Saturday February 9 The banquet

Lucille and I had hired Raj for another day. When we went into the parking lot, an older man came up to us and introduced himself as Raj’s uncle. He dialed Raj on his phone so that we could talk to him and make sure that we had been officially handed off. Raj said that his Tuk tuk had a problem, so his uncle would be driving us. Everyone has brothers, cousins, and uncles so a live client is always passed to a family member.

Our first stop was the Anokhi coffee shop. All of the girls were meeting there. The shops don’t open until 11 am and our husbands start off at about 8:15, so we are all ready to go – this gave us something to do. It was very pleasant to sit around and sip coffee and tea and chat. They also had fabulous pomegranate juice.

Our main topic of conversation was how we were going to be able to dress warmly enough for the banquet. It is cold here (about 43 degrees at night) and the banquet is going to be outside. Even with heaters, it is going to be a problem. The Anokhi shop had really nice scarves – so they were a popular item.

After coffee, we went to the conference site to pick up our tickets. (These had been supposed to be in the guy’s packages. They hadn’t been. Then we were told that our name tag would be sufficient – but the latest story is that we need official tickets. As it turned out – we didn’t need anything.)

Deena. Lucille and I went back to our hotel so that I could copy Deena’s pictures to my computer. Then we separated. Deena went shopping and Lucille and I went to the doll museum. It was on the campus of the school for the “blind, deaf and dumb.” It was a funny little museum. There were a lot of dolls that were dressed in the various native costumes of India. There were also dolls dressed in modern day school uniforms. Then there were the foreign dolls. Very strange national dress. Norway was a white blond girl dressed in a pink mini dress from the 60’s with a little white fur beret. It looked like every time someone from the school went on a trip, they picked up a doll from a toy store.

Lucille had clipped an ad for a Mall from the newspaper. We made that our next stop. Raj’s uncle told us it was very expensive. He would have preferred to take us to yet another craft shop. The mall had a food court – so we had Chinese food for a change. Then we just wandered through the more modern stores to see the kinds of things that are available.

Back to the hotel to rest before layering for dinner. Chuck and Art came back early so that we could all go over together in a taxi. Art was worried because there weren’t going to be enough chairs for everyone and he needed to have a seat. We were the first ones there and staked out places near heaters.

The organizers had gone all out. The venue was really pretty with flowers and fairy lights.

There were camels, elephants, a band and dancers to greet the guests:

We each had a necklace of marigolds and some of us got red dots. (I don’t know the criterion. At first we thought that it was only the women, but then some of the men had them too.

They had both gas heaters (like in restaurants here) and braziers. After dinner, gathering around the brazier was a good activity.

The food was tasty. They made fresh naan in tandori ovens

They also have a dessert which is very like our funnel cake. Theirs is thinner and is dipped in a sugar syrup.

Here we are with some friends from Hefei:

There were fireworks, a tightrope walker at the party next door and dancing to Indian folk music after dinner.

Chuck and I took a taxi back. We didn’t want to have to wait for the buses to be loaded. We were probably in bed before the party really broke up.