The House That Poo Built

Poo is formed into a variety of shapes. It is used for heating and cooking. My personal favorite were the ones drying on the side of the homes with handprints in the middle of each. Sort of a personal 'touch'.

neatly piled cooking/heating fuel

slapped on the side of their house to dry

the manure is shaped around a stick to dry

Ganges

We flew to Kolkata (better known to us as Calcutta) to get on a river boat from 7 days.
These are the towns/cities we are visiting along the way: Bandel, Kalna, Matiari, Khushbagh, Baganager, Mushidabad, Mayapur, and Chandenagor.  This was definitely the smart way to end the trip because a large part of the group had reached the "stomach bug" tipping point and it seemed that we were always missing a few people at meals and shore excursions. Our rooms on board were large and had very nice bathrooms which was convenient for some of the Delhi Belly group.

 The River was a daily part of the villagers life with fishing, bathing, washing of clothes, dishes and water buffalo being very common sites.

The water didn't seem to have a lot of garbage floating in it. Trash seemed to be laying on the shores. Paula and I did not see any dead bodies but Heather saw one but didn't have her camera at the time. However, she was able to get a photo of cremation as it floated by. They seemed to be fighting erosion with sandbags, bamboo 'jacks', and rocks. 

I guess riverboats and their accompanying tourists seemed to be a novelty to the locals because they spent a lot of time waving and yelling 'tata' to us.

Indian Trip Adventures

Broken down bus- our 52 member group has been divided into 2- an orange group and a white group. We were on the orange bus. After a rest stop our fourth gear stopped working and unlike any American bus driver, ours actually opened up the transmition compartment and started working on it. After 3 more starts and fails, we finally pulled off the road and loaded all our luggage and passengers into the white bus. Unfortunately 52 people will not fit into a 45 passenger bus so some of us were sitting on stairs, on the floor, or standing.  We heard a couple of complaints in that they were sleeping, one, who was sitting in a seat, asked Paula to move off of her floor space so she could stretch her foot. I was sitting on a side ledge by the first seat - there was room for another person to sit on the other side's front seat but the people refused to put their bags up so that another person could sit down.  We had definitely walked into enemy territory. (After riding in the front for the next hour, I realized we had had the better driver of the two). Another bus was called into action right outside of Delhi so "us intruders" left.  Paula made good use of her time while she was on the floor - she fired up her India hotspot and pulled up her spreadsheet and emailed in her payroll time sheet. It really is a "workcation" for her. 

After we got onto the boat, Munish gave all the 'standing' people free massages at the ship's spa.  Seemed like a fair trade to me ......!

Air quality gave Paula a sinus infection and a couple of days later I followed suit. After yesterday's long travel day, we are finally on the small boat and in a beautiful room. I am taking the morning off to give my body a chance to heal while Paula is being the good tourist and going to the Kolkata tour. I will read her notes. http://pgalland.blogspot.com She is way better at including the history and fact stuff. 

Part 3 - Taj Mahal

Wow! Not sure what else I can say. Even being as hazy as it was in the morning it was still so impressive. And it got better as the sun burned off the haze. So massive and so much detail.

A family wanted to take a photo with some blonds. The grandma kept touching my face.

We were sitting on the same bench that Princess Diana sat.

Part 2 India 2016

We decided that we would grab the front seat for this leg of the trip. So we got some good photo opportunities.  The first part of the trip was 4 lane divided highway with just a few stray cows making the ride exciting. The second part was a two lane, bumpy ride going thru small towns. Lots of passing and lots of horns. As we were leaving Jaipur we managed to capture some of the common street scenes.

This tree outside the old city walls is filled with dead kites. Most of the trees have these toys, but it was hard to photograph them from a speeding bus. 

We will have to change our perception when we think of the kids that ride the "short bus" . I couldn't catch a full one with the uniformed children. Public School is free including uniforms, books and lunch and even including a salary of a rupee a day to attend. Private school is about a 100 dollars a month.

You are ENCOURAGED to honk your horn when passing. Driving is a very noisy business. The "Use Dipper at Night", below the BLOW HORN, means to use your dim lights. They also have a condom with the trade name of "Dipper".  TATA is the name of one of the car companies. You can buy a 4 door small family TATA car for $ 2000. Our guide said it was as powerful as 2 motorbikes.

Very colorful painted trucks. I am assuming all the items hanging off the front are good luck charms, which are definitely necessary. We have only seen one overturned truck, a dead dog, and one dead cow, which is amazing with all the cacophony of sounds, vehicles and people. I saw no road rage but the people are aggressive as well as defensive drivers. Strange combo but it works. There are lots of traffic circles and not many lights.   And all this while driving on the wrong side of the road.

Ranthambore National Park Drive

We climbed into a big open vehicle with 15 other people. It was very cold so we had many layers on. 

We spent the first hour and a half driving around and stopping to talk to the other guides and groups to see if any tigers had been spotted. Our guide told us quite a few times how rare it was to see a tiger.  Then miraculously (suspiciously) we started speeding to a spot where a bunch of other jeeps and vehicles were stopped. 

It was a large male who was stalking a deer. He totally ignored all the jeep maneuvering and people talking. 

