Parag and Purva's Wedding - Day 1

First things first - both Van and I want to thank Parag, Purva, and more importantly, Purva's family for hosting us and our friends at this glorious wedding of theirs.  Aside from the sheer amazement of the weekend, we were showered with unmatched hospitality.  Thank you, thank you, thank you - and congratulations!!!

I just took a flip through my pictures to jog my memory and I don't know where to start!  Perhaps the best way to do this is to split it up into sections - so, we'll start with...

Arrival/Venue/Are We Really Here?


The 4 of us (Trang, Isaac, Van, and I) made our way a few hours north of Jaipur through what is the modern day Indian road trip - animals, farms, highways, big trucks, tractors, an occasional wedding taking place on the street, a small village, and last but not least, a plethora of smells both fragrant and not.  Finally, nestled into the mountains we arrived to our retreat for the weekend and the wedding: The Samode Palace.

Almost two hundred years old, the Samode Palace was first built as a Rajasthani stronghold and then later was formed into a residential palace for it's ruler.  Not sure when it was transformed into a hotel/resort, but it's sheer vastness in numbers of courtyards, pools, areas, sections is unprecedented.  There were areas of this place we didn't discover until leaving, views into the mountains which were pristine, and an overall sense of royalty clouded the place.  I probably saw 5 different rooms while I was there and not one was a cookie cutter copy - each room had been designed differently with huge bathrooms and ample living space.  It was a charm...

When our car dropped us off at the front courtyard, it was like we were in a different dimension.  We slowly got out of the car while gazing around and saw the red carpet leading up to the steps to the main entrance - with Parag standing up there with his Mother, flower girls, a trumpeter, a tabla player, and the ever-present audio/video men.  Music started playing, and I started looking around in disbelief - we were totally ruining Purva's entrance into some event!  I moved out of the way and looked up at Parag and he was laughing and waving us to come inside - it was our welcoming party!!!

Our royal entrance to Samode...

Renu Auntie and Parag (playing Brickbreaker)...

We exchanged our pleasantries and I started back downstairs to grab our bags, only to notice that there were about 10 men carrying all of our stuff up to our rooms.  Once again, exceptional service.  (As an aside: Isaac left his iPhone AND wallet in the car pocket and the driver came running to our room to drop it off.  I can name a few countries where that would certainly not happen...)

Friends started rolling in as the day progressed and mini-reunions were happening everywhere.  Texas, Penn, NYC, Boston, India - people from all of Parag's life mingling with Purva's friends and family was really fun.  Several of us starting exploring the palace and got lost in the windy steps and terraces which adorned the place...

Bucher and Shannan...

Me and my lady checking out the digs (Trang and Isaac in background)...

Uhh - done.

Event #1 / 21343

Indian weddings are chock full of customs, rituals, and traditions - the groom's "invite to marry" ceremony, the groom's preparation and cleaning for marriage, the "sangeet" where there are songs sung and dances done, the "garba" where we do traditional dancing, his arrival to the bride's home, little games they play, the ceremony, the "giving of the daughter" away to the groom's home and family, etc.  On top of all of these traditional customs, we've now added Western customs - a reception, a Sunday brunch, etc.

This combination brings a lot of different events to the plate - and whenever there is a new event, you have to wear something new.  If you're a woman, you have to wear something new that no one has ever seen before.  Thus - we packed a LOT of different clothes.  I had a good 3, 4 kurta/pajamas in my suitcase along with my reception gear, and Van had a good 3, 4 Indian saris, punjabis, etc. with her.  These things inevitably turn into a fashion show!  And that's just for the guests - think of the bride/groom and all of their family!  Many Indian families take the customary "trip to India" before a marriage only to shop for a week or two and buy all the clothes they need for all the different events.  It's quite worth it, however, when you see just how awesome everyone looks in their outfits...

As people rolled into the Palace, the first event took place which was the groom receiving an invitation to marry the bride.  It was fairly anticlimactic, with Parag sitting down and a bunch of Aunties feeding him laddus (Indian sweets) and reciting a few prayers, some people singing, etc.  He went Western with a blazer, shirt, and slacks.  The rest of us were in shorts and a t-shirt, just arriving and not wanting to waste time seeing everyone and catching up on how our respective trips were in and around India...

Event #1 - Parag eating Laddus

Kolom, Rish, and Alok have arrived!!!

Rishi and Parag - two good looking guys with a lot of good things going for them...

Most amazing looking man/physique on the planet - we named him: Lalu Kaka!

I can carry Kolom with one arm!!!

Lalu Kaka - can we clone you?

The bus from Dehli has arrived!

After the event was done, the groups split up and half went to their rooms to take their "vacation naps" and the other half continued to "catch up" - Parag's personal terrace and bar.  We were all getting excited about the next event - "The Dune Party".  We all freshened up, threw on our blazers and cocktail dresses, and met downstairs for the beginning of a great party...

Nice shot of everyone on Parag's personal terrace...

The Dune Party

What?  Did I hear this right?

Yes - one of the many events we'd all been waiting for.  And, yes, it is exactly what it sounds like - a party on the sand dunes...

