July 22--crossing the Wagah border and arriving in Lahore

     I forgot to mention yesterday that there was a very modern mall next to our hotel in Amritsar.  It had a grocery store in the basement, so it was nice to go over there and get some supplies.  There were serious-looking Sikhs at the entrance and separate lanes for men and women to get frisked as they entered the place.  Did you know that Mentos in India are only 16 cents??  Wow. 

     My guide found out for us that the border crossing at Wagah is open only from 12-3 pm.  So we had some time in the morning.  I asked him if he and I could go back and see the inside of the Golden Temple.  He happily agreed, so we went back.  On the way, he stopped and we had a little snack called jalebi. It’s basically like a funnel cake but way oilier and sweeter.  Honestly it was way too much for me, but I didn't feel like I could turn it down.  We also had another treat that was like a piece of corn meal deep fried with honey on it.  Also too rich for my taste, but we enjoyed it together. 

     At the temple there was about a 15-minute wait.  It was completely jammed with people.  The temple was beautiful.  I liked it better than the Hindu temples we visited, because it was lighter.  There were windows and inlaid marble as at the Taj Mahal.  There were priests reading scriptures as we’d seen the previous night.  But bigger, more impressive scriptures.  Of course it was very hot, and there were fans going.  The rooms and halls were all jammed with people sitting, reading the scriptures, and praying.  Some were putting money in a money box.  Some would wipe the threshold with their hands and then touch their hands to their heads and chests.  The ceiling and roof were plated with gold and/or elaborately painted in red, blue and gold patterns.  There were elaborate chandeliers for lighting.  From the top we could look out on the surrounding pool.  There were three stories we could access in the temple and the stairways and hallways were very narrow and constantly clogged with people.

     After the temple tour it was time to get home.  We were supposed to meet sister Javed on the Pakistan side of the border at 1:00 and we didn’t have much time.  We drove out to the border crossing, and it was surprising how it’s out in the middle of nowhere.  There were rice paddies and other crops as we headed that direction.  While we drove, our tour guide told me about dowry practices in northern India.  Apparently dowry payments are very common.  He said that life is very difficult for people who have many daughters, because they have to save up money for those girls’ dowry payments.  

     Once we entered the border crossing area, we first had to show our documents to the soldiers to enter the border area.  They wrote our information down in a ratty dime-store notebook.  Then we drove up to the Indian border office.  A swarm of porters tried to take our bags but I fought them off.  We walked up into the building.  I was frisked and Lily had to put her bag through a security screener.  For some reason they didn’t screen mine at that point.  

     Next we went to immigration.  We were literally the only travelers in the entire building.  Two friendly immigration guys asked what we thought of India and asked us to sit down.  We waited maybe 15 minutes for them to do their thing while a couple soldiers milled around and occasionally looked at us.  Then we got stamps in our passports and headed to Customs.  Our bags were put through a screener.  He asked about the knives we bought in Dubai (those always seem to attract attention).  He asked if they were gold and I said nope, just cheap fakes.  He didn’t even take them out of the bag, and that was that.  Then we interviewed briefly with a couple different customs officials.  Mostly they wanted to hear whether we liked India.  They didn’t ask any questions about what we’d bought or what we were bringing out of the country.  We passed out of the building and had to haul our stuff across no-man’s land.  We took a quick snapshot as we were about to enter Pakistan, then stepped over the painted line on the ground.   There was a serious-looking soldier at the border who looked at our passports.  I asked him (in Urdu!) what time the border ceremony was, and he told me 6:00.  We walked past the seating areas where people can watch the border ceremony, and came to couple Pakistan officials who asked to see our passports.  They were nice.  I told Lily to put on her headscarf and they commented approvingly to each other that she was acknowledging “Pakistani culture” by doing so.  

     We walked another hundred meters or so to Pakistani immigration and filled out a bunch of forms.  The lady asked me how much currency I had in my possession.  I pulled it out and counted it, which was a little weird because I had a healthy-sized wad.  I had about 30,000 rupees (about $200), plus a few hundred in dollars.  The lady said, “That’s too much”—but she said it in a sympathetic way like she was making sure we wouldn’t have a problem.

