Imagine a dirt road, pothole-strewn, with five 18 wheelers, busses and a smattering of passenger cars and a few foolhardy motorcyclists contending for four lanes of highway. Mix in major construction sites every five miles and the occasional sacred cow meandering through the traffic and that’s the Jaipur-Delhi expressway we traveled today. Ten hours of bus travel with two stops, one being lunch at a roadside café.

The only notable sight today was what Jai calls “new New Delhi” – a neighborhood of one impressive modern high rise office or apartment complex after another. It’s a reminder that portions of India are decidedly first world. A stark contrast to dear old Pachewar that we left this morning.

So that’s it for this half of our trip. Tomorrow we fly at 1:30 PM to Kathmandu. Jeff and company will meet our flight and take us to Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu pilgrimage site in Nepal – it’s a crematorium, as well as a temple.

If anything comes up at the Farewell Dinner, I’ll let you know tomorrow. I’m taking the rest of the night off!

It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and Judy is napping; I’m typing. Judy screams, sits upright in bed, and says “There’s something on my back!” Nightmare is, of course, my immediate guess but in 52 years of wedded bliss I’ve never heard her wake up screaming.

We’re In Pachewar, checked into our hotel and resting until 4:30 and the village walk. What to do? Chalk it up to imagination? Call someone? I’m alerted to motion on the floor to my left. It’s a mouse. Big mouse? Rat? Whatever, it’s a rodent.

I call Jai, our Chief Experience Officer, and ask him to deal with this experience. He shows up with three hotel employees, including a guy doing painting. Each armed with a broom or stick, and with evident glee, played a spirited game of whack-a-whatever. The mouse quickly succumbed, we moved rooms and all is well.

The hotel is a 300-year-old fort of the Fiefdom of Pachewar, complete with mud walls and a moat. It was presented to the present owner’s forefather in 1756 by the Maharaja of Jaipor in recognition for his service in a war. Back then, farmers, artisans and merchants payed taxes to the fiefdom, which in turn paid a portion to the maharaja. The maharaja paid the Emperor in Agra a portion and all was well. That worked until 1947 statehood when fiefdoms and maharajas loss the ability to tax. Now, it seems, running a hotel is the way to keep the family fort afloat.

The trip here from Jaipor was three hours and uneventful, passing through farming land punctuated by industrial operations, especially near cities. A $5 lunch was ready when we arrived.

The main event was an evening walk through the village, visiting shops and a business that presses rape seed to produce oil – what we would call canola oil The service is free if the customer leaves behind the solid material that has greater value when used as feed for cattle. They also grind wheat, including Millet, which is a common grain we’ve seen growing on many farms in this region of India. The most valuable part of cotton in the USA south are the seeds to produce cotton seed oil. Same deal.

There are a whole bunch of people in India, and judging by the number of kids following us around in this village of 10,000, a whole bunch more are on the way. We had a cooking demonstration over a wood-and-cow-dung fire by a woman outside her home.

The kids were lots of fun, willing to be photographed as were their parents and grandparents. In fact, everyone we met was very welcoming. The kids  didn’t beg but the one word of English they all knew was “present.” They weren’t obnoxious when we said “no.”

Tomorrow’s a long trip of nine hours back to Delhi. Then Sunday it’s off to Kathmandu for the second half of this adventure. Stay tuned!

We’re in Pachewar with a couple of hours before setting out on our walk about town, so here are some of the details I lost the other day concerning our trip to Jaipor.

1.    The Imperial Palace at Sikri

While Akbar, Emperor #3, built the palace at Sikri and founded the town of Sikri, his predecessors, Emperor #1 (Babur) and #2 (Humayun) came here to get away from the noise and population of Akra, a feeling with which we can sympathize. No honking tuk tuks back then but still. . .

Akbar was desperate for a male heir so the dynasty could continue. Girls didn’t count. A Hindu seer of some sort at Sikri foresaw the birth of his first son, the one who would later be killed by som #2. In celebration he had built a religious shrine upon the birth of his son to wife #3, his favorite. Two years later he commissioned the walled palace. He moved the entire Mughal imperial operation to Sitri, 20 miles or so west of Akra, which he abandoned as the imperial palace.

