Thursday Feb 7 Excursion to the Amber Fort

Every conference has an excursion. With over 800 attendees, organizing any kind of trip is a major undertaking. We chose to visit the Amber Fort (along with 4 bus loads of our friends.)

Our trip started in the late morning. You don’t think that Physicists were going to take a whole day off to play, do you? If one gets to the fort early, an elephant is the means of transportation from the bus to the fort. We were late, so used jeeps. (Supposedly, there have been some problems with the elephant transport – fights between elephants etc. People have been hurt – even killed, so the guides don’t really encourage using them. I must admit I was a little disappointed.)

Here are some of the elephants going home after their work shift. They are only allowed to do 5 round trips in a day, but they have to walk from the elephant barns near Jaipur and back each day.

Here is Art in our more mundane transport: The fort is large and impressive sitting on a hill.

The façade inside the fort was obviously the inspiration for the front of the conference venue. (Actually, a direct rip-off.)

We saw where the 12 wives (and 400 concubines) lived. Each had their own apartment – but they could only talk to each other in a central pavilion:

The wives bathed by standing in a square pool. Servants poured scented water over her (for 2 hours) while the Maharaja looked on from a balcony.

They had an ingenious method of air conditioning. It worked like a swamp cooler, but on a larger scale. When asked how the water was brought up to the top, the guide said that they had a Persian screw pump, but also multitudes of people.

A very special room was done with mirrors imported from Belgium. Just one candle would reflect from all of the surfaces to create a well lit room. At the present time, this can no longer be part of the tour, but we did see examples of the mirror work.

We left the fort and proceeded to 2 restaurants for lunch. It is really hard to find places that can feed busloads of people very quickly. In truth, the ones we were at were really dismal.

After lunch we stopped at the water palace for a photo op. THEN THEY TOOK US TO 2 FACTORY TOURS!! One of which I had already been to for way too long. (They call them factory tours. Really they are a quick demonstration of some craft and then a hard sell. This was not what we had signed up for. We were supposed to go to the Observatory. Everyone was really upset. Because tuk-tuks seemed to be off limits at these places, it was impossible to escape. Chuck just stayed on the bus.

Back at the hotel, I developed a fever and chills. Too bad, we were entertaining all of our Chinese friends. I took two Tylenol and hoped for the best. It seemed to do the trick. I think that everyone enjoyed themselves. They only had to choose a drink and Veg or Non Veg. Everything else was fixed. We reminisced and told each other of our travel adventures. (Some of them had taken the train in India.)

Fell into bed and was asleep immediately.

Wednesday Feb 6 I’m turning into a memsahib

Two nights ago we met a nice tuk-tuk driver named Raj. He gave me his card and told me to call him whenever I wanted to go around the city. He quoted what we thought was a fair rate of 50 Rs an hour.

Yesterday we went to Pushkar, so I didn’t call him. He saw Chuck at the conference and asked why I hadn’t phoned.

So at 10 am he met Lucille and me outside of the hotel for a day of exploring. He took us to an ATM, so that we would be prepared for shopping.

First we went to the Hawa Mahal, aka Palace of the winds. We see pictures of it all over and could see it from the Observatory. This is a model of it. The real thing is covered in scaffolding and not too photogenic at this point.

Its purpose in life seemed to be as a giant reviewing stand for the ladies in purdah. All of the windows are screened with the slots looking down at the street. All processions went down the street in front of this building. It is very tall and narrow. It has 7 floors, but is only one room wide. Instead of steps, there is a ramp that goes from floor to floor. Supposedly, the women wore very elaborate holiday dresses that were very heavy - so they were pushed in chairs by their servants.

A close up of the screen:

The view of the street:

This is a part of the palace that has been finished. You can see how lovely it is and why this is called the pink city, although I would call it more a coral.

Then Raj took us all over the city. The first bazaar we wanted to stop at was right in front of this Palace. He warned us that we would find it difficult, because the shopkeepers are very aggressive and would try to pull us into their stores. We managed 1 block and decided to cross the street and work our way back. Crossing the street is truly an adventure. There was a man standing next to us and we decided that when he moved, we would move with him. Unfortunately, when he moved, he jumped onto a moving bus. Not a good person to follow. Finally we just bit the bullet and worked our way across. We admitted to Raj that he had been right.

Then we went to a cheaper bazaar, but since it doesn’t get as many tourists, the shopkeepers are a little more laid back.

On our way, we passed the milk store:

All of these guys are there to fill up their milk cans. I think that they resell it.

Lucille and I aren’t really dedicated shoppers, so we would look for awhile and move on to the next place - another FACTORY! We were really fast there. Then we went to a shop that is owned by a friend of Raj’s. It had nicer things. Lucille was tempted by a scarf but decided to sleep on it.

