Luck, Chance or divine intervention - A trip to Jaipur

My vacation in India was supposed to be two weeks, including the 4th of July holiday. San and the kids were to spend another 2 weeks while I was to experiment alone in the Kitchen and go back to Asia for a business trip in those two weeks. My stay in India extended by an extra four days, and I got a chance to spend those four days with the family on a Jaipur trip. The way it happened was scary though.

My FIL had dropped me off at Mumbai airport for a Cathay Flight to Hongkong. Being my first time at the new airport, was happy snapping pictures of the airport and was in general looking forward to a great trip. It was a full flight and just as we were cleared for take off and the plane was about to go around the bend to start take off, the plane made the usual funny noises. The pilot however, announced that he was aborting take off and instead was going to cross over to the other side of the airport and get it checked by Engineering. His exact words were "this is most likely to be a 10 or 30 minute delay".

There we were on the outskirts of the airport with twenty or so vehicles of different sizes flashing cop lights everywhere. We did not know if it was really an engineering problem or something else. One hour goes by, we are all asked to remain seated, not get up, no water, no tray table lowering and no updates. Slowly the passengers who woke up and realized they are still on the plane started demanding updates. The updates were few and far between and finally 4 hours and 45 minutes after sitting on a plane that was supposed to fly for 5 hours 30 minutes,  the passengers started a mutiny of sorts. 

It was my most ridiculous experience on a plane to date. Finally the pilot said "we are aborting this flight" but we cannot go back to the airport in the plane. You will be taken in buses 50 at a time. The only good thing was that the passengers in first class allowed the elders and people with kids to go out first. 

Once we got back to the airport, it became even more ridiculous. The ground staff, which was mostly new college grads in Cathay uniforms were clearly not ready to handle 400+ irate and tired passengers at 6AM and to top things off we had to get a "cancel" stamp on our passports to Re-enter India! Then we had to get our baggage back and go through "customs". Fortunately they created a separate line for this aborted flight and let us out fast. Now this little "cancel" stamp is making every immigration officer look me up and down (I have already made it back to Asia twice since July)!

When my FIL picked me up back at the airport at 7AM, the logistics of this hit me. They were leaving at 11 AM to Jaipur. I had to stay alone in Mumbai for 2 days, then fly back and forth across the Pacific within 3 days. So alternate arrangements were made in 2 hours. I got Wifi ready to work from Jaipur over the next 4 nights and got a last minute ticket to fly with them and fly out of India 4 hours after we land back in Mumbai. It was sight seeing by day and work by night and was brutal, but we were all happy. The photographer was now part of the trip!

I was also over joyed at seeing San and the kids and have never hugged them tighter. Turns out the plane had engine failure and it was a good thing the pilot aborted the flight! 

Off we went to Jaipur and boy was it great! My FIL always does an outstanding job of planning a trip months in advance. He had to adjust on the fly and cancel a trip to Bikaner given my work schedule, but we managed to cover things in Jaipur at a steady pace over 4 days.

The ITC Rajputana, where we stayed was amazing. Just look at the lobby! Had to do HDR images to just capture a fraction of what our eyes saw there. 

The kids were running up and down the marble stair cases. To date we have not been in a more beautiful hotel.

Then we went to the room. It had a great view of the pool and there were folks going through a Yoga class in the lawn. 

Even the hallway props in this hotel were awesome!

After relaxing for an hour, we visited the City palace of Jaipur. As soon as we entered the palace, we were greeted by a snake charmer. These guys know how to play to the stereotype!

There was a puppet show which included "Michael Jackson" which amused Jr. and the little one. I will reiterate.. they know how to play to stereotypes..

The Palace was full of weaponry from the 1700's and the gifts that the kings had received from various places over the years. 

 The halls were magnificent. I just went click crazy.. 

We used a tour guide who gave us a decent explanation for every thing we saw. This palace has multiple levels above and below the ground level. An engineering marvel if you realize they had a 10+ story building 350+ years ago.

My mind kept going to the same thought. These guys created so many wonderful things hundreds of years ago. What have we done since then other than figure out how to destroy them or disrespect them? and I did not think of this in an Indian context but a global context. Eisenhower created a fantastic highway system in the fifties and today there is not enough money to even maintain those, let alone reinvent. 

When it comes to creating architecture, we suck compared to our previous generations. It is all glass, concrete and steel. The artistry seems to have taken a backseat and chances are all these glass thingys wont last 350 years. 

This palace had 4 gates which were so ornate, one for each season. Apparently the king used to use the entrance for that season. 

Waited patiently at this gate for the two guys to leave, but no luck. They insisted on being part of the shot. 

 The stone work in the palace was mind boggling. 

as were the doors with all the metal work. This is one huge door to enter the palace!

Just look at this one pillar. I asked the guide how long it took to complete the palace and he said "one kings starts it and his grandson finishes it".. most palaces in the area were completed over almost a hundred years.

There were a few intersting artifacts in the Palace that caught our attention. One was this mirror gifted to the King from the Chinese. No matter where you stood, you could get a full length reflection. 

and what was the worlds largest silver pot! This thing made it to UK and back because the King would only drink and bathe in water from the Ganges. So he made two large silver pots, filled them with Ganga water and hauled it in a ship for his UK tour. 

The palace also had a big hall where all the artists who were patronized by the king for generations demonstrated their art form. The kids thoroughly enjoyed spending an hour watching the artist paint minute details with vegetable colors on silk. 

After spending a good two hours at the palace, we were off to have a traditional Rajasthani dinner.

Would definitely recommend the ITC Rajputana hotel for a stay if you can manage one of those dicount deals.

That is a post for another day...

