The bad

So our trip to India was not all sunshine and bougainvillea and jellabies. To be fair, a large portion of the stress was entirely our own faults, and it all worked out ok in the end, but the run up to the trip was one huge 14 day bundle of cluster f***.

Here's what happened: a little bit more then two weeks before we were scheduled to leave, we discovered that we needed visas (bad news item #1). Now, anyone with an ounce of brain power who didn't live in the EU would have thought of this long ago, but we've gotten so used to being able to jet off to foreign lands without a care in the world, that it never even occurred to us that India would be any different. Ummm...

Good news item #1: as UK residents of more then two years, the average processing time for Indian visas was 2-3 days. Hooray!

Bad news item #2: The list of documents that fulfill the requirements for proving UK residency were very small, and my name wasn't on any of them. So I copied my mobile phone bill, my marriage license and the gas bill and head off to the visa processing center, hoping for the best. I was disappointed. And I sat there for more then two hours in line waiting to be helped.

Bad news item #3: When I finally got up to the counter, I discovered that none of the documents will work to prove residence for me. Not even the marriage license. More importantly, Boo had less then 180 days validity left on her passport (166 days to be exact), so they can't even put her name into the system. And also, since I've put Himself's profession down as "Researcher", I have to provide a certified letter from his place of business swearing left, right and center that he will not do any "Research" while in the country. I collect everything and leave in an absolute panic. Tears ensue on the train home.

The rest of the weekend was spent alternately wanting to throw up and wallowing in despair. I had visions of Himself and Dev going alone, while Boo and I wallowed in misery at home. It wasn't pretty. However...a little birdie (aka one of the other parents from school) told me about how this one time? She got a same-day emergency passport for her son. Hmmmm...

Monday morning I called the US Embassy. And then waited anxiously until 2:00 pm when I could actually talk to a human being. In the meantime I sent them several semi-hysterical emails - "I know emergency appointments are for life-or-death situations and this certainly doesn't qualify, but..." When I finally talked to a real live person, however, it was fairly straightforward. I explained our dilemma. She said "No problem. Can you be here at 8:30 tomorrow morning with all the paperwork?" We had all the paperwork already, but we had to take Elder Sister to school. "Ummm...how about 9:00?" "OK. Just be here as soon as you can and we'll get you a one year emergency passport." This is probably the only time I have ever thought "God Bless the US government!" (Good news #2)

After our whirlwind trip to the Embassy, I headed back over to the Visa Processing Centre, and barged up to the woman who had helped me previously, declining to sit and wait for 2+ hours (she told me I could, otherwise I never would have dared!). All the paperwork gets processed smoothly (Himself became a "businessman" and I became "unemployed"), but then we entered Bizarro world. Or the Twilight Zone. Or some strange universe in which the Powers-that-be try really hard to see what it will take to get Porpoise to lose her shit in a very, very public way.

This lovely young woman, who had told me four days before that even though I couldn't prove residency my visa should be processed within 5-7 days (which would have been fine), now turned to me and said "I'm very sorry, but the High Commission has just informed us this morning that the turnaround time on non-resident visas is now 14 working days."

I felt a bit like a bomb had just gone off - there was ringing in my ears, the world wobbled around the edges, I needed to have a little lie down. And then I let go. I pushed all the papers towards her and said "Take them anyway. I'll just wait and see what happens." Paperwork submitted, fees paid, I wandered back home and had several large drinks.

True to form, visas for the rest of the family took two days. On the day before we were to leave, I got pushy and called the Indian High Commission to find out what had happened. The result? "Your visa has been approved and processed, and you should be able to pick it up tomorrow." Should being the operative word.

I got my visa at 2:00 pm the day we were getting on the plane to go to Delhi. Nothing like cutting it close!

There is more bad on the travel end, involving traffic, snow and almost missing the plane, but you know what? I think the visa story is enough.

And I may need another little lie down now...

