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".

Woke Up This Morning, Got Myself Some Fun

Have been silent too long, but this posting won't be (too long, that is). We're on the road again while Willie is now out on bond and singing "On the tether again" or doing a cover of the Talking Head's "We're on the road to Nowhere". But Deb and I, having met David and Sarah in Delhi, are on the road right now. We're in Agra today, and if it's Agra, it can only be to see. . .the Taj Mahal. As we come to learn, it doesn't necessarily mean only the Taj Mahal. But we went this morning at dawn to see it and it was worth having to get up early and be ready to scoot over to the entrance where we were patted down like every place you go now. I have to say that this is truly one of the few sights that a photograph cannot do justice, no matter how good the photographer. As our guide reminded us, oh, maybe a million times, the British took the gold and diamonds from the Taj, leaving the marble and semi-precious stone structure we see today, but WOW! What a ruin! There are so many aspects of it, that it will take a few postings to get them all in. The photo below was not photoshopped. This is really us in front of the real Taj, really early in the morning.

Here are Sarah, David, and Deb waiting for the our guide and the shuttle. The guide went out earlier to buy the entrance tickets, so that was one less hassle to overcome. Then the shuttle took us to the nearest entrance gate where we had to go through security. TSA could take some lessons.

The Shah that commissioned the Taj had a wall to surround the structure built. This is the East Gate where we entered. There are so many stories that go into the 22 years it took to build that virtually every detail has meaning and myth behind it.
Sarah made the reservation and did she do great! Here's the view from our hotel room. Yeosah!
In the afternoon, we went to the Agra fort where the Shah had his digs. We'll be back with a series of stuff on that.