Friday 1st February

 

I have been looking at the weather maps and forecasts for the whole of Australia.  It has been quite catastrophic, here and there across the continent.  Dreadful floods, dreadful bushfires.  So much havoc and tragedy – it brings to mind my favourite poem from school days, My Country by Dorothea McKellar.  Here is a snippet:

 

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

 

Just at the moment we seem to be overdosing on the terror, on the flood and fire if not the famine…

 

On a lighter note…

 

Nicole and James usually go to Coles Bay in this last week of January.  As soon as they make a booking for accommodation, and plans for carefree sun-filled days on Freycinet Peninsula, the Weather Gods start grinning and counter-planning…and it invariably rains, with accompanying howling winds.  So this year they took Grace, Olivia and Matilda AWAY from Tasmania for the last week of January.  Away to…Northern New South Wales…Their plane was one of only six allowed to land last Sunday, because of rain and howling winds.  They got to their accommodation, and then were told not to drive anywhere because of the dire conditions:

 

From the internet weathernews…

 

A severe weather warning is still out for damaging surf for much of coastal NSW as ex-tropical cyclone Oswald's legacy batters shores after bringing heavy rain and damaging winds.

 

Pete rang Nicole on Monday and she said, in sad tones, “PLEASE tell me it is pouring with rain in Coles Bay!”

 

India #80

 

Beautiful Udaipor Day (BUD)

         

Well that is what my notes say… And I know now that while Pete and I were having a BUD Vish, Mary and Hana were having hot, sticky frenetic days in Mumbai.  They had been planning to go north, to the small village where Vish’s father (Amed’s grandfather) had grown up.  This was going to be the high point of their holiday, in fact.  To their consternation, when they got to Mumbai they found that the whole area surrounding the little village was in quarantine.  Some dreadful Ross River fever-type epidemic was laying people very low indeed; I think hundreds died.  So instead of a nice peaceful rural sojourn, they were at the India Club in Mumbai.  This, ofcourse, wasn’t horrible, because they were surrounded by Vish’s lovely family, but it was all very hectic, with a huge wedding being organised from London.

         

Back in Beautiful Udaipor… Pete and I asked Shambu to pick us up at ten.  “I will be there at 9.45!” he shouted.  We said there was no hurry and that we really didn’t have an agenda.  We wanted to take a boat trip out to the hotel on Jagmandir Island, but other than that he could choose places to take us.  Our first stop was at a beautiful little lake.  Shambu indicated that we might like to walk around it.  And what bliss!  It was just lovely, shaded by trees, and the most wonderful and amazing thing was…for the first time in India we had silence.  No traffic noise, no shouting, just birds.  It took us a little while to realise what was so different.  Ten minute of silent and peaceful beauty.  We watched a man who had a most desirable job, scooping stuff off the top of the lake.  He waded about with a long branch, gently scooping up leaves and rubbish and sorting it all out on the edge of the lake.  He was in no hurry and seemed totally at peace with himself and the world as he idly scooped and splashed.

         

Our next stop was at some very famous palace gardens, with many strange water features.  Not so pleasant… There was an all-pervading smell of urine, quite overwhelming.  We decided the water features were no such thing… they were all toilets!  We didn’t stay long at all, but we did see lotuses growing in the ponds, and that was a definite bonus.

         

Shambu then drove us to the outskirts of the city where there were 220 mausoleums,  They were there to commemorate the maharajahs of Udaipor – 76 of them in an unbroken line of descent.  Not a single other person around, not even a guide.  We clambered around very happily admiring the carvings and the columns.  Whole families of langurs were living there – no badboys, as there were at the mausoleums in Jaipur, just badmonkeys.  They seemed very happy with their lot in life.  I wanted to take some photos of them and went up quite close; they were so very pretty, all silver, with long black tails, black faces and beautiful brown eyes.  Shambu said, “Don’t go too close, they are quite vicious.”  I thought I knew better; they were so gentle and so peaceful.  But one of the males was watching me and when I got too close he snarled, very suddenly, revealing wicked sharp teeth.  I gave a sharp shriek and fled back to Pete and Shambu, who very nobly didn’t say, “I told you so.” 

