Category: 2023 – India

Well, we have come to the end of 12 days in New Zealand and over a reasonably good Indian meal we couldn’t decide on a “best moment” because, if you read the this post you’ll understand that “it just keeps getting better.

Yesterday morning Dunedin turned on a wet chilly start to the day so we hit the Dunedin art gallery.

The most impressive work was this one. Forgive the light reflection, I just couldn’t get a shot without it.

I know what you are thinking…”meh”. But here are a couple of details

Then a 30 minute drive to the Otago Peninsula where we stayed in a fabulous air bnb in Portobello, right on the water, ultra modern and reasonably priced.

When I say “right on the water, this was the view over the road

and see all those black spots? In case you hadn’t figured it out…black swans, hundreds of them. It was quite wonderful.

We didn’t really want to pay $50 a head to go to the little blue penguin viewing where you watch them come in for the night, it was a moot point anyway as it was booked out. So we checked out where they were at the Albatross centre and we were lucky enough to see a couple of albatross on the wing.

If I re-use superlatives, it is because everything is spectacular and amazing, and these were spectacular. Their wingspan is 3 metres, twice my height, and they spend most of their time soaring.

Thanks to ChatGPT “here are some fascinating facts about albatrosses”:

1. Master Flyers: Albatrosses are incredible long-distance fliers. They can glide for hours without flapping their wings, covering thousands of kilometers using dynamic soaring and slope soaring techniques.
2. Massive Wingspans: The wandering albatross holds the record for the longest wingspan of any living bird—up to 3.5 meters (11.5 feet)!
3. Lifelong Mates: Albatrosses are known for their strong pair bonds. Many species mate for life, performing complex courtship dances involving beak fencing, head bobbing, and vocalizations.
4. Long Lives: These seabirds can live 50 to 60 years, with some individuals reaching over 70 years old!
5. Efficient Sleepers: Albatrosses can sleep while flying by shutting down half their brain—an impressive adaptation for long ocean journeys.
6. Diet: They mainly feed on fish, squid, and krill, often diving or scavenging from the water’s surface.
7. Conservation Concerns: Many albatross species are endangered, primarily due to bycatch in fishing nets and longlines, as well as plastic pollution.
8. Incredible Navigators: Albatrosses use their keen sense of smell to locate food over vast ocean areas, a rare skill among birds.
9. Slow Breeders: Albatrosses lay only one egg every one to two years. Both parents share incubation duties for about 11 weeks, one of the longest incubation periods of any bird.
10. Myth and Symbolism: Throughout history, sailors have viewed albatrosses as symbols of good luck. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner popularized the idea of the “albatross around one’s neck,” symbolizing a burden.

Since we weren’t going to get to the penguins, we made a dinner/birthday booking at the local pub and got some good intel from a local to go to Allan’s Beach where we might see penguins.

On the way a hugely surprising find was a sea lion creche, right beside Allan’s Beach Rd, a very quiet gravel road. How close were the young sea lions? Very…

I hardly needed a zoom, they were less than 5 metres away over a fence to keep us away from them.

Allan’s Beach is a rugged place where we were almost the only people on the beach.

We waited until dark for penguins and could hear them, but not see them. Walking back along the beach in the dark I came impressively close to walking into a sea lion making its way to the water. If Erna hadn’t turned on her phone torch just at that moment it might have turned out to be an interesting meeting of species.

Despite not seeing penguins we all agreed it was one of the best adventures of our trip.

To finish…this is a photo of kelp from the cliff top near the Albatross centre. It is at least 3 metres long and there is lots of it.

and when you use the Nikon D7200 continuous shooting mode, where it takes about 5 shots per second, and then get google photos to stitch them into an animation, you get an idea of how hauntingly beautiful they were as the waves came and went.

Whew, quite a drive from Mt Cook to Dunedin. As the official chauffeur, cook, photographer, dishwasher, launderer, hair dresser and plumber I am pretty busy – OK, I don’t really do all that, but it was still a long and tiring drive across the country.

There is a little place called Waitaki where the call of “real fruit sorbet” at Waitaki Orchards was enough to warrant a break and a treat, neither of which went quite as expected.

First, the treat: WOW! If you ever happen to be passing this way do yourself a favour and have one of their apricot sorbets. We all agreed it is possibly the best ice cream we have ever tasted. It was seriously good, made in-house, from their own apricots. Did I mention it was seriouusly good?