The Good

The first time I flew to New Delhi, I remember taxiing in to the terminal with rain pouring down so hard that I couldn't see out of the window. It was the end of the monsoon season, and we arrived in the midst of the last, really big rain of the season. The rest of my memories are quite fragmented (not surprising given the intervening 37 years, right?) but are present in pictures - the bamboo walls of the playhouse in our back garden, the lizards that climbed up the walls of my bedroom, tiny gas lights lining the wall around our house on Diwali. And there were the less pleasant memories - being in a car surrounded by lepers at a stop light, dust and dirt and people living in squalor on the side of the road,

My expectations for returning were pretty open ended, given that I didn't have many memories of living there. I was amazed at how big Delhi is - maybe it was that way in 1979 as well - but it is a massive, heaving, roiling pile of a city. There is a sense of rampant growth in every direction (which could be both good and bad), and an overwhelming enthusiasm for more, more, more! This was evident both in the never-ending construction that seemed to be everywhere, and in the seemingly indefatigable pressure from various peddlers of goods, ranging from cheap toys to postcards to random knicknacks of every variety.

But what did we actually do? After discovering our neighbors just down the road,

we went sightseeing. One of the amazing things that has changed is the vast work that has been done in restoring and renovating the endless ancient architectural sites. The first one we visited was the Red Fort in Old Delhi.

(note: the good quality pictures were taken by Himself, the crappy ones are from my mobile)

We had a lovely time just wandering around the Red Fort - I remember seeing it as a child, but not anything about the inside.

Boo was appropriately attired, of course...

After wandering around for a while, the girls and their grandparents went off back to the hostel for a rest, while Himself, my brother and I went off with one of our hosts to the depths of Chandni Chowk and had a fabulous time wandering through the old markets, bravely trying the local foods. We would never have been so brave if we hadn't been with a local, but she directed us to some of the most exquisite food I've ever had - samosas and jellabies fresh out of the pot (of ghee!), sweet biscuits that were sort of like shortbread cooked over open coals, creamy lassi served in earthenware cups, dal halwa with almonds... It was Sunday, so the market was relatively uncrowded and we could look around more or less at leisure.

After eating ourselves into a stupor, we headed back to Humayun's Tomb, where there is a huge amount of restoration ongoing, using the original techniques.

So to replace a jaali (stone screen)* that has been broken,

they have stoneworkers cutting a new one using the same techniques and tools used back in the 16th century. I found this to be more spectacular then the Taj - the contrast between the red and white stone is unbelievable, and it's surrounded by grounds that contain numerous other burial sites and memorials. We wandered around, with the place mostly to ourselves - it was so peaceful and quiet. Just lovely.

The following day, we headed south to Agra. And once there, we went to the obvious place,

by somewhat less-obvious means.

Boo was in heaven!

The Taj was, well, about what you'd expect (and as I remembered): very crowded, and overwhelming in a "Oh, so that's what it really looks like" kind of way. It's familiar since there are pictures of it all over the place, but none of the pictures can quite convey the enormity of it all.

The next morning, we headed off bright and early to see the Agra Fort, which I think was my favorite place of the entire trip. Hang on for a multitude of pictures...

Yes, I took a lot of detail pictures. The things they did with stone are so extraordinary, and that's well before you get to the inlaid stuff!

From Agra, we piled back into the car and headed west to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. It's also known as the Pink City, not (as I had thought) because the sandstone used for building was pink, but because they painted all the buildings pink for Prince Albert's visit in 1876. Highlights of Jaipur included the Jantar Mantar, an ancient astronomical observatory that's been beautifully restored,

and the Hawa Mahal,

We also spent a wonderful evening at Chokhi Dhani, which is a reconstructed Rajasthani village, complete with craftspeople, dancers, puppet shows, elephant and camel rides, a maze, a fortune telling parrot, and traditional food served en masse on plates made from palm leaves. The girls were stellar about trying the food (Dev in particular, which is quite a good job for her!), although Boo made do mostly with plain white rice. However, when the jellabies came around (by the kilo!), she went into ecstatic reverie, which could only be assuaged by lying down with her head in one lap and her feet in the other. I was on the other end of the table from her, but every so often a little hand would rise up dramatically over the side of the table and swoop down for more sweets. Absolute bliss!

On the way back to Delhi the next day, we stopped at the Amer (Amber) Fort, which is set in an area that reminds me of the Great Wall.

