Human Pyramids / The Dahi Handi festival

Only in India could you have a festival which consists of people creating huge human pyramids with the aim of hitting a clay pot full of yogurt or buttermilk (dahi) with a stick.

There is a religious basis to the festival; it is based on the legend of the child god Lord Krishna who used to make human pyramids with friends to steal butter. I'm not quite sure what the moral of the story is, or if their is one at all, but it's a lot of fun and is a particularly popular festival in Mumbai.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahi_Handi

Although the pot traditionally contains dahi, the main attraction these days is the prize money on offer for the teams that manage to smash the pots.  Political parties and others put up fairly large cash prizes and lots of teams train for months to perfect their pyramids.

This is, though, a sport for the brave.  Last year, several people died falling off the pyramids and many more were hospitalised.  This year, a height limit of 20 feet has been imposed and people must be at least 12 years of age to compete.  Based on what I saw on Monday, both these requirements were ignored, but the Tuesdays papers reported that there were zero fatalities from the festivities.

I was at work on Monday (no holiday for this festival sadly) but Phil picked me up at 7pm and we went to watch our local pyramid competition on Hill Road.  As expected, it was loud, chaotic and exciting with a large crowd of people and pyramids springing up along the street.  There is serious skill and strength in the pyramids and strategy is important.  We didn't see a pot being broken, but a six person high pyramid is impressive enough.

Phil chatted to several locals and was invited to join a pyramid but he politely declined which was a relief.

Here are a few pictures of our experience:

Phil bonding with a local team 

 An unbroken dahi handi

 The little boy on the top (a very small 12 year-old) had a helmet and, strangely, a life jacket.  I assume to protect him in case he landed in a puddle of water...

This picture shows the climbing action up the side of the pyramid

The wobbly bit...standing up at the top 

Standing tall

Visitors - The Hall family and the return of the Butlers

Over the last few weeks we've been fortunate to welcome two sets of visitors; the Hall family and my parents (who were brave enough for a return visit).

Robin, Dorothy, Matthew and Arthur came for the weekend at the end of July, and we had such a lovely time that we forgot to take any photos!  What a missed opportunity.  As proof that they did come to India, here is a family picture at the Taj Mahal, which the Hall family visited after staying with us in Mumbai.

Dorothy, Arthur, Matthew and Robin

We beat the monsoon during their visit (which tried its best to derail us) and visited several sites in South Mumbai, including the Gandhi museum, the Gateway and we had tea at the Taj, as well as exploring the local area (Bandra Fort, Mount Mary and a good Indian massage).  Matthew and Arthur were undeterred by the heat and put our treadmill through its paces, whilst Robin rang his first handbell peal for several years to notch up the Cambridge University Guild's first peal in India.

http://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=345060

Two weeks later, we met up with my parents for a long weekend in Goa (yes, another long weekend...) at the end of their holiday exploring Delhi, Agra and Kolkata.  My father's view of India hadn't changed much, it was still dirty, but they seemed to have enjoyed the trip overall.  The weekend coincided with my Dad's birthday (Saturday) and my Mum's (Sunday) which gave the perfect excuse for a celebratory spa treatment on Sunday (me and Mum) and a few beers on every other day (for all).

We spent the weekend relaxing, including lots of swimming, table tennis, walking on the beach / visiting local sites and visiting the Taj spa.  Mum and I had a facial on her birthday and I was rather indulgent and had a pedicure too.  Phil also had a spa treatment which was a waste of time as he went for the deep tissue massage and asked for this to be as hard as possible.  He could hardly walk afterwards and didn't enjoy it very much!  The hotel ran yoga classes which I joined one morning and found challenging but fun.  Apparently I'm quite bendy which bodes well for more yoga in the future (my next project...)

A relatively sunny day in the monsoon 

An appropriate sign for a couple with a combined age of 108

We were treated to cake on my Dad's birthday by the Taj staff who secretly decorated my parents' room with towel sculptures, rose petals and a cake.  This brought back memories of our hotel lifestyle over a year ago.

More pictures to follow...

The Nilgiri Hills

I write this post sitting on the lawns of an old colonial hotel in Coonoor; a hill station and once outpost of the British Raj surrounded by tea plantations in Tamil Nadu.  The air is fresh and clear, the climate akin to a perfect English Summer's day, the landscape gloriously verdant and rolling, and the drink of choice is tea.  Unsurprisingly given these attributes, a trip to the Nilgiri hills has been high on my priority list for some time, and it has not disappointed me.

Relaxing with a brew while Phil is out running

The view from my table.

Shortly after uploading the photographs above, Phil returned from his run which led to an inevitable urgency to go inside for breakfast, and we're now back in Mumbai which feels like a world away from Coonoor.

