Rob and Annie's Excellent Adventure: Jaipur

This is Annie; a great lady.  She is the mother of my two daughters.  We were divorced 40 years ago.  One of the benefits of growing old:  we can't remember what we were mad about.

Annie loves to travel.  It wasn't hard to talk her into a trip to India.  We spent all of November '10 in India with side trip to Bali. 

She is a good organizer.  She does that for a living.  So when she decided to come to India she did the research.  She booked a tour and went all over northern India.  Veranasi, Delhi, Taj Mahal, Jaipur and Puskar to name a few......by herself.  She had a tour guide and a driver every where she went.  I met her in Jaipur.  We spent a day in Jaipur and then went to Puskar for the annual camel market/fair.  It was a great trip.  In the next few posts I will share some of this with you.

Here are two guys from the tour company.  The one on the left met me at the airport in Jaipur and took me to the hotel.  He made me suspicious.  On the way to the hotel I asked him how much a rick ride around city center would cost.  He told me INR 300.  There isn't a 300 rupee rick ride anywhere in India.  I am always wary of folks taking advantage of ex-pats.  For his next trick he told me I was invited to dinner with a "royal" family.  Annie was going and I could join her.  For me however there would be an additional charge:  INR 3500.  I almost fell outta the car.  That's $75 USD.  I gave him a hard time and paid him anyway since I wanted to join Annie.  He was an OK guy I just thought that was a little extreme. 

I went to the dinner.  It was interesting.  The family hosting was actually the vestige of a royal family.  Several brothers lived together with their families in a big home in Rajasthan.  The meal turned out to be a INR 100 buffet but all-in-all it was an enjoyable evening.

The fellow on the right was one of the tour guides who took Annie around.  She spent most of the tour with this fellow.  His name is Jitendra Shekhawat.  He was quite educated with a master's degree in Indian history.  It turns out that it is possible to get certification to be a tour guide in India.  He certainly had that and was very good. He took good care of us.

Rajasthan is a fascinating place.  Jaipur is the capital.  There are a lot of historic sites.  Shown below is the Amer fort.  It was actually moved to it present site in 1727.  The popular thing to do is take an elephant ride up to the fort.  It's a long ride and road is narrow and as the road approachs the gate to the fort it is steep and a long way down. 

Annie's comment was,

"If they as you if you want an elephant ride up to the fort, say no." 

"Get up on the elephant, have your picture taken and get back down."

Here's another elephant.  Not the one Annie rode to the top.  One that was on the walkway where I took the fort pix. 

This guy was on the same walkway.  They were all charging to have their pix taken.  After all what is India without a snake charmer?

This next site is called the "Wind Palace".  It was built in 1799.  It's purpose was to allow royal ladies to view everyday life without being seen since commoners were not allowed to see their faces.  Jatendra said they used to shop from those windows by lowering money on a string.

Here are a few street scenes from Jaipur.

We drove through this gate.  It was one car wide.  The police were directing passage.

These pix were taken a small grain and pulse market.  I was interested because there were so many pigeons hangin' out and folks were feeding them.

I have included this because I thought it was so colorful.  I bought a couple of T-shirts from the shop next door.





No trip to anywhere in India is complete without a stop at a craft shop.  This trip was no exception.  I thought is was an interesting shop.  They had a lot of unusual stuff.  I bought a Paschmina rug which I love.  I bargained for about 70% of the original price but who knows what kind of deal it was however I do love the rug.

















Bali

Annie and I spent last Thanksgiving in Bali.  We started this tradition in '09 when we visited my cousin Judy in Mexico on the Mayan Rivera.  We were sitting on that beautiful Carribean beach in the sun when Annie turned to me and said,

"You know, this ought to be a tradition for us.  Let the kids fend for themselves on Thanksgiving while we loaf on a beach somewhere.  We've done our time in the kitchen with turkey."

I thought that was a great idea.  I have always thought turkey was overrated.

Bali is a beautiful place.  Green and lush and the people are friendly.  Tourism is an important business there.  I thought the prices were reasonable in the face of that.  I would have loved to have had dinner in the setting shown in the image above.  However, we traded that for a sunset dinner on the beach.

  

Good trade.  The food was outstanding. The food court in the image below was near our hotel.  We ate there more than once.  I can't say it was Asian street food cheap but it was oh sooooo good.

The sunsets are spectacular.  Here I caught some folks posing in the sunset.  This was on the beach right accross the street from our hotel.

And here's a child on the same beach in the same sunset.

  This fellow is a local muscian who happened to be providing dinner music at a roadside cafe.  We had stopped to view the landscape when I heard this music and snapped this image.

