There are times when I start to panic because I've fallen so far behing on the blog and am afraid that if it gets any further I'll just drop the whole thing. These are the times when I look at how many stories I could tell, how many pictures of neat places to share, how many great people to introduce to you all, and feel overwhelmed, that I can't possibly do any of it justice.
Just get it out, I tell myself.
These are often the times that I then just ram something together for the sake of getting it out there, and end up feeling like I've done a piss poor job of it, and have made you suffer yet again through some mindless dribble accompanying mediocre photos that in no way captures the absolute awesomeness of whatever I was talking about.
This is one of those times.
Or at least, it's one of those times when I'm looking at the six or so entries I've got pictures laid out for and am freaking out a little. I'm hoping though it's not one of the times when I just ram crap through that none of us are pleased with. And trust me, it may be a waste of 20 minutes of your life to read one of these, but that makes it a waste of several hours of my life to have written. So we're in this together.
This entry, and the next few, are about my time with James, and the various fun we got ourselves up to in a variety of places. So I'm going to take my time and enjoy writiing about all of this. But I'm also going to try and keep it shorter than a Peter Jackson film.
As usual I have no idea what I'm going to say, so please just roll with it.
Good TV shows get really good when they start thinking in bigger arcs. A single episode can be fantastic, but when it's actually a small piece of a bigger puzzle that gets revealed over the course of a season or two, it gets to be way more enjoyable. Unless we're talking about the last few seasons of Lost, in which case, ignore that.
This is not going to be a good TV show. This likely isn't going to be very episodic.
The joy of going through all the pictures over the course of two weeks and thinking about a series of entries that could cover the time meant that I could approach telling the story several different ways. I could do it chronologically. I could do it alphabetically. I could do it based upon what letter of Meyers-Briggs was winning the day. I could do it like Inception, or Memento.
I could not do it like Star Wars Episode I. No one should do that.
I'm going to do it categorically, with an occasional montage.
I'm actually not going to even do that. It's going to seem like I am because this one is about forts, and I've got another on tombs, and then another on Mosques, Temples, Shrines and Madrasas, but then it degrades to "Water and Space" and "stuff".
So kinda like those horses but not.
If you decided to skip to the first picture and then just read the paragraph before it then welcome, and I applaud your decision. This is the Red Fort, or Cloud Fort, or Agra Fort, depending on what you read, who you talk to, or what mood you happen to be in. You might think given the list of names that it is either on Mars or protecting that castle Cosette hopes to live in, but it's actually in Agra.
Who knew.
Well, James and I knew. Because James and I are very SMRT and can read, and do research, and understand what we're told by guys in auto-rickshaws who we hired for the day when we got off the bus mid-morning in Agra having left early that morning from Delhi from what was likely the dullest bus terminal I have ever seen. Even the bus with thousands of colourful balls on top of it seemed sad.
We have our driver and a friend of his he picked up along the way to thank for the advice to see the fort first. First as opposed to second. We'd come to see the Taj Mahal, (shocking I know), and had the fort on our list of potential interests, but figured see the one you really want to see first. Well, it was foggy. It's like that in India during the winter months, but our driver and his friend assured us that we wanted to see the fort first as the fog would clear up as the day progressed, and we'd then be able to enjoy a sunny day at the Taj Mahal. Which is why you'll get to see pictures of it, rather than something out of a Stephen King movie.
But not here.
You still get to see lots of white marble though.
So yes, James and I did some research, but we didn't do alot. And we didn't take advantage of all of the lovely people offering to guide us about any of the places we visited. Likewise they did not take advantage of us.
Did we learn a great deal? No. Did we have a great time walking about these places, enjoying incredible architecture, being momentarily befriended by whomever so that they could take their picture with us, and chatting about whatever happened to occur to us at the time? Absolutely.
So did we get everything we possibly could out of the visit? No. But we got something way better.
I'm not sure that James and I followed the optimal or prescribed route for many of the places we visited. We just kinda wandered based upon the "hey, what's that over there?" school of navigational theory.
It served us well. It also, at least at the Agra Fort, had me wondering for the first 45 minutes how this place got to be named Red Fort. I mean, other than the big red wall around it, it was more of a white marble palace.
