When the slow parade went past….

 Today, 26^th Jan, is Republic Day in India. Unlike Constitution Day in the US (the celebration it is most akin to in the United States) it is a big deal here. It is a national holiday and in many parts of the country buildings are draped in saffron, white and green buntings or electric lights. Here in Delhi there is a grand parade. Seating for the parade is by invitation only and it is somewhat of a hard ticket to obtain. We weren’t able to go (even if we could have gotten tickets) because it is the same time as Church. However, Rae was able to get tickets to the dress rehearsal on Thursday morning. That experience will be the heart of her part of this post with pictures. It also caused me to select the Matchbox 20 lyric as today’s blog title.

As for me, I am going to focus my part of the entry again this week on work. I mentioned last week we are in the throes of preparing for our accreditation visit. This involves making sure all of our processes are compliant with accreditation standards and that everything we do is adequately documented. This is the substantive part of both the visit itself and of preparation. There is also a portion of the visit that is based on perception. Do we look professional and competent? Part of that perception is the look and feel of our physical facility.

At the last campus I led through accreditation (Charter College in Vancouver) our facility and equipment were brand new and beautiful. The place spoke for itself and immediately gave the accreditors a positive impression of us from the first walk through. Our campus here in India is not quite the opposite (there is nothing unsafe about it) but it is definitely long in the tooth. My predecessor(s) have neglected the building and the furnishings. There has been deferred maintenance and even inadequate cleaning. So now, in order to get the building ready for the visit we are doing a top-down, inside-outside “freshening” if not refurbishing. This has firmly exposed me to the current standard for cleaning and maintenance here in Delhi.

We have been trying to get our cleaning contractor to actually get things clean. Their standard is to wipe everything down with damp rag. A Damp. Dirty. Rag. Which is dipped into dirty water. Further, it doesn’t matter if things actually get clean. If things have been wiped, that should certainly be enough. Rae has been helping us with prepping the building including cleaning, identifying repairs that need to be done, painting, and wall hangings. I am sorry to say that after nine months, many of the deficiencies I saw when I first started have faded before my eyes after repeated exposure. Rae, who has a great eye for detail anyway, does not have that issue. Rae has been known to take the aforementioned rag, and show the cleaning people that by applying effort light switches, electrical plates, and dirt on the wall can also be made clean. A sophisticated, well-traveled, cosmopolitan Indian friend of mine says the problem is they can’t see the problem. They don’t have enough experience to know the standard we are seeking and therefore they can’t discern the difference between that standard and where we are now. It’s a work in progress but we are moving closer to the standard of cleanliness and order.

Now for painting. That has also been quite an eye opening experience. First, it has been hard to get people to understand the concept of a unified pallet of colors. If basic off white paint is thrown up (and I use that term deliberately) everywhere, that should be good enough. So, we have had several discussions with the painter about what colors of paint we should use where and how one light wall color can have a dramatically different effect than another light wall color. And don’t even get me started on accent paint. Why one would want an accent wall or feature seems a concept beyond understanding. Well, we finally got all of that sorted and agreed upon. I think we will now have a sophisticated, homogeneous pallet of colors that will lead from the entry through to the top floor.

Now if we can get them to paint with a bit more care.  Apparently the concept of taping off edges is beyond the understanding of painting crews. Sure they put down drop clothes to take care the big issues like spills but they seem to think it is cheaper and easier to clean dried pain off of light switches and coveing than it is to tape them. Likewise, it also better to paint and then clean and repaint where paint meets hard surfaces than to tape the boundary in the first place. This would be okay, I guess, if they actually do the detailed cleaning they promise will happen. Let’s just say I have my doubts it will be done right the first time. I think it is likely I will have a discussion with the painter about what is an acceptable standard. The painting is all supposed to be done this weekend. I guess the good news is that still gives us a week to actually make it right before the accreditors arrive.

