How many people can you fit....

... on a motorcycle? 

You may think the answer is 3.

But you would be wrong.  It's actually 4.

... on a cycle rickshaw?

Five, you say?

It may be hard to make out, but there are three people on the main seat and two on the foot rest.

But 5 is not the correct answer.

You think 6?

Nope, still wrong.

How about 8!
Again, it may be hard to make it out, but there are actually 8 kids on this thing.

Here's my peanut and her daddy on a cycle rickshaw:

Wedding Ceremony

The morning after the engagement ceremony is the wedding, which apparently begins at 7am with a series of rituals, with the "big finale," as our new friend Dinesh put it, at 9am.  So we arrived at 9am, although we attempted to be there by 8:30am but had some issues with the driver showing up half an hour late.

G sporting her new wedding outfit:

Kasthuri and Chris:

The temple next door to the event hall had this out front.  I don't know why.

And this was out front as well.  Perhaps there is no back door?

Vara Satkaarah
Kasthuri is greeted by Bidisha's family and he sits in a chair while bride's parents bless him with rice and trefoil and applies tilak of vermilion and turmeric powder. In the photo below Kasthuri is sitting to the left, which you can't see him because of the mataji in the purple sari; and Bidisha's parents are kneeling to the right, almost under the plate and cup.

Priya suggested I wear a bindi and the red markings of a married woman.

Kanya Dan
Bidisha enters in her beautiful red sari adorned will all sorts of gold jewelry.  Her father gives her away to the groom while sacred mantras are being chanted by the priests.

It was tough getting pictures of them under the altar, as everyone was mobbed around this thing.  Unlike American weddings, no one seems to sit down, they all crowd around the bride and groom.

The priest is a very busy man, so much so that he takes a cell phone call during the ceremony:

Here they are doing something that I'm not sure what it is.  She was hidden by the blanket, there was something going on with their feet, then they threw puffed rice or petals, I think, over the blanket at each other.

And another ritual:

So many garlands around their necks!

I apparently don't have pictures of Saptapadi, which is where the two are tied together with a knot.  Hence where our term "tie the knot" comes from.

Aren't they cute?

We left shortly after noon and missed the lunch, which we were bummed about, but we were still quite jet lagged.  Back at the hotel we napped for 3 hours!

Engagement Ceremony

Kashuri Sankar Weds Bidisha!

I've been to Indian wedding receptions in the past held in America, but never to any of the actual ceremonies, which for my friends always took place in India.  (I still remember Milit returning from India and surprising us with his new wife, Sundhya!)  The American receptions involved lots of dancing and a ton of traditional food.  Kasthuri's wedding was no different, except that he had ceremonies and receptions held in two different parts of India.

Kasthuri is from southern India, while his bride, Bidisha, is from Delhi (northern India, for those of you not up on your Indian geography).  The engagement and wedding ceremonies were held in New Delhi, both events including food afterwords, which we weren't able to fully take advantage of due to jet lag issues, which is a whole other topic.  The big wedding reception was held in Tamil Nadu (southern India) a few days later.

The ceremony was supposed to start at 5pm; we showed up at 4:55 and other than the priests we were the only people there.  We are used to "Indian" time and should have known better!  We were eventually greeted by Bidisha's father, who took us down to her waiting room for us to meet her for the first time.  My first impression was "I love her!"  She is a delightful, nice, thoughtful person and I look forward to us becoming friends when she moves to America with Kasthuri.

Kasthuri finally arrived (an hour late) and there is a big to-do with all sorts of offerings from Bidisha's family and a procession to the stage setup inside.

It is customary for the women to wear flowers in their hair, which are offered to everyone.  G of course loved this.

 The bride's family offers all sorts of gifts to the groom and there are several rituals that go on that I can't even begin to explain, plus half I didn't understand.  Thankfully we met a couple, Dinesh and Priya, who  befriended us and explained a lot of what was going on.

Below is Kasthuri (with one of the priests in front of him) and his parents to the left and Bidisha's parents to the right.  They are surrounded by female family members who appear to struggle with each other over who gets to do what.  It's quite amusing and I wish I understood what they were saying.

One of the items given to the groom is a new suit, which he leaves the room to change into.  Meanwhile the bride makes her first appearance of the evening.  Here is Bidisha entering with her aunts and friends accompanying her.  I wish I had photographed the beautiful and intricate mehndi that adorn her arms and feet. 

She then sits on the platform and goes through similar rituals and is offered gifts from the groom's family, which also includes a new sari, which she then eventually leaves the room to change into.

Kasthuri then re-enters, wearing his new suit, sits back on the platform and goes through another series of rituals.  He then gets off the platform and sits with his family.

Eventually Bidisha re-enters, wearing her new sari, and goes back to the platform for her next series of rituals.  At no point during the engagement ceremony do the couple sit together.

By 7pm we were becoming extremely tired, having not yet adjusted to the time zone.  We held out till 8pm, at which point we began making our way out.  It's a bit of an insult to not take food, so we shared a small plate of some fried item, which was tasty, and departed about 8:30pm.  We crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel from sheer exhaustion.