We threw on our best looking, sand dune-ready clothes and met in the courtyard for pictures.  Everyone looked great as usual, and the palace put a traditional Rajasthani instrument player / singer in the courtyard to give us a taste of the culture and entertain us.  This guy was really good at what he did, but, he also had one of the scariest stares ever because his eyes were HUGE!  He looked like he saw a ghost and had permanent big eyes!

Stop looking at me SWAN.

We rolled in our cadre of Beemers and Benzes to the Samode Bagh, an ornate village-type setup with all sorts of large courtyards, polo grounds, and other outdoor spaces.  Once there, we all loaded up onto, as you can see from the pictures below - camel carts!  It was an interesting but fun experience.  All the guests loaded up onto about 20 - 25 camel drawn carts and were were escorted by torch yielding guides and camel jockeys through the sand to our destination.  As expected, our canopy began breaking down and Rish and I had to hold it up the rest of the time, but, This Is India.  Every 5 minutes or so a man would run from torch weilder to torch weilder literally pouring kerosene onto the torch!  I wonder if this outfit has had a safety inspection lately...

Our camel was foaming at the mouth..

The beautiful bride is here!

Just another Thursday night, hanging out with the camel carts...(L to R: Louise, Coop, GB, Alok, Sank)

They're laughing with you, not at you...

It's a camel jockey!  No, I'm not racist.

Best Camel Cart Award - Van, Rish, SmooBug, and Me

Dude - Rishi touched the camels balls!

The event was beautiful.  Huge bonfires to keep us warm through the night, myriad food stalls, a fully stocked bar, a DJ and a dance floor - all in the middle of the desert.  Shortly after arriving, there was traditional Rajasthani dancing from a dance troupe who wore very ornate, sparkling saris and danced with fire on their heads!  They didn't last long, however.  The DJ starting pumping his techno-remixed, Top 40 and the superstar dancers which are Parag and Purva's friends took over the dance floor.  

Van and I with the Bride and Groom...

Rajasthani dancers with fire-pots on their heads!!!

Would be an awesome picture if it wasn't for homeboy in the background...

It was literally a blur after that.  Looking through my pictures, they are all literally blurry snaps of all of us dancing the night away!  The one thing I do remember from that night is after we were all done and ready to go back, we had one of the food guys fire up the grill, throw on some paneer (cheese cubes) and vegetables, and make us homemade kati rolls!  They were delicious!!!

Parag teaching this little kid how to get down - Purva likes the way her man moves!!!

Van and Neha choppin' up the dance floor...

This dude was passed out on a chair!  I had to get a picture with him...

Next up - Day 2 - get some rest, we got a big day ahead of us!!!

Jaipur Musings

            Beat, we landed in Jaipur late and hopped in a cab to our hotel – an AWESOME boutique hotel called the Hotel Pearl Palace (there’s a reason it’s #1 on TripAdvisor, and was only $15 a night!).  We were thoroughly impressed with the rooftop restaurant, room decoration, intricate paint jobs, and the service.  Hats off – travelers to Jaipur should seriously consider this place.

            As usual, we were up early, and as usual, I was on the computer.  What India lacks in public infrastructure build it has certainly made up for in technology.  My Uncle (Hitesh Mama) got me a USB travel modem (exact same size as a USB drive) which connects virtually tens of thousands of villages and cities in India to the Internet with broadband speeds.  Hotel Pearl Palace had very strong and fast Wi-Fi, so we spent the morning video chatting and Skyping with family and friends.  It’s funny how the grass is always greener – we yearned for the village life a mere 24 hours ago when we visited, but now equipped with Google Video were basking in the advancement of technology.  Life is great.

Giving the tour on Google Video Chat!!!

            I was flabbergasted by tourist inflation in Jaipur!  Aside from the hotel, we found prices for simple transportation and textiles (where there are scarves, there is Vans) to be exorbitant as compared to the spots we had traveled to.  Rickshaw rides were 5x the price of what they should have been (I don’t think we were getting duped, either).  We asked a local in broken Hindi of where to shop and got taken to a wholesaler, fixed price market that had palatable prices.  Once again, we sat in front of a couple of salesmen on mattresses and were showed dozens of different scarves, skirts, blankets, and other textiles to bring back to the US.  Vans bought a wool and silk blanket which they managed to wrap up into a package smaller than a shoebox!  (Which was also a selling point). 

And here is blanket #821...

Stay far away from this place, you're bound to get got...

             We spent a quick morning in Jaipur before our ride to Parag and Purva’s Palace (about 1.5 hours north of the city) and I wasn’t too impressed.  When I read about the old city area, I guess I had a Jerusalem-type situation and was looking forward to walking through the bazaars, etc.  This was quite the opposite.  The roads were lined with autos and it, again, was a tense walk through the city dodging streets, playing frogger, and inhaling carbon monoxide.  On the positives, there was a decent amount of Mughal architecture which was nice to see.  I can only imagine the splendor which is Jaipur are the myriad palaces in the outskirts of the city.

 

World famous Halwa Mahal...