This lack of quality and attention to detail that seems common to Indian labor is quite distressing to me. It is clear from the magnificent, iconic buildings throughout India that at one point there was an amazingly high level of craftsmanship in India. The decedents of those men and women apparently have little pride in their work. It is a tragedy actually. Another Indian friend of mine says the problem is that India is a country of laborers who have forgotten how to labor.

Well, I am sure this discussion of my cleaning and maintenance challenges has been insightful (read boring). I will now turn the writing over to Rae for what I am sure will be something more interesting. I know I am looking forward to it.

HI all,

Since Phil has talked about labor, I’d like to add a bit to that theme before I move on to the Republic Day Parade.  India is a country on contrasts, at least in my mind, on so many levels, one of those being labor.  In the US we are all about tools and having the right tool for the job.  Here I am continually amazed at the lack of tools or equipment.  I know I’ve talked about the number of times we’ve had repairmen out to fix our toilet, and the number of times they came with no tools or maybe a screwdriver or two.  I know we’ve mentioned that labor is cheap here and so the mind-set is just tell the person what you want done and let them figure out how to do it without the help of proper tools or supplies (because those cost money). 

I’ve been so amazed when I see men balancing on top of a very narrow wall or painting the front of a tall building or anything that I would assume you’d need a ladder for and yet there they are and no ladder in sight.  When you do see a ladder it is almost always made of bamboo and always looks like it needs repair.  When Phil and I were at a mall one day I noticed three repairmen outside trying to work on something over a doorway.  I watched them take a table, put a chair on that and then something on top of the chair and then climb the precarious pile to almost be able to reach what they needed to reach.  One man builds the makeshift ladder, climbs it and does the work while the other two do ?????. 

There is a new metro system being constructed between our house and the campus and so I get to observe that process regularly.  I’m amazed at the lack of equipment that I see, and occasionally find myself gasping when I see someone perched way up high working away and wonder how it is they got there, how they stay there, and how they will live through this process.  Oh well, labor is cheap and there is always someone else who will be happy for the work should this poor guy not make it.  I know that sounds cynical and I guess it is, but laborers don’t get many protections or considerations around here.  Labor is CHEAP. Words fail me when I try to paint an adequate picture.

Not many people here take initiative of their own.  Most people have a specific job and that is what they will do and not one thing more.  That was reinforced in my mind when I went to the rehearsal parade.  There are many fenced off sections set up with bleacher type seating and also different height folding chairs in front of those.  There was rain the day before the parade and so when we arrived at our section we found that most of the chairs had water on the seats.  There were many guards and guides there to help with crowd control.  Most of these men I observed just stood around and never did anything.  I kept thinking, “why didn’t someone, (or why didn’t they think of it themselves) have them tip the chairs and dump the water off so they were drier for people to set on”.  Just a thought.  It appears if it’s not in your job description, or someone over you doesn’t tell you to do it, then you don’t do it.

On to the actual parade.  First, it didn’t start on time, that’s a given.  Once it did start, it was really enjoyable and I was glad I was able to go.  Next year it will be on a Monday, Phil won’t be in the middle of accreditation, and hopefully we can get tickets and both go.  It turns out that because of tight security they didn’t allow cameras; I had to send mine back to the car.   No cameras, but nobody stopped us from using our cell phones so I was able to get some pictures.  They’re not great, but hopefully you’ll get some idea.

I wish I’d done a better job of getting some closer shots of the many different military uniforms because they are spectacular.  I know that there is an army, navy and air force and I’m assuming that the different uniforms represent different units or areas where they may serve.  Hopefully you can get some idea of the different colors and hats that each units wore. There were probably 20 different military units and almost that many bands to accompany them.  They were very precise in their look and movement.  I was very intrigued by their elaborate and colorful hats or headdresses.  They were spectacular.  It was easy to spot the Sikhs in each unit as they wore turbans instead of the standard hats.  Their marching was very striking and it was clear that these guys were in great shape.

