Turkey - 2nd and Final Episode

We are now back in Istanbul for four nights, after 9 days of travel by many forms of public transport along the coast of the Aegean Sea.

Ephesus

Our first stop after Pamukkale, where we last wrote, was in Selcuk, a picturesque town with cobbled streets and Roman ruins, including a fifth century AD fortress, a fourth century basilica, baths from 1364 and the Temple of Artemis which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Antique World. However, all these sites were somewhat neglected and totally overshadowed by the splendid Roman ruins of nearby Ephesus. Even the local museum displayed only excavated sculptures and artefacts from Ephesus. We spent half a day walking round the well preserved streets, admiring the vast piles of carved stone which are all that remain of the huge Roman city after many earthquakes. The marble streets are still in remarkable condition and some of the buildings have been reconstructed. Only 15% of the original city of over 200,000 inhabitants has been excavated so far.

Cooking pancakes in Sirince

We enjoyed a visit to the mountain village of Sirince, built and once occupied by Greeks, who left in the 1920's. Old stone houses with wooden shutters and doors and orange roof tiles have patios where they serve savoury pancakes under grape-vine awnings. It is famous for felt-making and olive-oil production as well as wines and vinegars. The characterful ice-cream vendors dress up in extravagant old-style costumes, and tease the customers by snatching the cones or scoops back with an iron-bar.

Restaurant waiters also like to joke with customers or pose for photos with them...in general the Turks are a fun-loving people. They are also very generous with strangers. When we asked to buy two huge apples in a market, the stall-holder gave them to us for free and when we were flummoxed by the complicated ticket buying system on Izmir public transport, a friendly middle-aged couple used their transport pass to buy us tickets.

Turks take their national holiday on October 29 very seriously, with red Turkish flags draped from private houses, flying from municipal buildings and carried by school children singing the national anthem and honouring Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, of whom there are pictures and statues everywhere. It is their Republic Holiday, celebrating the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

The long-distance buses were fully booked for the holiday, so we travelled to Ayvalik a day earlier than planned. It is a picturesque old fishing port, famed for its olives and “Ayvalik Tost”, a cheesy, meaty sandwich rivalling a Philly cheese-steak in fat content. We stayed in the old part of town in a quaint restored guest-house which served a wonderful breakfast. We enjoyed exploring the old parts of the town where there are working horse-drawn carts in the cobbled streets, olive-oil factories, mosques converted from old Christian churches and fishing boats bringing in fresh catches along the sea-front.

We took a bus ride to Alibey Island and tasted the seaside treat of “lokma”, which are deep-fried spheres of dough soaked in syrup and sprinkled with coconut. The olive plantations stretched for miles, the trees laden with green and black olives...they taste nasty until they have been cured, but we have loved being served a variety of different coloured olives with breakfast wherever we have stayed.

Our next stop was Foca, which is even more quaint and cute, with its fishermen mending colourful nets along the waterfront, each boat different from the next with elegant rugs to sit on and decorative potted plants on board.

Our hotel room had its own balcony over the promenade, from where we looked out over the harbour to the islands and enjoyed romantic sunsets. We were glad we hadn't swum in the sea after we noticed the numerous spiky sea-anemones on the rocks, and saw a large blue jellyfish close to shore. In the 3^rd century BC, Foca was the centre of a powerful seafaring civilization which founded many Mediterranean cities, including Marseilles.

While Sandy's namesake hurricane was hammering the Philadelphia area and other East coast communities in the U.S., we were enjoying sunny days with temperatures in the seventies. We did experience a major downpour one evening in Ayvalik, when the street was so flooded that our waiter had to rescue a girl from the rising water by helping her climb through the restaurant window.

We are now back in Istanbul for a few more days before returning to Philadelphia on Monday. Our trip from Foca to Istanbul was long and varied, involving a local bus, a suburban train through Izmir, a plane to Istanbul, another bus, a funicular railway, a tram ride and finally a walk through narrow streets and stairways to our lovely guest-house overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Today we enjoyed a great breakfast on the rooftop terrace with views of boats, fishermen and many varieties of birds, before wandering through the back streets of Istanbul, visiting streets where every store is specialized – in hardware, grilling equipment, belt buckles, spices, dried fruit, bridal wear, kitchen crockery, etc.

Tomorrow we have plans for a ferry ride to the islands in the Bosphorus and a whirling dervish performance in an old bath house.

Turkey - October 15 - 25, 2012

We are roughly half way through our holiday in Turkey, and felt it was time to communicate to let you know we are still alive and well, and to tell you what we are up to.

We are now in the tiny town of Pamukkale, about 100 miles from the west (Aegean) coast of Turkey, where we are spending a couple of nights. Today is Eid Al Adha – a very important date in the Muslim calendar, so the local mosque has been bustling with activity starting with a very loud and long call to prayer at 4 AM. People are grilling lamb in their back gardens, as the festival commemorates Abraham's killing of a sheep rather than his son (for those of you who remember your Genesis).



Stone (travertine) pools and terraces in Pamukkale

Pamukkale is famous for two things – extraordinary white limestone terraces and clear turquoise-blue pools that spill down the mountainside, and a well preserved partially excavated Roman town, Hierapolis, complete with a huge intact amphitheater, shops, houses, temples, baths and a very impressive public lavatory.

