flower.  It has nine white marble-covered petals in the center surrounded by nine more marble-covered sepals or petals and that is surrounded by nine pools of water which signify the green leaves of the lotus.  Inside this huge building was just marble flooring and wooden pews.  There were no religious icons at all.  We had to take off our shoes to go inside and there was no talking inside.  Thousands of people were streaming into and out of the building.  There were not as many people as we left as it was nearly closing time.  The religion itself sounds very sensible and appealing.

The first photo is as we were approaching the building.  The sun is just to the left and behind the building, so it’s not a great photo.

The second photo was taken from the back side of the building, so the sun was behind me and to the right.  I loved the symmetry of the building, but perhaps the most amazing aspect of the symmetry was the fact that the pigeons were sitting almost symmetrically on either side of the lowest petals or sepals.  Can you see that in the photo?  It must be one heck of a religion to get the pigeons to buy into the whole symmetry thing.

The last photo was taken as we were leaving.  The grounds were quite nice but not outstanding.  They were also symmetrical as you might notice.  It was near closing time, so very few people were still coming in at that point in time.

Old Delhi

Our guide started us off with a bang today.  Our first move was to go down a flight of stairs to Delhi’s Metro System.  It’s an underground train similar to our BART train at home in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Our guide said this would be a most amazing trip.  He said were going down to the Metro from the 21st century.  He said we would only be passing a few Metro stops and then we would come up out of the Metro in the 16th century, commonly known here as Old Delhi.  I would have to agree with him.  Coming up into Old Delhi was a bit like walking on to the set of a Stephen Spielberg movie.  The whole place was a bee-hive of human activity and we were right in the middle of it.  The roads were narrow, winding, crumbled, and crowded and it was every man, cow, donkey and goat for himself.  Old Delhi looked like it was about to fall down, but everything and everyone was moving so fast that no one seemed to notice.  Our guide said that he took us there in mid morning because it was not very crowded then.  He said if we went later, it would be so crowded that we would have a hard time getting around the place.

I have just included a few street scene photos that I took in Old Delhi.  This was right where we came up out of the Metro, so it was a main street.  It was wide enough for vehicles to use, unlike many of the Old Delhi streets.

Rickshaw Ride in Old Delhi

In the last photo of the prior post, Vicky was just getting into our rickshaw for a ride through Old Delhi.  Our bicycle-rickshaw ride lasted for an hour and it was about as exciting of an adventure as I think I’ve ever experienced.  I felt like a blood cell in someone’s main artery, with some detours through a bunch of side arteries.  The fact that we got through our hour ride without getting in an accident or seeing anyone get injured at all told me that this was business as usual for Old Delhi.

The still photos were taken by Vicky and I from our rickshaw on our ride through Old Delhi.  You will notice that the streets were narrow and crowded.  Our guide said this was the slow time of the day, but I can’t imagine how people get around during the busy time.

I was surprised that I had the presence of mind to take a few short videos with my still, point-and-shoot camera, but I did.  I also remembered how it worked which was even more amazing.  These aren’t great videos, but they give you a much better idea of what it was like to take a rickshaw ride through Old Delhi.  I loaded the videos on U-Tube and provided links below, so all you need to do is be on line and control-click on the links.

 The first video was on the main street where we started, right after coming up from the Metro into Old Delhi.

The second video was a much smaller street, but not the narrowest or most winding street by any means.

The third video is back on a major street with vehicle traffic.

Jama Masjid

This is the Jama Masjid, India’s largest Islamic mosque.  It’s located in Old Delhi on Chandni Chowk street and was the end point of our rickshaw ride through Old Delhi.  This mosque took six years to build by 5,000 workers and was completed in 1656 and is made from a combination of red sandstone and marble.  It has many broad steps up leading to a two-story gateway to get inside since it was built on a small hill or section of high ground.  Once inside, the enclosed courtyard holds 25,000 people.  It has a square ablution tank in the center for the washing of feet.  We saw people washing parts other than their feet as well.  The mosque features an onion-shaped dome and tapered minarets.  The mosque was commissioned and built by Shah Jahan who also built the Taj Mahal.  It is a Mughal mosque and the principal mosque of Old Delhi.  It has three gates, four towers and two 130 feet tall minarets.  It also has relics and an antique copy of the Quran written on deer skin.