There were several horse units also and they too were beautiful and impressive.  The horses had to be a certain height and color.  They could have been more closely matched if they’d been cloned, but short of that they were very similar.  I thought I took several pictures of these, but I must have been too busy being impressed to get more than one.  At least I got one.

There were huge tanks, and several other types of military equipment.  These were painted in some interesting ways.  There were floats with communications systems, missiles, aircraft and other items that highlighted the military power.

Many states had floats that represented something unique about that area.  We saw more primitive villages, the Himalayas, the coasts. Industrial, and craft and textile areas to name a few.  These floats were beautifully made and impressive. 

Now to my favorite part of the parade, the camel military unit and military band.  Where else could I see something like that?  The camels moved with smooth elegance and appeared to have an air of “aren’t I spectacular”.  I loved watching the band members sitting on top of the camels and preforming with the same precision as all the other bands.  If you look, you will see the large drums mounted on the camels.  Loved it!

There were some gaps in the parade and I’m assuming those were left for the groups that didn’t participate in the practice.  One on those gaps I believe were for the elephants.  I’ve been told there are elephants.  Don’t know if they’re part of a military units or just elephants.  Hopefully we can go next year and fill in some of the blanks. 

Well, those were the highlights of the parade and the highlight of the week was the parade.  The military and police presence were everywhere and security was tight.  There is always a security section for women and you are searched by a women.  The day we went there was one booth for women screening.  They gave us a pretty thorough pat down and then checked our purses.  I had a very small purse that held my wallet, glasses, chapstick and a couple of odd papers.  They unzipped and inspected each section of my purse and my wallet.  I have always found these women to be kind and friendly.  I do wonder how will they take that much time and care when they process the million people who attended today?  Kind of glad I went on rehearsal day, the crowds this morning had to be insane. 

    

Well enjoy your week and the fact that you have tools.          

Namaste.

It’s a backyard hodgepodge. Ooh, a backyard hodgepodge….

 First, for those of you who use our blog as a marker for the start of the week, we apologize for missing last week. We got carried away with the details of life and when we looked up, not only had Sunday gone but so had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… well you get the idea. At that point we were closer to THIS week than we were to LAST, so…well, here we are. We hope our negligence didn’t cause you too many problems. Now this week we are again a day late and a dollar short. Our delay this week is because we have had no Internet access at our home for the past four days. It is amazing how quickly something moves from a luxury to a necessity. How quickly we can develop a dependency on technology.

So, this week, huh? Well things are a little crazy these days. We are getting ready for our accreditation visit in a couple of weeks. In addition to that, we have our annual convocation on Friday of the same week; the same day as our annual Joint Venture Board Meeting. Then if that’s not enough we have our usual board meeting the following week. Yeah, I know, that wasn’t very bright. But work has been crazy busy. Things are normally busy but now they are crazy busy. Every day when I crawl into bed, I feel like I have slipped further behind. I can’t tell you the number of times I have said to myself in the last week, “I need to find a way to add more hours to every day;” and “if I can just make it through the 15^th everything will be okay.” The first statement is a true need; the second is foolish hope. I know there will be something else coming down the pike. I could use a few days to breathe however.

Monday the13th was another festival, Lohri. As it was described to me, Lohri is a primarily Punjabi celebration of the end of winter. However, there is a festival by some name on the same day all over India, mostly with the same meaning and many of the same or similar practices. Interestingly, it is one of the few festivals that is not tied to an astronomical occurrence – it is always on the 13^th of January. The purpose of Lohri is to rid one’s self of the evils that have happened during the year. At the end of the day, a bonfire is set. Once it is going well, people throw hands full of popped corn or sesame seeds into the fire. The popcorn and seeds represents the evils that have occurred. Then, everyone circles around the fire, while a traditional song is sung. Of course there are also traditional sweet crackers.

