Sunday, Blessed Sunday

Three highlights of the day:

• LUNCH at the wonderfully comfortable home of a Kerala family, owners of a rubber plantation - one with a commanding tree top view of the Western Ghats and surrounded by fruit trees, pineapple fields and groves of towering rubber trees.
  
  We learned how the family got into the rubber production business more than forty years ago as a means to retain ownership of their land (threatened with government confiscation until converted to rubber trees, an exempt land use category championed by the current owner's grandfather in the Kerala assembly).
  
  We watched a demonstration of how tree tapping is done – each of their eight employees taps 300 trees a day once every three days, in essence taking care of 900 trees as their contribution to the plantation's production.
  
  We also met and talked with members of the family, including a visiting son working towards his CPA certification and a daughter's first child, the owner's first grandchild.
  
  

• THE DRIVE BETWEEN PERIYAR AND KOCHI through the Western Ghats which took us through some fantastic, lush mountain scenery on a bright, sunny day with just enough short stops along the way to keep us from going stir crazy on our tour bus. The wild flowers and water falls along the way were particularly memorable.
  
  The enormous tea plantations were also fascinating! Shaded by Silver Maples from Australia (with pepper vines growing on each tree trunk) and each bush sheltering cardemon plants, the whole operation made excellent use of agricultural space.
  
  

• A CHANCE ENCOUNTER with an Orthodox Christian procession in the midst of a four day walking pilgrimage across Kerala to the grave site of the group's founder and first saint who died in 1902, a trek undertaken each year to honor his memory on the anniversary of his death.
  
  Hundreds of devotees walked along the side of the road or rested briefly nearby; several talked with us to explain what was going on – as did their spiritual leader (who blessed us all, one by one, with a touch to the head before we re-boarded our bus to continue our own pilgrimage here to the capital of the province in Kochi).
  

A Blessed Sunday, indeed!

A Day in the Mountains

Three of us left at six o'clock in the morning with our guide to line up for tickets to take a seven thirty boat ride around a lake in the Periyar National Wildlife Preserve to view the local wildlife. The mountain scenery was an added bonus to sightings of wild dogs, two kinds of deer, lots of birds, warthogs but no elephants or tigers (oh,my)! The ride proved a relaxing beginning to another busy day, one dampened by intermittent showers but still chock full of activities.

Next on the agenda was a visit to an organic spice garden where Taj, our young host, showed us some of the many, many varieties of spices grown locally, including pepper, cardamon, allspice, turmeric, mace, curry and cocoa. We were surprised by how some were grown, the kinds of plants involved and the parts thereof going into the spice itself.

For lunch we crowded into an apartment kitchen and, under the tutelage of our hostess, her sister and a neighbor, prepared lunch together. Actually our three hostesses had done most of the preparation but left the making of a couple of dishes to us. We gamely plunged right in and in the end had a delicious meal!

A brief elephant ride in the rain followed. It felt somewhat like a pony ride for grownups...

Back at our bungalow in the late afternoon we were visited by a curious pack of local monkeys who swung in to take a look and then vanished just as quickly.

After dinner this evening we attended a splendid performance of two traditional dance pieces performed by a graceful and extremely well trained young fifteen year old dancer whose every movement of eye and hand and head helped tell the stories she presented for our entertainment. What an accomplished artist!

A full dance card indeed, don't you think?

Searching for Periyar (not Perrier)

Yesterday (Friday) evening, at the end of a perilous vertical climb winding up from the plains surrounding Madurai after dark into the Western Ghats, our bus crossed over from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu into Kerala and entered the resort area of Periyar.

We're here to enjoy the cool mountain air, visit a National Wildlife Refuge and tour an organic spice garden. Kerala, as we know from our earlier visit in 2008, is particularly known for its spices. We'll even have a chance later today to mix some for ourselves since we're also scheduled to cook our own lunch meal today (under supervision, of course)! And we have been promised an elephant ride into the bargain...

Friday morning we awoke to learn that our guide's father had died suddenly during the early morning hours and that he would be leaving us in order to take up responsibilities connected with the funeral arrangements. A local guide joined us for our morning activities, then Manika Ashoka flew in from Chennai to assume Srini's leadership role. She had just finished with another OAT group the evening before but didn't hesitate when asked to jump in to help in this emergency situation. We'll all miss Srini's expertise and his meticulous planning but appear to be in equally capable hands under Manika.

