Acarolling in Kerala we go!

Kerala is the southwestern-most state on the subcontinent. It's local language is Malayalam which means "thank goodness for Tamil Nadu and the Bay of Bengal or we'd all be Malayans, or worse, Burmese". It's the closest to the Equator that Leigh or Deb had ever been. Of course, this is glaringly apparent as these two very blond, very pale-skinned women stepped off the plane onto the tarmac at the Cochin airport. The airport is 40 kilometers from Cochin, but the biggest city in the state gets to claim ownership of this one-runway "international" airport. However, as we experienced later, they were not alone. Kerala is a European magnet much like Goa. I took no pictures because Speedos on old guys on the beach or on the deck of a houseboat is just so wrong, but they were there as well. Buuuuuutttttt, I digress, again.
At the airport, we were met by our driver, Vinayan, pronounced Vinoo, who was a Kerala backwater kid who came to the big city and has been driving ever since. His English was OK, but he had a great sense of humor and, as we've learned from our previous driver experiences, is well-known by retailers, tourism guides, and vendors in the touristy areas of Kerala. We drove straight away out to the backwater area beginning with a typical two-lane road which seemed much like the drives we had experienced before outside Chennai or Bangalore or Delhi. But within an hour, we turned off the highway and started up winding roads lined on both sides by rubber tree plantations. One of the first things you notice is the number of Christian churches, but Duh, The Portuguese were the first western traders here and they brought along the shock troops of the Catholic church: the Jesuits. But you also see a great number of Hindu temples as well as a smattering of mosques. but was is really interesting about the number of religious institutions is that Kerala is and has been a communist-controlled government for decades. So much for godless commies! But enough politics! Off we go into the mountains. The state is dotted with small villages which we drove through maybe a gazillion on our way to Theddakay. We passed through one that was starting a festival with a drumming group. We were climbing up on a fairly steep grade when we started to get into the switchbacks which were quite exciting because the roads narrowed enough that the hundreds of buses we passed needed the entire road to make each of the switchbacks. This wasn't a real problem -- until after nearly five hours drive, it started to get dark -- and rain -- but the traffic did not subside. The back roads traffic seemed like something you would expect in Hyderabad -- passing, beeping horns, speeding up only to hit a switchback and find an on-coming bus. Well, Deb and a a>Leigh, both in the back seat, were car sick from the many twists and turns. I was unable to stand up straight from tensing all my muscles during the drive as if I came off the wildest roller coaster at Six Flags Over the Wagah border crossing during the daily flag lowering ceremony. We reached Spice Village about 8pm. We had some dinner and went to bed. And reliving it has exhausted me, so I'm gonna call it a night.

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Belated Merry Christmas!

For all our friends and relatives in the US, we sincerely wish you a Merry Christmas. Two weeks ago, Deb and I joined her colleagues from Novartis in spreading some cheer in a couple of places. I want to start with the orphanage. Novartis donated a new building to the Child Haven International facility in Hyderabad. If nothing else, you get the picture of what "wretched refuse" looks like. The children here, ranging from infants to young adults, are the cast offs of prostitutes, ultrapoor families who just can't deal with another mouth to feed, and generally the human equivalent of the pervasive litter on the side of the road. The folks that work full time at the shelter were probably residents here as well.

The kids play in a dusty yard in the compound or in a dusty field that surrounds it. Notice that the operative word is "dusty". I didn't want to think about a description during monsoon. As construction continues on the new building, the ubiquitous rubble piles are all around. A feral dog had puppies and the kids were taking care of her and the puppies as best they could. The mom dog was like the kids looking for the attention of anyone who would look at them with the possibility of something to eat or some attention -- any attention.

For anyone feeling gloomy over these holidays, just look at these folks and realize how many blessings you've got. It's like being part of the "Christmas Present" ghost section of Dicken's "A Christmas Carol". No, I didn't say "humbug" or anything like that.

Our second stop was to a clinic for people suffering with multiple sclerosis. With very few options for healthcare, most people are paying for treatment out-of-pocket, so Novartis supports the clinic with financial support and reduced price for drugs (of course).

Next post will be our trip to Kerala.

Remove your Shoes, Please. Dentist at Work.

We've been here six months and it's time to get our teeth cleaned. Deb got a recommendation from her beauty shop owner so I called to get an appointment. The receptionist immediately thought I was a dental tourist, asking when I would be coming to India. When I said we lived in Banjara Hills, I got an appointment in less than four days! Wow, try THAT with our Jersey dentists. Four months is more like it and that is only for the "high value" patients (read: we're gonna get a shitload of money off THIS one).

