Houseboat (Jan 6th continued)

Eventually we reached the coastal area again, which is an extensive area of lagoons, interspersed with canals and settlements, sometimes described as like Venice (but without that city's urban beauty). The largest body of water is Lake Venbanad, which extends south from Cochin and is separated into a fresh water part by a bridge, which we crossed on our way to Allepey. The lake is marked by a floating lily plant which is thickest at the edges (see photo) where is delicate lilac-blue flower intensifies its appearance. Abundant fish life too, so that fish-eating birds flock to it – white herons (and an occasional black one), kingfishers, cormorants (the cormorants looked like grebes when swimming but I saw one pop up with a catch (an eel or a long fish) which took some time to process. Grebes are perhaps vegetarians?!) And an egret which was a drab pale brown on the ground but miraculously in flight has white wings and a black back (Also a pair of golden-brown white-tipped winged fish eagles)

We met up with our houseboat – covered in a bamboo framed, rattan covered roof, like a Chinese river boat – and said goodbye to Sunil, our affable driver. The crew of three – engine –driver, captain and chef (not cook) – were to take us on a cruise through the canals and across the lake, with meals prepared and eaten on board. We stopped to purchase six plate-size prawns (fresh-water) on route (1000Rs per kilo, which was the weight of six of them).

Officially leisure traffic should moor at six pm, so that the locals can go fishing, but there is continual ferry traffic for the locals, which goes on much later. As we passed some of the can’s children would run alongside shouting, apparently, for ‘one pen’. We assembled a few old biros, but too late to see if they were what was wanted.

We moored slightly off shore overnight and feasted on our prawns – grilled in spices – but also some fish curry and ‘boatman chicken’. The chef has a web site with recipes.


The dwellings by the canalside were small, but permanent in the most part. As washing of clothes and persons was done in the canal, it would seem that running water, and electricity are not available to most. In addition to the well-stocked lake, coconut tress (and cashew trees) there were paddy fields where water could be fed in from the lake and waterways.

Rules and Customs for road users in India

1. Vehicles on a roundabout do not have priority.
2. Sound your horn as often as you like. Nobody will take offence.
3. Slow vehicles should not keep to the left. Anywhere in the road will do.
4. If there is a white line in the middle of the road, it should be used for guidance.
5. Pedestrians should walk in the road as it has a better surface than the pavement – assuming there is one.
6. Pedestrians should walk in the direction of traffic and should not walk in single file.
7. Pedestrians waiting at a zebra or other crossing should wait for a gap in the traffic – no vehicle will stop.
8. Pedestrians can cross the road anywhere they find convenient especially if slow or pulling a hand-cart.
9. If a motorist strikes a pedestrian it is bad luck for the pedestrian, but if he hits and animal it probably means a heavy fine or jail.
10. It’s ok to join a stream of traffic, or to cross it, at any time as long as oncoming traffic can stop in time. This also applies to: - making U-turns, stopping to set-down or pick-up passengers (which need not be done in the left-had lane), changing lanes, etc.
11. Do not get angry at other road users – you’ll not last 10 minutes.
12. It’s ok to carry as many people as you can crowd into or on your vehicle.
13. As per 10, it’s ok to go in the opposite direction for a short way.
14. If a policeman signals you to stop, do so, get out and find out how much he’ll take to let you go on. He needs to make a living too.

Kummily to Kumarakom

January 6th (Kumilly to Kumarokan)

Before breakfast two pairs of birds stayed long enough in a near by tree to enable us to have a good look. First was the red-crested cuckoo with red stripes to its wings and a mustard yellow back. Then the blackbird which had a surprisingly clear and resonant song, and was distinguished by a tail appendage of two long stalks with a small feather at the end, 10 or 12 inches from the end of the tail proper.

The roads were full on a Sunday morning with buses and pedestrians including many long distance pilgrims, singly and in groups, with their belongings in a bundle on their heads, trekking to some religious destination. Looking out for the variety of Christian churches I espied a Bethany Bible Institute, which Douglas Fairman would have known about, I surmised.

The descent to the coastal plain from around 4000 or 5000 feet was predictably vertiginous, and the occasional group of bus passengers whose stomachs were not up to the challenge were seen by the roadside – another reason why the more basic Indian buses have no glass in the side – windows – I had thought it was just for ‘air-conditioning’. Musing on the journey, I started a list of rules for driving in India.