         

After this we went to a Jain temple.  This obviously didn’t make too much impression on me: my notes say, bluntly, “Jain temple.”  I do remember it was very hot and we had to skip across scorching marble in our bare feet going ouch ouch ouch to look at various bits and pieces.  I still haven’t got a grip on the difference between Jains and Buddhists… But I have learned that it is impossible to become a Hindu; you are born Hindu and that is it, they don’t convert people or recruit anyone to their church.  Are any other religions like this, a matter only of birthright, do you know??

Thursday 31^st January

 

I am on the track of a satellite communications thingy.  One would think this would be easypeasy; all the cursing boats have them, don’t they? 

 

Well no…it is a bit like trying to catch smoke, using a mirror.  We find people who have good systems but when they try to explain how they work, where they got the…it all evaporates.  Or they got the system in the USA and it doesn’t really work in the southern hemisphere. 

 

This morning I talked to me New Best Friend Andrew, from Aquatronics in Sydney.  He assures me it can be done – easypeasy – and more or less within my budget.  We will see!  It would improve my life immensely, to have easy communication via the internet when we are away.  I found it a teensy bit stressful, having to lug my poor laptop computer in and out of Pacific island towns, trying to get WiFi connection, mostly with no success whatsoever.  And I was dreadfully envious of people on boats who sat, sipping Long Island Tea cocktails and communicating via the internet from the deck of their very own little boat. 

 

It must be possible to do this on 2XS – watch this space!

 

India #79

One evening Pete was suddenly stricken with indigestion.  All very painful and where were our Quikezes?  Nowhere to be found!  I persuaded him to have a rest and to let me go off on a medicine-finding adventure.  I felt very safe in Udaipor and was sure I could manage to find my way to and from some sort of chemist with no problems.  He said I had to be back before dark and I snorted quietly but derisively – OFCOURSE I would be back before dark, piece of cake, really!  The people at the desk at the Mahendra Prakash were very dubious when they saw me setting off alone.  One of them offered to go off on his motorscooter right then and there but I insisted on going alone; I really wanted to prove to myself that I could accomplish this one small task.  I followed the directions they gave me at the desk and found a hole-in-the-wall chemist about one kilometre from the hotel.  So far so good.  Next I had to try to explain Pete’s medical condition.  I thought I mimed indigestion quite convincingly, but the grave and handsome chemist thought I was holding back: “Does your husband have loose bowel motions?” he asked, directly.  Well not that was NOT what I was miming; I thought I had limited my show of pain to the gullet region.  Eventually I left the shop clutching a small packet of Digeze.  And very cheap it was too, about five cents.  All of this sort of stuff is amazingly cheap in India.  It’s almost worth a trip here to stock up on Aspirin and cough drops!

         