The first photo is  the mosque itself.  I took quite a few photos but the air was very dirty in Delhi and the sun was making it difficult to take photos.  This one probably came out the best.  They are doing some repair work as you can see some scaffolding near the main dome.

The second photo is inside the prayer hall.  Again, it was all built with marble and red sandstone.

The third photo was just a few of the worshippers in the mosque that day.

Sis Ganj Gurudwara

Our guide said that Indians have a saying which goes, “you can go anywhere in the world and you will always find two things: potatoes and Sikhs.  Our next stop was Old Delhi’s most famous Sikh shrine.  This is the Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib.  It is built on the site where the ninth Sikh Guru was beheaded in 1675.  He was beheaded on orders of the Mughal emperor at that time for refusing to convert to Islam.  That sounds like it could have happened last week in some parts of the world.  This Gurudwara commemorates his martyrdom.

This temple was built over a period of time starting in 1784 and they are still adding on to it today.  Inside the temple, we heard continuous chanting of scriptures and there was a continuous line of people offering flowers.  The inside of the temple was decorated with lines of colored foil and tinsel on the ceiling.  You can see the main temple in the first photo.  The main temple and floors were all marble.

The second photo was to the right of the main temple.  This was a reflecting pool which was full of really large carp.  You can see a few of them in the shallow water, especially near where the two guys are feeding them.  This gives you a better idea of the size and scope of the temple grounds.

The third photo is in another area of the temple complex.  I had to have a cloth covering my head to hide all of my hair.  My hat didn’t cover the hair on the back of my head well enough.  The Sikhs cover all the hair on their heads.  I wanted Vicky to take this photo because the guy next to me in the photo had a curved sword that was about two feet long hanging from his belt.  You can see the sword’s silver hilt in the photo, but the sword curved back around his body.  Quite a few guys had swords and I believe they had to be entitled to wear one.  Some guys my age or younger had swords too, but their swords were like six inches long.  This guy really had a sword.  None of these guys spoke English, so I figured I was taking my chances asking for a photo, but they seemed pleased to accommodate me.

The Sikhs Food Factory

We are still at Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib, the Sikh temple in Old Delhi.  Our tour guide arranged for our group to get a private tour of the temple’s kitchen.  Sikh members of this temple volunteer their time and experience to prepare food to feed all people who want to come here to eat.  It’s like the programs we have in the States to feed the homeless.  In the case of this Sikh temple, they do it in a big way.  That’s not a surprise since we are in Old Delhi and I’m sure lots of people could use a free meal. 

In the first photo, you can see people cutting up zucchini squash and other vegetables.  They were just sitting on the floor and working away. 

In the second photo, you can see a guy adding just a tad bit of oil to his wok.  There was quite a flame under that wok and personally, I would have been wearing shoes.

The guy in the third photo was stirring really fast, so the photo is a bit blurry.  These pots were just to the right of the woks.  I’m not sure what was in these pots but it smelled really good.

Now we come to my favorite part of our private tour of the temple’s kitchen.  Naan (bread) was so popular in India that we had it at every meal.  I believe that is true for all parts of India as well.  So the Sikhs were making a lot of naan for their meals program.

The first naan photo below starts from taking batches of dough to individual balls for each piece of naan.  You can also see some other parts of the kitchen including some woks in the background.

An adult and a couple of kids are cooking the naan in the next photo.  They had several griddles for this.

The last photo is just a pot full of naan, ready to serve.

If these kitchen photos seem silly to you, Vicky and I cook for large groups up here on our farm, so we are always interested in these operations.  Vicky’s parents were cooking for large groups way back when, so we are keeping the family tradition alive.  I know that some people on my blog list find this as interesting as I do. I also greatly admire the Sikhs at this temple for stepping up to feed so many hungry people.