Once back at the hotel, we met Trang and Isaac for lunch (from Purva’s side of the wedding – Trang went to architecture school with Purva in NYC) and our car picked us up right on time for our 1.5 hour trip through Jaipur and north into the desert hills of the Samode Palace.  Our hosts showered us with comfort from the top, sending us a Toyota Innova (think luxury minivan) to battle through the traffic and noise, and arrived to our dreamland for 3 days of royal treatment…

City Mouse, Country Mouse

A picture of my nephews, Kathan and Rohan...

After visiting my eldest uncle (where monkeys and peacocks walk around his front porch - unreal), we spent the late morning and early afternoon shopping for traditional women’s Indian clothes.  As much as I thought I wanted to shoot myself in the face, and as much as my opinions on colors didn’t matter – it was quite an interesting experience from a service point of view.

 Nothing like a peacock on your front porch!!!           

My cousin’s wife Krishna took us to several stores, each having their own sets of designs, colors, and styles.  The setup was really every woman’s dream.  You sit on a comfortable couch/bench in front of a huge mattress on which the salesman is kneeling.  The salesman (interesting, and quite counterintuitive, there were no saleswomen) starts laying out DOZENS of outfits – yelling at his helpy helpertons to throw him packages full of saris, cholis, Punjabi dresses, etc. and showing us all sorts of colors and styles.  After about 10 minutes, Vans and I started feeling bad for all the guys that had to refold everything!  Seems to be the norm, though – after 30 minutes of looking through dresses at one stop – Krishna flat out told the guy that she didn’t like any of the styles, got up, and left!  We were served chai, water, offered food – options which I can only assume consoled all the men dragged into these shopping trips!!!

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...            

Only a few hours away from our ancestral villages, we decided to spend the next morning and afternoon visiting Van’s extended family and taking a trip outside of the city.  It was a pleasant morning – it was certainly worth leaving at 8AM to beat the traffic, honking, and pollution which are the streets leaving Ahmedabad.  Our first stop was a small city called Nadiad, where both Van’s Uncle (Kaka) and her Mom’s Uncle (Dadu Mama) live.  I was impressed with a several things at her Uncle’s house – one of them being the solar panels he had installed on the roof to provide the home with 24 hours of hot water.  Dadu Mama’s house was your classic small city establishment – made of a hardened clay structure to keep cool in the summer months and vertically intimidating – it’s 3 floors tall but to compensate for the lack of width the steps traversing each floor were more like ladders!

            On our way to finding Dadu Mama’s house we had a funny incident which I thought in retrospect illustrated the nature of Indian hospitality.  Uncomfortable with the city and organizing directions, we had Van’s Aunt call up the phone number we had for our next visit and organize a meeting spot.  As soon as we got there, a friend of the family (or so we thought) named Vinod met us and we conversed for a good 5 minutes about how we were related to the family, who we were here to see, etc.  Surprisingly, we found it tough to truly figure out who this man was, why we couldn’t match any names together, and if we were really in the right place.  Van’s checked the number on the phone and realized we had been calling the wrong number the entire time!  This man, Vinod, had thought guests were here to visit his mother and left work to meet us (in the middle of the morning, mind you) and take us to his home!  We straightened everything out, talked a little insurance business (he was a life insurance broker), and finally our real family came out to get us at the meeting spot.  What impressed me was that Vinod was not peeved one bit – he laughed it all off, handled all the phone calls with our family to straighten out the situation, offered us chai/coffee/soft drinks, and waited with us until our family met us.  It was a true display of hospitality.

Mr. Vinod - right after Van realizes we dialed the wrong number!!!

From Nadiad, we hit the road and traveled through the real India – countryside full of rice paddies, wheat crops, roadside huts, and a children’s book full of farm animals and herders.  Surprisingly, the abundance of crop in this area were tobacco plant/leaves.  (Aside – Vans thought it was worthless for me to ask the driver every time we passed a farm what type of crop it was – I told her when the Armageddon comes and we have to go back to farming, at least I’ll know what I’m growing!).  An hour later we showed up in Dharmaj – Van’s father’s village and where her Grandma (Baa) lives.  It was a super pleasant trip – we spent a good hour catching up with her Grandma on life in the village, our travels, our lives, her life, etc. 

Van's Grandma (Baa) - super adorable!

Ba is adorable.  We talked about how Indian cities have become madness with the traffic and pollution – and how nice it was for us to get out of Ahmedabad, travel the roads, see the farms, and visit the villages.  She talked about how bored she was when she came to the US and lived at Van’s house in suburbia – nothing to do in the house except watch TV, nothing to walk to nearby, everyone driving cars to their destination, and how the only thing she would be able to look forward to is the next meal and getting to bed!  In the village, she said time and the days pass fast – there are people to see and catch up with walking by the house, news and gossip that travels around, markets and shops and temples to visit, etc.  Vans and I both related to that – it was such a cathartic experience to get out of the hot city and into the countryside where the hours while away, and you’re not setting your alarm to hit the road or looking at your watch to catch the next flight…

            …which was that evening.  We packed up, drove back into the disaster which was Ahmedabad traffic, and flew to Jaipur, Rajasthan – ancient land of the Kings, to attend one of the grandest wedding’s of our lives…