We had a misstep on our way as we stopped at the Smilin Dental Clinic rather than the Smiline Dental Hospital. One letter made a whole lot of difference. We finally arrived a couple of minutes late, walked up to the first floor and were immediately met with a sign: Remove your shoes. OK, I'm not certain what the purpose is, but we did it. There had to have been about 40 pairs of shoes lying about. My first inclination was "it's a busy clinic". The office is located in a relatively new building, the decor is modern, almost like the offices in "Nip Tuck". We pad on in and tell the receptionists that we had an appointment. We were given the perfunctory forms to fill out. The lighting in the reception area was soothingly dimmed (again, read: I can't read the frigging form that has to be in 4 point type!!!!). The receptionist who handed us the forms to fill out told us it would be 200 rupees for a consultation. When I said we had appointments for cleaning, a flurry of activity started. Deb asked how much the cleaning would be and now, the receptionist said 800 rupees. That ain't bad! $17 USD??? Slap me silly.

then we were guided to a waiting room that was empty, enclosed, and air conditioned where as about half the owners of the other shoes in the stairwell were seated in a cramped space.

We wait for a couple minutes and then one of the receptionists comes in wearing a pair of sandals and as Deb was feeling slightly uncomfortable barefoot in a public place (she doesn't walk around barefoot in our apartment)she asked him why he can wear sandals and we have to be barefoot. Humiliated, he sputtered something about how his were special for some of the staff and he immediately took his off and nudged them over to me and then barked at one of the cleaning women who were also wearing flipflops and she took hers off and gave them to Deb.

Deb was finally called and left the room. I was amusing myself with a copy of the special gala addition of a magazine that is something of a mix of gossip and fashion of the Indian film stars. It followed the same format of fashion magazines in the US: don't let the editorial get in the way of the advertising. You could have Shah Rukh Khan modeling some Indian designer's clothes for a fashion spread on one page and be in an ad for some other product on the facing page. You get light-headed reading a magazine like this. Of course, that's better than having the little bit of vomit come into your throat from reading an e-magazine article about Lindsey Lohan has straightened out her life and jail was the best thing that happened to her. Butttttttttttt, I digress.

When Deb returned to our semi-private waiting room, she let me know that the cleaning uses a water jet and it gives you the same sensation as being waterboarded. She was right. There was a constant mist on your face while the dentist was cleaning. I got done and was escorted back into our semi-private waiting room again. We waited for about another 5 minutes before another woman came in with the results of our cleaning which said that Deb needed some additional work but I was done. Then we went to pay up and check out when the price of the cleaning went from 800 rupees to 1200 rupees. That required another 10 minutes of head bobbing, intelligible discussion that they don't know what the price will really be until they clean. We had additional tarter that required extra work. We decided not to argue. Yes, it was a 50% increase in price but that meant the cleaning went from $17 to $25.

We've had some eccentric dentists in our time, but this experience was a notch above. Talk to you soon.

Tyger, Tyger burning bright

I read William Blake when I need late 18th-early 19th Century mysticism, and I know I'm no Blake. But we went into the jungle southeast of Jaipur to go on safari in the hopes of getting a glimpse of a tiger. Mind you, Deb and I were already exposed to the experience in Kabini reserve where the closest we got to a tiger was a paw print on the muddy trail. At Aman-I-Khas we were roughing it out in tents for the evening of our stay. The temperature dipped to 10 degrees Celsius at night. The roads to the encampment made me long for the potholes of Hyderabad. For David and Sarah, this was their first experience with rural Indian life and their eyes were at times as big as saucers when we went through some of the towns/villages. The dung disks drying in the sun beside the wooden lean-tos were enlightening. Now they think of any of the New York streets above 125th as being rather civilized. After about a three-hour drive out of Jaipur, we got to the campsite.
Fortunately our batman had the porters set up the tents before we arrived so we could stow our gear and grab a bite to eat before we left on our trek.
Deb had been jostled so much by the drive over the bad roads, that she decided to bow out of the afternoon outing, opting to stay back at camp and try to get all vital organs back in their proper place before attempting the safari.