For the Lohri fire at the campus (pictures below) about half the people knew exactly what was to happen at every step and for about half, it was the first Lohri they had experienced. It was fun participating but even more fun to observe all of the international students taking it all in. I had someone explaining to me what was going on and the meaning. I am not sure all of the international students had that same advantage. Still, they did seem to enjoy it.

Speaking of international students, it occurs to me that I may not have told you about a development that has occurred over the past nine months. We have always had quite a few international students but we have become the #1 international college in India (we have the highest percentage of international students of any other college). We have just under 60% of our students from 39 different countries. We have the greatest number from Nepal, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Congo, and Ghana. Afghanistan and Nepal are traditional trading partners with India and historically many students have come from there to India for college. Africa is a more recent phenomena. Some of the more exotic countries from which we have students are; Mongolia, China, South and North Korea, and a little place called America. OK, our American student is Indian but his family does live in Houston so it counts.

Our repatriated Indian student has led to our most recent strategy. There are millions of PIO (persons of Indian origin) and NRI (non-resident Indians) all over the world. In fact the Indian diaspora is of great interest and concern both to the Indian government and families affected thereby. The Indian government looks at the brain drain from all of those who have left and wonders what impact those skills would have on its own economy and society. Many families are concerned that dis-located Indians are losing their Indian-ness.

So, I had the thought, let’s ride this horse in the direction it is going. So, we are going to market our college to expatriated Indian parents: send your children back to India for college. They can re-establish their Indian roots and get a US degree. Or, they can come for a semester or two, have their Indian experience and have credits that can transfer back to the US, or Canada, or wherever home is located. Getting the contact information for these people is the challenge but this is where the government comes in. They are so keen to re-establish relationships with these folks they are spending millions to identify and make contact with them. Hence the source of our information. I am pretty excited about this strategy. I think it will be a big winner. I hope so. I could really use a nice, solid win.

Well enough about work. Here’s Rae to tell you more about what’s going on in our social life.

Hi all,

The last couple of weeks have been busy with church work, consulting at the campus, trying to figure out clothing for upcoming weddings and a few other things.

I am currently serving in the District Young Women’s presidency and as a result of that I have had several meetings and things to be at and prepare for over the last couple of weeks.  That doesn’t sound like it should be that big of a deal, but all these things take place at the Vasant Vihar building and the Vasant Vihar building typically takes about an hour to get to, so that just adds to the time commitment.

I had District council meeting on a Tuesday night, then Leadership Training the following Saturday, and New Beginnings yesterday.  Oh, and we started teaching seminary/institute again this week.

For New Beginnings, one of the things we decided to give the girls were socks. The socks were to say “Come Unto Christ”, our 2014 theme, on one foot and have a set of footprints on the other foot.  Sounds simple enough, right?  If we were doing these in the US I would have known exactly where to go for the materials to get this project done, but it’s not quite as simple here.  We had to go to the market to try to find the socks, then someplace to find fabric paints for writing the words.  We were hoping to find a foot print stamp to make the footprints. We couldn’t find stamps, so I bought a cheap doll hoping to use its feet as a stamp. I was shocked when I took the doll out of the package and found that it was a boy doll. How do I know that you may wonder?  Well, it turns out that boy dolls here come with boy parts, WHAT!!!!!

Shopping for the socks took us to Saroijni Nagar Market, where we were hoping to find 50 pairs of socks at good prices.  Christina said we should be able to get 5 pair for 100 rupees ($1.60).  After checking several little cart vendors we found one that would give us that price, in the colors we wanted.   We just needed to give them about half an hour to get additional socks brought over.  I’m always amazed at their resourcefulness.