Our driver

Sunil was our driver for nearly all the ten days, and was excellent. His English was good, and what he had to say was worth listening to, so, for instance he told us various Malayam meanings, like Periyar - sweet water and Kerala - land of coconuts.

Driving on Keralan roads meant the usual avoiding of other road users, but also of numerous potholes and ramps as we passed from one stretch to another, built by different contractors presumably. Sunil slowed down and negotiated each without damage to car wheels or our tummies.

He also directed us away from over expensive shops and restaurants. The day that he started with a huge bee sting from sleeping in the car park near big bees, was also the day that he missed breakfast because our start time was before the staff canteen was open. By lunch time he must have been so hungry. He took us to a small town restaurant - we'd never have found it - but it was clean, simple and had typical Keralan food. So we enjoyed our lunch - a sort of smorgasbord of vegetables and tuna curry, washed down with water boiled with a herb that made it go red - very good for digestion apparently. Finally, he insisted on paying for our meals.

Sunil found the Kalari for us, helped us book it. He knew the spice garden was worth visiting, because he had obviously been there lots of times before because he knew a lot of the information that the guide gave us - they had become good friends. And he also found us a cheaper massage parlour outside the hotel, pointing out that these masseurs - a husband and wife team - were very experienced, and explained that hotels tended to use trainees. Sunil was the one who realising that I was enthusiastically photographing everything pointed out interesting things to photo.

Sunil dropped us off on the eighth day at Lake Venabad, and we hoped that on our last day he would be free to pick us up from the hotel and take us to the airport - we'd really enjoyed his company, but in the event someone else turned up - his English was not up to conversation.

However, after we'd checked in, Anesh, our rep from Distant Frontiers, pointed at the door - there was Sunil waving at us. We couldn't go out because we'd checked in, and he wasn't allowed to come in to the airport - so we could only chat through the gap by the guard as people came in. We have - had his email and meant to keep in contact, find out how his two children do at school and hope to hear that his wife keeps well. But I've lost the email. :-(

Kumarakom

We are here in this fabulous hotel, surrounded by water, lagoon and palms.

Our bungalow overlooks the peaceful lagoon, its sounds being squawks of birds, and no muezzin. It is extravagant luxury. For example, we have a bathroom with nine towels, as big as a double bedroom and not only a bath - the first one we've seen and one with a shower attachment, but two showers - one inside and one outside in a completely enclosed tiny courtyard with pebbles, decorative brass urns and blossoming trees into which exotic birds fly to sip the nectar. You can watch them from the bath through the large picture window.

However, it does not have the ever present bucket, jug and hose next to the loo, strange to Western eyes, but useful for washing, for shaving water (no sink plugs) and refreshing when suffering from s&d.

Lazy day

Jan 5th
This was lazy day with a morning trip to a spice garden, reinforcing some of what we’d learnt before about plants like black pepper and vanilla - see photos - but also introducing the periwinkle – source of the cancer therapy drug, Vencristin, which was used on my HL 16 years ago, and the banana flower (see photo), which looks like a pointed cabbage, and can be cooked in a similar way.




After lunch we spent the afternoon in our room or on the balcony reading until a sudden afternoon rain storm, which made the dirt road outside the hotel a quagmire through which we picked our way to see an hour’s demonstration of Kalari (this is a martial art, perhaps the first one, but certainly one of the oldest). Here is a short video of it - no sound.

To Thekkady

January 4th Munnar to Thekkady (forest) / Kumily (town) or Periyar (river and lake)

We ate breakfast in the Tall Trees restaurants, much impressed by the view through the roof, then packed our bags and descended from the plantation to Munna where we visited a tea museum and saw the mechanics of tea processing. There is only one tea plant whose leaf buds are picked and turned into white tea, (the tip before the leaf has started to open in growth), green tea and black tea (which are both processed mechanically (CTC – cutting, tearing and curling), to reduce the leaf size), winnowing to remove the stalks. Then black tea goes through an oxidation process and is winnowed into about 8 sizes – bigger means more aroma, small means more colour. Blending then produces types for different markets, customers or packaging such as teabags.