So David, Sarah and I set out with our guide, Islam, to the Ranthambore reserve. David would later regret having a beverage at lunch that is a natural diuretic as the reserve does not allow humans to mark their territory in The Indian Way. The sky was slightly overcast, which was good as it allowed us to see some of the flora and fauna better, and there was lots of it. The "jungle" in Ranthambore reserve is more like savanna with Acacia trees and cactus along with the tall grasses.

This environment sustains a great deal of the wildlife just like those you see in the National Geographic magazines on India: lots of birds, crocodiles, and lizards. Where the deer, and the antelope play at not being some predator's next meal and the sky is only partly cloudy all day.



There were three ponds on the stretch of the reserve we were on so there were lots of egrets and other water fowl along with the crocodiles.
And the water birds did not bother with us as they went about their fishing. The reserve had originally been the hunting lodge (and second largest fort in India dating back to the 10th century) of the Maharajahs right up to the 1970s when Indira Gandhi endeared herself to the Nawabs, Maharajahs, and Nizams by exercising eminent domain and confiscated and nationalized these lands. Just like we saw in the Kabini, some of the most prolific fauna are the deer and antelope. Like this large antelope below, they are pretty much ubiquitous along with the deer population.

And the water birds, as well, go about their work with only a slight irritation as the bit 16 passenger tour bus pulls up.

Sarah, of course, is a natural with, well, nature. Just like Snow White, the little birds come to her while she was singing and dancing her way through the jungle.
I wanted one of the many green parrots to land on my shoulder so I could be one of Jimmy Buffet's parrot heads. Instead, I'm just one of the bird brains. Many monkeys populate the park in different gangs with their own colors and signs we were told by Islam (the guide, not the religion) and they send out alarm calls whenever there is a threat such as predators, rival gangs, or an invitation to a cocktail party. Suddenly Islam asked for silence as he listened to the monkeys. It was like watching Jeanette McDonald listening for Nelson Eddy singing "I am calling You ooo ooo oooo, ooo ooo oooooo".
David was the one to spot the leopard running off into a ravine not too far from us. He said he could see the tail and back legs as the animal took off into the scrub. And not too much later, we found out why it had beat a hasty retreat when coming up from under some dense brush by the lake, a female tiger came up the hill, directly at us. She wasn't charging. She was deliberately following a scent of the leopard, not to be confused with Al Pacino's tango partner in Scent of a Woman.
My Canon Powershot is a nice camera, but it doesn't have a long telephoto lens, so the shot below was no more than 6 meters from where we were. As David observed later, this was a risk-free meeting for the tigress. She knew that virtually all humans pose no direct threat and if need be, they could provide a meal since on any one kill, the tiger consumes about 35 kilos of meat. I would have been the obvious target. So this was a win-win for her and our presence did not deter her from continuing her tracking of the intruder leopard who has only one of the bigger-stronger-faster attributes for territorial domination (the answer would be C -- faster).

Now I could hear both David's and Sarah's hearts pounding at this meeting. You could almost see the adrenaline rush in both of them. The tigress padded off in the direction David had seen the leopard. We watched her for a while as she moved back and forth trying to figure out where the other cat went. She marked a few saplings and, after determining that the leopard was no longer invading her space, she came back toward us, passing incredibly close to where we were.
I switched to the video mode (Sarah had already switched and had some great segments) and got a few seconds as the tigress headed back down toward the lake. Now THAT was cool!

I gotta tell ya, the rest of the jaunt was anti-climatic, very nice, but the tiger meeting was great. When we got back, Deb was at the camp spa still trying to get straightened out. David, Sarah, and I wanted to tell her that we had seen the usual: birds, crocodiles, deer, and then nonchalantly mention that, oh, yeah, we saw a tiger. However, timing is everything. The batman had told her about our sighting before we got a chance.

So after we had a chance to relax, we had dinner and sat by the campfire (we could have had marshmallows).

After a day of the drive to the camp, the exciting safari, we retired to our tents. It is deceptively roomy on the inside.

We had a wonderful time. We were all sorry we couldn't stay longer. After this experience, I looking forward even more to our outing in Kerala in about 10 days. We'll be Keraling in Kerala for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, we're taking time to be on the shores of the Arabian Sea. We'll have more for you from that. Next post will be about the some of the living conditions of the Mogul kings and Hindu Maharajahs in the north. Stay tuned!

OK, it's awesome. 'Nough said.