We have just spent five hours walking up, down and all around. When you walk on the white travertine slopes you have to go barefoot, which is bit of an adventure. The rock is glistening white, with interesting ripples and waves, and warm volcanic water is constantly trickling down over it. It is reputedly full of health-giving properties, and people come from all over the world to be cured of heart and skin diseases, as well as rheumatism. 

A very impressive public convenience c 400 AD

The Roman city is huge and mostly still being excavated by an Italian university's team of archaeologists. It was destroyed several times by earthquakes and has been very little plundered, so the main buildings are being reassembled piece by piece, like a complicated three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces looking almost the same. Although there were many bus parties of tourists, they tend to stick to a few major buildings and most of the park is deserted. We climbed up the hill to the ruins of an ancient church (5^th century) built where St Philip (one of the less known of the 12 apostles) was martyred in 63 AD. The views from the top were wonderful, and there were many interesting birds and wild flowers, including thousands of yellow autumn crocuses, and beds planted with roses, zinnias and rosemary bushes.

Istanbul -- mosques and buses

Our first stop in Turkey was Istanbul, where we will return at the end of our stay. It is a wonderful city that has been the centre of civilization and trade between Europe and Asia for millennia. We spent two and a half days walking all over, visiting palaces, mosques, museums, and markets and drinking in the sights and sounds. Bizarrely, in a city of 13 million people, we bumped into our Bala Cynwyd friends, Debbie and Bill Becker TWICE by accident, and once on purpose when we got together for dinner.

 

Lin and Turkish lady with large cabbages

We are greatly enjoying our encounters with the Turkish people, who are incredibly friendly and welcoming, especially when we try out our few words of Turkish. In the market in Fethiye, Lin was accosted by a large lady selling enormous cabbages, who insisted on having a photo taken with each holding a five kilo cabbage.

Speaking of vegetables, we are loving the food here. There is a vast array of fruits and vegetables in the markets and on all the menus. It is the height of the pomegranate season, and we have enjoyed glasses of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice in the street. Another drink we have taken to is “ayran”, which is a thin salty yoghurt drink, both refreshing and filling after a strenuous day's walking round street markets or Roman ruins.

Pomegranate juice for sale

The warm, sunny weather we enjoyed for our first week has now returned after a few stormy days with heavy downpours. Our three-night boat -- "gulet" -- trip around the Mediterranean bays near Fethiye was luckily not spoilt by the bad weather, as the water stayed warm and relatively calm. There were only four of us on board for the last sail of the season with two crew, instead of a possible eighteen in total.

Calm seas and rainbows

Our cabin had its own tiny tiled bathroom. We mostly motored into the bays, inaccessible by road, to swim or snorkel, and walk on islands or peninsulas where goats were browsing among pine woods, with orange and olive trees, where thyme, sage, oregano and laurel grow wild. The boat stirred up schools of flying fish. The sea water was warm and salty, so swimming was easy. At night the only sounds were the lapping of the waves and the hooting of owls in the nearby forests.

We became good friends with the other two aboard, a retired couple from Toronto, and went out for dinner at the fish market in Fethiye together on our return to dry land. You buy your fish from the market stalls and the restaurants compete to cook it for you and serve it with salads, bread and drinks.

Our "gulet" anchored near
Cleopatra's Bath on the Lycian Coast

The Fethiye market was fun to visit, with colorful characters offering samples of fruit, olives, dried apricots or Turkish delight, and selling pancakes with a variety of fillings to eat at tables set with enormous jars of pickled vegetables.

In the hotels everything is clean and much of the water is potable. The breakfast buffets are plentiful and delicious, with lots of Greek-style yoghurt, eggs, cheeses, tomatoes, cucumber, many varieties of olives, figs and apricots, as well as fresh-squeezed juices, coffee and teas. The ubiquitous apple-tea is tasty and refreshing...something we will definitely want to take back home with us.

We travelled form Fethiye to Pammukale by an impressive long-distance bus on well-built, almost empty roads through the mountains. The bus had a “steward” who came around with complimentary bottled water and soda, and snacks, as well as lemon-scented sprays of hand-sanitizer.

Tomorrow we leave here for the coast, we are travelling by bus to Ephesus for more Roman ruins, seafood and hopefully more warm weather.

Last Post from Chandelao

The last post

This will be our last post from Chandelao,. It is Thursday 8^th March – full moon, and the Indian festival of Holi. We will be finishing work here on Saturday. On Sunday we become tourists, when Lin's sister Brenda and her husband Anthony arrive from England. Then we are off on a three week tour of Rajasthan.

Sandy is currently scurrying to get his second web site project, for the Sunder Rang Women's Craft Centre, finished before we leave. Lin's school is closed for three days for the holiday, so she has just one more day at school. She hopes to be able to present the school with the supplies she has bought with her grant money, though the Holi holidays have extended the excuses for non-delivery and it may not happen till next week. Saturday will still be a day for difficult goodbyes.

The past week has been occupied with two major events – our three day trip to Pushkar, and the Holi holiday.

Pushkar

Lin and Sandy standing at the lake in Pushkar

A week ago, our hotel in Chandelao was overbooked and we were “thrown out”. Luckily we were able to make this coincide with our FSD “mid-term” retreat, so FSD arranged for us to take a trip to Pushkar, about 3 hours from Chandelao. Pushkar is an unusual and attractive place, where no one eats meat or eggs, and no alcohol is sold. Groups of Hindu pilgrims visit the sacred lake and the only Brahma temple in India, young Israelis are there to decompress after their military service, and ageing hippies hang out and don't seem to realise that the 60's are over. The main street is lined with a wide variety of small shops where we spent a lot of time and a little money buying easily portable presents and souvenirs. The main street also had many good restaurants, more than the usual complement of cows, too many motor scooters, but no cars or rickshaws. There were some hilarious signs in the shops – our favorite was a painter who styled himself “Kickasso, the Indian Picasso”.