OK now it was time to retrace my steps.  Down the narrow winding streets, up and down a few steep little hills, through the inches deep flood of dubious water, past the tiny little shops, past the sumptuous-looking pavilion housing a collection of exotic cars (we never did go and see this, why not?) and then oh dear down a long straight dark dark street with nobody in sight, no lights, only a few cows wandering about in a desultory fashion.  Where on earth was I?  Should I keep going that way or turn back this way or what?  I dithered for a while, then made a purposeful decision and started walking purposefully – ummm – this way rather than that.  Along came a very young bloke on a shabby rickety old bike.  I might have mentioned before that a lot of the bikes ridden daily in India are of this ilk; you wouldn’t see one like this anywhere in Australia any more.  No gears at all, lots of rust, bald flat tyres.  He came to a halt and gazed at me in wonder.  What was I DOING?  He spoke very little English, but when I said Mahendra Prakash and waved my arms around in a “where is it?” sort of fashion, he became very animated.  Apparently I was a long way from the Mahendra Prakash – how did this happen?  And would I please hop gracefully onto the rusty little rack on the back of his bike.  I could feel my weight putting an unbearable strain on the back wheel but didn’t want to offend my boy-knight in shining armour so I clung on and we sped down the damp dark streets.  Well “sped” was the wrong word but we were making some sort of progress with much panting and grunting from the boy.  He managed all the way to puff away quite competently on his dangling cigarette.  But after a while he gave up and asked me to get off.  Now would I like to hop gracefully onto the cross bar in front of him.  Oh dear… He was very pleased with this arrangement and became even more happy when I gave a few sharp short shrieks of terror as he steered me towards bullock carts and big unidentifiable vehicles all coming right at us.  “Are you my friend?” he asked, wobbling the wheel dangerously close to a speeding autorickshaw.  “Yes,” I said firmly.  I wasn’t sure what he meant by friend.  Did he want me to adopt him and take him home with me; did he want me to give him lots of money; did he think I was a young chick available for dalliance – it was after all very dark by then?  None of this was up for discussion, I just wanted to get back to the hotel alive.  Finally we got there; he was very proud, and justifiably so, of having got me safely to my destination.  I wanted to give him money but he recoiled, no he didn’t want money but….could I please come to his uncle’s shop where he works and buy lots of things tomorrow?  Well no.  I couldn’t understand his directions, it was much easier to insist on giving him some well-earned rupees then and there.  And yes he rushed off with a spring in his step, very happy with this outcome.  (The men in reception and the poor ailing man in my room were all very happy to see me back safe and sound, Digeze in hand.)

Tuesday 29th january

Tuesday 29^th January

 

A long weekend – what bliss!

 

We tried to fit as much leisure as possible into the extra day.  Pete went up and down stairs to the garage workshop every few hours to put extra layers of varnish on his beautiful new drawers, specially designed to hold workshop items on 2XS – much better than having them crammed into narrow, unwieldy cupboards, or jammed under the couches.  But he did not go near the dodgy toilet and its associated problems, so it was a real holiday…

 

At 4.30 we had our first ever 3D movie experience.  I wasn’t sure if I would like 3D – I had heard that some people get motion sickness, and this is something I prefer (strangely…) to avoid.  But no!  We were both wildly enthusiastic about the whole 3D thing.  Such fun!  It was all a bit confronting – Life of Pi, which features a large amount of heaving sea and a very realistic shipwreck.  But – we loved it!  The scenes of Pi (aka Piscine Molitor Patel) surviving on his sturdy little lifeboat in the company of Richard Parker, a gloriously large and ferocious Bengal tiger, will stay in my memory forever.  A great movie!

 

India #78

 

Our experience of Udaipor was fortunate indeed.  We arrived in a beautiful magical fairytale city, with palaces floating on the edge of beautiful blue lakes.  I have since read other traveller’s tales and found them full of disappointment and mockery; the gorgeous palace in the middle of the lake is usually in the middle of a dusty plain…. In Monty East’s travel diary, he writes, “Udaipor is built around 4-5 artificial lakes, which because of the drought are virtually dry.”  So how lucky were we, to be there just after monsoon, and to see the city as it should be, with people swimming, washing, boating, using the lakes so happily.  It was also the first place we had been to which was a bit hilly, and I for one liked this very much.  I think Tasmanians are just used to hills and to having streets go up and down as well as round and round.

         

Our driver in Udaipor was Shambu.  I met him in a tiny shop just around the corner from our hotel, where they sold beautiful little leather books and albums, all made locally.  He was hanging out there talking to his friends, and he looked at me most longingly – surely I would like a lovely driver with a lovely autorickshaw??  Well yes I would… He was a delightful young bloke and we enjoyed his company very much, although he didn’t speak anywhere near as much English as our previous drivers.  He took us to a lakeside haveli (I think this is a generic word for a house turned into a hotel/restaurant…) for lunch and we sat there very happily on the edge of the lake looking at the floating palaces and the people disporting themselves in the water.  There were lots of women washing their clothes and their bodies in the ghats.  To my great surprise, the women were happily stripping off their clothes and bathing topless.  Pete somehow managed to miss every single sighting; he was always looking in the wrong direction, too sad!  I couldn’t work out why the women were so immodest, comparatively, when it is such a religious country, with women generally swathed from neck to ankle (other than the obligatory bare midriff).  Maybe they were of a lower caste and therefore invisible to the general population?  This wasn’t something I could ask Shambu….

