After lunch, which was, of course, a delicious buffet, we got to stop to take pictures in front of the Water Palace, which was a favorite quick get away resort of the royalty. It’s in the middle of a lake, which made it safe, but it’s only accessible by boat and we couldn’t visit it. It was there that we also got to see a bunch of dolled up camels, which made for some great pictures.

Next we headed to a local weaving cooperative. We learned that there are 300 families who are members of the cooperative, which is based in Jaipur and we got to watch some of the weavers at work. I got to tie a few knots on the loom, which made me a little bit nervous because I didn’t want to mess up the rug, but the weaver helped me out.

After we watched the weavers, we also got to see a man working on a block print tablecloth. He basically different blocks with different patterns in ink, then carefully lined them up on the cloth and hit them with the side of his hand. He repeated the pattern until the entire tablecloth was covered, then he’d get a new block with a new pattern, then dip, line it up over the first pattern and hit it to fill in the original pattern. It looked like a TON of work, but we got to see some of the finished products and they were gorgeous.

Inside the shop we were shown a bunch of different rugs. It was most definitely a sales pitch, but we learned a lot, too. There were hundreds of beautiful rugs hand woven by local workers and if I had the money, I would have definitely invested.

After the rug shop we were taken to an ancient observatory where we got to see huge old sundials and towers where they used to observe the stars. One of the enormous sundials could be used to tell the time “to an accuracy of twenty seconds,” which I thought was pretty good for an old school sundial.

There were several snake charmers outside of the observatory, which were fun to watch until Anand had purchased our tickets to get into the Prince’s Palace Museum, which was right next door.

One of the first things we saw at the entrance of the museum was two gangajalis, which were enormous silver jars. I took a picture of the explanation, so I wouldn’t forget what they were, so here it is.

“’Gangajalis’ are the largest silver objects in the world as per the entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. They were made in the Minstri Khana (one of the 36 karkhanas of Jaipur State), the City Palace, Jaipur by two silversmiths, Govind Ram and Madhav. Each Jar was made out of 14,000 Jhar Shahi (Jaipur coins) silver coins, which were issued form the Kapatdwara treasury of Jaipur State in the year 1894. The coins were melted into sheets of silver. A wooden mould was prepared and over that the sheets were beaten and shaped as the Jars. No shouldering was done. The entire process took two years and the Jars were ready by 1896. Each of the Jars weighs around 345 Kg (they’re each 5’3”). Ladders were made for reaching the mouths of the Jars. Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II took these Jars, filled with Gangajal (Ganges water) on his voyage to England to attend the coronation ceremony of Edward VII in 1902.”

There was also a large group of women chanting and doing henna, which we decided to get on our way out. The tour around the Palace itself was pretty cool, but the thought of henna, which we’d been looking for, had all the girls distracted. As soon as our tour was over, we took over the henna area. It was only 50 rupees for a decent amount on one hand, which is a tiny bit more than 1USD. It wasn’t the traditional henna ink, just the faster drying stuff, but everyone got beautiful designs. Mine lasted a little less than two weeks.

After the Museum, we drove back to the hotel for dinner, and then hung out for a while. We had another 4am wake up call, so we didn’t stay out too late.

The next morning we caught an early flight to Cochin in the Indian state of Kerala to catch up with the ship.

That night we took a taxi into town and used the Internet, but didn’t stay out too long because there’s technically a curfew in Cochin.


Final Day in India

On our last day in India, Heather and I were on the same SAS trip to a freshwater section of the Alleppy Backwaters, which was about an hour-long drive away from the ship.

Cochin is in the south and much warmer than Agra and Jaipur, which definitely affected the scenery. Cochin was hot and a little humid, filled with lush greenery and palm trees. The Alleppy Backwaters are a huge tourist destination in India. You can rent beautiful, locally made houseboats and tour the waters for days at a time. Our guide told us that it’s a booming industry and we passed hundreds of these boats on our trip.
After one final beautiful buffet lunch on the waterfront we met our tour boat and started our two hours Backwaters tour. As we motored down the river we passed entire villages comprised of people who depended on the water for everything from cooking, to bathing, to fishing and gathering mussels. We passed women washing clothes and cooking pots on the edge of the water. We passed children rowing small canoes filled with the coconuts that grew on every tree. We passed mothers walking their children home from school, carrying the Spiderman backpacks as their little boys ran on ahead. We even passed a group of young boys playing a pick-up game of cricket and a man clambering up a tall tree to cut down a few coconuts.

The scenery was wonderful and the people were beautiful. Everyone was waving and smiling. On our way out we passed the village’s pride and joy, a long black racing boat that they’d used to win an important boat racing competition last year and were planning to win again this year. It didn’t look that big, but our guide said it could seat 100 men. The village owned the boat together.

After the tour, we drove back to the ship and by that time it was too late to do anything but get back on and turn in our passports before on-ship time.

India is beautiful.



Love,

Molly