It was Indian Independence Day on Friday (and a day off work) and we travelled to the Nilgiri Hills for a long weekend in a cool(er) climate.  It's a two hour flight from Mumbai to Coimbatore, where we stayed on Thursday night, before driving up into the hills on Friday morning.

A South Indian breakfast at our hotel room in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, to get us into the southern vibe

The biggest hill station in the Nilgiris is Ooty, which sits 8000ft above sea level and is famous for the narrow gauge steam train which meanders from the base of the hill up to the town.  We decided not to stay in Ooty itself on the basis that Coonoor looked quieter and less spoiled by mass tourism, but went to have a look on Friday with the plan to catch the 2pm steam train back down the mountain from Ooty to Coonoor.  Unfortunately, the waiting list for the train didn't go down quite fast enough so we missed out on this journey, a good reason to return in future!

In Ooty, we visited a tea factory and tea museum, which was full of tourists ignoring the interesting exhibits and buying lots of tea.  I loved watching the tea making process; from the collection and drying of the leafs, then the CTC (Crush, Turn & Curl) process, followed by some spinning, heating, general oxidising and, finally, packaging and drinking.  The process in itself is very simple and fairly old fashioned - I've learned a lot about tea over the weekend.

Huge trays of tea leaves,handpicked and currently being dried by fans underneath the trays 

The CTC machinery

We drove up to Doddabetta Peak, the highest peak in the Nilgiris, though underestimated the extreme nature of the traffic on Independence Day in an area with narrow roads and a large number of buses and oversized tourist vehicles.  We couldn't see much from the peak but it was all very jolly with families enjoying a trip out to celebrate the holiday.  After a visit to the Rose Garden, Lake (artificial) and a super-size biryani lunch, our driver hurtled back down the winding roads to drop us at our hotel in Coonoor.

One of the thousands of roses in the pretty garden, with an amazing range of names that I had no idea had been given to roses! 

This highlights the importance of careful thought when selecting a bunch of roses as a gift; the recipient could have read this sign.

The "Jennifer" rose. Sadly we couldn't find a Philip rose although wikipedia tells me that a "Philippe" rose exists, and that's close enough for me.

Coonoor is the second largest hill station in The Nilgiris and is famous for its tea plantations.  We stayed in a hotel which used to be a vicarage; and now sits next to the quaint church in a picturesque corner of Coonoor.  The hotel is the first time I have been in India and could have easily believed that I was in an English country garden in summer.  The hotel's history in itself is interesting; it was converted into a club / hotel in the late 19th century although Indians were not admitted unless they were royalty or similarly esteemed, a worryingly familiar story which doesn't give me great pride in my country...

Our hotel in Coonoor in the heart of India

We were expecting a wet and misty weekend in the monsoon but discovered that Ooty and Coonoor, despite being only 20km apart, have different weather patterns and only Ooty gets the early monsoon.  Coonoor will be dry(ish) until October.

We spent Saturday exploring the Coonoor area including Sims Park, a beautifully kept botanical garden in the town.  We went for a long walk visiting a tea plantation, local village, temple complete with impish children and a popular view point called Lambs Rock.  Our walk was around 20km in total and very peaceful until the last few kilometres when we hit the wall of traffic stuck on the narrow road between Coonoor and Lambs Rock which was clearly not wide enough for large tourist vehicles on both sides of the road.  We strolled past the gridlocked traffic, much to the amusement of the car passengers who found it unfathomable that anyone could have walked to the view point.  On this occasion, walking was a lot quicker than travelling there and back by car!  We were back at the hotel in good time to catch the first session of the cricket, not a popular topic of conversation in India at the moment...

Beautiful 

Part of Sims Park although it's really much nicer and more impressive than this photo suggests 

Highfield Tea Factory, where we had another factory tour 

More hills - we couldn't get enough of them 

We stumbled across a group of children playing with tyres and sticks near a temple.  They were very friendly and taken with Philip as he gave them a tutorial on Google Maps on his tablet. 

The ladies of the family came out and kindly fed us sweet tea and bread for lunch!  This girl, Gayatri, is around 17 and was charming, with good English.  She wants to study maths. 

Tea pickers 

Looking out over Lambs Rock 

 A group of boys were playing cricket outside a children's home and invited us in to bat and bowl.  Phil is showing off his silky bowling skills above...

..and I did a respectable job batting below

My legs were pretty achey by the end of the day as Phil and I went for an early morning run, not usually a successful joint activity as we have different ambient speeds...Phil is convinced that I'm not trying when I'm running at a speed comfortable for me so I always end up going too fast and getting tired out which happened again here, not helped by running up a massive hill at the start of the route!  On Sunday morning, I elected to read my book with a cup of tea in the sunshine instead.

