Saturday January 17, 2015
The Call to Prayer has been an amazing way to awaken in the morning darkness. This enchanting sound has greeted me each day and beckoned me into a new set of adventures in a foreign land.
Most of the landscape today was flat with little definition, bad air pollution, and what I'm calling a "post-apocalyptic" landscape: what appear to be burned out buildings (but they may also just be partially built buildings of cement that have been given up on); falling down buildings; piles of rubble and trash everywhere; bulls, pigs, and dogs (the one generic dog) rummaging through the garbage looking for food; small villages with groups of men sitting around drinking coffee; and colorfully dressed women in saris and bangles doing all kinds of heavy work!! Adil explained to us that this is completely normal in rural village life: the women are expected to get up early, make breakfast and get the kids dressed (and off to school if they're lucky). Then the man wakes up around 10:00, asks for his tea and expects breakfast. He may go off to town to hang out with his friends while the wife goes out to work in the fields or a job laboring at something. He comes back for lunch and expects her to be there to serve him, then the same pattern is repeated in the afternoon. She then is expected to make dinner and take care of the children. The pattern continues day after day. My goodness! What a life for these rural village women! This is why Poonam Kathuria's SWATI mission is so important to support: she is really offering these women a chance to break out of this cycle and create meaningful lives for themselves AND their families.
I've been fascinated by a few phenomena on the roads here aside from the highly decorated trucks: what appear to be really over-burdened loads on trucks. I can't believe they allow this! It looks so unsafe!
We pulled off the small road onto an even smaller and extremely bumpy dirt road as we approached a white mecca that was to be our hotel for the next two days called Nahargarh Ranthambhore. This could have been Shangri La for all we knew. We passed this man hitched to a highly decorated camel on our way in, an exotic touch to this foreign landscape.
As we passed through the entry gate we were met with what may have well been our own Maharaja's palace! And this is a newly-built hotel with only 84 rooms. We were once again wowed and in love.
Dinner at the restaurant was the finest Indian buffet yet, and we were thrilled to not have to make any decisions about what to order. The spread included: Chicken hariyali tikka, Chicken kadai, Vegetable kebab, French spinach (delicious spinach puree), Okra masala, Vegetable jhalfreizi, Squash balls, Lentils (dahl, Green pea pulao, garlic and plain naan (we've come to love this!), and for dessert a homemade vanilla ice cream with banana toffee sauce. I would love to stay here for a week at least, just for the food!
To bed early tonight, as we're getting up very early for our tiger safari in the morning. Patricia wore her leopard outfit to dinner as a good luck omen that we would have a sighting! As we're winding down our last week in India, thank you again for following along on this grand adventure.
Mary Anne Erickson is an artist who has been documenting the demise of the American roadside culture for over 30 years in paintings and photography. Her work can be seen at vanishingroadside.com. She also blogs about great food and entertaining ideas at bluemountainbistro.com.