March 8, 2014. Jaipur, India

Another excellent day. We started with a tour of the city palace. It was over the top in every way. Ended up with me being cynical about the man/god who has everything and many women. If he marries them, they can never be seen again except for the head wife. If he keeps them as concubines, then they can still go out to their villages.  Jim said he's tired of viewing textiles. And I said I love them. Every time I see more, I notice and remember different things.  Jim loves seeing all the weapons and of course they just make me mad. Gandhi said that an evil deed is not justified by a good end.  Allot of what Gandhi said resonates with me.

When the maharaji went to England, he had two these 900 gallon containers made of silver to carry his drinking water!

As always I am intrigued by puppet shows. My parents made marionettes and gave puppet shows and and I always felt vaguely related to these little people who would sit on your lap and talk to you. Herkimer and I had matching overalls and so he was a special friend. My parents made an Indian snake charmer and a gorgeous slithering green snake for one of the acts. I never thought about it but the idea must have come from the photo my Dad took of a snake charmer in India.

Not a great photo, but it is the best one that I got yesterday, before the snake wrapped around the snake charmer and they both disappeared.

After the palace, Jim and I walked a bit of the old city, to find some beer and nan for lunch. Jim said I am like a nervous dear caught in head lights when I attempt to cross heavy nonstop traffic.

I just never get this experience in Portaupiqe.

Three hundred years ago, the same maharaji that built the palace also built a conservatory to calculate with the sun various times and zodiacs signs. The huge sun dials and various other devices reminded me of using a slide rule in high school. 

Late in the afternoon, we toured the Albert Hall museum.  The museum was made in 1881 and it doesn't appear that much has been done to it since.

March 7, 2014. Jaipur, India

The day had an auspicious start, because I grabbed this photo of a women loaded with bricks on her head.

Then after a brief visit to the stamp museum, we went to the Amber Fort. It is an incredible royal mountain city built in the 1600s and later abandoned for the new planned city of Jaipur. The palace was amazing as was the temple and the fortifications. There seemed to be zillion steps to climb, and I am once again worried about pneumonia, but some how I managed.

Hawkers are everywhere, and someone wanted to sell Jim this hat.  He didn't want it and counter offered a ridiculously low price. The hawker tried his hardest but Jim wouldn't budge and surprise of surprises, Jim now owns the hat!

 

Our driver, Kahn then took us to a textile factory, which I was keen to see.  I should've known it wasn't going to be a factory.

 Unfortunately although I did really enjoy seeing the demonstration of block printing on fabric, and trying it and seeing the rug making demonstration, I was less than enthusiastic about the pressured sales pitch afterwards, especially knowing that the driver would get a cut. All my shopping is now done, finished, complete and I told Kahn, that I wouldn't go to any more shops! 

I always have my eye out for interesting things and today I lucked in to an incredible private museum.

The sign on the building read Shree Sanjay Sharma Museum and Research Institute; an educational centre for Art and Heritage. Of course I had to check this out and am I ever glad I did.

We met the founder, Shree Sanjay Sharma and were shown through the musem by his son, Tilak Sharma and his grandson, Chaitanya Sharma, the museum co-ordinator. What an amazing collection of priceless manuscripts, over 100,000 many illustrated. Only a tiny fascinating sample of books from the past four hundred years are on display but they are all preserved, catalogued, and available by request. Scholars from over fourty countries have visited and taken advantage of one family's gift to humanity.  We were fortunate to visit the brand new museum building which opened in September 2013.  This new building is filled with many carefully curated galleries, each on a different theme and all of them cultural; sandels, paintings, tapestries and many more. I  was fascinated and the time flew by and I am certain the family kept the museum open until six  because we were so interested.  I think it is admirable and inspiring that one person, with the support of his wife and entire family, could take up the challenge of preserving the long, rich Indian culture.

Jim and also saw several very old examples of the game "snakes and ladders".  I had never thought about it as representing life and good and evil and I certainly never knew that this game is part of India's gift to the world.

March 6, Jaipur India

How many total can a tuc tuc take

If a tuc tuc took it's total?

And a word picture on the crazy driving in India

There are no apparent rules or speed limits in India,

Except drive as fast as possible,

And pass if possible.

If it is not possible to pass,

Pass anyways but always use your horn.

Recently we have spent several days and one evening,

In contested stop and go traffic.

Often trucks approach us head on,

On our side of a divided highway.

Most trucks are heavily decorated

And have no rear lights.

Some have rear lights painted on,

And often small painted signs that say "stop"

Or "blow horn" or in one case "good luck".

The trucks are piled high with 

People, cauliflower, everything else

And once an elephant!

There is a stench of sugar cane, manure

And smog.

This is broken by the wonderful fragrance

Of road side curry.