Touring South India in many ways lacks the constant “wow factor” present when traveling through the North of India – from Delhi to Jaipur and Khajuraho, then on to Agra and the Taj Mahal. That's a hard act to follow. In our travels through Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, however, we do have the opportunity to experience India at a more personal level. And that seems to be what OAT is aiming for in planning our itinerary.

Yesterday morning's visit in Madurai to Meenakshi, a Hindu temple devoted to Parvati (also called “Meenakshi”), the consort of Shiva (who also merits his own sanctum sanctorum within the temple complex and is escorted each evening to spend the night with Meenakshi), was this tour's exception to that “experience the soul of India” motif.

Meenakshi is one “wow” of a place, believe me!

From the seven huge gopura guarding the various entrances and central worship spaces to the brightly painted ceilings and the corridor after corridor lined with brilliantly executed sculpture, this is one pretty amazing place.

Photos don't do it justice. They isolate items from one another which in reality abut each other and taken together add up to much more than the sum of the individual parts.

Furthermore this is an active temple, one visited by 10,000 Hindu worshipers daily. That means the space is filled with life and sound and rituals and offerings and elephants and shops selling all manner of objects, sacred and profane. It was an experience well worth removing our shoes and socks to undertake; and, in our minds at least, ranks right up there with the best India has to offer.

Usually Lee takes about one hundred digital images on any given day. At Meenakshi he snapped nearly 150 in just that one location!

It's hard after an experience like that not to want to take something of it home with you. The central image in Meenakshi's Hall of A Thousand Pillars is a bronze image of a Dancing Shiva. Lee hoped to find a similar image to add to his “god shelf” at home and managed to locate a small bronze at the National Folk Art store across from the temple itself. It will evoke a very special memory of a very special place forever after.

Following our temple visit and brief shopping excursion, we set out in individual bicycle rickshaws for a drive-by view of the older part of Madurai, a city among the oldest in India – and full of crowded, narrow, bustling streets and alleys impossible to see any other way. On our earlier visits to Old Delhi and Varanasi, this kind of wild ride was one of Lee's favorite experiences – and this one was no exception, helping in this case to boost his photography count well up into the two hundred and fifty range!

On our afternoon bus ride we stopped along the highway and persuaded a local brick maker to demonstrate his manufacturing technique. Actually, as seems true in many of these instances, the brick-making operation is shared among several families, in this case three sisters and their respective spouses and children. Theirs was only one of dozens of similar cottage industry enterprises scattered along the road outside Madurai, all doing well in the building boom atmosphere that dominates the current Indian economy. Everyone's building and they all need bricks!

Once again, as has become the usual case, we had a busy, busy, busy – and extremely exciting and rewarding – day. And along the way, as well, we came to appreciate just a bit more of the true “soul” of India.

On the Road to Chettinad

Chettinad is a long bus ride from Madurai but worth the trip to see some of the remnants of a brilliant era in the town's history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when it was home to a group of wealthy international merchants who built large mansions throughout the township on profits from their trading operations in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.

Today these homes have fallen on hard times but they still retain hints of their former grandeur and seem especially intriguing given their EXTREMELY remote location. Evidently prices in the middle of nowhere on land not considered at all productive is precisely why these mansions are located where they are – these merchants didn't amass their fortunes by being lavish but parsimonious instead!

And they still managed to eat very, very well: our lunch at a local small hotel showed the Chettinad cuisine, famous throughout India, very much worthy of its outstanding reputation.

The bus trip gave us ample opportunity to observe life in rural Tamil Nadu.

We stopped on our way to Chettinad in a small village to visit a batik cooperative giving shelter and training to orphan girls …

… and later at a pre-Hindu temple, the walkway to which is lined with terracotta figures of horses, elephants and cows given by local farmers in thanksgiving for good harvests, a practice dating back thousands of years.

Returning to Madurai we took in a visit to another rural coop, this one making beautiful handcrafted ceramic tiles. Two of our group even got to try making free form tiles themselves, and both turned out quite credible efforts.

It's all these little extras along the way that make Overseas Adventure Travel tours so very special, however long the bus ride might take to bring us to them.

