Monthly Archives: December 2018

Mon Dec 24 

We woke up at 6:45 so that we could participate in the “optional” yoga class – as if yoga is ever optional for me. I was a little concerned about my foot, but I did much better than expected. It seems I am still creeping towards a full recovery. After the class was over, I stayed behind to do a bit more yoga and meditate. I cannot adequately describe how it felt to do “sun salutations” while basking in the sunlight as it came over the crest of the hills. I also did my Sa Ta Na Ma Meditation bathed in sunshine. Life is Good.

After a delicious breakfast, we had a short Hindi lesson and then headed into Kalinjar to meet the community. Today was the ribbon cutting ceremony for their brand new classrooms. Usually, there are 214 students who are crammed into 4 small rooms plus the small volleyball court, all on the floor. They are gradually planning on building enough classrooms to house the students comfortably, thirty to a classroom, at desks. It was less than an hour drive from Araveli to the school. The car journey took us through bumpy roads in the countryside, passing small homesteads with livestock, haystacks, young wheat crops and precious little children who waved at the car as we passed. We also cut through narrow streets in tiny towns, where we could barely fit between low-rise buildings, donkeys, cows, monkeys, motorbikes and people carrying supplies on their heads. The journey was fascinating and sometimes nausea-inducing.

At the school, we were again greeted by drumming and singing. More necklaces made of marigolds and another red dot between our eyebrows. The kids were adorable, as expected. They performed a special Hindu ritual of thanksgiving to signify the opening of the school, and some of the kids, dressed up in their finest dresses and jewellery performed traditional dances in celebration of the event. It was a wonderful day, but the highlight for me was the moment after we did the ribbon cutting ceremony when the students flooded the classrooms. I could feel the sheer joy and excitement they had to sit in the desks. 

Another moment that really struck me was when talking to some of the kids, I learned that one of the girls who was dancing for us, eight years old, is already married. The dress she was wearing for the dance was her wedding dress. Her husband is sixteen. Thankfully, she will still Iive with her parents until she reaches the age of maturity at eighteen. She doesn’t know him at all yet, as they are more literally bound by the formal contract of marriage and life together for the future. Child marriage is frowned upon now in India, but in the tribal areas, this century old tradition continues to exist.

We headed back to Araveli for lunch and a short rest, and then headed back at the end of the day to start our first session at the build site. This second drive really forced the use of some ginger for nausea. We had four jobs at the school job site: digging down a foot all along the front of the school for the foundation of the stairs with a pickaxe, then removing the dirt with an Indian shovel; mixing cement; carrying dirt or rocks or mixed cement; and plastering the back wall of the foundation of the classroom. None of us in our group of 12 was particularly great at any of the jobs, but we all worked very hard. In an hour and a half, I felt like we hadn’t really accomplished much, but it was something. We will go back two more times during the trip.

When we returned back to Araveli, there was a surprise waiting for us: two men had brought material and samples, to measure us for custom made Kurtha for the men, and Sarees for the women, for which we each needed to choose a pattern or colour. Of course, they also had other things for sale for very reasonable prices. This is bad news for me as I have such a weakness for textiles. I somehow managed to get away with only spending about $35 and will be going home with some beautiful things.

Reflecting on the day, I feel so very lucky to have had the opportunity to visit the Kalinjar community and share in their milestone. It made me feel so hopeful and happy connecting with these amazing children. Even though we had not yet done anything to deserve any recognition in the opening of the school, we are a part of the team that has built and will build in the future. Even if no formal goals are accomplished in our three build days, we are contributing to a larger project and goal.

Sun Dec 23

In the morning the tale was told of the rock climbing adventure from the previous evening. No one involved uttered the word “lost,” although others interpreted the details in such a way. We took the metro and then found a tuktuk to take us the expected fifteen minute drive to the gym. In typical fashion, the driver claimed to know where we were going, even though it was clear he did not. Thankfully, I had written down the full address and phone number, and he seemed to know the neighbourhood. When we got close, and asked a few pedestrians about the gym, it became clear we were in the wrong area altogether. To be fair, the address was not appropriately specific about the neighbourhood. When we soon go to the right general area, using google maps with Erez’s assistance, we established we were close. We drove around in a circle once and decided it best to disembark and walk through the alley. Then a few times up and down the street before a helpful pedestrian actually knew of the gym and its location. We had already once been to where it should have been (and was) but the address was wrong and there was absolutely no signage. Who would have guessed it was in the back and basement of the school with the long driveway?