This really was an errand day. Lucille and Art are going to an Indian friend’s home for dinner – so she had to buy a bottle of something to take. We stopped at a bottle shop and after much dithering chose a bottle of Indian whiskey. Who knows what it will taste like?

Then, a stop at the phone store, to see why her phone wasn’t working properly. She bought a sim chip in Mumbai and now, it doesn’t seem to work in Jaipur.

We went back to the hotel to rest before the “cultural extravaganza”. Raj was right on time when we headed back out to go to conference. He even agreed to find another tuk-tuk to take us all back to the hotel after it was over.

This evening turned out to be a big deal – a musical performance by one of the really famous musicians in India and then a dinner provide by the Prime Minister.

I’m not very musical – but this performance was wonderful. I hadn’t known that Ragas are all improvised within a set of rules.

After the dinner buffet, Art, Lucille, Chuck and I headed out hoping that Raj would be dependable. There he was – with a cousin in tow. We really didn’t want to have to sit and wait until the buses decided to depart.

I have been trying to find a nice Parcheesi set. I can’t even find an ordinary one. The people who know what they are, are astonished that I even know about it. One of the people who knew what I was talking about runs the jewelry shop in the hotel. He said that his company/family could make one. They could even make one with little carved and painted elephants for the pieces. Chuck and I went and ordered it. While we were working on the paper work, I asked what one looked for in an emerald. Chuck decided to go to bed. Yogi (my new friend’s name) showed me every emerald he had in stock and showed me how to compare them. I ended up choosing a stone that he will set into a ring.

A grand finish to a fun day

Tuesday Feb 5 Pushkar – town of the camel fair

Pushkar was one of the suggested tour possibilities. 6 of us decided to go. I think that we are destined to have long car rides wherever we go in India. City or country – everything is a far piece. In October, Pushkar is the site of an enormous camel fair. They have races, beauty contests (of camels) and auctions. During that time, most of the visitors sleep in tents.

Pushkar is a 3 hour drive from Jaipur. Most of the way is a 6 lane toll road, but there are tractors, tuk-tuks, and heavily laden small trucks sharing the lanes. On the way we stopped to pick up a friend of the driver. He wanted to make a pilgrimage to Puskar and took advantage of the ride.

They are building rest stops that look very much like the ones in the States, but they aren’t open yet. We stopped at this one. The driver said, “Very clean bathrooms.” He was right, so we were happy. They also had very good coffee.

This part of India is a desert region that looks remarkably like New Mexico. When there are no people or houses, you can’t tell the difference.

We did get to see many more camels: (There have been a bunch pulling carts around in downtown Jaipur, but they are too hard to get pictures of.)

We were supposed to pick up our guide at the outskirts of the town. He wasn’t there. Our driver got a little worried, because no one was answering their phones. He finally was told where the new pickup point was, so all was well.

Our first stop in Pushkar was the Brahma Temple. Brahma doesn’t have too many temples in India, because he played around on his wife and she cursed him. We had to take off our shoes and walk up a flight of stairs to the temple proper. Marble is slippery with socks – but I wouldn’t have liked to do it in bare feet. (Ick)

It has the same kind of dedication plaques that the English church in Mumbai had, except that these were for Indians.

The back of it was the most extraordinary color.

We walked further through the village. A small boy followed us all the way playing Frere Jacques on a stringed instrument. We had put our shoes back on.

We were going to the sacred lake. Every Hindu is supposed to make at least one pilgrimage here to bath at a holy ghat. Ghats are steps down to the water.

About 30 feet from the lake, we had to take our shoes off again. We were each given a tray with red and yellow powder, rice, sugar and flowers. We added the flower that we had been given at the Brahma temple.

Each of these substances represented an important element of our lives. Then we all traipsed over to a ghat and down the stairs.

We were each assigned our very own spiritual guide. He explained the significance of each item on the tray again and had us say a prayer in Hindi. Then we repeated for each item, “I pray for myself, for my family and for my country” good health, good education, good life, etc. It was weird and very moving. Knee-jerk crier that I am, I shed a few tears. He marked my forehead with a mixture of the red powder and rice. We tossed the things on our tray into the lake and the flower behind us. We were shedding our bad karma and getting good karma. Then the giant scam started. The “spiritual guide” asked for, and then demanded money for the charities in the area. They really argued about what one chose to give. It turned a good experience very nasty.

But here I am with my red mark:

We said good-by to our Pushkar guide and went to a very nice hotel for lunch. We ate in the garden and took pictures of the room next to the ladies room. Another 3 hours back to Jaipur, with a bathroom break at another place with "very nice bathrooms."

Chuck and I had dinner at the Indian restaurant in the hotel. They had a very good tasting menu. The only choices were Veg or Non-Veg. Just as we got to the soup, we were joined by Art & Lucille. We paused so they could catch up – and we all tasted everything. We are going to take all of our Chinese friends from Hefei out to dinner and decided that this place would be a good choice. We made reservations for 10 for Thursday.

