We’re now set up in the Mesa Spirit RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona (site K85). We arrived late Saturday afternoon after driving through Tucson, then leaving the Interstate to drive through Florence and into Mesa from the east side. We drove past the Tom Mix memorial on our way into Florence. Tom Mix was a very famous movie cowboy, starring in 219 films. He died in a car wreck traveling at over 80 mph and leaving the highway.
We drove past a very large Arizona prison complex as well as an Immigration Detention Center in Florence. That must be the town’s other claim to fame!
We’ve spent most of our time at Jaelene’s house in Chandler. Our big task was to paint her pantry and put sticky shelf paper down. That was a 2 1/2 day task, with a very nice looking result. Now we’ll do some playing. We want to go to the musical instrument museum, do a temple session in the Gilbert and Phoenix temples, and just visit. We’ll head north on Monday, February 16th, stopping for a couple of nights in St. George on our way back home to Pocatello.
While we were in Agra, India we visited the Taj Mahal as well as Agra Fort. The fort itself was very spectacular. Here’s a photo gallery from my visit to the fort!
The Agra Fort
Headed Towards the Entrance
Walls of the Fort
Going In the Main Gate
Inside the Main Gate
The Elephant Barrier
Looking Down the Ramp
Avoid Plucking
Second Gate
Cricket Pitches and Living Quarters
Archway Detail
Looking Back at the Gate
Cistern
Civil Servants
Funny Sign
Artisan Work on the Hindu Wife’s Area
Fountain in the Main Courtyard
Gateway into the living quarters of the Emperor and his Wives
We’ve made it to Lordsburg, New Mexico, which is about 30 miles from the Arizona border. We should be able to get to Jaelene’s by late afternoon tomorrow (Saturday, January 31, 2015). Texas is a big state! We pretty much drove the whole Interstate 20 from Georgia to where it ended as it merged into I-10 just west of Pecos, Texas. Today was chilly, cloudy, windy, rainy day. It was a good day to just be in the motor home and driving. We’re now in a very wet KOA campground listening to the wind blow and the trains go by. There are a LOT of trains going by!
The last day we were in Mumbai I took some pictures of some articles in the newspaper that I thought were very interesting. So, the photo gallery below are these articles with a bit of commentary.
We flew on Indigo Airlines from Mumbai to Delhi on Monday, January 19, 2015 (more about the Delhi portion of the trip in a later blog entry), and took the express train from Delhi to Agra early Tuesday morning. The train was scheduled to leave at 6am and actually got underway about 6:10am. By the time we got to Agra the train was a half-hour behind schedule. We were booked on a return train to leave Agra at 9 pm, but by the time we got to Agra at 8:30 am, the forecast was that the 9pm train would be at least one and a half hours behind schedule. That would make for a very long day….
Our guide and the driver met us at the train station and off we went. The first stop was the Agra Fort … which will be in a future blog post. Then we went to the Taj Mahal.
It’s only been in the last twenty years or so that India has taken the care and preservation of the Taj Mahal seriously. It had already been plundered a couple of times, most recently by the British. Today the grounds are beautiful and immaculate. The building has been thoroughly cleaned. The cleaning process involves a special kind of clay that is sprayed on the building and then washed off with water after it dries out, according to our guide. No other chemicals are used. The marble used in the building is Makrana Marble, which is a very hard, non-porous material actually harder than most metals. It also has a translucent quality to it which means that the marble takes on the color of the light shining on it. During the time we were there, the building changed from a kind of a white ivory to a much more of a cream-colored hue as the clouds departed and the sun emerged.
Vehicles with internal combustion engines are now prohibited within about a mile around the monument’s grounds. We drove to a transfer station, left our driver and car, and boarded an electric bus to go the rest of the way.
The grounds are massive. The building is on the banks of the Yamuna River (the second most revered river in India after the Ganges) and includes a garden on the other side of the river.
The whole experience was amazing and delightful. The Taj Mahal was better in every way than I had even hoped it would be. Our visit there was definitely the sightseeing highlight of the trip.