Moving on to Madurai

Late in the afternoon yesterday (Wednesday) we stepped off the bus across from a pillared colonnade which we had learned marked the outer entryway to a Hindu temple complex. Ahead of us down the pedestrian walkway lined with shops, smaller temples and wedding halls we could see the looming gopura, the colorful tower covered with figures of Hindu gods and goddesses that serves as a gate to the Vishnu Hindu temple beyond.

We actually weren't headed to the temple (however fascinating it might have been to visit) but instead to a Veda school just around the corner where young Brahmin boys, ages nine to twenty-six, spent five years learning the Veda, sacred texts passed down through the ages, in preparation for becoming Hindu priests.

We shucked our shoes at the door to a kind of gathering hall where the guys had lockers and would later return to chant for hours at a time. Further down the narrow alley was another hall where the younger boys waited patiently for the session to get underway. We visited both halls and asked questions, both of the priests-in-training and of our guide, prior to listening to several minutes of chanting before returning to our bus.

The whole experience was really quite unworldly. The young men, their long hair pulled back into knots at the back of their heads, wore yellow lungi and horizontal white markings on their faces, arms and bare chests. Yet they were not at all overly serious or solemn but lively, forthcoming and curious about our interest in them, willingly posing for photographs and talking with us freely about themselves, their schooling and their future expectations.

The Vedas they were learning date back several thousand years and must have sounded much the same when chanted by Hundu priests all those centuries ago. Here were the twenty-first century priestly inheritors of a faith tradition thousands of years old, many carrying a family tradition forward into yet another generation – and we were witnesses to that transmission. Wow!

Earlier in the afternoon, after our air flight's arrival in Madurai, we visited Thirumalai Nayaka, a huge palace at the heart of the city. Only about a fifth of its original size, it still made quite an impression. We spent much of our visit looking up at the ornate ceilings and crenelations all around the walls.

Before catching our flight, earlier in the day, we returned to view the Mamallapuram sculptured bas reliefs in better light and another nearby set depicting everyday life in stone carvings from the seventh century.

Enroute to the airport in Chennai, we also barged in on an Indian wedding and ended up having our pictures taken with the bride and groom. The Indians are wonderfully laid back and tolerant of us foreign visitors – and we take advantage of that tolerance every chance we can get!

Dravidian Kanchipuram

Our tour bus drove us off two hours or so away today to Kanchipuram, an important center of Dravidian culure, capital of the ancient Pallava kingdom and one of the seven most important Hindu sacred cities in India. Once home to a thousand temples, the modern city still hosts more than fifty, including the two we visited over the course of the morning hours after arriving in town.

Ekambareshvara, built in the sixteenth century, is the largest temple in the city. Here Srini, our guide, walked us through both the temple and various myths, practices and beliefs found within the Hindu fold.

We then bused a short distance away to Kailasanathau, built in the eighth century (roughly at the same time as the Shore Temple we toured yesterday in Mamallapuram), a truly stunning architectural and religious treasure where we examined more sacred stories and a bit more architectural history.

We learned why Brahma (along with Shiva and Vishnu, one of Hinduism's central religious figures) is worshiped only at a single temple in far-off Pushkar; what proked Pavarti, Shiva's consort, to turn into a menacing and dangerous devil; how to differentiate some of the major identifying characteristics associated with each of the most major Hindu deities; why Vishnu and Shiva are always competing; and a host of other interesting bits and pieces.

We now know, too, more about the evolution of Hindu temple architectural styles than we did a day or two ago, learning how the two "models" we saw evidence of yesterday in Mamallapuram came to be incorporated into the design of both temple gates and the temple's main sanctuary and how the once prominent inner sanctuary tower gradually gave away pride of place and size to what came to be called the gopura, the towering gateways guarding access to he now-walled compounds surrounding the sanctum sanctorum at its center.

Had all this taken place in a classroom setting, it likely would have seemed dull and difficult to understand. But being in these two sacred spaces, experiencing it all directly, made all the difference.

We also stopped along the way to and from Kanchipuram to see a snake shrine built around a termite mound in which cobras nest and are worshipped by local women seeking to become pregnant, a silk dying operation and a silk cloth weaving workshop (with a nicely stocked shop right there on the premises - imagine that ...).

