Jaipur, India

Our tour of the Pink City began bright and early because we had a lot to see.  It is called pink, but is more of a coral-orange.  This is the wind palace.  It was located on the main drag and had a bunch of windows so all the king's women could look out at the procession as it passed by.

Here's a guy, going to work.  People get up really early, but there are no set times on when stores open or close.  Most of the time you just have to be in the right place at the right time.  Except for the fruit market.  You have to go early for the best coconuts.

Here's a Famous shoe store that was open for business.  The sandals were very colorful and I snagged myself a pair even though they were very uncomfortable.

Our tourist van was taking us to another fort/palace combo.  This palace was a big one and up on a hill.  The fort was even higher up and had the world's largest cannon (that had never been fired).  We didn't get to see it though.

We did get to see a baby elephant on the side of the road just waiting for tourists to take pictures.

\

And this snake charming guy.  It was ok, but he did play a pretty mean snake recorder.

Aunt Becky was saying yes to everything at this point on the trip so she sat down and helped to charm the snake.  She was too busy laughing to make any music.  Christina, on the other hand, was probably first chair in recorder in the third grade because she rocked it!

Then I was distracted by this camel.

When I turned around, Aunt Becky had a snake on her neck!  And she kissed it.  Aunt Becky was really cutting loose.

We finally made it to the tourist herding area which was also the Elephant herding area.  We were all set to ride an elephant up to the fort.  Fun for all, but maybe not the elephant.

These guys were really thinking ahead and built a boarding platform to get on the elephant.

Dan and Kingkini getting left in the dust.  The elephant that Aunt Becky and I were on was a speed demon.  I'm pretty sure we didn't get our full money's worth because it went too fast.

Aunt Mary and Christina were just ahead of us in the traffic jam of elephants.

When we reached the top to the palace, we started to have a look around.  I spotted this monkey chewing on some flowers.  Then, it jumped up and took off running.  It ended up whizzing right past Aunt Mary's head.  She jumped about 10 feet in the air.  It was pretty funny.

Like I said, the Indians were cold.  Even our Indian.  I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she was keeping the sun off of her, but she did carry around a fleece jacket the entire trip.

More Agra, India

Like I said,  I had to stop at the pharmacy to pick up some cold medicine.  There was an advertisement that said a particular vitamin would make you taller, stronger and smarter.  Just had to take a picture to add to the Taller wall of fame in our house. 

We visited another palace that was out in the rural area.  It was quite lovely and all carved and beautiful as most of the palaces were.

This one was pretty interesting in that the king who built it had a Christian wife, a Hindu wife and a Muslim wife.  He wanted to have a connection to all the people, but I think he just wanted to have all his bases covered.  He also had a bunch of concubines.

There was another nice garden in this palace that we admired.

Everything was well kept. The "gardeners" gave us seed for some of the plants, but it was just a ploy to make 10 rupees off the Americans.

Not five minutes later this guy was dusting off part of the palace and wanted to take my picture.  For 5 rupees.  I was on to this scam by now and just took his picture and walked away.  By this time in the trip, I was getting pretty savy to these scams and buying stuff. 

Again, lots of carving.  It was interesting in that they had figured out all these ways to cool the areas with little channels of water between an outer and inner wall and to irrigate the gardens. 

The Christian wife was most into carving because her apartment had flowers all over the place

And this king was really into games and his concubines.  He had a parcheesi board laid out in stone in an area and used his brightly dressed concubines to be the pieces and they danced from space to space.  You should have seen Aunt Becky's rendition of this.

The happy newly weds.

Then we were back in the tourist van for the drive to Japuir.  We took some pics out the windows during the drive

For Oliver

This kid is a Seibert, through and through.  Just wait until your eyelids start drooping, Oliver.  Man, where did all those wrinkles come from?  Kids.....

Agra, India

Aunt Becky is seen here all smug because she is a week into her kid free vacation and the only person she has had to take to the bathroom is me.

She was pretty comfy in Dehli and took a lot of good pictures, but we had to go and catch a train to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.

Christina, despite losing her lugage, was a trooper and found some great Indian clothes, including this shirt that I would have liked to have for myself.

So we took an early morning train to Agra, India. We were dropped off at our hotel and then picked up by a very memorable guide.  This guy, with is 5 inch rattail, knew EVERYBODY.  It was like going around Archbold with Uncle Kevin or trying to go to the Chief with Grandma Seibert.  He took us to the Taj Mahal and explained to us about the gate.  It hid the Taj like a veil over a pretty woman's face.  You couldn't see the Taj until you went inside.

Like I said, he (in the pink fadeaway sweater) knew everyone including this "professional"photographer that goes by the name Wiskey. 

It was very lovely and a wonderful day to visit.  But there were a million people there.  I can only compare it to visiting Washington DC on spring break while the cherry trees are in bloom and every senior class and group of Japanese tourists are in town.

Lots and lots of pictures of the beautiful ladies.

Aunt Becky was being a cheese ball and going along with the Tour guide's demands that he takes pictures of all of us.  We think he just wanted to play with our cameras.  When I had my iphone out a couple of times to take pictures (because my camera battery died), he insisted that he take my picture a million times.

