Synagogues and Churches

So much for a one day break from blogging about my travels...more like a week. Oh well, these things happen.
Back to travels. After our day in Delhi we headed down to Kerala. I've been there before and was more than happy to go back as I had such a great time the first time. This trip began much like the last one by touching down in Cochin (or Kochi); we checked into our hotel and then headed down to Old Cochin. In addition to the fact that I had enjoyed my first visit to Cochin, I was excited to go back for one very specific reason...the first time I was there was a Friday and the synagogue was closed and according to my guide books this synagogue was well worth a visit.
So we strolled through the lovely colorful Jew town with all its little tourist shops to the little synagogue. It was built in the 16th century and is quite small; a large room really. The floor is made up of all hand painted tiles from China; there is a very ornate pulpit and some really amazing lamps including one really big chandelier. Standing there you can imagine people a few hundred years ago worshipping by oil lamps; it is like a little time capsule.
You couldn't take photos inside; a bummer for the tourist in me; but it did help to maintain the feeling of a place of worship rather than a tourist spot. Interestingly you had to take your shoes off to enter; I think that is a spill over of the Indian influence and how Hindus worship.
After the synagogue we visited the great big Chinese fishing nets which were not in use; apparently they are only used during high tide, or low tide, basically the tide that brings all the fish in. But more on fish later...
On my previous trip to Cochin I also missed out on seeing the interior of the Church of St. Francis. It closes at 5 p.m. and we got there a bit after 5 but got in this time...one of those few times that Indians always doing things late has worked to my advantage. The church is also from the 16th century and had a quite simple interior. We were most fascinated by these things hanging down along the length of the pews; they were long, maybe 10 feet, and were made of wood with a bit of fabric over them. They hung about 6 feet over the pews but looked like they could be lowered so we thought maybe they were to divide men and women.
Turns out they were the original fans in the church; so during mass (in the times before electricity) some poor folks would stand outside pulling those ropes back and forth to help keep people cool inside. Quite smart really as it stays hot year round down there and I cannot imagine how stuffy that church would get during the really humid months.
Now they have regular fans...I wonder if they use the old ones during power outages?
Back to fish; well the nets weren't in use but the fishermen were bringing in their catch from their boats and the market was being set up so we saw all sorts of fish being brought in. Since I couldn't take photos in the synagogue or church I'll leave you today with a photo of one of the men carrying some huge fish near the market place. I cannot even imagine how heavy this basket must be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving one and all. This is my 3rd Thanksgiving in a row away from the US of A (although the first doesn't really count because I was in Canada and my parents came up and we made Thanksgiving dinner) and I am determined that next year I'll be home for Turkey and Pie! No turkey for me this year (due to the fact that is next to impossible to get here) or tandoori chicken for that matter; will just be a quiet night at home. Which is fine with me.
So, what am I thankful for? Well, kind of a long story here so bear with me. My driver is currently away in his village for a bit so his dad is driving me this week. On Monday after I dropped my sister at the airport he asked me how long the flight was and where she was going in the states. He was wondering if she was going to DC because the Indian PM is there this week (very exciting for India that they got the President's first state dinner).
I explained and then he started asking me geography questions; where is this city, where is that city, etc., etc. Then he asked me if Paris is a beautiful city and I said yes, very. He said that he saw it on TV and it looks very beautiful. And I was suddenly very sad. I realized that this man who works so hard and is such a good man will never have enough money to travel outside of India. Other than going to his home village he probably rarely travels within India unless driving someone but he has the desire and the interest; every time he drives me he asks me about what life is like in 'my country' versus in India.
So I am thankful that I was born into a culture where the profession of my parents does not pre-determine my profession (i.e. my driver is the son of a driver; it is extremely difficult in India to break out of your 'caste' - even though the caste system is officially over, it really isn't) or the amount of education I receive. I could go to school and study what I chose; I can work as much or as little as I want and earn enough money to travel and see the world (economy permitting).
I wish I could give him enough money to travel to Paris; but that isn't possible...and he would never accept it if I could. So I will just continue to answer all of his questions about where places are in the world and hope to fulfill a little bit of his curiosity that way, and every question he asks helps me to appreciate just that much more what I have done and seen.

