The Shifting Sands

A Sikh worshiper with his ever present traditional knife tucked into his Dastar, a style of Pagri A city known for its Sikh temple, the Golden Temple, adorned with 750kg of serious gold, and pilgrims from around the Sikh world.  Visiting this temple is akin to 68 other sacred pilgrimages so one of the signs informed me!   Maree and Trish at least found a use for the many pieces of fabric purchased while in India Such a sacred experience even for us non Sikhs.  Follow the rules and deposit your shoes and cover your head and everything else is OK. The Hotel Pool (joking) Finding a good hotel with a cool pool is another bonus for a city in the Punjab.  A hot place to hang in September. We stayed at The Hyatt and it was just lovely. Cheap enough, under $100 for a clean room, comfortable  bed and breakfast, and right next to a shopping centre should you forget something. I hadn't...

The Diwali, the festival of light, is the Indian equivalent of Christmas.  It is very commercial and husbands are expected to buy jewellery for their wives, so its not much fun for the men folk! . This year we were in our new offices in the Metro Depot and we decided to have a Rangoli competition.  Rangolis are also known as a kolam or a muggu and are a form of folk art using coloured sand rice, flour, petals to create artwork to welcome gods into the home. They form a central role in religious observance in Mumbai and in India more broadly. The teams hard at work All the Senior Management were judges for the Rangoli competition including the expatriates Managers. An area in our foyer was set aside for the competition and the teams, most of whom were in traditional dress, were given an area consisting of four floor tiles to create their Rangoli. Based on the expatriate's  inability to predict the winners it could be reasonably suggested that w...

Dussera celebrates victory over the devil and draws from Rama's defeat of the 10 headed demon king Ravana and the Goddess Durga's victory over the demon Mahishasur. Our little friends Dusserra seems to have become much more significant in Mumbai this year.  In our first year in India we visited Udaipur over Dusserra and the festival was much more significant with temporary temples erected and kids out dancing the kolattam or stick dance almost every night.  After returning to Mumbai from Udaipur we rarely saw any festivities on the streets This year there were any number of Rama and Durga statutes in roadside shrines in the same manner as during Ganpatti.  On the roads with less traffic you could see people dancing, gambling and socialising for the week of Dusserra. Bright lights of festival season My logic is that Mumbai has a large population of migrants and they bring their traditions with them. This, combined with the fact tha...

They were travelling by tractor.... Well the Duke actually didn't say "Howdy Pilgrim" it was actually "Hey Pilgrim, your gonna need a couple of stitches". Although John Wayne wasn't in Rajasthan, the scenery was from a John Ford film. Sweeping expanses of arid country with low trees and punctuated with sand dunes and pilgrims everywhere. We had wanted to visit Jaisalmer for a long time and a weekend that coincided with Dahi Handi and Indian Independence day gave us the 4 day window to allow us to do justice to the City. From Mumbai, you fly to Jodhpur for a four and a half hour drive to Jaisalmer. I  wanted to go via the temples at Osian but our driver warned us against it as the it was a secondary road and he said lots of people were walking along the road.  I took his advice and so we travelled the main road to Jaisalmer via Pokhran, site of India's first nuclear tests and a hot spot for cancer, although I was...

We love Rajasthan.  The food, the people, the architecture and accommodation options all combine for a great Indian experience.  We have had the good fortune to spend time in the other major Rajasthanii cities except for Jaisalmer and Bikaner.  Jaisalmer was next on our list but the 4.5 hour drive from the nearest airport meant that we needed a 4 day weekend to complete our mission. A combination of Indian Independence Day and Dahi Handi ( Krishna’s birthday) provided the opportunity. The golden walls of Jaisalmer Fort Jailsalmer was a key town on the Silk Route from Asia to the Middle East and its position in the Thar Desert made it strategically important.  This importance was reinforced with the construction of a sandstone fort on a prominent rock ridge by by the Bhati Rajput Maharawal Jaisal Singh in the 12th Century.  The Bhatis, apart from occasional conflicts, managed to maintain their Princely State despite the Muslim invasion that establis...

Where the taxi dropped us for the boat ride to the Havelli It is probably very pretentious to even consider sharing my trip to Varanasi given we were in Varanasi for barely 24 hours but opportunity presented and one cannot ignore a chance to visit one of the worlds greatest ancient cities and the holiest of holy places for  Hindus.  The Mosque in tha background and the Ghats in the foreground Varanasi, known for a period of as Benares, is, along with Aleppo in Syria, consider the oldest continually occupied cities in the world. The Mosque caps the skyline despite the status of Varanasi as Hinduism's holiest city It is the most sacred of the seven Hindu holy cities and is also an important site for Buddhists being the site of Buddha's first public sermon The narrow road lined with a shrine for almost every house As a yoga teacher...