Here's proof that you can't be on the map unless you have a Hard Rock Cafe tucked away somewhere.

 There were lots of artisans.  Batik is popular.  There is also lots of woodworking.  These large slab tables were interesting.  I have been reading about them in my woodworking books.  The trick here is to get a slab this size to cure without large cracking. 

 

There were some beautiful temples.  The one shown here was called the Monkey Temple.  The setting was spectacular. 

 However the monkeys were spoiled.  They had attitude.  We were warned that they would steal stuff from you.  Sure enough, one grabbed Annie's sunglasses right off her head.  The one here is so interested in this juice bottle she forget to pull her skirt down.  These monkeys could have used some manners althought that is probally right up there with getting teenagers to clean their rooms. 

I will indulge in one last beach picture.  Those are monsoon clouds.  I reccomend Bali.  Even during monsoon.

It's a New Year

My last blog post was back in September.  The fourth quarter was a busy time.  Annie, the mother of my daughters, came to visit in November.  She stayed until we flew back to the states for Christmas on the 2d of December.  Annie was here with me in Bangalore for about a week after she arrived.  Then she went up into northern India on a tour.  Agra, Delhi, Veranasi, Jaipur, Pushkar et al.  She was gone about eight days. 

I caught up with her on day five in Jaipur. From there we went to the camel fair in Pushkar. Jaipur and Pushkar are both cities in Rajasthan. Rajasthan is truely an interesting and colorful place. The camel fair was over the top. We stayed in tent in a compound run by the tour company Annie had hired for her tour. We were quite comfortable for the two nights we were there.  The tent had a bathroom with a great shower.  The hot water supply was solar and plentiful.

We got back from Pushkar in mid-November.  We did some Christmas shopping in Bangalore and then spent Thanksgiving in Bali, Indonesia.  This seems to be a tradition for us.  The Thanksgiving before we had been with my cousin, Judy, in Cancun.  We enjoyed that so much we decided that leaving in the kids in the states and finding a beach somewhere was a good idea.  Bali was a great place.  Beautiful, reasonably priced and relaxing.

The first week in December we headed back to the states.  We layed over for a day in Frankfurt.  Annie knew about the Christmas fair in Frankfurt so we stayed in a hotel near the fair and paid it a visit.  It was cold.  Going from Bali to Frankfurt was a big change.  How cold was it in Frankfurt?  So cold that Annie didn't want to shop.  Oh yeah, our four star hotel didn't have any hot water.  I complained.  I told the manger, "I had a better shower in a tent in Rajasthan in India than I had this morning in your four star hotel."  He was nice but he wasn't that impressed.

Annie and I got back to Arlingon on the 4th of December.  I got right back on an airplane and flew to North Carolina to visit my grandson, Michael Lee, his wife Karrah and to see my great granddaughter, Paityn, for the first time.  It was a short visit but a good visit.  Michael was deploying to Afganistan the following week.  I'm glad I went.  Michael is a US Marine and I am very proud of him and his family.  I got a little more in touch with what it means to a young family when Dad goes off to be in harms way.  It goes without saying that Michael is a brave young man, but Karrah is also a very brave young woman in her role.

I got back in Wichita on the 6th and went to work for the next two weeks.  My oldest granddaughter, Ashleigh Ann, got married to a very nice young man the week before Christmas.  Jess, Mara Mae and I went down to Fort Worth for the wedding.  Ashleigh's mother, Alice Ann, came back to Wichita with me and stayed for three days.  We had a nice visit.  I am very blessed with the relationships I have with my children.

 Alice Ann went back down to Fort Worth for Christmas and I spent Christmas with Jess and Ginger.  I stayed with them on Christmas Eve and got up with Mara on Christmas morning.  Her mother told her not to come out of her room any sooner that 0530.  She woke up at 0500 and read until 0530.  She was so excited.  She still believes in Santa.  I asked her about this.  She told me, "some people don't believe in Santa.  Some people choose to believe in Santa."  That pretty much explained it.

I was due to come back here to India on the 6th of Jan.  I left Wichita a couple of days early and went back down to Fort Worth and spent some time with Annie, Alice Ann, the newly weds, Jenny and Leith and Lulu.  Leith and Lulu are a couple of kids who have accomplished alot in the last couple of years.  They have moved from Jordan to the US, integrated into a new high school, a new peer group and are doing well in school.  I'm impressed.

Now I'm back in India, blogging again.  Oh yeah, and resting up.

