Rajasthan

Back in India!

We arrived on the 19th of August in Mumbai, landing in the centre of India's Swine Flu outbreak! We got quite scared by the number of people wearing masks at the airport and train stations and a nice man took pity on us, giving us some masks which we felt rather obliged to wear on the spot. Looking lovely, attracting even more attention than usual..


From Mumbai we took a night train to Bundi, a quite little town in Rajasthan, to allow us to plan our trip round the North, experience yet another upset stomach for Sylv and adapt again to the humid heat of India.

Rajasthan is much more touristy than the South of India. And there are a lot of French tourists, many teachers.. giving the reasthouse a sort of 'salle des profs' atmosphere!

The landscape is very different too: drier, more uniform, flat. No more coconut trees. But flat little white houses. And women in bright colourful saris, their head covered with their shawl. And men dressed in white with big moustaches (think Salvador Dali), gold earings and huge bright turbans.

In Bundi we met Daniel, a french traveller who has been travelling the world on his bike for over 2 years (his blog: http://www.mondancyclo.canalblog.com/). It was a lovely and lucky encounter that was meant to be (that's India for you) and came as we started to think about how we were going to cycle SE Asia. Daniel very kindly showed us his bike and equipment and we're both dreaming of being on the bike...

Next stop Udaipur, the white city, city of lakes and palaces. Nice guesthouse with a view on the palace and a resident tortoise on our terrace.

Udaipur has an amazing City Palace on the lake shores and a palace (now a luxury hotel) set as an island on the lake. In the evening women bathe on the ghats of the lake, a colourful spectacle and by the night a thunderstorm struck, a wet but welcome breath of cool air!

Here are some pictures from the City Palace - stunning decorations in a palace hugging the top of a hill

Next was Jodhpur, the blue city, so called as a lot of its houses are blue.

An imposing fort dominates the city which has a palace and temples within its fortified walls. It's a real change to be wandering around plush palaces and noisy bazaars - a welcome change, a comfortable tourist chanage... but a great chance to learn about the history of this part of India and admire the beauty of Moghul decorations!

Ganesh's birthday

Last Sunday was Ganesha's birthday... and time for a parade in Bundi! The floats were numerous and amazing and the music too. My night photography hasn't improved though, so many words..

Bright bright float after float drawn through town,

Near-missing dog paws, electric cables pushed aside to make way

Families huddled on the roadside, hot

People appear on balconies of apparently abandonned buildings

Tractors, generators and dancers add to the August evening swelter

Electric light and max volume speakers drown out

Bagpipes, drums and turban-ed men twirling their balloon decorated umbrellas

Following camels, elephants and dressed up horses

Child Ganesha hidden by a red trunked mask - alone on a vast float

Star Ganesha statue brightly lit and surrounded by fluttering plastic flowers

Organ players and singers lead bands of drums, trumpets and bells

Blue painted Krishna on a borrowed bull adjusts his leopard print loincloth

Grey men push pull generators, top up bubbling fuel

Avoiding bumping dancers in front

Setting the pace for the lamp bearers accompanying all

Wires held by hand, strip lights on metal... bang, fire waiting to happen, doesn't!

Laughing monster float stuck 100m up the road

Endless laughter like a film vilain - (ha ha ha ho ho ho)

Lone dancer fills the space, Edna Everage meets turban-ed tribesman

Half an hour prancing and he and the laughter move on!

Last float squeezes by

Balloon sellers and rolling sweet stands take their place

The night is still hot, but quiet

Not quite sure how everyone made it down our narrow lane.

Moments from Sri Lanka...and finally a picture of us!

Before we leave Sri Lanka next week and head back to India, here a few pictures of moments, flowers, etc of Sri lanka.

These orchids are called the Kandyian dancers (they look like the traditional outfit with big shoulder pads that the kandyian men wear). And a lotus flower...they are everywhere here, because of the Buddha of course.

A tuc-tuc with a sense of humour....

A blessing ceremony for the 'cutting of the ground' at Mali's house. Before work is started on a house, there is a ceremony to bring good luck to the construction. It involves cooking sweet (very sweet - I think 1kg of sugar went in the pot) milk rice and sharing it. Making offering in a small homemade shrine, some prayers and making cones made of banana leaves stuffed with the rice and incense, oil, etc. for the spirits.

And a picture of us with Mali after nearly 7 months of travel (and lots of curries ;-)

Rice and curry

We went for lunch at one of Mali's friend today in the suburb of Colombo and we took pictures of the food as this was a superb example of a typical Sri Lankan Rice and Curry meal: A big pot of rice (in this case with cashew nuts) in the centre and a multitude of curries: cashew nut curry, dal, stuffed capsicums, fish balls, fish curry, tomato and chive salad, mango chutney, mint salad, etc, etc. Each meal is different as different vegetable curries are made. And before you ask, yes we have put on weight since we are in Sri Lanka, hence why there is no pictures of us anymore on the blog ;-).

Rice and curry feast

And fresh tropical fruits for dessert: watermelons, papaye, Mangosteen (and mum you can see how they look inside as they were half opened for us) and mangoes.

Another quiz

What is this man doing for a job??

Sri Lanka's beasties...