Monkeys!

Our hotel was right beside the lake with great views of the sunset, ghats and bathers. Pilgrim activity starts with the sunrise and from then on the sound of bells, gongs, drums and prayers continues throughout the day. We paid our respects to Brahma, the creator of the universe, by throwing some flowers at his statue in the temple and giving some sweets. We also threw flowers in the lake so good fortune is sure to come our way. On our second morning, we climbed a tall pointed hill on the outskirts of the town, up to a temple for Saraswati, Brahma's wronged wife, and the home of handsome, silky, gray langur monkey families who seemed to enjoy posing for photographs. We were lucky on our last evening that our visit coincided with a performance of Indian classical dance and music by a local dance school. We sat mesmerized for 2 hours by haunting music from a large group of excellent musicians and some very fine, intricate dancing in the Orissa style 

A lot has changed in 44 years

Sandy first visited India in 1966 when he came to work in Shimla (then Simla) for the Commonwealth Save the Children Fund in a school for Tibetan refugee children. A lot has changed in India in those 44 years. He remembers a sign outside the railway station in Delhi stating that the population of India was over 500 million, and exhorting people to not let it reach 600 million. The population is now nearly 1,200 million! At that time, only 19 years after independence – even 20-year-old white boys were addressed as “sahib” – a word he has only heard used ironically this visit. English was widely spoken by bus and taxi drivers; much less so now. Bicycle rickshaws and hand pulled rickshaws were common in the cities; we have only seen noisy, dirty motorised rickshaws this time. Most obvious, and most deleterious, is the ubiquity of plastic. 44 years ago there were no plastic bags or plastic containers. Chai was served in small unglazed earthenware cups which were returned to the soil after one use. Now there is plastic and plastic trash everywhere. Village rubbish dumps which used to rot away quite quickly and safely, are now piled with plastic trash. Jodhpur City has actually banned the use of plastic bags in shops, but the ban is widely ignored. Interestingly, the ban was not introduced solely to decrease the trash problem, but to protect cows from swallowing plastic bags which cause them terrible problems with their digestive systems.

Help! We got “holi”ed

Some of Lin's students going holi-crazy

Yesterday when we were in Jodhpur, there were preparations everywhere for Holi, the Hindu festival on the day of the full moon to celebrate the coming of spring. Sweet shops were doing a roaring trade;stalls had sprung up to sell cowdung donuts to make Holi fires; and everywhere were entrepreneurs with barrows piled high with brightly colored paint powders and water pistols. Already there were a few well-dyed people and cows in the street.

Today we became the target of paint throwers and sprayers the moment we stepped out of the haveli gate. We had been warned to wear our least respectable clothes, which were lovingly and sometimes mischievously daubed with splotches and splashes of bright color in Jackson Pollock style, along with our hair and face, amid a chorus of Happy Holi. Fortunately we managed to keep our cameras away from the colored water bombs, and the kids were amenable to the use of “bas” when we had had enough. Lin was dragged off to friends' houses where she was treated as a special guest, given lassi or chai to drink and a variety of snacks, as well as a fat 7-month old baby to hold for one of her many photos. Meanwhile the village elders in spectaculr holiday turbans have been drinking opium and conferring in a corner of the yard with the Thakur, our host Praduman Singh.

Sandy's shirt has not recovered after a soaking in Tide, apparently because the pink dye has potassium permanganate in it, so we will be saving our clothing in case we are here for Holi again next year.

Block-printed cloth dyed with indigo drying in the sun

Our afternoon trip to Pipar with some Norwegian and French guests introduced us to groups of highly painted red-faced young men dancing for Holi and wielding stout sticks in the street, as well as to the dyes used in the famous local block-printing factory. This is a traditional family business, open on Holi because the Muslim owners do not celebrate the festival. We watched and participated in the block-printing process, covering strips of cotton or silk with patterns and designs carved into wood blocks dipped in dyes made from natural products. The indigo dye was contained in a ten foot deep well that has not been emptied for thirty years, and the printed fabric was laid out in the sun to dry before being washed in vats of water. Deep blue finger prints were added to Lin's already decorated shirt by a gloved hand. Some of the wooden printing blocks used in the business were over 300 years old, and the skill and inventiveness of the printing was wonderful to see.

Again this evening we will be celebrating with a special dinner at the hotel, where a family party of thirty from Jodhpur has more or less taken over the place since yesterday. There has been cricket on the lawn all day, and much indulgence in spicy foods and treats, as the party hired their own caterers who took over the hotel kitchen for last night's dinner and all day today. A troupe of turbaned Rajasthani musicians and gypsy dancers in mirrored dresses decorated with sequins and bells came to entertain us all after dark.

We got holied!

Chandelao - Week 5

Hoopoe looking for ants in the hotel courtyard.