Having a short break to admire the view

On Sunday, we visited a tea plantation called Tranquilitea which produces gourmet tea and runs tea tasting sessions. We were originally told that these sessions were fully booked for the weekend, but I kept calling and the owner kindly fitted us in on Sunday.  This was amazing.  The plantation is perched on top of the highest peak in Coonoor and is very peaceful.  We had a thorough and fascinating tea tutorial and enjoyed tasting a range of the teas produced by the plantation.  I cannot recommend this experience highly enough.  Anyone interested in tea should stay at Tranquilitea if possible and try to book the tea tasting session in advance if not.
 

Loving my tea at Tranquilitea

The teas lined up ready to taste.  We were tutored in the difference between flavour and body; and I now know my Silver Tips from my Pekoe, Green and Oolong. 

Afterwards, we explored Lower Coonoor which is more like a typical Indian town; not the cleanest but full of life and quirky things to see.  Phil needed fuel after a long morning run and a 100 rupee (less than £1) thali at a local pure veg restaurant did the trick.

Lower Coonoor - Bustling and more typically Indian than the hills

Phil's monster lunch.  I had the mini thali which I think was a children's meal as it was all non-spicy and rice based, which suited me fine.

Philip's birthday weekend in Gujarat

On Sunday, Philip had his 32nd birthday, or he is now 33 years running as we say here in India. Suddenly, time seems to be moving rather quickly. It's 10 years since I left school and spent the summer holidaying and bell ringing in Australia, 5 years since we bought our house in Cambridge and almost 3 years since we got married. Time marches on...

Anyway, we celebrated with a weekend away in Gujarat, the state directly north of Maharashtra, with an itinerary some way from the main tourist trail.  Gujarat is famous for several things; Mahatma Gandhi, the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi ("NaMo"), the best roads in India (thanks to NaMo), a prosperous business culture, salt flats (Gandhi again) and being a "dry" state.  To get a beer in Gujarat, one needs to register for an alcohol licence and this beer can then only be drunk in private.  Phil's birthday was going to be a sober one.

We started our journey on Friday evening on an overnight train from Bandra station, a mile or two from home, up to Mahesana, one stop north of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat.  The journey didn't start well as every taxi and autorickshaw we approached refused to take us the two miles to the station, probably on account of the traffic and difficulty getting back into Bandra again, so we were left to march through the crazy Friday night traffic to our destination.  Thankfully we'd left lots of time and were soon on our upper bunks in AC 2-tier, a comparative luxury relative to our more recent sleeper class train experiences, and enjoyed a decent seven hour sleep before our arrival in Gujarat at 7am the next morning.

Shortly before our stop, when we were waiting by the doors, the cleaning boys came round to sweep up the carriages and empty the bins.  I was a little horrified, though not surprised, when everything was swept into a pile and I was politely asked to stand aside so he could open the train door (whilst in motion) to sweep the whole lot outside.  Sigh.  It seems that my efforts to put things in the bin rather than on the floor were in vain; it doesn't make any difference.  I do feel sorry for those living by the train tracks.  Life is hard enough as it is without train loads of litter being swept on you each day.

Sweeping up

We were picked up by our driver at the station, a young chap who didn't know any English and didn't know where he was going, but appeared to be able to drive a car safely so all was well.  Google maps is our friend in India; getting around would be a lot more difficult without it.  We had arranged the car in advance and Phil had a planned our route, started with the Rani ki Vav, an ancient stepwell in Patan, an hour's drive from Mahesana.

Now a day driving round rural Gujarat to visit stepwells doesn't sound particularly thrilling, but stepwells are a little known gem of northern India.  Where rain is sparse, it is very important to conserve what you can when the rains come, therefore many deep wells were built by wealthy rulers.  These are not, though, my kind of well consisting of a hole in the ground and a bucket; these are serious pieces of architecture.  From what I've seen, it seems that building a flashy stepwell was the 10th century rich Indian equivalent of driving a sparkling new BMW as quickly as possible in the streets near our apartment in Mumbai.  It was something to show off about.

The Rani ki Vav is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is magnificent.  It was buried until the 1960s so is now beautifully preserved with incredibly ornate stone carvings.  The highlight of my trip was when we reached the top of the stepwell and looked down on a colourful mass of schoolgirls who behaved like they have never seen a white person before (which was probably the case).  They came running towards us, desperate for photographs and to shake our hands, with no embarrassment or inhibition.  The only slight difficulty we had was paying for our tickets to get in as our driver was incredulous that we were being charged 100 rupees (£1) for a ticket and couldn't understand why we weren't being given the 5 rupee rate.  I have long ago learnt that there is no point even trying to get the lower rate, resident or not.

