Sorry, everything is a little out of order. This blog is long overdue! At the end of November, I met up with Jodie and Nishat in India. So much has happened since then! As soon as I got back from India, we moved out of our house in Kilifi, put all our stuff in storage, left Suki with some friends, spent a month in the US visiting as many people as we could (drinking as much good beer as we could!), followed the tragic events unfold in post-election Kenya (see previous posts) and finally made our way back here where we moved house three times in a week and waited with baited breath for the political crisis to culminate in either peace or disaster. Things have settled down a bit and I found a few spare minutes to reach back to distant memories and reminisce about our sibs trip four (!!) months ago.
Jo and Nishat were near the end of their two-month meander around the country when they met me in Mumbai. I only had a week and you can’t really get very far in a week if you are traveling by train and bus, so we set our sights on a few interesting towns just east of Mumbai. First we visited some cave temples dating back to 700AD carved straight down into red limestone cliffs. Over the centuries, Buddhists, Jainists, and Hindus carved their own series of sacred places leaving more than 20 cave temples along several kilometers of cliffs. Next we visited the second holiest city in India. The city sits on either side of a river and every twelve years, millions of pilgrims descend on this small, middle-class town. Dozens and dozens of temples lined the banks of the river where pilgrims dipped in the water to perform ritual cleansing. Whole markets full of flowers, colored sand, sweets and other offerings to the gods stretched away from the river to provide worshippers with appropriate gifts. It was fascinating to compare the ancient, abandoned ruins of elaborate and awesome places of worship with a vibrant, modern hub of religious life.
One of the most striking things about India is how colorful it is. Everywhere buildings are painted bright oranges and reds. Women never wear black and grey, instead they wrap themselves from head to toe in saffron yellow and fuchsia. Nishat commented that when she returns to the US from India, she always feels that it is so drab and plain.India is still a developing country, but it is about 25 years further along the process than Kenya. It is so interesting to see what path Kenya may be on. Roads were paved, middle class families owned motorbikes and all five or six of them would pile onto it, even the existence of a middle class was a striking difference. Stray dogs were fat, I mean FAT, compared to the lean village dogs here. I always think the stray dogs are an interesting indicator of food security and abundance.
All of the places we went were off the beaten tourist track, which meant very little hassle and almost no other foreigners. Jo and Nishat were veteran travelers and they knew all the ropes. Nishat of course speaks Hindi so altogether I didn’t have to make a single decision, negotiate a single cab fare, navigate any frustrating and unfamiliar systems. After a year of playing cruise director for loads of visitors, it was a welcome change.
Here are some visual aids (more pics on flickr):
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