animal sightings

I forgot to mention my wacky animal sightings and then this morning I had another one so...a break from Carrie's trip here for a day while I talk about some of the wacky places I've seen animals of late.
First, I stopped at a market to do some last minute shopping before heading to the airport to pick up my sis. Along with regular shops this market has a few little stands, best thing I can relate it to is a newsstand back in the states; a smallish stall with an open window where you go to pay. At this one stand I see a guy peeking in looking to see what is for sale and right next to him - about 6 inches away - a cow is peeking his head in the stall as well checking out what is going on. I actually stopped in my tracks and stared, it was the funniest thing...especially because the two guys (the buyer and the seller in the stall) completely ignored the cow and went along doing their business. If only I had my camera.
Second wacky animal sighting - which I must give my sister credit for noticing - was in Old Delhi. We're sitting in traffic and there is an auto rickshaw next to us and she notices that along with the two passengers there is a goat in the autorickshaw. Must have been their goat and they were bringing him somewhere. Definitely looked like the goat was the only one that was comfy in the back of that autorickshaw.
And finally...this morning. I hear this loud bang that sounds like my air conditioner had just fallen. Luckily it hadn't fallen...a monkey had just jumped on it. My neighborhood family of monkeys was back and were running all around the back of mine and my neighbor's houses this morning. Kept me quite entertained - amazing that I was on time to work because I was having such fun watching them.
You honestly never know what you are going to see here.

Seeing something again...for the first time

I've done quite a bit of touring around Delhi so now when people come to visit me it is pretty rare that we actually see something in the city that is new to me. Luckily I really like showing people around the city and re-visiting places...otherwise I'd be a pretty miserable travel buddy. But every once in a while when I go somewhere I've been before I discover something new (or rather, new to me).

This happened on our first full day of sightseeing in Delhi; we went to Humayun's Tomb. This is a very large tomb in Delhi. I visited it over a year ago and hadn't been back but really enjoyed it because not only is it very pretty it is also not that popular of a spot for tourists so is relatively quiet. It is actually a really huge tomb; I think second only in size to the Taj Mahal in India and if it weren't for the Taj it would likely be visited more, but because of the Taj most people skip out on Humayun's Tomb. After a morning in the craziness of Old Delhi it was good to be somewhere a bit quieter.

So, what was new? Well the first time I went I noticed this much smaller tomb in an enclosed area off to one side but it was blocked off for some reason. This time it was open so we went in to explore and it was soooo pretty. There are lots of small tombs all throughout Delhi from the period of the Mughal rulers; most of which originally had quite a bit of decoration which has now come off, but a lot of the detail on this one was fairly well preserved...and it was built in 1547 - almost 500 years ago.

I think we actually spent more time walking around this little tomb than we did at Humayun's. There are only 2 other octagonal tombs I've seen in India; the rest are mostly 4-sided (like the Taj) and I really like the octagonal ones; even when they are small they seem very imposing.

Here are two photos; one of the whole tomb and one of some of the detail where you can see the tiling still in place...quite a rarity. I think that this might become another spot in Delhi that I start to visit more and more often for a nice Sunday afternoon walk.

and I'm back

Just dropped my sis off at the airport and am in the fun process of going through gobs of emails.
Will blog more tomorrow.

on hiatus

Will be away next week because...my sister is coming. Hooray for visitors.
Three pre-hiatus comments....
1 - it rained last night. Crazy, its definitely been at least a month, I think 6 weeks, since it rained. Still kind of raining. I wonder when it will rain next? Jan, Feb? Will I see rain again before I leave?
2 - got caught in a traffic jam this morning. At a 4-way intersection all the lights were out so everyone just drove into the intersection and started honking. Finally a traffic police guy came and cleared it out a little bit but it was just silly.
3 - Delhi is "on strike" today. Not sure what that means or why, all I know is that all the coffee shops are closed and I seriously need some caffeine. Oh well, at least the strike happened before my sister's visit so it doesn't screw up those plans.
Will be back in a little over a week with pictures and stories.

