final pictures

steam train, roof repair, custard apple aka "sitafel", horn okay please

Highlights

Here are Josh and Yona's highlights.
1) Being on the shockingly beautiful Kanolla/Kannur beach in Kerala, watching dolphins, swimming in the warm water, nice ocean breezes, beach combing and finding grandma toenails, canoeing in the mangrove swamp and watching/hearing all the birds, and watching the sunset over the ocean every night.
2) All the great fresh fish available in S. India, which Yona liked to eat with her hands. Josh liked Trishna Restaurant in Bombay a lot and we both enjoyed the grilled fish tikka masala. For that matter, all the delicous food like sweet lassis, falooda (tapioca and icecream concoction), coconut water, as well as new main courses we had not had before.
3) Visiting the elephants at the Dubare Elephant Camp. A little touristy, but we got to feel the whiskers that pass for fur. Also, there was a baby elephant who liked to wrestle/shove/play with the teenage and adult elephants.
4) Riding the rails of India. We did a few night trains, which were shockingly comfortable when we were in 2 tier AC. The Blue Mountain Steam train up to the hill town of Ooty was cute (small, lots of windows and doors) and offered stunning views. We stopped often to top off the water and monkeys used the opportunity to visit us and beg handouts.
5) Being hosted and/or made to feel at home by so many people including Priya, Raghu, et al; Leela; Namhita,Vishal, Amita, Ashish, Saachi, et al. This includes the nice tour we got of Blue Mountain Montessori by Amukta and being invited to a wedding by Akshay. And recieving blessings for our baby from everyone from taxi drivers to stangers.
6) Having locals explain concepts that were foreign to us, like Jain philosophy (while sitting on a Jain priest's bed having snacks with some crazy planet-of-the-apes-like-hindi tale on the tv in the background).
7) A wonderful walking tour (in Chennai) and a fun village trek to a cave temple with a stop at a farm house for an impromtu dance party and a warm greeting by every child we passed (even though almost all of them mistakenly said bye bye instead of hello).
8) Seeing the millions of stars (not quite of the southern hemisphere, but close) shining brightly in the Osian desert on the roof of a camel man.
9) The relaxing stay and interesting plantation tour at rainforest retreat in Kodagu where saw vanilla beans, cadamom, tea and coffee, pineapples - all grown in an organic, sustainable method. It was especially cool that the owners are scientists who could tell us about the geology/biodiversity of the area including the wasps that pick up caterpillers, paralyze the them, stuff them in a hole, lay eggs in there and close up the hole. And the frogs and orchids too...
10) Seeing (and trying when safe) all the fresh fruits and vegetables including custard apples, nungu, mangosteen, chickoo, passion fruit, water pumpkin, drumsticks, amla, fresh barley, something called water chestnuts that were not really water chestnuts. The markets, especially devaraja market in mysore, were really cool. And all the boiling vats of milk and other products were fun.
11) The astrological observatory of jantar mantar in Jaipur. That emperor dude was serious about horoscopes!
12) Some other random highlights: helping repair the thatch roof of a traditional house during a home stay south of Jodhpur, the cultural activities and food meditation at The Attic in Delhi, flying first class and using the lounges (where we are this moment).

More pictures and maybe final thoughts to follow.

just a few little things

we're on our way back now, at the amsterdam first class lounge which is very very nice. yet another reason to fly first class, thank you patti and wayne. yesterday in mumbai we went on a walking tour and went to crawford market and did other stuff too. at a supermarket thing i saw a bottle of soda that was masala flavored. masala means "spice'' pretty much. so i thought that was funny. also the other night we were talking to some mumbai-ans and they were interesting - when they äsked us where we're from and we told them america, one of them shouted '"nelson mandela!"" and we asked them if they work together or how they are friends, and one of them told us he's a vegetarian but the others are not. he said veg, nonveg. that's what a lot of restaurants say. they call themselves veg or nonveg or both. also when a place calls themselves a hotel, it often means it's a restaurant. and there's often an a/c section and a non a/c section, and it costs a few rupees more to eat in the a/c section. but it's often worth it.

oh, also at the supermarket we saw a lot of tea for sale that came with a free/included bottle of ketchup. weird.

made snana, hindi stories

we're in mumbai and we're leaving tomorrow. trying right now to upload
pictures. i saw a truck the other day that said on the back: "horn
please okay". i liked that.