         

We went back for a rest and a swim in the pool, and then had dinner in the hotel restaurant where we found three other lots of Australians and nobody else, quite amazing!  We badly needed a swim because it was SO hot in our room… The electricity wasn’t working and we couldn’t turn on the air-conditioner so we lay and sweltered, every day that we were there until the very last day when we suddenly realised that in fact the staff went around and turned off a switch outside each room as soon as the occupants had left for the day.  Everyone else was wise to this and turned their switch back on when they came back in.  So we needn’t have lain on our bed groaning with heat and bathed in a large pool of sweat at all!

         

Udaipor is famous, amongst other things, for miniature paintings.  The place is heaving with “art schools” where artists from very young children to much older people sit with magnifying glasses painting tiny gorgeous little pictures.  They were just lovely but once again there were TOO MANY.  Sensory overload!  I only bought one, a tiny tiger for Pauline.

         

While I was being overwhelmed by paintings and painters, Pete was struggling away in a shiny new travel agency trying to negotiate tickets Udaipor-Mumbai.  The agency all looked very swish, and the bloke in there was handsome and helpful.  But…the power was out, his computer didn’t work, the phone was down, he couldn’t send emails, it was all very complicated and the whole process took about two hours.  I was quite happy walking up and down the hilly little street looking in shop windows.  A nice young man came and talked to me, wanting to know where I was from and what I thought of Ricky Ponting.  How nice, I thought.  He also wanted to know what the weather was like in Melbourne, so we discussed that for a while.  He told me he was on his way to Australia the following week, with a display of artefacts from Nepal.  Well gollygosh how interesting.  I gave him lots of useful info, and then out came the sales pitch… The exhibition of artefacts from Nepal was in fact at that very moment just around the corner in the exhibition hall under that palace; maybe I would like to come and spend some money???

Sunday 27th January

Sunday 27^th January

The wedding was so beautiful – full of love, laughter, sensational food, copious wine.  A splendid and wonderful bride and groom, lots of friends and family old and new – what more could we want? 

(Oh- a photo booth – what fun was that!  I got the card of the people who provided it, Duane and Christine, in case you want one for your next festive occasion – guaranteed to keep people in fits of laughter.  Nicola and Gus now have an album full of cheery photos and messages, with their nearest and dearest posing and sometimes shrieking in a variety of silly hats and moustaches. 

1300 303 700

info@hobartphotobooth.com.au

if you want to enquire about this possibility for a forthcoming Big Event.)

Sunday 27^th January

Can there be more MONAFOMA, I hear you cry?  Why yes!  Pete and I (finally) got into Faux Mo, the after-party in Bidencopes Lane.  It was indeed along the lines of if you build it they will come.  Bidencopes Lane isn’t all that attractive, in daylight.  It is full of lurid graffiti murals and back doors.  But done up for a Faux Mo party it was quite spectacular, with a disco feel – lights, DJs, music, flame-grilled hot dogs. 

Pete and I got a drink and sat on a handy comfy couch and watched the flame-grilling with great interest.  This stall is owned by a father-and-daughter combo, very handy with the blow-torches and speedy at assembling what looked like delicious hamburgers.  I watched with some alarm as Kylie Quon sauntered over to look – the father-and-daughter combo weren’t in the least fazed but I would have trembled in my boots of Kylie Quon, chef par excellence, came to watch me cook!