Now and Then in Tamil Nadu

After a stroll along the beach walk overlooking the Bay of Bengal early this morning while the air conditioning on our bus was undergoing repair (successfully, thank goodness!), we spent a VERY warm day investigating rural life along the road between Ponticherry and Mamallapuram for much of the morning and then later in the afternoon enjoyed some fascinating hours exploring some seventh century archeological sites of stupendous achievement along the coast here in Mamallapuram itself.

Our first stop gave us the opportunity to observe the opening exercises at a large girls' school with some 900 students ranging from sixth grade through twelfth grade. Next door was a free primary care clinic where local folk could turn for medical emergencies.

Down the road a bit we learned alot about local village guardian deities of Dravidian origin dating back two thousand years or more before the common era! Shrines housing these guardian figures stand at the entrances to rural villages. At night the shrine deity leaps on his trusty steed and circles the village three times to assure all in well. All this has been going on around Tamil Nadu for more than four thousand years!

We then watched some charcoal makers at work and wandered through a local village (where we were engulfed by the kids still too young to go off to school elsewhere). We drove by huge salt flats (a major natural resource gathered locally and sold all across the country) and stopped briefly at a small fresh fish market.

Following lunch at Mamallapuram restaurant (where most of us opted for what we had yesterday, an all-in-one meal called tahli made up of lots of little dishes arranged around the edge of a round tray and eaten with various breads and lots of steamed rice - absolutely delicious!), we checked into the Radisson Resort at Temple Bay, a place so special none of us wanted to leave again ever!

We did have the chance to take an afternoon swim before we took to the road again to visit three major World Heritage Sites dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries. The earliest consisted of the world's largest stone bas relief mural depicting the Hindu creation myth surrounding the origins of the Ganges River; the second, a set of granite "models" used to test out architectural possibilities for temple buildings eventually to be carved out of solid rock on a much larger scale.

Both sites were mightily impressive, for the stone carving skills so obviously in evidence, the beauty of the resulting creations and their very intact survival. Visiting just at sunset made the entire experience all the more magical.

The third site (which we visited first) was the Shore Temple, another impressive example of early Indian temple architecture from the eighth century. Although eroded significantly by sea salt and wind, the tall central tower is still quite dramatic, standing as it does directly on the shore of the Bay (safe behind a seawall reconstructed and reinforced after the 2004 tsunami which surrounded the temple but did not destroy it).

After all this, it was grand to return to our plush hotel to rest, eat dinner and get some much needed rest ...

Pondicherry Sunday

Among our most memorable moments during our 2008 visit to India were two rickshaw rides through Old Delhi and Varanasi. This time around, we'll definitely recall our careening tuk-tuk trips through the crowded streets of Pondicherry!

Numerous streets in the downtown area were blocked off to accommodate the flood of Sunday shoppers, many out buying new clothes for the upcoming Diwali celebrations. Motorbikes and tuk-tuks and bicycles continued to have access, however; and so, at the end of the afternoon we hopped aboard tuk-tuks to return to our hotel from the market area - and off we went! Our threesome was the first to leave but the fourth or fifth to arrive, laughing all the way, as we zoomed in and out of all that pedestrian traffic without seemingly disturbing anyone of those we passed by with only fractions of an inch to spare!

Later ten of us sped off to Rendezvous, a French restaurant on the other edge of town, and back after dinner, equally sure we were riding the best dodgem cars in the world. This is no place to even consider using a cellphone while behind the wheel - to say nothing of even trying to text!

We spent much of the day strolling around the city, visiting the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, ...

... wandering through a neighborhood of colorful merchant homes and the nearby French Quarter, ...

... walking along the shore of the Bay of Bengal with a stop for iced lemon soda at a beach side cafe, paying our respects to the founders of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, examining the iconography of the stunning bronze images of the Dancing Shiva at the local museum, watching a gathering in the park of a group of engineering students scheduling a farewell party for a particularly popular female professor seated among them, watching an elephant bless a petitioner with its trunk, making our way single file through the crowded streets to the even more crowded Grand Bazaar, and - perhaps best of all - stopping for coffee at the best little coffee stand in town (the drink labeled "meter coffee" because of the distance traveled by the milk added to the mixture).

Pondicherry is a very comfortable city to visit. We felt at ease everywhere and enjoyed the chance to observe and, more importantly, participate in all these aspects of typical everyday life.