     I  asked if I should split it between Lily and me, and she said yes.  So we did.  She took our form and then we moved on to chat with a friendly Pakistani official.  He asked what we had done in India, what we were going to do in Pakistan, and who we knew there.  He asked twice if I was going to stay in US Embassy (wow!  tricky!  asking twice to check for spies!) and I told him no, I’m a lawyer, I’m not in the US government.  He asked what our Pakistani sponsor (sister Javed's brother) does for work, but I realized dangit I don’t know.  I said Nosheen Javed works in a hair salon but I didn’t know what her brother (who is technically our sponsor) does for a living.  That was not the right answer.  He told me I would meet with another immigration official, who invited me into his office.  A couple other officials smoked and looked on.  He asked me if I wanted tea or coffee and I said no thanks.  He asked me again about the particulars of our journey and identity.  I sat up politely, gave him what answers I had, gave the phone numbers where we would be staying and for sister Javed, and gave him a copy of my business card.  It went pretty smoothly, actually, and we were off.

     We walked out of the building and a guy came up to me to change money.  He said he’d give me 1.5 Pakistan rupees for each Indian rupee.  Google says the exchange rate is 1.6, and I told him so.  He said nope, that’s the price to sell Pakistan rupees, not buy them.  I figured I was getting ripped off but changed $60 worth because I wanted to have some money in my pocket.  He told me that when I got to Lahore I would see that’s a good rate.  (Turns out he was right.  Two days later when I changed my money in Lahore I was offered 1.3, and I had to fight and scratch to get 1.4.)

     They loaded us on little train cars like the ones at Disneyland that take you from the parking lot to the gate.  Remember that we were the only people crossing the border, so we sat and waited for someone else to come along and fill up the trolley.  And waited.  And waited.  I said “Let’s go, sir!” in Urdu.  He said no and laid back and started to take a nap.  Hmm.  Not cool.  Waited ten more minutes and I said it again.  No dice.  I walked around and looked down the street where he was apparently going to take us.  I asked him, “Can we walk?” in Urdu.  He said no.  But then he and the porters talked among themselves and one of the porters said, “We go for you.  Special trip.”  I thanked them and we were off.  

     We rode maybe 600 meters to a dilapidated bus stop area with four concrete benches under a concrete roof structure, each bench wet from rainwater that was still dripping through the roof from an earlier shower.  We looked around.  A couple maintenance guys and a shed, and some storage buidlings, but no sister Javed.  Uh oh.  

     One of the employees gestured for me to come with him out into the road.  That would put me out of sight of Lily, so I was a little nervous and she was VERY nervous.  But I didn’t see any way around it, and anyway it wasn’t far from being in sight.  So we went.  The officer wrote my information in a dog-eared spiral notebook, and called sister Javed’s cell phone number.  After a couple discussions on the phone, he told me she’d be there in 20 minutes.  So we hunkered down to wait in the middle of nowhere, with Lily getting hotter and more annoyed at her headscarf by the minute.  I heard snatches of conversation from the guys standing around who seemed to be maintenance or yard guys.  All I could make out was “her father” and “American.”

     While we were waiting I started up a broken conversation with a maintenance guy whose name was pronounced “MujamalLEHmahd.”  We shared some cookies I had in my pack, and I told him he was “mera neya dost,” which is Urdu for “my new friend.”  He called sister Javed's number and told us that she was going to be there in 20 minutes.  We waited 20 minutes.  Then about 20 more.  Eventually the officer in the street called me back out.  I’m not sure, but I think he said there was a lot of congestion a half-mile down the road and I’d have to wait for a while or walk down there.  I walked back to the waiting area.  Then my new friend went and got a little green maintenance truck.  He put one of our bags in the bed of the pickup, and I threw in the rest.  There was only one seat in the truck, so I went to climb in the back, but he gestured for Lily to get in the back instead.  She did, and I got in the passenger seat.  He took off in the direction that sister Javed’s car would be.  Twice he had to sweet-talk an armed guard into letting us through a gate.  

     We drove down to where the road was bigger and the public had access to it.  We still had to sit another 20 minutes, because sister Javed’s cousin (her driver) had gotten lost in Lahore.  Finally they showed up, with a tiny car that would barely fit in four people and a small bag.  Sister Javed was as cute as ever.  She had brought three people with her, filling every seat.  I asked whether they’d brought rope or something to tie bags to the roof, and they said that no, there was another vehicle coming for the luggage.  So we got in and we were off to Lahore.

