Picture this… Nick purchases a truckload of Indian fireworks, skyrockets and crackers at Diwali, hides them in a wardrobe and bans the use of naked flame within a 50 metre radius. Now Christmas is imminent it’s time to start celebrating. We load up the children’s arms with fireworks and head downstairs onto the street. The street hums with Saturday night activity, pedestrians, rickshaws, scooters and expensive cars (we’re in Koregaon Park after all). Fireworks ready to go.
Armed with an empty beer bottle to stand the rockets in, a packet of matches and armfuls of Indian fireworks in a busy Indian street. What could possibly go wrong?!! Hilariously – no disaster befell us. The highlight was one of the skyrockets going spectacularly awry and flying sideways up into the apartments, crashing into an open balcony and exploding. Of the 100 balconies it could have crashed onto… this was ours!!! We ran upstairs… somehow the washing and windows are all unscathed. Time to call it a night 🙂
If you would like to get an idea of just how unreliable Indian fireworks are, check out the flight path on this one we launched out of a beer bottle gaffer-taped to the balcony!
Check out these vids. When you hit the ‘play’ button it may take a moment to load. Parental Guidance is recommended (but not always applied) and please don’t try this at home 🙂
The doors and locks in Rajasthan are often very beautiful and very old. Burmese teak studded with brass. Cut glass door handles.
Very decorative padlocks. I could fill an album just with photos of doors… but I’ve exercised some restraint. How beautiful is this lock?! Huge Burmese teak door studded with brass that were opened only on feast days. The small doors were the usual way. Ganesh, present above every doorway, is also the remover of obstacles 🙂 Cut glass door handles on our room in Jaipur Unlock the god to enter your home
Warning: There are a lot of photos in this post. The havelis of Rajasthan were the mansion homes of wealthy merchants the majority of which are now in a state of graceful decay. They are lavishly decorated with frescos and massive Burmese teak doors. These mini palaces were built as recently as the 1920’s, but now line near deserted streets in dusty towns and villages. We stayed in a converted haveli called Vivaana, in a village near Mandawa. Beautiful. Outside of our accommodation. Note the camel 🙂 Inside was pretty nice too! Inside courtyard at Vivaana Pool was freezing cold, but that didn’t stop the kids. Vivaana Letting Ethan lounge on my bed. Kids’ bed Visitor outside our window Inside of haveli before renovation. Walls are blackened from kitchens and oil lamps. Place to hang the washing Small businesses have opened in the sides of some disused havelis, like this barber shop. Common to see awning, signs and paintings over the top of the haveli artwork and businesses like this laundry. Check out his steam iron! Massive Burmese teak doors, studded with brass. frescos Europeans as part of the frescos Modern inventions were often included in the fresco decorations. In some cases people’s heads have been scratched out subsequently. A form of religious vandalism. A Rajasthani puppet show on the lawns, while up on the parapet a peacock poses. Lucinda: We took a sneak peak at this haveli, restorations were underway. up under a door way Vivaana doorway Welcoming bugle
Beautiful, Pushkar on its holy lake, with its small Brahma temple. While buying a drink in a small grocers, I was nudged and nudged again. Not the kids this time, but a brahmin cow who walked up the steps and into the shop demanding her daily chapatti bread. Brahma temple in Pushkar. The only temple to Brahma in India. cow receiving her daily feed of chapattis. Beautiful, holy Pushkar Lake. colours of Rajasthan
Riding camels at sunset in Pushkar. Audrey: Get me off this thing!! Ethan: The beads really killed on the inner thigh Majestic
At the Amber Fort in Jaipur we rode an elephant up through the gates. Great views and fun. Fun The gates are large enough for two elephants to pass side by side – just
The last of the pics from Jaipur and Delhi. (Looking at all these pics on the blog is saving you from a long and tedious slide show once we return 🙂 Palace of the winds in Jaipur, where the palace ladies would sit and watch the real world pass by down in the street. The windows in this facade are angled to catch breezes from any direction. Summer palace on the lake in Jaipur. Still used by the royal family. Destined to become an expensive hotel. Lots of gorgeous brass and copper pots in use in India. Palace in Jaipur Spice market in Delhi We could only walk around the perimeter of the market, the spices in the air were too intense to enter the wholesale market. Our eyes and noses were running. spices Often the beauty is in the small details. Above Jaipur at sunset. Can’t help but smile looking at this guy. Amber Fort in the background… and a snake charmer Elephants waiting for their rides at Amber Fort. Gentle giants Feeding an elephant bananas. Lucinda very sweetly peeled her banana for the elephant. Jeweller/silversmith in his colourful workshop in a small village in North Rajasthan. All his techniques and tools are unchanged in the past couple of hundred years. Audrey in the gardens. Advertisement for underwear. Rajasthani dancer with fire on her head. Often entertained by dancers. Clay pots outside homes are filled with water for the homes to use. Scales in use outside a flour mill.
