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India highlights: Mumbai

As you can see, I am dragging out the rehashing of our wonderful vacation as long as possible.   But, with no further delay, here are some highlights of our travels to India.

1. Mumbai aka Bombay

Our first stop was Mumbai.  We stayed at the beautiful Taj Hotel in the Colaba area of Mumbai.  I really loved this area because one can walk around and see the sights rather than rely on taxis or trishaws; a nice change for Jim and I.

Here is a slightly fuzzy night photo of the Taj but nice nonetheless.

This is a view of the Taj (center) and India Gate from the bay:

Here is another perhaps not as flattering view of the Taj.  There was a lot of construction in the area.  I imagine it will look quite nice once it's finished.

Here are some street scenes (notice the nice wide sidewalk):

It was the weekend so luckily for these guys there wasn't much traffic.

I love this photo.  He was a little bashful.

I asked this guy if I could take a photo after I bought some of his peanuts.  He so graciously sat there and withstood the smoke in his face so I could snap this shot.

Here is Linda making her first street purchase.  This little purse was a much more practical buy than the "big balloon" being sold by many on the street. 

Here is me in front of India Gate!

We also visited a Jain Temple:

The Jains where masks over their faces...they are extremely sensitive to the lives of all living creatures.  I believe this is to prevent any small organisms from entering the mouth.

Next stop....Udaipur!!

Kandalama

Jim's parents George and Linda blessed us with their presence over the holidays.  We spent the first part of our vacation in Sri Lanka and then headed off to India.  We did so many wonderful things, but in the interest of space, I will share the highlights.

1. The Heritance Kandalama.  This Geoffrey Bawa hotel is built into the hillside and overlooks a beautiful lake and a serene landscape.  The way the architecture integrates the surroundings is really quite amazing.  The hotel is 1km in length and because the hallways are open to nature, a walk from one end to the other is an experience in and of itself.  One can see monkeys, langurs, and various birds in the trees and at night bats galore!

This is a view of some of the hotel's balconies.  As you can see the greenery has completely inundated the structure of the hotel.

I'll have a coffee and the monkey will take some tea. (sorry, I had to!)  These clever monkeys stare at you during breakfast to guilt you into feeding them!

This is outside of the breakfast room too!  Look at the baby monkey!

2. We rode an elephant!  It was a bit frightening at first but we soon got the hang of it.  I couldn't help feeling bad for the elephant, like I was squashing him or something!  He seemed happy enough and took breaks here and there to munch on some shrubbery.

This is the view of the lake from the elephant's back.  Shortly after this photo was taken a huge herd of cow stampeded by to graze around the lake.

More highlights to come!

 

Update!

Hello All!!  Yes, we are alive and well; still beaming after what ended up being quite an amazing vacation thanks to George and Linda!  But before I recap our sojourn through Sri Lanka and India let me update everyone on what Jim and I have been up to and where we are at now in our Sri Lankan adventure.

Jim is really progressing with his fieldwork.  Although he has gone through many a guru in order to find a good fit, we are happy to report that he now has a few good teachers and many informants that are making his dissertation seem more than just a distant dream!  He is also improving greatly at the yak bera drum.  Pretty soon we may have pictures of him performing topless in a village ritual!  Well, probably not any time too soon!

At this very moment we are gearing up for an all-night ritual called a Sanni Yakuma.  If I understand this correctly, a Sanni Yakuma is a healing ritual that rids the sufferer of the demons of sickness.  I will be documenting the ritual so we will share our experiences on here in the next couple days.

We are also working diligently on getting our respective articles together for a newsletter that when released will earmark the launch of 'Sri Lankan Artists for Social Change'.  SLASC is the brain child of Eshantha Peris, a Sri Lankan composer currently studying at NYU.  The mission for SLASC is to create dialogue about the arts in Sri Lanka and explore arts power to create positive social change.  We will make sure to let you know when it is available.