     Unfortunately we didn’t make the border ceremony at Wagah that I had hoped to check out.  Logistically it just didn’t work.  Organizing transportation and other logistical stuff in Pakistan is complicated, and things often go wrong or take longer than expected.  My Wagah plans fell victim to that.

     We drove toward the place to stay that I’d arranged through airbnb.com.  On the way we stopped suddenly, and Sister Javed jumped out to buy two large flower arrangements.  She gave one each to Lily and me.  She said that it’s a custom in Pakistan to have those arrangements for honored guests, and she apologized for not having had time to get them before picking us up.  

     We found the place I'd booked, which was a reasonably decent place by developing-world standards and had AC in the bedrooms but nowhere else.  The best thing about it was that we could chat and kinda hang out, then go to bed whenever we were ready.  It didn’t have a washing machine, so I washed my clothes in the sink and hung them on the line on the roof.  Everyone was just kind of hanging out, so I hung out with them.  Cricket was on TV, and a couple of the guys watched it lackadaisically.  For dinner we had Chinese food that sister Javed had purchased, along with salad.  Sister Javed said that she’d noticed on her mission that American people always liked salad, and that’s why she made it.

     I was surprised at the ingrained inequality of the sexes.  When used glasses accumulated on the coffee table, sister Javed’s uncle called her in from another room to clear them away.  She was always expected to fetch people water when they wanted it.  And no one ever offered to help her with the dishes.  When I tried to do so, she looked really uncomfortable.  I asked if it was weird for me to try to help her.  She said yes, so I backed off.  Mind you, the people she was expected to be serving included her little brother and another friend in the ward who’s younger than she is.  It bugged me.  I tried to set a good example of clearing plates, and it seemed like the men maybe started to get the picture because they cleared off some dishes too.

     We had our first power outage that night—they happen a few times a day here—and lemme tell you, the concrete houses here get warm really fast when the electricity is off.  But my bed and room were comfortable.  I hit the sack and it felt great.

Narrow street in Amritsar

That's the India-Pakistan border behind us.

 "My new friend," who used a government truck to get us from limbo to the pickup area at the Pakistan border

 Our limbo area, where we spent about an hour at the border waiting and wondering what was going on with sister Javed

Lily, trying to be patient while we waited to get picked up in Pakistan

 Lily, waiting in the government pickup for sister Javed to show up and get us

Sister Javed buying welcome flowers for us

Arrival at our place in Lahore.  From left--a counselor in the Lahore district presidency; me; sister Javed; Lily; Sister Javed's little brother; another ward member.

July 21--travel to Amritsar and touring the Golden Temple

     We needed to wake up at 6 am so we could catch our taxi to the Delhi station and our 7:20 train to Amritsar.  Lily had been sick all night, throwing up and hating life.  So there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm during our departure.  And she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to her buddy Bailey, which upset her too.  We got to the train station in plenty of time and were immediately accosted by aggressive porters.  We had three bags so I figured why not.  It ended up costing me a fortune—like nine bucks—to get five minutes’ assistance from two porters.  Grr.  When we got to the platform, Lily immediately laid down and went to sleep.  She’s been carrying her grubby blanket and pillow around for a long time, but let me tell you it has come in handy.

     Our seats in the train were assigned, but the overhead luggage space wasn’t, so it was good we were there early.  The luggage racks were jammed.  Shortly into the six-hour ride, Lily realized she didn’t have her phone.  I used a friendly seat-neighbor’s phone to call our tour guide to see if maybe she’d left it in her hotel room or in the cab we took to the train station.  No dice.  We think it got left on the train platform.  That was a big hit to the sick girl’s morale, but honestly she got over it more quickly than I thought she would.

     Our host was ready for us when he arrived.  In fact, we were a little slow getting off, and he came onto the train looking for us with a sign saying “BRAD AND LILLY.”  He’s a devout Sikh, and told us all sorts of interesting things about their religion.  It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when he dropped us off at the Amritsar Hyatt.  That place is nice!  Lily still wasn’t feeling great, so we just had rest time till about 6:00.  

     Then our tour guide took us on a tour of the Sikh golden temple.  I was really impressed with that whole structure and the Sikh setup in general.  My tour guide got me a legitimate turban, because you aren’t allowed to go into the temple without a covering for your head.  Since it was a real turban, he had to wrap it around my head, which took a few minutes.  And he was a diligent Sikh and really cool guy and so he brought me a turban in the sacred color of orange.  

