Stanley and the security guard

So, word on the street is that I write a better blog than Mr. Barry – haha! I’ve left him crying in the corner and I have the laptop again. :-)

We drove five hours on Friday night from Delhi to Agra and stayed at the best hotel of my life, the Jaypee Palace (picture of me below in the comfy bed). The drive there was interesting to say the least. Long stretches of the road are two lanes (often with four lanes of traffic!) and you have to pull out into oncoming traffic to pass the tractors and slow-moving trucks – my nerves were shot!

On Saturday morning, we drove out to the Taj Mahal, only a mile or two from the hotel. We had a short walk to reach the entrance to the grounds, with monkeys roaming freely on the path beside us. We bought the tickets and the little white shoe covers that you have to wear inside the mausoleum, and headed for the entrance. As we went through the security scanner, the guard stopped Mr. Barry and said that he couldn’t take me in, as I was a toy.

A TOY?! A TOY?! I have feelings you know! And, more than that, I have a blog following bigger than Mr. Barry’s!

He argued a little to get me in, but the guard had a gun and he didn’t want to push it too far. So, I hung out in a nearby craft shop while the rest of the group went inside. I’ve never seen Mr. Barry so angry.

He told me later that the Taj Mahal was spectacular. It was built by the Mughal Emporer Shah Jahan, as a symbol of love for his wife, Mumtaj, after she died. It's constructed entirely from Marble, which was brought to the site by elephants from the North West of India. It took 22 years and 20,000 workers to build the Taj and the surrounding buildings. The highlight for him was the intricate pattern of gemstones that were set into the marble on the inside of the tomb. The stones (turqoise, jade, sapphire etc.) were brought from all corners of Asia to complete the design. One of them, Carnelian, is translucent and glows like it's on fire when light hits it a certain way.

Mr. Barry, pretending to be happy, but missing me really.

Next was a short rickshaw ride and then on to Agra Fort, which looks across to the Taj...

Here you can see me with the Taj Mahal in the background. Actually, this is an amazing way to see it from a different perspective, as the land around is fairly flat and the majesty of the building stands out on the horizon. (Also, it’s also the only way to see the Taj if you’re a little on the…erm…flat and colourful side!)


Here are some other pictures of people and places in India…

India Gate, Delhi

Buying peanuts on the road to Agra

The doorman of the Jaypee Palace Hotel

 
 











Gemstones inside the Taj Mahal

Until next time
Stanley

A school in Gurgaon

On Friday afternoon, the local team arranged for us to visit a primary school that is supported by Cargill. The aim of the school is to provide education for the children of migrant workers who wouldn’t ordinarily receive it. It was a modest building with three or four classrooms inside and one caged classroom out in the playground. (Caged to keep the local monkeys away from the children!)

I loved talking to one of the teachers and hearing the stories of how their organization grew over the past seven years. It was started by two elderly ladies in the village offering teaching under a tree to the children that they saw doing nothing. The work was recognised as being valuable by the local community and they gradually moved to outside classrooms with a few tables and chairs, and now to this school building. They provide a lunch to the children to guarantee at least one good meal per day.

One of the problems that the teachers explained is that once the children reach an age where they can work; their parents struggle to see the logic of education. “Why send my son to school when he can work and help to put food on the table?” So, although they don’t pay for the education, they are sacrificing the opportunity to support the family in the short-term. What an impossible choice.

Still, the work they do at the school is fantastic and all of the staff (most of which are volunteers) speak with a lot of passion about the school and the children. It’s heartening to work for an organisation that supports this kind of work.

Flat Stanley's Indian Adventure

We have a guest blogger this week...Flat Stanley...a happy little character created and coloured in by Patrick at school. The idea is that he is sent to friends/family in different places and returned to Patrick with a photograph of where he's been. Take it away Stan...

Here's me outside Qutb Minar, the oldest monument in Delhi. What you can see is just the minaret, but it was surrounded by Hindu temples and ruins, all built in the 12th and 13th centuries. Very impressive.

Mr. Barry (that's what they call him in the hotel - he thinks he's a big shot now!), his friends and me had a driver for the whole day on Sunday and he took us on a whirlwind tour of Delhi. After Qutb Minar, we made a brief stop at a craft shop, where the guy explained how they make Kashmir rugs (fascinating - it can take up to nine months to make a single rug) and then failed miserably trying to sell them to us (have you ever tried selling stuff to a 10", orange, laminated guy?).

Next stop...Humayun's Tomb, a beautiful, red sandstone building which houses the tomb of, you guessed it, Humayun. He was a Mughal Emperor who ruled India, and what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the 16th century. The building and gardens are said to have inspired some elements of the Taj Mahal. (Ooh, get me - I can read wikipedia, just like Mr. Barry!)

Here's me on top of the ruins nearby the tomb. Mr. Barry was trying to look cool, like me, but actually he was a bit scared.

Part of the fun of the drive around Delhi was just watching life on the streets...the rickhaws and auto-rickshaws (which can carry more people than you'd think possible), motorbikes carrying the whole family, cows ambling among the crazy traffic, and my favourite...elephants...