hot water perspective

I have no hot water right now, will hopefully get fixed today but definitely tomorrow the latest. The way my water is heated here is in a smallish hot water heater in my bathroom. It sits high on the wall above my toilet and I can tell when the water is heating because a light goes on.
I didn't think much about it when I got here; as in didn't think it was odd at all; because when I lived in France my apartment had a similar hot water heater in a big closet. For that one I just had to make sure that I ran water some time after 8 p.m. to get it to kick on...the only time in my life I've done my dishes every day because by doing them after 8 I knew I'd have hot water in the morning.
The slight bummer with my water heater here is that it only links to the taps in that bathroom, so none of the other sinks have hot water. And it isn't huge so if if someone is staying with me you need to wait about 5 or 10 minutes between showers for it to fill up with hot water again.
Other than those minor things it works well, and it plugs in to the wall so when I'm away I unplug it so I'm not using extra energy.
Then it stopped working and my affections quickly wained. My first thought was "only in India would I be stuck like this". Then I realized that isn't the case at all. Once when I was living in Boston (well, Watertown) our hot water heater stopped working and, in the process, put about 3 inches of water in the basement. That got fixed in a day but cost my landlord quite a lot of money. This will take 1 or 2 days and will only cost about $20. A slight inconvenience but I can boil water if I really need hot water.
Its funny, sometimes I think that when you are in a foreign country and something doesn't go just as planned the first thing you do is blame the country without realizing that something like that could very well happen back home.
Overall things do break a lot more often here than back home...that is because people keep using things about 10 years after they should have been tossed aside (I'm fairly certain my AC units are older than I am) but it usually takes relatively little time and definitely very little money to get things fixed.
Although, people never seem to believe me when I say that something is broken. Took me 2 days of insisting there really was a problem with the water heater (everyone said they all make weird noises) before I convinced my guy to go and check it out. I'm always right when things are broken, you'd think they'd start believing me. Oh well. I just count it as another minor adventure.
Aside: the low temp last night was 14C (57ish) and I saw a dog in a sweater this morning. I wonder if he is really cold...I mean he has fur and it isn't that chilly. Or do dogs in India get used to the heat as well and feel cold at not very cold temperatures.

Modern-ish architecture in Delhi

So this past weekend I decided to go somewhere in Delhi I haven't been before. I've been here a year and 4 months now and have been on a mission to see as much of this city as possible but it is a really big city so there are still places to see.
When I went to Jaipur I visited the Jantar Mantar there; an astrological park built in the 18th century. I really enjoyed it because it has such a modern cool feel but is so old and it is just so different from what you normally see in India. I knew there was one in Delhi but I had never heard anyone talk about visiting it so figured it probably wasn't much to see. But I had free time and enjoyed the one in Jaipur so I decided to check Delhi's out. So off I went and...I was quite impressed.

It is slightly worn and could use a coat of paint but it is very very big and just looks totally out of place, especially when you consider that it is almost 300 years old. It is a park with HUGE sundials and other HUGE instruments to tell the time and read your horoscope (alas, it was a bit hazy the day I was there so I couldn't confirm that the time was correct). It kind of felt like an abstract artists dream, lots of funny angles and shapes. One of the biggest differences between the one in Jaipur and this one is that you can climb all over lots of these instruments...which lots of people were doing.

I just set out to take lots and lots of pictures in all the odd little corners of these devices. Here is my favorite one along with a pic of the whole thing so that you can better understand what on earth I'm talking about because well, I certainly couldn't have imagined what an 18th century astrological park in India would look like.

Enjoy!

Animal kingdom

One of my new favorite past times in Delhi is to count the number of animals I see on any given day. On the weekends I usually see more since my weekdays usually just involve me going to/from the office which is on a pretty busy road and not very animally. This morning, however, I did see 4 cows...one of which was walking into traffic and kept walking to our car no matter how much my driver moved. Finally we slowed to a crawl and got past him...silly cow.