     The tour guide said that Amritsar is sometimes called the “city of colored turbans,” which I figured was touristy exaggeration.  But it’s not.  The town is about 50% Sikh, and Sikhs wear turbans.  It was cool.  In fact, the security guard at our hotel was a big, tall Sikh with an awesome waxed mustache, so you know we got a picture o’ that.  Our guide explained that most Sikhs wear turbans made of cloth that is 5-7 meters in length; that a father teaches his son how to tie his turban during the teenage years; and that my turban was only two meters long.  I was a little worried because I didn’t want to be the dork in the turban designed for a six-year old.  But there were other adults who had turbans like mine.  The thing that DID make me feel dorky was the fact that my green striped t-shirt utterly and perfectly clashed with my turban.  But I got a few compliments from Sikhs in the temple about my turban.  They saw it as a token of respect for their holy shrine that I took the time to have a real turban and not just one of the ‘do-rags that are lent out to people who don’t have something to cover their heads.  And when in my life am I gonna have another chance to wear a real live turban?  In public?  And get complimented for it?

     Lily was still not feeling well during our tour, but she was a trooper.  Our tour entailed about a kilometer of walking.  The golden temple is surrounded by a large, square pool of water that is probably a couple hundred meters across.  A tall and ornate wall—maybe thirty feet tall—surrounds the whole complex, and the wall has various rooms and structures that face toward the temple.  The temple is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  The water is supposed to have miraculous healing qualities (“Amritsar” means “pool of nectar” or “pool of holy water”), and there were people bathing in it—with separate enclosed areas for women.  The guide encouraged me to wade in it, so I did.  One of the security guards (easy to spot because of their yellow jackets and real spears!) asked me to get out after I’d been in for a minute or so.

     At all times, there is a head priest reading/chanting/singing the scriptures over a huge speaker system.  A bunch of other sub-priests are elsewhere in the temple, reading (and sometimes, but not always, chanting) the scriptures.  We got to walk right up behind them and watch.  The Sikhs believe that there were a bunch of gurus (prophet-types) some years ago, but that there’s no guru on the earth now.  They worship the scriptures as incarnations of the gurus.  And they put the main, original set of scriptures to bed each night to rest.  We got to see the bed.

     Every night the Sikhs—and whoever else cares to volunteer—cook food for anyone who wants to show up at the temple and get a free meal.  Anyone can volunteer to cook, or clean up, or do any of the other things that are part of feeding all those people.  There were huge vats for cooking, long stations for dishwashing, hugs kettles of utensils, and so forth.  Anyone who wants can also sleep under the roof that surrounds the entire perimeter of the temple complex.  So when we touring in the evening, hundreds of people were eating or sprawled out, preparing to sleep on the ground.  

     As we walked around and saw all that, Lily was clearly not thrilled and told me she wasn’t feeling great.  She was a good sport until we walked up to finally see the temple itself as the climax of our tour.  The tour guide told us it was a 20-minute wait and I said okay, we’ll do it—and Lily put her head on my shoulder and started crying.  I figured I’d pushed her hard enough for the night.  We canceled the plan to see the inside of the golden temple, and went back to the hotel.

 Lily crashed out at the Delhi train station

 I don't make it a habit to photograph toilets, but this was just a hole that dropped onto the train tracks.

 The view out our hotel window in Amritsar

 Heading off to tour the Golden Temple

 The place where you deposit your shoes before entering the Golden Temple complex

 Gate to the Golden Temple

 Lily at the gate to the Golden Temple

 Helping some Sikhs take a photo

 By the Golden Temple

 Golden Temple at dusk

 Screen that displays the scriptural passages as they are chanted by the priest

 One of the priests reading scripture

 Another priest reading scripture

 Just me and some Sikh buddies

 Food preparation vats

 Dishwashing station

 Outside the Golden Temple

 Security guard

 Entrance to go see the inside of the Golden Temple

 Bed where the put the scriptures every night

This group of girls followed us around timidly for a while before finally working up the nerve to ask Lily to take a photo with them.

