Today was a wonderful day! We did what OAT calls "day in the life" where we spent the day in a rural village and got a taste of rural Indian life. As our guide tells us, India is over 70% a rural country and so to get an idea of Indian life you have to experience the rural villages. We started this morning going to a school in the village near Ranthanbore National Park. It is a school in a village that is supported by the Grand Circle Foundation, a not for profit foundation affiliated with Overseas Adventure Travel. We took the bus up the road into the village and then got off and walked through the village streets to the school. The children were finishing their morning assembly when we arrived, so we heard them sing the national anthem and then a small group of girls recited a poem in English for us. Then we went into school with the children, going into different classrooms to spend time with them and to help them with their English lessons. I was delighted when a couple of little girls came over to me and took my hand and led me right into their classroom! I was with the very small children, kindergarten/first grade. The children had their English texts and recited the alphabet for us and we attempted some conversation although it was hard because they know very little English and we know no Hindi at all! One of our group members had brought balloons for the kids so we spent time blowing those up and playing with them. The headmaster showed us all over the school and the children were simply adorable - very open and smiling and excited to have us visiting. It was truly delightful to be there and to interact with them. It was also sobering to compare the spirit of these children, who are dirt poor by American standards and the school which is also very poor by our standards, to its American counterparts. These children were so well behaved, exuberant, open and receptive and clearly glad to be in school, respectful of their elders and of us visiting tourists. It was an atmosphere I'm not sure would be duplicated in a primary school in the US at this point in time.
After we left the school our guide walked us through the village, which was a real experience of village India. Cows and pigs and dogs vie with the humans for space on the dirt roads, with the cows getting high preference among all the creatures wandering around! Goats were also plentiful. And lots of children who were not going to school were running about or accompanying their mothers on walks to the water pump. We then went to the home of a village family, where the elder husband and wife entertained us with tea and cookies. They live in a little two room home, with a courtyard where everything important in life happens - cooking, eating, socializing. Our host and hostess were in their mid-50s (but looked much older - rural life is tough on folks!) and they had grown daughters-in-law living with them who helped prepare the tea for us. We were sitting on the pallets that they use as beds. Through our guides we enjoyed conversation with them. The woman of the house was very curious and had our guide go through every one of us asking us our name, what we do for a living, and the most important question of all - are you married and do you have children? We had some laughs during that exchange, as our hostess tried to wrap her head around the concept of people choosing to remain single as adults which is the case for a couple of the people in our group. As we were sitting there facing the kitchen area where the tea was being prepared we saw a cloth basket hanging from the cross beam near the kitchen and it kept moving. Finally someone asked our hostess what was in there and she said "My granddaughter." Then they woke the 9 month old baby up and showed her to us!! Truly it was hilarious! The baby looked pretty disgruntled at having her nap cut short! The most priceless moment of the visit was when a cow stopped by the front door to our hostess's courtyard, and poked her head through the doorway and stood quite a while there looking us all over! Honestly, it looked like she was checking up on the family and trying to figure out who were all the strangers in their courtyard!
After we left that family we walked back through the village to our bus. We then drove to a women's cooperative, a not-for-profit organization that has been around for 25 years, that trains village women in various handicrafts, and through microfinance, manages to help them to earn money to supplement their husband's earnings. The area around the national park lost a lot of jobs when the park was created and the villagers were left even poorer than before, so this women's cooperative has been enormously important in helping families to increase their incomes and to empower the women by giving them skills and the ability to earn an income and help their families. We shopped and bought some of their goods and then had lunch hosted by the cooperative. At lunch we got to meet some of the women who work there. At my table, a young woman named Vimla was our hostess. She is 28 years old, married 8 years with three children and she is an artisan there doing quilting and other fabric crafts. Her income is now half of what her husband makes in a nearby town working as a sales person in an electronics shop.
Then we drove for four hours to come to the OAT camp where we are spending the night. On the road trip we had a few fun moments. At one point we stopped our bus so we could get out and take pictures of a herd of camels coming down the road behind us. It was hilarious to watch this whole passle of camels making their way down the highway! And then when we got closer to our destination, our guide stopped the bus so we could visit a South Indian Hindu Temple, a temple dedicated to the god Krishna. South Indian temples are much more colorful and elaborate than North Indian temples and it was neat to get to see that contrast. In the OAT camp, we are staying in tents which are quite luxurious, with private bathrooms and electric heaters and lights. Shortly after we arrived we had cocktails and then an Indian cooking class with the Nepalese sherpa who works here as a cook! Then after the cooking class we were treated to some traditional folk dancing by some men from the local village. They got everyone in the group up and on their feet dancing! Then we had dinner. When we returned to our tents our beds had been turned down and when I got into my pajamas and crawled into my bed I discovered a lovely hot water bottle warming the bed! So it has been a full and fascinating day! Tomorrow we head to Agra.
Today - Wednesday
Today was a travel day. We left the camp at 9:00 AM and stopped to watch a local potter making his clay pots and his wife making the millet bread that is the staple in that area of Rajasthan and then we saw a phenomenal national monument, a "step-well" dating from the 8th or 9th century I believe which was a magnificent piece of construction. Very hard to describe in words, and unfortunately today was a densely foggy day so the pictures I took tell you nothing. The fog never lifted all day, and put a real chill in the air. We drove most of the day, stopping for lunch and then arrived in Agra about 4 PM. We're staying in a very luxurious, 6 star hotel the next two nights which is a real treat. Tracy and I immediately booked massages at the spa and intend to spend the rest of the evening relaxing! Tomorrow we see the Taj Mahal!
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