Keith's & Karen's Photos: December 2014

Keith and I spent about two weeks visiting sites in northern India’s “Golden Triangle” (Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra) and in Nepal with an organized tour called The Treasures of India and Nepal, offered by AHI.

Click on the map to see it larger.

Our group was organized through the alumni associations of the UW-Madison, McGill University, and the University of Saskatchewan. Our tour director, Sergey Pukanov, third from left in the front row, is a charming professor of linguistics from the University of Tula in Russia. Our Indian tour guide is Ajay (still trying to find where I wrote his last name), second from left in the front row.

We saw a snake charmer.

Near the Amber Fort

Our Indian guide, Ajay, told us the snake was defanged and devenomed and that it would be okay if we accepted the snake charmer’s invitation to touch it. Our Russian travel director, Sergey Pukhanov, firmly announced that no one in his group was going to do any such thing.

We rode an elephant.

We went to a nature preserve in the countryside for our elephant rides. Ajay made sure to point out that his company, Indebo, refuses to do business with the companies that keep elephants in the city. I was glad he acknowledged the value of treating elephants humanely, but I remain unconvinced that it’s in any elephant’s nature to give tourist rides.

We did see evidence that the mahouts (elephant handlers) placed the elephants’ comfort over the tourists’ interests. Although we had been promised an opportunity to give the elephants their baths, the mahouts refused when the temperature dipped too low and allowed us only to give the elephants drinking water and to refresh their painted designs. Interesting fact: Both mahouts and elephants start work when they are in their early adulthood, and their working lifespans are similar. So it often works out that one mahout and one elephant spend their entire working lives as a pair.

We saw cows wandering the streets.

Ajay explained that the cows are sacred in the Hindu culture and that killing one is a crime. We saw no effort to control their movements beyond honking at them. The cattle are owned and used normally while they are still giving milk, but when one becomes economically useless, it’s simply turned out to wander. Because people also believe that giving food daily to a cow (the first bread of the morning) is “auspicious” (a word we heard a lot on this trip), the cows get by. Families often have 'friend cows' that wander by each morning for their bread. The cows’ droppings seem to be promptly picked up, and either disposed of or used for fuel.

We sat down with holy men.

These holy men hang out at Pashupatinath, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Nepal used for cremations and memorial activities. They are smeared with ashes to remind us all of our origin and our destination. Our guide said some are actually holy men and others simply make a living by having their photos taken with tourists. I suspect all are probably some of both. Even holy men have to eat; and we're all holy.

We saw ruins in the wilderness.

More than one story line in popular entertainment has relied upon finding a deserted ancient castle in the jungle. I had always assumed this was fantasy. Apparently not.

India’s inhabitants have been building stone structures for more than a thousand years and not bothering to dismantle them when they had no further use for them. If more of North America’s aboriginals had built with stone instead of wood and buffalo hides, we’d probably have the same thing here.

These photos are from the Ranthambore Tiger Preserve.

When I asked our Ranthambore guide about the deserted structures we were seeing in the wilderness, he casually explained, “Somebody probably lived there, or needed a defensive fort, or some maharaja wanted a hunting lodge.” The question didn’t seem to interest him.

From a few glances at the ground, I could see why they were building with stone instead of wood. In many places in Ranthambore, the stone seemed to volunteer its use as building material by breaking naturally into blocks.

Can you see the tiger hiding in the grass?
Neither could we. We saw no tigers, darn it.
Hard to say how many saw us, though.

We got dots on our foreheads.

We got several different explanations of the meaning. It’s clear that the hotels and restaurants that dot your forehead do it as a welcome blessing. People also dot their foreheads when the visit a Hindu temple; in that context, I know it signifies the opening our a third eye, through which we can perceive spiritual, rather than only material, realities.

We learned to say “Namaste.”

Everyone in our group took eagerly to the Indian/Nepali form of greeting. One of our tour director’s first instructions was to refrain from shaking hands with the natives. It’s considered too assertive. Instead, you greet people by placing your palms together, nodding your head slightly, and saying “Namaste,” which roughly translated means “I honor the divine in you.” We all decided we liked it better than shaking hands. For one thing, you can give this greeting from across the room or when walking past someone like a doorman.

We saw the Himalayas.

From a distance, to be sure, but we saw the Himalayas.

Something about the airplane's window glass must have interacted with the lens on Keith's camera to create this rainbow effect. We saw only the natural colors as we looked out the airplane window.