July 20--On the way to, and in, Delhi

     First of all, let me say that I just uploaded a bunch of text for the entries regarding July 17, 18 and 19.  So go read that if you haven't yet.
     Today was almost all spent in the bus from Jaipur to Delhi, and it was pretty uneventful.  The bus driver’s daughter, Jothi (“light”), rode along with us because she needed to get to Delhi.  She was married about a year ago.  On the drive, the girls started singing and dancing as the driver held their phones up to the tour guide microphone.  It wasn’t exactly high quality sound, but they had a good time.  Then they put some Indian music on and Jothi started dancing Indian style.  It was really cool!  She taught the girls some Indian moves and that was fun.  But it was mostly sitting in the bus, staring out the window, or chatting with others in the group.

     When we got to Delhi we stopped at a modern mall, just as nice as anything you’ve ever seen in the U.S.  We got some food, including some tasty ice cream from an Indian version of Cold Stone.   They even had Twix bars to mix in.  It wasn’t cheap but it was yummy.

     Once we got checked in, we took the kids to a local shopping area.  We walked there, and it was a really long, unpleasant walk on busy streets with few sidewalks.  Along the way we passed under an overpass, where a small community of extremely poor people live.  They tried to get our attention to ask for money as we walked by.  I don’t think anyone could be much less fortunate than that group—no shelter except the overpass, with some meager beds and a few other possessions and that was it.  At the market, Lily bought some shirts, I think, and I got a few small gifts.  Some of the girls in the group got their hands professionally done by henna painters.  I can’t believe how fast they work!  They created these elaborate patterns about halfway up to the girls’ elbow in maybe 10 minutes.

     In the evening, our guide took me and two other people to Old Delhi to get some kebabs from a place that he said is legendary.  We drove about 45 minutes in crazy traffic.  Then the driver dropped us off, and our guide said we have to walk for a while.  We walked through the most crowded streets I have ever seen.  It was still as hot as a sauna.  It was almost 10:00 pm when we arrived, but the road was completely jammed.  There’s no way to describe the pandemonium.  Every vehicle imaginable—cars, little motorized three-wheel taxis, motorcycles, bicyclist-powered taxis, and scooters, all honking and shouting.  And thousands and thousands of people on foot, pushing and dodging every direction—men of various ages in groups, street vendors, beggars, families of all sizes, including lots of little kids in fancy, spangled clothes, some of whom were walking by themselves to my amazement.  The congestion really was unbelievable.

     When we reached the kebab place, it was tiny hole in the wall, maybe eight feet wide and 15 feet deep, with a searing hot charcoal fire across the entire front of the store and a little open area on one side.  The temperature near that fire was unbelievable.  The open side of the store was surrounded by shouting men trying to get service.  There was no concept of a line.  People were tugging on the sleeve of the proprietor, yelling at him, holding out money, gesturing and trying to convince him to serve them next.  To me it seemed like he was mostly ignoring everyone’s pleas and doling out the food to whoever he felt like it.  But there was probably some sort of customer pecking order, because our guide told us that it’s always crowded like that, and he wished that he could have arranged to bring another taxi driver he knows who’s a friend of the owner and can always get served right away.

     Sweat dripping down his face, our guide pushed and wheedled and tugged on the guy’s sleeve nonstop for maybe 10 minutes before finally getting a heaping plate of kebabs for us to share.  The kebab was coarsely ground beef full of fat and gristle, laden with spices and dripping with butter.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had anything less healthy to eat in my whole life.  The meat was pretty good, but not as good as the experience, which was honestly like nothing else I’ve ever seen in my life.  

     It was a takeout place and customers were just walking off with their food, but there was one grimy little table (no chairs), just big enough for four, that a friend of the proprietor pointed us to—I suspect because we were obviously foreigners.  We stood next to the table, ate our meat and drank our water bottles, mostly free from being pushed and jostled as we ate.  Afterward we walked around the area for maybe half an hour to scope it out.  It was the last night of Eid, and we were across the street from one of the biggest mosques in Delhi, so I thought it was crazy because of the holiday.  But our guide told me that it’s like that every night.  After walking around and taking it all in for a while, we headed back to the hotel.  I was exhausted and hit the sack after a very satisfying shower.  Seriously, I have never had better-feeling showers than I have in India.

Leftover photo from Agra.  A guy took this photo and sold it to us for about 30 cents after we were done.

