Last evening was spent looking at the stars over a beer on one of the hotel’s patios. It was lovely and cool, just like a Canadian early summer evening – not too warm and not too cold. A soothing breeze cooled whatever heat remained from the stone terrace as we sipped our Kingfisher beers. We couldn’t believe that we were in India! Suddenly, how cool, how liveable, how not unbearably hot! We glanced up at the star-filled sky and thought of Ruth, John’s sister, who could tell us where we were in the celestial sky. We revelled in the noiseless, honk-less, people-less-ness of it all. No noise, no pollution, no crowds….no nothing! We don’t dally with this euphoria because we have a wake-up call for 4:30 for our first day of Safari in Corbett National Park. The Tigers wait!

John shakes me out of sleep at 4:50 am. “Greg, we’ve missed the wake up call…what the hell’s going on?” I, of course, being completely engaged in what I do so well – sleep - have missed the tumultuous thunder and lightning storm that has engulfed the park overnight. Just our luck – not a lick of rain or even a cloud in the sky for the entire two weeks that we have been in India. Not even a chance of rain in the forecast. It is at least 6 weeks till the monsoon starts. There has been constant comment on the heat and dryness of the country, and we arrive for our first day of Safari and it rains.

The phone rings at 5:00 and a stilted voice tells us that our Safari is cancelled due to rain and to hang on for further information. Ok. I roll over and pull the pillow over my head and proceed as soon as possible back to ZZZZZ land. My favourite place to visit. Hope to live there one day.

The phone rings at 8:15 and its our stilted friend again telling us that we can do a full day safari today but we must be prepared to be out for the entire day, which is 9:30 – 7:00 and do we have rain coats with us, etc, etc. etc. I agree and roll over again for another half hour.

We get up, have breakfast and head out into what is now a completely different weather pattern.
We officially decide to change our trip to followautumn.com. I have to put on two layers and my rain jacket. I wear short pants on safari and justify it by wearing the two layers and rain gear on top for the trip. I’m a hardy Canadian. My bare legs can take it. It’s India for God’s sake.

Everything feels smells and looks like our annual Labour Day retreat to Bluesea Lake in the Gatineau region of Quebec with our friends Bob, Brian and Bill. All of a sudden we are in a beautiful, wet, late autumn with hints of a glorious Indian summer. It is the foot hills of the Himalayans after all. Talk about a brain fart.


Views of the Park

By the end of the day we are both shivering and completely cold with the rain and wind. Our safari vehicle is a big open truck with seats in the back with no windows and no protection. Of course this viewing situation would be perfect when it is hot and sunny. Just enough protection from the sun but still able to let a nice cooling breeze flow through.

We have seen langur monkeys, rhesus monkeys, deer both spotted and not and sambar, eagles, herds of wild elephants, mongoose, 2 species of crocodiles, beautiful long-tailed flycatchers, hornbills, peafowl, pheasants, forest fowl, and wild boars, but no tigers! At the mid-point lunch break, a group of Indian tourists out for a Sunday drive in the park say they experienced a “first class sighting” of a tiger. The base camp suddenly springs into action; each guide wanting his client to catch a glimpse of the elusive Bengal Tiger. This, despite the pouring rain. 4X4’s roar into gear and head out in search of the tigers. To no avail, it seems. John and I wonder that if all this sudden action actually scares the tigers away.


Langurs; 2 species of crocodile


Spotted deer; rhesus monkeys



And of course ELEPHANTS!

We arrive back to our hotel by 7:00. We have driven over torturous muddy, wet and rut filled roads. The thunder and lighting is tremendous and we grab hot showers and begin the familiar ritual of packing for the next leg of our journey to Greece and Turkey. We have a quiet dinner in the hotel restaurant. Our lights are out early (as usual) and we listen to the beating rain on the roof of our bungalow.

N 29
E 079

For our last outing in India, we are treating ourselves to a safari in Jim Corbett National Park, in the state of Uttaranchal, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, where we anticipate that the weather will be a bit cooler – like that of the famous hill stations where the British retreated during the heat of the Indian summer. Corbett NP is India’s oldest national park, established before independence by Jim Corbett, born in India of English and Irish parents, and a famous conservationist, writer and hunter of man-eating tigers. It is India’s most successful national park, housing a large population of Bengal tigers and wild elephants.

Today is about getting there. Although it is only about 250 kilometres from Delhi, the roads are so bad that Tibari, our driver, tells us it will take a minimum of 6 hours. He tells us as well that the road we will travel on for most of the way is one of India’s worst. And so it proves: we see 6 overturned trucks, and get involved in the most amazing traffic jam – caused by road construction that has one lane blocked – and made far worse by the incessant need to move forward that all drivers here appear to share. We see a major highway in such incredibly bad shape that it would cause a government to fall at home. Despite this, and despite Tibari getting totally lost, we make it to our hotel in just over 7 hours.

This gives lots of time to think about various things. I spend a lot of time thinking about an article I have read in the Times of India that reports that India’s economy, one of the fastest growing in the world at the moment, is expected to grow by at least 7% this year, and the same again next year. This story also tells that the per capita annual income for India is US$430, about US$1.20, maybe 50 rupees, per day. This puts India far ahead of a raft of countries, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa. I think of what 50 rupees will buy: a meal in a Thali restaurant; 4 litres of reverse osmosis, ozonised and UV purified water; a big bottle of beer, a couple of kilos of bananas. I think of how long the Indian economy will have to continue to grow at 7% annually in order for the per capita income to reach $1,000 annually, or $10,000 annually. It doesn’t give one hope that India’s poor will see the end of poverty in my lifetime, or even my nephew Nimi’s.

I also think a lot about the Indian TV we have watched, and the radio I have listened to. Unlike everywhere else we have been, where the satellite TV we watched was totally dominated by the US media (why, we often wondered, do the villagers of Bali need to know about the minutia of the US presidential election?), the media here, both TV and radio, have been created by Indians for Indians. And their marketing skills are clearly well-developed, putting those of Hollywood to shame. The songs from the movies, sung by the stars, are the hit songs on the radio. Everyone’s mobile phone rings with their downloaded ring of … the hit songs from the movies. The music videos on the multiple music video channels showcase songs from the hit movies. The stars sell everything – clothing, mobile phones, political parties in the current federal election, Coke. And those few non-Indian channels that there are, other than CNN and BBC World, have Indian content in Indian languages.

We arrive in Uttaranchal to find it a soothing green colour, after so much brown. We get to the national park and it is so different to what we are accustomed to. In North America, national parks are almost always remote, pristine, and often indistinguishable from the land around. This is India, where over 1 billion people are squeezed onto the land. Right to the border of the park, there is the intense cultivation of the land, and the people everywhere, that characterizes the Indian countryside.

The rooms at our hotel, situated on a river where small rapids create wonderful sounds, with cliffs on the other side, are all separate bungalows – a wonderful place to hang our hats for our last 2 nights in India. We are, as Tibari had promised, well away from the places that Sahibs normally go – all of the other guests at the hotel are Indian families, enjoying summer vacation away from the cities.

Before dinner there is a show of local music and dancing. Radically different from any local dancing we have seen, the man and the woman actually dance together.



As we are getting ready for bed, I see a beetle in our bathroom, with the most beautiful markings. It looks as though someone has inlaid its back with silver. Greg calls me to the front door that he has gone to lock to see a visitor who has come to say goodnight: it is a small scorpion, coming under the door, not longer than my little finger. We convince it that it really doesn’t want in the room, and make a mental note to check our shoes in the morning before we put them on.

N 28
E 077

The saying goes that to drive the highways of India, you need three things: good brakes, good horn, good luck So goes the old Indian Joke... Ha. Ha. Try driving in India and you won’t be laughing so hard.

The pavement can disappear without notice
Pedestrians step out into the street without notice apparently in a daze or trance
Workers will be standing in the road, no warning signs
There are no minimum or maximum posted speed limits – a car or tractor or tuk tuk can be doing 10 on a road where most are doing 70
Do those lines painted on the highway actually mean something?
The farm trucks are so overloaded that we wonder how they stay upright – some obviously don’t for we see them on the side, overturned, apparently abandoned
People pull in front of without regard to their speed or yours; a honk or a wave of the hand is all the notice you’re given
Bricks scattered around the road to notify others that a car or truck is broken down
People sit on roofs of buses, stand clinging for dear life on the backs of trucks
Whole families, 5 or 6, on a scooter
Women riding side saddle in the scooter’s passenger seat, holding on to nothing
Women driving scooters, riding sidesaddle
Side mirrors? Rear view mirror? What are they?
Turn signals? What are they?
Cars passing in the other direction expect you to stop or pull off the road if they haven’t had time to finish passing before you reach them
Black smoke, belching from every truck
White smoke, belching from every tuk tuk and most scooters
BLOW HORN
Cars from the other direction will turn across your lane if they’re there first – despite the fact that your car is going 80 and they are doing 20
No matter that we’ve been driving the highways for a week, we are startled everytime we come across an elephant or a camel or a donkey or a bicycle on a 4 lane highway
Every so often, a car or truck or tractor comes driving down the wrong side of the 4 lane divided highway, despite the very polite signs that nicely say: “Please do not drive in the wrong direction”
Cattle, buffalo and dogs step into the road whenever they feel

We have not driven outside a town after dark – nor would we. Even in town, it is difficult enough, between the animals, the lack of street lights, the lack of lights on vehicles, and the paved road that is suddenly not – we can’t imagine what it must be like trying to drive on a country road or highway after dark.

1,500 people die on the roads every day – we are lucky: we don’t see any accidents; we actually wonder why the total isn’t higher, given the complete unpredictability of driving on the highways.
_______________________

We arrive in Delhi without mishap, exhausted from the limitless supply of Delhi traffic – Delhi, with only 14 million people, apparently has more cars than the 3 largest cities, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata, put together.

We do not have a tour planned – the afternoon is ours. We head out to Connaught Place, the centre of New Delhi, a very English circle. For the first time in India, we feel like we are in a modern city – the streets are paved, except where they have dug them up for the construction of the new metro. There is no wildlife visible. The air is as unbreathable as most of India, but it is pure exhaust fumes – the ever-present smell of dung is absent for once.

We walk around. We see a few tourists, but mainly we see Indians. The shops around Connaught Place have names we recognize from home, and the people shopping are clearly well-off. They wear designer jeans; all of the younger women and even some of the older women wear western clothes and carry shopping bags from trendy shops, and are heading to Pizza Hut and TGIF for lunch.

Despite being off the tourist path, we are still harassed mercilessly – people want to take us to the tourist office, to show us their friend’s store where we’ll get a good price, to take us in their auto-rickshaws. We sit at lunch and discuss the reality of India for us: that although we are people who love to get out and walk, we have done little walking other than at the tourist sites: the constant harassment from the touts, the hawkers and the beggars takes away the enjoyment of walking and discovering the streets. And yet, we intuit, rightly or wrongly, based on the kinds of people we have seen eating in our hotel restaurants, many clearly locals and regulars, that our experience in India is not dissimilar to that of a lot of middle class Indians –they drive from point A to point B, and rarely actually go out on the streets.

Oh India! Beautiful in the extreme. And, yet, equally as heartbreaking.

We drive today from Jaipur to Agra, seeing the small towns of India from the back seat of an air conditioned car.

40 kilometres outside Agra, we stop at Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar’s new capital, built between 1569 and 1585, abandoned shortly after because of inadequate water. Because Akbar had decided he didn’t like Agra, he built Fatehpur Sikri. When the water supply didn’t work out, he move his capital to Lahore.

Amazingly well-preserved in the dry desert air, we gasp at the splendour and can only begin to guess how wealthy ancient India was to enable Akbar, like so many of the ancient rulers, to move his capital and built palaces such as these.



Around the Palace at Fatehpur Sikri

My favourite story relates to a column our guide points out. He tells us that this it is the grave of Akbar’s favourite elephant, and that Akbar built it to commemorate its death. He also tells us that in those days, condemned people were not hung or shot, they were put to death by an elephant’s foot stepping on them. Greg: Obviously John has a love affair with elephants. Must be a past life thing.


Doesn’t every elephant deserve a nice monument?

Then into Agra. We go first to the Agra Fort. It was started by Akbar in 1565, before he got tired of Agra and built Fatehpur Sikri. It was finished by his grandson (Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal). Again, we are overwhelmed by the splendour, in particular the amazing inlay of semiprecious stones into white marble.