Our lively friends at the stepwell

The astonishing Rani ki Vav 

The stepwell is covered with these carvings, immaculately preserved

From the stepwell, we moved on to Modhera, the site of a Sun Temple, the twin to the temple that we saw in Konark in February this year.  We hired a very enthusiastic guide who talked us through the carvings and structure of the temple.  The lessons that will stay with me are "never enter from the south" (not a good idea, apparently) and that 108 and 1008 are both lucky numbers.  There is a huge stepwell (a theme emerges...) with 108 mini-temples along with the main Sun Temple and entrance hall.  The temple itself used to contain an idol with a diamond embedded such that the sun would shine through the diamond at the Equinox and light up the whole temple.  Unfortunately, the statue and diamond are long gone, to be replaced with lots of smelly bats, but it's a good story.

 A herd of camels on the road

The 108 temple stepwell in front of the Sun Temple 

Note the woman giving birth in these carvings on the temple

Carvings on the temple - used for sex education lessons 

 Bats in the temple. Bats are very smelly.  I am not a fan.

The south exit from the temple - not to be used for entry

We had a sneaky roadside breakfast of deep fried spice lentil dumplings (veg, deep fried, very hot, never going to kill you) which our driver tried to supplement by offering us grubby fruits.  The intention was good, but I politely declined.

Our journey into Ahmedabad was quick owing to the excellent roads (tarmaced, no potholes, infrequent wildlife) though with the added excitement of deep flooding in places, though this didn't seem to bother our driver.  We made it through unscathed to our next stepwell stop; the Adalaj stepwell outside Ahmedabad.  This was fairly busy and, after a quick scamper down and up the steps, we were ready for our lunch.

Water-logged road.  The plastic barriers provided some guidance as to where the road ended and the river started. 

The Adalaj stepwell

Our driver took us to a Gujarati thali restaurant; a gut busting experience and possibly my favourite type of Indian cuisine.  Gujarati food is lighter and sweeter than north Indian food (close to the UK curry house style) and, to me, is simply delicious.  The flavours are intense without being dominated by chilli and the range of dishes is incredible.  It's all pure veg (no meat or eggs) but lacks nothing as a truly satisfying meal.  At some point, I will do a separate blog post dedicated to the Gujarati thali - it deserves it.

Full to the brim, we had some mid-afternoon mosque tourism at Sarkhej Roza, a complex of buildings on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.  This was rather cheery and I spoke with (smiled, said hello, how are you, ran out of conversation) several locals who were all friendly and welcoming.  I have found some mosques a little forbidding as a woman, but not here.

The mosque complex 

A boy with a mouth powered horn on his bicycle

Our accommodation was in the heart of the old city of Ahmedbad, in a beautifully renovated old bungalow run by the Neemrana hotel group.  This was really lovely; the aim of Neemrana is to keep as many original features of the old buildings as possible and the hotel achieved this goal.  We enjoyed a peaceful meal in the hotel that evening and were more than ready for sleep after a busy day.  We left the hotel with a copy of the Neemrana catalogue and lots of ideas for future trips in India!

Divan's Bungalow

On Sunday, Phil started his day with a long run along a track next to the river in Ahmedabad (crazy) and received his gifts (mainly running book and travel guide themes) before breakfast.  Fueled up, our day of exploring began with us walking round the old city to visit several old mosques and havelis (beautiful houses in a decrepit state) and soaking up the atmosphere.  Soaking up the atmosphere in an Indian city in the monsoon can be a more sensory experience than is ideal, but we got a feel for this industrious city (the old "Manchester of the East") and enjoyed its vibrancy and energy.

The cow and the milk 

 An example of the buildings in the old city

The Jama Masjid 

Inside the Jama Masjid

By one o'clock we were muddy, hungry and ready to sit down for Phil's birthday lunch (more thali!) at a recommend restaurant on the rooftop of a restored haveli (House of MG) in the heart of the city.  The food was excellent, although the rose and coconut icecream for dessert appeared to contain lumps of ghee which was a bit offputting, and we retained our equilibrium.

Birthday lunch

We hired an autorickshaw for the afternoon with a very cheerful driver to see another stepwell, a textiles museum in an impressive palace (no photos allowed sadly), a lake where the locals enjoy a Sunday afternoon walk, and Phil's birthday icecream at a nearby cafe (in lieu of cake).

The lake 

Phil's guide around one of mosques.  He was a friendly chap. 

Stepwell from a new angle 

Another hidden mosque that we stumbled across

Ahmedabad is full of treasures but you have to look through a lot of dirt and dilapidation to appreciate much of what it has to offer.  I thoroughly enjoyed our visit and would love to see many of the old houses returned to their former glory.  Our hotel demonstrated what can be achieved through conservation, but this requires money, which is needed for so much in India.  There aren't, however, many places in the world where would can walk out of you hotel to see a real life working elephant, and that's special.

Outside our hotel