Lee snapped some great photographs along the way as well:

A Bit of Local Color in Chennai

Overseas Adventure Travel limits the size of its groups to fifteen which allows us numerous opportunities denied others but also can "overfill" itineraries, too. OAT's "Soul of India" tour is in its first year and still feeling its way. There's so much to see, anyway, that the winnowing process would under the best of circumstances take some time to accomplish.

Our first day being "out and about" took us to an Armenian Catholic Church, a drive through Chennai passing by important relics of the British Raj and the extremely wide beach bordering the eastern edge of the city plus a stop at St. Thomas Basilica. We didn't get out of our bus to visit Fort George or the city's best known Hindu temple because we'll see better examples later on in the trip. The standard guide books tell us that there's not much to see in Chennai (although the shopping - for silks and cotton fabric, particularly -- is topnotch), and we would have to agree, especially if other stops are on the traveler's agenda.

The Armenian church WAS interesting, if only because of its age and ethnic association: it was begun in 1712 by members of a merchant community which had recently immigrated to India from Iran. The recently renovated church building itself dates to 1772 and reminds us that the story of India contains many, many distinct historical threads involving migrations, invasions, conquering Greeks and Mughals, colonies established by the British and the French and the Portuguese and the independent development of hundreds of local traditions, languages, habits and customs.

Our luxury bus coach (each of us has our own window seat) then headed off for Pondicherry, a former French colony further south along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. We stopped for lunch at Dakshina Chitra, an independent effort by the Madras Craft Foundation to preserve examples of traditional domestic architecture found in the South.

The complex includes examples of homes, workshops and retail buildings from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Lee would have loved to have had a couple hours more here to explore the many buildings available had to make due with a rapid photographic survey.

In Pondicherry at the Atithi Hotel that evening, we gathered poolside for our Welcome Dinner under a full moon reflected in the nearby Bay of Bengal with wedding fireworks sparkling away on the horizon, a full first day behind us with much more to come in the days ahead.

Our group is made up of VERY seasoned OAT travelers. One couple has twenty OAT tours under their belt! This being our third actually puts at the bottom of the list. The group's makeup is unusual in that we are six couples with only three single women among us, a ratio uncommon is Lee's experience leading groups for the Smithsonian to Japan.

One couple arrived for the tour at 7:00 AM following a delayed flight. Six folks came from the pre-tour trip to Sri Lanka. One of them went off to have her knee x-rayed after injuring it the day before. Others arrived early as did we, but our's was clearly the best pre-departure story! Our guide, Srinivasa Lakshmanan, is first rate; with twenty years experience, he knows EXACTLY how to handle groups like ours and has already demonstrated his mastery of the craft involved in keeping us informed and focused.

Not that this seems all that difficult. Yesterday we were given the chance to descend into St, Thomas' tomb beneath the church bearing his name. We would have to remove our shoes to do so - which, in many cases, would have brought groans and a general unwillingness to take advantage of this (once in a lifetime) opportunity. Nobody even hesitated! We all chose to make the effort - that's what real travelers are like, and we all seem to fit that profile.

We're off to a great beginning!

Big Day in a Big City

Climbing into bed well after 2:00 AM leaves little incentive to hop out of bed bright and early the next morning! Instead we slept in a bit, ate a hardy buffet breakfast in the Park Hotel lobby restaurant, spent much of the morning "catching up" on lots of little chores, then set out in the early afternoon for a visit to Landmark, a highly regarded Chennai bookstore nearby. We even managed to cross a busy street to get there!

So much good literature is written by Indian authors in English that we spent quite some time browsing through the well-stocked store, purchasing (despite the weight involved) some reading material that caught our attention along the way. We then hopped aboard one of Chennai's ubiquitous little yellow tuk-tuks and, for about the equivalent of ninety cents (40 rupees), made our way to the Sathyam Cinema complex for an afternoon showing of ENTHIRAN, a Tollywood film released to great acclaim hereabouts four weeks ago.

Coming on this trip to India in 2010, Lee had three specific "bucket list" objectives in mind that he hoped might be fulfilled this time around. He wanted to attend an Indian wedding (accomplished), witness a monsoon rain (ditto, in spades!) and attend a Bollywood film with an Indian audience.