Around the Agra Fort

And then, to the Taj Mahal. Words fail. How can you adequately describe perfection? We have seen bigger buildings, with more splendour or size. But never any building more perfect. We spend a long time savouring the site, greedily drinking it in from every angle, watching the sun and shade play against the domes and minarets, glinting off the mother of pearl, inlaid as one of the semiprecious stones through the entire complex.

Not only is the building perfection in design, its design is perfectly suited to its function – it is a tomb, and despite the thousands of people visiting today, the vast majority Indians enjoying their summer vacations, the building induces a mood of reflection and contemplation, and we feel virtually alone, despite the crowds. The monument is best viewed at sunrise or sunset and if you get a sprinkling of rain during these times, the domes and minarets have an extra sparkle. We have the luxury, we think, of viewing the wonder of India at sunset.

Most of the ancient buildings we have seen till now have been of sandstone, red or brown. Shah Jahan decided he preferred marble, and traces are seen in the Agra Fort, for example in the photo above of marble inlay. The Taj Mahal is the stunning endpoint of the transformation from sandstone to marble.

It is constructed of marble quarried a few hundred kilometres away, and brought on elephant-back to Agra. This marble is reputed to be the hardest in the world, and unlike most marbles, it is supposedly nonporous. The lack of wear and tear on the steps, which carry over 7 million pair of feet annually, is certainly evidence that it can withstand lots of use – after over 450 years, they are as amazingly unworn as if they were brand new.

From virtually the bottom of the Taj Mahal itself to the base of the dome, both inside and outside, the marble is inlaid with semiprecious stones, much of it verses from the Koran, set in onyx. The verses on the outside are readable (if one can read Arabic) from a great distance, and are the letters change size to present the optical illusion that those at the top of the building are the same size as those at the bottom. Although this is not major earthquake territory, the minarets at each corner are not built straight-up. They are angled slightly away from the Taj Mahal, so that should there ever be an earthquake, they will fall away from the building, and not damage it.


From left: the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort; the Taj Mahal; detail of the Taj Mahal showing inlay

And then, back to the streets, to the other India. The India of 500 million people who cannot read a single word, not even their own names. Of 400 million people who live in such shocking poverty that even the poorest people in the west look incredibly wealthy in comparison. And all, at both extremes, silently, calmly watched by the cattle, the silent witnesses.


Behind the Taj Mahal, the other India

We get to the hotel and I go out walking. Just before going back to the hotel, I pick up some bottled water. A little boy, no older than 5 or 6, comes hopping madly over, using a stick as a crutch, for his right foot is deformed and he cannot stand on it. He is filthy, but he gives me the most beautiful smile. He asks for a Pepsi. I buy him a Pepsi. He asks for 100 rupees. I give him 100 rupees. He doesn’t ask for anything more – he gives me again his beautiful smile and his thanks. It is all I can do to keep from breaking down right there. I want so much to save him, to get him good medical care, an education. I know I can’t.

Later, I do cry. I cry for that little boy. And I cry for India.

N 26
E 075

For whatever reason, I have not had quite the same reaction to India that Greg described yesterday. It is true that it is almost excruciatingly hot right now. [A word of advice: everyone tells us this is the “slow season” and those who don’t come to India in the middle of its summer are wiser than we. If you ever want to come, do it in the winter, about October to late January, when the temperatures are more or less the same as they are on the hottest days of summer in most of North America, or come during the monsoon, which will start soon in the south and in about July further north, when things become green and lush.] It is also dusty, and to our eyes unorganized; nobody likes to say no or appear ignorant, so nobody tells you that you can’t do something or that the directions they’re giving you aren’t quite accurate. And you tip everyone for the smallest services; I overtip: I give at least 100 rupees to the coolies at the station: last night, our tour host negotiated for me, and including the wait while we figured our which compartment was ours, the amount demanded was 30 rupees. When the tour host wasn’t looking, I slipped the coolie another 20. Despite all this, I have been coping better than Greg.

Today changes all this.

We get off the train at 7:45, a bit late given the late start. Our driver is there waiting for us, an easy job at this time of year, as ours are the only pale faces emerging from the 1AC compartment. We walk to the car, and a young girl approaches, asking for money. I have been quietly giving money to beggars, mostly the disabled but also young children, and I reach into my pocket and pull out a couple of small bills, which I hand her. Out of nowhere, at least 25 other children are immediately grabbing and pinching me on the legs, all yelling for money. I can’t move until our driver shoos them all away, which takes a couple of minutes, and even then it is a difficult process getting into the car, and getting the door closed – their hands keep reaching in, always grabbing my legs and pinching them. This really rattles me.

We are exhausted from the journey. Sleeping pills or not, neither of us slept well. At our hotel, they give us our room, despite our 8:00 a.m. arrival. The hotel is an old haveli, mansion, converted to hotel, and it is beautiful. We wonder who lived here before. We negotiate with our tour host for a 10:30 a.m. start to our Jaipur and Amber tour – he would prefer earlier, we would prefer later. We hit our beds and fall back to sleep, managing somehow to be up and showered by 10:30. And off we go.

At this point we have begun the “if it’s Monday, it must be Jaipur” part of our tour. The leisureliness of last week is gone – we start the week with last night’s train ride, and every day this week except Friday, we have either the train or a long (4+ hour) car drive, and then a 4 hour city tour.

We are also, as we discover, on the major tourist route. This started in Udaipur, but because we were ensconced in the Lake Palace, we were shielded from the full impact. Today we are not: at every destination, there are many many non-Indians, and everywhere we are greeted by swarms of beggars, touts and hawkers. The hawkers are all bargaining with themselves, because we have adopted the strategy of saying only 1 word to them: NO. And still they follow us, reducing their prices to a fraction of the original asking price by the time they understand that we mean what we say.

We start with a tour of the Amber Palace. Another spectacular palace, standing in front of the equally impressive Amber Fort, built on the whim of a maharajah. We go up on elephant back.


Elephant!


The Amber Palace; the Amber Fort


Inside the Amber Palace

We move back to the city of Jaipur. Maharaja Jay Singh II moved his capital from Amber to Jaipur because Amber, in a narrow valley, couldn’t expand. Jaipur feels almost western – laid out in straight lines with wide streets, although our guidebook tells us that this design is based on ancient Hindu texts and represents a mandala, designed to bring the harmony of the cosmos to daily human life. We stop at the City Palace, and the Palace of Winds (one room wide, with screens on both walls, a place for the palace women to get cooling breezes and to watch the city’s street life without being seen), both again amazing. We also stop at the Jantar Mantar, Jay Singh’s observatory – a collection of structures, modernistic in the extreme with their pure lines and form follows function design. We wish we had more time for sightseeing in Jaipur.


2 views of The City Palace


The Palace of Winds; the 27 metre tall Samrat Yanta at the Jantar Mantar: it is the most impressive sundial we have ever seen

It is a long day spent in the sun. We have been trying to be very careful – lots of sunscreen and water – but I am not careful enough. When we get home, Greg tells me I’m flushed. As we are changing out of our sweat-soaked clothes, I start shivering from the A/C. Greg touches my forehead and tells me I’m burning up. I say I can’t be, I feel fine. He insists, I touch my forehead and even I know I’m burning up. We take my temperature – 102.7. Greg says the thermometer must be wrong, because at that temperature I should be feeling violently ill, while I feel fine. We dig out his thermometer, and it reads the same. We check our reference guide: the classic symptoms of sunstroke. We spend a quiet night at home, neither of us feeling like moving, both of us wishing we were somewhere else. And I am now with Greg – I’m ready to stop moving. Visions of a beach in Greece, less than 1 week away, lull me to a deep, recuperative sleep.

Happy Birthday to our friend Marlene Etherington, on April 27!

Our last day in Udaipur and the Lake Palace is a quiet one. We have secured a late check out time from the hotel and plan to take advantage of their ample sitting and viewing spaces outside of our room to try and catch up on some reading and web updating. The hotel does have a wireless system that is available about 50% of the time, and we try a number of times to sign onto the site and update. It is a hit and miss situation. Other than a 3:00 p.m. visit to the Monsoon Palace (the Palace precariously perched on the highest mountain peak in the area and visible from almost every vantage point in Udaipur), we are not scheduled until 8:00 p.m., so the rest of the day is ours. This evening we are booked on India Rail’s grand overnight train adventure to Jaipur and both of us have finally admitted that we are not entirely sure what to expect with our sleeping car arrangements and are more concerned about our luggage than our own personal safety. We really don’t have a romanticised version of “A Passage to India” in our heads – with grand turbaned coolies and servants waiting to transport us, and our trunks, reticules and hat boxes, to our richly appointed private rail car and our luxurious 10 hour train ride north. But the reality of that later.

From left: the Monsoon Palace; the City Palace and Lake Palace Hotel from the Monsoon Palace; the sunset terrace at the Monsoon Palace – the prototype for the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle?

At about 6:00 p.m. we board our hotel launch and head into town for dinner. Danielle and Bill from Seattle had recommended a restaurant called Natraj which was also mentioned in our guide book. (Note and recommendation: We have found the Rough Guide series of guide books indispensable with their practical and historical information.) Natraj is known as a Thali restaurant. It is the single metal plate and 3 bowls into which a combination of vegetarian dishes, chutneys, pickles, rice and bread are served as a single meal. It is not done with a lot of flourish or savvy and the room itself isn’t anything to update a website over, but is incredibly cheap and has a local feel and flavour that you are not going to find in any of the tourist restaurants. In India, as a sahib and unless you speak up, you will automatically be taken to a tourist restaurant where you will be ushered to your seat in the “air con” room, while your driver and sometimes your guide will have to sit in the other, less desirable “non air con” adjoining room. We have always opted for our driver and guide to sit with us and this gives us an opportunity to really speak with them and get to know them, at least a little bit. They get a free meal, but sometimes we wonder if they wouldn’t rather be sitting with the other guides and drivers, gossiping.

Our meal is, as always, very filling and the waiters circle with the serving pots, ready to continuously fill our plates. We have learned in India that you don’t finish what is on your plate because it will always be filled again, whether you want it or not. We grab a motorized rickshaw and head back to the Lake Palace land side boat launch/waiting room, where we are to be picked up for our trip to the train station. We grab a beer on the mainland terrace overlooking the lake and the Palace and enjoy the warm breeze and the view, punctuated with thousands of swarming bats, skimming the lake as the moon starts to rise.

We arrive at the train station and are thankful for our driver. It is a nondescript building with no outside signage and no indication of its whereabouts. We could never have found it on our own. We pull up to the main entrance and an older coolie is immediately there to help with our bags. I wonder if he can lift the two bags and my attempts to help him are quickly pooh-poohed. That is another thing we have learned in India – leave your Western ways and guilt at home! Don’t try to help out the help. From coolies to waiters to doormen, they will make it clear to you that they are here to help you. We are providing a service to them in a manner by employing them and it is, rupee wise, nothing to us. (I, however, am still trying to get over having my car door opened by the driver every time we go somewhere – but I am almost there!)

Our view of the platform is less emotionally charged than it was in Mumbai (see April 20th posting) but it is still night time and there is a certain depressed, fluorescent-lit mood hanging in the air.

We think we have this process down pat as we follow our tour host to our train car. India Rail lists all of the passengers’ names on a print-out posted on the coach that you are travelling in. Our names however, are not posted on this list. Some slight panic starts to creep into my stomach. Our tour host heads into the station and returns five minutes later confirming that our names are indeed on the master list and we board the train to find our luggage plopped onto the berths and on the floor of our compartment. John has boarded ahead of me and he is sitting on the edge of the berth surrounded by our luggage. The camera and computer bags are stacked on top of the other bags which are stacked on top of the rolling bags.


There’s almost enough room for our luggage, isn’t there?

We start to organize the luggage when our night porter arrives with sheets and blankets to make up the berths. We are not talking Egyptian cotton here but the sheets are clean and crisp and have a traditional India Western Rail logo stitched down the middle. I feel somehow part of history. We end up being more concerned about the “facilities” and how to navigate them at 2 am on a pitching and rolling train.

The train leaves roughly on time and we move about 20 feet outside of the station and promptly stop. I stick my head out the door and watch as people, which bags perched on their heads and children in tow, scramble and run for the train. This continues for another 25 minutes before we are officially headed north. We brush our teeth, say our good-nights, pop one of those little pills that come in so handy on red-eyes, whether plane or train, and are lulled to sleep by the bump and tousle of the “Midnight Train to Jaipur”.