Funniest moment of the trip so far...tonight we went for dinner in a nearby hotel...Mr. Barry asked where the restaurant was and they didn't understand his poor English...they sent him to the restroom. (I laughed my little, purple ass off!)
Namaste
Stan

New Orleans

(or N'awlins as the locals call it. I love that.)

Just had a couple of days in Louisiana, visiting a salt mine, which was very cool. Before my flight home I had a few hours in New Orleans, which has a vibe unlike any other city I've been to. A friend told me that, if I only had a couple of hours, I should head straight for the French Quarter. I did and wasn't disappointed. First stop was Cafe du Monde which is famous for its coffee and beignets, a French doughnut with a liberal covering of powdered sugar. Delicious!

(This is not Cafe du Monde, just a guy enjoying a beer with his dog!)

The first thing I noticed about walking around the French Quarter was the music...it seems to come out of every pore of the city. You can't help but walk along with a spring in your step!
What else makes it great?...the street artists, psychics, funky restaurants, great bookshops and at least one house of voodoo. This is a definite candidate for the 'places to return to with Anna' -list (not because I think she's into voodoo, of course!).

Bourbon Street is a little tacky, but it was still good interesting to walk down it. It was there that I discovered zydeco - a Louisiana music style based on an accordion and washboard. A friend told me I should try and listen to it live and I confess that I wasn't too excited about that combination of instruments. However, I stumbled across a bar with a live band on and the modern, rock/funk take on zydeco was terrific. (It was very amusing watching the guy with the washboard, looking ridiculous, freak out like a lead guitarist.)

I didn't see any evidence of Hurricane Katrina. I guess they made sure that the tourist spots were cleaned up pretty quickly, rightly or wrongly. I would love go back for a weekend though and explore a little further afield.

Remembrance

This morning I spent a few moments remembering our war veterans; in particular my Granda Steve, who fought in WWII and my Great-Grandad, Frederick, whom my Grandma never met as she was born around the time that her father fell in Israel during WWI.

Anyway, this morning I read the following comment from someone suggesting why we should honor these people:

We all owe a debt to those who came before us in this world, and left it a better place than they found it.

It made me wonder...will future generations say the same about us?

Nicaragua

So, here are a few notes about Nicaragua that I've just got around to posting. In short, it’s one of the most beautiful, interesting and saddening countries that I’ve been too.

The drive from the airport to the hotel was a feast for the eyes, but not always for all the right reasons. There are too many shanty houses, too many children without shoes and too many people selling all kinds of junk on the roadside just to get by.

I read that 68% of the people in Nicaragua live on less than $1 per day so I found it pretty difficult to drive past many of them every day on the way to our four star hotel. It’s hard to write this stuff without sounding like Bob Geldof, but I do feel like I want to do more to help.

The Sunday after we arrived a couple of us took a tour around Managua and Lake Nicaragua. First stop was the Masaya Volcano, which is dormant but still has a constant cloud of sulphur dioxide over it (very cool). I climbed the steps up to the nearby cross at the top of the crater and I could really feel the smoke on my lungs. Denis, our driver, told us that the cross was put up to commemorate the first Spanish priests who discovered the volcano and thought it was the entrance to hell. Apparently one of them decided to ‘save humanity’ by sacrificing himself to the volcano. That worked!

After the volcano, we drove to Granada, another colonial town on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. The locals told us that, during Spanish rule, it was the most important city in Central America. Isn’t that what they told us about La Antigua Guatemala? Well, I guess it says something about national pride.

We only had a short time in the city but it was enough to see the central square, buzzing with traders and food stalls and surrounded by colourful colonial buildings. The presidential palace and cathedral (below) were particular highlights.

Later, we took a small motor boat trip around Las Isletas de Granada, an archipelago of 365 volcanic islands a few miles from Granada; one for every day of the year. It was a perfectly tranquil hour spent slowly cruising between the islands. Many of them have holiday homes on them (some of which are for sale, for anyone with a spare half a million) and one of them has a small colony of monkeys living on it. As we cruised along, I tested the lake water with my hand and it was the perfect temperature for a swim. I ditched that idea as soon as the boat owner told us that Lake Nicaragua contains the world’s only freshwater sharks!

There was a lot more to see and do but, as it was a work trip, we didn’t have time. I could easily see how you could spend a very pleasant couple of weeks in Nicaragua though. The locals told us that it has more natural beauty than its richer neighbour, Costa Rica, and I could believe it. I guess I’ll just have to find a reason to go to Costa Rica to prove the theory!

An airport security breach

Going through security in Guatemala, my rucksack caused the lady monitoring the x-ray machine to shout for a bag search. I was puzzled. I was pretty sure there were no guns, drugs or illegal immigrants in there. Anyway, to cut a long bag search short, she found a pair of tweezers that must have been at least two inches long, maybe more, and confiscated them.

What was I going to do…threaten to pluck the pilot’s monobrow unless he let me fly the plane? Or perhaps I was going to hold up the passengers… “I want all your purses, wallets and watches or somebody gets nipped!”

Well, it’s all part of the fun of travel I suppose. (There was no need for her to wag her finger though!)