Incredible India

Imagine today going into an ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman or Mayan temple and seeing a ceremony performed exactly as it was done thousands of years ago.  This is what you see today in temples such as Brihadishwara in Tanjore.  Ceremonies performed there today were being performed when temples in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and southern Mexico were still in use, by priests who are descendents of those from ancient times.

But the gods of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Mexico are long dead; their ceremonies, chants and prayers forgotten in the mists of time.  Their temples are ruins for tourists and historians. The gods and temples of Hindu India, however, are as alive today as they were in antiquity.  Only in Tamil Nadu, India can you see a classic civilization in action.  This, to me, is the great thing about this place and why it was my favorite spot on our trip. 

A couple of times, in temples off the tourist route, Amy and I were invited into the dark sanctum sanctorum by the Brahmin priest, himself a descendent of the ancient priests, to see him perform the age-old ceremony…waving candles, chants in the original Sanskrit, the pouring of ghee and water over the lingum and the dabbing of sacred ash on our foreheads.  The sound, sight, smell and color of all this was remarkable and I felt something unique here.   Knowing that this exact same experience was had by people thousands of years ago was exciting and a feeling, or maybe an energy of some kind, enveloped me and I felt being transported back in time.

But a feeling of being in another time is not unique to the temples.  Where as in other parts of India much of the old farmland in the countryside has been developed into new neighborhoods full of high rises, call centers, fancy apartments and new businesses, in South India it is still mostly rural, unchanged from ancient times.  There are no fancy malls here, but there still exists villages with small roadside shops, coffee stalls and dirt roads. Villagers leave their newly harvested grain on the road to be threshed by passing cars.  It is in the south that you see the age old tradition of bronze casting performed exactly the same way, by the same families, for thousands of years.  It is here in South India that you can walk through a marketplace and be overwhelmed by the sights and smells that amazed the Romans and Greeks when they traded here millennia ago.

I loved everywhere we went and we chose our route well.  We were fortunate to choose South India as our first visit to this country, thanks in large part to advice from our friends Shuba and Ananth, who helped us a lot with choosing the places to visit.  Not only Tamil Nadu, but Kerela, where we could relax on the backwaters in a small village and and way up in the mountains on a coffee/tea/beetlenut plantation, seeing elephants working on their farms pulling out large tree trunks to the roadside and ancient Jain temples in the forest.  And Mysore, where we saw the 400^th anniversary of the great Dusara procession, which had elephants carrying great howdahs on their backs, transporting the descendant of the last Majaraja. Marketplaces are full of ancient shops run by the same families for generations.  Kashmiri shopkeepers all competing for your business, some quite annoying, others quite charming with great sales techniques.  Afterall, we bought a Kashmir rug from one of them!

After many years of avoiding India, because of all the stories of dirt, robberies and worse, we finally said to hell with that and went.  And it turned out to be one of our greatest trips ever.  We will come back someday, maybe next time to the far north, to the Himalayan states of Ladakh or Sikkim.  I can’t wait to again experience the crazy, honking traffic, the smiling faces, the odd head wobbles, the tasty food, the roaming cows, the ancient traditions, the great, old temples, the chanting priests, the busy markets, the friendly people.  The sights, smells, sounds that can only be found here.  Incredible India indeed!

a few last travel details

if you are traveling to India, a few quirks on travel


airports are a bit different: in chennai at least: first thing you must do when you come in is find out which bag screening queue to get into, do that get a sticker on your luggage that's being checked, then get in the queue for your airline departure itself.  While waiting in line send someone ahead to get baggage ID tags for all your carry on luggage and if leaving the country, to get the immigration exit forms.  Fill out fresh bag ID tags for each of your hand carry luggage!  Then even for domestic sites, go through individual screening separate lines for men and women. They will pat you down, and then stamp things all over your boarding pass AND your little luggage tags. make sure to do this or you will not board.

smiles: smiles from staff and customs folks in Indian airports and train stations are quite hard to come by.  keeping a solemn dour face and being brief and curt seems to be the order of the day!  don't know why.... (maybe our customs agents and tsa folks are the same actually)... sometimes, smiles can be freed if you can do the south indian sideways head waggle... but this is quite hard to learn, makes us dizzy!