 Nomadic cattle guy using the access road on the highway to move his cows

Random Delhi selfie with kids

July 19--morning hike, Amber Fort, elephant rides

     Today was really eventful.  Those who were interested left at 5 am for a sunset hike to nearby ruins.  They were incredible.  It was maybe a 15-minute climb on a path and some pretty serious stone stairways.  As we climbed, a Hindu temple below blared out a constant super-Indian sounding chant.  Wild peacocks shrieked and flew back and forth in the trees (never letting me get close enough to get a decent picture, though).  Have I ever mentioned that wild peacocks sound just like the bird “Kevin” in the movie “Up”?

     When we got to the top the views were incredible and the sunrise, though a little hazy, was really neat.  From the top we could see the city below, a picturesque lake nearby, the Amber Fort (a huge structure begun in the ninth century), and the 10+ km defensive wall that encircles the area.  It was really, really neat.  We walked around the lake and looked through an old settlement on the other side.  All the families but one have abandoned it, and many of the dwellings are cracking and collapsing.  A boy herded about 10 cows through the narrow paths by the settlement.  

     On the way down, we happened across a bunch of monkeys on the side of the road.  We pulled over to take pictures and were surprised at how they weren’t scared of us—in fact, it seemed like they were bored if anything as I snuck close for a monkey selfie.

     We got back to the hotel about 7:30, had breakfast, and headed out for the Amber Fort.  That’s a major landmark of India, so it was kind of touristy.  But cool too!  We started by riding elephants from the bottom of the hill up to the fort.  Along the way photographers took shots and called out for us to find them at the top so we could buy prints of the pictures.  Hawkers tried to get our attention so we’d buy their turbans/carvings/sparkly umbrellas/postcards and everything else.  As we arrived in the large courtyard at the top, someone was playing a huge drum and some kind of exotic horn, so there was a really south-Asian feel.  Touristy maybe, but it was cool.  As we got to the top, I realized that the stairway to the drum area was open, so I ran up there and they let me play the drum for a while.  Then I played a smaller one, hitting as hard as I could to make it really loud, till my hand hurt really bad and I had to quit.  Lily and some others in the group got to play to.  And no one around the drums asked us for any money, which was a huge surprise.

     The fort includes a temple.  No photography was allowed in there, but it was pretty amazing.  No shoes, socks, leather or cameras were allowed.  The ornate double doorway into the temple was covered with raised, carved metal scenes of different gods.   People were reverently touching each of the gods in turn, and they would kiss their hands before and after doing so.  Inside the temple there were large pictures of multi-armed gods.  Worshippers brought in food that looked like some kind of a mush, and they would each smear a little bit on the mouth of the god in the picture.  So there was a big gob of food on the picture and a pile of food below that had fallen off the picture.  The temple chamber itself was maybe 30 feet wide and 40 feet long, with inlaid marble floors and carved marble on some of the walls.  The ceiling was mostly open, with chicken wire over the opening to make sure that birds couldn’t come into the temple.  The room was crammed with people who were kneeling, chanting, praying, milling around.  Incense was heavy in the air.  A group of women and little children were playing tambourines and singing, with two dancing girls maybe five years old with thick mascara.  An idol at the front of the temple was the central attraction.  People’s prayers were focused there, and the priest there was putting a little red dot on the forehead of everyone who approached.  Someone (not in our group, thankfully) had snuck in a camera, and when the priest saw him he yelled at him and aggressively shooed him out of the temple.  Being there was an overpowering experience for all five senses.

     After visiting the temple, we continued touring the fort.  There was an area that was completely covered in tiny, ornate, convex mirrors.  The idea, I guess, was that in that room you could put a candle or two so the queen could see what looked like stars all night long.  I took photos but we weren't’ allowed into the main room, and anyway it was the sort of place that photos can’t do justice to.  We walked around and saw several other parts of the fort as well.  The view at the top was incredible, and we could see the structure we had hiked to that morning.

     Our bus then took us to a place where they showed us how the rugs are made by hand.  Of course that was a lead-in to an extended sales spiel about rugs.  They also had a textiles/clothing store upstairs where we could buy scarves, shirts, jammies, rugs and whatever.  Lily picked up a few things.  The best part about that place was the downstairs, which was filled with all sorts of crazy antique stuff and antique replica stuff.  It was like and Indian Z Gallery.  I skipped the rug sales spiel and spent more than an hour browsing through that place.  There were a couple things I might have liked to have, but they weren’t cheap and for the most part wouldn’t have been easy to ship at all.  So I refrained.

     We drove by Jaipur’s “wind palace,” which is really a facade that was created for women in the Muslim royal family to look out on the street without being observed.