so one thing i wanted to write about was "made snana." in mysore we
saw a lot of stuff about this in the newspaper. i've been really
interested in caste stuff and this goes along with it. apparently
there's been a very old tradition of lower caste people who roll
around naked in the unfinished food of upper caste people. and there's
discussion of a ban or a prohibition of some sort, that this should
stop. there were photos in the paper of people rolling in the food. i
might have it totally wrong, but this is my understanding of what's
being discussed.

another thing interesting is about cultural hindi stories. there are
something like 613 million hindu gods. and there are stories and
stories about them, and they have personalities and long drawn out
details about them. and this is like a standard set of stories that
are written about and told to children, and they instill morals and
ethics and Good Advice about How to Live. this is really cool. we
don't have anything like that. i mean i guess there's shakespeare, and
fairy tales like the three little pigs. but we don't have a set of
moral stories like that. we should, i think! i think that's really a
good thing.

we went to a cool weaving loom place yesterday that was cooperative
and i liked seeing that a lot. it was interesting to see both men and
women working the looms - usually it seems like certain jobs are all
men or all women. something else we see sometimes is at construction
sites - it's both men and women carrying the bricks. on their heads.
really. when people carry something on their head, they put on a
padded doughnut thing on their heads, and then the heavy thing. often
the heavy thing is a bowl or basket of bricks.

okay i'm gonna sign off for now. more later today or tomorrow.

more photos - funnel web spider, making batik, 11 am dance party

more photos - pineapple growing, mosquito zapper under our mosquito net

photos! bathing an elephant, beachcombing

photos!

Kerala Beach Wonderland Looms Large

We are in the southern state of Kerala and it is beautiful and super friendly. We were walking on a country road yesterday and someone pulled over, hands appeared out the window, hands were shaken, and the car drove off. Also, people have thanked us for visiting and everyone wants to know our good name and where we are from. So welcoming.

We stayed a few days at the Kerala/Kanala Beach House and it was so relaxing. A perfect antidote for the honking and pollution that goes with much of India. We stayed at a beachfront cottage and looked out over swaying coconut palms onto the breaking waves.

If you sat on the rocks in the morning you could see dolphins swimming by maybe 50-100 yards away and we now have one suitcase just devoted to shells. My plan is to tip the airline personnel to ensure that they never arrive in the US.

We spent one evening canoeing in a mangrove river. Soooo many birds to see and hear. We ate seafood for two meals a day and just lazed around and maybe swam a little.

We leave for mumbai tomorrow so we left the beach house for a place closer to the train.

Breakfast and dinner (lunch optional) were all included and since the beach was free, it was nice not worrying about money for a few days. It also has a nice mini spontaneous community because the 5 or 10 of us who are there at a time eat together and see one another on the beach, etc.

On the way out we stopped at a weaving cooperative. (Not only was it a cooperative, but Kerala State has a communist government to boot and there are hammer and sickles everywhere to show it) (But really they are pink and not red because they believe in private property and free enterprise.)

The looms looked like they were from the industrial revolution, huge heavy dark wood contraptions with lots of fast moving parts. All hand (foot powered). Whoosh click, whoosh click, click click click, they went as the men and women shot pieces of fabric up and down, back and forth.

Pictures will come once we get a better internet connection.

almost end of trip

today is monday and we leave thursday night. we're in kunnor and going to take a 6 am train tomorrow morning to mangalore, and then a taxi to the airport to catch a plane to mumbai. we'll be in mumbai for two days and then we fly home.

i have a lot to write about. A LOT.

pregnant lady stuff first: my belly button is almost poking out now. another day or two and i'll have an outie. that's fun. AND i felt something the other night and last night - not quite a kick but something. like little taps or mini-thumps or something. something is going on. dancing or something.

we stayed at a rainforest place for a few days and learned a lot, and saw coffee plants and cardamum and funnel web spiders and pineapples growing. it was a very nice place. then we came here, to another nice place. kunnola beach house near kunnor has been so lovely and great. beautiful beach, totally beautiful. and the guesthouse beach house hotel thing or whatever - really great. lots of interesting people to talk to and good food and a great mosquito net even set up in the room for us, and good food and we're right on the beach. so great. and i got to do a lot of beach combing, which i love. pretty shiny shells that kate calls old man toenails, but pink and red. so great. i love collecting shells and walking on the sand... and we ate watermelon which has been what i've been craving and loving, and feeling a breeze and sitting in the shade also make me very happy.

it's funny because i'm not that into beaches, and if you would have asked me a month or two or three ago if i wanted to spend any time at a beach i would have said maybe a day or maybe not at all. but after time in india, and all the busy-ness and commotion and noise and hullabaloo, the beach is soooooo welcome and nice. and the temperature of the water - so nice and warm.