Which of course it is.
It's a fort, and it's a residence.
By the way. Beyond the name and location of these sites, you're not going to get any historical information in this blog entry. James and I both figured we could look something up when we wanted to. Well, so can you.
That's all inlay by the way.
Can you imagine how hard that must be to do without having one of those handy all purpose Mastercraft thingies?
And yes, about 45 minutes later we got to the red and the fort bits.
Now this. This is the Red Fort.
Back in Delhi now. Actually, this is before we went to Agra.
We spent a day wandering around Old Delhi, which aside from wandering crowded streets and even more crowded alleys, included visiting two "must sees" on the enoromous "must see" list that is Delhi.
The first of them was the Red Fort. And like any good "must see" it started with a gift shop.
And then quickly degraded into an interesting historical site steeped in 1/2 milk and 1/2 water with some sugar and ginger.
No wait. That's masala chai.
We need trees like this in Toronto.
Of course, that could potentially result in impromptu shrines popping up all over the place, but I'm not sure that there's a downside to that.
It's a banyon. And a grand one at that.
So yes, this Red Fort also comes with a White Residence.
And has this gorgeous inlay.
This is the mosque within the Red Fort that I decided to include here rather than in the mosque entry.
Yes, inlay. Not paint. Inlay.
This is the Amber Fort in Jaipur.
Jaipur was the first of two out of town trips James and I took. His idea. A good one too. I'm hoping you can guess the second one.
Incidently, these two out of town trips will be my only out of town trips during my time here in India. Or at least I think so, unless something unforeseen happens in the next nine days, which is conceivable.
And people may think me crazy for that. Spending all of my time in Delhi. Maybe I've said this already, but I've had people comment that the "real India" is the villages. Herds of cows in the streets. Garbage everywhere. Seriously, this is what people who live here have told me is the "real India".
Well, after over a month I can assure you all that Delhi is quite real. And I'm pretty sure it's a part of India. I don't think I have gotten a comprehensive view of India on this trip, but I've gotten a pretty good one of Delhi. And I think that's been worth it.
I know I need to come back though.
Anyway, this is the Amber Fort in Jaipur. I'm including a few pictures but I've got little to say on the place.
Why?
Well. James and I took an overnight bus from Delhi to get here, and that was all swell. We arrived around 5:30am or so and found our way to the hostel where we would be staying that night, got in, and curled up on bean bag chairs and crashed for a few hours. We then headed off to the fort.
Pretty eh?
Thing is, I wasn't feeling so good. And the "not so good" status continued to fall as the morning progressed. And surprisingly enough, the auto-rickshaw ride across the city and walk up the hill in the sun didn't help.
Oh, that thing creeping up the hill is a wall that surrounded the old city.
We had hoped for an elephant ride up the hill but they were done for the day by the time we got there. So walk it was.
And yes, late morning and the elephants were done for the day. Better than bankers' hours. Mind you, if a banker carried people on their back up and down a big frickin' hill all day in the sun then I suspect we'd have a bit more sympathy for them.
Unless of course you also just tried to deposit a $9,000 cheque and got arrested for your efforts.
Ya, I read.
I'm actually surprised that these pictures turned out as well as some of them did given how I was feeling.
If that tree were white you'd expect to see Gandolf running by screaming for a touque. Or maybe that was Took, as he already had a hat.
And now we're at the entrance to the main residence within the Amber Fort. It was here that my body totally failed me and I left James to it. He can tell you what happened next if he evers gets around to accepting my invitation to contribute to the blog.
What happened to me next is pretty hazy. It did consist though of lying in the back of an auto-rickshaw all the way back to the hostel - something I would not advise - followed by collapsing onto my bed and passing out for the next several hours. Eventually getting up in early evening when James returned from his solo adventures, and returning to the bean bag chair to put what remained of my brain in a bucket, drink sprite, and watch movies that are best watched when your brain is in a bucket.
Yes, sprite. James tells me they looked at him like he was an alien when he asked for the traditional "your stomach hates you" remedy, ginger ale. He thought it was maybe because they don't have ginger ale. I think it's because of the antennae.
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