for train tickets book 3 months in advance if possible, use the Indian railways site 'trains between cities' to find out your train #s, your 3 letter codes for the stations you want and then go to cleartrip.com to book it and pay with your US credit cards (the indian rails site only seems to take visas linked to Indian banks). Last minute train trip changes:  a few seats are released about 72 hours before the train leaves so you can sometimes get a last minute overnight train...

train station information: hard to come by... there is usually a person at an information booth who may be helpful and direct you to the right platform.. but they do not always know where your car will be...... there are fourteen different types of offices at train stations (station manager, platform manager, whatever) and finding the actual one who may have your bedding or finding some sign to indicate where your particular rail car is going to stop, is hard. Trains do have car numbers like "A1" or "S1" and they do go in order usually S1, S2, S3 but sometimes in reverse order... many stations have an electronic sign way up high above the train platform, facing the train,  that shows the order of the cars. some stations have painted bulletin boards that list the order of cars for each train.  Perhaps in Delhi and Mumbai there are actually the porters in red shirts you can pay to find your car... as the books say... in the smaller country stations we were at, forget it!

by the way if your train ticket says your seats are A15 and A16 it's not A 15 and A 16 it's train car A1, seats 5 and 6...  so if you absolutely don't know where your car will be, go to the middle of the likely train and watch the signs flash by as the train pulls in then run like crazy in the right direction once you figure it out.

hotels... some hotels have a check out time, but SOME still have a system where your room rate starts the hour you check in... so if you come in on an overnight train and check in at 5 am, then if you stay past 5 am the next day, you may owe a whole other night's stay, be warned!  usually  just as with our hotel there is a tax added on at checkout... and before you can check out if your hotel room had one of those little mini bars you have to wait for this to be checked so allow time...

traveling by private car and driver: hard to know what the charges should be, if your hotel arranges it you may be paying a bit extra... this way of traveling was definitely pleasant and less jolty than buses but still just as terrifying, as the one lane road accomodates 3 cars and trucks wide ...

traveling by local bus definitely fun, but so hard to find the right bus if you don't read the local script so allow time... and notice that the front seats are nearly always reserved for ladies so if you are a lady traveling with a gentleman, be prepared to split up for a while if need be...

the lap of luxury

Craig and I are home now, but had an odd adventure that prolonged our holiday for one day, and it was a good though strange day.

Our last day in Mahaballipuram/Mamallapuram was a very nice one.  There was a fresh rain coming in, and we wandered around the granite hills in the center of town that have been set apart from town because they are covered with ancient temples hewed from stone back in the 600s when the dying Roman empire may still have been sending trading ships in the area.  These temple/caves that are fronted with intricate columns hewn from the rock itself and with small 'cameo' portraits that sometimes look European, feel like the parthenon or the roman agora.  There are MANY of them, and to find some you have to walk west around the main known ones and you are suddenly walking through a natural forest, and finding caves, and due to the rain they have inhabitants - people getting out of the rain sleeping wrapped around an ancient lingam sculpture, and in one large pair of these temples, goats! goats getting out of the rain, baby goats butting heads in front of sculptures in niches.  And, even giant pigs in the jungly undergrowth. towards the back of the reserved area next to a large pond, stands a sacred tree of some type and at its base, small sculptures of the naga, the cobra, are covered with red and yellow powder like some kind of pollen.  wrapped in sacred cloth.

Anyway we had a great taxi ride in with a driver who was very curious about everything in our lives, to the Chennai airport which is pretty funky and dirty.... our last contact with Indian toilets that are not kept clean, we think... NO!  we realize there is some problem with the plane and boarding is delayed and then, suddenly, the captain says, no, this plane is not leaving you must all get off and collect your bags. WHATTT!!!!  imagine 350 very tired people at 2:30 am ... half of us have already taken sleeping pills... pandemonium, no one seems to know what will happen. I imagine sleeping in the incredibly filthy Chennai airport waiting rooms and grab a little airline pillow... there are huge crowds luckily we are at the front and they are asking for contact phone #s ... we don't carry a phone, what to do? the nice girl says, ok don't worry you are going to Park Sheraton the representative will appear and get you there.  We are freaking.Well after about half hour, in fact, someone does say, follow me and about 30 of us folks are herded by 3s into vans and driven... where?

