Monday 21st January

Monday 21^st January

Today’s birthday girl is – Zoe Thomas, aged three!  She has requested, for her birthday feast, a nice bowl of boiled noodles with tomato sauce.  Her poor older brother and sister have tried, quietly and persistently, to get her to choose fish and chips, but she is adamant.  Boiled noodles with sauce, and maybe a jellybean or two thrown in.  Zoe is a wonderful little girl, full of fun and good cheer.  She is extremely obedient and compliant – All right then, she says, happily, when redirected from some dangerous or faintly heinous activity.  Except…when she isn’t extremely obedient and compliant …and then she is Zoe Of Fury and no amount of reason or logic will sway her.  She is much loved.

This weekend we had guests on 2XS – Hamish (12) and Angus (10).  They showed us quite a different aspect of marina life… They explored up, down, around and under, clambering, exploring, fishing (unsuccessfully) and rip-sticking in the almost empty carpark.  Pete and I played quite a few rounds of Sequence with them and I am afraid to say we were roundly trounced; I think the final score was 5 to The Boys and 1 to P & M… Oh deary me…and we really did try!

We also spent a lot of the weekend rushing about from one MONAFOMA event to the other.  No not with Hamish and Angus; they would have loathed it all, we were not so unkind! My head is buzzing, not altogether pleasantly, so I will try to settle my impressions and write coherently about this amazing festival over the next few days.

India #72

Raj took us to the Amber Fort the next morning, all five of us jammed into a rickety old taxivan he had borrowed.  I had my heart set on doing this the traditional way, ie on the back of an elephant.  Until recently the elephants at the Amber Fort have had a hard time.  They have trudged up and down the steep ramparts from morning till night, carrying up to six people at a time.  Recently their lives have been transformed.  They only work 8-11am and carry only two at a time.  I asked where they go for the rest of the day, and was shown a large paddock with a small lake in the middle; this is where they have their siesta.  All very satisfactory; under these circumstances I was more than happy to pay 550 rupees and ride my beautiful elephant.  Nobody else wanted to join me, they preferred to walk up and up and UP in the stifling heat.  We did, however, persuade Mary that she should ride up as well; she still wasn’t all that well, and it really was hot, and steep.

         

(I have already put the story of Pete And the German on this blog but…here it is again, in its original form…)

The elephant loading areas are very old and designed specifically for the purpose of getting onto the back of an elephant with minimum injury to one’s dignity.  Mary and I joined a large queue and started up a set of stairs to the top of the loading platform.  Pete accompanied us to make sure we didn’t totter over the edge in a foolish manner.  When we got to the top there was, very suddenly and inexplicably, an unseemly commotion.  A thin elderly German tourist was shouting and gesticulating at us, saying that we had pushed in and that it was HIS turn to get on before us.  Mary and I just stared at him in wonder; why all the fuss, there were plenty of elephants, plenty of places on elephantbacks.  What was the matter with the silly old geezer?  He was quite apoplectic and shaking his fist at us.  Pete was incensed.  His eyes flashed with rage and he made menacing gestures, and said, in unequivocal terms that it was a LONG way down.  The German didn’t speak a word of English but he understood all too clearly that he was in danger of being thrown from elephant height.  It didn’t stop him from shouting and waving his arms about in an intemperate fashion.  In the meantime, the two young Indian elephant loaders had quietly and efficiently plucked Mary and me from the queue and placed us gently on our beautiful elephant, Poonam, and we were away.  The German, we saw to our satisfaction, was quite a long way behind us.  He was part of a tour group, all of whom looked mightily embarrassed to be associated with him.

         

After all of that, did we enjoy our majestic ride up to the Amber Fort on the back of Poonam?  Well yes it was just lovely!  We were a bit bemused to find people dangling things before our eyes as we progressed up the hill.  From elephant-height windows in the ramparts there were desperate street sellers –“buy this dress/t-shirt/sarong/carved elephant-with-baby-elephant-inside!”  “Why yes!” we felt like shouting.  “Ofcourse we want to buy dresses!  We will try them on from our comfortable seat on the back of Poonam!”

         

We were a bit sad to get off our lovely elephant but it was time to go and explore the wonderful Amber Fort.  It is a very extensive structure and is surrounded by twelve miles of solid stone walls which go up and down the ridges of the steep surrounding hills.  It must have all been very daunting for the marauding forces rushing around in the heat trying to raid and slaughter.  There were lots of tourgroups “doing” the Fort.  A flock of gorgeously-clad young Indian women from a college seemed to be on the same track as we were.  They were so funny, all totally besotted with Hana.  They would shriek and giggle when they saw her, “Hana!  Hana!” they would shout, clapping their hands with glee and watching her with wide admiring eyes.  It was as if Paris Hilton had descended upon the Amber Fort!  (Oh dear and oh no…I’m so sorry; Hana is MUCH more impressive and wonderful than Paris H… I was just using her as a measure of young female pulling-power!)