The rock climbing gym experience went well. Once we had paid, the boys got their gear and were left to their own devices, as the one staff was busy with other duties and people. Erez and Zev tried bouldering and even climbed a five-storey route from a pit in the floor to to the top of the school chimney. The boys got some advice from local climbers for a few bouldering routes and enjoyed the interactions. I fell asleep on the hard mat in the cold gym for a while.

After conferring with on of the climbers for the best route to the nearest metro station, we set off on foot. It was not entirely clear if the “main street” where we turned was the correct one, so after a few minutes we asked directions. The station should have come relatively soon after the turn and we either missed the station, or the “main street” was further along. The gentleman thought we could not possibly walk to the station, as it was about three kilometres away. I doubted his assessment of our ability and distance and we set out to return to our premature turn and get back on track. About fifteen minutes later, we were at the station. Once we got back to the original road and continued along it, the “main street” became obvious as we met the Ring Road that encircles Delhi. We noted a few men urinating in the street, but no one bothered us.

After our last (sniff!) breakfast at the Spectra Restaurant, we met up with the rest of our group for the WE trip. Everyone was lovely, and we all hit it off right away. We could tell this was going to be a great trip already. We have one more family joining us tomorrow and they have three kids. The family from Detroit has a girl named India, who is the same age as Noam, and her Bat Mitzvah is the week before Noam’s. She is REALLY into rock climbing, so she fit right in with our boys.

We headed to the airport around ten to catch the one hour flight to Udaipur. Then we were picked up for a 2.5 hour car ride to Araveli Camp, the WE headquarters here in Rajasthan, right alongside the Aravalli Mountains. It is absolutely beautiful with pink hills in the distance. We were welcomed by the sound of a drum and tambourine, necklaces of marigolds and roses around our necks, and a red dot between our eyebrows. What a reception!

We were then shown to our “cottage” accommodations and had a scrumptious dinner made by the Chef, Ashant. He explained the meal to us in detail and the food was superb. The facilitators are very friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. We fell into our beds quite early as we were completely exhausted. We are looking forward to tomorrow’s activities.

Old Delhi Market

Sat Dec 22

Considering that we had left these two days to relax and adjust, we still managed to fit in many activities. We started the day with a leisurely meal at Spectra and then headed out on the metro. Today, the breakfast offerings were half different and still everything was superb. We let Noam sleep for 14 hours.

Our first stop was the Old Delhi Market. We got off at the Chandni Chowk Metro station and wove our way through the textile area of the Markets until we reached Connaught Centre in New Delhi. As soon as we stepped off the Metro in “Old Delhi”, we knew we were not in Gurgaon anymore. The park outside the station was full of souls sleeping on the grass during the sunny warm daytime. The market area was a bit overwhelming at first. There was a labyrinth of tiny aisles jam-packed with stalls with things to buy. For the most part, there were distinct districts within the market itself (textiles, oils and fragrance, spices, fruits and vegetables, household items), and we mostly passed through the textiles area. We did see a plate of dal and rice for fifteen rupees (thirty cents). Too bad even cooked street food isn’t safe for our fragile Canadian digestive tracts. The market was an interesting mix of smells; some pungent, some savoury, some sweet, some nauseating. The occasional row of open urinals may have contributed to the latter. There were so many people bustling around that we were always in someone’s way, although a gentle push or the sound of a drum or a honk cleared the way quite easily. The main arteries were clogged with auto rickshaws, animals pulling carts, people pulling carts, bicycles, and trucks, all in a complete jumble. There were also animals of all types: cows, goats, monkeys, and buffalo. For the most part, no one bothered us too much. We were the only tourists around, so mostly people were smiling or chuckling at our group of eight, totally out of place in the market. One woman, surprised to see us, commented “there is nothing here for you to buy, it is just our regular market”. 