 As for me, I am busy with photo editing work.  My day usually involves doing some work from home and then heading out to one of the many cafes with wifi in Colombo.  In addition to this I have just completed my second article for TravelSriLanka magazine. The first was a review of an essay on Sri Lankan art in a book called "Art and Social Change" edited by Caroline Turner.  The second, which was really fun to research, was about women artists in Sri Lanka.  I could have written much much more, but alas, I was limited by my word count!  The next article will be on Sri Lanka's 43 Group, a modernist arts group founded in 1943.  Unfortunately, the magazine doesn't have a proper website so I will try and get the formatted pages to post on here once they are available.

   

Oh Thailand! How we love you!

Jim and I thought it was about time that we venture out of Sri Lanka and Thailand was our natural pick!  Here are some of the highlights!

The Royal Complex in Bangkok is so beautiful.  The ornamentation of the temples and statues, which is made of ceramics and reflective glass, glistens in the sun.  Quite breathtaking.  Here is one of the gatekeepers:

These monks were also playing tourist although they seemed to be a tourist attraction themselves.  They couldn't walk a few feet before everyone was snapping pictures of them!

Although brimming with tourists, the Temple Complex is also a place of worship.

More of our favorite things about Thailand coming up.......

Canoeing on Bolgoda Lake

A few weeks ago Jim and I, along with a few friends, undertook a 2 1/2 hour canoe trip across Bolgoda Lake.  We were shuttled to our kick off point by Peter of ActionLanka and our very able guide. 

Beth and Zoe were the first to go:

It took Jim and I some time to perfect our skills but after no time at all we were pros. 

There is little life on the lake but occasionally you will see a small fishing house.

At one point we hit an area of the water that was completely covered in lily pads....beautiful!!

Here I am keepin' my eye on the prize, in this case the Blue Water Resort where we were to have a swim after our journey. 

Unfortunately, there was a torrential downpour as soon as we paddled to shore!  No swimming but a good time overall!

 

Colombo

So much time has passed since my last entry and I'm afraid catching everyone up on events chronologically is a feat that I am not prepared to undertake so I will just give a quick update.

As some of you may know, Jim and I opted to live in Colombo rather than in Kandy.  After our partial glimpse at the region know as the Cultural Triangle of Sri Lanka, we headed back to Colombo to find our future home.  We are happy to say that within only two days we found our beautifully clean and fully furnished apartment.  It is located in the bustling Tamil neighborhood of Wellewatta and is within walking distance to the ocean (although one must walk over well-traveled train tracks to reach it).

So, after so much complaining about Colombo, all it took was a month and a half, without air-conditioned restaraunts, movie theaters, and metered taxis, for our appreciation of its cosmopolitanism to come to full fruition. 

But, don't think just because we are accepting the western luxuries of the city that we are isolating ourselves too much from the "real" Sri Lanka.  Shortly after our return to Colombo, there was a Hindu procession at about 8 in the morning called the Vel Festival that began just down the street from our hotel and made its way several kilometers through the streets of Colombo.  This was one of the most beautiful and rich displays of devotion that I have ever witnessed and a real awakener to the fact that I am most definitely living a world away from the US.

More pictures and video to come!

Dambulla Hike

About 2 hours north of Kandy is the town of Dambulla wherein lies the Dambulla Caves.  The cave temple is said to have been a place of refuge in the 1st century BC by King Valagamba who was hiding away from the invading army at the time.  The site has been undergoing renovations since then as is apparent by the brand new gargantuan Buddha that greets visitors upon entry.

It is quite a climb to the top especially in the sweltering Sri Lankan heat.  But, alas, we finally made it and saw before us the striking colonnaded structure built out of the large boulder. 

The site consists of 5 caves and a few smaller niches for the devales (this one is to the god Kataragama who can be recognized by his signature peacock). 

Each cave is elaborately painted from ceiling to floor and is filled with sitting Buddhas, lying Buddhas, meditating Buddhas, well over 2,000 images of Buddhas in total. 