Chennai is a busy modernizing city with actual sky scrapers, and lots of street activity ... in the city night glare things whiz by.. suddenly we turn into a driveway that has tire-puncturing defenses, then we get our bags and selves screened, and suddenly.... oh my god 7 star peace and luxury.  The hotel has lofty ceilings, golden details everywhere, absolute quiet, lovely women in blue saris making enchantingly nice comments about how well you look and they take us to one of their rooms.... the room has ten foot ceilings, exquisite molding and decor, the most comfortable king sized bed I've ever seen with soft cotton, your choice of pillows of the hardness of your choice, a massage reclining chair, a sparkling white bathtub., cotton terry robes and foot wear... three incredibly good restaurants written up in The Rough Guide as among the best in Chennai... and all of it is free for us. cocooned in luxury we fall asleep.... periodically, little one page updates are slipped under our door.  "The scheduled departure time for your flight is 045 hrs (24th early morning)" please find below your entitlements your meals are the following and enjoy the pool"...  "further to a call received from Lufthansa, this is to bring to your kind attention that your coach will be ready to leave by 01:00 hrs, requesting you to assemble in the lobby, for further enquiry please feel free to call the undersigned, Regards Shreyas Ladde Duty Manager"... breakfast lunch and dinner are these immense buffets of the very best indian veg, non veg food I've ever had... like going to Ajanta restaurant and getting your absolute pick of every dish.  Dessert is about 20 items: warm chocolate pudding, little tastes of every type of Indian halva like sweet, coconut ice cream, berry ice cream, mango ice cream, chocolate ice cream, creme brulee, and pastries.. During the whole trip I've been looking at little Indian sweets stores and wondering what they all taste like and now, I know...

We sleep, doze and eat the day away and go out for several hours to go to the stores Shubha recommended, including FabIndia where craig gets four soft, glowing cotton shirts and I get a stylish silk top or two, then to Pothy's department store which is crammed with women shopping for the upcoming Diwali holidays... we lounge by the pool in thick terry towels and we in the evening enjoy seeing the rich of Chennai come in to te hotel for engagement banquets or to go to the night club... young couples are kissing and giggling in slinky modern clothes in the quiet dark shadows of the garden... quite a scene!

anyway a little 24 hour taste of the luxury Indian hotels offer to the rich... free for us courtesy of Lufthansas airlines... apparently this is a 'seven star' luxury hotel....  for us, wow! quite a contrast from our 600 rupee room by the sea the night before!

Mystical Temples, A Fishing Village, and Lots of Poop.

One of the great pleasures of life is to eat freshly caught seafood on the beach in a small fishing village, preferably with your toes in the sand.  No toes-in-the-sand restaurants here in Mallamapuram, but great seafood in a restaurant right on the beach.  We drove here from Thanjore, capital of the Cholan Empire, yesterday and found a funky little two room hotel, room with a view on the Bay of Bengal, for 600 rupees (around $13 US).  But before we got here, we explored the area around Thanjore, hiring a driver for the day and going to many temples and the bronze statue making town of Swamimalai.

Darasuram is a small town about 40 kms outside of Thanjore with a beautiful Cholan temple that was built in the 11th century.  We got there at sunrise, as the light early in the morning and at sunset is the best.  The temple is situated in a lovely park and local folks were taking their morning strolls around the temple (always clockwise!!).  We were the only foreigners here (we're getting used to that) and had the temple complex all to ourselves.  This temple looks like a smaller version of the Thanjore temple with a large (55 meter high) pyramid.