The fort itself is hard to describe - it is a massive conglomeration of buildings with lots of narrow passages leading from one place to the other. A fantastic place (as most of these were) to wander with the girls, who were in absolute heaven.

There were (lots more!) carved stone screens, and some very brave parrots/cockatoos that the girls watched for a long time...

 

From Amer, we headed back to Delhi, well touristed. Or last day was a whirlwind of shopping (pottery! textiles! more textiles! ALL THE TEXTILES!) and packing and enjoying the last bits of time with my parents, who had to leave well before dawn the next day. And then it was slowly getting ourselves sorted out and to the airport and onto the plane, full of new sights and sounds and smells.

Up next: The Bad (none of which was very much so, and most of which was self-induced)

* I must admit that the majority of my pictures are photos of stone screens - for whatever reason, I found them absolutely fascinating!

India

In 1979, when I was seven years old, my family moved to New Delhi for a year. Or, in the case of my mom, my brother and I, 6 months. A couple of weeks ago, I went back with my parents and brother (along with my husband, my almost-5 and almost-7 year olds) for the half-term holiday.

It was mind-blowing. I'm still working on digesting my thoughts, and sorting through the piles of pictures, but I have three blog posts brewing with the details. I'm hoping to get them up over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

Come on Irene

We fled London, complete with an arrival at Heathrow only to find firetrucks lined up and everyone standing outside, and have spent the last week enjoying a lovely, sunny week in Vermont. Then, on Friday, we packed up and headed to the Maine coast, just in time for a hurricane. Oh joy!

So far today it's been windy and grey, with some rain coming down, but nothing too exciting yet. Himself and I went down to the water to see what was going on. It was high tide, and the pier for the dock was almost under water. The harbor was quiet, with lots of boats moored to hunker down for the storm, and the wind was rippling the surface of the sea into incredible interference patterns and ruffles.

 

I hope everyone else on the East Coast is staying warm and dry and safe. I'm going to hunker down and watch movies with the girls. See you on the other side!

Tour de France Stage 19: an overview

Last week, Himself went off to the French Alpes to do a little riding/Tour de France groupie-ing with a friend from Texas. What follows is a transcript of our text message interchange on Friday afternoon while I watched the stage on TV and he watched it from the hillside of Alpe d'Huez:

Himself: Rode up alpe d'huez. Way more fun than last time! Today it is already a 9 mile party. Incredible to be here!
Porpoise: I'm jealous!
H: It's ok, I got you a present.
P: Andy Schlek?
H: Guido*, he was going backwards anyway. Might as well bring him home.
P: Frank? Ivan? Please, anyone but Guido!
H: Cav?
P: Ummmm...too high maintenance. How about Thor?
H: He's busy. How about Levi? He's not doing anything (oh snap!)
P: LOL. Maybe that new young rider? Or maybe Tyler? Cadel? we could bbq for him...
H: If Cadel doesn't get himself bbq'd today. Imagine Andy will be turning up the heat.

You get the idea. He sat on the side of the Alpe in the midst of a pile of people who had been drinking all day, watching the best cyclists in the world speed their way up a truly legendary climb. Not a bad way to spend a Friday afternoon in July!

* Guido = Alberto Contador, so nicknamed because of a series of Sidi cycling shoe ads on TV here in the UK showing him wearing a white tuxedo, barefoot, carrying a pair of cycling shoes. Ewwwww!

Three weeks and a bit

Three weeks from tomorrow I'm climbing on a plane and heading up to Inverness, where I'll climb on a bus for a multi-hour trip to John O'Groats. Hopefully my bike will meet me there, and on June 11th, we'll head off with 600 other insane enthusiastic cyclists for the lovely beaches of Cornwall and Land's End.

Part of this event is raising money for ParalympicsGB, the organization that supports the British Paralympic team as they prepare for the London 2012 games. I've set up an online fundraising page here - if you are able to donate in any way, it is greatly appreciated.

In return, I promise to post a daily update reporting on the ride: the route (the hills!), the weather (please no horizontal rain, 'kay?), the absolutely spectacular scenery, and the experience of riding 953 miles in nine days.