P.S. from Greg: It is inevitable that on all great trips, big or small, extended or not, one begins to feel a little weary from the actual process of traveling. Our story and our travelling so far has been a sweet success – we have so many memories. The web postings tell a very accurate tale of our travels but not completely. It would be naïve of me to think that our trip of a lifetime was not going to have some bumps in the road.

I had begun to feel this travel weariness upon our arrival in India and this feeling was exacerbated by the sheer volume of people and the complexity of their lives that confronted us daily. I began to pine for familiar things and routine. I missed having a “home” to come to every night after seeing so many homeless people. I grew lethargic and disinterested in seeing one of the most complex and invigorating countries in the world. I can’t say that my western eyes were shocked at what I saw; I had readied myself somewhat for the hardship and the incomprehensibility around me. The time we spent in Indonesia and Thailand prior to this had given us some inkling of what to expect in India and yet I could feel this travel depression beginning to creep into my pores.

I began having longer naps in the afternoon. I slept later in the morning. I became bored and critical with the seemingly canned commentary our guides were tossing us. I began to glance over the fascinating beauty of the wide-eyed children in their dirty clothes and the brown, windswept mountains that supported the Maharaja’s palaces. The cattle, goats, pigs, camels, water buffalo, sloth bears, monkeys and elephants could continue to live in the streets – I didn’t care. I even started to become outwardly angry at the many hawkers and street vendors innocently plying their trades, pestering me to buy things that I neither wanted nor had any use for. And John. Poor John. He was always on the receiving end of most of my weariness.

After the requisite wallowing, I began to understand that this was all part of the process of travelling. I tried not to view this in a negative way. I began to understand and accept a certain physical reaction to my surroundings. Heat, sweat, heat, heat and of course dehydration all play an integral part in the wellbeing of any travelling adventurer. As I focus on accepting the reality of the situation and place it in a human and almost an inevitable context, I start to see the beautiful kohl-lined eyes of that Rajasthani baby girl staring at my as I pass her in the Agra marketplace. I am just as foreign and exotic to her as she is to me. And hopefully as beautiful.

I wake early this morning with Bombay Belly. This is the 1st time on the trip either of us has come down with anything except a cold. I go down to breakfast, but halfway through retreat to the comfort of our bathroom.

We are scheduled to have a tour of the city this morning, and with a bit of trepidation on my part, we head off to meet our guide, Laleet. We start with a tour of the museum in the city palace, a short walk up the hill from the boat launch on the city side. I am relieved that we are not getting into a car – bathrooms will surely be available on quick notice if necessary.

The Maharanas of Mewar built many palaces in Udaipur. The city palace is really a number of palaces built in close proximity, and they are also known as the winter palace. The Lake Palace, our hotel, was previously the summer palace. High on a hill overlooking town there is another palace, the Monsoon Palace. Finally, there is a palace built on another island in the lake, now open to the public. Called Jag Mandir, it was built as a small palace and is also known as the Pleasure Palace, but has never been lived in. Here the women of the Royal family would come for respite from the tough lives they had and walks in the extensive gardens.

A number of the palaces that form the city palace are now also luxury hotels; and part of the city palace is still the Udaipur residence of the current Maharana of Mewar, whose father ceded his powers to the Indian government in 1955. The main part of the palace, however, is the museum. I am ecstatic - among the amazing paintings, mosaics, sculptures and architecture are everywhere elephants! There are statues and paintings of Ganesh, elephant mounting platforms, and paintings and statues of elephants at war, in hunting, and entertaining the people. Elephants were indirectly responsible for a famous battle victory for the Maharana: he had a horse costumed as an elephant because elephants are not as nimble as horses; this confused his opponents, who did not respond appropriately, and he won his battle.

The museum is a veritable history lesson about Mewar, the only part of present-day Rajasthan that never fell to the Moghuls, and intensely proud of that, despite having borrowed many customs and architectural features from them. The Maharanas also never acknowledged the rule of Britain over this area. Despite no longer being the royal family of Mewar, the ordinary people still revere them. As we walk past the entrance to the current palace, Laleet tells us that the Maharana is in residence: he points to a red MG and tells us the Maharana is a sports car aficionado; he also points out a fountain, water flowing, which he tells us only operates when the Maharana is here.


Around the city palace

After the tour, which I complete without needing a bathroom, we do indeed get into a car for a tour of the city. We drive through the old town, then out to another lake, this one manmade, connected by canal to Lake Pichola; it is almost dry. We stop at a beautiful park which was originally a garden for the court women, full of beautiful fountains. The fountains are not operating today, and the pools are completely dry. Laleet tells us they operate on water pressure from Lake Pichola, and are not working now because the water is so low in the lake.

Laleet takes his departure as we head for lunch at a Thali restaurant he recommends. Great silver plates, divided into sections, are put in front of us, and the waiter brings over serving dishes and doles out a variety of dishes, rice and chapattis. We eat, he brings more, and more, and more. The food is simple but good, and the supply apparently unlimited. We get the bill – for 2, with 2 bottles of water: 140 rupees, under C$5.

We decide that the wisest course for the afternoon is to stick close to home, and we barely make it back in time! I spend the afternoon sticking very close to the room.

At 6, we head out for a 1 hour boat tour of the lake, which includes a 20 minute stop at the Pleasure Palace. Back home, we decide not to head over to the land side for dinner, and order room service instead, a smart decision as it turns out.

Jag Mandir

N 24
E 073
At 8 a.m. Manu is at the hotel door, waiting. Our bags loaded, we set off for Udaipur, famed for its palace turned hotel floating in Lake Pichola. It is a 260 kilometre drive, and Manu says it will take about 5 hours.

The road is hectic as we head out of town – crazier with people, camels, buffalo and dogs than any road we’ve seen so far. It takes the better part of an hour to get out of the sprawl of Ahmedabad, and once we do we are on a beautiful 4 lane motorway, able to move at about 100 kilometres an hour, except for the occasional monkey or buffalo crossing the highway. The land is very much as we’ve seen it around Ahmedabad – flat, dusty green going to brown in the late summer heat and haze. And it stays this way for another 90 minutes.

All of a sudden, out of the haze, a high brown ridge emerges like a solid line from as far left as we can see to as far right as we can see: the Araralli Range, the border between green Gujurat and the desert state of Rajasthan. At the border there is chaos as all trucks stop to deal with the interstate inspections and taxes, but we pick our way through, about the only private automobile on this stretch of road.

Immediately across the border, the road – National Highway 8 – virtually disappears. It goes from 4 lanes to something less than 2 but more than 1, barely paved and clearly under construction, for another 2 lanes are being worked on across a median. We ascend through the hills, passing trucks as they slowly go up, weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic. The hills are brown and scree-covered – it reminds us of the drive from Ontario to Palm Springs in California in late fall.

From here until we get to Udaipur we drive through brown hills, although an hour into Rajasthan the road turns back into a 4 lane motorway. The air is thick with haze – visibility can’t be more than a few hundred metres. All of a sudden we are in Udaipur, earlier than expected, about 4 hours into the trip. We drive through town, the haze still so thick that little can be seen, until we drive down a ramp to a boat dock.

From here, we are treated like royalty – we are staying at the Lake Palace Hotel, ultra luxurious. The woman at the landside entrance asks us our names, and from here on, everywhere we go in the hotel we are greeted by name: “are you enjoying your stay, Mr. Mountain”; “may I help you with anything, Mr. George.” It makes us laugh – through the rest of India, everyone wants to know our name; here, everyone already does.

The boat takes us across the lake – tinier than we expected from the pictures we have seen, and reduced even more by 7 years of abnormally low monsoon rainfall. You can see that the lake is probably 3 metres lower than normal; the hotel is almost connected to the land.

The hotel is idyllic – built around beautiful courtyards, everything white marble or painted white plaster. Our room has a view back to the city palace. We spend the afternoon luxuriating.

From left: The Lake Palace Hotel; courtyard and terrace; the lake palace in the foreground, city palace in the background

Before dinner, there is a show of traditional Rajasthani music and dancing on one of the terraces. Quite beautiful. We then head for dinner in the hotel dining room, claimed by our guidebook to be the most romantic dining experience in India.

Traditional dances

We are on the road by 8:00 this morning with a “hail” to the honking car drivers of India. We have learned a lot from our expert young driver Manu – he can navigate the best of the worst of Ahmebadad’s congested roads. From the camel and water buffalo driven carts that lazily haul on a non-schedule, to the wayward pedestrians who decide to cross the street just when they feel like it, even when that street is an 80 km/hr. stretch of so called highway, Manu can deal with it. They say that “if you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere”; we have come to know the truth of this. People signal all their intentions by using their horn here and this has become a familiar start to our early mornings.

Our first stop this morning is a Jain temple for early morning prayers. The sun is already beating down on us as we remove our shoes as we enter the main gate. John is smart today – he is wearing shoes and socks and his socks protect his feet from the scorching temple floor tiles. Again, we are greeted with smiles and curious eyes. “What country?” is the usual opening line and then we quickly move on to a first name basis. It is all quite lovely and non-threatening. I am still trying to figure out why John is so popular here, especially with all the boys.

We are told that we cannot take pictures in the temple and so snap some quick ones outside before entering the inner sanctum. The process of prayer and ritual is very different from what we have seen elsewhere but we learn of demons and single thread garments and worshiping the 24 deities that reside within their small temples surrounding the main temple. So many rules and what a process!


Early morning at the Jain Temple

We head out in tough traffic, headed to a place of quiet contemplation and introspection. Mahatma Gandhi founded the Sabarmati Ashram in 1917 as a compound for prayer and community based on 11 specific principles, including non-violence, manual labour, and equality for the Untouchables of India. It is a lovely, simple place set high on the banks of the river Sabarmati seemingly away from the chaos of Ahmedabad. We stroll through the living quarters of Gandhi and his wife Ba and spend 45 minutes walking through quite an extensive museum focusing on Gandhi’s writings and teachings.


Gandhi’s bedroom

Our next stop is highly anticipated. We arrive at 10:30 for our scheduled tour of The Calico Museum of Textiles. We understand that no-one should leave Ahmedabad without seeing the incredibly impressive collection of textiles, clothes, furniture and crafts of India. And impressive it is. It is set inside a beautiful haveli (mansion) made of ornately carved Burmese wood (mahogany?), moved to Ahmedabad from the countryside and reassembled here. Colourful embroidered wall hangings depicting Hindu gods hang from the walls. Decorated cloth of bandhani (tie-dye), mirror work, screen and block prints and most impressive of all, the amazing embroidery work. We also get to see clothing from India’s Royal households and their travelling tents. The craftswomen made a new set of clothes with different designs everyday for the Royal family. The last part of the tour explains the many processes used by these craftspeople, including the stitching, dyeing and printing of many of the works. Like so many places in the world, these wonderful art forms, passed on over generations, are almost nonexistent today. This is a must see for anyone travelling to India.

Our last stop before lunch is the Jami Masjid or Friday Mosque. This is an imposing structure dominated by the main Qibla or prayer hall. Built in 1424 by
Ahmed Shah, the Qibla is surrounded by an immense walled courtyard with a large water feature used for ablutions. My feet get toasted again on the burning marble courtyard tiles. Inside the Qibla, 260 pillars support the roof and two towers, whose minarets were destroyed by an earthquake in 1957. The mosque was built immediately after the Muslim conquest of Gujarat, and it displays a striking Hindu and Jain aesthetic in places.


From left: the Qibla; a screen in front of the zenana; the dome in the background is Ahmed Shah’s tomb

We exit out a side door and find ourselves in the middle of the Market, teeming with lunch time shoppers.


Inside the Ahmedabad city walls

This is the last photo of the morning as our battery runs out. This is a real shame because the food market is bursting with colour and smells. John quickly finds a spice vendor and I pick over some tangerines that I think are good until the friendly man behind the counter pulls out his own stash and promises me some “very sweet” tangerines. I’m not entirely sold on this concept as the tangerines are green and don’t look ripe. But of course they are and are a welcome treat in the midday sun and exhaust fumes. We continue through the markets and more and more people ask “where you from? And what is your name?” The mystery of why John is swarmed by all the boys is soon answered. They think that he is a famous Australian cricket player here for a visit and want his autograph and to say hi to him. It doesn’t help that he is wearing trendy sunglasses and walking with a guide. I continue the game with the locals by asking them where they are from and what is their name. Always a smile or a laugh and a hand shake.

