INDIA!!!

So it’s Friday night in Jaipur, known as the “pink city” 150 miles southwest of Delhi. That’s 5.5 hours of what, a week ago, we’d have considered to be insane driving. Now we’re somewhat used to it, and think we can tell the difference between drivers skilled at this lawless transportation and ones who are merely dangerous! But that is only the tip of the iceburg.

At least two people told me before I left North America that a visit to India would be “life-changing.” I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I’m facing new experiences of such an extreme level of strangeness to me that I can only compare it to 40 years ago when I went off to college. (I think Denise shares some of this—she wrote a lengthy email to her family for Thanksgiving listing all the things for which India makes her thankful.) Not being someone who splats my feelings onto the internet without a lot of care, I’ll post more about the past week in due course.

In the meantime, today started with breakfast in the charming courtyard of our hotel, pictured here past Denise’s shoulder. The hotel is the “Madhuban,” the home of “the erstwhile ruling family of Patan, an ancient state which lies about 70 miles northeast of Jaipur.” The quote is from the hotel’s publicity.www.madhuban.net
One of the amazing things we saw today was a huge sundial, shown in the attached picture. It was part of a huge outdoor astronomical observatory built (1728-1734) by the maharajah who founded Jaipur. The guide claimed that it tells time accurately to within 2 seconds, and we were able to confirm that the time shown was at least as accurate as our casually-set watches.

Paul