Then we set on our way here – a 100 km drive scheduled to take 3 hours but Sunil, our driver, explained that one section hadn’t been upgraded and due to a dispute was in very bad condition. After lunch in a Keralan style local restaurant (fish stew or fish curry and pink coloured drink made from infusing a local spice leaf) Sunil embarked on a detour which meant we only had 5 km of pot holes to negotiate, so that we arrived and went straight to Periyar lake (a reservoir) for a boat-trip – deer, bison and many birds – white heron, snake bird and cormorant nests built on some of the tree stumps which stuck out of the lake – a close view of cormorant fledglings waiting for more lunch – but no elephants.

We booked into our hotel and booked ayuvedic full-body and head and feet massages for both of us. Unlike my previous relaxing muscle massage, this was a vigorous stroking after application of hot oil (and while completely starkers) of (almost) every part – arrived at the blood-vein layout of the human form. Finally we were cooked, separately, in a steam bath apparently powered from a Prestige pressure cooker.

Still oily, we ate an evening meal, as it was nearly 9pm (the massage took about an hour and a half).

Under instructions to keep the oil on until morning, we soon opted for bed, when a gecko climbed up the wall to have a peek at the world.

I slept well, but was awake before 5am to hear the electronic peal of bells and striking of the hour followed by some uplifting (I presume) words. All this was followed by the call of the local muezzin – also amplified – half an hour later. For a state which is about 20% Christian the local churches are surprisingly prominent with their gaudy vernacular architecture, the many schools attended by neatly turned-out, uniformed children, (to judge by one extensive washing line, the school also launders the uniforms). The churches are also diverse – Anglican, RC, Orthodox, Syrian Christians, Seventh Day Adventists and no doubt many others.

Tea plantation at Munnar

Jan 3rd
We packed our bags and embarked on a scheduled 3-hour journey, which immediately got an hour added trying to get through the traffic jams in Cochin. Still wondered why it was going to take 3 hours to do 100km, but as the forest and hills approached, the road started to wind and the pace slowed as the spice plantations emerged.



We stopped after 2 hours for tea and a quick tour of the different plants in a small nursery – pepper, cardamom, vanilla, coffee and the amazing jackfruit.

But the pace slowed as the hills were only foot-hills – now it was in minutes per km. As we got higher the tea plantations started the road became more winding, narrower, potholed, and vertiginous; stomachs became queasy. Eventually at around 5,000 feet we arrived at the hotel too late for lunch, but a complimentary fruit bowl and a glass of beer sufficed (we had bought the beer en-route at a state liquor shop of forbidding aspect – metal barrier ensured a single file to the first grille where the order was placed and paid for, collected at a second grille before exiting).

We then toured the tea plantation on foot where the guide explained that the bushes, which by plucking and pruning would normally grow to 80 foot trees, were at waist height, closely packed, but with room to reach over each bush to pick the leaves (every 12 days).
The bushes are pruned every 3 years and live for 100 years. The complicated ownership of the plantation, and its history were explained by the guide who said that most of the product went to Tetley’s –thus soothing my annoyance at come to a tea plantation hotel and finding Tetley tea bags in our room. We also had a long discussion about the telegraph poles, made of old (1901) pieces of narrow gauge railway track (labeled BNR, which we later decoded as Bengal Nagpur Railway). Several red-bearded Bulbuls were spotted before the evening drew in and we returned to our room snapping the setting sun (see photos).



As we prepared for dinner, the phone rang and an invitation to a local dance demonstration issued – this turned out to be 3 young lads doing fire dancing to Bollywood hits – very impressive in close-up it was and left the mystery intensified as we felt the heat of fire-breathing a couple of yards away, but almost unable to feel the heat of a handful of flames as they were offered to us.

I looked forward to a quiet night’s sleep in the forest silence but as soon as I turned off my light something crawled down my arm – only after two attempts did I espy a hopping insect and give it a terminal sleep.

To Cochin

Jan 1st 2008
We did manage to wake up at 5 am (11.30pm body time), to get our taxi to the airport. Ahmedabad traffic at this time of the morning was easier to cope with there being none, with the almost sole exception of a young man on a scooter with a cricket bat strapped on his back – a Freddy Flintoff style dedication.

We arrived without problem at Cochin to be garlanded with flowers by our rep from Distant Frontiers and to be introduced to Sunil who was to be our driver during our stay. We were deposited at our hotel on one of the islands in the inland sea on which Cochin is situated.