We were actually waiting to get into the downstairs area, fiercely closed off by a team of security guards.  We asked one of them what was down there, and the answer was, We have no idea.  Good strategy; keep it mysterious!  When we finally did get down there, what did we see??  Well nothing much at all… Several large rooms, one of which was the old Tatler cinema.  This was only relevant to a few of us; Pete and I were amongst the very oldest people there by several decades, the only ones likely to remember the Tatler.  The rooms filled up with a bright, cheery crowd of hipsters, some of whom were wearing extraordinary outfits: 

•   tight shorts, topknots, tight home-knitted jumpers with animal designs (boys)

•   50s dresses and flowery hats (girls)

Nobody seemed to mind the presence of a few oldfarts so we wandered around and then found another comfy couch, where we sat, bemused but happy, for a few hours.  There were random happens – a disco in the Tatler room, a small below-ground dance floor where the projector screens must once have lurked, a random small Asian woman playing an obscure and very quiet instrument and then singing, soprano and very loudly, a strange Asian song.

When we left the whole laneway was heaving with happycampers, dancing – was this really Hobart, on a Sunday night??

India #76

Ali Baba, who Pete met by chance in a plumbing shop.  Yes indeed, this was his New Best Friend’s name.  … Should have been some sort of clue… We had been invited for dinner at seven, so, being punctual Australians there we were, delivered to the designated address by a slightly silent Raj.  Hmmm. Were we at a warm and welcoming Ali Babar house?  No indeed…we were at a jewellery shop…with our three bottles of cold Kingfisher.  We rolled our eyes at one another and entered, a bit reluctantly.  Pete, ever the optimist, said that this might be the perfect opportunity for me to buy a gold bracelet.  It had been one of my aims, while in India, to buy one thing made out of gaudy Indian 22 carat gold, and I had been singularly unsuccessful thus far in getting within cooee of real gold in a real jeweller’s shop.

         

Ali wasn’t there. Yet.  His offsider, known as Smile Ali – yes he did smile ALL the time; he was a very annoying man – stayed back to entertain us while we waited and WAITED for Ali Babar.  He brought us glasses so we could drink our rapidly heating Kingfisher and there we sat, surrounded by jewels and faced with a huge smile and a fairly unpleasant line of conversation.  Smile Ali was a really sleazy bloke, with, as I said, a line of conversation – hot chickybabes, dubious nightclubs – which made me very uncomfortable.  Pete just sat, stoically polite but not smiling back much at Smile Ali.  We managed to interrupt the flow for a brief moment – did they have any gold bracelets in this shop?  Well yes – and here is one just perfect for the Little Lady.  And yes indeed it was.  I have never been one to covet jewellery – after all whatever would have been the point?? – but this was truly gorgeous.  I gasped and stretched my eyes and wanted it very badly.  It was made of flat links of gaudy gold interspersed with white gold, just beautiful.  OK how much??  Well, said Smile Ali, expansively, it is really very cheap.  Only 1500.  Pete and I exchanged cautious looks – this was very cheap, about $50.  Surprisingly astoundingly cheap.  No haggling needed; he said that he would buy it for me straight up.  We chatted away about it for quite some time – was the clasp strong enough etc etc – and then it dawned on us – NOT 1500 rupees, 1500 US DOLLARS.  Gasp once again.  I dropped it like a hot potato, although my eyes still slid covetously towards the little pouch I knew it was resting in… But no, I could never justify spending that much on one single bracelet, too silly for words. 

         