This weekend I saw some goats and pigs and a monkey. Well, not so much pigs as hogs. I don't know what the actual difference is but these guys are big and look like they have fur and they aren't cute...so I call them hogs. I saw about 8 of them, with a few piglets too (hoglets?).

Last weekend I had my second ferret sighting...quite tricky to see because they move really quickly and stay hidden, and I saw my peacocks again; this time I had my camera so you have a picture today...there are two in the photo, one is kind of hidden in the back.

As I was looking at the hogs though I couldn't help but wonder about them. At what point in time in the west did we move all of the wild animals (other than squirrels., etc) out of the cities? And will they ever do that here? The goats I see seem to be domesticated, I think people use them for their milk, but the hogs just kind of wander around. I feel badly for them. I think that the government should try to move them out of the city to somewhere greener where they can roam freely and have food to eat.

Much as I enjoy spotting animals in the city it doesn't seem like a good life for them, and they do quite often really mess up traffic. For now I'll just enjoy counting the animals and be happy my driver has good reaction time and can stop quickly for cows/goats/pigs that decide to stroll into the street

Bad blogger in a wacky time zone

I've been a bad blogger this week. Sorry. Had a bit of writers block combined with a general feeling of just being slightly off. I think my feeling of being off strangely has to do with daylight savings. See India doesn't do daylight savings so I'm now 10 1/2 hours ahead of the East Coast. So if I want to call someone back in the US of A I need to wait until 7:30 p.m., which means that I forget...and when these are work calls I really need to remember.
Another aspect of being on the other side of the world that I've noticed before but now it is extra noticeable this week...all because of Sesame Street.
Confused?
Well this week is the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and Google is running special Sesame Street style Google images this week. Today is Cookie Monster...only today isn't Cookie Monster, yesterday was, but since today for me is still yesterday in the US I still have Cookie Monster on my screen. It will change sometime mid-morning.
Kind of like this post will probably say that it was done on November 5th, but it is actually the 6th for me.
Another not-so fun website update is that all of the US websites do their maintenance during the night US time; usually between 2 and 5 a.m. which means that when I've tried to check my bank account or credit card on line lately about 1/2 the time the website is down for maintenance. You would think that I would remember this and start doing my banking first thing in the morning India time but alas, I always forget.
Maybe I just need to work on remembering this better so that I don't keep running into these obstacles.
Minor India pet peeve tirade...so we have a cleaning guy in our office and he cleans pretty much all the time; like every day dusts off desks, cleans the floors, etc., etc. But because this is India and people don't pick up after themselves he works during the day. What this means is that every morning he cleans off people's desks, while they are working, and the staff just sit back for 5 minutes and stop working. This drives me batty. Why can't he get here an hour before everyone? Why can't he just wait until they are on their lunch break? Luckily he knows that I'm weird and he cleans my desk when I'm away but really, why am I the only one to find this inefficient?
Sigh.
Oh well. I should just get over it.
Anyway...time to get back to work. Its 9:20 a.m. my time, still yesterday back in the US. I have a little more than an hour left with Cookie Monster on my Google screen.

lightbulbs and monkeys

two totally unrelated stories today.
First, I changed a lightbulb all by myself on Friday. I was quite proud of myself as this is the first time I have been able to do so here. Might not seem like much to those of you back in the real world but for me this was a big thing. If only I could figure out how to pay my own bills then I would really have this place figured out.
Second, on Sunday morning I was sitting on my couch drinking my coffee and suddenly a mommy and baby monkey jumped up onto my balcony (probably the same ones I saw in September from my balcony). They walked around for a minute or so then left and then the daddy monkey hopped up onto my balcony and walked around for about a minute.
And then, just to make it perfect, the baby monkey came up all by himself and jumped around on the balcony railings for a bit just playing around.
So exciting...monkeys, on my balcony, max 20 feet from where I was having my coffee.