Bangkok Airport

The Bangkok airport was amazing.  There were 800 meters or 5/8 of a mile of duty free shops and restaurants.  There were all the high end shops we all expect to see in duty free.  All of the major Asian cusines were represented in the restaurants.  Everything was well kept and very clean. 

This image was taken from my table in a restaurant where I was having duck soup.  I was struck by the curious combination of high end acoutrement and fast food.

This island is a sushi bar.

I couldn't resist piggybacking on this posing.

Here is another juxtapositon of culture and haute retail.

Finally I have window shopped enough and stretch out for a nap.

A Final Thought

I looked it up on Wikepedia.  According to the numbers listed there, over 2,000,000 people were killed or missing in action in the struggle to keep the Communists out of South VietNam.  Both these images were taken in Saigon.  The image on the left is clear evidence that our sacrifice did not keep communism out of South VietNam.  The image on the right tells another story.  Taken at the Saigon Zoo on a Sunday afternoon it could be evidence of something we left behind.  Probablly not as a result of our military might and prowess.  Definitely not becasue we prevailed in that conflict in the classic sense.  More than likely what we left behind was a result of the one-on-one interactions that took place;  the associations and friendships that developed and the effect of a warm and caring western persona that surfaced in spite of all the strife that took place.  Was it worth the lives?  That question will hang in history for a long time.

Another thing, she is wearing that dress and apparently she is free to do so.  The communist party is the majority party in a number of states here in India.  In today's world, communism seems to have turned out in many places to be just another view of the world; not necessarily an inherent evil.  One could argue that China contradicts this notion.  It does, but I think the oppression there is more about their approach to government than a communisht ideology in its purest form.

Saigon Markets

When I travel I don't see everything.  I decide on a limited number of things in a place.  On this trip to Viet Nam I was interested in the food, the people watching and the markets.  Here are some images from a couple of the markets I visited.

I have visited the markets in Mexico and the markets here in India.  We have summertime markets in Kansas as well.  I like them all.  The Markets in Saigon were some of the best I have visited.  There I saw the largest selection of things in the smallest space.  Mexico runs a close second for variety but these markets definitely take that prize.  I saw wonderful lacquer ware pieces, bolts of silk, dishes, jewely, watches, and on and on.  Shown below is one of Saigons largest and most popular markets.

This lady met me as I got out of Hoi's bike rick. She was selling something.  I was so taken by her face I don't even remember what she was selling.  She is shown here as she was presenting her wares to me.

On the left a European woman is bargaining for a watch.  I bought a fake Rolex from this guy for $12.50.  I don't know how this lady came out.  These guys sell knock offs of all the big brands.  The knock offs have quartz movements which the Swiss poopooed in the beginning and now do their best to keep the prices up.  The reality is those quartz movements are reliable and cheap.  My $12.00 Rolex from Mexico has kept perfect time for three years now.

I was amazed at what is shown in these next images.  These market aisles were narrow.  Very narrow; and folks rode motor scooters up and down them.  Nobody hurt.  Just not what I would expect to see.

I included a close-up of this gal because it shows something my new friend Chris pointed out.  Folks in Saigon do not like the sun.  They cover up.  Long sleeves, gloves and face maskes.  All this in hot and humid conditions. 

More motor scooters in the aisles and scooter acoutrement.

More market scenes.  I just liked the way the one on the left turned out.  There is no particular story to go with it.  The image on the left is a coffee stall.  Now notice the moniker "weasel coffee".  I think I may have discussed this before but weasel coffee in Indochina is very special.  The beans are gathered from the jungle floor where they have been deposited by the marmots who ate them.  Apparently the enzymes in those little critters have a profound effect on the taste of the coffee.  I am quite sure this coffee was not "weasel" coffee in the strictest sense.  I think it was probablly the bean that is consumed by the animal or maybe just beans from that region but definitely not the "re-processed" bean.  I am sure of this because of the price.  It wasn't nearly expensive enought to be authentic.  Anyway I bought some, brought it home and tried it.  It was OK but not nearly as good as some premium blend I bought at another coffee shop in Saigon.

More shoppers.  I took this image to try to show one more time how confined the spaces were.  Definitely not "WalMart" aisles.

I don't know what this is.  I have no idea.  My guess it is expensive and religious in nature.

Tell me.  What do you see in these faces?  It was early in the day.  These ladies were sitting around in their market stalls waiting for the day to gain momentum.  They resisted my camera.  Their resistance was coy in a wholesome way.  Genuinely humble yet very friendly.  The memory I will take from my time in Saigon is how friendly and warm all the folks were.  To me these ladies are communicating that in their coy and bashful dance with my camera.  That memory will draw me back there.