India 2009 Continued...

Day 4, August 22th, 2009

After a quick breakfast at the Golden Tulip hotel our group loaded up in the Tata bus to explore Jaipur.

Our bus carried us through the center of Jaipur (The Pink City), then up into the Aravali Mountains. The bus stopped where this photograph was taken. Then we continued on our journey up to the Amber Fort in Indian Jeeps. The Indian Jeeps were very similar in aesthetical design to U.S. Jeeps.

This is the interior of the Amber Fort near Jaipur in Rajastahn India. Many people can be seen in this photo riding elephants. The Amber fort was ruled by the Kachhawa Maharajahs. Eventually the fort was abandoned when the red city of Jaipur was constructed. The city was moved to Jaipur because this Amber fort up in the mountains had expanded to its maximum geographic extent and the population needed to expand. Entering this large open courtyard was truly an experience for the senses. Local drum music was being played live by a band in the patio above the large door on the left hand side of this picture. There were a dozen or more elephants carrying people around. Smells of perfume and incense lingered in the air. Everyone on our trip commented on how the Amber fort wall extending into the Aravalli Mountains looks like the great wall of China.
You can click on the image to see the "Great Wall" in greater detail
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This is a painting of Lord Ganesh inside the Amber fort. Ganesh is the Hindu god of prosperity and happiness. Lord Ganesh has an elephants head on a human body. Ganesh was created by the Hindu goddess Parvati who is considered to be Ganesh's mother. Parvati is the wife of Lord Shiva. Parvati decided to take a bath, and she had no one to guard the door, so she created a boy (Ganesh) to guard the door. Lord Shiva came along and wanted into the bathroom, but when he tried to get in the boy blocked the door. Not being able to get in infuriated Lord Shiva, so he used his mighty trident and severed the head of the boy. Parvati became very upset with her husband Lord Shiva for killing the boy she had made. Shiva went to find the boys head, but since he used his mighty trident to sever the head, he had knocked the head so far away that he could not find it, so Lord Shiva went looking for a new head. The first creature Lord Shiva came across was an elephant, so he took the elephants head and put it on the boys body and brought him back to life. Parvati was still upset, she told Shiva that her boy was now a freak and that people would fear and ridicule him. Shiva then said he could fix that problem by making is so anyone who worshiped the elephant head boy would have happiness good luck and prosperity; hence, Lord Ganesh was born.

Above is one of the internal entry ways inside the Amber Fort (Palace) near Jaipur India. If you look carefully you can see the Lord Ganesh mural from the previous image directly above the entrance door. You can click on this image to enlarge it to see the fine detail in the murals and carvings of the entry way.

Inside the Amber Palace there is a courtyard which splits the internal sub palaces. The above photo is looking inside the Amber Palace's Winter Palace from the court yard. The Summer Palace was located on the opposite side of the courtyard and it had features that collected compressed the local breeze (wind) and funneled it through a small manmade waterfall to create an air conditioning effect. The photo above is of the Amber Fort's winter palace where the floors walls and are made of light colored marble to reflect light and heat of sunlight on as many surfaces as possible. There are also hundreds of nooks in the walls where lamps can be placed to increase the heating effect. The Winter Palace is on the east side of the courtyard where the afternoon sun will come into the winter palace through the courtyard; whereas, the summer palace is on the west side of the courtyard, so only the morning sun comes in and it is shaded from the more intense afternoon sun.

Above is the Jal Mahal which is located on the outskirts of Jaipur India in lake Mansagar. The Jal Mahal is a Rajput style water palace. Lake Mansagar is seasonally periodic and will dry up, but the lake is replenished by monsoon rains. Of any of the places in India I have visited, I believe the street vendors (hawkers) were the most aggressive here. Many travelers stop here to photograph the Jal Mahal. Our driver wisely drove past the hawkers and stopped. I quickly jumped off the bus and had just time for one photograph before the swarm of hawkers descended on my position. The hawkers aggressiveness worked to their own disadvantage here as no one in our group was willing to buy anything, when we were normally a pretty buy happy bunch.

Our group returned to Jaipur where we visited a local jewelry making physicality that employed over 50 full time jewelry making artists. After making a few jewelry purchases we returned to our hotel for a relaxed afternoon. The swimming pool at the Golden Tulip (our hotel) had just been filled with water so I went for a swim.

In the early evening our group set out again in our Tata bus to go to a local families house for dinner. The head of the family hosting us for dinner was a retired major in the Indian army. He had a lovely home with beautiful hand woven art work and a marble staircase. The Major's next door neighbors were members of his immediate family. Having your immediate family as next door neighbors is common in India.