We stopped for a photo op at the park's most photographed spots. Here is my version ....

We should have been packing but we decided to take a short spin around the resort complex on a camel cart. Not .... We ended up on a 45 minute ride thru town and traffic. Interesting and exciting with all the traffic and horns. Paula had a little girl hop on with us and pat her leg for money.

Last game ride was an extra long one with very little bang for the buck. We spotted a lot of spotted deer, monkeys, boars, and peacocks. The only new animal we saw was a blue buck. No tiger spotted but we did see a leopard??? (Thru binoculars we really did see it moving and turning its head but they could have had a robot up there for all we know) 

On our way to Agra

 You obviously can't get there from here. We had to put our bags out last night at 9pm and hoped that we remembered everything we needed to get dressed the exit day. ( we did ) The bags went by bus the slow way ( 7-10 hrs ) to Agra but we are taking a 3 hr train ride. The Indian rail system is the biggest government employer in the county. We will meet up with our bags and bus in ......for the rest of the ride. 

Agra

The Agra Fort visit on our first day was sort of a teaser for the Taj Mahal. This is where the Shaw lived who had the Taj Mahal tomb built for his wife. She died giving birth to her 14 th child. It was a very hazy afternoon so,we could barely see the tomb from across the fields and river.

The third son (who killed off his two older brothers) decided that it was bad form for his father to spend so much money on the Taj Mahal for his wife (but not his mother), that he imprisioned him in the fort till he died. This was his balcony that had a view (on a clear day) of the Tomb. 

2016 India Adventures

February 2016

Paula and I are doing a Vantage Travel tour of India.  

We both needed a Typhoid shot which ended up taking us a total of 4 hours at the Glynn County Health Center. We ended up not being too upset after waiting an 1.5 hours for our APPOINTMENT because the nurse told us we were covered by previous shots. Happily we left with an unexpected 100 dollars in our purses.  Unfortunately that evening we both got a phone call from the nurse saying she had made a mistake and would we please come back in. To make up for her mistake she would give us the shot without waiting. That didn't work, it was another 1.5 hour wait, plus the shot area hurt for almost a week.
The Malaria pill we had to start today is really a strong antibiotic that you have to take for 45 days - scheduling the taking of the pill is challenging as well as remembering to take the expensive probiotics to counteract all the yucky side effects. 

We are here ! 

Except for an exciting rough landing in Delhi, we had great (but 2 really long) flights with all the connections working.  We got all our luggage even though Paula kept letting her luggage go round and round on the carrier .... I finally yelled at her to grab it as it was passing her by for another spin.  Serves her right for buying a black suitcase. I like my chartreuse one - can't miss it. I had a very "fragrant" seat mate but the ice cream that Air France gave us sort of made up for it - one was a Dove Bar - they obviously know how to win me over. Paula had a very interesting seatmate/story on our second long flight - she doesn't remember any of the first flight due to her halcyon daze.  check out her blog pgalland.blogspot.com

Hotel is beautiful but can't see too much farther than the pool because of the air pollution. I think China May have some competition in the horrible air department. 

Our first group meeting was this morning. We have already met someone from SSI on our trip. Small world. There are 52 people in our group which is split into two groups - orange ( ours ) and white. This is a good thing because Paula and I are having a hard time remembering everyone's name since Vantage is no longer handing out identifying name tags due to security issues. Also it means we can each have our own seat on the bus. 

First stop was the largest mosque in the India. Services can handle 20,000 plus.

Lots of birds everywhere. There was small room sized spot where people had scattered a pile of bird seeds along with bowls of water.  We saw it repeated in different parts of the city.  Lots of plants along the sides of the road but the leafs were all brown due to the dirt and dust in the air and the trunks were invariably used as supports for the multitude of electrical wires.

Lots of entertainers and sales occurring at the traffic lights or traffic jams. Teens selling 3-D puzzles, balloons, or car window shades along with little kids doing acrobatics and contortions for money or other favors. People were observing us as much as we were observing them. Lots of waves and smiles from people of all ages. 

We were treated to a rickshaw ride thru some local streets. Driver was not a young dude and kept trying to guilt us into a bigger tip by using the pity angle. A lot of moaning and complaining that he was tired. He did not do our egos ANY good.  

Garbage strike here - they haven't gotten paid in 2 months. I don't blame them, but it was hard to tell if the streets always looked this bad or if it was due to the strike. Weird - the area looked like slums but really didn't feel like slums. People seemed ok with their situation. Again - lots of smiles and interest. 

The ride reminded me of China in that the neighborhoods were grouped into commercial categories. One section sold just auto parts and one section sold books. Books were sold on the street - a far cry from Books A Million. 

Next stop was the Mahatma Gandhi memorial. Back story - rich family, educated in England as a lawyer, but he was such a lousy lawyer that he was sent to South Africa to do grunt work where he became interested in Apartheid Politics. He returned to India and began his movement.  No cemeteries except for some leftover English ones - the vast majority of the people are cremated. The memorials to India's  famous people are the spots where they have been cremated - seems odd to us.  The entrance building and along the entrance to his cremation slab had a lot of hanging marigold flowers. There are also lots of street corner flower stalls.