Animals and Birds

We are regularly surprised about amount and variety of the wildlife in and around Chandelao. With every scrap of usable land given over to agriculture, sparse vegetation and little water it would not seem on the face of it to be a good place for animal and bird watching. Sandy has now identified 63 species of birds, and seen many others that he has been unable to match with a picture in Grimmett's Birds of Northern India. Two rapidly drying up local lakes are frequented by ducks and other water birds, and there are wild peacocks everywhere.

Spotted owlet outside a hotel window

On the furry side of the animal kingdom we have seen 2 kinds of antelope and one kind of gazelle. A few nights ago Sandy was surprised by a large, black, bristly wild sow jumping out of a ditch and squealing down the track in front of him followed by six tiny piglets. Last night we heard jackals howling in the distance, and this evening we caught sight of a mongoose. Some wildlife encounters are less welcome – we hear ominous squeakings and rustlings when it is dark, and one night, Sandy woke up to find a little mouse on his pillow. A little gecko hides out in the shutters, and yellow wasps hatch out in the rotting wood.

Caste

The caste system is very strong in this part of India, and we have gradually become more aware of it among the various local people we know. There are about 12 castes represented in this village, from Rajputs (the former rulers and warriors) to shepherds (the most numerous) and on down to musicians, farmers, gardeners, manual laborers, and blacksmiths at the bottom. Even though in modern India the caste does not determine the profession – there are no bus driver or computer programmer castes – many aspects of life, especially marriage, are strictly organized along caste lines.

We see how much of a self fulfilling prophecy is the caste into which someone is born. We find ourselves liking and encouraging the well-dressed, clean, well behaved and educated high-caste children, and avoiding the uneducated, pushy, grubby, badly behaved low-caste children. Some aspects of the system are quite obnoxious and incomprehensible to us. Some of the workmen who came to do some repairs to the hotel refused to eat the meals provided for them because the dishes were washed by a lower caste hotel kitchen worker.

Ding Dong Bell

Local ladies, and water truck collecting
water from the lake.

The school and many of the homes have their own well, which, after the monsoon rain is depleted, is filled by the local water tanker. This week we learned that these wells have to be cleaned out regularly. The low water and poor quality of water from the school's well led to an interesting and distracting spectacle: a barefoot teacher was lowered fifteen feet underground on a thin rope, from where he sent up buckets of silt and mud to the surface for disposal by a chain of young boys. One brave youth subsequently joined the teacher down the well and helped load the buckets. Lin was allowed to peer down into the well and wave to those below. Surprisingly, the teacher and his helper emerged with spotless shirts and only muddy feet, before the tanker was called and the tank refilled. This unexpected mid-morning entertainment was definitely worth recording, but unfortunately Lin did not have her camera with her.

Stars and Planets

The past few days as we dine on the hotel rooftop, we have been treated to a wonderful show in the early night sky, with a pale new moon hanging low in the western sky and a brilliant Venus and Jupiter above. In the east, Mars rises orange. The air is so clear and dry and we are so far from any large cities, that the night sky is breathtakingly beautiful – it is even more spectacular during a power cut.

Things that surprise Lin's chai-drinking lady friends

Lin's chai-drinking lady friends, and son.

• We have a house with 5 bedrooms, with a bed for each member of the family
• We have a machine for washing dishes as well as one for clothes
• We don't have our own cow or goat, or even a dog
• We get along well with our daughters-in-law, and do not have to nag them constantly to keep them in line.
• Our sons and their families have their own houses and do not live with us.
• Lin doesn't keep her face covered and eyes lowered when talking to Sandy, though she has taken to putting a scarf/shawl round her neck, if only to keep out some of the dust.
• She does not wear lots of jewellery, bangles from wrist to shoulder, earrings, nose-piercings, necklaces and a jewelled headband, to show off her wealth and status as a wife.
• She is also taken for a widow because she doesn't wear make-up, nail-polish or henna designs on hands and feet.
• Toddlers in Pennsylvania wear diapers and do not run around outside with bare bottoms.
• We take walks together for pleasure and relaxation.
• We allow our lips to touch the cup when we drink water, and are a source of amusement when we spill it down our necks.

Inder Singh - smiling hotel factotum

Things we will miss

This week the hotel will be completely full, and we are being politely requested to leave for 2 nights. This coincides perfectly with a “mid-term retreat”the FSD encourages us to take, so we are going on a two day trip to Pushkar. It is a pretty spot in the hills about four hours from here. It is famous for two things: a camel fair in autumn, which we will miss, and as a major pilgrimage destination. Pushkar has the only temple in India dedicated to Brahma. Brahma was the creator of the universe in Hindu mythology, but due to an unfortunate misunderstanding with his wife he was cursed and permitted to have only one temple. We will stay in a lake-side hotel, and are looking forward to shopping at the famous bazaar that fills the streets around the temple.

When we get back, we will have only one week left in Chandelao, and we are already thinking about all the things we will miss.

• Fresh home made yoghurt with our cereal every morning, served by smiling men in turbans.
• Frequent cups of hot, spicy chai.
• Parrot and peacock wake up calls, along with temple chanting, drums and bells
• Children shouting “Pratigya” and “Sandee” at us in the street. (Pratigya is Lin's adopted Hindi name, and “Linda” jokes are already long forgotten)

• 

  Delicious mithai

  Warm, dry, cloudless weather and brilliant night skies
• Ladies dressed in intense orange, red, pink, green, turquoise and blue native dress, stitched with gold and silver thread, sequins and mirrors, even when working on building sites, cutting wood, milking cows, cooking, and cleaning.
• Cows wandering along the streets, into courtyards and even school
• The morning and evening visit from a hoopoe which pecks for ants in the hotel lawn
• The “no light” warning that the electricity is not working.
• The “daily dusting” that ensures we are never dust-free.
• Delicious sweets made of milk, cream, butter, sugar, nuts, and flavorings – and no chocolate.
• The school kids' friendly chorus of welcome and “See you tomorrow” in Hindi and English.