This palace and mosque is only 40 kms from Agra and was built in the 1500’s by the Mughal Emperor Akbar, the grandfather of the Taj Mahal visionary. Akbar moved his capital here after he visited a Sufi hermit in this place who predicted he would have an heir (something he’d been trying for for a while). Unfortunately the place had no water and within 14 years the man made lake dried up and the court moved on. It is exquisitely carved and includes a distinct palace for each of his three wives (Christian, Islamic and Hindu). incredibly high gate to the mosque. Large wasps nests hanging under the gate. Goats on the steps of the mosque… wearing cardigans. Officially a woolly jumper. The Emperor would sit on this stone stool and move slave girls around as human pieces in this life size game of Ludo. There is a beautiful small white marble tomb inside the mosque. Pilgrims travel to make wishes at the shrine by tying knots in strings on the marble screens. The kids each made 3 wishes. The white marble screens were mostly carved from a single slab of marble, each with a unique design. inside the mosque Stone frieze carving of ear rings. No two are the same. Chief poohbah seat.
On the first day in the Andaman islands the whole family hopped in two auto rickshaws (also known as a tuk tuk) and took a ride down to the ferry to catch the ferry that took us to our island. but as soon as the auto rickshaw stopped mum was getting hassled about bags so I jumped out and went to help her then dad stepped out of the rickshaw paid the dude and he was off, after I helped mum I realised something… I left my carry on backpack with my camera, phone and wallet in the auto rickshaw that had just left.
So me and dad jumped on the back of another auto rickshaw and told the guy to follow the dude that had my bag in the back. Turning around corners at full speed (which in an auto rickshaw was like 20 miles per hour but still) and chasing this guy with my bag. Eventually we lost him and searched the whole of Port Blair, top to bottom. Then the rickshaw driver said he knew the guy with my bag and would let him know that he has it. We told him that we are coming back to Port Blair on our last day and that the dude could give it to the hotel that we would be staying at. Dad got the guy’s mobile number.
Anyway the 5 days in havelock island (our island) was great fun but when we got back to port blair and checked in to the hotel they said that no one had come in with a bag of any sort. And that got me worried so I waited an hour in my room to see if the guy dropping off my bag was late, but no luck. I looked out the window and saw a private detective billboard and me and mum thought “well…” We decided to make a plan. First we would go around to all the rickshaw stands and use me being the only blond kid on the whole island to our advantage, trying to tell all the drivers about my missing bag, if that didn’t work we would go to the police station and if that didn’t work then we would go to the private detective.
We tried calling the driver’s number but it was missing one number. So we found out where all the rickshaws hang out and went around looking at the back of all the rickshaws looking for a match. Eventually we talked to a driver that cared and was asking helpful questions and was trying to match the mobile number. When suddenly the guy who drove me around to look for his friend with my bag taps me on the shoulder and said “come come Mr Thorpe”. So we jumped in the back of his rickshaw as the driver and he took us round to his friend’s house were he was keeping my bag safe. Huge relief and gratitude. Thank you dude!
I checked and luckily nothing was stolen, everything was exactly as I’d left it. but I did find something else that was slightly strange. you know when your friend steals your phone/ipod and takes tones of useless weird photos that take forever to delete, well it was kinda like that but he took photos of his home, his back garden and his finger. He was like a baby with a new toy playing with the camera on my phone. who took this picture??? random
.red octopus
.Dugong
.many varieties of hermit crabs
.sand crabs
.Mosquitous
.banded coral sea Krait
.Micro bats (Andaman bat)
.Gecko
.Emerald Gecko Also the name of the place we stayed.
.Dogs
.Cats
.Giant Clam
.clams
.angel fish
.flying fish
.trigger fish
.lion fish .bump head parrot fish
.thousands of little fish that I dont know the name of
.Nemo (clown fish)
.pigs
.parrot fish
.lobster
. many varieties of sea cucumbers
.huge sea urchin
.Dory (from finding Nemo)
.cow
.corals (soft and hard)
.kingfisher
.cow
.sea slug
.cone shell
.sea snail
.bull ants
.wasps
.millipedes
.ducks
.frogs
.sand flies
.jelly fish
.algae
.sea lice (ouch)
.crabs
.chickens
.people
.sea sponge
.eagle
.pipe fish