As we were walking around the temple (clockwise!!) a man came up to us wearing a dhoti (sarong) and a shirt that said "Orange County Choppers" with a motorcycle on it and asked if we wanted to see the inside of the temple.  I asked if he was the temple guardian (I had read about temple guardians in our guidebook) and he said, "NO, NO, NO!!!  I am Brahmin priest!!!", which he then repeated about 10 times so I would be sure not to make that mistake again (a really big faux-pas I'm sure to mistake the highest ranking type Indian Brahmin for a temple guardian).  He took us into the sanctum sanctorum where he lit candles and put ash on our foreheads.  Very cool to be in the inner part of the temple with just candles lighting it up.  You feel so much history there.

From here we went to the nearby town of Kombakanam, where there are four temples.  These are the more modern ones with the colored gopuras.  We arrived as some men were carrying this large palenquin with what looked like a chicken on top.  I didn't think the Hindus had sacred chickens and when I asked a man what it was he said it was Garuda (mythical bird in Hindu-lore), but the ones we've seen in Bali look more like majestic eagles then the chicken like Garudas they have here.

So after 3 hours of temple exploring it was time for something, in the words of Monte Python, completely different.  We went to the town of Swamimalai, where they carry on the ancient craft of 'Lost Wax' bronze casting.  I"ve talked a bit about this in a prior post, but we went to a factory called Rajan and were given a nice tour by a guy named Suresh, who is a student bronze caster.  Rajan is a bronze casting school where they teach this 4,000 year old craft.  Suresh explained the whole process (see our previous post) and then took us in the backyard where some students had this huge model, several hundred pounds, wrapped in it's clay mold and getting ready to put near the fire where the wax would melt out through two holes (lost wax) and later would have the molten bronze poured in.  This particular statue was going to the USA.  Once the statue is taken out of the mold, then the artist cleans in up and puts lots of finishing details on it...

About 60% of the work is done after the statue is taken out of the mold.  Things like hair, eyes, fingernails, etc are done at the end.  We were taken to a little showroom and found a gorgeous statue of Saraswati, goddess of learning and Amy's favorite.  The thing to look for first to see how good of a carving it is is the face.  If the face is beautiful then the rest is bound to be beautiful.

When we got back to Thanjore we went down to the temple to catch the sunset.  What we didn't expect was a major Nandi fest going on.  Nandi is the bull that hangs out with Shiva and there is a HUGE statue of him here carved out of a single rock. It's about 35 feet high and there was a scaffold up the side which the priests climb and then they pour all this stuff over his head.  It's a yellow-green liquid and I think it may be ghee (clarified butter), poured over him from these large, 5 gallon containers.  So you are sitting there, among a crowd of hundreds of very well dressed Indians, looking at ol' Nandi with yellow ghee being poured over him, followed by water to clean the ghee off.  During all this is a little three piece band of drums and trumpets, a sound coming out of them like you've never heard as the sun is going down and the gorupas of the temple are glowing red.  An amazing site to behold.

Yesterday we came to our last stop, Mamallapuram, an ancient seaport town about 50 kms south of Chennai.  Tonight we leave for home at 1:45 am, but we've had a couple of days to look at the amazing stone carvings here. 

The carvings here are carved out of solid granite, which is all over the place  Most of it is from the 7th century!  These temple, shown above, were carved out of very large boulders and they are incredible.  A couple aren't quite finished and it is curious why they worked so long and so hard and just didn't quite finish the job.  Plus, these were never consicrated, according to historians.  The stone carving tradition continues here as there are stone carvers and stone carving shops everywhere.  They all make statues of different kinds from tiny ones, 1/2 inch high, to 10 food high Shivas.  The large ones are carved with electric tools, but the small ones are carved by hand.

Our little hotel has been a great oasis.  The second floor restaurant serves great fresh seafood and there is always a light breeze blowing, which is welcome in this hot, humid place.  Our hotel is non A/C, and the room was about 90 degrees all night, but thanks to some great sleeping drugs we slept through the night just fine.