ENTHIRAN (ROBOT), because its in Tamil rather than Hindi, is technically not "Bollywood" but rather "Tollywood" -- other film centers in India have adopted similar local place names that refer to their specialized (usually language-centered) offerings.

Technicalities aside, ENTHIRAN turned out to be one heck of an enjoyable movie as did the experience of seeing it with a large Indian audience! The film has become an enormous success with over one thousand prints in circulation all around the world. It appears on its way to being the highest grossing film in Indian movie history. Although we saw it without subtitles, that hardly mattered - the plot, while absorbing and complex (the film ran around three hours), was easy to follow and generally quite straightforward. And, man, did it entertain the audience, us included: lots of singing and dancing, action sequences of amazing ingenuity, a villain to hiss and a gorgeous leading lady to whistle at, humor galore and such a hectic pace that even Heidi stayed awake (rather than falling asleep as she usually does when confronted by "too much action").

The theater was HUGE and quite full, considering the mid-afternoon show time and that the film has been out nearly a month by now. The first several rows (the "cheap seats") were wooden, but the rest were high-back and very comfortable reserved seats. The concession stand stocked all the usual goodies. The enormous screen was slightly curved; the images, sharp and clear with a stupendous sound system that really rocked the house. Lee was especially taken by the overhead lighting which resembled jelly fish without those long tentacles dangling down.

We were even mesmerized by the pre-screening ads! Advertisers (lots of jewelry and sari commercials) obviously can count on reaching lots of potential customers, so they put lots into making their ads as entertaining as possible; and it really made them fun to watch.

Another cool aspect of the movie for us was that it was filmed here in Chennai. And even though we have been here less than a day, we recognized the lobby of our hotel in one scene and a circular overpass we drove around on our way into town from the airport in another!

We must have been a bit dazed when we exited the theater, because we ended up being taken (again by tuk-tuk) to the wrong hotel while trying to return to the Park Hotel, Chennai (we ended up instead at the Park Hotel, Sheraton ...). Eventually we got home, had a tasty Thai dinner at a restaurant in the hotel, met briefly with our Overseas Adventure Travel local guide, then retreated to our room for (hopefully) a good night's sleep.

... with Tollywood dance routines alive in our heads!

Yet Another (Beach) Party

Thursday morning Dave and Diane Hartt hosted a brunch at yet another extraordinary beachside setting, a high season spot Kevin and Jeannine especially enjoy. The gathering included lots and lots of family and friends, giving us all one last chance for extended conversations and opportunities to get to know one another a bit better.

If there's one thing that these extended celebrations allow that is most to be appreciated, it's this chance to interact over time. We have met some extraordinarily interesting people here in Goa, folks gathered from all over the world - India and the United States, certainly, but also Italy, Germany, France, Dubai, Kenya, England, and Canada! Our Indian hosts, Lorna and Filippe Colaco, have been particularly welcoming and easy to talk with as were all the members of their extended family. This warmth and openness and the lengthy series of events we all attended over several days gave opportunities galore to extend our interactions with one another, in the end serving to blend all the desperate groups into one big happy "family".

In the end it was hard to say goodbye, especially since the sunny weather gave us even more to appreciate about this wonderful setting. The whole experience will remain one of those VERY special memories we are sure to replay over and over again in future years.

Our two flights between Goa and Mumbai, then on to Chennai, were fine; but our arrival was delayed by an hour. We didn't get to our hotel and settled into our room here at the Park until 2:00 AM. Fortunately we have an independent day on our own before our tour group gathers for the first time Saturday morning.

Thursday's journey did have its positive side, however. Lee earlier had lost his paper air ticket somewhere between Mumbai and Goa, then had spent some anxious days trying to replace it without capitulating to American Airlines stated policy requiring him to appear IN PERSON in DELHI at his own expense to fill in the required forms (which could not under any circumstances be handled otherwise), pay a hundred dollar penalty fee, then WAIT TWO DAYS before being issued the ticket replacements (!). With all kinds of help from Taj Exotica staff, we had eventually managed to settle on an alternative which, among other aspects, allowed Jet Airways (our internal carrier in India) to provide replacement paper tickets at the airport in Goa for our three remaining internal flights. When we arrived at the airport for our flights Thursday, however, they gave Lee back his ORIGINAL tcket packet which had been turned in days earlier!

