Delhi wedding

A Hindu Indian wedding is a fantastic thing, and if you are used to the sort of weddings South Africans have, impossible to imagine. For a start, it runs over five days with a number of different ceremonies, hosted by different people at different places for specific reasons (I will try and describe these, but my memory is a bit blurry, so this will be the gist rather than Wikipedia accuracy). What these have in common in our experience was that each one was a fantastic, beautiful party. I’m not sure what I expected from India, perhaps a lot of people being very spiritual and meditating or something, but this was not that. Fantastic warm people, not sure what I expected, fantastic galaxy-of-flavours super-spicy food, as expected, but not imagined. What I neither expected nor imagined was the way that Delhi can party – and by this I mean a couple of hundred people dancing from start to finish. I did not take my camera to all the events , the first of which is when the groom’s family hosts the bride’s family – such a pity not to have taken it – it was on a farm (which I would probably describe as an estate) in Delhi – it was visually out of this world. The party started at 9am, we had dinner at 2am, and the dance floor was cooking from start (Aiden and Evan and other little kids to begin with) to 4am finish. I got to bed at around five. The second event involved the bride’s extended family visiting the groom’s home to bring them gifts. Within this there was some really lovely symbolism, for example the bride’s brother and the groom sit together and the brother feeds the groom and vice versa to demonstrate their acceptance of one another. It was so beautifully gentle and without machismo, which is a loathsome world problem I think. 

The photo above is of our lovely friend Vandanna, her little boy Veer, and her two nieces (daughters of Vandanna's brother P.C. who we stayed with in Delhi) Pria and Poluk at the third event at the bride's extended family's home, the henna ceremony.  This is when the groom's family takes gifts to the bride's family, and the women have their hands died with beautiful henna patterns in the course of the evening.

The party gets going, cool lights and smoke machines, on the outer edge of the dance-floor.  You can see some of the henna patterns on some of the women's hands at this stage.  The music is very groovy, India style hip hop Bhangra mixes, very cool to dance to.

Ange with Aiden and Ev at the beginning of the last night, before the main ceremony.  Aiden and Evan were completely wasted because we had just woken them up - India weddings require improvised sleeping for little ones.  The start of the evening was incredible, marching bands, horses, groups of drummers, and colour colour colour.

As I said in an earlier post, India really knows how to party - this is the parking lot outside the main reception venue, and as you can see people were really going for it already - woooohoooo.

With the party raging in the parking lot already (spontaneous fireworks, drummers, marching band, mobile bars appearing along the way, and a lot of people really getting down to some serious grooving, you arrive at the venue entrance, it's wonderfully loud and colourful - this guy from the band was absolutely cooking with his shakers - colour and sound in wonderful waves.

The groom, Vandanna's lovely brother Sonny, had been through a marathon of parties and events and being in the limelight, always super-gracious and polite and warm (I think this takes real human endurance, because we are talking about a huge number of people that he has engaged and talked to and laughed with - over five days - add to that minimal sleep - perhaps this is a secret agenda of the five day wedding - if the person you are marrying remains warm emotionally and cool in temprament then the future is bright.  Here he is on the left and below, big smile no doubt, in beautiful clothes in the thick of the dancing and party and drummers and people, on his way into the final function. 

And then you are inside - star-spangled,  fantastic and beautiful, on a lovely warm-cool night.  We had the absolutely best time Josh - India - I really hope to go again (and again) and I would so recommend going if you ever can - it's like Africa without the edge, and China with souped-up heart and soul.

Neemrana Palace

On the way back to Delhi we met Virendra, Vandanna and Veer at Neemrana Palace for a night. It was built in 1300 and something, and at some point was converted into a boutique hotel. I’m running out of hyperbole, but I think these late afternoon pics above and below will speak for me (though again, a lack of wide angle lens means the scale is just not captured). An incredible building of extraordinary size, atop a hill overlooking India. The boys and I had a blast – Ange did too – but unfortunately of the Delhi Belly version; she was just completely hammered by some grim biotic; Aiden Ev and I were fortunate to escape pretty much unscathed.

Indian innovativeness; no TV or internet connection - so best we have a quick game on the old man's phone (sigh) before crashing for the night

The next morning I got up early to look out of my window at this mist enshrouded plain below the palace with the sounds of India waking up and stretching below.  I went for a walk with the camera to the lower terraces of the palace to shoot this one.

I like the below picture a lot, and I think it’s illustrative – life in India is tough for most of its people, in the sense that work is hard, and convenience limited. But it is also collective and therein seems joyful; people are with and surrounded by others, and beauty matters. I took this picture of five women across a valley to the side of the palace with my long lens. There was nothing on the side of the rugged hill to suggest where they were going, and it must have been a very tough trek, especially as they were carrying things. But they were together, and infinitely colourful in their rugged surrounds. 