Then there was the break in our drive: it was a bit lot longer than expected. We have a bank “travel card” where you put a bunch of money into an account, convert it to a currency of choice and then can spend it like a local using a debit card. At the start, we each added funds and it became our slush fund along the way. The system has had been faultless all through our trip.

But Waitaki is in rural New Zealand, their shop is apparently only open for 3 months a year, during the fruit season, so they don’t want to pay a chunky monthly fee for something modern like pay wave. Since we couldn’t just tap the card, the machine wanted a PIN, which, since it hadn’t been used before, had fallen out of heads somewhere along the road. There was a justified fear of getting it wrong 3 times and having the card (and our slush money) locked.

No worries, I will get my phone and pay myself…but wait…you can’t tap. No worries, Christa will use her German credit card…but wait…it wouldn’t accept it, or another of her cards. No worries, pay cash…but wait…we haven’t seen cash since we got here. No worries, give us bank details and we will drop money into the account…but wait…”I only work here, I don’t have those details”.

What to do, apart from continuing to praise the excellent ice cream in an attempt to soothe the woman behind the counter who was very patient with us.

Our 5 minute driving break had now extended to 30 minutes and there was no solution to be had. She wanted to give us the ice creams fro free, but we were adamant we wanted to do the right thing and pay. The end result was that I have emailed them asking how we can send them the money…and praising the ice cream, of course.

Oamaru, on the west coast, has a lovely historic area near the wharf and possibly the only people in the world making a living from steam punk.

I think the place came out of a Steampunk art competition about 20 years ago where they likely didn’t know what to do with all the entries so they opened a “museum”.

Also in Oamaru is a Little Blue Penguin colony, right on the edge of town. No penguins during the day, they are in their luxury motel rooms.

But there were plenty of fur seals. At first we were delighted that there were 3 we could see. After about half an hour of watching we realised there was about 20 of them lying on the rocks, such great camouflage that they are hard to spot until they move.

And on the way back, a shag/cormorant colony on an abandoned wharf.

Today it is a bit of a grey day in Dunedin, made a bit brighter by Christa’s 36 hour birthday, starting in New Zealand time and ending in German time.

An Indian themed dinner was organised for after we returned, unfortunately Tall Girl is back in the Netherlands for a short while, so this page is a few stories to entertain the guests.

Holi

Holi is the festival of colours, to celebrate the arrival of spring.

The night before, on every street…

later that night we went to the family farm at Barala, arriving quite late and waking up to…

and the start of Holi

of course, it always gets out of hand

A trip to Mandawa

We were invited to join Ajeet on a business trip to Mandawa, about an hour drive from Jaipur. Any journey with Ajeet is sure to be an adventure.

We stopped for something to eat and there happened to be a temple (what a surprise) and we were just in time for puja.

The Haveli where we stayed was run down, but incredible

Ajeet knows I love stepwells, on the way back we stopped at one that is being restored

Tall Girl and I walked around the back to where there were some people. She thought they were waving us away, I know India better.

The engagement party at Mochingpura

Sheetala Ashtami

We were on a mission to buy some gifts and wandered aimlessly. While not lost, we had no idea where we were. Trying to find somewhere to eat we spotted these photogenic statues outside a house

obviously it was worth looking inside and this was happening

it was obviously some religious ceremony, but we had no idea. As we wandered we kept seeing groups of mostly women and children heading somewhere, so naturally we followed along to see what was happening

of course…

Enough already, some favourite photos

I have had it with the frustration of trying to get images uploaded and stories told. We will be home in less than 24 hours and maybe then I will add more.

Of course there are loads more…maybe in a few days.

If you read this far, thanks.

Days later, we are still in Jaipur. There is seriously a lot to see here and with the added bonus of visits to my Indian family farm and events, we just can’t get out of the place. This is not a bad thing.

The good news is that we are both 100% well again, though the Tall Girl is being very wary of what she eats.

We’ve been doing so much, it is going to be hard to write it all up before we want to head out and do more…

Sigh…too many days to catch up.

We went to an engagement party on the family farm at Mochingpura, here are some of the other guests…

An interesting party with a crazy finish at Hathroi Fort – here’s the view from the top of the fort wall.

A day trip to Amer fort where there are a lot of elephants giving tourists rides. Again, I found it amazing being around and so close to so many elephants. This time I found it even more distressing seeing the elephants being exploited and appearing to not be in very good health. And tourists still ride them up the hill :o(

Wandering down the back of the fort to the stepwell, we stumbled on the amazing 400 year old Shri Jagat Shiromani ji Temple. We arrived just in time for morning Puja and were part of a group of less than 10 people in the place, the only westerners, of course. The holy man and devotees were really friendly and there was plenty of banter afterwards.

and the stepwell….