Engagement Ceremony - Our Attire

We attended the wedding of our friend Kasthuri, who is a colleague of Chris'.  Indian weddings are a several day affair and in this case we attended the engagement ceremony one evening and the wedding ceremony the next morning.  I'll save the details of these ceremonies for the next posts, since some of you have inquired about what we wore I'd like to address that first.

As a tourist you obviously don't have to wear their traditional clothing.  However, it is not appropriate to wear some of our Western style of clothing, such as tight tops and pants, shirts with the midriff exposed, low ride jeans, low cut tops, etc.  Not that I wear that kind of stuff, but my point being that you don't want to draw too much unwanted attention to yourself; just being white and walking around with a camera hanging off of your neck is enough.

For everyday purposes in Delhi we chose to wear a mix of Indian and Western clothing.  G and I wore long skirts with a t-shirt type top and a shawl covering most of our arms and upper body.  Chris wore pants (not jeans) with a kurta.  In Vrindavan we wore more traditional clothing, such as saris and punjabis for G and I, while Chris went with a dhoti instead of pants.

For the engagement and wedding ceremonies we got more dressed up.  While I didn't wear super fancy special occasion saris like everyone else, I did wear very nice silk saris.  A big thanks to my friend Lila Katha for letting me borrow these.  I only have cotton and synthetic saris, which she said were not fancy enough for a wedding.  She was certainly right and I am so glad she helped me out with this.

Chris borrowed two formal outfits from our friend Sumit.  It's basically a longer, more fancy kurta with matching drawstring bottoms.

G didn't have anything formal enough, so we went shopping for her our first morning there.  What a neat experience it is to shop for clothing!  You are essentially waited on hand and foot - it reminds me of what it must be like to be super wealthy and shopping at an insanely expensive clothing store in NYC or L.A.  You sit down and are offered a beverage while a very knowledgeable store clerk sits on the floor on a padded mattress type thing and just starts laying out item after item.  You tell him what colors and style you like and he fetches it for you.

Originally G wanted a sari, but then changed her mind after the clerk pulled out 6 different ones for her.  Honestly, we were okay with that because they were more than we wanted to spend.  They only had silk and it was about $40 USD.  We found out later on that it is difficult to find saris for children, and of course later on G changed her mind about wanting a sari.

She bought an adorable salwar kameez for the engagement ceremony, not quite fancy enough for the occasion, but adequate.  Her favorite and most worn purchase is the shawl.  The salwar kameez comes with a scarf, but I had to use it as a drawstring for the pants, apparently they don't come with the string.

G's other favorite purchase of the day, which she bought with her own money that her Oma and Grandpop gave her, is this bracelet.

While doing the usual tourist stuff in Delhi we saw tourists wearing a variety of clothing.  Some were in regular Western clothes - just pants and a top.  Others did a nice job of mixing the two cultures, like we did.  We felt we blended in the best we could while respecting the culture.

Delhi Hotel

We spent a great deal of time researching hotels in Delhi.  There are so many to choose from and they range in price from $5 to $500 a night.  Based on our price range and location needs we settled on the Velvet Apple.  Trip Advisor had good ratings for it, albeit there were only 10, but the pictures online appeared to be nice, although I read that sometimes the pictures posted on hotel websites are often phony.

I did not know until after the fact that in India you are supposed to haggle over even the cost of a hotel room. Booking via their website did not work, so we tried to Skype them, but the language barrier was too difficult so we finally had to email them.  It took a few days for them to reply and, again, communication was difficult, even via email.  We were sketched out on faxing them our credit card number, but friends assured us this was the way it's done and it is safe.  So we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. 

We were pleasantly surprised.  The room was very nice, clean and spacious.  And it had a western toilet. 

While our hotel building looked very nice from the outside (and so it was inside as well), the buildings surrounding it were less than stellar.  But we quickly discovered that this is the case in Delhi.  We'd see a very nice two story home with a gated entrance and security guard, and right next to it is a dilapidated single story home that is literally in pieces with frayed tarps for a roof.

The view from the front of our hotel.  I didn't think of taking photos of the buildings on either side of it.

At least the street is swept clean manually every day....

First Impressions: Driving

The drive from Delhi airport to our hotel was quite the experience.  We were told what driving in India is like and we even watched videos of it on Youtube; but none of that adequately prepares you for the real life experience.  Honestly, I was quite sure our driver was crazy and we would end up in an accident.  Driving in India is absolutely insane.

While there are lines painted on the road, they are meaningless.  A two lane road miraculously accommodates a bicycle, motorbike, auto rickshaw, car and tour bus all side-by-side.  I would look out the window and see someone staring back at me from only a foot away.

The horn is used constantly and as a means of letting the mode of transportation in front of or beside you know that you are overtaking it and it needs to move out of your way.  Which, most of the time, they do.  It's a noisy, chaotic mess of vehicles, bicycles, ox carts, and pedestrians; but yet it all seems to work.  Organized chaos.

When we arrived back in America we all commented on how quiet the roads were.  We were so used to the non-stop honking that without it everything seemed eerily silent.

Here's a snippet of one of our Took Took (auto rickshaw) rides. 

In this clip we are leaving Delhi, headed to Vrindavan, and at about 15 seconds into the video you hear a loud thump on the car.  Apparently our driver got a little too close to a pedestrian so he punches our vehicle.