We've had a tough time in Sri Lanka -

attacked successfully by dengue carrying mosquitoes from the outset...

haunted (and even poo-ed on) by the entire monster spider population of Bowata,

splatted by carelessly flying tree frogs and spied on by their cousins living in the pond down the garden and behind the picture in the bedroom (cheeky one, that!).. and then we left the relative safety of Mali's house and came across this little lot..

Cheeky monkeys keeping us on our toes as we 'relax' by the pool...

'I'm a brick and a piece of straw' chameleons...

'snake on legs' Iguanas (this picture's specially for Sylv's mum ;o)

and snake (that doesn't need legs to get up those steps)

.. add to this the population of 'surprise' loo frogs (yes, we've developed a technique involving a loo brush and a lot of patience - a sort of emergency ladder arrangement), kamikaze flying beetles and bugs and bats and it's been quite a nature holiday!

After all this, it was not a surprise to hear that the last village we were in was under attack from wild elephants, then - no sightings, (un)fortunately.

We're making good progress overcoming all our phobias though - won't flinch as we evict a spider from the bathtub ever again!

Game time

Spot the difference...



An easy one to start the week :o)

We've been wandering the island and learning lots about the history of Sri Lanka from some fantastic ruins. Sylv's busy uploading pictures and we'll post something in the next week to give you a taste.

As for this lion - he marks the place for the king's throne in the council chamber built on the banks of the beautiful tank (lake) in Polonnuwara - the rest of the guests had pillars with their names on, which have also lasted longer than your average name cards!

More soon...x

H & S hit the cultural triangle

We've just returned from 10 days wandering Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle - not just seeing the 'must sees' of Sri Lanka but learning loads about the island's history, eating lots of lovely rice and curry and generally having a good time.

First stop was Anuradhapura - ancient capital of the island
The site was enormous and included ruins of royal palaces and the numerous monastries that were built by the different kings ruling there. The monastries were BIG - usually about 5,000 monks and the buildings and statues were big too... Some of the stuppas are the biggest in the world! Millions of bricks used, enormous troughs (i.e. 18m) for the food given to the monks... everything was big!
We rented bikes to cover the site - hot work but worth it!
This is Sylv in front of one of the 3 biggest Stupas in the city
This was another of the three stupas, the only one still 'active' and very busy, as we visited the night before the big Jasmine festival which would cover the whole walkway with flowers. There were pilgrims everywhere, preparing to sleep outside the temple and stands of food and loads of other things (clay pots, cushions, food etc) too, which made it all feel like a fair.

Lamps at the Maha Bhodi shrine - the Bo tree arrived from India and is a cutting of the one under which the Buddha sat as he attained enlightenment - lots of people, prayers, donation calling (a bit like bingo calling but letting everyone know who's given what..)

Next day we took the bus and swapped the saddle for hundreds of steps to see Mihintale, a temple on a rock and ruins of caves and other temples around, and site of Ashoka's son coming to teach the kings about Buddhism, leading to lots of conversions.. He taught from the top of the rock on the right - windy and rather hairy place for a lecture!



From Anuradhapura we went to Polonnaruwa, the next ancient capital of Sri Lanka and rented the room prepared for the three bears' visit... ha ha!

Polonnaruwa was much more 'concentrated' than A'pura and the sites have been excavated to a further extend giving a better idea of what the capital would have looked like when it was full of people. There was even a long shoppping arcade outside the gates.

Here are some pics to give you an idea of the site, temples, moonstones, lotus pond/ jacuzzi, image houses...

The Gal Viara is the famous collection of three enormous statues:
The dying Buddha and his disciple, Ananda
The Buddha meditating - these statues were absolutely stunning and this one seemed to be breathing...

The monastry ruins all over Sri Lanka were dotted with ancient loos, part of the amazing water management and irrigation systems built here by successive kings and creating enormous artificial lakes across the country. Here's Sylv demonstrating a Polonnaruwa loo....


And a view of the lake at sunset.....


From Polonnaruwa we made it to Sigiriya - a crazy palace on a 200m high rock, an ancient disney land built over meditation caves... and a good test of our head for hights and our strength to see if we were really over the Dengue - it was a long climb up!


On the way up, the king had covered a whole side of the rock with paintings of beautiful women.. then added a wall on the other side of the path up to reflect them and surround those walking up - it took your mind of the climb for a while!


Views from the top were stunning and it was amazing to think of how they built the palace, laid out the gardens, got water up there and fed everyone!


We took a little trip to Dambulla and visited the cave temples there... up some more steps!
We crossed a weding party coming down - dressed in the traditional Kandyan outfits - big shoulder pads and tums for the men, frilly saris for the women!

The colours, paintings and statues in the caves were amazing and well worth the climb!


At the bottom, there was what Mali calls a 'Coca-Cola' buddha at the Golden Temple attended by life-size plastic monks - a contrast in styles indeed!


Now we're off doing some 'work' for a change visiting the Home and school supported through Lankangels and accompanying a group of the Colombo women's intelligentsia across the country on their first trip to the East Coast after 30 years of war which made this bit of land inaccessible.

We've got egg sandwiches, fruit cake and a map, so we should be fine!