Samode, and the road to Neemrana

We left Jaipur and travelled through the countryside to the cool shady ancient walled town of Samode, which surprise surprise, has a fantastic palace. It’s a proper walled city, so old (I’m not sure how, sorry) that the outer walls had very long thin vertical slots in them – so that archers could adjust the range of their arrows directed at some now long distant, unfortunate foe.

The streets are fantastic cobbled stone, and the paradox of time is everywhere; click on this pic – ancient cobbled road, ancient buildings, a camel drawn cart, but a painted wall with a cell phone number on it advertising something.

The palace was (I don’t have an appropriate English word) detailed and beautiful. Instead of the outside I thought I’d show you a tiny bit of the the in. Here is a room, looking down from a balcony sort of passageway – perhaps a bit busy for some tastes – but profoundly beautifully done – and I don’t know how long ago – but more than a few yesterdays.  All the white stuff is polished marble.

In the little towns dotting rural Rajastan, way off the beaten track now – going is a little slower – and any form of transport will do. I really liked the guys in the tractor trailer – wrapped up as they were in their turbans.  The tractor is an old Massey Ferguson - something that reminded me of my childhood Eastern  Cape holidays.

And everywhere, along all the roads, walked the flag people. Every so often there would be a tractor with a trailer – on the back of it (no doubt a lot of car batteries and) some really huge speakers pumping out Banghra at a zillion watts. Nothing on earth parties like India – more of that later though.

More fantastic landscape - drilling down to detail, then interior

Wow! Jaipur!

(Confidentially I will tell you that the good people running Blogger have just updated the editor.  It does work much better it seems, and the standard post pictures are much bigger (at last, thank you blogger) but the process of working out how to sequence these photos - man 20 years ago I would have been taking this laptop for a swim in the hotel pool - come to think of it 20 years ago laptops did not exist.  Enjoy Jaipur)

Jaipur is not called the Pink City for nothing – it is genuinely pink – and amazing in every respect. We entered the city through a mountain pass, which you descend to a beautiful lake, in the middle of which is a palace – the Lake Palace – it’s a good forewarning of what is to come – scale, detail and colour beyond anything which I have seen before.

The palaces and castles and history are incredible; all of it in this arid mountainous topography, under azure sky – huge, desolate, fantastic – a monster Karoo, with mountains, and castle upon castle.

We took an elephant up to one of the castles. If you click on the photo above you will get an idea of scale - the wall just goes on and on, over the mountains, over the horizon.  Elephants are quite an interesting form of transport. They go up steps for example (and on the streets of Jaipur - chaotic - they have serious right of way).  I would not describe its rocking and rolling as particularly smooth – but they do have aircon – in the form of the thing waving its trunk up and blasting you with a cool jet of air and (what I can only conclude were) droplets of elephant snot – I did not see our friendly tusker sucking up any water along the way. Aiden and Evan did not fool around while the Elephant rocked up the steep roads to the castle.  I do not have a wide enough angle lens to get in the ellie and us, so you'll have to settle for eyes-closed Aiden, a piece of the structure you sit on, and a bit of traffic in the road ahead.

The castle was utterly enormous – with profound detail, an impossible to imagine scale of art – have a look at the detail on one of the entrances.

Inside was an intergalactic maze of corridors and passages and secret balconies and private little courtyards – utterly disorienting and vast vast vast. The walls of many of the passageways were some sort of detailed polished cretestone (I could not imagine the number of skilled artisans and years this place must have taken to build) creating these fantastic scaled shapes in some places and paths of light transfer and reflection in others.

On the top of the castle was this fantastic courtyard – people and Elephants milling around; how cool is this pop-art finish photo of Ange and Ev?

And of course when we gave him a call when we were ready to go – Raj materialized as if by magic in the courtyard – cool, and calm, smiling for a photo with Aiden and Zebedee (the class Zebra which kids get to take for a week at a time and take pics of for their travel book. I don’t think Zebedee has been to Rajastan before.  I was petrified of losing the damn thing – to the extent that I was thinking before we left where I might get an identical one from to take on the trip).  Raj epitomised service professionalism - an absolute lesson to anyone providing services to anyone else.

Aiden watches a thunderstorm brewing over Jaipur from a hotel window.  Down below, kids played cricket on the rooftops.  India had the day before beaten South Africa by one run in the same city.

Travelling in Rajastan - another world, a beautiful world

After gathering our thoughts and sharpening up for a day, we hit the road for a trip South West to the province of Rajastan - which borders on Pakistan- and the wild pink city of Jaipur. At first, outside of Delhi, things were pretty much as you'd expect - a dual carriage way heading into the great beyond, quite a bit of traffic (though unusually for us, a lot of people riding on top of vehicles, which seemed a bit precarious).