Qutub Minar

We are in Delhi and this is the Qutub Minar (or Qutb or Qutab Minar) which is the world’s tallest brick minaret.  It’s a 238 foot tall red sandstone minaret which is five stories high and has 378 steps leading to the top.  It lies within the Qutub complex which our guide said was the original first city of Delhi and first capital of India.  Construction on the minaret began in 1193 but was added on to later and so wasn’t finished until 1368.  This complex originally had 27 Hindu temples but like many ancient places in the world, they were torn down to build this minaret and some of the other current buildings.  The area had a mosque, various buildings with domes, arches, covered walkways, carved walls, pillars, ponds and a 4th or 5th century iron pillar.  From what I read, this was the number one tourist stop in India in 2006 with almost 4 million visitors, versus 2.5 million visitors to the Taj Mahal.  The mosque is dead today and the place is clearly not what it once was, but it was still well worth visiting.  One side note was that the whole area was thick with rosy-cheeked parakeets as well as other birds and animals.

In the area of Delhi around the Qutub Minar, we passed some so-so neighborhoods.  But we also passed a golf course and our guide said it was one of 18 golf courses in Delhi.  We also passed an engineering college and our guide said that current graduates of this college start at salaries of $120,000 U.S.  I saw people living in this area that I doubt will make that much money in their lifetimes.

You can see the minaret and a couple of other buildings in the first photo.

You can see some of the sandstone arches in the second photo which had very detailed carving in the sandstone plus you can see the twenty-four foot tall iron pillar made in the 4th or 5th century and still rust free, so good was their iron-making skills.

The last photo is a closer shot of a couple of the buildings, all originally made or covered using red sandstone and white marble. 

Chomu Palace

We have now left Delhi and traveled into the Indian state of Rajasthan.  We are in the Jaipur District of Rajasthan.  We stopped for lunch at the Chomu Palace.  We were in the town of Chomu when we turned off the main road and ended up on a small winding dirt road.  The area looked like an area where we didn’t want to be.  We rounded another corner and arrived at the Chomu Palace, just in time for lunch.  This palace is 300 years old and a palace by anyone’s standards.  Today, it is a hotel and restaurant.  In earlier days, it was the palace of the younger brother of the King of Rajasthan.  It is opulent with marble, carved wood and sandstone, grand chandeliers, courtyards, gardens, pools and surrounded by a massive wall with a massive gate to gain entry to the palace.

You can see our group filing into the main palace for lunch in the first photo.

The second photo isn’t a very good photo, but it’s where we ate lunch.  I was trying to give a sense of the room and its history and decorations.  It was a great room and they served us a fifteen course meal which was very good, as was the service.

After lunch, they gave us a tour of the palace.  I will only include one photo from the many that I shot.  The photo was described to us as the “women’s quarters”.  It was very ornate and very comfortable.  It seems to me that the king’s took very good care of their women – and judging by the size of their quarters, he must have had quite a few ladies at his beckon call.

Town of Chomu

After lunch at the palace, we decided to walk around the town a bit.  It was a “small” town or village, by Indian standards.  I don’t know how many people, but not too many for India.  I don’t think that this town sees many tourists as we really caught people’s attention as we walked around.  But we didn’t attract any beggars and the hawkers hardly bothered with us, so I think they were just curious about us.

The first photo has some vegetables for sale in it.  I’m always big on the produce markets.  Their produce looked very good and that was true for all of India on our trip. 

The second photo was pretty typical of India.  Almost all of the women wear saris and for the most part, they were very colorful and very beautiful.

The third photo was along the main road through town.  There was very little open space to walk.  The cars and vehicles used up the whole street and the vendors and cows and everything else went right up to the street, so we had to weave our way along the road dodging in and out of the road, vendor’s space, parked vehicles, and resting cattle.

Jaipur

Welcome to the Pink City.  Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan.  It was founded in 1727 and was once the capital of royalty.  We were told that Jaipur was the first well planned city in India and so far, it has been the only city we’ve seen that looks well planned.  Some people even call it the Paris of India.  The city is divided into sectors separated by broad streets.  It has a distinct and relatively consistent architecture which I really liked.  You will see what I’m talking about in these photos.  Jaipur is a city of some two million people. 