A little later we bumped into one of the men outside his house and were invited in for chai with his daughter-in-law and grandson. This is why we come to India.

sigh…sitting in Kuala Airport, half way home, trying to get at least one more post up before we get back.

Boy it was good to get out of Kolkata. It is a noisy, dirty, busy city and we were in a commercial area with lots of trucks of all sizes, plus goods being moved on trolleys, bicycle carts and heads.

The noise of constant traffic with the continuous honking horns, crowded streets, hot weather…it became a bit overwhelming. We both had a mini melt-down (not at each other) and decided to seek quiet time in a large mosque that we had spotted from our hotel.

But we did find a great restaurant, Gupta Brothers, right beside M.G. Rd railway station. It is bright and efficient (in an Indian way) and clean. At least the eating area is, who knows what the kitchen is like.

Most importantly, shared tables, so more Hindi for Tall Girl. I confess that I have shifted from being bemused by her project to being envious, maybe even jealous, at her skills.

It is absolutely a great initiator of interacting with people. I suspect that by the time we head home on March 21st, she is going to be quite fluent.

We were a bit frazzled and the White House owner suggested the Hard Rock cafe. This goes totally against my idea of travelling in India, but I wanted a beer (which is surprising hard to find) so we head off. We have discussed western franchises in India and have both agreed the best we can say is that it was air conditioned.

Well, there was one other good thing. As we were walking, there were a few hole in the wall places selling “rolls” which are basically a flat bread rolled up with a filling of choice. They weren’t busy at all, except one, that had a 3 deep crowd trying to order. On the way back we bought one each and they almost made it worth the Hard Rock visit.

The other reason we headed there was to visit the Victoria Memorial. But we were too late. It was closed. We tried every trick on the guard on the gate to be able to just go in and look around, but he wasn’t having any of it. It looked like an astonishing building, the best we got was a glimpse. We also marvelled at how we were starting to learn our way around the Kolkata metro trains.

Our last day in Kolkata we make a decision to do chilled stuff and after leaving our bags at the White House we head to the bazaar so that Tall Girl can find a Salwar Kameez.

We had learned a very important Hindi phrase; मुझे अकेला छोड़ दो (mujhe akela chhod do) – “leave me alone” and had the opportunity to use it many times in the market.

Another meal at Gupta Brothers and once again Tall Girl is in her element.

I recall the last time I was in Kolkata in 2015 and am still traumatised by the memory of being hassled as we left the hotel for the airport. One would think I would learn a lesson, but obviously I didn’t and a promised 5 minute wait for a taxi turned into a 30 minute back and forth about where the taxi was, with me about to hail a tuk tuk and put everyone out of their misery. At the time Tall Girl wouldn’t let me…nowadays I think it would be her idea…she is adapting well to India :o)

Speaking of being put out of our misery, I am contemplating self destructing. I just can’t get it together to write the stories I would like to, so this may turn into a photo essay of our trip with some brief notes for our reference

Bodh Gaya is where Siddhartha attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree and became the Buddha. It is the holiest of Buddhist places, and the Mahabodhi Temple, which has a descendant of the original tree, is a peaceful and wonderful place.

Unfortunately, since a bombing in 2013, no electronics, including phones are allowed inside = no photos. So Tall Girl created our own memory of monks chanting.

It was such a shame about not having a camera. Stone point Tall Girl had about 10 monks crowding looking over her shoulder and admiring her work. It was such a great (missed) shot.

We went the wrong way back to our hotel,which was a good thing. I have a philosophy to follow the crowd / music / noise and see what is going on.

This was a crowd scene that was quite puzzling. Nothing was being sold. It wasn’t a bus station. It was odd.

We were directed to a bloke at an inquiry desk who spoke excellent English

Welcome to Bodh Gaya eye camp 2023 where people from near and far, especially rural, are brought at no personal expense, to receive eye surgery, mostly cataracts.

We were given the VIP tour of the entire place, including showing us people’s damaged eyes.

This is really awesome work carried out by international doctors, funded by a charity we are having trouble traking down, but would like to ask our friends to support. Each eye costs only $US40 to fix…nothing when you think about it. At some point, when we find out how money can be donated, we’ll put the word out to people who feel inclined to help.

A not unusual front yard scene, and this is in a big town, not in the country.

Next, on to Varanasi, but not before more friends and Hindi practice at the railway station