Sadda Pind - a great end to a great trip

The previous post on this series is here..

After a late, heavy and amazing lunch, we went shopping for clothes. There is a street in Amritsar where women can pick cloth, get measurements done for a "patiala" and get it delivered in 6 hours. This information should have been restricted from the ladies in our Van. Our tour guide/ driver who had to that point secured an A+ brought down his grade to a C by just disclosing this information and volunteering to drive there. The FIL and me knew what that meant and gave ourselves a nod "this guy's grade is coming down fast in the finals"!

So there we were Patiala shopping and after giving our hotel address, we decided it was time to get some rest in the hotel. There were two more places to visit. A rock garden and Sadda Pind, a cultural village that gave us a sneak peak of Punjabi village living (we visited a similar place in Rajastan called Choki Dhani three years ago and had some idea what to expect). We decided to skip the rock garden and go to Sadda Pind. 

It started raining on the way back to the hotel. By the time we were ready to leave, it was raining like crazy. We called the driver and he said "why don't we drive there anyways? the rain comes and goes. you might get lucky. worse case come back and eat in hotel". We were glad that we took his advice and went to Sadda Pind. A few mintues after we reached there, it was not even a drizzle and the skies cleared. We had an amazing time at this place. There was something for everyone!

Here are some pictures.

 

 

as you can tell from the photos, Jr. took the "I am going to try being a Punjabi girl for 3 hours" very seriously and posed for all the pictures and tried every activity available. Then there was an all you can eat dinner that was part of the ticket in a nice closed restaurant. The food was "heavy" and the roti's while not as buttery as the dhaba's earlier, were still thick.... 

Happened to catch Jr. eating and immediately got flashbacks from years ago. While editing photos for this blog post, got the deja(deja vu)vu's and found the old picture from this post for a comparison.. you can see not much has changed! 

and finally a video that captures more of the activities. There were a lot more things to do and see, but it was already 9 PM and we had to rush back to the hotel.. we had an early morning flight to catch and more importantly.. the Patialas would be arriving! 

Amritsar is cute. It is a great place to do this "trip within a trip" and you can pretty much cover everything in two days provided you have a good plan and are ready to walk a lot. The food is simply amazing and you come out happier than you went in! If you put on some weight, there is always the Patiala suits that can do some packaging magic to make Photoshop obsolete!

What more can you ask?

Strongly recommended as a vacation spot!

I have finally managed to finish blogging this part of the trip. Have two more posts to write about the India trip itself that are still in "draft". That does not seem to be a daunting task anymore!

Ghee fried noodles

Jr. is in India. The first thing she requests from me after reaching there? Daddy, can you tell me how you make ghee fry ? 

She meant noodles and she knew I understood her request without mentioning noodles!

Was going to ask her Chitti to make it for her. They say kids will go crave for foods when they go to college. 

Mine is in India and gets to eat home cooked food from my sister in law and mom and still craves ghee fried noodles. I have done something right! (or wrong if you ask all the women in either side of the phone conversation)

So here is a videoblog.

We use Maggi noodles in the house, lead or otherwise. If lead poisoning from Maggi is happening to anyone, yours truly should be hit, having eaten Maggi at least twice a week for a good 20 years. Many patents, papers, presentations later, not to mention a moderately successful stint as hubby and daddy over the same time frame,  one can conclude that the brain is still functioning after all that Maggi! However, I dont use the masala packet that comes with Maggi and I always put Peas, carrots and Potato in the noodles. Potato is a questionable "Veggie" in our household, but it is one by my definition (for that matter, Maggi is questionable "food" in our household).

Hope the kids watch this years from now and realize that the best ingredient in the noodles was not the ghee but daddy's love.. okay.. that is asking for too much.

It is Ghee! You can make anything taste better with some Ghee!

Dreading that day..

Jr. is part of a student exchange program and is spending the spring break in Asia. Given dads struggles in Asia over the last three years to get around, get the right food etc. and realizing learning Mandarin in your forties is not easy no matter how many languages you already have a grasp of, asked her to take Mandarin in school as the language.

She thought it was a good idea and went with it. Her Chinese is already way way better than mine, given she spends an hour at least on it every day and I spend 20 mintues in the night on days I get a chance. Also that brain is more moldable!  

We dropped her off on a rainy evening to go be part of a 9 day trip to put her Mandarin to test, be with a host family, make new friends and have an experience that she will remember for a long time..

We are going through a partially empty nest syndrome this week. The house feels empty because the mom daughter or sibling fight noises have reduced to nothing! 

I know that I did this to my parents and left the house and have not gone back, but my brother stays with my parents. Not sure if either kid will stay with us the way things are going.

The little one does come and sleep on my hand every now and then. So this morning I told her

"do you want to go to 

Daddys arm college of engineering,

Daddys arm college of Medicine,

Daddys arm college of arts and sciences or

just stay with daddy?"

She gave me a shy smile and said "Daddy, you know I will have to go to College somewhere right? Don't worry, I will come back!"

Know she means it, but things will change. Made that same promise to my mom and went back on it because things changed, I changed. 

Later in the day there was a discussion about that conversation and daddy was being psychoanalyzed and the conclusion was "maybe I am scared of being alone with my wife and worried about getting her undivided attention".. 