Phew. Wish me luck!

Sun, snow and attempted murder

Sooooo...about that ski trip, right?

We headed off from London on a Friday, flying in to Geneva. Nana and Grandpa arrived the next morning, and the six of us, and our multitude of baggage (3 ski bags, 5 suitcases, 2 children) piled on to a bus to head to Meribel. Three hours and one rendition of "Jungle Book 2", we arrived. After a somewhat haphazard ride on the shuttle bus, we found our flat and unloaded. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and the older participants in this adventure were thrilled to see all the white stuff on the ground. Sadly, most of that ground was a lot higher up on the mountain - they hadn't gotten any snow in more then a month when we arrived, but the trails seemed to be pretty well covered still.

The next morning, we found the ski school for the girls and, armed with a bag of Gummi Bears and strict instructions to take care of her little sister, Devil managed to make the transition without too much drama. She was very reluctant to go, completely unconvinced that this was going to be any fun at all, and her Dad had the brilliant parenting moment of framing it as a scenario where she needed to take care of Boo. Being a nurturing soul, this was just the ticket. There were some tears and wailing, but nothing compared to some of the other ski school kindergarden participants waiting to get in. And by day 3, when I asked her if she was nervous about going to ski lessons, she said "Moooom, I've been twice already..." as if my question was completely out of left field and an insult to her capabilities.

So our week went something like this: get up, roust everyone into their snow gear (by Wednesday the girls were happily clomping around in their ski boots while the rest of us struggled to get ourselves together), rush off to the shuttle and head to the base lodge. Drop girls off, climb on lift and head upwards. Frantic skiing for 2.5 hours, and then rush back to get girls for lunch. Pizza, omelettes, more fries then you can shake a stick at, then Nana and the girls would head off, while the rest of us went back up the hill. The snow was ok - better in Val Thorens then Courcheval (higher and lower respectively) - the whole skiing experience was very different then our previous experience. Overall, I would say the terrain was less challenging. That might have largely been a function of the lack of snow - most of the off piste stuff wasn't available (although Himself did try out some likely looking drops, mostly to his regret and our entertainment) - but everything that was open was groomed within an inch of its life. Lovely corn snow, some feeble en-snowment ("faible enneigement" being the French equivalent of "thin cover").

The other really spectacular difference was the fashion. There we were, four New Englanders, and I was the flashiest in my bright orange jacket.

But some of the Euro-outfits were unbelievable. Like this one.

These guys were just silly - an alligator, Pancho Villa, Superman, the Tick, Batman and a sumo wrestler hit the slopes for the day.

But this lady was the crowning glory. She even had a matching hat. I spotted her while standing in line for the gondola, and almost fell off the ramp trying to get a good shot.

She was spectacular. Devil tried to get in on the Euro look, but I'm not so sure it plays as well on an almost-6-year-old Texan.

The last couple of days, we took advantage of the lovely sunny weather and the girls' growing enthusiasm for this sliding around on snow stuff to take them out on the real slopes. They were pretty thrilled, although turning and stopping weren't really high up in their list of priorities. Which gave their mother heart palpitations and their grandfather giggles at the irony*. But I think we got a good start with the snow obsession!

Daddy as rope tow

And now for the attempted murder by cholesterol poisoning. On our first day, my lovely husband and my dad decided that it made sense to have lunch at the restaurant at the top of one of the lifts. What we didn't consider was the lack of competition at that particular location was going to lead to major price issues. But, we rationalized, we're on vacation, so what the hell. I ordered a hamburger, and when it arrived I was blown away. Picture this: a large burger with bacon, sauteed onions and cheese on top, sandwiched between two fried potatoe cakes and topped with yet more bacon. And a lovely green salad on the side. It was death on a plate. Somehow I managed to gobble choke it down, but out of concern for my coronary arteries, I stayed away from the Savoy burgers for the rest of the week.

An early morning bus on Saturday took us back to Geneva in time to hang about at the airport for three hours before our flight. And then we were back in London, half-term finished, and the Small Ridiculous Dog's arrival imminent! More on that later.