We had to remove our shoes at this site and many others.  I liked this sign and was thinking I would hang it in our hallway so the kids actually put their shoes away every now and then.

The grounds were lovely and very well maintained.

Tourist sites.  Security.  Heck.  Even the guy guarding the atm had a shotgun.  I never felt unsafe.

By the time we walked up , things were getting very crowded.  As part of our tour, we had the "expensive" forienger tickets which allowed us to skip the lines.  If you were Indian, you got in for 10 rupees, but had to wait in line.  This was another place that I felt like an American target for getting ripped off and having my picture taken against my will.

the entire thing is carved out of white marbel and had inlaid stone flowers all over it.  When it was initally built, all the inlay was precious stones. Then the Brits came and chiseled out all the good stuff and replaced it with plain old granite.  Still impressive, but another instance of the Brits pillaging around the world.

Another one of my artsy-fartsy pictures.  I was just avoiding being around people because I had a pollution head cold (we did stop a pharmacy and I bought cold medicine that was 50 rupees--$1 and consisted mostly of caffine.)

After a lengthy visit to a resturant that served ok food with vegetables carved into flowers, but very nice restrooms and then a stop at the marble inlay factory, we went to the Agra Fort.  We finally saw some monkeys up close.

Another impressive stone fort with all kinds of crazy carving and 10 foot thick walls. 

Inside the fort, there was a palace that was quite nice and ornate.

This dome used to be gold, but then the British came and replaced it with brass.  Sigh....

These were medicinal herb gardens and all the sections were different back in the days of the palace.  It was still very nice to look at.  Remember, it was winter there, so there wasn't much in bloom or growing.

More about the palace...carving, kings, concubines....At this point, I just wanted to catch up on some sleep.

India Post wedding (or crashing John and Kingkini's honeymoon)

After we had the business of the wedding behind us, we went on John and Kingkini's honeymoon.  They insisted that it wasn't their honeymoon, but a trip around northern India to see the sites with all the rest of the white people.  First stop, Dehli.  We visited the beautiful Baha'i temple that is shaped like a Lotus flower.  Interesting thing about lotus flowers is that the stem on them grows so the water never touches the flower.  The lotus flower is a symbol of purity.  It was a beautiful and very spiritual site.  And also, unlike everything else we saw, it wasn't carved and it was built in the last 30 years.  Our friend and architec, Dan, is working on the Chicago Baha'i temple's welcome center. 

Indians really don't know what cold is. This is their winter and it was probably 62 degrees F.  But that is pretty cold over there so they bundled up their babies in snowsuits and gloves.  Even our Indian, Kingkini, was all wrapped up in a fleece and scarf during the trip.  The rest of us just wore long sleeve shirts.  Lightweight Indians.

This is a pretty popular place to visit as evidence by all the other people walking up the pathway.  There were lots of school children on field trips.  This was our first real taste of manicured greens in India and we were soaking it in. Probably a throwback to the traditional English Gardens.  Thanks Brits. We also have the Brits to thank for the awesome tradition of bed tea.  That's where someone brings you tea and biscuits before you get up out of bed.  Outstanding.  I need bed tea in Indiana, but the only Brit I know probably doesn't deliver.

We were all wandering around and checking things out when Aunt Becky disappeared.  We found her talking to some girls.  They were teaching her swear words in Hindi.  They were super cute and wanted to talk English with us.

John, the groom, minus his fancy clothes, and his mom, Mary.  We had lots of fun with Aunt Mary.  I think she had fun too.

Like I said before, fair people with light hair are rare in India and people would want to talk to us.  These school girls all wanted to shake hands and say hello.  Unfortunately, their English was very limited and we couldn't speak and Hindi, so there was just a lot of smiling and shaking hands.  If you shook one hand, you had to shake everyone's hands.  I'm around a lot of school children and I know what kind of germ factories they could be so I refrained from hand shaking and just took pictures.  Then I made everyone use hand sanitizer.  No telling which one just had a finger up their nose.

More coconuts.  A tradition at Hindi weddings is to steal the groom's shoes and then he has to pay a penalty.  We negotiated with John for a sari for Christina and Kingkini's cousin and then coconuts for all of us.  This was the day that John had to pay up.

We visited the India Gate which is like a war memorial to those fallen in the line of duty.  It was shortly after Republic day so there were still lots of flowers and military around.

Then it was on to a historical site, the Qubar Minar.  It was built in 1192 AD and serves the purpose of calling people to prayer in the mosque.  It was beautiful and amazing that it was standing and the polution hadn't affected it too badly in the 800+ years.

Another tower near the first was started but never finished.  It was set to be twice as tall as the first, but budget shortfalls caused the building to stop.

Aunt Becky and Dan took lots of artist pictures at this site, but after a while, they were just starting to wonder where their next butter chicken and gulab jamun was coming from.

Keep an eye on Becky's blog www.turnerfive.blogspot.com for more picture of our amazing trip.  We are both only part way through our pictures.