Taking Grandfather Home

We met Philip Jose on the plane from Mumbai to Kochi. He was taking his grandfather (88) back home after a celebration in Mumbai. Philip is headed to Ohio soon to meet with manufacturers of plastics. He works six months in India and six months in Dubai.

Jantar Mantar and Hawa Mahal

Jantar Mantar means - according to one of the guides leading one of the German or British tours - calculating tools. This is the observatory in the old town of Jaipur. It was begun in 1728 and has the world's largest sun dial as well as smaller ones. What was cool was that the shadows fall on arches on the sides of the 'needle'. The arches are marked off in to show hours and minutes, and the one I saw was exactly right to the minute. (you have to add 11 minutes)

There are also constructions to track the stars and planets. All very amazing.

Right near by is the Hawa Mahal (Hawa = wind, Mahal = palace). This one was built with lots of little holes so the women, who were not allowed out, could still view the street outside. These pictures give you just a tiny peek into the fantastical architecture of Jaipur. This computer is impossibly slow. Not even sure these pics will load.

Call Center Workers

We started talking to two young men yesterday as we were getting on the ferry from Fort Cochin back to Ernakulum (same emphasis as binoculars). They are studying English and are hoping to becom call center workers because the money is good. I asked how much. They said 20,000 Rupees a year. Now, I'm not sure I got this right because that is only about $500. Less than $2 per day, which is one of the measures of poverty. But Nishant had told us earlier that a family could live on 15,000 Rupees a year and our driver said he made 1500 per month.

Stamp collector, House names

As we walked back from the bird sanctuary in Kummarakom, a young man asked - as does everyone else - "What country?" The short story is that he collects stamps and so here's his address. If you have old stamps from envelopes sent to you, send them to him. Geeno is the one in the middle in back in the blue shirt, with his aunt, uncle, cousin, mother, and grandmother.

Geeno P. Teny
Paruthiparampil
Kumarakom PO
Kottayam
Kerela
India

The Para... is a 'housename'. Someone else mentioned housenames to us. We also heard a little bit about housenames in China. If anyone knows more about house names, post a comment and enlighten us all.

Where the hell are they?

I figured it was time to give you a sense of where all we are. We started in Delhi - upper left/middle of the map.

1 - trip to Amritsar and back (train)

2 - to Agra (Taj Majal) (by car)

3 - to Bharatpur (bird sanctuary)

4 - to Jaipur (I'll try to post pics, but this computer is slow)

5 - to Pushkar - the holy lake - then back to Jaipur and Delhi

6 - fly to Kochi (was Cochin) (with a stop in Mumbai (was Bombay) taxi two hours to Kummarakom for two nights, then back up to Kochi where we are now. About 4 hours flying time total.

7 - tomorrow we are scheduled to fly to Goa with a stop in Bangalore. We'll relax at the beach for 6 days there.

8 - fly to Mumbai, we immediately drive to Aurangabad on Nov 27 to see the Ellora and Ajanta caves nearby

Then back to Delhi on Nov 30 and leave for LA on Dec. 1 at 11:35pm if all goes well

Kumarakom, Kerala

No internet for two days. We are in southern India now - Kerela
State near Cochin, now Kochi - and it is a totally different world.
Here it is more like rural Thailand and much less crowded, much more
prosperous. And the sky is blue, though it wa raining when we arrived
yesterday. Went to the bird sanctuary this morning at 7 and went out
in a little boat, a man with a pole, and our guide pointed out
and named various birds. Very enjoyable and relaxing. Can't add any
more pictures now because I didn't bring the connector.

I do want to mention the other parts of the travel - getting from place to place. It took 6 hours to go the 325 km (about 200miles) from Jaipur to Delhi - about 2 hours spent on the last 50 km (30 miles) getting into Delhi.

Then yesterday we were up at 5:30am, picked up at 6 and to the airport, where our flight out was delayed an hour. Stopped in Mumbai (Bombay) and then to Kochi (Cochin). Philip Jose sat next to us on the second part of the flight, accompanying his grandfather home. He was a wonderful introduction to Kerela and gave us his cell number if we had any problems.

Nishant, as always, was fantastic. He had everything planned out. (He has the blog address now so I can ony say good things. :) ) If you read this Nishant, our phon isn't able to call out. It does seem you called.

It was raining, but we were picked up and driven to Kochin where the travel agent got out - he needed 800 more than the original price, to pay for the taxi from the Kochi hotel to the airport - and then we drove about 2.5 hours more into little back villages to Kumarakom, where our 'hotel' is a beautiful little cottage on the lake. This is where people boat back into the canals, and we have lovely little spot in a locally owned place that is not much more than someone's lot that added these first class bungalows. Dinner was made to order and brought to our porch where we ate looking over the dark lake. At less than $40 a night it is a bargain compared to the international hotels nearby that are $180 on up. Nishant, you did a great job.