yesterday we took a canoe to a little inlet thing and saw tons of mangroves and birds birds birds. that was nice. people in this part of india, (the name of the state is kerala) are so friendly it's weird. people greet us from their houses when we're walking down the road and say hi, and where are your from, and what is your name. some people even say "thank you for coming to kerala." as we were walking yesterday, a car slowed to a stop and the side two windows opened so the passengers could shake josh's hand and say welcome.

okay we're gonna go see some dance thing, a kathakali thing i think but i'm not sure. so i'll write again tomorrow or something. still want to write about bricks on the head, hindi cultural stories, made snana, and highlights of our trip. and it would be cool to put up pictures too.

snana and stories, er nevermind

we're in madikeri and about to go to a rainforest retreat place, so we won't have internet for a few days. i definitely want to put up more pictures but that might have to wait. i also really want to write about a couple things: made snana and hindi stories.

but it's all good and we'll write more soon!

Nunku (palm fruit) and chocolate tea

Here are some pictures of the weird mystery nunku palm fruit. They cost 10 cents each and you got the show of the salesman slashing the palm fruit open with his machete. Here is what wikipdeia has to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borassus_flabellifer

Fruits and Veggies from Dejaraja Market

Here are some fruits and vegetables. Lots of new things including tree tomatoes, thumb-sized cucumbers. The market is fun and colorful.

good! more pictures!

i think it might be working to upload pictures now... the computer i'm on is now thinking or working on it or something.

we're in mysore. tonight we'll probably go see the illuminated palace - they light it up every sunday night and people come to look at it and see and be seen (not just tourists, but locals). also my rickshaw driver from last night told me that sundays there's no sales tax. or maybe he said just sunday mornings or something. something weird like that.

yesterday was devaraja market which is like a huge bazaar with fruits and vegetables and kumkum powder and flowers and bangles and there were even two goats for sale. walking there i saw all these weird shops like one called "cooker and mixi clinic" which sold kitchen gadgets and stuff, and another called "electrical devices, drycleaning." i bought a pomegranate on the street. also at the devaraja market there was a man trying to sell me an anklet which i wasn't going to buy but he was so persistent that he followed me throughout the whole market and his english was good, so he answered my questions about produce. that was cool. i saw water pumpkin, which is like a huge cucumber, baby cucumbers which are kumquat sized, sugar yam ( a huge root thing as big as a pumpkin, but brown), chikoo fruit, a lot of interesting things. and they are usually laid out in nice designs. on the ground. with the vendors' bare feet all around. and piles of beans and peas. i don't know why, but i just find it so interesting.

regarding feet: randomly people are barefoot. always beggars, but also randomly people wearing nice clothes. just walking around the streets barefoot.

something confusing is that a lot of towns and cities have two names. chennai = madras, mumbai = bombay, bangalore = bangaluru, and a lot that we now know or make sense. but there's also coorg = kodagu and madikeri = mercara. it's just confusing and a lot to remember.

on our bus from ooty to mysore we saw a wild elephant roaming around. we've been seeing monkeys but they're getting to be old news. hey josh, there's a monkey. yeah yeah, monkey monkey, big deal.

we shipped some stuff home and went to the post office to do it, but they wanted it packaged and we needed to go to some other person or place to have it packaged and put into a box. some kid approached us and said he could do it for us, right over there. so we followed him across the street, and bargained a lot because he wanted 300 rupees ($6) and finally agreed to $3. it took about an hour, and included an old beat up many-times-used cardboard box, a sewing machine he used to sew a cotton perfectly-fitting cover for the box, which was torn off because it didn't fit perfectly the first time and then made again, and then plastic covering. i could sort of see why he was charging $6 at first - it was quite a production. when it was finally done, the post office was closed, so we brought it with us and went back the next day to the post office. of course he wanted to ship it for us but we said no. oh, after the plastic he used a thread and needle to stick corners or other details i couldn't understand. anyway, it was pretty interesting. the box should arrive at home in a month or two.

okay i'm gonna try and upload pictures....

answers about food to avoid heat!

that's cool that we tricked some people! the answers of foods to avoid if you are pregnant are: papaya, sesame, mango, cumin, and safron. everyone is adamant about avoiding papaya.

oh well no pictures right now

i was hoping to put up some pictures but the usb port thing isn't working. so i'll just write and later i'll add pictures.