Walking in this village and all over South India is a challenge.   The don't have many sidewalks here and the sidewalks they have are usually filled with vendors, motorcycles, or sleeping humans.  So you have to walk in the street and then deal with the traffic and thousands of other people walking in the street.  And then there is the poop.  Cow poop, goat poop, dog poop, and with all the humans sleeping outside...well, you just have to be carefull where you walk.  India has this little problem with filth.  It's pretty darn dirty in the towns and cities, not so bad in the countryside.  They just don't get the whole 'don't be a litterbug' thing here. People just throw their trash anywhere.  I think this comes from the mentality that someone else will clean it up, as the lower castes job is to clean up the trash and filth.  But there aren't enough of these folks, apparently, because India is certainly the dirtiest country I have ever been to. 

But you have to take the bad with the good and all in all there is much more good in this counrty then bad.  The amazing history, the exotic culture, the colorful, spicey and yummy food, the smiling and helpful people (at least those who aren't trying to sell you somethng), the easy and on time train system, the green, lush countryside...I could go on and on.  This has been one of the most amazing places I have ever been. 

Would I come back?  In a heart beat.

NO RASH DRIVING

"No rash driving" is one of the helpful signs along the roads of Tamil Nadu, along with "Avoid Honking" and "Don't Overspeed."   Ha!  No actually, drivers in South India have to be exceptionally good and careful drivers, because every 2 lane road can suddenly be a four lane road (your lane is the shoulder, all the others are coming at you fast) and speeds of traffic range from Oxcart pulling load of building sand to Supersonic.  Honk, honk!  We have become very used to this noise, which no longer makes us scared or think someone is mad at us or particularly cares what we do, except avoid them. And we spent the last 2 days with a very nice driver "Steven Raj" in a very comfy sedan with great shock absorbers.  The local countryside has been pretty, rice fields, rivers, bullock carts, bicycles, and towns which rarely get tourists stopping in them based on the excitement when Craig and I stopped at a coffee stand.  And I bought a pack of Maria cookies and made the mistake of offering cash in my LEFT hand.  shocked the recipient terribly. Since we don't have this custom it's SO easy to make a left handed mistake.

One of the great pleasures of the last two days is we unexpectedly stumbled into ceremonies at the temples we have been visiting.  Steven Raj took us to the temples we wanted to see, the incredible Darasuram which was deserted and lovely in early morning, and he added/suggested a few others that are especially venerated here, like the one in Swamimalai (which we sought out for its bronze casting).  Swamimalai  includes a very special temple on 3 levels up a hill. Quite lovely quite different

AND, the Swamimalaie has an unexpected bonus, just inside the temple there is a stand, it's Poompuhar, the state arts and crafts shop, selling really quality costume jewelry, at the entrance! Clearly not directed at us foreign tourists, and, I'm not quite sure why a woman Indian tourist would want to buy costume jewelry in the temple, but this was a great shop. And cheaper than the one in Tanjavur!  SO, I loaded up. fake rubies, fake emeralds and lots of "gold". Gold bangles, gold necklaces. The cost of true gold has gone so high, due to the economic crisis, that indian women who already have gold must be twice as rich. Everyone seems to know exactly today's spot price for gold! So, fake gold for me.

The last night we were in Thanjavur, we went again to one of the most beautiful temples there is, the Brihadishwara temple, where there was a large crowd and the priests were bathing the 30 foot high Nandi (the sacred bull that is part of Shiva, the lord of creation) in water, ghee and milk, over and over, with chanting and prayers, followed by some dancing by a male dancer in honor of Shiva and then some dancing by what I would call the 'keiki hula' - several troupes of local schoolage girls with lovely costumes and hair decorated with shiny ribbon rosettes and lots and lots of fragrant white and orange flower garlands.  And the day after, as we drove up to our final destination Mahaballipuram, Stevenraj took us to the country temple of Ganga...cholapuram, all that's left of the capital of the Chola empire after they had expanded all the way up to the river Ganges (!) (a REALLY long way), and there was an elaborate cleaning of the Lingam of this temple, and there was a wedding!