After walking for a long while, the boys were getting hungry, so we decided to flag down an auto rickshaw to hopefully speed up the process. One gentleman offered to take us, named his price, and then we all ended up piling in to one tiny auto rickshaw. We were skeptical about the fit, but he kept encouraging us to pile in. It was the clown car of rickshaws, as eight of us (plus the driver) traversed the busy streets on the tiny three-wheeled vehicle. Seven people sat in the back where there should be at most four, and Erez shared a tiny seat with the driver in the front. The three extra occupants meant two kids on laps and Aubrey was across the middle or squatting over Noam to avoid crushing him. Any left turn was risky as Aubrey was thrown right, and it was not easy to hold on. And when the vehicle frequently came close to other objects, Aubrey had to bring his feet back inside the confines of the vehicle. It was quite comical; if people were chuckling before, they were laughing out loud as we navigated through the traffic jam. It was an adventure, to say the least. The funniest part was when the driver stopped, ran into a nearby shop to get a wrench, tightened the wheel nuts and then used his foot for momentum to get us moving again.

We ate lunch in Connaught Place, at a small coffee house. This area was in complete juxtaposition to the market in Old Delhi. While Old Delhi was haphazard and dilapidated, New Delhi’s Connaught place was full of European-style architecture, western chain stores and restaurants. It was still crowded, but this market areas certainly had a different feel. Only the small children on mats selling cheap Christmas trinkets seemed to bridge the connection to the Old market.

On the way home we split up half way home on the metro. Aubrey, Erez and Zev decided to find a rock climbing gym (blogpost from Erez forthcoming), and Maxine, Michelle, Koren, Noam and Teva decided to check out a Bollywood-style theatrical performance in Gurgaon.

The KIngdom of Dreams is a theatre complex with three huge theatres that look like they belong in Las Vegas. The theatres are large, beautiful and larger than life. The play was in Hindi but there were translator units available if we were willing to leave our credit cards as collateral. We took a pass, as we figured the spectacle of the show would be enough to understand the play. 

We were not disappointed. The production was called Zangoora: The Gypsy Prince. It was full of beautiful, colourful, flashy costumes, gorgeous dramatic sets and lighting, and of course, many actors flying through the theatre by harness on a trapeze, including one scene where the main character flies down out of the sky being “carried” by a giant eagle to save the day. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute. The musical numbers were energetic and captivating, and even though the show was in Hindi, we were able to figure out the gist of the plot. Unfortunately, jet lag was setting in and we ended up leaving at the intermission. Teva especially was fading, and frankly, so were some of the adults.

On the way home, we found dinner open at the mall by our hotel, even though it was after nine. Once we got settled in to our rooms and the youngest and oldest settled in to bed, there was time to worry about when to send out the search party for the rock climbers. The gym closed at eight, but they wandered in, well fed (they also found food open at the mall after ten) and tired after eleven.

( Note, having trouble uploading pictures, as the internet connection is patchy, so for now will just upload the text)

Fri Dec 21

Gurgaon and Delhi

We arrived in Delhi about an hour late, around 4:15 am. We were greeted by a friendly face from WE, named Raj, who got us safely to the hotel around 5:30 am.  We checked in, got to our rooms (on three different floors) and then went down for “breakfast”.

The Leela Hotel is absolutely beautiful, with water on platforms through the lobby, a Christmas tree and huge two-storey gingerbread house. Their main floor breakfast buffet restaurant is called Spectra. It was stunning! The food was…to die for. It was 6:30 in the morning, and the choices were dizzying. There was breakfast food (an omelette bar,  assorted pastries, waffles, pancakes, breakfast meats, fruit, cereals, and yogurts), but there was also a wide variety of hot Indian Food, Arabic Food, and Japanese food. There were so many choices and so many things we have never seen or eaten before. There were numerous veggie options, and everything was delicious. A typical all-you-can-eat buffet has mostly mediocre food, but this place everything was superb! I figure that if I ever get to heaven, it will look something like the Spectra restaurant.

