Frank's India Adventure

We left the house at 7am on Friday to head up to the Covington/Cincinatti Airport for our flights to Chicago, to New Delhi, to Kolkata.

We got there and the go us on an earlier flight so we would miss the storms that were due to hit Cinci about the time of our flight. Soooo, we ended up in Chicago an hour or so earlier and just hung out.

Our flight to New Delhi left at about 3:35pm Friday and we arrived in Delhi at about 5pm Saturday afternoon. There's a 9.5 hour time difference, so that was 7:30am Saturday back home—our flight was about 16 hours!!

The Air India seats had nice leg room, but the cushions were very thin. If I'd brought a couple extra sheets of paper, I could have doubled the thickness! ;->

The flight out of Delhi was late and we ended up getting into Kolkata about 11:15pm after hour 2.5 hour flight. Then to the Kolkata Oberoi to check in. We walked into the hotel about 31 hours to the minute from when we left home.

At the airport we met Som (short for Somnat, one of the 108 names of Shiva), who will be our guide for our entire trip. He gave us each a marigold lei. They smelled great and were beautiful. Because today is the festival of colors, he put a pretty pink stripe down each of our foreheads. I'll post the phots when I have the band width to do it.

The drive to the hotel was uneventful as midnight on a holiday has the streets almost empty, Som said. The poverty will take some getting used to. We passed the Bookseller's area and it was, like we've seen in other countries, these little metal sheds that had the doors down for the night. But what I haven't seen before was that in front of a number of them were people curled up on the sidewalk asleep. Also at a couple street corners, on the sidewalk, people were curled up sleeping. We just forget what a wealthy nation we live in.

I did a little laundry, did this writing and should get to bed since it's almost 3am and we have an 11 o'clock meeting in the A.M.

I'll write more later.

Love and sweet dreams,

Frank

3/20

Got up in time for breakfast which ends at 10:30 and had a nice breakfast. This is a beautiful old hotel. This building is 300 years old and has been a hotel for 150 years. As with all hot humid countries we have our not-so-welcome travelling companion—mildew. My room isn't bad, but Lea and Stuart are going to have to change rooms.

We met a 11am with Som to go over the day and for him to get to know us a bit. I think he will be a great traveling companion. As he talked briefly about the history of India and the many, many other nations and cultures that have conquered and occupied it he said there was nothing to be angry about toward those countries/occupiers because each one of them helped enrich India. What a wonderful attitude! I told him that that was a lot of what we taught, that we should look at life as an enrichment process. It's not that we fell down, but that we got back up and learned from it—we were enriched by it.

India is such a sacred land. Ritual is a part of the day-to-day life of the people. But we learned from Som, that just like all religions, those that practice Hinduism can get into the empty formality of it. He went through a time where it sounds like he moved away from it because he had no idea what was behind his daily rituals (like greeting the sun each morning). Then he had people from other parts of the world that were coming to India to study, or because of, Hinduism and he began thinking that if educated people from other places in the world were coming to India because of Hinduism, maybe there is something to it. So he began looking into the history of it and the meaning behind the rituals and learned from it and sees the meaning and purpose of it.

We talked about the sacredness of all things and the fact that India is a sacred land and he was touched by it. I think he's looking forward to being with us also. I think this will be a good time.

We were going to take today as a sleep day, but it looks like we'll get together in about an hour (2pm) and drive around town a bit. There may still be some celebrations from Holi (the Festival of Color) still going on. Of course, I just realized that this is the equinox. Here, rather than it being the beginning of Spring, it is a celebration of the beginning of Summer. It is in the mid-90s today and quite humid. Nothing like it will be in October when the group is here. He says each day will be hotter until we head up to the north east.

He is looking forward to that part of the trip, he has been there, but in the Shillong area, he says it will be an adventure for him also. We'll have a local guide, also, there. He says that not only is the language in that area totally different than what he can speak, the written characters are totally different. He said he won't be able to understand a word they speak or read a word they write.

Isn't that amazing—that a country can be so diverse in so many ways.

I'm going to see if I can get a nap in before we go. We'll get back for dinner. We've arranged vegan dinners for our meals at all the hotels so that we can make sure they can work for the group.

Here vegetarianism is like what we call lacto-ovo without the eggs. So, being vegetarian with no dairy is quite different. They use butter and ghee in most everything. So we are having to be careful. But so far so good.

3/20

We went out for about about 2 hours—about all any of us were up for—and had a really nice time. We went down to the river (the Hooglia which is a distributary of the Ganges) to a couple of the local Ghats. During Holi, a celebration of color, people cover themselves in a bright pink color. Though traditionally it was only the pink color, now you see people who are painted green, blue and even some with black colors on themselves. Some of them are solid pink. It is really interesting. At the end of Holi (which was this afternoon) people go down to the river and wash the color off. Some of the color comes off but it seemed like most stayed on. We were told that the color would take 2-3 days to come off totally.

One section of the Ghat was for the males and the other for the females. The Ghats are more than bathing places, they seem to be the area where people come to the sacred river for sacred purposes. In the past, peole were brought to the river's edge to die. There were people getting massages and others just hanging out. It was a very interesting experience.