Back to Jaipur, Israeli tourists in Pushkar

A quickie. Up by 7am, walked around the holy lake at Pushkar. Had breakfast overlooking the lake then took off our shoes to walk over the holy bridge to the ghats where pilgrims come to bathe in the river. Sat and talked to Raghu, the owner/manager, not totally sure which, of the Rhagav Resort. About the impact of tourism on Pushkar (mostly bad he thought), why he doesn't have fruit trees (monkeys and peacocks eat the fruit), and the growing gap between rich and poor in India.

An interesting note on Pushkar is the number of Israeli tourists (and this is a backpacker hangout). While we first noticed Hebrew books for sale and a Hebrew sign on a shop, it really sank in when all the keyboards in the internet shop had Hebrew letters painted or pasted on them.

We are back in Jaipur, staying in a plush hotel with a beautiful garden and pool that we used this evening. After our spartan but beautiful digs in Pushkar (our room had windows and balcony all around, but the bathroom was basic and this morning I had to get water with a bucket (let's me feel how many Indians live), Joan walked into our room here and said, "I liked Pushkar better."

Gotta run.

Keoladeo National Park

Here are some pictures from the park.
Our guide was Satto (pronounced Shatto) and he warmed up to us slowly and the second day we went looking for the night jar
and
the owl. You can tell which one is the owl. The other is the nightjar. And there is an antelope.












While I'm waiting for the pictures to download, I want to tell you about camels. We've moved into camel territory and we shared the road yesterday (two lane highway)with trucks, busses, bikes, motorcycles, horse carts, and lots and lots of camel carts. And people were passing three abreast. Our driver is extremely cautious, which is good. And he wears his seatbelt all the time, and stays within the 80km (about 48mph) speedlimit.

More From Pushkar, More on Maps

Here's the "Hotel Raghav Resort" in Pushkar, Rajastan. Joan is locking our door that opens to the rooftop 'garden' with a great view of Pushkar.



The place we stayed at by the bird sanctuary was one we found in Lonely Planet. It was really nice as you can see in the photo. Well, you can't really see the garden and the nice arched sitting patios with beautiful marble tiled floors.
As I said, Pawad was not happy. The place that was reserved for us in Jaipur was another company guest house that Nishant arranged. Despite the fact that it was in a non-descript street, it had nice furnishings in the lobby and was very clean. Our room was spartan, but clean. We've learned to ask for a second towel, how to turn on the hot water ("it comes on at 4am"), and for a top sheet. (In the Indian guest houses they just have a blanket without a top sheet.) They were very nice and brought all that and toilet paper too. But the window was tiny and the room was dark. As we changed plans and decided to scrap going to Jodhpur, I pulled out Lonely Planet and called two places (the first was full) and made reservations for tomorrow night. I called Nishant and told him and we talked a little about Pawan's need for commissions. Nishant thought skipping Jodhpur was a good idea (not that it should be missed, but we would be driving too much). Anyway, we wanted to go by and check the place out. I had a map in the Lonely Planet and we figured out where we were. Pawan asked someone directions and was told to go left where I thought we should go right. I said, I think this is wrong. We drove ten minutes, asked a couple more times. We got to the road - Ram Singh Highway. But we needed Jai Singh Highway. I told Pawan the difference. He asked a cop who pointed in the direction I wanted. From then he let me tell him where to turn and we got there pretty quick. It is a beautiful old, huge home with a nice swimming pool in the back. Talked to the lady about maps and she just said, Indians don't use maps, they ask. I mentioned what the bookseller had said about getting opportunities to help people, and she smiled wryly, and said, well, I don't know about that. They just don't use maps. (She was Indian.)

Birding at Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur

Dianne, here's the list for you. Much of what the park is famous for is missing because water has been diverted for irrigation for farmers. So the wetlands are mainly drylands. All the waterfowl that usually stop off here from Siberia (cranes) and from Africa are elsewhere because there are no wetlands here.

We went out the first evening from 3-6 and saw:
jungle babblers
Rufous tree pie (This was one I caught a picture of at JNU)
Lesser Golden woodpecker
Scops Owl
Coucal
Red vented Bulbul
Bromely starling
While breasted watrhen
White cheeked bulbul
spotted owlette
Rosering parakeet (they are actually all over India)
white throated kingfisher
chip-chip (need to look up the right spelling)
plain plenia (again need to check spelling)
Indian Roller (Blue Jay)
Orange headed ground thrush - well, I saw it, and the guide identified it as a Siberian visitor that is rare, but I couldn't really tell what I saw

Some animals that day were antelope, spotted deer, Indian soft shelled turtle, and a golden jackel (very cool, the last one)

The next day we went from 6:30-9:30am. We didn't see a lot of new ones, but went looking for and found:
a long tailed night jar
dusky hawk owl

Both were amazing. The owl more so because we really went chasing it. We saw a glimpse, then it flew away. We found it again and it flew away. And once more. The parakeets and crows were harrassing it. Then the guide found it again and it just sat there staring at us as we stared back in the glasses. He was incredible - those big yellow eyes.