Monday February 4 Tour of the Pink City

We had made arrangements for a ½ day tour of the old city, so I spent the morning in the room. Sent out the laundry; sat with my feet up; just relaxed.

The van picked me up in the early afternoon. The Pink City is entered through gates. These are high and wide so that an elephant can go through them. The doors have spikes, to stop elephants when they are being attacked. One of the gates is only for the royal family.

Our first stop was the city palace. It is still home to the Maharaja. When he is in residence, they fly a small flag over the national flag. The Maharaja no longer has any power, but still has lots of money. He has his own private jet, for instance.

Near our parking place was the “pigeon restaurant”. No, they don’t serve pigeons, they sell food to feed them there.

We walked by a public letter writer. The man is paid to type letters for those who cannot read or write.

The palace is painted and carved with elaborate designs:

One of the Maharajas didn’t trust the water in England when he went to visit, so he took his own in these huge urns:

We found this really funny, since we are all really obsessive about not letting any Indian water pass our lips.

From there we walked to the Observatory. Built by Jai Singh II between 1728 and 1734, it looks like a giant sculpture garden. The small sundial calculates Jaipur’s local time to an accuracy of 20 seconds.

There are 12 of these boat like things, one for each of the zodiac signs. They are used by astrologers.
Astrology is important here. It is necessary to know the exact time of a person's birth and the ascending and descending signs.

I spotted some snake charmers and asked our guide what an appropriate tip would be. 10 Rs. OK. I took my first picture and a snake guy demanded 150. He was trying to convince me that since there were a lot of snakes, it was worth more. No way, I said and turned away. The guide ran up and asked if I had taken any. He then took me back, gave them 10 Rs and had me take my pictures. The guide also offered to take my picture with the snakes. NO THANKS!! I reimbursed him when we left.

We moved outside of the city walls to the Lake Palace. This is being turned into a restaurant. Customers will be taken by boat to the palace.

Here’s our group. From the left, Odda, me, Lucille, Maria, Ursula and Kara:

Next came the ever popular FACTORY TOUR. The first part was interesting. They demonstrated all of the steps of the block printing on cloth:

Starting with the outline, they added colors one by one to achieve this:

At the end, it is rinsed in salt water and dried in the sun to set the colors, which are now look like this:

Then we went through the steps of rug making. This guy showed me how to tie the knots. They aren’t actually tied, but rather wound in a figure 8 and cut off.

Next, they are cut with scissors. This process is repeated several times until the carpet colors almost glow.

The fine threads and hairs are burned off the back with a blowtorch. Because it is wool, the fibers only singe.

So far, so good. Then we were trapped in the shop areas. Carpets, textiles, handicrafts. Each person had a follower, so each time we hesitated near something, they started to sell it to us.

Maria was shown every fabric in the place. She ended up buying a silk which they made into a stole. Unfortunately, the rest of us waited more than 30 minutes for her. They had told her that we were all buying handicrafts and she had lots of time.

We got back to our hotel about 7. The guys arrived at 7:45. There had been the usual balls up with the buses. Chuck says that he loves being with Art (Lucille’s husband.) When Chuck is about to blow, Art is already there reaming people.

Chuck rushed into the room and said that we were going out to dinner at another hotel and had to be there at 8. We cleaned up hurriedly and went to get a cab. The doorman was relieved when we agreed to a Tuk-tuk. Cabs are few and far between here.

We had a buffet dinner at the Sheraton with the other members of the User’s Executive Committee. The Sheraton had Western, Chinese and Indian food on there buffet. We all drank Cobra beer.

We had a great Tuk-tuk driver on the way home who gave me his card, so that I could call him again. His rate is 50 Rs an hour for schlepping people around town.

Sunday, Feb. 3rd Moving on day

It is very strange to travel with so many people that you know. How many times do you get on an airplane and know most of the people on it?

The Indians do not do well with moving groups of people in an organized manner, so getting everyone into vehicles to go to the airport was the usual “cluster f…” The airport was very well organized. They x-rayed the bags just as you came into the building. They put a plastic tape around each bag and a guy then carried them to the check in counter. A quick boarding pass and baggage tag operation (It took two people – one whose only job was to put the tag on the case) and then we were all ready to go to the gate. A fast 10 minute operation. (Our bags had been touched by about 6 people, because if you can use 1 person to do a job, 2 (or 12) will be better.)

At the security check point we were divided into male and female lines. Our flight which was 60% physicists had many many more men than women, so our line was much shorter. Instead of walking through a scanner, each person was wanded, so in this culture a woman had to check the women.

Kingfisher was a very pleasant airline, in 1 ½ hours they did a lunch service. The choice was veg and non-veg.