Here’s a small gallery of pictures from our visit to the Taj Mahal:
The routing was from Mumbai to London Heathrow, change planes, then from London Heathrow to Atlanta, Georgia. Each leg was scheduled to be about nine and a half hours long. The flight from Mumbai was scheduled to leave at 2:35 am. That meant arriving at the airport not later than midnight. It turned out to be the right amount of time. By the time we cleared both sets of security, checked our luggage, went through immigration, and walked to the gate we had about ten minutes before boarding. Flights from Mumbai are always delayed, apparently; we were fortunate that the delay was only about twenty minutes.
All of the formalities were completely uneventful. The only issue that came up was our chosen seats. I had booked us into exit row seats, which on this Airbus A-330 airplane were seats 50H and 50K. Two seats next to each other on the right side of the airplane. However, it turns out that Indian regulations prohibit anyone over the age of 50 sitting in an emergency row. We were relocated to 55A and 55C (there was no 55B). Those seats, while they had the extra leg room I had paid for, were still very cramped. In the end the flight took just over 10 hours from takeoff to landing in London. According to the flight attendant, the airplane was completely full.
The flight itself was mostly uneventful, except for my nasal CPAP machine. Without that machine, I can’t sleep. I had called Delta about the machine and they assured me that there was not problem using the machine and that they would inform Virgin Atlantic. Well, they didn’t inform Virgin Atlantic. The flight attendants were quite upset when I put the mask on and drifted off to sleep. It took over an hour for them to inspect the machine, verify with someone(s) that it was OK, that the battery wasn’t dangerous, etc., etc. Eventually I did get a couple of hours of rather restless sleep, with the machine.
When we got to London, I was met at the door of the airplane by a Virgin Atlantic person who had me wait to go with her to the checkin place so they could note my CPAP machine in the records so I could use it on the next flight.
Seats 50H and 50KI had booked the same seats on the flight from London to Atlanta. This time our age didn’t matter. However, my seat (50H) had an issue: the entertainment unit was broken. In the end, Nina sat in an aisle seat in the center section and I sat in the window seat. This flight had 191 passengers and 14 crew members. It took right at 10 hours. There wasn’t any sleep on the flight, try as I might. We were quite exhausted when we got to Atlanta!
I had booked a room at the Comfort Suites hotel at the airport. That worked out just OK. The facility turned out to be under new ownership and had been converted into a Comfort Suites. It was an old facility, very worn. The TV didn’t work. The remote was missing. Light bulbs were missing. But the bed was nice and we both slept (after ordering in Chinese food) about nine hours.
On Saturday morning we picked up the rental car and drove back to Ninety Six, South Carolina where Nina’s sister lives and where our motor home was waiting for us. We were back in the US, back to our “home”, and it’s almost like the trip never happened.
Except, it did. We had a great time. I’ve got great memories (and a couple hundred photographs to back them up). Over the next few days I’ll write about some of our experiences, starting with the Taj Mahal.
This afternoon we went to the Sanjay Ghandi National Park and spent some time climbing up and around a few of the 109 caves where Buddhist acharyas lived and worked. The Kanheri caves were constructed between the 1st century B.C. and the 11th century A.D. They are indeed at the top of a mountain! The monks would carve out a small cave for themselves where they would live and work and then expand one or more of them to be used for worship, study, or meditation. While it is possible to visit all 109 caves, I was quite satisfied (and very winded) after visiting about 10 of them. It was quite a climb on a relatively cool and nicely breezy Saturday afternoon.
However, the smog in and around central India is just horrendous. It has been getting worse day by day and blowing my nose is now a “don’t look at the result” experience. I’ve no idea when this situation will clear out, but it doesn’t look to be happening while we are here.
Yesterday we drove a couple of hours east of Mumbai into the mountains to Lonavala. Unfortunately, the smog took away most of the views which, on a fairly clear day, must be quite spectacular. We spent the night in a resort hotel in Lonavala before coming back to Mumbai this morning.
I have hundreds of pictures. Now I just need to decide how and what to do with them.
Tomorrow is a quiet day. We’ll go to Church in the morning and be here at the apartment the rest of the day. On Monday we fly to New Delhi where we’ll stay two nights. On Tuesday we’ll take the train to Agra and back to see the Taj Mahal. Wednesday afternoon we fly back to Mumbai. Thursday evening late we board a Delta flight to London and then on to Atlanta and our India adventure will finish. Way too soon!