This area is full of juxtapositions. Gurgaon, more recently also known as Gurugram, is a very urban area with many high-rise apartment buildings, commerce centres, modern metro stations, malls and highways. Amidst the development, in the “cracks” so to speak, there are still dilapidated buildings and poverty. The area just outside Delhi has a population of approximately 900,000 people. On our walk to the metro after a necessary two hour rest, we noted a lot of garbage at the roadside, and the sidewalks are more like a perpetual construction site.

Maxine was still recovering from a virus she had before we left and decided to rest and then explore the immediate area of our hotel. The rest of us decided to take the metro to a ruins site called Qutub Minar. The main attraction of the complex is a 73-metre (239.5 feet) tapering tower of five storeys, with a 14.3 metre (47 feet) base diameter, reducing to 2.7 metres (9 feet) at the top of the peak. It contains a spiral staircase of 379 steps, although the tower itself has a fence around it. So no stair-climbing or wall-scaling allowed, much to the chagrin of the four boys in our family.The boys watched the informative movie about the entire site and then we made our way around the grounds. The design of the tower is thought to have been based on the Minaret of Jam, in western Afghanistan. The ruins were fascinating and in varying states of repair. They were constructed with red sandstone but also had marble features. The carving was intricate both on the minaret itself and on the buildings in the surrounding compound. Twelve thousand people visit the site every day, mostly Indian nationals. Foreign tourists pay fifteen times the price paid by locals, but we also had a separate ticket line and entrance line, which likely saved us over an hour. Even though there were many people. the site is very spread out and there were many calm places within the park to relax and picnic or run around and parkour.

We did get turned around a few times, but we were able to navigate the area easily with public transit, taxis and auto rickshaws. The metro system in the Delhi area was very impressive – impeccably clean, and easy to navigate. We enjoyed seeing the greenery outside of Delhi, with communities hidden under the trees, the different buildings and even slum neighbourhoods.

After visiting the ruin of Qutub Minar, we went in a completely different direction and visited a trendy complex called “Cyberhub”. It was a complex full of restaurants and shopping. We had dinner on a patio and sampled some interesting Indian and Turkish Fusion cuisine. We were pretty exhausted at this point, so we walked back to the hotel for the night, passing a large collection of auto rickshaws, the teens in one room and parents split up with the younger boys for the night.

Sat Dec 22

Considering that we had left these two days to relax and adjust, we still managed to fit in many activities. We started the day with a leisurely meal at Spectra and then headed out for our excursions. Today, the breakfast offerings were half different and still everything was superb. We let Noam sleep for 14 hours.

Our first stop was the Old Delhi Market. We got off at the Chandni Chowk Metro station and wove our way through the textile area of the Markets until we reached Connaught Centre which is in New Delhi. As soon as we stepped of the Metro in “Old Delhi”, we knew we were not in Gurgaon anymore. The park outside the station was full of souls sleeping on the ground during the sunny warm daytime. The market area was a bit overwhelming at first. There was a labyrinth of tiny aisles jam-packed with all types of stall with things to buy. For the most part, there were distinct districts within the market itself – i.e. the textiles area, the oils and fragrance area, the spice area, the fruits and vegetable area, the household items area etc…It was an interesting mix of smells; some pungent, some savoury, some sweet, some nauseating. There were so many people bustling around, we were always in someone’s way. The main arteries were clogged with auto rickshaws, animals pulling carts, people pulling carts, bicycles, trucks, all in a complete jumble. There were also animals of all types: cows, goats, monkeys, buffalo, to name a few. For the most part, no one bothered us too much. We were the only tourists around, so mostly people were smiling and/or chuckling at us as our group of 8 walked by. One woman actually seemed annoyed that we were there, telling us “There is nothing here for you to buy, it is just our regular market”. 