we are in ooty, at the ywca. ooty is actually called oodachadalamandalacala or something like that. there's a ymca and a ywca. it's nice here. we're in the nilgiri region which is also called the blue hills or blue mountains. we took a steam train to get here and it was incredibly beautiful. i'll put up pictures later and you won't believe it. it's hilly and mountainy and the hills are terraced for farming and there's tons of tea plantations and tea fields. it's so green and we passed waterfalls and lots of monkeys and apparently there are wild elephants also. we did a trek yesterday through a tea plantation and passed all these plants that we recognized: eucalyptus trees, lots of them, salvia, aloe vera and lots of succulents, lots of lantana. we even saw: fuschia, california golden poppies, bird of paradise, trumpet flowers, bottlebrush (in red and also light purple) nasturtium. it's a funny thing to recognize plants in a very different place.

we took an overnight train from chennai. we did this once before. i have to say: the overnight train thing is not bad at all. in fact it's a little nicer than not bad. we have a softish platform thing to sit or lay on, they give blankets, it's quiet. when we arrived at 7 am, we got on the steam train which was about 5 hours.

in ooty there are women with double nose rings: a round intricate kind of nosering on each nostril. also on the street they sell these things that are apparently called "noonku" or something like that. i'll add a picture later. it looks like a dark coconut from the outside. a guy puts it in his hand and chops with a machete thing all around it until you see three seed/heart/wet things inside. he gives you these and you sort of slurp them. they are juicy and josh thinks they are leechi-like. it's a weird cool thing.

something else we did in ooty was to see a montessori school. this morning we walked from the ywca to blue mountain school and met with amukta, who is a friend of priya's and visited my classroom in california last year. blue mountain school is an elementary montessori and when we went in the classroom, it was so cool to recognize materials. i'll attach pictures later. sandpaper letters, in hindi, bead chains, puzzle maps of india, powers of numbers materials, journals. the school is a boarding school and goes from ages 6 to 18 or 19. crazy and cool to see!

this afternoon also we went to the produce bazaar and we asked the ywca to help us find a guide to go with us so we could ask things. they hooked us up with our waiter from last night, and we gave him 110 rupees for a couple hours and it was really interesting. we saw a water pumpkin, which looks like a huge squash shaped cucumber, and bought some coconuts to drink and other fruits we haven't had before. i don't remember what they are called now but i'll attach pictures. (we have bleach to clean stuff and a swiss army knife to cut stuff up so we're being safe).

i'm looking very pregnant and people are noticing and asking and that's nice. i'm 21 weeks old now.

Udaipor

This is a long overdue post about our time in Udaipor in the North. We spent a hectic night and day in the city, but it was too loud and dirty for me. All the honking and haranguing were too much. Also, the whole city, us included, was kept up until 5 am with a disco at a hotel on an island in a lake in the middle of town. Evidently the royal family owns the hotel and can do what they want.

So we went to a homestay with a british/nepalese family called Mountain Ridge a few miles from town. We did a walk in the countryside with a guide that was really interesting. I/we talked a little about the spontaneous dance party/photo fest, and that was along this walk. There was something fun about it. The college students who invited us in were so excited that we came into their farm house. It was like a major coup for them.

The other home we visited the guide's aunt who made us tea as we watched the chickens chase each other. There were maybe four families of chickens and boy did they not get along!

The farming area around Udaipor was surprisingly wealthy. Most of the rural residents had satellite TV, modern homes, etc. The farm animals had shelters to escape the rain and or sun. On the walk we visited a cave/temple. In some ways, I like the really simple shrines more than the ornate/showy ones. While we were walking we saw a small lake where the outlet/river rises from 2 feet, the level we saw it at, to 20 feet, during the monsoon season. It is a brick making reason so we saw lots and lot of small brick yards. Also, there were tons of stone walls. Just to keep the cattle in, but they felt really substantial.

In Udaipor, I did a cooking class. Yona stayed home and relaxed. The teacher was from a small village so she never really went to school or learned how to get a job. This was fine until her husband died and she had no way of supporting herself. She wanted to get a job doing manual labor/domestic service work, because that is all she had the skills for, but because she was a brahaman (very high caste) her husbands family would not let her. She did odd jobs like laundry, hiding it from her family. Eventually her son met a westerner and invited him for dinner. The westerner liked her cooking and suggested she teach a class. Hence her career was born. I enjoyed the class, had a great meal, learned some, but like most Indian teachers, she did most of the cooking and the students did most of the watching.