One of the cool things is seeing the blend of old and new.  Every temple that has a sacred object in the innermost sanctum that gets bathed in ghee or milk or water or all, has a drain that comes out the lower side of the temple, into a special tank.  Even though in many temples non Hindus can't see this, the tourist may suddenly see slightly orange buttery fluid coming down. Well this day in Ganga...cholapuram, they were cleaning the temple thoroughly for a major festival the next day, so, they had threaded a modern hose back UP the drain into the temple so that they could do a great precleaning! These temples are about as old as Chartres cathedral and have statuary as lovely as renaissance ones, and so to see a bright green hose suddenly alongside all the old stuff, is kinda funny!

For whatever reason, the wedding was one, the upcoming festival another, and people going to the city (we went through Pondichery which is a big town), we saw a LOT of lovely gold bordered saris on the women today,  one woman wore a midnight blue sari spangled with small gold stars and then the broad gold border, it looked like the night sky. it was Beautiful! and she was seated side saddle on the back of the motorcycle, holding on to her tiny baby.

During this trip, I have almost entirely been wearing Indian clothes, the Salwar kameez, which is a loose blousy tunic over loose trousers and with a scarf (dupatta) worn around the neck. Let me tell you the outfit's great but the scarf, TORTURE at times! yet not a single woman over the age of 15 ever, ever wears this without the scarf part.  In the car I'd whip it off but going into temples I had to quickly put it back on.  You can make it just a little less torture by spreading it out one layer thin... Anyway most of the time we've seen virtually no tourists and I've met another european woman who also wore the salwar, but, as we got to places more frequented by tourists, I'd see the women in their sleeveless tanks and shorts with white flabby legs, and it looked so creepy!  I totally recommend to try to wear the salwar kameez while traveling, I do think it got us nice reception, I think many times priests would invite us in to get a blessing partly for the kindness and partly for the expected donation but also because we were dressed right.  But now, we are in the first real 'backpacker tourist' town we have been in, and I am finally wearing khaki pants again! and little light tops with no dupatta!

While I've really liked trying out local clothes, it has made me VERY aware of its restrictiveness.  The men can wear light western style cotton shirts, and shorts; the women are really limited by the yards they wear and I feel 10 lbs lighter now that I'm out of it. On holiday, the upper class women tourists we met at the homestays quickly switched into jeans and shirts!   But in public, it was SO rare to see this.  So it was interesting to know how many of them wore both, and in relaxation mode, preferred the western stuff.  I hated trying to use the restroom, keeping all these blousy pants and long trailing dupattas and long tunics from getting wet in that already wet environment. it's truly an art to wear these clothes.  I need a tutor!


Mamallipuram:

We are living for 600 rupees a night ($13.50) in a great little hotel/restaurant in Mahaballipuram, a seaside town, it's a 2 story open air restaurant and we have one of two small rooms on the upper level, two twin beds, a fan and bathroom.  Warm! our first nights w/o A/C.  But we are so happy to have the sound of the waves in our ears at night and we get fresh fish and prawns twice daily for about $20 for a very large prawn meal.  Not super cheap but super fresh!!!

I quite like the sculptures at Mahaballipuram, they are spread out slightly as the town has a small granite hill, and several granite hillocks, and each of the solid granite hillocks that seemed appropriate for it, got carved into a temple, in AD 600.  And sides of the granite hills got carved INTO, to make manmade temple shaped carves, LARGE ones, with pillars all of which have carved animals in them (like lions, mostly).  And some of the large stones are carved into lifesize elephants, and larger than lifesize Nandi bulls.  Craig will I'm sure be posting stock photos of these.  The hillsides sometimes also have been carved into bas relief murals and they are so human. although they show mythical figures, they are in fluid motion and show family type scenes sometimes.  And one of the murals is about the way a hero figure did 'penance' which means doing a sort of torture in order to win special privileges to the gods... and in one corner of this, a CAT is smugly doing the same type of penance, in front of a group of admiring rodents! I presume the cat is seeking the power of overcoming its food easily.