And where was Ali Babar?  Why off at a temple, praying, ofcourse!  Licking his chops at the thought of his Australian juicy prey more likely, and waiting for us to be softened up with Smile Ali-induced boredom and rapidly warming Kingfisher.  Finally in he came, wreathed in smiles and exuding bonhomie.  Would we like to come into his inner sanctum and listen to him talk talk talk for another three quarters of an hour…I was very bored; Pete was very polite.  Out came a big portfolio of Ali Babar’s artwork – hundreds of exquisite miniature paintings, with goldleaf, each painted by his own fair hand, and each taking at least a week to complete.  Well I don’t think so…and yes they were excessively cheap, only US$100 or thereabouts each; why didn’t I buy a dozen?  I murmured soothingly, “Yes very beautiful, oh how lovely, aren’t you clever, but no thank you, not even now you are showing me Kama Sutra ones, no thank you very much, very lovely, but NO.”  And then FINALLY he came to the moneyshot.  He lives six months of the year in Sydney, and his Australian wife Lea would love to talk to us on the phone.  We protested – it would have been about 2am in NSW, but no he said she would LOVE to talk to us, his new bestfriends.  She was very cheery, and very wide-awake for 2am.  Hmmm…. I asked her a few pertinent questions, eg, “Where do your children go to school?”  “Locally,” she said, unhelpfully.  When I had finished talking to Lea, I said, casually, to Ali, “So where do your children go to school, in Sydney?”  “Umm…The Victorian Something or Another.”  Yes ofcourse, all schools in New South Wales are called the Victorian Something or Another!!  By now I was getting tired, hungry, grumpy.  I was ready to get to my feet and say, “Well I’m off!  Pete, have fun with Ali Babar and Smile Ali!!”  Poor Pete, he was being more polite and forbearing than me…

         

Ali must have decided it was time for the Big Pitch.  Almost casually, he started out with saying that, as we were now such Great Friends, would we like to help him out?  He has two jewellery shops in Sydney and has trouble getting jewels out of India and into Australia, there is a limit to how much he can bring into the country each trip.   Maybe I would like to wear a ruby necklace, carry one in my bag, ditto with bracelets, and Pete could do the same.  Well yes Pete would look very lovely bedecked in rubies and emeralds… When we got back to Tasmania, Ali would drive down to Hobart in his BMW and pick up the jewels.  We would be rewarded with $10,000 each.  Did he think we were totally stupid or what???  I just sat back and watched Ali with a jaundiced eye; Pete asked, in polite tones, how Ali was going to guarantee that we wouldn’t just scarper with the jewels.  “Well no problem, my friend!  If you just give me your passport and your credit cards, I will photocopy them, and if there is a problem I can recoup the money.”  He had a whole folder full of testimonials from delighted people all over the world who had helped him out in this precise way; we would be very foolish to miss out on the opportunity.  By this stage – I am a bit slow – I had recognised that we were in the midst of The Jewellery Scam.  I had read about it in several places in Lonely Planet.  What happens is that the poor unsuspecting people who decide to help out Ali Babar and his kin get back to their country of origin only to find that their credit cards have been cleared out of quite a lot of money.  When they go to sell the jewellery to recoup the money, the jewels, ofcourse are worth very little.  Pete hadn’t read these pages in Lonely Planet, but he was not going to be conned, not at all.  He thanked Ali for the wonderful opportunity, and said, “We’re not really interested.  We don’t need $20,000 that badly.  But we are hungry, and would like some dinner.”

         

Ali did in fact cough up for a meal.  He took us to a cheap and cheerful restaurant.  I am sure that if we had given him our credit card details we would have been indulging in Fine Dining… He also paid for Raj to eat with us, which made me happy.  Ali didn’t really talk to us much during the meal, which was a blessing.  But before we left, he told us that the offer was open, that we could even get in touch with him from Udaipor, our next port of call, and he would rush some jewels down to us.  When Raj drove us back to our hotel, we asked how he knew Ali.  He told us that Ali is a famous man in the district; famous for being married to an Australian woman, and for having (dodgily) made a lot of money.  “But,” he said, darkly, “I would never have taken you to his shop, if it had been up to me.”

Saturday 26th January

Saturday 26^th January

Australia Day!

We are going to a beautiful wedding, Nichola and Gus , in Salamanca.  I am wearing a bright pink and blue dress (Zoe would LOVE it; she tries very hard to summons enthusiasm when she sees me in my black and grey work numbers…) and Pete is going to stun the crowds with a costume of his own devising.  I will keep you posted!

