The Shifting Sands

We have just survived another Ganpatti.  Maybe India does get easier... Ganpatti is an annual religious festival celebrating Ganesh, the elephant headed god much loved in Mumbai.  Many families and societies bring Ganesh, in the form of a statue, into their home or into a temporary shrine or pandal that often takes up half a lane on the street.   Ganesh is hosted for a 1.5, 3, 5, 7, or 11 day stay with a senior family member required to stay in the home to host Ganesh. While Ganesh is in the house, Pooja’s are held and offerings are made.  Bringing Ganesh into the home means significant commitment.  Once started you need to invite Ganesh into your house for the next 5 years, the statue must never get smaller, no alcohol should be consumed and there must not have been a family bereavement in the prior 12 months. Different societies, local communities and political parties compete to build the largest, most unique, Ganesh statue to which large offerings are made.  The larg

The girls had a long weekend for the Mahatma Ghandi’s birthday so we took the opportunity to visit the heartland of the Indian Republic, Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Mirror inlaid into the walls to amplify the light from candles We flew in to Jaipur, where we had booked rooms in the newly constructed Fairmont Hotel.  As with many hotels in Rajasthan, the accommodation and service was excellent. The hotel was out of town but close to the Amer or Amber Fort, which was our first outing the next day. Decorative carvings with precious stone inlaid The fort was spectacular with a familiar Rajasthan layout of winter, summer and monsoon sleeping quarters combined with a spectacular mirrored hall, designed to amplify candlelight, and intricate inlayed precious stones in elaborate patterns.  Even in the 16 th  century, they had indoor plumbed toilets, mutilpe person stone hot tubs and a steam room.  All serviced by a women only staff of 400!

After doing the rounds of the family in Australia, we decided to spend a week in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand with elephants, tigers, Thai food, night markets and rock climbing on the menu to meet the appetite of the respective parties. Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second city but it is far from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok.  The city is based on a grid and has a moat and the remnants of an old city wall to add to the sense of atmosphere. The first outing was a visit to a tiger park so the girls could pat a tiger.  We were a little concerned about the ethics of the park given some of the reviews in which people were concerned about the tigers being drugged. On arrival we found the operation to be professional and very commercial.  They have a significant number of baby, adolescent and very large mature tigers and from the way that two of the large tiger’s fought with each other while people tried to evacuate the cage, they were certainly not drugged.  The Park forms part