So, we wandered and looked at other things for a while.  It’s always interesting making your way through these markets because you are bombarded by people trying to sell you any number of things.  The items being peddled by people who walk up to you and shove them in front of you wanting you to buy them are pretty common from one market to the next. There are washing machine coves, (I always wonder why they think a tourist would need a washing machine cover), plastic aprons, fabric tote bags, lace table clothes, handkerchiefs, sunglasses, jewellery, and a number of other things.  One that I particularly like are the guys who walk up to you carrying a handkerchief which they secretly open to reveal 3 or 4 watches.  Now these obviously aren’t just any watches, but great watches at great prices that they can only secretly sell you. 

Back to the socks.  After a while we returned to the cart to get the socks.  I probably don’t need to mention that at this price these are not the highest quality socks, so we needed to look thru each pair to make sure they were okay.  As we were doing this, all of a sudden the cart guys start grabbing all the socks and start moving their cart over and behind a more permanent booth.  I soon realized that all the cart vendors were doing this.  Things were being moved and pulled back into the permanent booths and out of the center of the walkways.  Someone had “spotted” some authority who would fine them if they caught them selling from these carts, which I’m guessing aren’t licensed and they are selling illegally.  It is amazing to see how quickly the word goes out and how quickly these people disappear.  After a brief disappearing act, carts began to come back out and business goes on as usual.  A false alarm I guess.  I’ve seen this happen a couple of times now; it’s crazy!!!  

Socks purchased, let the painting begin.  It turns out that footprint stamps are not easily found here so after some experimenting, I ended up just painting footprints on 50 socks. They’re all done, and handed out to the girls last night.  Done.

In the middle of church assignments I’ve been trying to buy some fabric to make some things to wear to weddings that we are invited to.  Weddings here are a big deal and so is wedding attire.  Guests are dressed in elaborated outfits.  Think formals that are ornately decorated with metallic braids, jewelled bead work, you name it.  The more colourful and bejewelled the better.  Typically the bride is dressed in red and both bride and groom very ornately attired.  I can’t bring myself to be that glamorous, so I am trying to strike a happy medium (for me) between western and Indian wear.  Something that I would possibly wear other than to the occasional wedding. 

I know I have mentioned this one small trim booth before, I use the term “booth” loosely.  It is located by some of the fabric stalls I go to.  It is located on a stairway that is barely wide enough for two people to pass each other on and you stand on the stairs to shop for trims. I’ve been able to get a picture of it so maybe that will help explain.  It is so narrow that it is hard to get a good picture, but hopefully you get the idea.  Oh, just a reminder that this booth is only about 4 feet tall if that. You’ll notice that the young man is kneeling because he can’t stand.  Imagine spending you day in there.  Hope the pictures help explain this better than I have.

Coming home from fabric shopping the other day there were two stray donkeys roaming our neighbourhood so I was able to snap a couple of pictures of them.  If you look you will see that one of them has a tether and rope tied to its foot and is dragging it along.  Phil said they were still there at the end of the day when he came home.  They were gone the next day so hopefully their owner found them.  You just never know what you might see.

Phil mentioned that he is very busy preparing for the accreditation that is coming up.  Part of getting ready is preparing the campus and I’ve been able to spend some time consulting with them on some things that could be done to help things look more presentable.  I’ve been advising them on some paint colors, helping to select some pictures that will be used as art work for different spaces and making some other recommendations to help make the place look fresher and nicer.  It’s been fun and I always welcome getting to do those kind of things.  

This coming weekend we have a wedding to attend.  We are invited to three different days of the celebrations.  We’ll share about that later.   

 Namaste.

Transforming your mind from the inside out, Overcoming fear that made you doubt…

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I have to start today’s blog entry by bragging on Rae. I always love her and am proud of her. I think she is a magnificent woman and literally can do anything she wants. Today, I am pointedly proud of her.

Some of you may know that Rae plays the piano. She plays better than she admits to herself. However she has always been hesitant to play in public or to be an accompanist. We joked, when we decided to move to India, that she would probably be called to be the Branch pianist. Well that hasn’t happened. When we first came, the Branch was using a thumb drive with 50-60 hymns on it. More recently, I downloaded all of the hymns onto my iPhone and we have been using that as accompaniment.