Apparently it is one of the few days of the year when young boys and girls may touch each other. They apparently put the colors on each other if they are "friends" or like each other. At one of the Ghats there was a very pretty young (pink!) girl with her father. She must have been 12-14 years old and she very nicely reached out her hands to greet us and wish us a happy Holi. I think she really enjoyed getting to do that. She had the sweetest, happiest smile.

Our local guide for Kolkatta is Shaunty (who knows how to spell it?) who is a 74 year old former school teacher. He said that since the life expectancy in India is 68, he is a ghost! ;-> He is a very friendly and knowledgeable man.

Both he and Som are being very flexible. They had yesterday scheduled for a full day of seeing ALL that we could see in Kolkatta. We told Som that we thought it would be a hotel/rest day, and he took that in stride. As we talked with him he explained that because it was Sunday and the end of Holi, we would have much less traffic and it would be easier to get around AND we'd get to see the end of the celebrations. We decided we felt good enough for that and had our short outing.

We got back about 4 and were whipped. Stuart and I had dinner at 5pm and had Lea's taken to the room. The chef came out and explained that he understood our special vegan needs and asked if we wanted western or Indian food. We asked for Indian and he made us a very nice south Indian dinner.

We were all in bed and asleep by 8:30pm.

8/21

We all woke up without an alarm about 6-6:30 and met for a nice breakfast at about 7-7:15. Now I'm doing a quick checkin here and then we meet Som and Shauty for our day in Kolkatta.

An exciting thing about today is that Ani is flying up to spend some time with us. It will be great to see him and spend some time with him. I think we'll see some sites and then it's a . . . you guessed it—a shopping day. We wanted to check out a market or two and FAB India so that we'd have an idea of what we could tell the group to expect when they were here. I think it will be a fun day.

I'll try to get on the internet and post all this later.

3/21 noonish

We are back from our morning outing. This morning we did the local flower market and a Jain Temple. We also saw great sites of Kolkata and her people as we drove through the city.

The way of life for most of the people is so very different. There is abject poverty, but it does not seem like poverty relates to unhappiness in this culture. The poor people seem no more happy or unhappy than the people who are obviously well-to-do. I saw people bathing at the side of the street with the water flowing out of a large faucet along the road, people brushing their teeth with that same water. Squatter's homes that consisted of sheetmetal, cardboard and tarps that were as wide as the sidewalk and about 20 feet wide. It is very dirty here, really quite amazing. But for some reason it (maybe it's my vast well of enightenment! ;->) it doesn't make me sad or unhappy for these people. The poor that we've seen don't seem to be poor because of bad health, crippled bodies, or other challenges; they appear healthy and most of them are doing some type of work.

My reaction is very different than to the poverty of Egypt, Mexico or even China. There isn't an aura of oppression or misery.

Well, on to other brighter, perhaps, subjects. The flower market was very interesting. From Shaunty I learned:

Flowers are considered the handwriting of the gods

The hibiscus flower is the flower of Kali because it is open and all the elements of the flower can be seen. It is representative of Kali saying "I give my open heart to you."

Each of the gods has a flower (or more) that are "theirs" and every flower has a meaning.

For example, the Marigold is Shiva's flower. Because Shiva has 108 names (or more) the marigold is Shiva's flower because it has more than 108 petals.

The tuberose is the flower of Kolkata and we were each given a beautiful lei of tuberoses with a red rose at the bottom.

It seemed like a much more informal flower market than we saw in Turkey or in Bolivia. But it was beautiful and amazing how many floweres and people there were.

We left there for the Jain temple. As we were driving there one of the things I found interesting that we learned was that the Indian people, before their freedom from the British 63 years ago underwent 900 years of slavery (occupation) from the Afgans, the Ottomans and the British. They are proud of how far they have come after 900 years of slavery. I found that real interesting.

The Jain temple is a relatively new one, having been build in 1863. I had always thought that Jainism was a branch of Buddhism, but it isn't. Jainism predates Buddha's birth. The population of India is 1% Jain, yet the account of something like 63% of the wealth. When we asked them why that was, we were told that because Jain's honor all life and kill none, they have never been able to be farmers, fisherman or taken part in those industries. Sooooo, they've always been business people, market ownes and the such. And, after century after century of being market owners they have acquired more and more wealth.

The temple is known as a jewel box because it is completely covered (inside and out) with tiles and mirrors. It really is pretty. The grounds and inner temple were filled with the aroma of burning sandal incense.

There was no photography inside the temple as it is an active place of worship.

After that we headed back to the hotel for a rest so we could get back at it at 2pm when we will go to the FAB India and another market or two. We have to make sure there's shopping for our folks! ;->

I had gotten a bird book on the birds of India so I'd be able to know what we were seeing and found out that the author is the "grandfather of ornithology" for India. This is the umpteenth edition and has great info in it. When I asked Som about it he was very excited because he really likes birds also. I saw a really nice field guide to birds of India in the hotel gift shop, but thought $56US for it was a bit much!! Som, said we'd find a place where it was much cheaper later today.

We'll that's our day so far.