Before leaving Udaipor, we did a sunset cruise on the lake (where the disco music had been). It was relaxing but a little silly. (Yona would describe it as, "tsss, I wouldn't descibe it...pointless." It was supposed to be an hour but really was 40 minutes, half of which was spent on disco island.

waste/waist, corrupt post office, and other things

we're in chennai and we've been here 3 or 4 days. we're leaving on a night train tonight. it's been really nice here- a real change from the north. south india really does feel like a different country. it's quieter and mellower. less honking. sometimes we go from a busy bustling street to a very quiet and suburban-feeling street just by turning the corner. we're staying with leela, hemashree's mom, which is very very nice, and seeing priya and raghu and their family, which is also very nice. it's great to be able to call up priya every time we have a question about something, or need her to talk to someone whose english isn't understandable for us.

we took a block printing and batik class yesterday and learned a lot and got to make some things. they're drying now and then we'll iron them to melt off extra wax and finish "fixing" the color. that's fun and exciting. we didn't do it, but i learned how the tie-and-dye method works, which is something we saw a lot of in jodhpur. i might add pictures of these.

we did a walking tour today that was really interesting and i learned a lot, including about how the right side of our bodies is more holy or sacred than the left. which is nice to here, considering that this morning i realized that my belly button is no longer in the middle of my belly, but a little to the right! isn't that funny! also, i'm getting to the point where i don't have a waist. i feel my hip bones and my ribs, but there's no longer an indentation or curve where my waist should be. in fact it kind of bulges out a little from my hips. no more waist.

regarding waste, there are trash piles on the street that are definite trash piles. i can now accept adding my trash to those piles, without feeling like i'm littering. i feel like it WOULD be littering if i put my trash far from one of those piles.

the other day we left agra and came here. here is what transportation methods we used: auto rickshaw to bus station, bus to delhi, metro to the delhi airport (which was partly a very very crowded car where i can't remember being so packed in, and then the airport express trains which were quiet and empty), plane to chennai, prepaid taxi to leela's house. this was all in one day. there was a big storm in chennai that we arrived at the end of, which was lots of rain and wind. it was a cyclone and delayed our plane but not too much.

good foods i've really liked so far: warm kheer (like rice pudding), jalabe from the street, sweet laasi's, paneer pasanda in agra, fresh watermelon juice at dakshina chitra, kesar dhoodh (warm safron almond milk with pieces of almond in it), fresh grilled fish in mammalapuram, ... lots more but those are the ones i remember especially loving.

in the airport in delhi we saw a little post office desk and we wanted to mail our postcards we've written. we were told that our mail would cost something like 270 rupees (five dollars) and they put stamps on them and showed us. josh counted the stamps and saw it only added up to 150 rupees, and he asked why we were asked to pay 270 rupees. the men wiggled their heads in the indian way and gave an answer we didn't understand. josh asked for a receipt and they wobbled their heads again. we weren't going to give the money without understanding what was happening, so we insisted, and they agreed to add more stamps. so they put on another stamp or two on each piece of mail, until it really did add up to 270 rupees. great. so that mail may never arrive anywhere. it was very suspicious.

last thing to write about for now: the back of trucks often say HORN PLEASE. sometimes they also say USE DIPPER AT NIGHT. now i know what it means. if you think you have an answer, write it as a comment. if you really do know the answer, don't say it yet because i'm curious what people guess.

Odds (and Ends)

Observations:
* Cars with no option for heat
* Five people on a motorcycle with the family dog running behind them
* Monkeys on our balcony
* Strangers handing us phone to talk to random people because we speak English even though the person on the other end of the phone doesn't appear to speak English
* Floors that are swept constantly, but menus that are grimy
* Cellphone rules that require a passport, multiple photo IDs and local references before you get a SIM card
* 2 lane roads that go down to one lane because no one wanted to cut down an old tree
* garlic being peeled on the floor and put back there when done
* all the switches go the opposite direction of america, where up is off
* socks with a separate toe so you can wear flip flops

Foods for Pregnancy

Indians are very sensitive to foods that cause internal heat, a concept that is mostly foreign to us. Pregnant women are supposed to avoid these foods, especially if it is hot out. Guess which of these foods are verboten for Yona while on the sub-continent.
A) Apples
B) Lemons
C) Papayas
D) Mango
E) Saffron
F) Cumin
G) Red (Chili)Pepper
H) Sesame
I) Vinegar
J) Onions

Clue - Five of the above foods are forbidden. Five are allowed. Good luck guessing.