This first photo is the Hawa Mahal or Palace of Winds.  It was built in 1799, is five stories high, and has close to 1000 windows.  While a big palace from the front, Hawa Mahal is only one room thick.  It was built so that the women of Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh’s court could discreetly get some air and at the same time watch the activity in the streets below.  It was built to take advantage of the westerly winds which blow through this palace.  The servants would also throw water on the lattice to add to the cooling effect.  The palace is made of pink sandstone.

Jaipur was a walled city with gates.  The gates were originally closed at night.  While no longer closed at night, they are still in place and quite impressive.  While it was still a challenge to cross the street here, the gates did provide some blocking along the way.

The third photo is just a typical Jaipur street scene with shops in the background and people flowing by in the street. I loved the continuity of the architecture in Jaipur.

Amber Fort

The Amber Fort and Palace (also spoken and spelled Amer instead of Amber) was perhaps the highlight of Jaipur.  It sits on the hills above Jaipur and is the lowest of three forts along the same ridge of mountain.  Above Amber Fort are Nahargarh Fort and Jaigarh Fort.  Raja Man Singh began building Amber Fort in 1592 and work continued for 125 years.  It was the capital of the Kachhawah Rajputs for centuries.  It is made of red sandstone and white marble.  Artistically it is a blend of Hindu and Mughal (Muslim) architecture.  The Palace lies within the fort as back in those days, you couldn’t have a palace without a fort to protect it. 

Amber Fort can be seen in the first photo.  It doesn’t look that big here as we were across the (dry) lake and still quite a ways away from the fort.  The fort has many gates, courtyards, gardens, temples, pools, apartments, and so on.  We spent a couple of hours here, but it wasn’t nearly enough time to explore it all.  The whole place has tunnels and hidden passageways and is a bit of a maze.  Those were to conceal movement within the palace and to allow time to escape in case of an emergency.  I found it very intriguing.

The Jaleb Chowk or main courtyard can be seen in the second photo.  This was where they would parade a returning army and of course, a whole army would fit in this courtyard.  They used elephants to shuttle tourist up the long incline to this point.  You can see a few of the elephants in the courtyard.  Music was played when we entered the courtyard which was how they announced someone’s arrival to the whole complex back in those days.

The third photo was the Ganesh Pol or palace gate.  This lead to the private parts of the palace.  It was elaborately carved and painted and also included lattice corridors above for the Queen to hear and see the more public courtyard (but not the main courtyard) below it.  You can actually see a few people standing behind the lattice above the main entrance.

The first and third photos below are inside the Palace area while the second photo is just outside of the palace gate.  The first photo is a courtyard inside the palace area.  The high walls around this garden were to give protection to the family from wind and sandstorms plus some solitude and privacy from the rest of the fort.  This photo probably only shows about half of the courtyard.  You can also see another fort up the mountain ridge behind Amber fort.  The fort above was originally the royal treasury but was later adapted for use primarily as water storage for Amber Fort.  

The next photo is the Diwan-i-Am or Hall of Public Audience.  This pavilion was located in the courtyard outside of the palace gate.  This hall is marble, red sandstone, limestone, and alabaster panels with fine inlaid work.  It was in a very pleasant setting in the courtyard.  The purpose of this hall was so that common people could have an audience with the king and his court and make suggestions or requests.  It was in the courtyard near the palace gate so that the Queen could look through the lattice and listen to the people and the king and keep up on what was going on during the meetings.  The tradition was that the women were neither seen or heard.

The last photo is a close up of the Sheesh Mahal or Palace of Mirrors.  This was located in the same courtyard with the gardens in the photo above.  It was a good size structure.  This palace was designed for light and romance.  It is said that one single candle could light up the entire palace at night, so effective was the design and use of mirrors.  Romance and keeping the women happy was a big part of the king’s responsibilities.  Our guide said that a king might have a dozen marriages and that each bride would come with 100 women.  That would give the king 1200 women or wives – for his pleasure.  The pleasure part, I can understand.  Keeping 1200 women happy, well that’s another story….