Over the past few weeks, Rae has had a few times where she has had the opportunity to practice playing hymns on the organ in the Chapel. Today on the way to church she said, she could play prelude if we wanted. It turns out she not only played prelude and postlude but also played for the three hymns we sang during Church. This wasn’t just playing for a few young women or in Seminary. We had over 100 people in Sacrament Meeting today, which in our small building is a full house. Rae did great. As I said, I am quite proud of her.

I took off Monday and Tuesday and with Wednesday being New Year’s Day, I had five days off of work. We talked about going somewhere, say to see the Taj Mahal or to Jaipur, but chose instead to stay in town and do a few touristy things here. We talked in last week’s entry about visiting the furniture restoration stalls, so I will start with our Monday excursion to Humayun’s Tomb.

Humayun's tomb is the tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun. The tomb was built in the late 1500’s and it was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent. The tomb was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 and since then has undergone extensive restoration work. Besides the main tomb enclosure of Humayun, several smaller monuments dot the pathway leading up to it, including the tomb complex of Isa Khan Niyazi, an Afghan who fought against the Mughals. The complex encompasses the main tomb of the Emperor Humayun and 160 members of his family and key members of his court (their tombs were added one by one as they died over time; it wasn’t that they were all killed to accompany the Emperor). This final tomb was actually designed by the man himself before he died. I must say that’s a good way to make sure you have an amazing burial ground.

The tomb is surround by a walled complex with gates in each of the four cardinal directions and beautiful irrigated gardens. The gardens were typical of the style found in Persia, called charbagh, or four section, garden. Charbagh gardens are symmetrical quadrants separated by irrigation channels. They are typical of Persian gardens, but never seen before in India. The features at Humayun’s tomb set a precedent for subsequent Mughal architecture including the Taj Mahal. The total Tomb complex was amazing. I mentioned that it has been restored. It took hundreds of people over a decade using traditional methods and materials taken from the original quarries. Now it looks as much like it did originally as the experts can conceive. It was also interesting to me there were essentially no access restrictions. We could pretty much go where we wanted.

We thought we might spend a couple of hours there but ended up staying for almost four. In my mind it is now at the top of list for our visitors to go see (That’s a hint, ya’ll). I hope this isn’t just ABT (see last week’s entry if you don’t know that acronym). But here are a few of the literally hundreds of pictures we took at Humayun’s tomb.

One last thing before I pass the baton to Rae. As we were walking into Humayun’s Tomb, we came across our first snake charmer. A man was playing a flute and playing with two cobras in baskets. He offered to lets us pet the cobras, an offer which we quickly declined. Still, Rae got pretty close and we got the following pictures.

Well, that’s it for me. Here’s Rae.

Hi ya’ll,

Tuesday we decided to go see India Gate and a few of the governmental sites that are around that area.  India Gate is much like the Arc de Triomph in Paris, except it is in a mall area more like the National Mall in Washington DC. We have driven by India gate several times, but never actually walked up to it and had the “up close and personal” experience.

The “up close and personal” experience was in fact an experience.  We were bombarded from all sides for a wide range of services and items that we undoubtedly needed.  First were the many opportunities to pay someone to take our picture in front of the Gate, next were the many chances to take “just two minutes” to have a henna tattoo, (something that I will do at some point but not then).  There were also offers to buy flying helicopter type toys.  I really loved the part when they would grab the propeller of a new packaged one and bend it around to show us that it wasn’t even broken.  There were also people selling balloons, other toys, and a variety of bracelets, earrings and assorted jewelry.  Each person knowing that we really did need their items and if we’d just let them explain why, then we’d understand and undoubtedly buy everything they had to offer. Shaking your head, waving them off and continually saying nay, nay has no meaning.