Speaking of food.... our last day of Indian food for a while.  Craig has loved it, I've liked it. To me a disappointment has been that most dishes we've gotten have been basically potatoes, rarely cauliflower, and some green bean/carrot combinations. This is disappointing because in the markets I see okra, eggplant, chayote squash, and other vegetables for sale, and I have NO idea how to ask for these in meals.  And, here in Mahaballipuram, our restaurant which focuses on fish,  mainly has delightful french fried potatoes and can give me some curd (yoghurt) with cucumbers and spices, the local raita.  But I know that Tamil food includes other dishes and someday I hope to find them. I know Shubha's made them for us.

We have enjoyed lots of the food though, and especially some Chettinad dishes which are Tamil Nadu but contain meat.  Craig has loved everything, I think. I am just a bit overwhelmed by bread and potatoes, after having worked so hard to get my 20lbs off eating leaner food and lower carbs and fresh veggies.  So when we get back I am hoping to have some large recognizeable vegetables!  Artichokes, tiny green beans, and whatever is in my garden. And lettuce.

Today we have a few more ruins to see, as soon as it hopefully gets cooler, and may take a walk up the beach further than the current part which is a little stinky smelling, and have one more fish dinner and then, to the airport.

And, we are wandering around town, admiring the thousands of stone sculptures made here.  Those little lacy stone globes and eggs that show up in Berkeley that look chinese?  From Mahabalipuram!  Along with millions of delicately carved deities in black basalty stone, a green olivine stone and some smoother pale marbley limestony rock.  And, every other store is run by Kashmiris, who generally have their wives and kids still in Kashmir, and are here to sell you the local specialties as well as rugs, pashmina scarves, silk scarves, and 'it might be' silk scarves.   We met one of the Kashmiri patriarchs, a cool guy who sold Craig a great antique or maybe antique lapis ring.

Well this is already Friday, October 22nd, and it will be our last posting day because tonight, at 2 am, we start home!  for a full 24 hours we will be flying, and yet when we arrive in San Francisco, it will still be Saturday afternoon!

SOOOO sad to be leaving. We have loved this trip to India.  A whirl of color ful events and people, lots of very varied experiences, really lovely sculptural art, welcoming homestays with very cool people, a few surprise festivals and parades, and a great experience of this vibrant country which is so proud of its economic success and the place of respect it has now among the other nations. People love to hear that we like it and it's clear they are very proud of their technological boom and their educational opportunities and it's been really fun to have so many strangers approach us to get our opinion of their country.

In the Land of the Cholas

We are now in the city of Thanjore, in Tamil Nadu, after a 15 hour overnight train ride from Mysore.   The train ride was pretty good, although we were cramped in the side beds which are a little narrow and short, but somehow I survived.  It was a little smelly, being right next to the toilet, and the air con wasn't all that cold, but the train arrived on time in Thanjore and what a treat it is here.

Thanjore has one of the most beautiful temples I have ever seen.  Built in 1010 (1,000 years ago exactly) by RajaRaja the Great, it is one of the best examplse of Cholan architecture....



We arrived at the temple of 6am and the light on the solid granite pyramids was a light orange-red.  The priests were very busy doing their ceremonies and we were actually invited in to the sanctum santorum, which is usually forbiden to non Hindus, to receive a blessing.  We saw the very large lingum (this is a symbol of Shiva's you-know-what) and the priest put some sacred in our palms and instructed us how to put it on our forehead.  He then gave us a little package that contained some sacred ash, herbs and a banana (!?!?!?).   We walked around to another temple and again were invited in and this was a temple for Shiva's son.  More ash on the forehead another package with a banana and some herbs, and we were on our way.

This afternoon we went to the local museum, where there is an amazing collection of old bronze statues made from the "Lost Wax" process.  This is a very unusual way of making very beautiful bronze work.  The artists makes a mold in bee's wax, doing the whole carving.  Then he applies some kind of wet dirt over it and then wraps that with some linen or other wrapping material.  The wet dirt dries, creating the mold from the bee's wax.  Then the whole thing is heated and the wax melts out of the mold (lost was).  THen, in the holes that the wax came out of, molten bronze is poured in, cooled, then the mold is broken and, voila, you have a beautiful statue.  Doing it this way, the artist is able to make very fine detail, since he is working in bee's wax.  This is still done nearby in the town of Swamimalai, where we plan on going tomorrow.  We actually bought a beautiful example of a lost wax piece, of a dancing Shiva, or Natarasha.  It looks something like this...