Of the things we've experienced in the last week, I freely admit that the Taj Mahal (the original name was Arjumand Banu Begum which is loosely translated "my wife is looking down from heaven and will curse me unless I fulfill her wish to have a beautiful resting place after having 14 children by me" or Deb's translation: "after 14 kids, I deserve this") is one of the truly awe-inspiring sites I have ever visited.














There are so many details that you can spend days here but these images are ones that struck me. If you haven't been -- go. If you have been, I hope you enjoyed it as much as us.

Help! I've been fortified!

After three cities, I think I've almost reached my fort quota, but it is worth it. Northern India has always been something of a highway. The original settlers came this way followed by the Aryans, followed by the (your western Asian culture goes here). Then the spice and silk roads also came through here. So I see these forts as much being very large toll booths as they were defensive positions. You start to get a sense of this when you are in the Red Fort in Delhi. The buildings above are part of the fort complex and they are white marble. Not the thing you want to protect you from the hoards at the gates. Anyway, we were at the Red Fort in Delhi. Right below is the king's seat where he judged the petitions of the little people, not Munchkins, but HIS little people. He sits on the throne (I know what you're thinking!), his advisers sit just below him in the shade, and the litigants sit in the hot sun until the king thinks their willing to settle.

This is the gate leading to the market street which still has the same type of shops that it did 350 years ago. For any of you who have been to Mackinaw Island or Niagara Falls, the same Chinese suppliers are making the statues, "silk" pashminas, and bobble head peasants for these guys to sell.
Now here's a wall and it goes for 3.5 kilometers around the fort which still houses active military operations.
And here's the family outside the main gate.
Ya know, if I were a marauding horde, I'd be impressed!
I'll write about the tombs in a later post, cuzz we're on to the Agra Fort! In the next picture you can just make out the Taj Mahal in the distance which is the vantage point the old Shah Jahan could look at his masterpiece as he was under house arrest by his son. There are two major (and conflicting) stories about the son: (1) he was blood-thirsty and an all around nasty guy who killed his older brothers and imprisoned his father so he could wield unlimited power in the extreme version of "it's good to be king", and (2) he devoutly followed the Quran which says you don't build palacial monuments with other people's money, so Dad, you get a "time out" for oh, say, 8 years or until you die, whichever comes first. Winners write history, so I'm thinking the legal story is number 2.

You can see a lot of details in this fort that are blends of Persian, Chinese, and Hindu architecture.

So, what's with the Star of David? Like the Swastika, the six-pointed star is from Hindu symbolism. But once again, some of the guides will say it was because the Shah married a nice Jewish girl and put the symbol on the building in respect for her religion -- like THAT's real believable.
Another fort, another turret and gate to storm.
The Agra fort is much larger (over 5 kilometers around the outside wall), but that's not the BIG fort which we have to go to Jaipur and the Amber fort. Here are the private gardens of the harem. The original gardens were supposed to have been a series of pools and garden areas with fountains. There the king's wives and concubines lounged around. No men except da king went here. Even the guards were women. We were told the fierce Rajastani women were the security detail as they were excellent archers who protected the queen and the court.

As you can imagine, the water had to get up to the fort from the tank below. The three tiers below were part of a donkey or camel or some other animal that kept water moving from one level to another until it was up to the top level of the fort and gravity did the rest.
See that hill in the distance? You should be able to make out a wall that snakes up from the left and runs along the spine of the hill and down to the valley below where it then winds its way back up another hill and around to the Tiger fort. In total the wall encompasses about 20 kilometers. Yeowza! Another IGTBK moment.
And below is the saffron island where the king grew the flower to allow its scent to waft up to the castle on the wings of the wind. Of course trying to get gentle fragrance of the saffron flower to overcome the animal sweat and putrid peasant smell was a challenge that the engineers had to overcome. Being FOTK did have its drawbacks as should you fail to solve the good fragrance to bad odor ratio could land you a job as target practice for the female guards of the harem on their training days.
But here is another view to impress the marauding hordes on their approach. You can imagine the castle shining in the sun with a big banner saying in sanskrit "I fart in your general direction".
Maybe you can tell that by this point, we'd seen enough world heritage site fort antiquities that David and Sarah were ready to go back to our hotel fortress which even had a moat as well.I'm going to call it quits for tonight. Watch for "Name that Palace", a traveling quiz show, a parchezee board using people as pieces, and a jaccuzi that brings visions of the bath scene from Mel Brooks' "Robin Hood, Men in Tights".