Life in Chandelao

Two of Lin's pupils doing after-school chores

Weather

The weather so far in Chandelao has been wonderful. Every day is dry and clear. We have seen only a few wispy clouds, and at night the sky is crystal clear and blazing with stars and planets. The humidity is uniformly low – 15-25% – so anything we wash is dry in a few hours at most – even Lin's hair. The temperature goes in waves, so for a few days the daytime high gradually increases, then it decreases. However, each peak and trough is higher than the previous one. 10 days ago we had an early morning temperature of 8 C (46 F). With the low humidity and no heating, it was bone-chilling, and we kept our thick sweaters on all day. This Monday was our hottest day so far – 32 C (90 F) – and very pleasant. Now, it is starting to get cooler again, but not as cool as last week. In summer (May, June) it reaches 45 C (113 F) or higher most days. Then, the hotel guests may opt to spend the night on the rooftop or in the courtyard. We are glad we will not be here then.

The greenhouse project and vegetable growing

Some of you may be wondering why, with this hot weather, we need a greenhouse. Although in the winter the greenhouse will keep the temperature up and allow a longer season for warm weather crops, the main reason is to keep the moisture in and the humidity high. Water is in short supply, and with the low humidity and dry air, any water applied to plants evaporates from the ground very quickly. In addition to losing precious water, this also increases the salinity of the soil, eventually making it unusable. This happened near the huge Indira Gandhi canal. When it was first built, the fields were constantly flooded with water and were highly productive for a few years. Now many have become unusable because of high salinity.

Farmer cutting fresh spinach

A few days ago, Sandy visited a vegetable farm to gain some insights into local cultivation methods and what grows well – and sells well – here. It was an interesting visit. The farmer was a real expert in producing the maximum from his two acres, with judicious irrigation and applications of cow and goat manure. He produces 4!! crops from each patch of ground every year. In winter spinach, cabbage, and cauliflower, in the spring and autumn tomatoes, eggplants, and chili peppers, and in the summer various varieties of hot-weather greens. They have abundant water from a deep well, and in the summer the water does double duty. First it is used to fill a large swimming pool which he charges the locals a few rupees for using, then at night he runs some water out of the pool to water the crops. My colleague Hannah and I fell upon the spinach crop, as it was the first fresh green vegetable we had seen for some weeks – the spinach we eat is always cooked in butter with potato or paneer – and very tasty it was. We thought we had found a source of delicious organic vegetables until we asked whether they had any problems with caterpillars and other pests. The farmer then produced a bottle of an extremely noxious pesticide banned for use in the US except in the most extreme cases!

Utilities

Our friend Deepu making chai using
the most reliable local utility -- wood.

We have plenty of water here at the moment, and when the big underground tank starts to get low, a tractor pulling a large, colorfully painted tanker arrives to refill it. The water in the tanker comes from the local lake, where ducks and buffalo swim. It is left to settle in the tank and is perfectly clean for washing, showering and laundry. For drinking water, we go to the kitchen and refill our bottles with “Aquaguard” filtered water. Aquaguard, the ubiquitous brand of water purifier in India, is also used for washing vegetables and cooking, and it is obviously pretty effective as we have so far managed to avoid any stomach upsets.

Electricity is intermittent and provided by the government grid – sometimes – and by the hotel's diesel generator – sometimes. They use 5-amp round pin plugs, familiar to us from our British childhoods. We are always careful to make sure that our computer and other battery-powered gadgets are plugged in to charge when the electricity is on. This led to a minor disaster last week when the generator was switched on early in the morning. A short circuit sent a very high voltage through the hotel system and burned out three computer power packs, and a television set, not to mention causing a small electrical fire in Hannah's room. No lasting damage was done however, and the computer repair shop in Jodhpur got some unexpectedly welcome business.

Television – none, not that we have ever watched it anyway.

Internet – We have a clever little dongle that plugs into the computer and makes a cell phone call to a computer center somewhere. It is surprisingly efficient and amazingly cheap. It has allowed Sandy to complete the rewriting and reorganization of the Chandelao web site at www.chandelao.com, as well as to post our interminable blog entries.

The beharupiya as Rama

The Beharupiya

For the past few evenings, there have been crowds of screaming children following a tall, thin, strangely dressed man through the streets. He is a beharupiya – an itinerant street performer and comedian, with many disguises. The first time we saw him he was dressed all in yellow as a holy man; the next night, with a bow and arrow, as Rama, a major Hindu deity; the following day draped in a pink sari he was a female milk vendor in full Rajasthani costume with a milk pot glued to his/her head; and finally he portrayed a witch. He goes from door to door, shouting out the lines of a chant to which the children respond. Some of the residents give him money or food. He looks as if he enjoys his job, and his presence in the village for a few days is a source of great excitement.

Cricket and children's games

Ever a popular game since the Brits introduced it here, cricket is played in the dusty streets or on a field near the lake, where we have been invited to join in games. The decorated bats look home-made and the players use a tennis ball, but the young men and boys are enthusiastic and focused, even without white clothes and wickets. Just knowing Tendulkar's name has led us into lengthy conversations about how well India has played against Sri Lanka, how exciting the matches are down under, and which countries have no good players.

