A Glimpse of India

Last month I got to go with David on a work trip to India. I've been wanting to visit for ages, particularly since David was born there and I've heard stories about it for as long as we've been together. 

I'm going to try to avoid making this a travelogue - others have done that much better and more comprehensively than I ever could. I just want to give an overview of what we did, and highlight some of the things that caught my fancy while we were there.

We spent the first couple of days in Mumbai (Bombay) where David spoke to a meeting of Mumbai Metro church workers. 

Some of the church workers David spoke to in Mumbai

He was very pleased to be able to speak from the same pulpit his Dad would have preached in more than forty years ago.

David speaking at the Mumbai Central English Church

 We also had our first experience of Indian hospitality, with the first in a series of flower garlands and bouquets we were presented with during our visit.

The first, and my favourite, of the flower garlands we were presented with.

We were scheduled pretty tightly while we were there, but we did get an afternoon to do a little sightseeing before we left Mumbai.

First stop was the Breach Candy hospital, where David was born. It looks a little dilapidated from the outside but inside was very clean and modern - unfortunately they wouldn't let me take pictures inside.

Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai

We then drove by the Chhatrapati Shivaji train station (formerly Victoria Terminus), an amazing Victorian neo-Gothic extravaganza, but unfortunately we didn't stop so I couldn't get a picture.

We did get to get out and walk around the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. Someday I want to spend a night at that hotel - it's gorgeous.

The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel - Mumbai

Taj Mahal Palace Hotel - close up

While we were admiring the architecture, a group of Muslim girls, and one young man, decided they needed a picture with me. There were a few other Westerners about so I'm not sure why I was the lucky one - maybe it was the sunglasses. David managed to catch the moment on his phone.

It was a bit of a whirlwind afternoon but I managed to capture a few images that caught my fancy.

Construction workers clambering around bamboo scaffolding - about four floors up.

A man selling some of the most gorgeous strawberries I've ever seen.

Ferries in the harbour by the Gate of India

A Hindu shrine, near where we had lunch

An example of India's somewhat idiosyncratic English

We left Bombay the next day and drove to Pune (previously Poona), about ninety miles south-east of Mumbai, where the church has offices and a college (Spicer).

Maharashtra, the state Mumbai and Pune are in, reminded me of Central California, with dry hills and scrubby trees, punctuated with the verdant green of irrigated agricultural land.

Maharashtra

One of the things David wanted to do while we were in India was to visit some of the small churches, not just the bigger, institutional ones. We visited several church plants in the outskirts of Mumbai, Pune and Aurangabad, where little groups of 20-30 members came out of an evening to hear David speak. They spoke little English, but smiled and greeted us with "namaste" or "salaam," and gifts of flowers presented by little girls in their best dresses. One group fed us dinner of homemade curries and iddly. The sightseeing was fabulous, but my favourite moments were these.

We also got to briefly visit the school in Pune, which has more than a thousand students. They were very well behaved when we were there, and despite the size of the school, the class sizes seemed to remain small. We popped our heads into a classroom of nine- or ten-year-olds, and there were about twenty children, with a teacher and one or two assistants.

Getting small boys to line up in order is apparently hard whereever you are.

We left Pune and drove to Aurangabad, 150 miles north-east. Our van got a flat about two hours into the trip, so we got out and waited on the side of a very busy, dry, dusty road for about half an hour. It was a warm day, in the 80s, and there was very little shade. There were trees along the side, but since it was still technically winter, there were few leaves. David caught a picture of me while we were waiting - the scarf was not intended to make me blend in, it was just to offer a little shade.

Me, not blending in at all.

We did visit a church in Aurangabad, but the real reason for going was to visit the the Daulatabad Fortress and the Ellora caves.

Ellora was amazing. It's a series of 34 "caves" carved right into the rock of a ridge north of Aurangabad, over several hundred years. The older caves are Buddhist, and are more cave-like; caverns carved back into the rock with columns and a few statues. They were dark and a bit of a relief from the heat and glare of the outside. 

The Buddhist caves at Ellora

Although Buddhism was all but extinguished in India long ago, this site is clearly still a draw for Buddhists from other parts of the world.

My favourite part of Ellora was the Hindu temple closer to the entrance. The craftsmanship was incredible.

We stopped by the fortress at Daulatabad, but it was getting late, we were tired, and we had a plane to catch, so we didn't climb all the way to the top, but we did wander around the bottom of the hill.

Daulatabad Fortress

 The tower used to be open, but too many lovers were jumping off.

There were monkeys.

Before we left Aurangabad, we also briefly visited Bibi Ka Maqbara, known as the Mini Taj Mahal. It was built by Azam Shah, son of Aurangazeb (after whom Aurangabad is named) on the same model as the Taj Mahal, his grandmother's mausoleum. It is a charming building, of white marble, with exquisite carvings of flowers and latticework.

Finally, I'd like to share a few random pictures of things I just found interesting or charming.

Indian babies are the most adorable things in the world. I asked this mother if I could take a picture and she graciously agreed. 

 When I had done the little girl indicated that I needed to take another one, so I did.

Indian lorries (trucks) are movable works of art.

 And they want you to honk your horn at them - almost every truck had "Horn OK Please" emblazoned on the back. Many of them seem to lack wing mirrors so I think it's to let them know that something is coming up behind them.