(Unfortunately, I love the smell

But not the harsh, eye watering taste.)

Cars and trucks and silver noise machines

Are in abundance.

Monday was a lucky day to marry.

Huge cloth wagons, filled with animal feed,

Are pulled by buffaloes or camels,

And accompanied by white kurta clad drivers.

Bicycles, over loaded with huge sacks

Are peddled by old men.

Motorcycles are used like trucks.

Sometimes carrying entire families

And milk cans.

They weave  and dodge

between the cars and trucks.

Rickshaws and buses carry 

As many people as can hang on.

There seems to always be room 

For one more passenger.

Cows are sacred.

They lay or stand in the road,

Watching everyone 

Trying not to hit them.

Amid all the confusion,

Are the women in colourful saris.

Sparkling with gold and silver embroidery,

They ride on the backs of motorcycles,

Or cross the crazy traffic

With large loads of

Water, sticks, animal feed

Or bowls of manure on their heads.

My camera clicks continually as I try

To capture the excitement, the fear

And the energy.

A couple of days ago,

There was a sobering sight.

A cluster of men, one in a uniform,

Stood roadside, talking on cell phones.

In front of them lay a small pile of clothes,

A dark head and one brown arm extended.

Did he die a natural death?

Was it an accident?

Or was it murder?

March 6, Jaipur

Painted stork

 We're been busy the past few days hunting down tigers! (Only with cameras and despite six hours of being tossed about in a jeep on rough mountain trails we didn't see a one)

We did see many other creatures.

Black faced monkeys

Spotted deer

India,s national bird, the peacock

Antelope

And always my favourite, the colourful people!

March 3, Agra, India

A poem I composed on the drive from  New Delhi to Agra.

How many total can a tuc tuc take 

If a tuc tuc took its total?

And no blog would be complete with out a mention of the Taj Mahal.

We saw it from a roof top restaurant one evening and then we were there at dawn yesterday.

It is extremely beautiful and I am glad we saw it.

March 2, 2014, Kulwehri, India

Today Jim and I went to the village of Kulwehri, to visit Gurdip and Tani Singh.  Gurdip and Tani are old friends of our friend Kris Pruski. Kris wrote them to tell them of our planned trip to India and they followed up with an invitation to visit them.  We arrived at 12:30, and spent a couple of hours drinking beer and sugar cane juice and getting to know each other. What a huge treat for us! Both Gurdip and Tani are very special people to open themselves to two strangers. We talked politics, religion, village development, family and more.

I know that as a result of our chatting, I will be following India's April Election with huge interest .

After a splendid luncheon, we took Gurdip on his offer to show us their farm and the village. We probably should have headed back to Dehi, as it was long frantic drive in the dark, but I am so happy that we took this opportunity. Gurdip was head of the village council for over fourty years and on the council even longer.  Both Tani and Gurdip are highly respected and well loved by the villagers.  The initiatives that were realized under his leadership are remarkable. Kulwehri now has a big school that goes right through to the end of high school. It has a generator and fourty computers! One huge problem initially,  was the very high incidence of dysentery.  Safe drinking water was a first priority for the village. Over the years all of the streets have been paved making the village healthier in the rainy season. The thatch roofs have been replaced and the houses have numbers. Most importantly now every home has a bathroom.  The village has regular access to a veterinarian for the animals and a village hall for meetings and the leadership is now coming from the village itself.  Everyone that we met was warm and pleased that we had come.  Unfortunately we couldn't stay long enough for another tea in the village. We did try a tastey unfamiliar fruit. It was small and round and green and tasted like a pear.  It was called a "bare".

There will be wedding in the village tomorrow and we were given a tour of the dowry. It included just about everything imaginable to set up housekeeping! This man was making sweets for the wedding.

And the faces everywhere were welcoming and wonderful. I would just love to come back here another year to paint for a month.

And my favourite face that I can't stop thinking about

March 1, 2014. New Delhi, India

Before we left for the day, I had to watch while four of the hotel men counted our dirty clothes for the laundry.  It's almost enough to decide to forgo the wearing of underwear!

We started the day at the Gate of India.  

Then Jim and I had a marvellous several hours at the National Museum.  Five thousand years of history on display- and of course what remains from 5000 years ago is it's ceramics and stone carvings. I was enthralled. I felt a real kinship with this art and I also felt honoured to be an artist myself.  No one should ever come to New Delhi and miss this museum!

Afterwards Jim and I went to the museum of craft. Unfortunately, this was not on a par with the national museum but there was an incredible display of textiles.

This is a chariot for taking god statues on parade during festivals.

Although at this point my ankle was very tired, we still couldn't resist a stroll through India's largest zoo.

I continue to have mixed feeling about zoos but I did my best to get a few interesting photos.

An elephant's eye