Hopscotch, Chandelao-style

The children play a game similar to hopscotch in squares they mark out in the dust. Marbles are another favorite, and Lin's silk scarf was even used for a demonstration of Blind Man's Buff.

Music

Morning and evening, drums and bells summon us to prayers at the local Hindu temples, where an elderly priest can be paid to say a “puja” for friends and family, with rituals involving rice, spices and pieces of coconut. He picks a suitably propitious moment according to astrological charts and the dates and times of birth of those involved.

Brass bands and loud drumming accompany wedding parties through the streets, men solemnly accompanying the unsmiling groom on his horse, ladies in colorful saris and children dancing and singing songs of welcome.

In the craft center, ladies and girls sing quietly as they sew, stitch, and thread beads and bells. They like popular songs from romantic Bollywood movies as well as traditional songs from the Ramayana.

Spoonbills at the local lake

Photographs

There are endless opportunities for taking photographs in the community. Apart from the little children who assume every visitor has a camera and wants to take pictures of them, the ladies' colorful clothes, the clear bright light of day and soft evening colors at sunset, the warm glow of pink sandstone walls and fences, the seemingly fearless hawks and owls, parakeets, herons, spoonbills, and hoopoes, tempt even the most inept photographer.

The local ladies are happy for us to photograph them elegantly carrying pots of water from the well, bundles of wood from the fields, bowls of building rubble, or cow and goat droppings on their heads.

An invitation to a villager's house involves an introduction to all the family members of at least three generations, a shy willingness to be photographed, and an expectation that we will want to take pictures of the family goat, cow, buffalo, cat and puppy, as well. They let us take pictures of their stoves, their grinding stones, haystacks and dung heaps, charpoy beds and household shrines. Actions that might be considered intrusive in other cultures seem welcome here.

More from Chandelao

Language

We are finding the little Hindi we learned before we came here to be quite useful. Most people are really surprised that we know any at all, and we can carry on conversations in our fractured Hindi and their fractured English. Some of the locals speak quite a lot of English, but often with a very strong accent and with a lot of Hindi words thrown in. They are “fluently incomprehensible” as Lin puts it. The local language in Chandelao is Marwari. It is a bit like Hindi, but most of the useful words are different, so when the locals are speaking to each other it is completely meaningless to us. The English teacher in the school where Lin teaches speaks very little English, and the Hindi-English vocabulary book they use in the school is weirdly antiquated, with translations of English phrases like “Birds of a feather flock together” into their Hindi equivalents. We have adopted the phrase “I am not buttering you” from the electronics store keeper in Jodhpur, where Sandy spent time getting new converter/adapter boxes for his computer this week, after the hotel generator had a problem with crossed wires and blew out anything that was plugged in overnight. Telling Sandy he looks not a day over 48 was a “buttering” he could enjoy.

Marwari Cow with calf

Goat and cows and other animals

Over 80% of the population of India are farmers of one kind or another. Here in Chandelao, the majority of farmers look after animals – primarily goats. Every evening we meet mixed flocks of goats and sheep being brought home for the night. They seem to find plenty of dry desert vegetation to eat, and are often put into the fields to graze where sorghum has been grown and harvested. The goats provide rich milk and “mutton”, which is the only red meat in the local diet of non-vegetarians.

Cows are kept close to the house, and sometimes share the living space with their keepers. As the cows are holy animals, they are well looked after. You seldom see them grazing the fields and they are mostly fed chopped sorghum. The Marwari cows are rather beautiful, with white coats, droopy ears and big dark eyes with long lashes that look as if been made up with mascara. Many of these well-kept cows have calves at present so there is plenty of milk, butter and cheese. The cows also provide manure, which is carefully collected and used for many purposes – fertilizer, fuel, and an odor-free, insect-repelling plaster coating for walls and floors. We always have to remove our shoes before stepping onto the cow-dung coated part of the a courtyard.

There are street cows as well. They hang around the houses waiting for handouts, of which there are plenty. There is a saying here that “The first chapati is for the cow”, so every housewife at breakfast, lunch, and dinner provides a fresh chapati for the local cows, before she starts making them for her family. Of course, nobody eats beef, and, surprisingly, many people are unaware that cows are eaten in other parts of the world. One of Lin's fellow teachers declared that Texas must be “a very bad place” when he heard that they raise a lot of cattle for beef there. Lin agreed, but more politically with George W. in mind. When the street cows are too old to be useful, or are injured in traffic accidents, they are often taken to cow shelters, many of which are on the sides of major roads. There they end their days being fed high-quality grass purchased in 10-rupee bunches by passing motorists.

Stubborn water buffalo calf with happy keeper

The other animals we see quite a lot of are water buffalo, which are large, black and surly, with heavy horns. They are taken down to the lake in the evening by small boys with big sticks. They are cousins to the cows, so are not killed for meat, but they are regularly whacked on their rear ends. They also provide very tasty milk and yoghurt.

We also see domesticated sheep, camels, dogs and cats, but no pigs or chickens. Dogs are fed on table scraps and leftovers, so some are quite fat. There are a number of semi-wild dogs in the village who conduct choruses of barking and howling at odd hours of the night. The hotel has two dogs; Hazel – a very fat yellow Labrador, and Kitty – an affectionate dachshund.