Cows. So many cows. David managed to get a picture for me on our last day. 

Saris - so many beautiful saris. It was interesting - most of the men I saw wore Western dress, but most of the women were in traditional dress - either saris or some form of a salwar kameez.

A woman with an angle grinder on the side of the road on the way out of Mumbai - sharpening knives

Women, in saris, on scooters - everywhere

We packed so much into our week in India, and yet saw so little of the country. It turns out it was just an appetizer, to whet our appetite for more. David has been invited back next year, so hopefully we can extend our visit and see some of the south and north as well.

Wendy

7 More Things I Learned in India

1. The Maratha hero Shivaji was my husband's boyhood hero.
2. I assumed that when we got here "real" Indian food would blow my head off, but I actually found much of it fairly tame, spice-wise. 
3. I am ridiculously charmed by the sight of women in saris perched decorously side-saddle on the back of motorbikes.
4. Indian toddlers are the most adorable creatures on the face of the earth.
5. I never want to visit India between April and October. It was quite hot and humid enough for me in mid-winter (into the low 90s).
6. I love how most of the churches we visited haven't slavishly used the Adventist Church Hymnal, as in many other parts of the world, but have created their own sacred music with Indian tones and rhythms.
7. Indians follow their celebrities even more fervently than Americans. Kim Kardashian and Ryan Gosling have nothing on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan.

7 Things I Learned in India

(Bearing in mind that so far I've only visited the triangle comprising Mumbai, Pune, and Aurangabad.)

1. I want a sari. Seriously. I don't care if I'm a fat, middle-aged, white woman. I'm getting myself one of those someday.
2. There are cows. Lots of cows. And I didn't get a single photo.
3. There are also lots of dogs. And goats. And pigeons. But I only saw one cat the whole time.
4. Indians love two-wheelers (motorcycles/motorbikes/scooters). You'll often see three or four on at a time. But very few wear helmets and when they do it's only the driver - the passengers just have to hope for the best.
5. Maharashtra looks a lot like Central California: semi-arid, with parched brown grass and scrubby trees; punctuated with areas of lush farmland.
6. Everything is covered in dust. Everything.
7. Hospitality is everything. Guests are considered to be like God visiting so all the stops are pulled out to make them happy. I like this.

Wendy

Ruthlessly Pillaged

I've snagged some of the photos taken by iPhone this year from my David's Facebook page. What's his is mine, right?

First up is the coffee cart stop of our Third Wave Coffee Tour in Portland. I discovered on this trip that Portland is my spiritual home.

That's Lora there in the middle checking her phone. I can't remember the name of the cart (memory like a sieve, me) but they were the ones who provided us coffee with that lemon/rosemary/Douglas Fir syrup, the latter of which was sourced from their own yard. They also had a great pay-it-forward system - you can "sponsor" a free cup of coffee for someone in the future. You pay for it, it's marked  up on a blackboard, and anyone who comes along, feels the need for a cuppa, but is short of cash, can take it up. Very cool.

In Kelowna, David was there to speak at their "campmeeting" held in the local school, and we were tickled to find this when we arrived.

The Okanagan is beautiful, as I said before. This is a view of the lake from the local lavender farm Lori-Anne took us to while we were there.

Unfortunately the farm itself didn't open for another week but the shop/tearoom was open and we spent a ridiculous amount of money on lavender-related goodness, and had hand-blended tea on the back verandah.

The elegant and charming Lori-Anne is on the right, in an Audrey Hepburn-esque turtleneck, and the adorable cheeky monkey Amelie is making eyes at us at the front. Oliver was off doing whatever small boys do when the grown ups are being boring.

David and I drove along the lake and a short visit to the beach, where a few of those crazy Okanagans were sunbathing and swimming. David took the first picture of me in a very long time that I actually really like.

While in Canada we also discovered the awesomeness that is...deep fried pickles. How did I not know about this? Why has no one told me?!!!

We had them twice. It's just as well we weren't there for longer, really.

On the food-related theme, we were in Australia on my birthday and David's brother Geoffrey took us on a drive to Byron Bay, where we had lunch at what he said had been rated the 2nd best place to eat in town. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to be a cafe attached to the local Adventist church.

Manna Haven is a vegan restaurant with really, really good food (sadly, often not the case at vegan places) and a hot mint-carob drink that David could have and, despite my long-standing bias against carob, would have fooled me into thinking it was chocolate if I hadn't known otherwise.

Geoff oldest son, William, wasn't feeling well and didn't come along, but his wife Anne and Ben, the youngest, in all his curly-headed-Trim glory, were there to help me celebrate heading into the back stretch of my 40s.

Although still suffering from the colds we came down with the moment we arrived, we had a really good day. And despite being winter, the weather while we were in Australia was perfect - hovering around 70F most of the time.

I'm including the photo below because it's funny, and because I think I look surprisingly cute with a hard-hat. We went on a tour of the new section of the Sydney Adventist Hospital, which is a building site, so everyone had to wear hard-hats and day-glo vests. (David has several pictures of senior church officials looking silly in hard-hats and safety vests, but I will not be posting them here, to preserve their dignity.)

I rocked the hat, not so much the vest.

Next time I'll show pictures of the Victorian extravaganza that is Ferndale, CA, and my souvenir yarn.

Wendy