After a while at the Majors house I began to feel ill. My swim earlier that afternoon was in Jaipur city water that had just been introduced into the swimming pool; hence, the chlorine in the pool had not had a chance to kill off all of the bacteria. I wound up returning to our bus and lying down in the back of it while the rest of our group had dinner with the Major. My Illness caused me to stay home in my hotel room during our tour on Day 5, so I have no photos or descriptions of the temples and markets our group visited on Day 5 in Jaipur. During day 5 I saw a doctor Gupta a local physician in Jaipur that made a house call to my hotel. He gave me some antibiotics that fixed me up quickly, and I was back on my feet for Day 6 of the tour.

Day 6, August 24th, 2009

After a nice breakfast in the Golden Tulip we left Jaipur on our way to Ranthambhore National Park.

In the country, Indian women typically wash their cloths by hand often using stones for scrubbing. We came across this bunch of brightly colored sarees and other cloths drying in the sunlight.

There are many street festivals that we witnessed while traveling through India. This street festival between Jaipur and Ranthambhore National Park. This was one of the smaller street festivals that we stopped for; however, traffic was too thick to stop for some of the larger street festivals which sometimes had 100's of participants. Many of the festivals we witnessed were for Lord Ganesh. Late August is the annual time to honor Ganesh, which serves as a major boost to the Indian economy due to the fact if a person makes offerings to Ganesh this time of the year that person believes he will be more prosperous; therefore, he or she can go out and buy the things they want to have, like cars motorcycles TV's etc...

This is a 30ft (10M) statue of Hanuman the Hindu monkey god. Hanuman is most famous for leading an army of monkeys to defeat the demon king Ravana. As it turned out this statue of Hanuman turned out to be a sign of things to come in Ranthambhore National Park.

Once we reached Ranthambhore National Park, we had lunch in our hotel, the Nahargarh which was a lovely recreation of a Maharajahs' palace. Then in the afternoon we loaded up in jeeps and ventured into the park.

These Black Face monkeys are common inhabitants of Ranthambhore National Park. They are not afraid of humans and will let you get quite close to them; however, as my father discovered, they can get quite annoyed if you grab their tail. In the park the monkeys' calls served as markers for us to search for predators. The monkeys make a grumbly barking hoot when they see a leopard or tiger.

Many species of birds were visible in Ranthambhore National Park, including this parakeet. Ranthambhore National Park is still wild today because it was a hunting preserve of the Maharajahs'.

This is a covered patio over a 100ft + (30M +) wall of Ranthambhore Fort, which is in Ranthambhore National Park. Ranthambhore Fort was originally constructed in 944AD by the Chauhan Rajputs (tatu). The fort is in a strategic location overlooking the plateau below from a point of 700ft + above.

This is the main entrance to Ranthambhore Fort. In the photograph you can see that the steps leading up to the fort are long flat steps with small relief. The steps were designed long and flat so animals like camels and elephants can carry supply's up into the fort. The main entrance into the fort includes many tricks and traps designed to hamper an invading army's progress. One particularly interesting trap was at the very top of the entrance, where you must make a quick 90deg right turn down a very dark passage to enter into the fort. If you miss the 90deg turn down the dark hallway you are using the fake entrance which is well lit until you step off a 100ft+ cliff. With a large army charging behind you, if you miss the 90deg turn, the charging army behind you will more than likely push you off the cliff, even if you see it in time to stop yourself.

Inside Ranthambhore Fort there are several palaces and temples. Many monkeys and peacocks run loose inside these places. Ranthambhore Fort also contains one of the oldest temples built to honor Lord Ganesh. Many Hindus had just finished making a pilgrimage to the Ganesh temple in Ranthambhore Fort during the Ganesh festival in late August just before we arrived. When we arrived many vendors who catered to the Ganesh Pilgrims were just packing up their portable shops. In front of the Ganesh temple there were temporary divided aluminum pedestrian line dividers like you would find at an amusement park in the U. S..

After visiting Ranthambhore Fort we returned in the Jeeps to our hotel where we had a nice dinner. After dinner we had time to shop in the hotel shop which had nice shirts and beautiful wall hangings of tigers, and my sister Karen found some nice turquoise necklaces there.

Day 7, August 25th, 2009

We had breakfast in our hotel, then we loaded into a off road amphibious vehicle that held our entire group, plus a naturalist from Ranthambhore national park who accompanied us on our safari.