Lunch over, we head out of town for the one and a half hour drive to Lothal, or Mound of Dead. This is an archaeological site of the remains of a city of the Harapaan, India’s 1st major civilization, which spread across what is now western India and eastern Pakistan about 2500 B.C. There is a hot, hot, dry sandy wind blowing as we get out of the car to have a look. Not much remains of the site of this important city and important archaeological find, except what has been rebuilt by the archaeologists for us tourists. From about 2500 to 1900 BC, this was a thriving river port town with a connection to the ocean that was renowned mostly for its bead production. We find it hard to believe that in this dry, parched landscape there was ever any water here.


From left: 2 view of Lothal; the old port

Finally, after 5 days in India, we tackle the issue of moving about a city after dark – we are tired of being prisoners of our hotels here. India is not a pedestrian-friendly country, even less so than either Bali or Thailand, and between the noise, the lack of sidewalks (most are such thick dirt that you walk on the road, at your own risk, even close to the city centre), the noise, the heat and the pollution, we have not yet ventured out after dark. However, we have asked a number of people for a restaurant recommendation, and the name everyone has said is “Agashiye”, which serves Gujarati cuisine. With so many people vouching for it, how can we not? So we get instructions from reception on how to bargain for an auto-rickshaw and off we go, holding tight for dear life.

When we arrive, the smiling doorman takes us to the cash desk – where there is a sign that says “pay first!” We stare at the menu, not comprehending, until we finally realize that it is a set menu – Option A or Option B. We choose Option B, and the bill is presented, including the service charge. Then we are led to an elevator, and go up to the 5th floor. We step out onto a beautifully tiled roof garden, and are seated on divans under a wonderful mirrored tent. Starters are served as we lounge. They are delicious. A huge freestanding A/C unit is moved over to cool us down.

We are then led to a proper table, in an area open to the sky. Again, a huge freestanding A/C unit is brought over to keep us cool – at least it blunts the sounds of the horns from the street below. The view of the sky is wonderful, and the two corners of the crescent moon point straight up into the heavens.

Dinner is unbelievably delicious – if nothing else had made the trip to Admedabad worthwhile, this dinner alone would! We aren’t completely sure what we are eating at times, other than that the meal is “completely veg.”, but we don’t care. The complexity of the spicing means that we savour each and every mouthful, and that every mouthful has a different starting, middle, and ending taste, all of them sublime. And the price is best of all: less than 600 rupees (C$20) for the 2 of us, service included.

After dinner, we walk a block down the street to the internet café that we had been told would allow us to bring our laptop. John is leading us down an unlit dirt alley. I tell him he's crazy: what internet place would be down an unlit dirt alley? He points to the barely visible signs, and then he stumbles in the thick loose dirt. But sure enough, there is light at the end, and we get connected. An hour later, on the way back to the street, voices call out “hello, where are you from?” from the darkness.

When we were in Mumbai, and told people there that we were coming to Ahmedabad, they all, universally, asked “why?” Ahmedabad is famous for its textiles – we have been told many times since arriving that it was the “Manchester of India”. Gandhi is in part responsible for this – he helped organize the textile workers of Gujarat, his home state, as part of his campaign to rid India of the British. The 5th largest city in India, with a population of about 5 million (in Gujarat, the only dry state left in India, with a population of about 53 million), it is a big, industrial city – well off the beaten tourist track and not pretty. The fact of the matter is that we have no idea why we are here – when we told the company that organized our tour of India that we wanted to go to Udaipur and Jaisalmer, we were presented with an either or proposition: Jaisalmer and Jodhpur; or Udaipur and Ahmedabad. We wanted Udaipur more than Jaisalmer, and so we are in Ahmedabad.

But after our 1st day touring around Ahmedabad, we have absolutely no regrets about being here. We visit 3 spectacular sites (and sights) today and see parts of India that very few tourists ever get to – as our guide said, we saw “the real India” – and our hotel here is wonderful, quiet, calm, beautiful, a real sanctuary from the real India outside.

First is the Sun Temple, 2 hours north of Ahmedabad in Modhera. Built in the 11th century, it is in amazing condition. Frances, our guide (from Goa, and thus with a Portugese name) tells us that the temple is laid out so that when the sun rises on the equinoxes, it will strike the wall of the sanctuary. The carving throughout is exquisite. He says that the human level (like many traditional Hindu temples, there is a hierarchy of levels throughout the carving – demon below animal below human below god) is all about sex education. And despite a millennium of exposure to weather, war, earthquakes, and air pollution, the graphic details are there.


At the Modhera Sun Temple

There is a group of schoolchildren and their teachers visiting the Sun Temple, celebrating the end of the school year. They mob Greg and me – they want to shake our hands, say a few words and get our autograph. Our guide later tells us that they are from a small village not too far away, a village where non-Indians almost never go.


Find John amongst his new friends

Second is the Rani-ki-Vav, a step temple built at about the same time as the Sun Temple, and not too far away. Step wells are multi-level affairs, all with a spring-fed pool on the lowest level, designed to be refuges for Queens from the intense heat of the Gujarati summer. Rani-ki-Vav was discovered only in the last 30 years, having silted up over the years. Again, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, and the quality of the carving.



At the Rani-ki-Vav

From Rani-ki-Vav it is a short drive to Anhilawada Patan, the capital of Gujarata until Ahmed Shah moved the capital to his new city of Admedabad in 1411, and the reason that both the Sun Temple and Rani-ki-Vav are located here. Nearby Patan looks and feels and smells like a city that has not changed much since the middle ages. More than anywhere else today (and there are lots everywhere else today – even on the toll motorway we take from Ahmedabad to Mehsana), there are cattle, water buffalo, camels, goats, dogs and the occasional cat in the streets. The only animals that are missing that we’ve seen elsewhere on the streets here in India are elephants and monkeys.


Scenes from the motorway

In Patan there is a patola – a traditional silk loom where the threads are dyed in a most amazing way with vegetable dyes while tied in long bundles – maybe 2 metres long by the width of your little finger. They are then put onto the loom and woven, and the colours in both directions match, so that the design is the same on both sides. The process is amazing to see – and the quality magnificent: it takes about 4 months to weave a panel of about 3 metres x 1.5 metres. Handed down as a trade from father to son, there are now only this 1 family in all of India doing it, down from 800 families 50 years ago.


The finished product

We stop for lunch just outside the town of Mehsana at a restaurant that Frances says is delicious (it is) and “hygienic” (we can’t say for sure, the dishwashing process left a bit to be desired). We are the only non-Indians for miles around, and all of the families in the restaurant stop eating as we enter. From then until we get into the car, the children shyly come up to us, politely introduce themselves and ask where we are from, while their parents, equally shy, encourage them with hand gestures.

Third is the Adalaj Vav, another step well, just outside Ahmedabad. Built in the late 1400s, it has survived pretty much intact since then, although until recently it was used by the villagers to wash their clothes and as a well, and as a bathhouse for the women. And for the 3rd time today, we are overwhelmed by the beauty and skill on display.


At the Adalaj Vav

N23
E072

5:50 a.m.

We are safely settled in our train seats after a seeming roller-coaster ride of avoiding motorized rickshaws and pedestrians through the very early morning streets of Mumbai, headed for Mumbai Central train station and our train to Ahmedabad. We have arrived far too early for the train but given the rather unknown circumstances of train travel in India, we decide better to play it safe than sorry.

Even at this early hour we are greeted by the chaos that is Mumbai: people streaming in and out of Mumbai Central, newly arrived or newly going, their lives, goods and chattels balanced on their heads or otherwise clutched and dragged by their collective coolies. Those who cannot afford a coolie must fend for themselves and many do. Inside, all of humanity seems to be stretched out on the floor of the main hall. Harold, our tour organizer, tells us that many of these people are in transit and cannot afford a hotel so sleep on the floor of the station with their belongings and wait for their train. Some look like they have been here for days if not weeks.

Since our arrival last Friday we have seen very few foreigners travelling in India and we appear to be the only foreigners on the platform this morning. We have come to accept this as a given in low season in India. We have caught the staring eyes of the locals and in particular towards John and his bald head. We discovered yesterday that men in India shave their heads when there has been a death in the family. Or perhaps they see him as being some strange monk.

Our train is classic 1950’s vintage India Rail - rotary fans on the ceiling, bright, fluorescent lighting but with an added treat – A/C! We have paid for the highest class of seating available and it is quite comfortable, if a little gaudy. Having seen some of the passengers on trains arriving and departing Churchgate Station near our hotel, this is luxury. Our fellow passengers appear to be business people and families of high caste. The women are in beautiful traveling saris with hennaed hands and arms. Gold bangles adorn their wrists. The men are typical: black oxfords or loafers, pleated trousers and crisp shirts. They are usually sporting a fancy (or not so) clunky wrist watch. Almost all of the men we see have appeared this way: pulled together in a western way, shirts ironed and hair combed. Even the under-employed and young men dress this way. If you look closely enough, you may see the tell-tale signs of their station in life: a frayed pant cuff or shirt sleeve. This may be away to divert attention away from their caste.

We set out exactly on time: 6:25. We are not entirely sure what to expect during our 7 hour ride to Ahmedabad. The view out our windows is as we expected: slums and people everywhere. Living under fly-overs, some in shanties right beside the tracks, garbage and filth everywhere. This continues for the next 25 minutes or so, and we emerge into a landscape that is similar to Southwestern Ontario in mid-August after a particularly dry and parched summer. The windows are so beat up and scratched that picture taking is impossible.

The train-wallahs start their morning service. Cereal and hot milk is delivered on trays to our seats. It is followed by white bread in bags and hot and spicy vegetarian cakes on a bed of somewhat mushy peas, and a glass of overly sweet orange kool-aid “juice” and, finally, some packaged instant coffee or tea. We have daily papers delivered to us and we feel (somewhat) like kings.

But the reality of life in India is waiting for us, a glance away, just outside our air-conditioned windows.

No one could really have prepared us for what India is and in particular Mumbai. The locals still refer to it as Bombay and we find ourselves referring to both Bombay and Mumbai.

Our car arrives at 9:00 for our tour of the city. We set out and quickly see (and hear) that everyone drives with their horns here. No break pedals or signalling or defensive driving here. Only the horn and it is always going. People sail through intersections with their horns blaring at everything in their path: pedestrians, rickshaws, cars, buses and even cows. We hang on for dear life.

There are people everywhere. We wonder where they live and work and of course quickly figure out that many don’t work anywhere, and they live wherever they can – under overpasses, beside railways, on the sidewalk.

We drive up Marine Drive – the view as beautiful as Lakeshore Drive in Chicago. Then through the neighbourhood called Malabar Hill, past mansions and luxury apartment buildings, and an old temple in the classical north Indian style. At the top of Malabar Hill are 2 beautiful parks – one built over a water reservoir and called the Hanging Garden, with a great view of the city.

Right beside these parks is the “Tower of Silence”, which is not open to the public. It is the site of the funerals of a small community (about 90,000 people) of Zoroastrians, who were originally from Persia, which they fled to escape persecution following the Muslim conquest there. More than a millennium after they arrived in India, the Zoroastrians are still called “the Persians” by the Indians. At the Tower of Silence, bodies of the dead are laid out to be eaten by vultures. And as we drove by, we could see the vultures circling the hill, waiting.


From left: Mumbai from Marine Drive; temple; Chowpatty Beach and Mumbai from Malabar Hill

At the bottom of Malabar Hill, away from the Arabian Sea, we stop at a sacred spring that has been surrounded by temples. There are many groups of people sitting in clusters around the spring. Avinash explains that many are funeral ceremonies – the shaved heads of the men are an indication of the death of a close relative. We feel like voyeurs, but in fact are invited to watch and photograph by a number of the families. There are offerings of food everywhere (and, of course, vendors selling the necessary supplies), and flower petals have been sprinkled into the spring. Ritual cleansing appears to be part of many of the ceremonies: the women and most of the men walk down and stand in the water, and splash it on their heads and arms; some of the men strip down to their briefs and dive right in.



Scenes around the sacred spring

As we leave the spring, we pass an open-air barbershop (like most barbershops in India) where the men are lined up to have their heads and beards shaved. From there, we drive to a huge open-air hand laundry, where hundreds of men operate their own dhobis. Then back to the ocean, further north this time, past the beautiful mosque and mausoleum of Haji Ali Bukhari, where the causeway that connects it to the mainland is underwater at high tide.


