Jaipur

We flew back to Delhi and stayed in a nice hotel. We are well at Alfa Spice but went back to our room before the music started since we were to head out for Jaipur early in the morning.

On the road to Jaipur from Delhi we stopped at a roadside “hotel” for tea and parathas. This photo is the hotel part of the establishment.



Olga said it was very comfortable. I really want to learn to make parathas.



The drive was long and difficult. The Delhi-Jaipur road is really the main road between Delhi and Mumbai so there is a huge amount of traffic and you are lucky to average 30mph. We had our first view of a camel.




Traffic is very hectic. Here is a parent or servant getting 5 kids across the road.

The Observatory of Jai Singh is amazing. The Maharaja was interested in astronomy and astrology (I wonder when these became two?) so he could pinpoint the astrological sign and time of any event.





This is a sun dial accurate to 2 seconds.



This is a miniature of the big one. It is accurate to 20 seconds. Where the middle incline's shadow falls on the curved surface indicates the time – AM to the left and PM to the right.

About time in India. It is a big country with only one time zone but each city has its own adjustment so that Jaipur is 24 minutes off the national time in India.



The Ram Yantra measures the altitude and azimuth of the sun. There are two of these devices so if the sun's shadow falls in a hole in one of the devices it falls on the surface of the other. This makes it possible for someone to get a really close look at the reading. When the sun is at 45 degrees in the sky the shadow of the tip of the rod is at the junction of the horizontal and vertical surfaces.




This is the Welcome Palace of the main palace in Jaipur. Those are solid silver water jars so that when the Maharaja traveled he always brought his own water.



Jaipur is called the Red City. A lot of the old city architecture looks like this but a little less fancy.





In the evening we went to a restaurant with entertainment.





It was very well done and some of the tourist women got up to dance too.









The next morning we visited the Amber Fort. It is huge and only housed perhaps 200 people in all, including servants.





This was our mode of transportation up to the fort.

This is a herb garden.



The elephants are allowed to make 5 trips a day. Trips are made only in the early morning and late afternoon.

What is red is sand stone and local, what is white is marble and from Iran.




This is the entrance to the main living quarters. There was a lot of technology in his palace. The shot below is where he spent his days. The walls are all covered with convex mirrors to better distribute light.



The black pipe across the top was a water pipe that dripped water all along its length. Below the pipe were hanging many thin ropes that absorbed the dripping water. Something mechanical moved the ropes back and forth and created an air-conditioning effect.


The Maharaja's wives lived in separate apartment but spent a good bit of the day together is a communal courtyard.



He had a dozen or so wives and a much larger number of concubines.

After the Amber Fort we made another long drive to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

Nepal: Day 3

The Himalayas from Nagarkot, in a profile stretching 300+ km, are like the hamon (visible curved and jagged line on the cutting edge of a katana (Japanese sword). The hamon is a consequence of the heating and quenching process used to give the katana its characteristic curve.

Seeing a stretch of the Himalayas more than 300 km long also gives you a sense of the curvature of the earth and the profile created by the peaks and ranges of the Himalayas is something also created by the forces of the earth that created the very mountains themselves.

On Wednesday we left Kathmandu, visited Baktapur and had lunch and then our guide left us while the driver took us to a nearby but higher town of Nagarkot. The Kathmandu valley is at 1300 meters and Nagarkot is at 2000 meters.





It is a narrow mountain road. It was constructed as a two lane paved road but what with washout and wear and tear, it is mostly a one-lane road now and you need to pull two wheels off the pavement every time you meet an oncoming car or truck.





You see lots of terraces as in Peru. In Peru, however, the terraces (called andenes) are made of stone while here they are packed mud. A consequence is that many terraces here have to be rebuilt after each rainy season.



Even well out of Kathmandu the roads have a lot of vehicle traffic on them; mostly motor cycles. People complain about all the motorcycles but just image if they were all cars instead. The relative wealth of Nepal when compared with Peru can be seen in the large number of motorcycles.


Well we arrived about 3PM at the hotel, called The Fort. Nagarkot means “town with a fort”. It was breathtaking. The hotel consists of a main building and several two and three-story cottages.




This is a shot of the lounge at the hotel. Those are the Himalayas outside the window, which you would be able to see if I had a better camera.




Since the cottages are built into a steep hill they don't stick out at all. Each cottage room has an unobstructed view of the Himalayas. At least if there are no clouds, which there weren't. The doors to the cottages have brass fittings and are locked with a padlock.




The hotel has a widow's walk at the top of the main building and we climbed it to view the sunset on the backside of the hill – the hotel is on the eastern slope of the same hill. It was windy but not too cold.



Here comes the sun.





We woke in the morning to a relatively clear day and the sun coming up over the eastern ranges of the Himalayas. The beauty of the scene, the tranquil gardens in which we could walk, the respect from the hotel staff to leave us alone with our moment with the mountains, are not something anyone will soon forget.