Across the street from India Gate is a long road, (think Washington mall and the Washington monument) and at the end of that road is the President’s House.  On each side of that road and before you get to the President’s House are two identical Secretariat buildings.  Secretariat 1 on one side and a duplicate building, Secretariat 2 on the opposite side. Parliament is an even larger circular building visible off to the right.

The walk from the Gate to the President’s House is rather long, but we had sent our driver to park somewhere and wait for us to finish our adventure.  They had closed off the road and so cars were not allowed to drive down there.  Somehow though, autos (tuk tuks) and rickshaws were allowed.  As we were making that walk we were offered many auto and rickshaw rides.  At one point one of those drivers asked us to give him just a minute so he could explain that he would drive us to those sights, stop for us to take pictures and return us where we needed and only charge us 50 rupees (80 cents), and not 1 rupee more.  After realizing that it was quite a walk we decided to take him up on his offer, (my first auto ride since arriving here), while wondering when the BUT would come to play.  He did speak English quite well and did share information about some of the things we were seeing. He did stop for us to take the wanted pictures and kept assuring us that we were not going to pay more than 50 rupees.  Having seen our intended sights, we were headed back to where we would connect with Robinson, our driver.  BUT, as we headed back he told us he’d really like to show us some good shops in the area and a couple of other sights, and it would not cost any more rupees.

Our next adventure began with a couple of other photo ops.  One a gold domed Sikh temple and the other a Hindu temple.  After that we were off to the shopping areas.  He explained to us that if he brought us to these areas they would give him a gift.  We didn’t need to buy anything but just look to see if there was anything of interest.  The first place was quite nice and clearly catered to the expat and tourist community (meaning inflated prices).  There really were some beautiful items and I learned about some rugs that I’d be interested in.  They are made of pashmina and are done in Kashmir tribal patterns.  They are more supple than the more traditional silk,wool or cotton rugs and the colors are more vibrant. Anyway, we both found them beautiful and something that we will keep our eye out for, at a more reasonable price. This place had everything from art, clothing. jewelry, sculptures, blankets, to you name it. 

After making it out of there and not buying anything our driver told us that they were overpriced and that he knew of a shop that had much better prices.  We told him that we really needed to go back but he could drive us past the place, (that was of course on the way) and we’d run in and get a card from them so we could come back later.  He assured us that if we only took 5 minutes to look around then we’d be able to remember them better in the future and our card would mean more.  So, we took 5 minutes and went in.  We found a couple of things we were interested in, and will probably go back at some point. 

It is clear that these drivers have worked out a deal with these merchants and get some sort of gift, kick back or compensations for dragging us poor confused visitors into their establishments.   I know I sound a bit cynical, and I probably am a bit, but having said that, I found these side trips to be interesting, educational and something I’d never find on my own. 

Finally, we really were headed back to meet up with our driver.  As we were nearly to our destination we were bracing ourselves for the BUT, but when we arrived he did in fact just ask for 50 rupees, SHOCK.  We did give him 100 rupees, and felt that we got a good deal.  As I was telling a friend about our adventure she explained that they too had had a similar experience and she was shocked to hear our conclusion, because their similar experience had had a BUT and they spend 1,000 rupees.  I guess we got the good driver.  Thank You!

Speaking of things to look out for, I will just share one more experience.  As we’ve mentioned several times, there are always beggars and people along the road trying to get you to buy from or donate to them.  One day as we’re stopped in traffic (something that happens regularly) a women approaches carrying a child that I thought looked to be 10-14 months old.  The child’s forearm and hand looked like it had been badly burned, like dipped in boiling oil or some other horrific thing.  The arm was charred black and bloody looking.  As I’m gasping in horror our driver explains that this is not real, but make-up.  What!  I couldn’t understand at the time how the child could be so calm and  not crying or screaming, I’m thinking of my own grandchildren and how they would be acting in that situation.  Things like this are something that I’m still coming to terms with on many levels.      

With that cheery note I will bid you all,

 Namaste.