* I distinctly remember scaring the bejeezus out of him at least once during the learn-to-ski years. At least once. But no more then three or four times, right Dad?

Here's to 2011!

We've been so fortunate over the past twelve months - we've had lots of good travel, great accomplishments, happy days. Here's hoping that the next twelve months bring all of you peace, joy and good memories!

Copenhagen from the Round Tower, 29th December 2010

Summer Holidays redux

Now that the girls are back in school, I finally have a few minutes to sit down and hear myself think. And I guess that means that I should wade through the backlog of blog posts floating around inside my brain. Unfortunately they are somewhat fragmented (to say the least) and quite incoherent. Let's see if I can sort out something intelligible out of the madness.

One obvious event is our trip to Germany and Austria. Ironman has spent the last ten months training for IM #3, Ironman Regensburg, which occurred on 1 August. We left for Germany at 6:15 am the Thursday before the race.

Just an aside: if you ever want to experience trans-Atlantic jet leg on a budget, I highly recommend the early morning Easy Jet flights to the Continent. Getting up at 3:00 am after going to bed at 11:00 and spending the next six hours in various modes of transportation did a fantastic job of beating the crap out of the two of us. The girls were less traumatized by the whole event, but us parents are united in our cries of Never Again!

After landing in Munich, we picked up a car and headed north. A short time later, we were in our hotel and Himself had picked up his race stuff. Regensburg is a gorgeous city, full of cobblestone streets and old buildings.

Waiting for Daddy to get all his race stuff...

It turned out that another SW-London competitor (who was known to Himself before we got there) was staying at our hotel. He and IM left at sparrow's fart on Sunday morning to get to the swim start, while the girls and I slept in and then braved the road closures to get out to the bike course. And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more - finally the fast people came by.

And eventually we saw Daddy. He was smiling and looking pretty good at that stage (halfway through the second of two laps on the bike course). Then we headed in to town, braved the parking (!) and trooped out to the run course. Thankfully it wound through the town, taking in lots of sights.

Go Daddy!

And it passed a playground. So the girls and I walked out along the course, cheering for the runners, until we reached said playground.

The girls did a stellar job of being entertained for hours on end at this place. Which was needed, because we spent quite a while waiting for Himself to appear again. And again. And again. Four 10K loops must be excruciatingly mind numbing to run. But he persevered - the final result was not what he was hoping for, but come on...140.6 miles under your own power? An amazing accomplishment no matter how long it takes. Even if things did get a wee bit nutty in the late hours of the evening...

After Regensburg, we spent a couple of days waiting for Daddy's synapses to start firing efficiently again. And then it was off to Austria. We hit Salzburg first, and had an amazing time eating everything in sight (justified or not), playing at the Magic Flute Playground, climbing up to the fort overlooking the town, and generally playing tourist.

Massive slide with Devil for scale

We spent the better part of three days in and around Salzburg, and it was absolutely wonderful. Even if they are a bit het up about this guy...

Then we headed off to Innsbruck which, tragically, was socked in with clouds the entire time we were there. It didn't deter the experts in European Playground Inspection, but we didn't get to see the mountains in all there glory. But there was more swinging and sliding and general mayhem, including an event that had the parents in the group almost wetting themselves with laughter. We'd gone to the playground near our hotel one morning to get out some extra energy. Sadly, it was a grey and drizzly day, so we put on the girls' waterproof pants and off we went. The slides were metal, and I almost ruptured something when Boo slid down the smaller slide, and ended up going so fast that she shot off the end of the slide and landed a couple of feet away, leaving a lovely skid mark in the mud. She left tracks. Unfortunately, we weren't on the spot with the cameras, so we had to settle for a video reconstruction which was, to be fair, also pretty funny.

A couple days in Innsbruck and it was time to head back to Munich to catch the plane. Our plan was to drive back via The Disney Castle, but for whatever reason, the traffic going through the mountains was unbelievable. So we had to bail on that and head back to catch our plane. The flight home was much less jarring then the trip over, and we came back to run 42 loads of laundry in the four days before we had to pack up again and head west for the real jet lag. An upcoming post...