Next stop on the Ancient Cities tour, Sigiriya

Culture Shock!

Care of Wikipedia:

"Culture shock is a term used to describe the anxiety and feelings (of surprise, disorientation, confusion, etc.) felt when people have to operate within an entirely different cultural or social environment, such as a foreign country. It grows out of the difficulties in assimilating the new culture, causing difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what is not. Often this is combined with strong disgust (moral or aesthetical) about certain aspects of the new or different culture.

Recently, some researchers claim that culture shock does have many positive effects on intercultural sojourners, like increasing self-efficacy and helping improve self-motivation"

So, I didn't anticipate it, because I mistakenly thought I was a pro, but it hit me like a speeding train.  It all started one fateful day whilst searching for an apartment in Kandy.  An overly eager tuk-tuk driver agreed to take us to our first apartment, which we had found online, and lucky for us on the condition that we let him show us the apartments that he knew about.

When moving to a place like Sri Lanka or to any other foreign country, it just happens that there is a constant battle with one's judgment.  Do I "go for it" and pet the porcupine?  Do I put that strange berry in my mouth that the village man just picked from the tree?  Or do I politely decline the fish-smelling salad, although culturally risky, to safeguard my future health?  You get the idea.  So with an adventurous spirit we let this pushy driver show us the "apartments".

One after another we were shown uninhabitable dwellings and each time we had to convince the tuk-tuk driver that it was not for us.  And when I say convince, I mean "beg and plea with him to take us away from the place" convince.  It seemed our driver was moonlighting as a real estate agent of sorts, no doubt to collect what ever commission he would require from the landlord of our choosing.  When we refused the apartments he then tried to charge us a ridiculous amount of money for his "services".  So, the 2-hour "adventure" turned into the beginning of the above-mentioned "strong disgust" of culture shock.  This combined with a stomach bug led to several blurred and unaccounted for days of my trip.

But, despite the difficulties in navigating a country whose citizens rely on tourism at times thankfully and at times with deep spite, the process of assimilation takes time and in our case woke us up to the obvious.....Kandy is NOT for us!  And as a bonus, my self-efficacy is off the charts!

Here are some nice things we experienced that reminded me to lighten up!

After our disaster with the real estate tuk-tuk driver, we stuck with a driver we like named Samaricon. These are his adorable kids who had just visited Temple.

This is Mr. Kasir.  He invited us  to the yearly meeting of the Hill  Country Malay Association of which he is the President. 

Next stop Ancient Cities......

Elephants galore!

Several days into our Kandy stay, Jim and I headed to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage about 1 and a half hours west of Kandy.  It is government run and provides homes for over 60 elephants. Pinnewala is a tourist oasis.  After driving several miles on dirt roads all of sudden modern tourist shops pop up on either side of the road announcing one's arrival.   Our driver hurried us in to see the Elephants for their morning feeding.  The elephants were then led out to the fields to graze and to pose for photos.  The elephant keepers, or mahouts as they call them here, stand by eagerly awaiting tourists such as ourselves.

After a bit, the elephants were led out to bathe in the nearby river.

My new favorite thing to do: watch elephants play in the water.

The new saddest thing I've seen: an elephant wounded by the civil war.

Bats!

After a couple days in Kandy, we visited the 60 hectare (approx. 150 acre) Peradeniya Botanical Gardens.  The Gardens were quite spectacular and even after several hours we still hadn't seen all of it. 

I can't remember what the name of this flower is but isn't it amazing!?

And this Giant Java Fig tree covers an amazing 17,222 square feet!

Check this out, it's a Cannonball Tree!

There were several intriguing things about the Gardens:

1) There were thousands of bats!  It was so creepy but so cool.

2) Many of the trees in the Garden were planted by royalty from around the world at various times in the last 100 years such as the Prince of Wales in 1922 , the King of Belgium in 1925, and even the infamous Tito!

3) This photo speaks for itself!