Sweeping

As we are in the desert and it has not rained since September, there is dust everywhere. This means that all surfaces must be swept regularly. Sweeping is accomplished, usually by women, with various types of whisk made of grass or other plant material. Sweeping involves redistributing dust, and I am now watching one of the hotel cleaning ladies sweeping out a guest room. Clouds of dust are issuing from the door, and, as there is a slight breeze, it is blowing straight back in. Some surfaces are made of dust, but they are also regularly swept to remove any leaves or debris, and to leave a nice pattern of sweep marks. So, even though no dust is actually removed, it is prettily rearranged.

Sandy's Work

We are here to work after all, so a few words on progress so far. I have established a nice “office” in the hotel, on an outdoor porch with a small desk, a comfortable chair and a fine view of the hotel courtyard. I am mostly not too distracted by birds and other sights and sounds. So far I have rewritten and redesigned most of the hotel web site, and am working on getting the hotel listed, or listed correctly, on more travel web sites such as Expedia, Lonely Planet, Frommers and TripAdvisor. I am also trying to redesign the web site for the women's craft center, but that is turning out to be a bit more challenging. The greenhouse project is also making some progress. Last week I visited a local market garden near Jodhpur and was very impressed with how intensive and productive vegetable growing can be, even in this desert environment. With liberal application of cow and goat manure and plenty of well water, the farmer was producing 4 crops of high quality vegetables in succession from his land every year. We have also settled on a greenhouse design, and I have drawn up plans and operating instructions for a compost heap.

Teachers and students at Lin's school, with new whiteboard

Lin's Work

Dust and discomfort notwithstanding, I am enjoying my enthusiastic classes, and seeing a noticeable improvement in their English skills.

I have written and submitted a seed-grant proposal to FSD for supplies and materials for the school. It has not been difficult to justify providing for the needs I have identified. Thanks to a generous gift from a couple of Brits travelling through, I was able to try out a combination white-board/chalkboard that has been so successful with the teachers and kids that I plan to purchase 7 more, so that each class will have one. Since one of the young philanthropists was a wanna-be geography teacher, I am putting in an order for globes with Hindi or English writing, again one for each class. Apart from pens, pencils and notebooks, I will also be able to buy laminated maps and educational posters, and hope to start a small library collection of rhymes and stories for younger kids, and science and social studies readers for older ones. I am waiting for the go-ahead from FSD, so that I can get into town, and hopefully start using the new materials with classes before I leave in mid-March.

I attended a Saturday vocabulary/spelling-quiz contest between classes, that has the kids competing to spell a word in English starting with the last letter of the previous word, pronouncing it, and giving its meaning in Hindi, all at break-neck speed, which leaves me the listener quite breathless and not at all sure which word has been invoked. They certainly need to know a lot of words that start with “e”.

Lin's hands after mehndi treatment

Henna, Beads and Bells

As well as a colorant for hair, henna is used to decorate hands and feet for girls and young women, especially for weddings and special events. Of course, Lin couldn't resist an offer to have hers worked on, and now sports beautiful orange “mehndi” designs on the front and back of her hands, and on the sides and tops of her feet. The orange fingernails may not lose their hue for a couple of months, but the hand-art is fading, especially after she washes clothes in Tide. Mehndi usually lasts about ten days. To complete the picture she sported a red bindi stick-on spot between her eyebrows for a couple of days.

In addition, her two silk scarves now have a pretty hand-sewn bead trim, Rajasthani style, thanks to the work of a skilled fifteen year old, and she wears a Valentine's Day friendship bracelet of red wool with gold bells.

Lin with some chai-drinking friends

Chai

We have enjoyed visiting people's homes and offices and drinking a welcoming cup of masala chai, the spicy boiled tea that has added milk, sugar and cardamom, sometimes with other spices. It is an essential part of local hospitality. Chai is also served at breakfast, lunch and dinner at our hotel, and we seldom turn down a chance to drink it.

Desserts
Rajasthan – the Jodhpur area in particular – is famous for desserts and sweets. Most of the desserts involve large quantities of milk, butter, sugar and flavorings in various combinations. There are many sweet shops with huge shallow pans of milk being boiled down to a thick or even solid consistency, and cauldrons of hot oil for frying. Most nights our hotel serves a different dessert which it buys from a Jodhpur “mithai” shop. Sandy's favorite so far is “lapsi” – a soft porridge-like concoction of cracked wheat, brown sugar, butter and cardamom, eaten with a teaspoon. Lin's favorite is carrot halva, grated carrot cooked with butter, sugar, and nuts. Another is squares of crushed sesame seeds with sugar, cardamom, pistachios and almonds. At the wedding we attended recently, we had gulab jamun – spongy balls of dried milk, deep fried until they are almost black, then soaked in rose-flavoured syrup until they are soggy and dripping with sugary goodness.


Transport

Here in Chandelao there are only a couple of cars, but quite a few motor cycles and mopeds. It is rare to see only one person on these vehicles, and if there is room the drivers will usually stop to take hitch hikers. It is not uncommon to see 3 or 4 people on a motor bike, including women in saris sitting side-saddle, and there was a great photo in the local newspaper of a motor bike with 3 passengers – two men and a large monkey all sitting astride.

There are also many tractors, some of which could be in a museum of agricultural history, often carrying 20 or more people in their trailers.