Monday - another good sleep and good breakfast. 

We visited the "leaning Tower" of Qutab Minar which puts the Pisa tower to shame. Built in 1193 by the 1st Muslum empire - it is 72 meters high with 5 out of the original 7 stages remaining. Tried to get photos of the very large green parakeets and the bold chipmunks that populate the parks but failed in both endeavors. 

Shopping stop at a silk rug shop, then on to lunch and a quick photo op at the India gate. Watched and probably encouraged (with tip) the illegal activity of a snake charmer. Still cool!

An afternoon on our own so we braved shopping and eating in the walkable Khan Market. The most exciting was walking back to the hotel and dragging Paula across the busy streets. Tomorrow morning will be 6 hour bus ride to the next city of Jaipur. 

No curtains - there was a horrible story of a Delhi girl getting raped on a bus with curtains - so there is a law that all buses could not have curtains in Delhi, but they are allowed in other parts of the country. So when it got too sunny to bear we improvised.

We now have real normal bus curtains since we are no longer in Dehli.

We arrived in Jaipur and got our first dot of the trip. I texted Paula's husband Bob a photo of his wife. Before the trip he had told her (jokingly) not to get any dots. Here is his reply....

It kept us laughing the rest of the evening! After an interesting family home visit and meal we had really  needed FULL night sleep.

Morning drive to  the Amber Fort, started in 1165. Jaipur was built in a natural bowl with mountains surrounding it. 

Walls around the ridges reminded us of a shorter version of the Great Wall of China. This is where we got the elephant ride. It was hilarious - my "posting" ability was horrible. Paula had the more stable seat in the rear. (Paula disagrees with me) 

Decorations in the fort are very elaborate with the lots of carvings, wall painting and mirrors.

Besides the free roaming pigs, cows, and dogs there are also monkeys. We found out that it is tradition to feed them on Tuesday. Hawkers come to the road and sell bananas for the people to buy and to give to the monkeys. A monkey in the fort almost attacted the guide in front of us for his necklace of flowers. 

Speaking of hawkers and agression - they were very aggressive at the fort. They kept throwing this bedspread at Paula even while she was on the elephant. She kept throwing it.back - it got rather humorous. We won't even go into the story of the photo hawkers. Brought back memories of the Chinese hawkers at the Great Wall.  Our favorite shopping was when Munish, our guide, would bring the hawkers' souvenirs  onto the bus and we could buy them there and avoid the bargaining. 

Last stop before lunch was a photo stop for the summer palace that was located in a lake.

Jaipur 

Today was a light day with just the palace/museum visit and a quick shopping at the bizzaar. The 18 yr old "prince" is attending school and wasn't in residence. Sounds like tourism and the museums maintained the palace. 

Whenever Paula and I travel we always seem to get a little panicked about water and we tend to hoard any extra bottles they give us. Last night, Paula had to take out 6 bottles of water from her suitcase so she could fit in her souvenirs. I have been known to be just as bad, BUT when the Maharaja's son went to England in the late 1800's - the family really went overboard. They built 2 silver urns that held 4000 liters of water from the Ganges.  Now THAT is water hoarding. 

Paula and I spent 3 dollars to get henna tattoos on our hands. The artist was so fast and skilled. You have it drawn on your non-dominant hand and it takes 30 minutes to dry - I of course smeared mine just as I did in Spain. 

24 hours later - We both still have them even though they are sort of a poop color brown. 

We did some quick shopping in the bazaar and Paula got all the stuff on her wish list. I got some sparkly bangles. 

Photo stop in the old by at the famous Hawa Mahal. Very thin "front" with 152 windows. It was built for the palace women to stand behind and watch all street activities in private. 

Rocky Mountain High Sept 2015

Amazing, all six of us were able coordinate a trip together at the same time (granted 2 of us were really doing workcations not vacations). We were invited to Paula's husband's baby sister's 2nd spectacular home located ontop of a hill in the Cotopaxi CO postal area. All the views from her massive windows belonged on a postcard. I actually felt guilty taking photos with my phone because it never did them justice.

 We landed in Colorado Springs at night so it was a little tricky following the GPS lady's directions in our humongous expedition rental car. Maria did a great job driving and navigating all the tricky turns and curves. Only problem we had was in Canon CO - I am guessing that place has a doppelgänger in Waldo FL.

It was a very laid back weekend with expectations of sleeping late and wine-ing into the night. Mimi and I had a problem with the sleeping in part because the morning sunrises beckoned us to try and capture the colors and scenes. 

We walked the roads, avoided the snakes, and enjoyed the cool dry (thin) air. We spent one day in the small and closest town of Westcliff doing the touristy things of shopping, sightseeing and eating.

 On the way we saw people pulled off on the side of the road using the cell phones (coverage was very iffy). The town had free wifi everywhere because it was too expensive to get to all the homes. Even though it was about a 30 minute winding, partially dirt road drive, we were surprised that during our absence the UPS man had come and gone and dropped off a couple of packages that Maria had ordered the previous morning. Amazon Prime rules....especially in the boonies.