From left: funeral haircut; dhobis and dhobi-wallahs; mausoleum and mosque of Haji Ali Bukhari

Greg and I are near exhaustion at this point, but Avinash is in fine form. We head back down to central Mumbai, past the house where Gandhi lived (not his house – he was a sort of multiyear Sheridan Whiteside), and into a market district, where we passed an exquisite Jain temple. By this time, we are seeing another unique Mumbai institution in action: the dhaba-wallah. Every morning, men take the train to work, and their wives make a cooked lunch for them. Mid-morning, the dhaba-wallahs visit the suburban homes, and pick up the elaborately packed cooked lunches, taking them on trains, bicycles and carts into the central city. Outside the train stations, the dhaba-wallahs meet up and, in a sort of post office operation, sort the lunches for efficient delivery to their recipient.


From left: Gandhi’s house; Jain temple; dhaba-wallah’s cart

After a quick breeze-through of the British quarter, with its imposing Victorian architecture, we head to the fishing harbour, for lunch. Greg and I pass-up the fish (we took a ferry yesterday through the water this fish was caught in, don’t forget) and go vegetarian – an easy option here in a country where a huge number of people don’t eat meat. Avinash opts for fish, and from the way he devours his 2 fried fish and his side order of about 15 fried goldfish, it must be delicious. We spend an hour going through books at an English book stall and walk home with the late afternoon workers, ready for a nap and dinner.

N 18
E 072

We arrived at Mumbai airport about 9:30 last night. We were met at the airport by a driver and our contact here in Mumbai, and we drive the very short drive to our hotel. The condition of the streets reminds us of both Bali and Thailand – lanes that disappear in the middle of a block, construction debris on the side of the road, moto-rickshaws (called Tuk Tuks in Thailand).

What is dramatically different, obvious even in the pitch black night, is the level of obvious poverty. We didn’t see orphans living in the median in either Thailand or Bali – we see many children asleep on the little concrete strip down the middle of the road, no adult visible. At every red light, very old or very young people come up and paw the passenger window – begging.

We check into our “4 star” hotel – and it is reminiscent of what hotels in the early 1960s felt like, at least in the dim recesses of my memory. We discover that the restaurant in this hotel is vegetarian, and serves alcohol – we display our tourist credentials by not being aware that there is often a corollary between being vegetarian and serving alcohol, and being “Not Veg” and not serving alcohol. After splashing our faces with water, we hit the restaurant and take advantage of its vegetarian status.

At 9 this morning, our driver is at the front door to drive us into the city, 35 kilometres and – often – 2 hours drive time away. Because today is Sunday, and the start of the summer vacation period (the academic year ends April 16, the unofficial start of the hot season – summer – in India), the drive is pleasant and fast. We realize that our hotel was almost on the beach of Juhu, a very trendy suburb, and we have constant sightings of the Arabian Sea throughout the drive downtown. At one point, we round a corner and there is Chowpatty Beach, with downtown Mumbai across the water.

Our new “business class” hotel is again a variation on a 60’s theme, with every mod con – for 1962. We check-in, and head out for a walk before lunch and our afternoon tour. It feels like an older, dirtier version of Bangkok. A child follows us begging. Then an adult does the same. We say to ourselves that we are glad that we have spent 5 weeks in SE Asia before coming to India: we are not shocked, despite seeing destitution far beyond what we have seen so far. We don’t know what to do, though: our hearts are breaking, but both our guide and our guidebook have told us, in the strongest of terms, that the begging is saved for tourists, and that if we succumb we are likely to be swarmed and robbed.

At 1:30, our driver and tour guide are outside the hotel, and off we go – straight to the Gateway to India. I have seen photos of this arch, and always thought it a wonderful conceit – to have a formal “entrance” to a country. The arch was built in 1924 to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay in 1911. We walk through the Gateway, which is a stunning structure, and onto the boat that will take us to the Elephanta Caves on Elephanta Island, an hour across the bay (downtown Mumbai is built at the southern tip of a series of islands that have become a peninsula through landfilling). Shortly after we take off, a piece of the guardrail from the upper deck comes crashing down and bounces into the bay. Greg looks around and asks, only half-facetiously, where the life jackets are.


From left: the Gateway to India; walking to the ferry; near the Gateway

There were not many women on the street when we walked earlier today or in the public areas of our hotels, so this is our first real exposure to women since we arrived in India. Almost all are dressed in traditional garb, in bright beautiful colours and patterns. The men, by contrast, are almost all dressed in western clothes – shirt with collar, and, despite the heat, long pants. This is a first – everywhere we have been in Asia, the men have worn shorts except when required for work. We understand that wearing shorts in India is a sign of being low-caste.

Halfway to Elephanta, the ferry stops beside a sister ferry, and all of the passengers from the other ferry jump onto ours – mechanical problems have meant that the other ferry was drifting around the bay for a few minutes – these ferries are on a “leave when full” schedule, and today is busy, so they are leaving every few minutes. Transfers complete, we take off again.

We see a number of oil refineries around the bay, a huge container port on the mainland, and a CANDU nuclear reactor, 1 of 5 Canada sold to India in the 1970s. Looking back to Mumbai, you can see mile after mile of highrise buildings. Avinash, our guide, explains that because the peninsula is so narrow, it has a very high density. He also tells us a bit about life in Mumbai, and the suburbs, which stretch forever up on the mainland.

There are about 18 million people living in Mumbai (about double the number in Bangkok), and the suburban trains carry over 6 million of them every workday. Our guidebook says that the local economy of Mumbai, where slightly less than 2% of India’s people live, generates 37% of India’s GDP. We wonder,given the poverty we have seen poverty here, what will it be like when we get outside the comparative prosperity of Mumbai?

We finally arrive at Elephanta. This beautiful, green island is the site of a number of caves excavated about 1,300 years ago. Within the caves are temples to the god Shiva. At the entrance and throughout the huge caves are columns that look structural, but that are really just decorative. Throughout the temple are carved reliefs depicting a variety of Shiva’s exploits. Despite the damage the caves and reliefs inside have suffered over the years, they are still amazing, in part because everything here was carved in 1 piece from the rock itself.


From left: the cave’s entrance; 2 sculptures of Shiva

There is a restaurant just down the street from our hotel that Avinash told us was very good, so we head there for dinner. Avinash was right – our meal is delicious! It includes chicken, and thus no alcohol.

Bye Bye Bangkok and Thailand

We have seen many different and wonderful things here, and both marvel at and question the relaxed views on sex in Thailand. We would comment daily on the number of young men and women on the arms of older Western men, saying goodbye in the morning at all of the hotels we have stayed at, and would wonder what kind of life these young people lead and aspire to.

Begging seems almost nonexistent in Thailand but we have seen a little here in Bangkok. It is done with a quiet, almost prayerful reverence that is truly Thai: hands clasped in the traditional Thai “wai” greeting followed by a gentle bow of the head. No aggressive harassment here; that is saved for the sex touts, go-go show promoters and Tuk Tuk drivers.

Thailand is promoted as the land of smiles – this is completely true. We are always greeted with a smiling “sa-wa-dee-krup” and graceful wai. Thailand has been interesting but next time we will approach the country completely differently. Perhaps spend more time in the south, on remote islands or on a 4-5 day live-aboard dive ship. We definitely would not come back during Songkran, and to judge from comments we have overheard in restaurants and our hotel lobby, neither would most other westerners. That is to say that we wouldn’t recommend it. One, maybe two, days, max.

But isn’t that what discovery and travel is all about?

Best of Thailand:

Restaurant: The Whole Earth, Chiang Mai; Ban Klang Nam, Bangkok; but pretty well anywhere in Thailand is going to serve wonderful food.
Best Buy: CD’s: 4 for $12.00 CDN. Also anything bargained for in the Patpong Night Markets.
If you can buy: Thai Silk at Jim Thompson or from a reputable Mom & Pop shop. Beautiful!
Best Bar: Babylon: total experience, good food, good show, nice pool, great environment.
Runner Up: Tawan Bar: Ask me when you see me.
Books we have read: The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin; The Page Turner, David Leavitt; Dirt Music, Tim Winton.

We say “krop-koon-krup” to all the Thais who have made the last two weeks so interesting. Especially the staff at our hotels Tarntawan Place in Bangkok and Club Bamboo in Patong, Phuket.

And now onto India!

I head out early to scout around. There is nobody on the street, so I am safe, for the moment, from the happy Songkranners. But the streets are deserted. This is the most important day of Songkran, and it appears that most of the shops and businesses, at least in our part of town, will remain closed today.

One that will open, according to its sign, is our internet café, and so Greg and I head there shortly after it opens, at 12:30, to update the web, check email, and make some reservations for the next part of our trip. We spend a couple of hours there, and by the time we head out to the street, it is mayhem. There are more people throwing water, and more pick up trucks full of people driving the streets throwing water, than we’ve seen so far. We head into a little restaurant for lunch, while we try to figure out how to get back to the hotel without our computer having a pail of water dumped on it. We come up with a strategy, and it works! We get back safe and sound.

It is Graeme’s last night in Bangkok, so he comes over and we have a drink at our hotel. We head out to dinner to a restaurant suggested by a Thai friend of his, San, called Ban Klang Nam. It is right on the river, and San tells us that it serves excellent seafood.

The taxi ride is, as all taxi rides are, disorienting – we seem to go in circles, down a major street that inexplicably ends, through 4 or 5 sois, then back onto a major street that will soon change directions – all 10 lanes will all of a sudden become 1 way, the wrong way, so we will head down more back streets. Finally, we turn down a soi that could be a movie set of the kind of street you don’t go down after dark, and down at the end is the restaurant. The only other farang in the place have also been brought there by Thais.

We are lucky – we get a table right on the water. San orders the meal, and it is as billed. The fried whole fish is delicious, and the calamari with chillies is even better. We have a nice Australian white with the meal – a real luxury in Thailand, where, as has been true throughout SE Asia, wine is expensive. The meal is still a bargain, just over 500 baht each, about C$17.

We taxi back to Surawong, and carefully shop the night market. Patpong 2 is safe – it has no cars. We move over to Patpong 1, and Graeme and I say no – there is water being thrown everywhere. So we shop back down the other side of Patpong 1, back to Surawong. On the way, we buy a couple of CDs, about $3 each, and I buy a new wallet – no major label, so unlikely to be counterfeit, but made of stingray leather.

We sit and have a beer on the street – the craziness at midnight seems confined to Patpong 2, and then head back to the comfort of the A/C.

Hot, Hot, Hot. The predicted temperature in Bangkok will be 42 degrees! This does not include the humidity.

Some businesses and venues are open; some are closed for day two of Songkran in Bangkok. Staff at our hotel isn't entirely sure what is open or closed. Many of them are too busy throwing buckets of water at passers-by in the street. And they are in their uniforms too!

There is a certain level of frustration growing as we experience the feeling of being trapped in our hotel for yet another Southeast Asian New Year's celebration. First it was Nyepi in Bali, with no lights and no movement outside our hotel for 24 hours. Now, Songkran in Thailand. We can go out but can't keep up with the demand for dry clothes!

I do head to the front desk and discover that the Grand Palace is open today and we decide to make the journey across town to the house that King Rama I built in 1782. We must of course, be properly attired and this means long pants, sleeved shirts and no flip flops. Ugh! We step outside and immediately break sweat.


From left: the Grand Palace; Palace Grounds

We arrive about noon and the crowds are enormous. We make our way around the various Phras and Chedis and marvel at the detail and beauty of the grounds. We head into the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha with all the other Thais on pilgrimage. The Monastery houses the famous Emerald Buddha and this Wat is the most revered in Thailand because of its connection to the Royal Family. Everyone is out celebrating Songkran and covering the Buddhas with water, both plain and flower scented.


Pilgrims bathing Buddha

The Emerald Buddha is in fact carved from a single block of Jade and was first discovered in 1434 when movers accidentally dropped it, releasing it from inside its plaster Buddha casing. The statue dons a different costume for each of the three seasons in Thailand and is changed by the King himself, who climbs up to the image because it can be lowered for no-one. It is as crowded and policed as the Sistine Chapel is, and we step back and allow the faithful time and room to pray. The walls are covered in beautiful paintings depicting selected events of the Lord Buddha's life. We're not allowed to take photos of the Emerald Buddha.