All's well that ends well, we guess ...

Kevin and Jeannine Get Married

The big day arrived with the first truely sunny day we've had since arriving in Goa - and the weather held throughout the day. So we were able in the end both to experience monsoon rains (several of them, in fact!) AND still have the perfect weather for a wedding.

The nuptial mass took place at 4:30 PM this afternoon and was followed at 6:30 PM with cocktails by the Taj Exotica Hotel pool and dinner in the Grand Ballroom. The whole affair went off extremely well, all recorded on video for the benefit of Kevin's Grandmother back in Ohio who was unable to make the trip here to India.

Lee connected her to the reception using Skype and has spent much of the late night and early morning hours eitting the eighty-five separate clips into one or two (or maybe three, possibly four) packets to upload to the 'Net before going to sleep.

Just click on the title which follows for a look at the final product - A Wedding in Goa - which just might give you a small sense of the actual ceremony and perhaps as well a hint of just how joyous the entire day has been. [NOTE: After posting the video compilation early Thursday morning around 2:30 AM local time (!), Lee reviewed the results only to discover that he had produced what at its most kindly might be considered a "postmodern" effort. The various original segments somehow got out of sync so that the bride and groom exit the church and then are shown taking communion! Postmodernism allows the unexpected juxtaposition of miscellaneous bits and pieces, so that's what you get when viewing this particular version of events. Once home again in Shaker Heights, he will reedit everything and hopefully produce a more polished and coherent version of this truly glorious event...]

Worth At Least FIve Thousand Words

HEIDI CELEBRATED A REALLY BIG BIRTHDAY OCTOBER 19TH - SOMEWHERE BETWEEN A SIX AND AN EIGHT. EVEN THE STAFF AT THE TAJ HELPED US CELEBRATE!

Lee and Heidi have been having much too much fun, staying up much too late, eating much too well and otherwise enjoying life at the Taj Exotica Hotel resort too much to bother spending much time at all editing digital images or otherwise tending to the care and feeding of this blog.

So, just to give you a flavor of what's been going on around here, Lee has assembled a set of collages illustrating some of the wonderful events surround Jeanine and Kevin's wedding festivities (knowing full well that each is worth a minimum of a thousand words)...

REMEMBER THAT YOU CAN CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO VIEW A LARGER VERSION

MONDAY HEIDI AND LEE HIRED A CAR AND DRIVER TO VISIT OLD GOA, A WORLD HERITAGE SITE WHERE WE VISITED A SERIES OF FOUR CHUIRCHES BUILT BY THE PORTUGUESE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEEN CENTURIES. AMONG THEM WAS THE CHURCH IN WHICH ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IS BURIED. VISITING HIS MEMORIAL CHAPEL WHEREIN HIS BODY IS KEPT IN A CHRYSTAL COFFIN HAS LONG BEEN ON LEE'S "BUCKET LIST" ...

THE BRIDE'S PARENTS HOSTED A SPLENDID PARTY MONDAY EVENING AT THEIR BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED TRADITIONAL STYLE BED-AND-BREAKFAST IN NEARBY MARGAO

THE CLEVELAND CONTINGENT TURNED OUT DRESSED TO THE NINES IN THE REQUESTED INDIAN ATTIRE

TUESDAY WE SPENT MUCH OF THE DAY CRUISING A NEARBY RIVER, ENJOYING THE SUN AND FEASTING ON FRESHLY CAUGHT FISH, SIPPING WINE, WATCHING THE BOATS AND TALKING WITH FRIENDS AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES ALIKE

THE BRAEMAR BUNCH AGAIN TURNED OUT IN FORCE, THIS TIME VERY CASUALLY DRESSED!

From Taj (Palace) to Taj (Exotica)

A lovely beach side dinner at Johncy's with all four of the Hartts and several of the groom's friends ended our second travel day on a very high note. We arrived at our final destination late in the afternoon, having flown the three hours between the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi and the Taj Exotica Hotel here in Goa via a three hour layover in Mumbai.