We saw many peacocks in Ranthambhore National Park, outside the town of Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan India. The sound the peacocks made was not what I expected, in fact at first I thought that the peacock calls were sounds made by cats. Peacocks and Peahens are a food source for leopards and tigers in Ranthambhore National Park.

Above is a good sized group of Black Face monkeys hanging out in a power tower on the fringes of Ranthambhore National Park. The Monkeys are important for trying to locate tigers and leopards. The monkeys make a barking call when they are agitated by the presence of a large cat. We were very close to seeing a large cat, we waited for about 30 minutes listening to the calls of the monkeys and knew that a cat was in close proximity. Most likely the close by cat was a tiger, because tigers are territorial, and have driven the leopards from the location where we herd the monkey calls.

The above photo is proof that we were close to seeing a tiger, this tiger paw foot print was still on the ground, and it had rained recently. We also saw tiger poop close to where this footprint was photographed. However, we did not actually see a tiger. Late august when we were at Ranthambhore National Park is both monsoon season, and the tigers mating season; therefore, the roads into the heart of Ranthambhore were closed so that vehicles did not trench out the muddy roads, and so the tigers would not be disturbed while mating. I have been told that 60% of the visitors to Ranthambhore during the normal season see a tiger; whereas, visitors like us in late August had only a 10% chance of spotting a tiger.

A tiger would prefer to kill a larger deer like this one rather than a peacock. Tigers can eat up to 85 pounds (38.5 Kilograms) at a single time. We saw many different types of deer as we drove through the park.

This small deer was quite quick and agile and looked like it would be difficult prey for a tiger or leopard

The momma deer nursing her fawn was a sweet sight. Momma sure looked miserable covered in fly's, but her baby had almost no fly's. The naturalist from Ranthambhore said that the baby was only 1 or 2 days old.

This little guy had to take a leek. You had better check for tigers in Ranthambhore before you go.

Cows in the street are common place in India. Photographed above are Brahman cows in the central round about of Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan, India.

This is the Nahargarh hotel near Ranthambhore National Park in Sawai Madhopur. Our rooms here were very nice and large, the padded window sills literally were large enough to sleep 10+ people. The hotel is a replica of a maharajahs palace, but unlike the old maharajahs' palaces that have been converted to hotels, this replica has modern power, plumbing, and services. Many antiques were used to enhance the effect of being a maharajahs palace. Sometimes leopards. have been spotted prowling in the bushes on the hotel grounds.

We returned to the Nahargarh hotel for lunch, then after lunch we had a slide slow presentation by our Ranthambhore naturalist. Late in the afternoon we loaded up into several small jeeps and made our way back into Ranthambhore National Park for a late afternoon to early evening safari.

This palm tree, which was seen on our way back to Ranthambhore National Park, contains dozens of bird nests.

I rode in the jeep with our Ranthambhore naturalist. He pointed out many different species of bird while we were on safari. If I had to guess I would say the naturalist pointed out at least 12 different species of birds. Of the birds I photographed, I thought this was one of the interesting looking birds.

This is a leopard named Lakshmi in Ranthambhore. Poor Lakshmi was beat up by bigger tougher leopards. She was nursed back to health by a family that have a small ranch on the outskirts of the national park. Lakshmi was released back into the wild after her rehabilitation; however, she got beat up by the other leopards again, so she hobbled home to the kindly folks at the ranch. When we saw Lakshmi at the ranch she was being trained how to hunt peacocks. The people at the ranch released a chicken for her to stalk. Lakshmi needs some more practice hunting, it took her over 5 minutes, and she needed some human help, to get a hold of the chicken. Lakshmi is regularly released into the wild, but when she is unsuccessful with her hunts she returns to the ranch. Lakshmi is named after a Hindu goddess who's beauty is incomparable. The Hindu Goddess Lakshmi is married to Vishnu, and returns as a consort with Vishnu during each of his incarnations.

This is a 160deg panoramic image of Sunset Point in the Aravalli Mountains in Ranthambhore National Park, Rajasthan India. The cliffs in the foreground are composed of quartzite (metamorphosed sandstone). The Aravalli Range is Precambrian in age making it one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.
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This is another panoramic image of the Aravalli mountain front seen while descending by jeep from Sunset Point. Ranthambhore is known for its wildlife, however, the scenic beauty of the topography in the park is worth the trip alone.

We returned to our hotel for another nice dinner, and then to our large rooms to reflect on the interesting sights seen in Ranthambhore.

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