Food, Elephants, Trains, Temples and HEAT!

Wow we only have about 3 days left here. SO sad. Today we are back in Tamil Nadu.- in Tanjore and then we hope to get on a train back to chennai but we are waitlisted.

We had some nice highlights our last day in the green city of Mysore.  we wandered over to the large vegetables market and met a charming young kid, Akbar, who promptly ensnared us with his smile and got us to go watch him make incense which was of course to take us to his family's oils shop!which dates back 3 or 4 generations.  We actually had a grand time, sniffing and testing wonderful fragrances and being charmed into buying little bottles of this and that.  Black Jasmine, Watermelon, Sandalwood. they do smell better than they sound!

We also went into the Raja's palace which was exquisite, huge arches and ceilings and lots of turquoise, silver, gold and lots of red carpeting. Gold thrones, that kind of thing.  Then, trying to escape the huge palace area grounds, we followed some folks behind a building and we were in the elephant stables!  The elephants were still painted from yesterday's parade, and many people were checking them out and the Mahouts and their families who live right there (being an elephant handler is an inherited trade) were allowing people to stroke them, sit on them, ride on them.  All very happy until somecop decided it was a bad idea and shooed us out. Shooed me out in particular by thwacking me on the back with a piece of cane or bamboo or something.  was kind of funny actually.  Then we watched some of the other elephants being bathed and cossetted and hand fed little bundles of hay. they really are beautiful animals. when you are eye to eye with an elephant and can't read its emotions and aren't sure how to communicte it can be a little scary! have great pictures of little five years olds so very scared to touch it and reaching out and touching and leaping back.

we continued to enjoy the cool fresh day there and ate some more fabulous food at Dynasty, this time lamb 'rogan gosh' and chicken/murgh chat paddi. all I remember is lovely deep orange brown caramel color on one dish and a redder spicier color on another.

then, another overnight train. we have learned a lot about the trains:  how to find out where your particular carriage is going to be is a big one so you don't make mad dashes along the track.  this train was an overnight 2AC. All the trains unfortunately are very dirty theynever wash them but the dirt is a dry old kind of dirt and so not too bad. the actual chairs and beds are quite clean, just not the walls and floors and windows.  The porters bring clean sheets, you have a pillow and blanket of unclear status but which seem clean, there are lights which take some learning, there are fans, there is air con -- SORT of. we descended down into the hot flats of Tamil Nadu and it was one warm night!

We are now in Tanjore or thanjur, every town has several ways to spell names based on how the English used to try to standardize it and then how the various languages reclaimed the names.  We had a fabulous early morning at the beautiful templehere that dates 1000 years this september. Craig is posting pix I see.  It's a bit warm here and defintely there is not as muchmoney as in Mysore - the saris women wear are quite different, the ones for sale are no longer the very fine wedding silk saris or even sophisticated prints they are more like ordinary fabricyoumight see in the US (for the first time; til now all sari stores have been a treat to gaze at.)

The town also has a terrific, if run down, palace, with thick walls and moorish arches which capture the wind just right. and an AMAZING museum of the lovely bronze statues and carvings from the Cholan empire in about 1400. . THese statues are so lifelike, they look like greek statues kind of! or michelangelo kind of.  beautiful.  we have many pictures.  

It being hot, tomorrow we are hiring a car and driver for $40 to go to a bunch of places andhopefully see a little countryside!  Among the treats we expect are another incredible temple built by the same Raja Raja who built the temple here, some temples with fabulous carving still in the site, and a village where they still prepare the bronze statues by making a detailed wax sculpture, burying it in clay, and then heating it til the wax melts. basedon how I feel today actually, I do NOT understand how the wax isn't melted to start with!  and THEN we may be going to the town market which specializes in excellent cosmetic jewelry! I already bought some 'emerald' jewelry today.