The mountains are at some distance, across a large valley and behind more foothills. So they don't tower over you. However, the long uninterrupted range of the mountains have a sense of command over everything below, us included.



Mount Everest is in the eastern most part of the Himalayas and behind the range we were looking at so we could only imagine its location. Several 8000 meter + peaks seemed to be lower than closer, lowerer summits, precisely because they were further away.




It was a lovely garden and I guess the only garden tool you really need is an adz – different size for different job





So we headed back to Kathamndu. These guys were smoothing out the road (about to be paved) with hand trowels.




When we left Nagarkot we met our guide along the way and visited a Tibetan Arts and Crafts Cooperative run by refugees. Carpets were their main product and exquisitely done. Very expensive but they are happy to ship DHL to you ($9/kg according to them but I doubt that). Like just about everywhere else, we could look and admire but not acquire.

After the cooperative we were taken to two villages to see a bit of daily life. We really didn't take our camera out but did see daily life unfold; a woman washing her dog, people drying various seeds and grains, old men sitting in a sunny corner.

According to our guide, these people were not poor. At best they were “land-rich” perhaps, but open sewers and flies everywhere do not speak about material wealth.

Adios Nepal

Nepal: Day 2

We started with a visit to a Hindu cremation site. It was full of temples, statues and monkeys.


This picture is of a long line of mini-temple-like structures with the same small "statue" inside. I don't know what these might be. Actually, I do know what they “might” be but don't know what they are.

Cremation takes place with the same indifference to the people around you that are not part of what you are doing that you see with everything else.




You can't wait for a quiet moment for none will come so you just get on with what needs to be done. As the funeral pyre is built the family males, wrapped in white and bear chested, help out. Once the body has been set alight, the family withdraws and a fireman keeps things going. We reeds keep the wood from burning too fast and not consuming the remains.





The gates of the main temple at this site show Vishnu (in blue per usual), Ganesh (elephant) and Hanumant (monkey).





Later we saw this bull, it was hardly able to stand up even though it seems pretty well fed. It moved a a sloth-like pace.

Next we visited a Buddhist shrine. An important one but I forget which. People's homes and businesses come right up to the edge of the shrine. No green space here.



Most of the shops are in the tourist trade. I was impressed by the quality of the stuff I saw in Nepal. It really looks locally made and pretty much on religious themes.


The woman is praying. She has wooden skates on her hands that allow her to prostrate herself in an easy sliding motion.



From that position she slides back into child's pose. There was something like the Day of the Dead going on at the time so lots of people were visiting the shrine as a family group.








The workers were white washing the temple. This guy is mixing the white wash.


There is a style of painting called Thangka. They are mandalas in exquisite detail. Just in case anyone is interested, the really nice ones, all in gold, are $1000.00


We could only admire, yet again.

There is a constant consumption of farm land by housing. It reminded me of what they said about the Mayans; that they used all the best farming land for building and eventually couldn't feed themselves.




A three story house is for a nuclear family; anything bigger is for several generations of the same family.

We left Kathmandu and headed for Baktapur. Temple complexes are one of the few places you can get away from motorcycle traffic




What is interesting is that these complexes, which appear to be everywhere, are part of people's daily lives since for many people, this kind if open space is the only open space available.



This is a nice wooden carving that I enjoyed looking at.

Day 1 in Kathmandu

Our tour of Kathmandu began with a visit to a temple dedicated to the monkey. They are everywhere but not a nuisance. Nepal seems to be a world where Hindus (the majority) and Buddhists (the minority) live side by side and in close proximity.



We seemed to switch between Hindu and Buddhist temples with a few hybrids in between. What is also interesting is that many of the Hindu constructs are from a South Indian tradition and not just across the border in North India.

Just because it is a temple doesn't mean there isn't a buck to be made. There are so many vendors, so many different items for sale that it is mind-boggling.



One thing seems to be clear, the stuff for sale was not made in China unlike similar stuff for sale at home.

I don't know the details but the photo is supposed to represent the Buddhist sense of maleness.



There is a corresponding symbol for the female but I don't have a photo.

I told you there were monkeys.





They seem to get along very well with the dogs, which is surprising given that they are after the same food - whatever they can scrounge.

Everywhere you look there are these amazing wooden balconies. They make what you see in Peru seem pretty simple.



After the Monkey Temple we headed for Patan in the south of the city. This is a World Heritage cite and like just about everything we saw, really impressive in its extent.



This photo shows just a small part of a large complex of temples and former royal palaces.

The woodwork is phenomenal and you don't know if the



wood was made to fit the opening created by the brick or the other way round.

I am amazed at how the wood has not been demolished by termites, weather or time.

Yes, it is a World Heritage site but people still need to go about their business.



all over Kathmandu you will find ancient buildings and peoples homes mixed together. Imagine walking in and out of the 21st century several times a day.

This is a photo of a bougainvillea . It made me think of Rodin's “Les Bourgeois de Calais”.