     After that we visited a place where the elephants are kept.  The kids really liked touching them and interacting with them.  I felt bad because they were chained up and cooped in a small barn. But it was cool to touch them.  The elephant keeper’s family was more interesting to me, to be honest.  It was a scrawny, scruffy looking guy and his beautiful wife and two pretty daughters, maybe two and four years old.  Lily wanted to play with the two-year old but she wasn’t having any of it.  The four-year old was more willing.  I took a few pictures of the little family.  The mom was obviously a very modest Muslim.  She held her scarf over her face much of the time, and she was unwilling to come closer to us than the open doorway that separated the family’s living quarters from the elephant pens.  She was pretty excited to have her baby’s picture taken, though.  I got a picture I really like (the last one below), with mom looking on as I took a photo of Lily, dad and baby.  Mom is smiling in a way that I’m sure she never would have if she’d known she was part of the picture frame.  I found myself wondering about their lifestyle.  There were swarms of flies in the barn-apartment, and they surely landed alternately on elephant poo and the family’s food.  Yikes.  I wondered how the woman ended up with the elephant keeper.  It seemed like such a mismatch.  Who knows.

     That evening three of us guys walked along the lake right across the street from our hotel.  It’s Eid now—the festival after Ramadan—so there were a jillion people out.  The park was more crowded than any park I’ve ever been to in the US.  It appeared that all or most of the people were Muslims, and it was a really interesting experience to be out walking among the crowd.  We were clearly the center of attention.  People stared unabashedly.  When I would try out my few words of Hindi on them, they acted impressed, although of course their English would always be far better than my Hindi.  One of the guys with me was particularly conspicuous, because he’s tall, good-looking and has longish curly hair.  Guys were asking us questions, hooting at us, asking for selfies with us, introducing themselves, etc.  No women tried to talk to us or looked at us at all other than the occasional furtive glance.  One economics student was particularly garrulous.  He told us about Islam, asked me if I knew any Muslims in America, asked if I knew Spanish (“poquito”), asked if I knew French (“un petit peu seulement”—ha!), and generally chatted us up.  The park was so crowded and so dirty; no one seems to use trash cans here ever, and cows roam freely.  People weren’t really doing anything, just sitting around or walking back and forth and chatting with friends or people-watching.

     Crossing the street to and from the park was an adventure.  There was a crosswalk but no signal, and no one in India heeds paint on the road.  It was like real-life Frogger and I’m not kidding.  The saving grace for not getting killed in traffic is that people can’t drive fast here because there’s so much traffic.  So you kind of walk out and they honk and slow down and swerve and sometimes stop, sort of, and you dodge up and back and across, and after a while you get across the street.  Most of the traffic was motorcycles and scooters.  I’d say the average number of riders was three, and I saw as many as five on a motorcycle. 

     That night we had dinner at a place called Pink City.  It included a show with two traditional dancers and three native musicians.  One of the dancers did a number where she spun around with a stack of five metal pots on her head, and it was pretty impressive.  I ordered mild food, because my innards have been traumatized lately and I wasn’t feeling so hot.

This panorama shows the city, the Amber Fort (center), the wall, and the lake.

 Amber Fort and surrounding wall

 A small white temple between the double walls, with a banner and the Amber Fort in the background.

This is the tower we climbed up to.

 Awesome panorama

 Lake

 Hello!  There were wild monkeys hanging out on the side of the road as we drove home!

 Monkey!

Brad and Lily at Amber Fort, about to ride elephants

 Lily and her friend Bailey riding an elephant

 Lily riding an elephant

Me riding an elephant

 The view from Amber Fort of the tower we climbed in the morning

One structure in the Amber Fort

Garden in the Amber Fort

 Textiles place we went to this afternoon

Facade from which Muslim royal women (whom no one else was allowed to see) used to look out upon the activities in Jaipur. 

 Lily and one of the elephants we visited

 Those elephants sometimes suddenly use their ears to flap away flies.

For some reason the kids all decided it would be cool to kiss an elephant.

The family that operates the place where we went to pet elephants.  It's amazing that I got this picture of the mom.  She was a conservative Muslim, and would not come out of her kitchen doorway or take the scarf off her face if she thought anyone was looking at her.  I'm sure she didn't know she was part of the picture.  She wasn't posing--just really happy that we were admiring her cute baby.  One of my favorite pictures this trip!