Spending three days in the hospital of the 14 days we’ll be here in Mumbai pretty much tossed the schedule our daughter Heather had planned for our visit. As a result, we spent the day today in different parts of Mumbai. We had lunch in Chili’s where the menu items were generally western, but didn’t have anything on the menu I recognized from our last visit to Chili’s a couple of weeks ago. However for my lunch, the chicken tenders were good, the “Peach Breezer” was a delicious drink, and the french fries were very tasty. Nina had a chicken salad with french fries and our daughter Heather had a chicken burger (I’m not sure you can buy a hamburger made with real beef anywhere in Mumbai). The total bill for the three of us was 2,286 Rupees ($36.40), very comparable to a lunch in the US.
Mumbai is definitely a place of enormous contrasts. For instance, the area where our daughter and her husband live is very modern. Their apartment is on the top floor of a 36 story high-rise in a circle with several other high-rises enclosing a nice garden. It’s a block away from the slums. All of the significant western brands are here including Häagen-Dazs, Louis Vinton, CitiBank, McDonalds (but there’s no beef), and Krispy Kreme and many, many more.
Auto-Rickshaw
On the other hand, traffic is horrendous. I had a hard time looking out the windshield as our driver took us around the city today. For instance, there are 128,000 auto-rickshaws prowling the streets along with another 100,000 yellow and black taxi’s, all trying to coexist on the roads with close to a million private automobiles, public buses and what seems to be a gazillion motorcycles. Horns are mandatory and there is a distinct and unique horn-honking language of the road. We haven’t seen a single accident; I’m sure the legendary Indian passive/aggressive mannerisms were born on the roadways.
We visited four beautiful and elaborate Hindu temples, drove past a Zoroastrian Fire Temple, and a couple of Jain temples. We drove by the vegetable and flower markets (absolutely jammed with people … a good place to get a thorough body massage). We walked through a couple of shopping areas. It was all a lovely combination of scents, sounds, and colors. And here in Mumbai, the scents, sounds, and colors are never subdued!
I walked through an electronics section of a supermarket. Everything that I could buy in the US is available to buy here in India. The prices looked to be anywhere from 15% to 25% cheaper than in the US. There were a number of items for sale that I haven’t seen on sale in the US, all with Japanese names. The number of handsets, tablets, and phablets available for sale was amazing. I watched a demo for a few minutes on the curved ultra-HD tv from Samsung (a tidy $6,800). The detail and clarity of the picture was breathtaking.
Migrant Children School
We also spent an hour at a migrant worker children school. This school is one of several sponsored by an NGO called Mumbai Mobile Creches. These are children of migrant construction workers whose parents can’t afford to send them to public schools and who would get no education at all otherwise.
Our daughter volunteers at this school each week. When we got there she exclaimed, “Oh my! They now have doors on the rooms!” We spent the hour helping them make hand puppets. I thoroughly enjoyed our time there and the happiness and enthusiasm of the children. The tag line for the NGO is “Futures Under Construction” … a delicious play on words while emphasizing that, for these children in destitute families, the way out of poverty is certainly through education.
The four LDS missionaries here in Mumbai came over for dinner last evening. All four of them are Indian. One is the first person in his family to join the Church, two were baptized along with their parents, and one is a 2nd generation member. The discussion was very interesting. All of them are in their mid to late 20’s. Three of them are college graduates. One has an MBA in accounting and finance. Apparently it is normal to finish with schooling before going on a mission as the colleges and universities don’t have a provision for interrupting the education for a religious sabbatical. Taking a break between secondary school and college causes government funding for education to be lost.
The New Dehli Mission covers all of India and Pakistan. Most of the missionaries are natives. The Pakistani missionaries are not allowed to come to India and the Indian missionaries can’t serve in Pakistan for political reasons. Foreign missionaries can get a visa for about six to nine months and then must leave the country for at least 90 days before returning. Consequently, foreign missionaries (say from the United States) will serve up to half of their mission assignment to the India New Dehli mission in a mission in the Philippines. Also, the Indian and Pakistani missionaries go to the MTC in Manila, Philippines. They are there for two weeks, go to the Temple twice while they are there, and probably won’t be able to return to the Temple again until they are going to be sealed. The mission sees around 300 baptisms a year in India and twice that in Pakistan. There are about 4,000 members in total in both countries.
We’re having fun! I’ll get my pictures downloaded and put together a gallery in the next couple of days. I’ve managed to stay out of the hospital for 30 hours….