Paintings in the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha

We move outside, our feet burning on the granite tiles and quickly put our shoes on and head for some shade, but there is not much to be found. There are many, many beautiful things to look at.


From left: View from the Emerald Buddha; around the Grounds

The heat and crowds are beginning to get too much for us and we decide to call it quits and head back to the hotel for late afternoon naps and early evening Songkran yelling and whooping.

Outside our hotel the street is alive with screaming, screeching, whistling water throwers waiting for us to leave our hotel for a wet supper.

Songkran is full on. You don’t want to leave the hotel lest you get soaking wet. And I mean soaking wet. Today is the first day of the “official” three days of Songkran and we grab breakfast and decide to hightail it out of town. We have seen pretty well all we want to in Chiang Mai and so we call the airport and organize an earlier flight and head out to the airport. The car is pelted with water all the way out. It seems the Thais are almost drunk on Songkran. Some of the younger ones literally are.

We arrive in Bangkok to the same drunkenness. We check into our hotel and feel that we are almost prisoners here. John does a quick errand to the 7/11 that is 10 metres from our hotel’s front door, and comes back completely soaked and literally dripping wet; covered also in wet, white powder. We are afraid to take any electronic equipment out into the shrieking, laughing street. They tell us that it stops after 6 pm and in fact this is what happened in Chiang Mai. We have a feeling that Bangkok is probably different.

We plan to meet our friend Graeme from Australia (see Patong Beach, Phuket) who is in stopover mode through Bangkok, and head out for dinner and a beer. The street is aggressively spraying water at everyone and truckloads of kids are driving by with oil drums full of water; their water cannons and dripping buckets ready to hit you twice if they can. Farang are the targets of choice, but we fare pretty well on our short walk to the restaurant. We choose to sit inside.

This is the first night of Songkran in Bangkok, although it started earlier up north. Everyone here is partying. Even the security guards and desk staff at our hotel are caught up in the fun. It is the start of a 3 day holiday here and one only needs to think of New Years Eve in North America to understand what is going on.

Some brief Songkran statistics:
Total road deaths so far during Songkran: 353 April 9 - 13
Total people injured so far during Songkran: 20,293 April 9 - 13
These are mostly motorcycle accidents attributed to drunkenness and not wearing helmets and the highest demographic is young males. It is turning into quite the political scandal here because the government had pledged to lower the road deaths from last year and in fact the totals exceed last years with two days still to go.

We wonder what the next three days will be like. In Chiang Mai, Nokia came up with a clever marketing ploy: they were handing out re-sealable plastic bags that hang around your neck for your mobile or wallet; anything that might potentially get wet. John got four of them. We thought Songkran was sweet in Chiang Mai - it is downright dangerous in Bangkok.

The morning does not start auspiciously – the minibus that is to pick us up for our day in the country-side around Chiang Mai does not appear. Finally, we head out of town, and after about 45 minutes, we stop. Our guide points up a hill and tells us that we are walking up, and up we go – and go – and go, in the heat and dust. There is almost no shade on this walk up the hill to a tribal village.

We finally get to the top. Half our group didn’t make it – they turned when they saw the rickety, bamboo bridge over the river. The 4 who did, Keith and Pat from England, and Greg and I, are all panting and sweating and desperate for water. The village itself is sad – dry, dusty, pigs and chickens and old people and children. There are woven goods to buy, and drinks and ice creams. This is subsistence living. Our guide explains that today, only the very old and the very young live in the villages – everyone else goes to the cities to make money, coming back only for weekends and holidays, leaving the children to be looked after by their grandparents.


Bridge; the climb up


1st village; some of Greg's friends

We hike back down the hill, and head off for lunch in a roadside stand. We watch as the locals, including our guide, pitch bucket after bucket of water at the cars, scooters and Tuk Tuks passing by. After lunch, we head to a 2nd native village. Same story, different tribe.


Leaf construction materials; villager in the 2nd village


Houses in the 2nd village

From there we head to a waterfall swimming hole. It is quite busy – because Songkran is a big holiday, many people who live in the cities are visiting their ancestral villages, and come here for relaxation. Despite the crowds, there is room enough for everyone, and of course the Thai courtesy and gentleness that we have come to love is everywhere apparent. Sa-wa-dee-krup! It certainly makes one wonder why we in North America are, generally, so unpleasant to one another in our public demeanour. Life would certainly be nicer if we could adopt a more Thai-like attitude.


Swimming hole and waterfall

We walk back up the big hill to our minibus, and head off again. Although the best parts of the day are yet to come, everyone is feeling weary. But off we go, and as soon as we spot the elephants we are about to ride, everyone revives. As with my previous elephant ride, we walk up some stairs to a platform to take our places on the elephant’s back. And off we go. The elephants are sure-footed, and although we wonder how they keep stable on part of the walk, they have no problems and evidence no worries.


All Aboard!; mahout riding elephant

We cross a little river twice, and both times the elephants stop and frolic, enjoying the coolness of the water, filling their trunks and spraying themselves, and us. Everyday must be Songkran for elephants. From time-to-time, our elephant makes this deep rumble for a few seconds; if she were a cat, we would say she was purring. We find out that she is 25 years old, that her mother, who is about 50, is the elephant in front of us. But the English skills of the mahouts don’t go far enough for us to find out what the purring noise is all about.


River fun with Pat and Keith; gotta scratch that itchy trunk!

Back at the platform are huge bunches of bananas for sale, 20 baht (60 cents) each. I buy one, and the mother elephant very deftly takes the complete bunch away from me before I know what is going on. The other 3 elephants are now crowding around, and Pat and I buy more bunches, now knowing to stand far enough away that we can rip off 2 or 3 bananas at a time and hand them to the elephants, who take them with the end of their trunks and stuff them into their mouths. We have some eyeball-to-eyeball moments, and the elephants again make their pleasure known.


Please, may I have some bananas?; yum, that’s good!; eyeball-to-eyeball

On the way back to the mini-bus, Pat, Keith, Greg and I talk about the mahouts, and the sticks they carry with short metal spikes that curve slightly at the end, which they use to control the elephants. We worry about whether this is cruel to the elephants, but at the same time we reckon that if the elephants didn’t want to be carrying us around, nobody with a stick and a short spike is going to be able to make them. So, with thousands of years of symbiosis between elephant and mahout, and with the existence of both elephant and mahout completely intertwined and interdependent, we don’t feel that we can impose our westernized, and totally impressionistic, feelings onto what is a lifelong relationship between the elephant and the mahout.

From here, it is a short ride to our last event of the marathon day – bamboo rafting down the river. There are 3 of us and a driver to each raft, which is made of 10 bamboo logs lashed together, each log about 5 metres longs. Our guide tells us that in the wet season the ride would be much longer, but that because the water level is so low, it will be a slow passage. We head off, and sure enough, the way is full of rocks to be navigated around. As we go down the river, we pass many families doing exactly the same thing – we have the benefit of a professional driver, who knows where the obstacles are and who thus avoids getting caught in most of the traffic jams we pass. Each raft we go by splashes water at us – “Happy Songkran” – and we in turn do the same. All of it wonderful fun, and being wet in a beautiful river on a very hot day, full of people enjoying themselves, is not a bad way at all to spend an hour.


Happy Songkran!

The drive back to Chiang Mai is slow – every few metres a group of people stands at the side of the road, buckets in hand, drenching everyone passing by. At one point, an elegant young woman on a scooter gives a bunch of them the dirtiest look we’ve seen in Thailand, and we wonder what she was expecting – this is so clearly just the way it is, and apparently the way it is going to be until Thursday, when Songkran finally ends.

Back at the hotel, we barely have enough energy to go out for dinner after our long day – the only thing that convinces us is the room service menu, which is full of items like club sandwiches and hamburgers. No amount of exhaustion is worth eating this for dinner, when there are wonderful Thai restaurants lining the streets around the hotel. So out we go – all the merry Songkranners have gone home for the night – and we plop into seats at the first restaurant we come across, too tired to go further – but rewarded for our doggedness by wonderfully delicious food.

It is the hot season here, which means it is the dry season. We saw in this morning's newspaper that yesterday the temperature here in Chiang Mai reached 41 degrees.

We head out early - me to book a trek for tomorrow, Greg to update the website. We meet for a quick lunch, and it feels hotter today than yesterday.

Other than the occasional bucket of water hurled in our direction in honour of Songkran, there is no escape. And even those are few and far between in the heat of midday. We make a strategic decision - to retreat! Greg opts for a 2 hour massage/reflexology treatment, I opt for the hotel pool - except that there is no shade available there, and the coolness of the water isn't worth the hotter than H-E-double hockeysticks environment at the pool. So up to the air conditioned wonderfulness of the room, and a good book.

N 18
E 099
This turns out to be a wonderful, magical and somewhat mystical day.


Outside our Hotel

It starts late for us, even John sleeps in to 9:00. We head downstairs for our “American Breakfast”and are out by 10:30. I am not feeling 100% this morning. I am dealing with a cold and am a little run down but figure that this will work itself out as the day progresses. On arrival yesterday, our pilot tells us that it is 30 degrees and we gleefully think, how Australian the weather is! That changes today as we head out into the heat of the day for our Wat tour of Chiang Mai. Of course, etiquette demands that you must wear long pants and sleeved shirts when you enter the temples and we do so despite the blistering heat.

Our first stop is the Wat Bupparam, housing the famous 400 year old Teak Buddah, and we are met at the gates by two women bearing small baskets and we think, “oh, no, more touts. Religious touts this time”. They nab John and we quickly realize that these baskets are housing doves that, upon release, bring good luck to those who have let them free. It is Songkran after all. We pay our 200 baht for 2, and John lets them go.


John wishing for Good Luck

The wat is huge and has the many traditional Pra Chedi housing relics of the Lord Buddha. An old women graciously greets us at the temple door, asks us to remove our shoes and shows us in. I am overcome with a need to cry. Of course, the North American in me quickly squashes this emotion but still I move up to the Lord Buddha and crouch down on my knees and say a little prayer. Don’t know why. It just seem like the right thing to do. My stomach does heave a bit as I continue to squelch the emotion. As we leave, one of the old women, says in her very limited English, essentially, that we are crazy to be out in the heat and that we should take a Tuk Tuk to all the wats. At least, this is our interpretation of what she said.


From left: Buddhas, The Teak Buddha, the ceiling of the Wat

We continue along the main street bisecting Chiang Mai and enter another temple. Here the temple is locked, and we are only allowed to enter the grounds, which are completely deserted. We try to stay in the shade as much as possible and our shirts are already soaking wet and clinging to us.


Views from the Wat

We continue our Wat Trek along the main street. This is a very non-descript area of town with no high end shopping plazas or even night market type stalls on this part of the street but we pass a jewellery store and something catches our eye. We decide to enter, as we have in many stores in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore, not expecting much but still, in search of our wedding bands.

We walk out of Nova with our wedding bands!

Nova is creative co-operative dealing with young and interesting designers and both John and I love the rings we have chosen. They are two floating bands, interlocking scallops, one gold and the other is sandblasted sterling silver. The wonderful thing is that they go perfectly with the bands we already wear. I get to wear mine out but John needs his re-sized. We will return later in the day to retrieve his. Those lucky birds that John set free at the first temple really meant something!

We celebrate over a lavish $8 CDN lunch run by a sweet girl just two doors down and continue our trek to the biggest temple, Phra Singh. This compound was built during the zenith of Chiang Mai’s power and is one of the more venerated shrines in the city, and more than 700 monks study here. During Songkran, it is the center of the festival.


From left, some young monks, Buddha


From left, Greg receiving water blessing, reclining Buddha

We are exhausted at this point and grab a Tuk Tuk back to the hotel for quick naps and a change of clothes before heading out again for 5:00 and the Songkran Parade at the main park in Chiang Mai.

Now, we have heard that people get sprayed with water for the entire time of this festival so at the very least we expect to get some water guns fired at us . We hail our first open air Tuk Tuk, I notice, and no sooner are we at the first traffic lights when a truck load of kids comes by and douses us with a bucket of water! We were wise not to bring any camera equipment with us because by the time we get to the park, we are soaking wet. They are even grabbing buckets of water from the moat around the old walled city, and hurling them across the traffic at us. Farang (foreigners) supposedly are a sought-after target and we are very popular Farang! We feel badly for our Tuk Tuk driver because he is as wet as we are. What you going to do except laugh and laugh. And we do. And so does our driver.