After walking for a long while, the boys were getting hungry, so we decided to flag down an auto rickshaw to hopefully speed up the process. One gentleman offered to take us, named his price, and then we all ended up piling in to one tiny auto rickshaw, yes, all 8 of us.  7 of us in the back where there should be at most 4 people and Erez shared a tiny seat with the driver in the front. It was quite comical – if people were chuckling before, they were laughing out loud as we navigated through the traffic jam. It was an adventure, to say the least.  The funniest part was when the driver stopped, ran into a nearby shop to get a wrench, tweaked a bunch of things under the rickshaw and then soldiered on, probably regretting he had ever agreed to take us on. We are still not quite sure why we ended up in one rickshaw instead of two…

We ate lunch in Connaught Place, at a small coffee house. This area was in complete juxtaposition to the market in Old Delhi. While Old Delhi was haphazard and dilapidated, New Delhi’s Connaught place was full of European-style architecture, western chain stores and restaurants…still crowded, but certainly had a different feel.

On the way home we split up. Aubrey, Erez and Zev decided to find a rock climbing gym ( blogpost from Erez forthcoming), and Maxine, Michelle, Koren, Noam and Teva decided to check out a Bollywood-style theatrical performance in Gurgaon.

Kingdom of Dreams:

The KIngdom of Dreams is a theatre complex with three huge theatres, that look like they belong in Las Vegas: beautiful, over the top buildings. The theatre we were in was quite large. The play was in Hindi but there were translator units available if we were willing to leave our credit cards as collateral. We were not willing and took our chances that the spectacle of the show would be enough. 

We weren’t disappointed.  The production was called Jangeroon: The Gypsy Prince. it was full of beautiful, colourful, flashy costumes, gorgeous dramatic sets and lighting, and of course, many actors flying through the theatre by harness on a trapeze, including one scene where the main character flies down out of the sky being “carried” by a giant eagle to save the day. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute. The musical numbers were energetic and captivating, and even though the show was in Hindi, we were able to figure out the gist of the plot. Unfortunately, jet lag was setting in and we ended up leaving at the intermission, Teva especially was fading, and frankly, so were some of the adults.

Our trips usually starts with mayhem. No matter how much I plan ahead of time, no matter how on top of things I think I am, things always fall apart in the last couple of hours when we are trying to leave – that’s when the mayhem comes in. This time it was different. The boys had all of their things ready at least two days before, and I only had a few incidentals that needed to be done. I even had time to make 132 latkes the day before we were leaving to take in to Noam and Teva’s classes. And, I cleaned my fish tank – a job I had neglected for MONTHS. Something felt wrong. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop – I must be forgetting something, something big.

Our plan was to sleep in this morning, get up, work as a team to clean the house and pack the car. I was going to go to my physio to get my foot taped up before the trip, and we would leave between 2 and 2:30. Aubrey even considered going to the office for two hours. And then, it happened. 

We got a call last evening that Bev (Aubrey’s Mom) broke her ankle and would be having surgery around noon. We would try to leave by 9 so we could see her before she went in for surgery. We got up at 7 and then the mayhem started, in spite of all our preparations, we were running around like maniacs – again. We didn’t manage to leave until almost 10:30 and then I had to go to the pharmacy because my pair of compression socks I had bought for the plane was missing one of the socks.

Good news is, we made it to the hospital in time to see Bev before surgery. She is in good spirits and we found out later she got through the surgery fine. I made the boys all wear masks in her room because they were coughing, and didn’t think Bev or her roommates would appreciate their germs. They actually got a kick out of it and didn’t take the masks off, even in the parking lot, until they got back to the car.

We went back to Bev’s apartment to have some lunch and rest up for a couple of hours before we had to meet Maxine and Michelle at the airport. We picked up my brother and after we got to the airport he took our car home.

The trip otherwise so far has been uneventful. Travelling with 4 boys who are tired and hungry is no picnic at times, there are many personalities to referee, but we all made it onto the plane intact. We will be stopping in Keflavik, Iceland for about 7 hours and will take the opportunity to rest in a nearby hotel which Michelle booked for us. The Aurora forecast is pretty dismal, which is disappointing, but at least we can focus on resting, and not chasing the Northern Lights.

P.S. Have safely landed in Keflavik, now in an old army base hotel to nap for three hours before heading back…