Vicky, above, is the one woman that I try to keep happy…

Jaipur Street Food

I get a lot of questions inquiring about if we ate food from street vendors.  We did in Jaipur.  We literally ate our way around town.  We had chai tea, gooseberries, some white sugar product for the gods, chickpea fudge, dried and salted chickpeas with garnishes, peanut brittle, molasses sesame candy, and some herb pills to prevent (or induce) farting – which was our tour guide’s idea.

You can see the chickpea (garbanzo beans) fudge in the first photo.  It’s in the pan in the bottom center of the photo, just to the left of the guy sitting there.  It was very good.

We saw the product sold in the second photo quite often.  They would take a page from a magazine and roll it into the shape of an ice cream cone and then put in the ingredients.  In this case it was dried and salted chickpeas with tomatoes, onions, peppers, and so forth on top as garnishes.  This was also very good.

You can see the kitchen crew making the molasses sesame candy in the third photo.  The guy on the right was cooking it up.  It was also quite good.

Did we get sick?  Of course we did.  We were in India and we went in for the entire experience.

Jaipur Home Visit

We had two home-hosted dinners in India.  Our tour company arranges for our group to eat a home-cooked meal in some family’s house.  The first home meal was at a middle-class family.  These photos are from the second home-hosted dinner.  It was at the Jaipur home of the Jaideep Singh family.  They were originally in the Rajput caste which was the ruling class.  They were very nice people and had a fantastic home.  They were a lively and talkative family.  The couple runs a school with grades K through 8 and are hoping to eventually increase it to all the way through grade 12.  The grandfather recently retired from being the Wildlife Commissioner for the State of Rajasthan.

You can see one wing of their house in the first photo.  We had drinks and snacks on the lawn in their garden before dinner.  This was after drinks and on our way into the house when I took this photo, so it was already dark.  The woman in the photo is the grandmother of the house.

The second photo was in a sitting room of some sort.  They had several such rooms.  You can see a picture of our hosts on the wall on the right side of the tiger’s head.  His grandfather shot that tiger.  It was a very nice place and if something looks silver or gold, that’s because it is silver or gold.

Our host’s father is in the third photo with Vicky.  We had been told that ‘historically’ in India, all real men had mustaches.  IF a man did not have a mustache, people would have some doubts about him.  One of our group asked this man about not having a mustache.  He laughed and said that as soon as he retired from being the Wildlife Commissioner, the first thing he did was to shave off his mustache, and then he laughed some more.

Milk Market

I believe that this is the first time in our travels that we have visited a ‘milk market’.  We stopped here first thing in the morning on this day.  The market was just along the side of the road.  The milk market entails wholesalers, retailers, buyers, customers, and everyone else that’s interested, like us.  In this milk market, they sold cow, buffalo, and goat’s milk.  Cow’s milk is for babies and nursing mothers and is more expensive.  Most people buy milk every day and make yogurt, so milk is a staple.  Our guide said that this milk market does not sell camel’s milk because camel’s milk only has a shelf life of four hours.  Other milk markets, however, do sell camel’s milk as well.

You can see milk coming in from a dairy in the first photo.  I don’t think that all the guys in back work for the dairy.  I suspect that the driver was just picking up some extra money by giving these guys a ride.  We almost never saw any vehicles driving on the road without people loaded in them.

You can see people selling and buying milk in the second photo.  Some people purchased milk for resale, others purchased milk for themselves.  The photo that I didn’t get was a guy testing the milk.  He sticks two fingers down into the big milk can and watches and feels the milk as it drips off his fingers.  Our guide said that was to test if the seller had ‘cut’ the milk with water.  I wondered where some of those guys fingers had been prior to sticking them into the milk.

A guy is about ready to go deliver or resell some milk in the third photo.

We purchased chai tea quite a few times in India from people on the streets, families in towns that we walked through, and at a truck stop.  We had chai tea made with cow’s milk, buffalo’s milk and camel’s milk.  They were all good.  I thought the camel’s milk chai was a bit stronger, but Vicky didn’t seem to think so.  Mostly the chai tea was very sweet due to plenty of sugar.