The parade is quite spectacular with many Thai provinces and 5 countries besides Thailand represented: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China and Myanmar. Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, the two host provinces, are at the tail end of the parade. All have beautiful floats and processions, each representing their cultures. The parade goes on for over 2 hours. All of the delegations bring gifts and homage to Buddha. Some in their hands and some on their backs, with each country and province bringing gifts that represent their uniqueness. The offerings include beautiful floral arrangements, food, and cleansing materials (this is a cleansing festival) including, oddly enough, lots of dishsoap and paper towels.

After the parade ends, we wander through the crowds and endless traffic jam. For the first time since arriving in Thailand, the traffic fumes overwhelm us, and we move away from the crowd, and finally make our way to a steet where the traffic is moving, at least in the direction we want to go, grabbing a Tuk Tuk back to the night market near our hotel.


Buddha blesses all

Breakfast by the pool at 8, to say goodbye to Tony and Graeme. Tony has stopped in Phuket on his way home from a business trip to Europe, and today he heads to Singapore for a couple more days R&R. Graeme will stay in Phuket until Monday, when he heads to Bangkok. We hope to see him in Bangkok when we return next week. And this afternoon we are off to Chiang Mai, in Thailand’s north. Both Tony and Graeme donate a novel to our sadly depleted library. Thank you, boys!

After breakfast, I grab a Tuk Tuk down to town to the internet café, to pick up email and pay some bills. Yes, sad but true, even in Paradise there are bills to be paid.

Greg and I have lunch by the pool at the Club Bamboo. This little hotel, maybe 35 or 40 rooms and bungalows, has been a wonderful oasis of civilization over the last 5 days. It is built on many levels up the side of the hill above Patong Beach, slightly away from the craziness, but still close enough that 100 baht ($3) in a Tuk Tuk, or 40 baht on the back of a motorcycle, gets you up or down the hill. As I look around, I realize that we have, without question, had the best service here that we have had so far on the trip. It has been quietly efficient, generously given, always knowing what you need before you know it yourself. I will always remember the smile of the woman who made up our room, and I will miss Club Bamboo!

At 1, we leave for the airport. Because of Songkran, the Thai New Year, which starts this weekend, we could not get a non-stop flight to Chiang Mai, so we will fly to Bangkok and connect to Chiang Mai. Which is still better than the alternative, a 24 hour bus ride. We have an amazing view of Bangkok as we arrive (in part because we spend an hour circling, waiting for permission to land). We make our connection without problem. As we approach our destination, the captain makes his standard pre-landing announcement, telling us that the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius in Chiang Mai. We wonder if we will find it cold – we have not experienced temperatures this low since we left Sydney a month ago.

We get to the hotel, unpack quickly, and head out for dinner. Just up the street is a beautiful looking restaurant, The Whole Earth Restaurant, and we go in. It appears to float slightly above ground. The restaurant is situated in a traditional Lanna Thai pavilion. We are asked to remove our shoes before we go up the stairs, and of course the sensation of wood on our feet immediately grounds us. We sit on a long open-air veranda with beautiful views of the gardens. It is a very peaceful place. Our meal is delicious – I have Tom Yum Soup, and the tastes of lemongrass, ginger and chilli are divine on my tongue and Greg’s sweet and sour vegetables are lovely – not too sweet.

The night market is just around the corner, and we spend 30 minutes exploring before we head back to the hotel, and crash, exhausted.

The elephants of Thailand are beautiful! A major part of the Thai lumber industry until recently, there is now only a tiny lumber industry left (the country has gone from 95% forest coverage 100 years ago to a fraction of that today) and it uses machinery, not elephants. As a result, the elephant population has dwindled to about 2,500 in the entire country. Most of those are now employed in the service sector, entertaining tourists. But their life is precarious – they need a lot of attention and care from their mahouts, not to mention food – and so the more people who ride them, the more stable their existence. I am ready to do my bit – by riding elephants at every possible opportunity.

There is an elephant safari just down the road from Club Bamboo, and at 10:00 a taxi takes me there. I go alone. Greg decides to stay at the hotel and update the web journal. At the safari, I climb a set of stairs to a platform about 5 metres above the ground. The mahout stands with me, and calls out to his elephant, who comes over and expertly sidles up to the platform. I cautiously stand on the elephant’s back to get into my seat, and the mahout takes up his position on the elephant’s head.

We quickly cross the main road and start up a hill. I am sitting right behind the mahout, and still sway wildly with each step the elephant takes – it must be worse when there are 2 and each sits on one side of the elephant. Up we go, stopping from time-to-time (at the elephant’s discretion, of course) until the mahout decides that it is time to move. Then he yells at the elephant, and off we go again.

We get to the turnaround at the top of the hill – very clear in the mud that this is where the elephants turn. The view over the Andaman Sea is wonderful. The mahout takes my camera, and tells the elephant to lower his head so he can get down. He takes a couple of pictures of me, then tells me to get out of my seat and to sit on the elephant’s head in the mahout’s position. I do, again cautiously. After a couple of pictures, the mahout calls out to the elephant who starts walking down the hill. I realize that I get to pretend to be the mahout on the way down, and work hard to enjoy the experience.


Mahout for a day!

At the bottom of the hill, we go back to the platform and I get off. The mahout says something to the elephant, who raises his head so that he and I are looking at each other, eyeball to eyeball. He raises his trunk up onto the platform and we shake, hand to trunk.

Greg and I then head for the beach, and meet up Graeme and Tony for a leisurely lunch in a seaside restaurant. The sea is beautifully calm and warm, and the afternoon passes lazily. After naps back at the hotel, the 4 of us head out for dinner. We go to the Sea Hag, the name of which is not appetizing, but the reviews overcome our hesitation. We are glad we did – the seafood is delicious, and the prices, while high compared to the norm in Thailand, are still low compared to anything at home.

After dinner, we wander over to Paradise! Paradise is a complex of sois (literally: “alleys”, but really “side streets”) around the Royal Paradise Hotel, one of the 3 highrises in Patong Beach. There are 15 or 20 bars and restaurants in the 4 or 5 streets that make up Paradise, and we have adopted them since our arrival. We head to the “James Dean” where we are all greeted by name by Jin, the maitre d’. After a couple of beers, we head to the “Boat Bar” for the 1:00 a.m. drag show. The drags are great, and get the applause they deserve, but the chorus boys are less than enthusiastic. Show over, we all grab a Tuk Tuk back to the Club Bamboo, ready for sleep.

We have made it part of our daily routine to actively introduce ourselves to our fellow travelers and today is no exception. On the Dive Tuk Tuk we meet Pete and his two kids Manda, 16 and Theo, 14. Pete and his wife (who isn’t here) are in the US Army and are stationed in Korea, and the 2 kids live in Korea as well. We talk about how much they are enjoying the experience of living outside the US. We soon pick up more people and realize that the boat will be fuller today than yesterday.


Scenery we pass on the boat

The boat procedure routine is familiar to us this morning and we set off into the hazy sunshine. About 15 minutes into our trip out, the skies turn dark and stormy and we expect rain at any moment. The 3 advanced students (that’s us and Vani from Richmond Hill) are first in the water this morning, working with Azad our instructor, to complete the course.

We have a total of 3 dives to complete today and the first one is the deep dive. We must plummet to 30 meters and complete some basic math equations. We must also observe the differences that depth makes on our gauges and colours and environment. Most importantly we are watching for incidences of Nitrogen Narcosis, the heady, almost drunken feeling of too much nitrogen in your blood steam. This can cause a diver to loose their sense of direction and focus but generally this just makes them look and act stupid. Unfortunately, none of us reaches Nitrogen Nirvana. Too bad! After our work is done, we continue the dive and spot baby bluespot stingrays on the bottom of the ocean floor.



Marine life

Our surface interval is only 50 minutes as we prep for the next dive. This dive will be short – the navigation skills dive. We must perform 4 tasks on the bottom including navigating with a compass and estimating distance by counting fin kicks. There is quite a strong current and all of our exercises are slightly off course but we manage to get through them successfully. Near the “base station” where 2 of us wait while the 3rd completes his skills, Azad spots an octopus. We all swim over to it, and it watches us watching it. Azad is taking many photos, but the octopus is content to watch. At one point, Azad must have gone a little to close for the octopus’ comfort – it changes colours – magic to see! Finally it heads into its cave to escape the relentless attention of the paparazzi. We head up with half tanks of air (a first time for us), have lunch and wait for our 3rd and last dive of the day.


Octopus

Our last dive is a multilevel dive which means we start at 19 meters and work our way up to 12 meters. This is a leisurely dive and we spot lionfish, stonefish, flute fish and a big jelly fish at the end of the dive. A very easy-going, relaxing finish to our advanced course. We’re home by 4 and we sleep soundly until 7:30.

We met 2 guys from Australia staying at our hotel, Tony from Melbourne and Graeme from Sydney, and about 8 we head out for drinks and dinner with them to celebrate our successful completion of our course. After a couple of beers, we head to a street restaurant and have a truly delicious meal.

A gorgeous day! We are on a boat, heading to 2 dive sites in the Andaman Sea, for the 1st day of diving in our advanced scuba certification course. The course consists of 5 different dives over 2 days. Today we will do 2 of them, the wreck dive and the underwater naturalist dive.

We had been picked up at our hotel by the dive shop’s Tuk Tuk, and then driven 30 minutes to Chalong, at the south-east corner of Phuket Island. Phuket is the largest of the many islands in Thailand, slightly larger than Barbados and slightly smaller than Singapore. Then we boarded a boat for the 90 minute trip to the dive sites. On board we met some great people – Maricar from San Francisco, John from Manila, and Vani, who is also doing his advanced certification course, from Richmond Hill. Azad, a Kurd originally from Sweden who has lived and taught diving on Phuket for 5 years, is our instructor. Azad has brought his underwater camera, so we will have photos of today’s dives.



On the way out; Greg is with John and Maricar

We jump in the water and descend along the mooring line, and the magic of diving is upon us. The sensation of floating, with friends but alone, only the sounds and sights of the ocean, is true freedom.

The 1st dive is at the site of the King Cruiser, a car and passenger ferry that rammed a coral reef in 1997 and slowly sank, with no loss of life. This wreck is clearly exactly that – a ship underwater; it has quite a different feeling from the Liberty wreck in Bali, probably because the Liberty was sunk 60 years ago, and was so coral encrusted that it was not evidently man-made. There is plentiful life everywhere as we swim the around and through the hull. In addition to the usual, angelfish, groupers, sweetlips, we see numerous lionfish, and a pufferfish that has been startled by something and so is scurrying to hide, but at full size. The immediate and dramatic changes in water temperature as we move about the wreck are quite surprising.

After 2 hours on the boat between dives, in which there is a surprisingly good (this is a dive boat, after all – the norm would be more like a cold sandwich) Thai curry and lots of conversation with all our new friends, we go back in for our 2nd dive. The boat has moved a few hundred metres to Shark Point, and Azad promises us that we will see at least 2 kinds of sharks. We do – a nurse shark and bamboo sharks. Bamboo sharks, while clearly sharks, are so cute – they don’t get longer than about 50 centimetres, and they don’t like people. To see them, we have to peer into their hiding spaces, floating upside down. We also see some barracuda, scorpionfish, and some white-eyed moray eels.



Underwater; note lionfish in lower left corner

For each of the 5 dives in the advanced certification, there is a written test, and the answer to one of the questions for this afternoon’s dive, of how humans provoke attacks underwater, includes either assuming the fish are friendly or have human characteristics, and also, to the contrary, assuming that they are inherently dangerous. It is so different underwater – you get so close to the fish without them appearing concerned that it is easy to assume they are friendly: on land you could never get so close to wild creatures without provoking defensive reactions. Even the dangerous fish, such as the lionfish and the scorpionfish, do not react when Azad swims quite close and takes their photos (unlike Balinese temple monkeys).

The day is perfect as we head back to shore!

We plan a quiet day of internet updating and beach. We wake up and have a wonderful breakfast at the hotel – all fresh fruit, fresh squeezed juice, and coffee made in an automatic machine. We head to the internet café we found yesterday. The internet is frustratingly slow – it takes 2 hours to upload 2 days of our journal, and we can’t download all of our email.

