Shopping in Chandigarh...

We should have taken a nap, but instead we went to Sector 17, the shopping district. This area was filled with very nice stores on the ground floor, but looked largely deserted on higher levels. There were some persistent beggars, who we were better prepared for with pens and candy on our second visit.

Sister-in-law Shawn from London came along to try to help me find an outfit for the wedding. Luckily I had borrowed an Indian suit from a friend in The Hague, as we quickly discovered I was too broad-shouldered for the affordable suits. I especially enjoyed my return visit the next morning with Mandy (a cousin from London). Rather than search through racks, a salesman had her sit and brought her elaborate and colorful outfits to choose from. I was surprised that they didn’t ask more about what she was looking for or made recommendations based on her figure, but rather just filled up the counter with options. Amazingly, she found two lovely outfits and left very happy.

Friday in Chandigarh...

The wedding events all took place in Chandigarh, India’s first planned urban development (PUD) started in the 1950’s. This city is India’s richest, greenest and least polluted. The population is nearing 1 million; it was originally designed to have 13 sectors, but today has 70. Being the naive person I am, I thought it would be reminiscent to Tierrasanta, the lovely PUD where I used to live in San Diego. Silly me!

Despite not having a map, the driver eventually found our hotel in Sector 43 and our friend was in the lobby to great us.

This cow was being walked in the uncle’s neighborhood, where many of the events over the four days would take place. We saw haircuts given on street corners here as well as in Delhi. This city has a high concentration of Sikhs, a warrior offshoot of Hinduism that doesn’t believe in the caste system. Our friend’s family is easily identifiable as Sikhs by the men’s turbans; neither the men nor women typically cut their hair ever in their lives.

Valuable Lessons Learned in India - Part 3

* When you need to regroup, escape to a 5-star hotel.

Although we still hadn’t fully figured out the con, we decided we needed somewhere comfortable to get our wits back. To the disappointment of our scammers, we had our taxi drive us to the nearest 5-star hotel. There we had a nice breakfast and called Davinder for his advice. The next real train wasn’t until 5pm, so we opted to have him arrange for a private driver. The 3.5 hour train ride then turned into a 4.5 hour death-defying 200-mile car ride. This whole screw-up cost us an extra $150, but at least the con men didn’t benefit. And I managed to keep my eyes open during the ride as I tried to capture on film a fraction of the insanity that we saw.

While we were travelling on a toll-highway, there didn’t seem to be any vehicles prohibited. There were tractors of all sizes and fancy painted trucks. The only big rigs seemed to be oil tankers. There also weren’t any lane restrictions or lanes for that matter. Everyone used horns rather than blinkers to communicate where they were headed. It seemed very random to me, but clearly had some pattern as we didn’t see any accidents in either direction.
A variety of animals also pulled carts along the highway including horses, donkeys and cows. Clearly they weren’t able to keep up with us when we hit 60MPH on the few segments that were far enough between villages.

Valuable Lessons Learned in India - Part 2

* Being just 5 minutes late for the train is just long enough to be susceptible to a sweet talking con man.

With all of our years of international travel, you would have thought we would have seen right through the guy that told us our train had left and that he’d help us to get tickets for another train. Worse than that, not only did it take us 2 days for the full implications of his con to finally sink in, but we later discovered that our train was actually 25 minutes late. Instead, we’d already been put in taxi to a Ticket Office to book tickets for a train that didn’t actually exist. That nice reservation clerk then offered to book us a car (presumably the guy at the station would have gotten a cut). Luckily, some part of our brains started functioning again and we passed.

It’s nice that the driver’s wise enough to wear a helmet on the highway, but guess he’s not too worried about his wife or child. We failed to manage to get a photo of the many ladies carrying babies on motorcycles or the family of four with one child in front of the driver.
There was an endless parade of interesting vehicles on the shoulder of the highway including these wheelchair cycles. Sorry, but also missed taking a photo of the fellow walking two monkeys.

Valuable Lessons Learned in India - Part I

I usually wait to end my entries about a trip with the Valuable Lessons Learned, but as we started learning our lessons as soon as we arrived, it seems more appropriate to start here.

* Telling a taxi driver there’s an extra tip if he drives fast is not a great idea if your wife’s nerves are already frazzled.

Our flight was 2.5 hours late and it took a ridiculous amount of time to get through customs; after very little sleep, we were already dazed. Rather than having a relaxed 3.5 hours between our flight and our train trip to where the wedding was being held, we had a tense 20 minutes to get to the train station. While Jimmy found the taxi ride exhilarating, I found it horrifying; I spent much of it with my eyes closed as I feared not just for our lives, but for the many people that crossed our paths in cars, on bikes or on foot. Amazingly, we survived and arrived only 5 minutes late.

Rickshaws are used throughout India, but no idea why they were allowed on the highway. We never did manage to ride in a bike rickshaw, but had many rides in auto rickshaws (which are actually 3-wheeled scooters with a vinyl roof and back and cloth on one side. They all had meters in them like real taxis, but were never used. We always made sure that the fare was agreed upon before getting in (a 40-minute ride cost under $5, so a very economical way to get around).

Off to India...

When Jimmy’s co-worker Davinder invited us in December to his wedding at the end of January in India, I basically shrugged it off. I mentioned it to Marianne after taking care of her kids for a weekend and was surprised when she said she’d look after the girls as this wasn’t an invitation to turn down. Frankly, I had no idea what to expect, but booked our tickets and on January 29th we arrived in Delhi. There’s definitely stories to tell, but in the meantime I have so many photos of incredible things we saw on the highway, that I’m doing several entries, so bear with me.

After all the things we’ve seen carried on bikes in Holland, we didn’t think we could be surprised anymore, but we constantly were. Need some bamboo?

Not entirely sure what this fellow is carrying, but appears to be a trash man.

Ice, Ice Baby...

This winter has definitely been our coldest yet in the Netherlands. While our last real snowfall was 5 inches on December 22nd, 3 weeks later the bike lanes and sidewalks were still covered in ice. We heard rumors that the main waterway through our area, the Vliet, was frozen, so when David and Andrew slept over on January 10th we went out to investigate. While our route onto the ice through a small marina was a bit nerve wracking when we heard cracking underfoot, our worries disappeared once we got onto the main canal. The kids had a blast seeing how far they could slide.