The most used piece of equipment on cars and buses is the horn. When you are overtaking you must blow the horn, otherwise the overtaken vehicle will sit in the middle of the road. Drivers also blow their horns when they see a friend, pass a temple, and to warn the dogs, cows, camel carts or people occupying the roadway. Jodhpur is a constant blare of car, truck and bus horns, so we are glad that we live out in the country.

Snapshots of Chandelao

A happy group of villagers going to a wedding.
The groom is on the right behind the driver. 

Weddings

Weddings are a huge event here, and we are now right in the middle of the wedding season. All marriages are arranged between the bride's and the groom's parents. They only occur within families from the same caste, and in Chandelao, marriages never occur within the village. Parents must always find a suitable match from another nearby village. In addition, although dowries are officially illegal, they are still very much a part of the overall negotiations between the two families. We have not attended a whole wedding – they go on for days – but we have seen and heard many bits and pieces.

A few nights ago there was a huge commotion in the street with lots of drums and cymbals. A local lady from the musicians' caste was getting married, and all her female friends and relatives were celebrating before the groom arrived. Each group in turn – children, unmarried women, married women – were dancing while the older men held 10 rupee notes above the best dancer's head. At the end of the dance the money was given to the musicians. It was a wild scene with people jostling, young ladies in their spectacularly colored finery, loud drumming and clanging, older ladies singing, and clouds of dust. This was the start of several days of intermittent partying, fireworks, and singing and dancing at odd hours of the day and night.

The groom arrived on a horse through a hastily built, decorated archway the next day. He looked very serious and hardly cracked a smile. The wedding ceremony itself was very brief and took place at 11:15 pm – a time that the local astrologer had determined to be the most auspicious. We had been invited, but could not keep our eyes open that late. I am sure that we will regret it later. The following day there was more partying, after which the groom took the bride away to his village, where the newly married couple will live with the groom's parents. By this time the groom was looking a lot happier. Now the archway and the party tent have been dismantled, but there is still a lot of singing going on in the house of the bride's parents. Perhaps they are lamenting the loss of their daughter, and the huge expense of getting her married in the proper style.

Birds and Animals

Large male nilgai -- a "blue bull"

We are constantly amazed and delighted by the wonderful bird and animal life here. So far in Chandelao, I have seen 47 species of birds, most of which are new to me, and many of which are spectacular and/or rare. There are many more that I have seen but have been unable to identify. The complete lack of chemicals used in agriculture, the lakes and ponds, and wide variety of vegetation encourages diversity. Most exhilarating are large flocks of elegant cranes soaring overhead, honking gently on their northward migration towards Siberia.

Elegant blackbuck with corkscrew horns

Yesterday, we played hookey in the afternoon, and went on a “jeep safari” from the hotel along dusty tracks to some even more remote villages. Some of the villages are inhabited by Bishnoi people who have been protecting the local animals and plant life for centuries. As a result the animals are quite unafraid of humans. We stopped to take pictures of camels, and large numbers of nilgai, huge antelope that look like a cross between a cow and a horse, with spindly legs and black and white socks. They are supposedly quite dangerous if crossed. More special were the blackbucks, a threatened species that used to be relentlessly hunted for their spectacular black and white skins and their long corkscrew horns.

Rug weaving and pottery

We also watched a rug-maker at work, using a huge loom to weave strong camel-hair carpets that can take from two to six days to complete, depending on the size.

The potter made his work look easy, but even spinning the heavy stone wheel with a stick was a challenge for the brave tourist who tried it, and her clay pot seemed to have a mind of its own and detached itself from the stone before completion.

Opium!

Elderly Bishnoi pours opium

Elderly Bishnoi gentleman in this part of the world are partial to opium, which has been part of the culture for centuries and is not illegal. They take it in small quantities dissolved in water. The last stop on our jeep safari was at the house of a wizened 82-year-old who demonstrated how the opium is prepared and taken. The whole procedure is ritualized and formal. First a dark red syrup is mixed in a wooden “Aladdin's lamp” with water, then the mixture is poured through a conical cloth filter, then the liquid is poured into the palm of the hand and after a quick offering to one of the gods, is noisily slurped and the hand is then rinsed clean. The darker red the opium solution, the stronger it is. Sandy tried some of the pale yellow stuff – very weak. It had a bitter, distinctly chemical taste, and no palpable effect.

Photography Project

A German lady is currently staying here for three weeks as part of a project she has started to help the village make money through the sale of postcards, a calendar and eventually a book, based on photos that local children have taken. You can find her previous assignment in Zanskar, Ladakh at http://www.kamerakidz.com. 

One of the "camera kids" photos.
Go to www.kamerakidz.com for more information

She arrived equipped with thirteen cameras donated by German people, and has worked with children in Class 8, showing them how to take pictures of their families and activities, like milking a cow/goat, preparing food, playing games...They select the best photos each day, to encourage further creativity, and the results have been really promising. It is refreshing to see the children using cameras, instead of chasing the tourists yelling “poto” and being disappointed that they can not get instant copies when they are snapped.

Hindi Lessons

The hotel and craft-center staff, teachers and school-children all participate in the effort to teach us Hindi words, though we can't always distinguish Hindi from Marwari, and we certainly need constant repetition and practice. Sandy has become adept at reading signs and is less likely to get lost than his language-teacher wife. We now have a wider food-vocabulary, and hope it will serve us well when we are studying menus and conducting basic conversations.

A "classroom" in Lin's school