In the evening we had a walking tour of another island (or part of it) called Fort Cochin where the old trading settlements were positioned – Jews, Portuguese, Dutch and English. Being New Years Day it was a holiday and Fort Cochin had a carnival so the narrow roads were thronged with happy (but not drunk as the first of every month is a dry day in Kerala). We passed the Dutch cemetery, the Church of St. Francis (see photo of us) where Vasco da Gama the Portuguese navigator was initially interred, and the Chinese Fishing Nets (see photo) – a productive method of fishing (shore based) built by Chinese traders who came to Cochin.

On leaving the walk we were dropped at Cottage Industries – a national enterprise for craft work sales. We were regaled with green tea with cardamom, smooth sales talk and beautiful Kashmir carpets before escaping to look at some jewellery (more tea, more super sales patter) before we finally made an empty-handed and slightly guilty exit.


In all this, we had received an excellent potted history of Cochin from Susan, our guide for the walk, which we were able to add to the knowledge gained from our stay in Ahmedabad, and the reading of Edward Luce’s book – ‘In Spite of the Gods’.

Although it was a dry day we found a bottle of Kingfisher beer in the fridge in our room, which served as an appetizer before sampling the sea food restaurant where we selected our main course (a pearl spot fish from the local waters which are neither salt or fresh) some massive prawns (plain and tiger) and crisp-fried anchovies as an appetizer.

Jan 2nd
We returned to the old part of Cochin with Mr. Joyce as our guide (he seemed to know many people and his mother still lived there) and commenced with the Jewish quarter. First we looked through the gate at the cemetery and then walked down the main street full of shops just opening before arriving at the Jewish Synagogue, a small hall paved with Chinese floor tiles and lit by many chandeliers of Belgian origin. An anteroom displayed a painted sequence of the length of Jewish involvement in Cochin – supposedly back to the time BCE of King Solomon and ultimately to a grant of authority to dwell in Cochin – there was a thriving community until the new state of Israel was created when almost all emigrated to it (because India for all its tolerance of different religions did not accommodate aspects of the Jewish one - observing the Sabbath for instance).

Next was the Dutch Palace built by them for the local ruler – quite small, with an elaborately carved roof, and murals of Hindu mythology (naughty). Finally, to an Anglican church built originally by the Portuguese, rebuilt by Dutch Protestants, and the first resting place of the navigator Vasco da Gama. After another look at the Chinese fishing nets we stopped again at a different cottage industry outlet to wife’s benefit and a hole in my credit card.

Afternoon spent by the pool (by me, wife was in the hotel shop doing more damage to my credit).
Then we went to see a Katakali dance demonstration preceded by watching the make-up being applied.

Kerala - Cochin

We're in the Casino Hotel, which is a totally different experience from the Host-Inn. For instance, we have two towels each, instead of one between us! However, the Host-inn had two internet terminals - here there is only one, though there is wi-fi. I have to wait for access. And it costs twice as much.

I've added something about Rusi Uncle at http://ejh2.blogspot.com/search/label/family%20history

I'll make other entries shortly. I have to check my email and the hotel shop.

Yesterday evening we went for a walk round the old city, where plenty of people were enjoying the party - celebrating new year. We saw a lot of evidence of the Catholicity of the people here - 20% of the population is Christian. There are lorries painted with holy pictures of Jesus, or Jesus and Mary. One small van was labelled

"My boss is a Jewish carpenter."

Adrian's Monday in Ahmedabad

A little tenderly, I got up and we went out shopping with our host, K, as a guide. His mother-in-law had a range of womens clothes to see in her house (where some tame, if still fearful, monkeys came for peanuts).

Then we walked to a mens clothing shop to get some more goods to take home.

Monday shopping

It's siesta time (after 4 local time, nearly 11 at home) and we're in the hotel reading, writing and will say our 'goodbyes' this evening.

K picked us up this morning along with his Auntie Beris to go shopping for kurti (short tops) and kurtas (long tops). His mother-in-law sells them from her home, and we arrived to find choices of clothing already arranged on hangers in the sitting room. There were several of us women there, trying on various colours and sizes. I saw colours like turquoise that daughter would like, and wanted something for SD#2 too. Her father recommended a red one, and we will have to find out if it will fit her. I chose a turquoise blue cotton one with Hindu patterns on for daughter but they didn't really have anything small enough for her, and a blue one with Parsi markings for me, as well as a pair of trousers with lace round the base of the legs. I'd paid and we were about to leave, when M-i-L showed me a lovely black kurti with patterns including green. I tried it on, as she assured me that it would fit, but it was too tight round the arms, so I was about to discard it when I realised it is bound to fit daughter. So I got out my purse ...