Our Room at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi

The grounds and villas of the Taj Exotica Hotel in Goa

The Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces are all part of Tata Family holdings. The Tata name is primarily associated here in India with truck and automobile manufacturing, but their various lodgings scattered around the world (one in Boston; another, in Dubai; the Pierre Hotel in NYC) are all five-star-rated places to stay and clearly deserve their vaunted reputation, if our experiences are anything to judge by.

(The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, one might recall, was the one involved in the 2008 terrorist attacks. Completely refurbished, it just reopened this August and in early November will host President Obama and the First Lady.)

Both Heidi and Lee feel a bit like royalty ourselves. We have a lovely large garden villa with a covered veranda, so attractive that Heidi fell asleep there within minutes or our arrival! The beach is just steps away and the fifty-six acre grounds are beautifully planted and maintained.

The final forty minutes or so of our trip from Cleveland to Goa were by far the most exotic. Because the Portuguese controlled a large part of the coast here along the Arabian Ocean beginning in the early sixteenth century right up until 1961, the local architecture reflects a lot of European influence adapted to the local environmental setting. Thick concrete walls, arched windows, deep verandas and brightly painted exteriors mark this part of India apart from all the others. The palm trees and other tropical foliage also contribute to its exotic feel.

The winding road along the coast between the airport and the hotel provided a wonderful opportunity to observe all these local characteristics and to make us feel that the eighteen hours flying time to get here were well worth the effort!

A good night's sleep lies ahead (hopefully). Then we're off to explore the local sights before the formal wedding events begin tomorrow evening. It's been great already to see so many familiar faces, so far from home.

Given the time spent traveling today, we had the opportunity to thoroughly digest a local Sunday edition of an Indian English language newspaper, always a great way to get a feel for a culture. The news was dominated by calls for an investigation into corruption and other problems plaguing the just-completed Commonwealth Games. Commentators were also questioning whether the entire effort was worth it, especially given the huge cost overruns and the bad publicity surrounding the problems faced in the weeks and days leading up to the opening ceremonies. Delhi's citizens, however, reaped praise for their good behavior during the Games themselves: a forty-sever percent drop in crime and a similar drop in auto accidents topped the list but so, too, did staying within painted traffic lanes and making more extensive use of public transportation!

The several pages of matrimonial ads were also fascinating...

So Far, So Good

A full day has past since we left Cleveland on the afternoon of the 15^th, and we find ourselves now happily ensconced in a very nice room at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi. The actual travel time involved in reality was only fifteen hours.

Heidi still finds it remarkable that one can get so far so quickly these days – half way 'round the world in nothing flat! The American Airline flight we took from Chicago directly to Indira Gandhi International Airport is the longest direct flight AA makes anywhere in the world, an even more remarkable accomplishment of modern technology.

All along the way, we have been treated well – fight attendants throughout not only did their jobs well but were in good spirits and friendly as well; on our short hop from Cleveland to Chicago, in fact, our steward called us by name and even dropped by to give us the location of our connecting gate at Ohare without being prompted. The crew on the Delhi flight had a full cabin but managed just as courteously, going out of their way on occasion to meet personal requests. Even the food was palatable!

We were met outside of Immigration and Customs (at the brand spanking new airport opened only since August) by a representative from the hotel and a driver who whisked us off to our final destination. At the Taj our personal representative met us curbside, welcoming us by name, then escorted us directly to our room where she handled all the necessities, even taking care of exchanging some dollars into rupees for us.

This, by golly, is the way to travel!

Our first impression of Delhi 2010 contrast favorably with those from our earlier visit in 2008. Our trip into the city was entirely on four lane divided highways rather than the construction littered boulevards of our earlier trip. Lane markings still seem more suggestions than otherwise; honking horns are still all too common. But there's a whole new fleet of sparkling white taxis cursing around, and trash seems less ubiquitous.

The Commonwealth Games just ended today; many of these changes were part of the construction run up to this major athletic event – and some (such as the subway into the city from the airport) have yet to be completed, much to the chagrin of those hoping to have the Games mark India's arrival on the international scene as China managed with their recent Summer Olympics.

Our airport host seemed a bit downcast when asked how Game attendance had been over the past ten days or so, indicating that many more were expected than actually show up. However, those who come AFTER the Games will continue to reap the benefits, that's clear.

Not much else to report at this moment – we've been cooped up in a darkened metal tube for much of the day without much else to observe. We're here, though, and ready for our adventures to begin...