At Jaipur we were met by a bus. We were all staying a different hotels, so they tried to separate the suitcases into areas in the luggage compartment. At each hotel they threw the people and their suitcases out and went on to the next. When it was our turn, we were put on the curb, they neglected to say that the hotel entrance was around the back of the building. Art and Lucille are staying at the same hotel, so there we were, 4 old people, lots of suitcases and no idea of where we were to go. A tuk-tuk (aka 3 wheeler and auto-rickshaw) driver saved us. He loaded all of our stuff into his vehicle. There was room for one person – so Chuck was nominated to go with him and keep our stuff safe. We followed him to the driveway and then hotel employees shifted everything the rest of the way. (Another CF.)

The view of Jaipur from our hotel room window. The hotel is lovely and modern and nicely located, but all of the hotels are islands in a sort of slummy looking sea.

After checking in, we had ½ hour until a bus would pick us up to go to the conference venue for registration. Then we had to wander around for hours until the reception started. This was in a giant tent behind the building. (There are more than 800 participants, I think that this many people are very hard to handle.)

The venue:

I used this opportunity to talk to the travel desk about our need for a car and driver from Agra to the Delhi airport. He suggested instead that the car would meet us at the Agra Airport, show us around and take us to the hotel. The next day they would take us to the Taj Mahal and the Fort with a stop for lunch. The following morning they would then take us to Delhi. A car, driver and guide for all of this for $250 plus tips. It sounds good – so we made a deal.

The waiters at dinner were all dressed in black suits, black fedoras and white gloves:

The bus boys were all in white with baseball hats.

After the reception, we whined and cried until they got their act together and got the buses loaded to return to the hotels.

The room is large & lovely. The beds are comfortable. This hotel is a little posher than the last. We really slept well. Didn’t wake up until the alarm.

Saturday February 2nd, our last fling in Mumbai

For our last day in Mumbai, we really, really didn’t want to get in another car for another very long ride, so we decided that we would explore closer to home.

First was the little village just outside of our hotel’s gate. We had been driving by several times a day and wanted to see it “up close and personal.”

There were many little shops. They were selling clothes, shoes, electronics – you name it, some teeny shop was selling it. They tried to tell us that a scarf was pashmina – but it was a filthy (from all the street dust) piece of harsh wool.

The medical facilities:

We all shuddered and said, “Don’t get sick!”

The kids were adorable. They came to talk to us and loved getting their picture taken and then wanted to see the result. These kids looked well cared for. We have seen some that make your heart ache.

At the end of the shops, we could look across a stream and see some houses:

A barber shop:

All was going well, until Carol, in a well meaning way, decided to give one of the kids a dollar. Deena was taking some pictures when she heard a commotion and thought that the kids were going to knock Carol over in their effort to get to her. She reached in and grabbed her and pulled her out of the scrum.

Meanwhile, Mary and I had been wandering farther on. We couldn’t understand, why all of a sudden, all of the kids who had just been chatting and asking questions and answering ours, started asking for money. We regrouped and retreated to the hotel.

Our next adventure was to take a taxi to the chandelier shop that we had seen everytime that we went to the conference.

Yes, there they are, just hanging from the tree on the edge of a very busy street. We took some pictures and walked along this street to a restaurant that was over the Pizza Hut. We thought that this was closer that it really was. “Mad dogs and Englishmen” did cross our minds as we walked along.

Mary thought that since we were on the shoulder of the road, we were safe. She was clipped a little by a motorcycle. Not enough to really hurt, but enough to scare. I didn’t mind the motorcycles using the shoulder, or even the auto rickshaws, but I thought that the dump truck that squeezed us against the wall, was a bit much.

Before we could get to the restaurant, we had to cross this street. It did have a median, so we could go across the lanes nearest us, while the traffic was stopped. Then we rested before darting through the moving traffic on the other side.

We took the levitator:

It was open with just a chain across the entrance.A nice view of the traffic from the window of the restaurant:
We each ordered a dish. The waiters dish them out onto each person’s plate. When I said before that it was hard to photograph, it was because it was all done sort of piecemeal. The food itself is really tasty.

This was just after each person had received a portion of the dish that she had ordered. The naan in the middle of the table is also delicious.

After lunch, we walked up the street to a bazaar. The building was really elaborate and fancy, but inside there were just a bunch of stalls.

It did have a “food court” with a Baskin-Robbins.

I had left my pink hat in the restaurant, so Mary and I walked back to retrieve it and took a 3 wheeler home. Deena and Carol shopped a little more and took one from the “mall”.

That night, Chuck and I went back to the same restaurant. He has been eating at the conference and at the hotel the whole week. We had been planning to go to one of the other hotels, but this restaurant was nice and a little different and better than hotel food.

We took a taxi there and, to give him the true experience of India, an auto rickshaw back.