Then K walked us up the road for about half a mile to a men's outfitters where husband bought himself a kurtus (a long one) and we got a blue one with special patterns on for son. K says he guarantees he will like it.

Then it was back to the compound for a cup of tea and a parsee cake made of dal paste - lovely - and to say goodbyes to a lot of the family, such as the little boys, the auntie, Z's sister, K's cousin, and even the servants, who were very friendly and kind. There were invitations to New Zealand where K lives, and to come back in 2010 for the younger boy's Navjote. I think we might come.

Navjote - Adrian's report

We started with even more difficulty than yesterday before K with his elder son Z (whose Navjote was to take place that evening) came to take us to the hall where there was to be another communal lunch.

I was able to spend time watching the kites - coming to the idea that they occupied the ecological niche that seagulls do in England - when a couple of vultures appeared and took up residence in the trees surrounding the property. Dhun told me they were white backed vultures (they had large white patches on the under wings) and that vultures were under threat. The use of Diclofenac in the cattle herds was the culprit (the eggs did not hatch?). This in turn affected the Parsis who leave their dead on towers for the vultures to reduce to bones. Green parrots and a type of starling (?) with a yellow beak and white/yellow flashes on the edge of its wings appeared, and in the evening there were cormorants and a heron in flight.


We returned early in the evening so that we could see the public part of the ceremony (the private part involved something to do with the purified/concentrated urine of a cow of spotless white coat, and a ceremonial cleansing bath).


The public ceremony took place on a stage backed with a semi-circular structure draped with cloth representing the sun's rays, decorated with flowers and a large Z.




An urn was burning a fire lit from the perpetual fire maintained in the holy temple since Parsis came to India. Four white garbed and hatted priests, looking more like surgeons ready to perform an operation, led him onto the stage to kneel on a white cloth. Prayers, etc, were said, petals scattered and finally a long white thread was unravelled and tied around Z's waist. This took about twenty minutes and public interest diminished as the ceremony was inaudible, and probably in Sanskrit so would have been unintelligible to most anyway.

An orgy of photo-opportunities then ensued before the band (with leader/drummer and guitarist from the family) started to perform, at much the same time as dinner service started. More Parsi food served on banana leaf plates, with a fish wrapped in a chutney paste and steamed as a new (to us) offering.

The band were still going, but were offering music to dance to, so we joined the group to shake our limbs about, during which a makeshift turban was wrapped around my head (see embarrassing photos)


We were told, during the evening, how the Parsis who fled persia (though there are still some there) came to part of India where the king said his country was too full to take any more people and illustrated his point by showing a full bowl of milk. The Parsi leader sprinkled sugar into the milk without it spilling to prove that they could sweeten life, and would not overcrowd the country, in the same way as the sweetened milk was still within the bowl. They were then permitted to stay, as long as they married only within their community and adopted local customs (such as the wearing of saris by the women).

The Navjote

It's around 10.30 pm, and we've just got back from the Navjote - around 400 people at the Zorastian Hall.

We went in time for the ceremony, though we must have been the first non-Parsees to arrive. If you aren't a Parsi, then you can't go into the temple, but after the ceremony, they come out and the new Navjote (nav means new) repeats the prayers as the priest says them.

He arrived in a procession with his very proud parents and grandparents, garlanded in flowers, newly bathed as the ceremony requires, wrapped in red to be dressed in new garments.

We watched as the priest ran the thread round his waist several times. In future he will have to do this every time he washes. I thought the thread was of 27 threads, but Mr Gai tells me that it is 72 and the number represents 72 scriptures.

We had a lot of photo taking, and video taking, then a meal - a Parsi fish dish for the non-vegetarians.

Then there was music, with Khaizad's uncle Vispee on the drums and his cousin, Harmony singing. Watch out for the recordings I made - I'll put them on our home site. People started to dance, Khaizad with exhuberance and so I tried to photo him, but found myself on the patio dancing too. Next I looked up to find husband, not only dancing, but dancing with a red shawl wrapped round his head like a turban. Everyone was high with happiness, enthusiam and gaiety. Toddlers, teenagers, parents and grandparents danced.

