Feb 14 to 26: Goa to Aurangabad, and Mumbai feels like home!

We have been lax in posting to our blog lately, but we are alive and well and made it back to Mumbai with Twyla and Greg. We spent the remaining days in Goa relaxing around the pool and at the beach.

Our daily routine was to buy the Hindi Times Newspaper, eat breakfast on the balcony at our room, go to the pool (this included checking email since poolside was the only WiFi location…what a hardship), get a lassi or sweet lime soda late morning, wander to the beach early afternoon (sometimes we took a rickshaw if we

were hot or lazy), set ourselves up close to one of several bar/restaurants on their lounge chairs with umbrellas (their use is free if you patronize them), buy a large Kingfisher beer…or two, read and splash in the ocean waves when we got hot, decide whether we eat dinner and watch the sunset or eat elsewhere.

Poolside time frequently included talking with other guests and finding out a bit about each others’ lives. One day, after talking with Sirpa and Dennis and learning about their volunteer work with a local orphanage, we met them for breakfast and visited the orphanage with them and learned about the Sister’s work with street women and their kids.

 Another day we met Gurmeet and Nirmal, a Sikh couple from southeast of London. We talked about many interesting topics (arranged marriages, Sikh guru teachings, similarities between world religions, growing up in Kenya, and lots more) at the pool and over dinner.

From Goa we flew to Aurangabad to see the Ellora and Adjunta caves. These are not natural caves but were carved out of sandstone cliffs by Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain monks between 200BC and 1100AD. There are 34 caves at Ellora and 30 at Adjunta. These sites are FANTASTIC to see!!!! One of the caves/temples took 150 years to complete. The exterior isusually a series of columns with a doorway into the interior. Inside, they range from a single unadorned room to a huge temple cavern with clumns and wall statuary of Buddah (or later, Hindu gods) along the walls.
 

 
 

While in Aurangabad we also went to the Daulatabad Fort, built in the 12th century. In 1328 the site became the capital for Sultan Mohammed Tughlaq for a short time. In addition to the central part of the fortification being located on a hilltop surrounded by sheer cliff, there are two concentric additional fortified walls around the fort. One of the attractions is that the only way in to the central portion is via a dimly lit stairway/passageway with a very healthy bat population, all squeeking away and flitting around. The impregnable fort was never conquered by force, only by bribing

the gate guards (probably with a delectable bat stew).



















In Aurangabad we found a great resturant, Tandoor Bar and Restaurnant, (Lonely Planet recommendation) close to our hotel. One evening, while walking to the restaurant, there was a wedding celebration going on in the street so we saw the groom seated on a white horse, and watched the crowd dance to very loud music. We ate delicious cashew (pronounced Kaju here, a good cat name,

don’t you think?) curry, and went back the next night for more of the same.

Next we returned to Twyla and Greg’s apartment in Mumbai. It is starting to feel very familiar to us when we are in the Bandra area of Mumbai.
 

During this stay in Mumbai we even had two evening dinner engagements. The first with our new friends, Nitin, Ruma and Sana, whom we had met in Munnar. We met at their apartment in Dadar, had drinks and delicious Punjabi snacks, and then went to dinner at their local Gymkana, or social/fitness club. After dinner Twyla and Greg went home because they had to work the next day while we stayed to talk longer and it turned into a sleep-over for us. After we saw Sana off to school in the morning, we had breakfast with Ruma and Nitin and then Nitin dropped us off at Twyla and Greg’s on his way to work. What fun!

The second dinner engagement was with Twyla and Greg’s landlords, Charu and Pankaj. Charu’s sister, Vina, visiting from Dehli, and sister-in-law, Seema and her husband also named Pankaj, joined us as well.
During the conversation we learned about all the complex but systemmatic names Indian’s have for the extended family members. There are different names for neices, nephews, and cousins depending whether they are on the Mother’s or Father’s side, or on the Grandfather’s or Grandmother’s side.

During the evening we also learned about, and then saw several days later, a photo exhibit at the Mumbai Museum of Modern Art about the first woman professional photographer in India, Homai Vyarawalla.  Her professional work was from the 1930s to 1970s.  It was nice to see photographs of India during those days and the people who helped create independent India and the partitioning of Pakistan. Her most frequent subject was Nehru, but she had many photos of the young Delai Lama, Queen Elizabeth, Lord Mountbatten, Mohatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, etc.  Homai is 97 years old and was present at the exibition when we were

there!  She sat in a wheelchair at the museum, but apparently lives alone and conducts her own affairs, and she clearly is completely compis mentis. It was wonderful to learn of this exhibit and visit it.

One of our train excursions to the Mumbai Fort area got waylayed.  We had set out to find the little jewelery shop at which Barbara Brezer had bought some cut gemstones and jewelery. Alison and I were sitting (a very unusual happening in class II train travel) and started talking to a 20ish fellow traveler and learned he was a student at the Sir J. J. School of Art and this week was their annual student exposition.  (as it turned out, this was also the school where Homai Vyarawalla had studied many years ago.)  Since the school is located across the street from our train stop we accompanied him and he showed us around the school grounds and the exposition.  We looked at all the galleries, inside and out.  Over three hours later we were tired, had bought a student watercolor painting and didn’t get to our initial destination that day.  But we were very glad to have seen the very good, extensive, and varied works of art at the school.

Another day we went with Twyla to One International, the school she and several other school acquaintancies volunteer a half day a week.  The school is for street kids who live in the neighborhood close to the school.  It was set up 10 years ago by a Canadian woman and is supported by charity, largely from Canada. Twyla and the other women teach three 45 minute classes for the kids from ages 3 to 12.  The classes give the kids a chance to improve their English and to express themselves. It was so much fun to see Twyla and the other women, teaching these eager children. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”.

Now we are in Puri on the east coast of India and back to beaches and temples.