Now that day, I dread! Right now anyone she turns her attention to, is under pressure and the three of us take turns. Imagine all the power of that glare concentrated on one person.. I will be like those ants burnt by sunlight being focused by a water drop in one of those National Geographic programs!

It is going to be an interesting time when the kids are off.. 

Jr.'s dancing takes another step forward

Today Jr. performed at the Pushpanali Dance Academy's annual day. She has been learning for at least 8 years now and has been practicing when she gets a chance. She loves to dance and she has come to a realization that her performing is directly proportional to the practice!

She did pose for photos before the performance (now that I have studio lights set up!) and there were some good shots during her performance..

Kept thinking about my sister today because Jr. is a splitting image of my baby sister! 

Here is a video with a few snippets of the 10 minute Thillana performance..

and a few photos that were taken in between shooting video snippets!

My baby is a big girl now! As a dad it is not an easy thing to accept.. but I will go through the learning curve and hopefully get on the other side of that curve soon!

As long as this makes her happy, it is all good!

Peru Day4 - Machu Picchu

Peru Trip day 3 last stop post is here..

On day 4 we were asked again to get up at 4AM. We were to leave the hotel at 4:30AM on a 2 hour car ride to Ollantaytampo train station. Get a short restroom and breakfast break there and leave on a 7AM train to Aguas Caliente, the small town at the base of Machu Picchu. The train ride was almost 2 hours. 

So off we went. It was a scenic drive early in the morning with snow covered mountains for backdrops.

A slide show of pictures from the taxi and train rides..

Once we got into the train after that long drive, we settled in to enjoy more scenery along the way.

It was a Mystic experience, alright! To add to the mysticism, they kept serving coca tea to help with the altitude sickness. 

The train winds its way along the banks of the Urubabma river and the Andes mountains provide a breathtaking backdrop..

Eventually we started seeing terraces and Inca housing and we knew we were close. 

Once at Agua Calientes we were in for a rude shock. Everyone on the train made a mad dash to the bus station. We knew we were to take a bus to the top and meet our tourguide at the entrance to Machupicchu. San and the little one decided to take a "restroom break" in the train station before going on the bus. By the time they came out of the restroom, we were standing in the bus line somewhere in the next town. I was not in a talking mood at that point. It took 5 minutes at a minimum between buses and we were going to be in bus number 15 or so.. Then all of a sudden more buses showed up and after waiting for only 45 minutes, we were on our way up. 

A funny thing happened while we were in line with Jr. debating the merits of taking a break on the train as opposed to on the ground. She suddenly said "there is a guy asking for your name". We all said "seriously, there is a guy saying sundararaman ?" and after a few minutes we had a face palm moment when a guy actually was reading out my name. Turns out jr. was right. The tour guide was also late and he had not made his way up and was trying to find us at the base! Always listen to your kids and take them seriously, especially when they tell you things that sound ridiculous!

We made our way up on an interesting bus ride into the clouds! You can see it in the video below..

Once up there, it was a steep hike from the entrance. I was completely drenched in sweat by the time I made it up on that trek with my camera bag. It was worth it though. The view of Machupicchu just makes you take a deep breath and go "how the hell did they do this up here?" It is truly a wonder of the world!

For a few minutes on the hike I was thinking 'there is a reason this place is on the bucket list for a lot of folks.. but it would be better to put it on the end of the list.. one might hit the bucket just going on this hike!"

Kept clicking photos from every vantage point. Here are some of my favorites..

The rest are in the slide shows below..

We did get two family portraits thanks to our tour guide.. 

After that sweat drenching episode, things took a good turn and my body finally adjusted to the altitude and the hiking. Eventually I put on my new Alpaca sweater that had been purchased the previous day at Chinchero.. 

It started raining after we had spent close to two hours up there. We stood in line for the return bus again for a good 45 minutes and made it down to Aguas Calientes. There were a lot of restaurants on the bus stand but we did not find anything Vegetarian with good quality. Had to settle for some fries and some Mexican food that was too oily. The kids were not happy, but we had cookies, chips and other snacks to fill up and got some Gatorade to go. 

I ran in the rain to get this picture just before heading back to the train station. This small base camp of sorts was beautiful. 

Finally at the train station, we met a lot of our previous tour buddies from before and sat together and chatted for a good hour. Then we said our byes and made it back to Cusco via train and car. When we first boarded the train we were wondering why our tour operator had booked us in the expensive Inca Rail train intead of the cheaper Peru Rail. We found out why on the return. Apparently the government owned Peru rail is cheaper but not reliable. They cancelled the previous train and the train station was packed with folks from two trains scrambling to make it into one! After a 30 minute delay we were on our way back..

That night was going to be our last night in Cusco. So we found a real nice Andean food place, but this time the owner was standing outside the restaurant trying to get customers. He saw me and asked "you are looking for good vegetarian food?" and I said "yes!" and he says "we will custom make whatever you want. just come inside". It was called Ama Lur Restaurante and they made us really good food that we picked from the menu. He even gave us rice and Yogurt! Finally the kids came back to the hotel all happy. 

When we reached the hotel, we got one more piece of good news. We had to get ready only by 5:45 AM the next day instead of 4 something! We were going on a 12 hour bus ride with 5 or 6 stops... that will be the next post!