I don't know whether we saw Everest, but these mountains were impressive enough for me.

Next: The Ten Biggest Surprises, Part One.

At Humayun's Tomb, Delhi

Ask any international traveler why it’s worth the time, cost, and inconvenience, and he or she will likely to cite the benefits of seeing the wide range of human capabilities. We go through our daily lives assuming that the way we do things—going to the bathroom, building a house, cleaning the streets, worshiping, whatever—is either the only way to do it or the best way. But our species is capable of coming up with far more creative solutions and adapting to far more varied conditions than we usually assume until we see with our own eyes.

Here are what Keith and I consider to be the top ten surprises we saw in India and Nepal, in no particular order.

1. The bathroom

Within minutes of landing in Delhi, I got my first culture shock. As most travelers do, I headed for the bathroom as soon as I got off the plane. When I opened the door to the stall, I saw a porcelain hole in the ground. Hmmm.

Fortunately, we never found ourselves in a facility that didn't also offer sit-down toilets. Considering that I (like most adult Americans) don't have the flexibility to sit in a squatting position and that I wear pants instead of a sari, I didn’t even try to use the Indian-style toilets. They also make little use of toilet paper; instead, most toilet stalls were equipped with spray hoses or faucets with small buckets. We learned to carry our own toilet paper. I did try once to use the squirting hose, but got my clothes wet.

2. Fragrance
I’ve never before been on a trip where I regretted not being able to bring home samples of the country’s smells. Even on the most crowded dirty streets, if it wasn’t aromatic spices, it was incense, oils, or flowers. Our guide explained that Indians’ attention to fragrance dates back to the earliest human cultures on the Indian subcontinent. Vedic gardens (the ancient culture, predating Muslim influence) focused on fragrance—jasmine, champa, etc.—while the Moghul gardens incorporated water features, pavilions, and pagodas. British-style gardens, he said, emphasized lawns, peacocks, and swans.

Bowls of water with floating flower petals are a common sight.
Taj Palace Hotel, Delhi

When the main feature of the ashtrays is a large fresh flower, how can a hotel lobby NOT smell nice?

Indians must rip up millions of flowers every day, for all the ways they use petals.
This is how we were welcomed to a truck stop along the road to Agra.

3. Peaceful religious coexistence

The most reassuring surprise was the length and depth of religious tolerance. Anyone who knows the history of India’s independence can be forgiven for believing India has always been plagued by religious conflict. While under British rule (1857-1947), the subcontinent had been a single colony, but was partitioned upon independence into India and Pakistan, with Pakistan intended to be majority Muslim. Millions were displaced in the upheaval, hundreds of thousands died, and the sibling states have not had friendly relations over the years.

The only evidence of religious conflict, either historical or current, we saw on our trip was a few defaced carvings, from which Muslims had years ago removed the faces. At Qutb Minar, we saw an Islamic mosque built in 1193 CE with materials taken from existing Hindu temples, but were told the motives at that time were more political than religious (to the extent people at that time made such a distinction.)

The Qutb Minar complex in Delhi was built by Sultan Qutbuddin Aibak in the late 12th century. His conquest of the area marked the beginning of Islamic rule on the Indian subcontinent. Notice the base of the large minaret in the background, the largest brick minaret in the world.

The full minaret from a greater distance.
The entire complex was built with bricks from dismantled
Hindu temples that had previously occupied the site.

Keith and I are standing in a small forest of pillars that marked the first flowering
of the unique elements that came to exemplify Indian architecture and decoration--
a merger of Islamic intricacy and Hindu exuberance for natural motifs.

Aside from this early 12th century dismantling of a Hindu temple complex to create an Islamic one, we saw consistent evidence of tolerance, cooperation, and mutually beneficial cooperation. Just a few of the examples:

India's premier landmark is an Islamic tomb. Although India was intended to be largely Hindu after partition congregated the Muslims in Pakistan, the most recognizably Indian landmark is an Islamic tomb, with a mosque on either side.

A couple of us had the odd experience of taking a photo outside the Taj Mahal
and later noticing there were no people other than the main subject.
There were plenty of people milling around when I looked back at Keith,
but none of them were in the frame when he snapped this.

Muslim prayer in a Hindu temple. During our visit to a modern Jaipur Hindu temple, the Birla Mandir dedicated to Shiva, most people were facing the icons of Shiva and Parvati to pay their respects or to pray. The signs on the temple clearly indicated people of all faiths were welcome, and we must have been there at a time when Muslims are to pray, because I also saw a man kneeling with his forehead on the floor, facing sideways from the altar—toward Mecca, I assume. No one seemed to consider this odd.