MONAFOMA cont’d

We had a bit of a break, which involved lying on the 2XS couches in a slumped position, and then set off to see David Burn (from Talking Heads) and St Vincent (aka Annie Clark), once again in Prices Wharf Shed.  We were a bit fortified by a beautiful meal, cooked by Pete, and involving vegetables from his very own garden, freshly picked/dug/gathered.  The band was fabulous; I have googled a description:

Live, the brass section shared the spotlight with the singers, and the 12 performers spent nearly two hours engaged in odd but charming choreography that included a conga line and recalled Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.

I needed to google this because…I couldn’t see anything at all… Occasionally, through the crowd, I caught a glimpse of an enormous gleaming tuba.  And several times brave Pete hoicked me up so I could see over people’s heads.   It was great fun, to see a large brass section, all choreographed, line dancing!

Last night I removed my Thursday blogbit about MONAFOMA.  I discovered, to my great dismay, that I had offended some people.  This was never my intention; maybe I was just being too clever by half.  I didn’t mean to be unkind or hypercritical; in fact I rather thought that what I had written revealed more of my own deficiencies as an appreciator of the arts than anything else but…apparently not so much.  And maybe I shouldn’t have written about Pete’s reaction because in fact Pete enjoyed the performance greatly, although this sort of modern classical music is a bit bewildering to him.  He is quite happy (happier, alas, than I am,) to stretch his boundaries.  So…I have removed the “review” and send my apologies out into cyberspace…

India

Apart from wanting us to meet John Stark, Raj was insistent that we visit Chokkidani before we left Jaipur.  He extolled its many charms and virtues, and said we would be totally enchanted.  Slightly reluctantly, we let him drive us the 25 kilometres out of Jaipur to Chokkidani.  It is a cultural theme park, very much geared towards Indian families.  And yes we did have a lovely time, although we got very lost wandering around and around, seeing what looked like the same little elevated platforms with Rajastani women dancing with pots on their heads.  “Oh look we must be getting closer to the restaurant, see there is the elephant!”  But there was ofcourse more than one elephant, and many more than one dancing troupe of pot-headed women. 

         

We never told Raj that what we liked best of all was the ferris wheels… He would have thought we weren’t appreciating the culture of the cultural theme park.  We actually found the magicians and musicians and dancers just a tad repetitious and boring.  But the ferris wheels; well we sat enchanted indeed and watched them for long periods of time.  One was small, with only two lots of seats.  It was made of wood and was very rickety.  Two big strong men spun and whirled it without – miracle – breaking off their arms, which could so easily have become jammed in the struts.  The other one was made of metal, and had about eight seats.  At first we thought it was powered by some sort of motor, but no!  It was powered by an athletic young boy, no more than fifteen years old, who jumped up and swung on the seats to get momentum.  Once he had got the whole thing started he climbed up through the mechanism then pedalled the whole contraption like a giant treadmill.  It got up quite a lot of speed.   He never once lost his footing.  I suppose ferris wheel boys who lose their footing are never seen again at Chokkidani; they more than likely are dead and buried!  When it came time to slow the wheel down, he would jump into the seats to weigh them down and get the momentum to change.  Just fascinating.

         

Food was included in our entry fee, but we decided to go through to the adjoining glitzy resort and have a more substantial meal, with gin and tonic and Kingfisher beer.  (We didn’t tell Raj this either, he would have been disappointed that we weren’t sitting eating dhal off banana leaves.)  This turned out to be a very good idea, the resort itself was just fascinating.  It catered almost exclusively, I should think, for wealthy Indian families.  The families in the theme park part of Chokkidani were more your average Indian battlers, and consequently the children were all charming, happy, polite.  Through in the glitzy resort they were monsters!  There were packs of twelve year olds roaming around with poor frazzled resort workers trying to entertain them while their parents had childfree time.  They were so rude and disrespectful to the staff, we were amazed.  They were also quite plump and petulant; until then we had only seen slender, cheery children.  The resort itself was all lit up, fairy lights everywhere, little cabins shaped like the Taj Mahal, a huge mosaic tiled pool, water features everywhere.  Glitzy to the last degree!