Virendra, who is brilliantly energetic and resourceful (V has the mind of the encyclopedia Britannica squared - amazing recall of detail and information - uniquely so) organised a car and (most importantly) a driver for us. His name is Raj - and I can say without the slightest doubt whatsoever - that Raj is the best driver in the world; the best that has ever been and the best that ever will be. Raj saw stuff that had not even thought of happening yet, but did. Raj anticipated complexities of hazardous events that only the most experienced of Indian drivers could ever have conceived of. Raj resisted acts of wanton disregard and brutal selfishness on behalf of other drivers (and camels and Elephants) without as much as batting an eyelid. Raj is un-rattle-able - Raj is the rock of ages. Raj cannot be freaked out. Raj only stays cool; Raj anticipates and handles. Raj looks into the setting sun hour after hour without squinting. I think Raj might be bullet-proof. (I think Raj might be The Stig). Angela can sleep in Raj's car - which believe me is saying a LOT. He was FANTASTIC - because stuff got interesting as we went further and further into Rajastan... He was perfectly named - this road is Raj's kingdom, and I love this surreal coloured photo because it so aptly captures his coolth.

Aiden, strapped in, starting to misbehave. (Raj handles misbehaviour x10 - Raj is unfased).

OK, so things aren't quite what you'd anticipate now in the early dusk. One of the lanes of the highway have been taken over by guys with flags - who are walking - many of them bare-foot (click on the pic and you'll see). Raj says they will be walking for five days, so don't expect this to pass. The other lane is taken up by very large colourful trucks, also going at walking speed. They advise you to "Blow" and "wait". More wait than blow, I can assure you. (In the context of India blow refers to hooter.  And it's not like people need to be told; a hooter is to an vehicle in India like the wheel; kind of central to the whole way you go about things.)  The other drivers (of vehicles other than trucks) get a dose of Transkei taxi driver fever, and start freaking out, ramping through the dongas on the side of the road. Not Raj. Raj stays cool; Raj navigates. Raj, somehow, overcomes the highway of trucks and guys on a mission to nowhere with flags.

Arriving in India

2.30am outside the New Delhi airport - the start of a lovely adventure; Ange hypervigilant in the new surroundings, Ev and Aiden, slightly sleep drugged but into the adventure. We were picked up by our lovely friend Vandanna's family's driver - who had substantial "local knowledge" which included executing a u-turn on a dual carriage way and driving into the oncoming traffic all the way back to the onramp - which he then went down, treating it as an offramp - in order to avoid a middle-of-the-night traffic jam! No-one was particularly worried about this - some other drivers thought it was a good idea and followed suit - welcome to India, land of the wise and chilled-out. Anyone for a party?










Ev at speed in the passage of 41 Pusa Road, New Delhi (near pillar 121). As it turns out, this is the address of paradise - 20 odd rooms, 3 families of beautiful, warm, hospitable, loving, humane and kind people. Josh, this was a real education for me - we had such fun, and felt so welcome, it made me think of what the nuclear family has lost - and what the extended family offers. We lived in Bunny and his sister's part of the house - the coolest people - Aiden and Evan running around shouting - no worries, they are kids. India played South Africa, fantastic, Sachin hit the first double ton in history - and I enjoyed it like it was our own guy, because the people I was watching with so "got" cricket, and quality play - it was the most terrific knock - hope you saw it.











A smily food munching Aiden and I hit the streets of Delhi with Ev, the lovely Virendra and Veer - on our way to an Indian barber for a head massage (cut for the boys) and a straight blade razor shave for me - aaaaaiiiiiyaaah! I tell you, it takes a step of faith to have a stranger slashing away at your face and neck with something so sharp that it would slice your head off at a wink.



From near to far, Veer, Aiden and Ev have their mega-seventies mullets sorted out for the wedding.

Family pics

Ev and Aiden on the balcony early one morning - Aiden in his Chinese New Year Kit - same as Ev's in one of the previous (but bigger of course) - looking cool - but dodgy weather (it always seems cold and wet over Chinese new year).

Me with the short blonde - it was a real hoot to go with the dye option - but in the end I just looked greyer than I already am (plenty of that I tell you - thanks Granny R - mind you, it beats the pink look :-)

Ev and I on the way back from seeing Aiden onto the school bus. Aiden insists on the early bus at 7.35am - I leave at 8.15; Ev gets picked up by Mr Man at 8.45.

Another tea shot of Ev - how about some more? Sure mate, help yourself with a chin lick there.

Cool shot of a naughty boy in amongst the flowers on the table.