Finally, the music ended, and people drifted off. Khaized put us in a rickshaw to make our own way back to the hotel.

Saturday 29th December - Adrian

We struggled to get out of bed as our bodies still said that we were in the small hours and went downstairs to the small room which called itself a restaurant for continental breakfast - tea/coffe, pineapple juice and toast. Almost as soon as we were finished we were taken off for lunch at the Zoroastrian Hall (1929), a large building like a church hall, with lawn in front and terraces or patios at the front and sides. One of these had long tables laid out for lunch, where we sat as large platters were filled with a first course of chappatis, pickle and a meat curry, followed by a second spicy dish with rice.

After lunch four adults and two children piled into a rickshaw (a 2 or 4 stroke 3-wheeled vehicle in green and yellow with an old-style convertible hood. I sat in the front alongside the driver - a dubious privilege as the horrors of the traffic are even closer there, and, as the small front wheel is almost underneath you, even closer to the wheels of bicycles, scooters, and the backs and legs of pedestrians, the hand carts and the monstrous fume belching buses.

I should have mentioned that we stopped first at the apartment of Zenobia and Noshir, the grand parents of the small boy whose navjote ceremony (a sort of first-comnmunion) was the cause of all the celebrations.

In the afternoon, while wife caught up with her sleep, I went for a walk, first of all to the completely misnamed 'Italian Bakery' (I asked what Italian bread they had but the Indian girl at the counter told me they had none).

I carried on walking, along the line of the old-city walls (brick-built and extensive but in disrepair) as I felt that the river which flows through Ahmedabad (dividing it into and old and a new town by its considerable width), lay behind the buildings on the opposite side of the road. As I walked, the new buildings opposite the wall (hotels, apartments, the Mount Carmel primary school and the Ahmedabad Rifle Club which was now degorging contestants from a National competition) thinned out and the spaces betweeen occupied by shanty settlements of increasing squalor as I approached a cross-road and turned left to find a bridge crossing the river (Sabarmati?)

Rusi Uncle - how we met

Nilu & I were reminiscing how Rusi Uncle and I came to meet. He had to work in Leyland for six months, and we used to catch the same bus home in the afternoon, me home from junior school, he after work.
He used to talk to me and offer me sweets - Rowntrees fruit gums - so I knew they were all right, but puzzled at my parents' instruction, which I obeyed:

"Never take sweets from strangers."

And I sensed that he was a kind gentleman, knowing also that he missed his own daughter. He missed her and I reminded him of her. When it turned out that she was two years younger than me, at the age of 8, I was even more puzzled; how could I, such a big girl, be like a little girl?

I wanted to show him where I lived. In order to do this, I would get off the bus the stop before my home, then run the 100-150 yards as fast as I could so I could point it out to him as the bus passed , carrying him on to his digs. As I usually couldn't beat the bus, it took me a week of these sprints before I got near enough to point it out.

N tells me the background to RU's emotions at that time. She was convinced that she was going to England with him, and at the airport was saying goodbye to everyone else, not to him, because she was going to go with him. It was only when he walked off without her that she realised. He turned and looked back as she cried. He cried.

When he returned to India, he sent me photos of the family - I think this one must be of Nilufer's Navjote, and a present of India coins, which started my coin collection.

Now talking to Nilufer, watching her with her own daughter, I miss my daughter - there must be some thing in the K and our family that reminds us of ourselves.

Adrian's first impressions

Ahmedabad 28th December
We flew into Mumbai airport by Jet Airways - noticing the shanty town by its side as we landed. International airports are usually a prestige monument to the host nation, but Mumbai airport fails to impress and as we transferred by bus to the domestic terminal, with closer contact to the neighbouring shanties, and the building work on the warehouses (unfinished so that cardboard packaged goods were out in the open) with women carrying building materials on their heads, the impression worsened. The domestic terminal is new but the expected electronic announcement boards were absent so that boarding was organised by announcements and rail way style destination boards at the gates - onto another bus to the plane on the tarmac.