The Nepali incarnation of the Hindu goddess Devi is a Buddhist. Hindus in both India and Nepal, and perhaps some Buddhists, believe Buddha to be the ninth incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Nepal and Tibet, Hindu, Buddhist, and animist beliefs and practices have respectfully coexisted for so long they have melded in many ways. In Kathmandu, we visited the local ‘living goddess’ Kumari. This child is embraced by the Nepalese Newari community as an incarnation of Devi, the quintessential form of every Hindu Goddess. Because she must be a prepubescent girl, she needs to be replaced at regular intervals. When a new Kumari is chosen, she must come from a Buddhist family.

A scanned postcard. We were not allowed to take
the goddess's photo.

Religious accommodation in the harem. At Fatehpur Sikri, the palatial residence of Mughal Emperor Akbar built in the late 1500's, we saw different rooms set aside and decorated specifically for his Christian wives, his Muslim wives, and his Hindu wives.

Enough paint survives in Akbar's Christian wives' quarters that we can sort of imagine how it might have looked.

Fabulous red sandstone carving in the Muslim wives' quarters. The design was filled in with gold and jewels, all taken from the palace (duh) while it was abandoned.

For what it’s worth, I suspect the long history of religious tolerance in India may have something to do with the nature of the Hindu and Buddhist belief systems, both of which calmly accept the fact that human perception of the unitary Divine can take many legitimate forms.

4. Traffic

Of all the things that surprised us, the “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it” award goes to India’s and Nepal’s traffic habits. I cannot bring myself to call them rules of the road. I had seen this viral YouTube video, and assumed this intersection was atypical in some way. It is not. In fact, because that street has a median that prevents drivers from using the oncoming lanes it would have ranked among the more orderly ones that we saw. Trust me, without that median strip, you would have seen many drivers crossing over into oncoming traffic.

Lane markings mean nothing in India; they might as well save the paint for something useful. We saw no evidence of speed limits; everyone just goes as fast as they can, overtaking and passing other cars with abandon. In the US, if a car crossed the center line outside of a passing zone, people would be screaming and slamming their brakes. In India, the drivers simply make room for three cars across.


Wherever you are, that's your 'lane,' even on rural highways like this one.

There are very few traffic lights; most intersections are uncontrolled. All types of vehicles travel on every road, along with animals and pedestrians.

They mix it up on the roadway: Pedestrians; bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, tuk-tuks (open, two-passenger, three-wheeled motor vehicles); cars; trucks; buses...

...elephants; camels....
(God's honest truth, this was the line at the next toll booth as our bus went through. The sign was in Hindi; I cannot tell you what the toll is for a camel and cart.)

...and cows always have the right of way.

The amazing thing is that they make it work. One day, I made a point of looking for scratches and dents on the cars that surrounded our bus and didn’t see any more than I would see in the US. We saw only one accident while we were there. (The cause wasn't apparent. A bus had gone up on the sidewalk and plowed into a storefront. There appeared to be no injuries, fortunately.)

I think the secret is continuous cooperation, as on a dance floor. No one stops; they just keep moving, honking at each other continuously. But the honks seem to mean something more like “I’m passing on your right,” instead of “Get back in your lane!”

This truck driver requests the courtesy of you honking at him.

5. Exuberant décor

The "Blow Horn" truck is a good segue to the next surprise on this list: Indians love to decorate things, and colorfully, too. No simply painting a solid color and slapping on a logo for these truck owners. Look at the care and time it took to paint that "Blow Horn" truck. That sort of creative paint job is very common.

Trucks in line at a toll booth

When you're done with the paint, you can wrap ribbons around your antennae, and add fringe, tassels, garlands and artificial flowers.

And don't forget to sparkle up the tractor!

Watching the Indian ladies go everywhere in bright, sparkly, shiny saris and lehengas (long gathered skirts topped with short-sleeve blouses and scarves) made us North Americans in our khakis and neutral-color tops feel mousy in comparison.

Tourists like us--only gorgeous--at the Taj Mahal

A group of gorgeous domestic tourists at the Taj Mahal.

Tourists at the Agra Fort.

And the women don't wear these fabulous threads just for party and recreation. I am not making this up: Women working in the fields with hoes were dressed just as beautifully.