Halfway through our internet session, Greg looks at the wall beside me and gasps and points – there is a picture of our friends Alan Cornwall, who went to law school with me, and his partner Paul Meagher. Paul died in 1993, and Alan died in 1995 – we can’t imagine when these pictures were taken. I have a dim recollection of them coming to Thailand, but couldn’t begin to pin it down. But there they are, laughing and happy. We shiver – half way around the world and many years later, the last people we expected to see are Alan and Paul. The rest of the day is spent thinking and talking of times gone by, laughs that we shared, and losses we have suffered. It is a day of ghosts.

Gazillions of Italians, Germans, Swedes and Brits, each family with numerous children, all starting their Easter vacations, all exhausted from their connecting flights from all over the world, converge on Gates 8 through 10 at Bangkok International Airport. Some are headed for Chiang Mai, others to a destination we have never heard of. Most are on the 1:00 flight to Phuket with us.

Our morning has been relatively quite, packing and repacking for the 10 days away from Bangkok; we are leaving our big suitcases at the hotel in Bangkok until we get back. Today we are heading to Phuket for 5 days, and then north to Chiang Mai in time to celebrate Songkran there. Songkran is the Thai Lunar New Year water festival, when Buddah images are bathed, and monks and elders receive the respect of younger Thais through the sprinkling of water (sometimes throwing and squirting with water cannons) over their hands. We understand that a lot of water is generously splashed about and that the parade in Chiang Mai will be attended by thousands.

Our flight is over 40 minutes late in taking off and we ascend into a major lightning storm. But the hour and ten minute flight to Phuket is uneventful, except for the most efficient service of a complete meal we’ve ever seen on an airplane. The tourists on vacation do the typical hand clapping at touch-down and John and I laugh to each other, having accomplished 11 flights since we left Toronto.

We are staying at Patong Beach and for those of you who don’t know Phuket, it is busy, gregarious and raucous. We are staying at the Club Bamboo (thanks for the referral, Bill Sumpton), a 5 minute, 100 baht (approximately $3 CDN) Tuk Tuk ride to downtown. We are out of the loud, honky-tonk center of this typical beach town. Our ultimate goal here is to do some diving and we head into town to check out the dive shops and book a day out on Tuesday. We find a $5 CDN all-you-can-eat buffet of scrummy and spicy Thai curries and rice and a couple (several) Singha Beers in the Paradise section of Patong then grab a brightly lit Tuk Tuk home.

N13
E100

Happy Birthday to Liz, John’s sister, on April 5!

We arrived in Bangkok last night long after dark. On the drive from the airport, which was very quick, we couldn’t really tell what we were looking at, other than lots and lots of high-rises. We got to our hotel, and realized that it was smack-dab in the middle of everything – just off Surawong Road, right beside Patpong Market and close to Silom. The taxi driver tells us that we are lucky – it is a long weekend and so the traffic is easy.

When we arrived, we had no plans – a hotel reservation for 1 night and that’s all. So we wake up and, after breakfast, call a travel agent that our friend Bill Sumpton recommended. They are open until noon Saturday, so after a few minutes chat we grab a taxi and head over. An hour later, we have plans – we fly to Phuket tomorrow for 5 days, then we fly to Chiang Mai, in time for the Songkran parade for the Thai New Year, the year of the monkey, we think, next Saturday. We had originally expected that we would take some buses there, but the arrival of Air Asia here in Thailand means that it is virtually the same price to take a 1 hour flight as it is to take a 12 hour bus ride. So we will fly around Thailand on Thai Air International, collecting Aeroplan miles in the process.

We decide to walk back to the hotel, through a wonderful park with a statue of King Rama VI. We are surprised by Bangkok – all that we have heard has led us to expect a really ugly and dirty city. At least for the few kilometres between Wireless Road and Surawong, it is a decidedly modern and prosperous city. We turn onto Surawong Road from King Rama IV Road, and there is the Jim Thompson store. Jim Thompson was an American stationed in Bangkok after WWII, who virtually single-handedly revived the Thai Silk industry in the 1960s. We go in – the silks are truly beautiful, and most of them do not conform to our stereotype of what silk is like. We wander to the 2nd, then the 3rd, and then the 4th floors – to the furniture department and the upholstery silks. These fabrics are absolutely beautiful, and again, for the most part, are not what we expected silk upholstery fabric to look like. We decide that the next time we decorate a home, we are coming to Bangkok, and that there will be a huge amount of silk involved. Greg has asked to leave the store early because of the frustration of not being able to buy anything.

Our hotel is just down the street, and we head in to wash our faces – it is the hot season here, 38 degrees, but not as humid as Bali so we aren’t noticing the heat quite as much as we did there, but the smoke and smog sting our throats and eyes and crust our faces. We head out immediately to walk to the river. After a couple of blocks, a tuk-tuk driver convinces us to go for a ride. He takes us to a pier on the river, and we negotiate (Greg: down to just over 50% of original asking price, yeah! John!) a tour of the river and through the klongs (canals). The tour we get is worth every penny!

On the river


On the klongs

We go through a number of different areas – some clearly very middle class, a couple of homes we pass clearly belong to very wealthy people, but most of what we pass evidences heartbreaking poverty – although this is very decidedly a more prosperous country than what we saw of Indonesia. The thing that gets us today is the number of people – adults and children – swimming and bathing in both the river and the klongs – this is water that you and I would not dream of putting our baby finger into, let along jumping in and frolicking.

Our ride done, we walk back to the hotel – it is now 4 p.m., and the sun is low enough that we can find shade on the west side of the street. It feels like a much shorter walk in shade than it did in full sun. We realize that we haven’t had lunch yet, so find a place and have wonderful Thai curries. Then we grab the computer and find an internet café, where, much to our delight, they have broadband and it doesn’t take an hour to upload 6 pictures.

After washing our faces – again – we head out for supper at about 9. We find a place that we’ve read about in one of our guidebooks, and have more Thai curry – this stuff is absolutely addictive. At the table next to ours is an Aussie, and something happens that makes us all laugh, so the next thing you know we’re into quite the conversation. He’s been working in Asia for over 30 years, and tells us that things have really changed since he started hanging out in Bangkok in the early 70s. He also tells us that he arrived on Wednesday and that just as his taxi pulled away from the airport terminal, the rain started – it took over 5 hours to get to his hotel downtown – about 24 kilometres from the airport.

After supper, we head to a club that Bill S. recommended to us; the only thing we can say is that we saw some things we’ve seen many times before and some things we’ve never seen before – things we still can’t quite believe we saw.

We head for home through the heady Patpong market, still going strong, continuously asked for “what do you want, I have it.” Bangkok, you got it!

Our last day in Bali is one of mixed emotion. We are sorry to be leaving but also happy to move on. The last 24 hours have been clouded with bad “taksi” rides and average restaurant service (see John’s review of La Luciolla) but nonetheless Bali has been as visually beautiful as its people are kind and gentle. I have not witnessed any Balinese angry, upset or displaying any form of temper while we have been on their island. Which poses the question: Why were such a beautiful and unassuming people targeted with a bomb that continues to affect their daily lives? Having spoken to some westerners who have been coming to Bali for over 10 years and have earned the right to call themselves Balinese, we discover that the bombings have allowed the Balinese to focus their energies back to their religious and spiritual lives. Re-focusing on their families, their religion, the rituals and the sensibilities that define them as a beautiful, warm and caring people. We have been lucky to see, meet and share time with some of them.

Gadeh our driver picks us up at the Bali Agung Village at about 12 o’clock. We are packed, checked out and ready to head to the airport. But before we do so we want to make a pilgrimage to the Father Temple, Uluwatu, which is about a 45 minute drive south on the island. We catch up on how Gadeh’s wife and two sons are and he tells us that they will be leaving this afternoon for the three hour drive north to his family’s temple in Sringrajah for a special get together.

We head south with the AC blazing. We walk into the temple, past the usual touts and hawkers and are given our requisite sarongs and sashes for the entrance. The temple itself is situated on a beautiful, sheer cliff and is very popular at sunset. We are happy to be here mid-day, despite the heat, avoiding the tourists.


Two views of Uluwatu Temple


Cliffs near Uluwatu, looking west over the Indian Ocean; temple monkey

We do our quick tour, stopping to gape at the views, chat with the aggressive monkeys and strike out for the airport. On our way we stop at a major Balinese Arts and Cultural centre called the Garuda Vishnu or GWK complex that is somewhat of a white elephant locally. Work started years ago and continues at a snails pace to this day. It is a bizarre complex of open plazas and little shade, to be presided over by a gigantic statue of Vishna on Garuda (the Eagle). This bronze statue, when and if it will be finished, will rival the Statue of Liberty in height and majesty. Again, when and if it is finished. At the moment, the faces of Vishnu and Garuda have been assembled and are on display, but there is little sign of ongoing activity.


Vishnu


Garuda; model of completed statue

We set our sights on the airport and drive down the hills surrounding Jimbaran Bay. Easy check-in, easy flight on Thai Airlines and we cross the equator for the 4th time in 2004. We touch down in the crazy city of Bangkok, singing songs from the King and I the whole way.

Bye-bye Bali. We will be back!

Best of Bali:
Best Club: Q, Seminyak
Best Resto: TeraZo, Ubud
Best Dive Site: Mimpang Island, Padang Bai
Best Hotel: Green Field Bungalows, Ubud; close 2nd: Bali Agung Village, Seminyak
Best Beer: Bintang

Reading: various issues of The New Yorker and The Economist; The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, by Mitch Albom

A day for sleeping in! Hooray!

We have a late start, and a wonderful breakfast compared to the rolls we’ve been grabbing as we head out for the long drives to dive sites.

We spend most of the morning choosing pictures for the last few days of our journal – the stories have been written, but the pictures have not been chosen. Then we head off to do something we dread – we go to the internet café to update the web and pick up our email. The internet is so slow here on Bali – everywhere they tell you they have “high speed”, and everywhere it is dialup – sharing small bandwidth among 12 or 15 other users. It is so bad that we have been avoiding the internet since last week. But we must do it, and so we head to a café that Sophie, our dive master of the last 2 days, tells us is faster.

2 hours later, our website updated and our email downloaded, it is time to head to the beach. It is a very short walk to the beach. When we get there, we head north, walk about 1 km to La Lucciola, which everyone has told us is the best restaurant on Bali, and where we are having our “farewell to Bali” dinner tonight. Having done the walk, we turn around and go south, and choose chaises in front of another restaurant, Ku Dé Ta, on which to sit – paying the appropriate fee, of course. The water is clean – very different from our only other time at the beach, on our 1st day here, when neither of us was willing to get in the water. The waves are unbelievably high – we won’t venture in very far. The only people who do go out past knee depth are attached at their ankles to surf boards, and they gladly take the risk and head out past the breaking waves, waiting for that perfect wave.



Seminyak beach

After showers, we head into the restaurant – it is beautiful – all open to the ocean, no walls under the Balinese thatch roof – in that way that only places where the coldest temperature they get is 26 degrees can do. The menu is strongly Italian-influenced, and for the first time in our experience here, there is nothing on it to indicate that we are Indonesia or even to hint that the chef has been influenced by Indonesian cooking. We order a drink, our entrees and mains, and a bottle of wine. The first thing to arrive is the bottle of wine. The next things to arrive are our entrées. Finally, our drinks arrive – we have almost finished our entrées (Greg had a hot entrée), but have held off on wine pending the arrival of the drinks. We slowly finish our entrées and our drinks, and there is a nice amount of breathing room before our mains arrive. Timing issues aside, everything is very good. We aren’t sure what we feel at the end of the meal, though – tonight’s meal does not in any way compare to a number of the meals (Indonesian food raised to the level of art in equally beautiful settings) we’ve had for a fraction of the price we paid tonight, which was about the same as we would pay in a good restaurant in Toronto.

Joan and Errol are at Santa Fe, and we meet them for a drink. And then we head off to home, for our last sleep in Bali. We will be sorry to leave – it is, once you adjust to it, spectacularly beautiful. The best is out in the country-side. The city, as John Baker says, has been spoiled by tourism. But if you want to, you can find the heart of the island, and you will be, as we feel we have been, rewarded for engaging in the search. And if nothing else, we feel that we could drive to Candi Dasa blindfolded – which is, to judge from appearances, the way all of the other drivers do it.

© 2004 Tobeeco Corp., all rights reserved | design by Artifex Design | powered by b2