We were met by Kaizad and one of his sons, with a cousin to drive a small and battered four-seat er into which we five and luggage were piled - seat belts ? - no! Nothing but the experience can prepare you for the horror of traffic in Ahmedabad - traffic in Palermo was peaceful and well-regulated by comparison. There is a continual beeping of horns to the extent that as a warning signal this exercise is pointless through indecipherability in the overall noise. There are no lanes marked - even in the few places where an all but indistinguishable mark exists it is ignored entirely - there is often no directional discipline, and crossing, entrances and exits are a complete free for all - with people and vehicles dashing into and across any free spaces. Bicycles, pedestrians from the fleet to almost lame, hand and horse cats, scooters and three-wheeled ''rickshaws' jostle with cars, lorries and buses, all without regard for each other. Not to mention ubiquitous dogs and the odd bullock grazing on greenery in the central reservation as additional hazards to be negotiated. No wonder the sky is filled with kites wheeling away in their dozens.


January 14th is the festival day or competition for the flying of man-made kites, when the sky becomes almost invisible with them, it is said. Remnants of unsuccessful kites are wrapped around every overhead wire and by the side of the road from the airport, boys were laying out lengths of white and fluorescent red threads on poles in preparation for the big day.

We were deposited at a small hotel. Across the road was an opulent 'Le Meridien' which we went into when ours did not know how to deal with travellers cheques. They couldn't deal with ours as we were not resident there, but phoned across the road with the necessary information and half an hour later a banker and his driver turned up so that we could perform a transaction in the hotel restaurant, sealed with a cup of tea and some social conversation.

Also across the road was a building labelled 'The Zoroastian Womens Ind. Coop' indicating the Parsee community of whom we were guests, and behind our hotel was a mosque, the PA system amplified muezzin of which woke us at dawn local time (1 am ish GMT).

First Impressions

Husband asks how you'd give this hotel Host-Inn, opp le Meridien, a star rating, but adds

"perhaps you'd give it an asteroid rating?"

However, at Rs1460/- per night for a double room, it costs only about 19 pounds sterling. Moreover, it is clean and friendly.

Last night we went to a party, just friends and family, but perhaps a hundred people. Zenobia wrote to me years ago about her friends Ferose and Farida, so I'm pleased to meet them. And Kaizad's friends from catering and management school and Noshir's friends from the bank where he worked. I should have remembered that when I had to change my travellers cheques.

We were introduced to everyone, initially formally as we went round a semi circle of chairs, but everyone was pleased to come and talk to us and make us feel welcome and tell us about themselves too. We met Z's brother from Bombay, who explained something about the Parsee religion. I hadn't realised how conservatively religious the family was, and that Rusi Uncle was a priest.

The party was on the grounds of a school, well out of the city centre, in the countryside - the 'jungle' is what Behzad, Z's 4 year -old grandson called it - lit by lots of tiny lights hanging from the trees that surrounded the 'playground' where we sat and ate and drank and chatted. We had lots of lovely nibbles, followed by a main course of rice and dal, washed down with sprite (or some sort of local home made concoction - this is a dry state).

Dhun (Noshir's brother) told us a lot about his media work, including with the Wild Fowl and Wetland trust in the UK and how that is influencing and improving tourist access to a mangrove park. He also told me about how Rusi Uncle passed away in 1994.

Beris, Zenobia's mother's sister-in-law told me how good the shopping was in Ahmedabad, and we've agreed to go together on 31st.

At around 11.30 we piled (7 of us) into a car, and they brought us back to our hotel with a promise to pick us up the next day (this morning) for another party.

This morning we had a cup of tea at Zenobya and Noshir's flat - I've been writing to this address for years, and at last get to see it.

Later we were driven in a rather grander car to the Zorastian temple, - you can't go right into the centre if you are not a parsi, - where there was another fine meal. We sat outside under an awning at long tables, one side only, so that the waiters could serve you down the other side.


Inside you could see them making the chappattis, and they were lovely and light and small. Then a monkey jumped on to and ran across the awning - you couldn't see it - just it's shadow, and then a long grey tail hanging from the tree where it stopped.

I met Z's cousin Rose, who lives in England, and Farida. She introduced me to her father, who said "Don't you remember me?" It was Mr Gai, the gentleman in Delhi who had so looked after Vera (McNamara) and me in 1975.

Now we are finishing a siesta in the hotel, to be picked up for the first of the celebrations for the Navjote, that takes place tomorrow.