Transported to another time

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of reconnecting with old high school friends. It is going to be 25 years since we all graduated from high school and a reunion is on the cards.

Thanks to social media and friend finders, we have managed to connect to a lot of folks using the "ghost to ghost" network...

I know at least a few friends of mine, who stood in line at the school library to get their hands on the one book they could take home every Wednesday, will get the "ghost to ghost" reference.. 

There is now a larger group on Whatsapp, which I could not understand. It is a single serial thread on text, where it is not easy to parse or figure out who is responding to whom. Facebook, which still falls short of my expectations on how things should be does a better job!

Everyone tells me though that for folks who are not used to getting unlimited texts for 10$ a month or 140MBps at a minimum, it is very convenient.  I have joined the group and am figuring out how to check 600+ texts over a 8 hour gap. Stating that my classmates seem to be "prolific texters" is an understatement. 

One our classmates happened to visit our middle school geography teacher, a person who was very special to a lot of kids in the class. Always nice but stern, she had a way to get us to learn, what we needed to learn and drilled it into our heads. She also had a way to confirm that we actually got it! It was not through tests and quizzes but by making us feel proud of displaying what we had learned, to the whole class.

If you got something that no one else got in the class on some special topic, she would award a small pencil to that kid. In "those days", we used to have only the standard 2B lead pencils made by two companies, Natraj and Flora. I might still have a sample of those two somewhere in my shoe box.

Natraj had alternate faces of the hexagonal sides painted red and black and flora was a white pencil with small pink or purple flowers on it. Our Georgaphy teacher was handing out a pencil with a really tiny lead that would pop out when you clicked it.

It was a technological marvel when seen by the eyes of 7th grade students. When I said this to my daughter she went "so you got a mechanical pencil.. big deal!" 

It was a bigger deal than anything she can imagine.

Me : has your teacher even given you anything for being outstanding?

Little one : No

Jr. : Yes she has. I got a free dinner certificate at "The Elephant Bar" restaurant last year. You guys did not even use it or take me there. 

Me : Okay, but why is that any different than my "mechanical pencil" ?

kids : Because mechanical pencils are what we use all the time. We don't use lead pencils.

Then I got their point. They did not "diss" the concept. They did not understand that this was a novelty in those days. 

Today I spent a good thirty minutes rummaging through my shoe box which should now be renamed as my memory box. Opening the shoe box can be a double edged sword. Sometimes it brings a rush of happy memories, but sometimes it is just sadness. Dead friends, relatives, people who have been lost over the years to distance and time, sometimes a tear or two at being able to find a pencil from middle school years!

You just don't throw things like that away! Another thing that the kids are learing from the shoe box concept. 

The pencil still had some lead in it and works. I clicked the pencil and closed my eyes and before knowing it, was in middle school sitting in my Geography class learning about European countries, one at a time, their food, people, culture, currencies, landmarks to visit with a little bit of history thrown in for good measure.

It might be just a "mechanical pencil", but what my kids don't know, is that it is also a time machine!

Athirappilly Falls - Kerala

After having a ton of fun at Thekkadi on our recent India trip, we moved on to visit the Athirappalli (Tamil pronounciation) or Athirappilly (as they say it Malayalam) falls with a short stop at Kalady. 

Kalady is the birth place of Adi Sankara, the man who rejuvenated Hinduism across India when it was under threat from invasion on all sides. However cute as Kalady is as a small village on the banks of the Poorna(now Periyaar) river, I did not see anything special there. It was just another temple that was not even maintained to the standards of other important temples. The place could seriously use an upgrade. Moving on... 

Athirappalli is amazing! It was worth the drive on the windy Ghat roads, the trek on slippery stones down to the bottom and walking with plastic ponchos through and through. Totally worth it!

We get to see a lot of tall falls, but few wide ones here. One notable exception was Burney McArthur falls. This one is like a supersize version of Burney McArthur falls when it comes to the volume of water flowing down. Given that we were there in the middle of the monsoon, it was breathtaking!

I did take a slow motion video with the iPhone5, but somehow uploading it to Youtube makes it lose the slo-mo effect. 

If you visit Kerala, this place is a must see. On a touristy note, the ponchos are sold by vendors a good kilometer before you approach the ticket booth entrance for 100 to 120 Rupees. The store at the entrance sells it for 50 Rupees. Our kids learnt an economics lesson there which was interesting. 

Some pictures from the few hours we spent there. It was challenging to get anything there. Even if you have weatherproof 1000 dollar lenses with fancy hoods, the water just forms a fine mist in the air and hits you from all directions. I used to wipe down with a cloth, then aim, shoot, repeat. 

We came back up with happy thoughts and smiles on our faces. Just look at the little ones face on that last picture. It sums up our emotions walking in the mist!

When I post a picture on Facebook of how many states I have visited in the US over the last 21 years of staying here and many friends who were born and raised here tell me that is a lot more than they have seen! There are folks I know who have not seen any state other than California, Nevada or Oregon! 

India is also a vast country. When I was growing up, there was not a lot of time or money to go see the country. Our parents did take us on vacations within the state and to neighbouring Andra Pradesh using their LTC( Leave Travel Concession) tickets every summer. We used to love those trips, have fun visiting temples, taking bath in pristine rivers, etc. but they were like local travel. Not a wide exposure to the rest of the country.

Studying in Varanasi helped break that for me. 

Now that we have the ability to plan trips better and see more things in a short time, we are discovering a piece of India on every trip, even if the trips are few and far between.

This trip was after a gap of 3 years, so we covered two places that were on the list. Kerala and Rajasthan. 

Have finally started looking at photos from the Rajasthan trip.. will post them soon.