Some call him Akbar the Great. He was, for a Muslim, quite liberal in his outlook. He expanded and consolidated control of the various Mughal domains on the subcontinent. He tolerated other religions and even went so far as to marry a Hindu and a Christian. He had a dozen or more wives and a passel of consorts. Some of the wives he took as diplomatic moves to bring loyalty to fiefdoms and kingdoms to the Mughal empire. He even created his own religion in a move to unify religion across the disparate regions of the empire.

After 14 years, he moved the imperial headquarters back to Akra. Poor water supply is the excuse. Some say he simply tired of Sitri. The palace was deserted and grew over in a jungle of vegetation. The Brits unearthed it in the 19th century.

2.    The Stepwell at Chand Bahri

This one had us all stumped until Jai filled us in. As you can see in the pictures, a stepwell is a square hole in the ground, 100 feet or so on a side, that tapers inward 13 stories down to form an inverted pyramid. At the bottom is a pool of water fed from underground artesian springs. Three sides of the hole are made up of sandstone blocks that form stairs leading to the bottom.

The fourth side, to the north, has several levels of rooms that are the royal bathing chambers: boys on the left, girls on the right. Water was lifted up on ropes and buckets. Commoners had to climb down and up the stairs to get water.

Jai said he has climbed the stairs many times back when it was allowed. Reagan said she’d do it, but I would die a thousand deaths watching her. I’d die only one death if I tried it.

This stepwell is the largest in India and was constructed by the Hindus in the 9th century. A Hindu temple was built later next door. The Muslims arrived and tore down the temple. They oppose any form of idolatry and images. They did, however need water in this arid part of the country so they left the well intact. They also defaced the carved decorative images on pillars and whatnot.

3.    Anoothi

Anoothi is an organization that trains disadvantaged women in the traditional arts of making Indian textile products. They taught us how block printing is done to create patterns on fabric that can be made into table cloths, napkins, dresses, bags, t-shirts and do-dads – we bought one of each.

Women who come here in some cases are living in poverty or abusive relationships. Others, however, are escaping traditional roles in farming communities. We had a discussion with the women of Anoothi about life as a farm wife. “Women work harder than men,” one said. “Oh boy, here we go again. I’ve heard this one back home,” thought I to myself. But they went on to say that farm women not only cook, clean house and tend kids daily but they also tend the crops.

Men, you see, are only involved in farming at the time of planting and the time of harvest. The rest of the time they sit at a coffee shop smoking and talking with their friends. In fact, we’ve seen many such establishments, outdoor snack bars, with a half dozen men sitting around in the middle of the day. Some of that is due to unemployment, Jai confirmed, but some of them are idle farmers.

I’m not sure how well it translated to Hindi, but I recited my Grandfather Libby’s saying, “One thing every farmer should know: never plant more than your wife can hoe.” I will say that my grandfather was a gentleman farmer. I never saw my grandmother lift her hand to pull a weed.

4.    Not much to say about the roof top dinner except to say the temperature was mild, the moon full, bugs absent, the food good and the company quite pleasant. We’re starting to get the hang of ordering Indian restaurant food without pulling the fire alarm.

That’s it, then. My first version, being fresher in my mind, was better but this will have to do.

I don’t know what happened. Something bad. I typed all day today on the bus, producing the text for today’s blog posting. We didn’t get checked into our Jaipur hotel until 10:30 PM. It’s been a long day.

I boot up my iPad and all today’s typing is gone. Vanished.

I normally type on my iPhone and, through cloud magic, it shows up on my iPad for final editing and posting. This time, neither my iPhone nor iPad has anything more recent than yesterday’s text.

So here’s a much abbreviated version of what we did. With any sort of luck I’ll be able to post some pictures. And maybe someday, for my own benefit, I’ll come back here and provide more detail.

I’m bummed.

1.    Visited in the pouring rain a palace complex built by the third Mughal emperor. He built it to celebrate the birth of his first, long-awaited, son who was born there. He moved his entire court here but after only 14 years he decided the water supply wasn’t adequate and moved court back to Agra.

2.    Visited a step well, built my Hindus in the 9th century. It provided artesian water for people in this town in this arid part of India.

3.    Visited an organization that trains women to do block printing – designs on fabric that can be made into clothing and other items. We bought a ton.

4.    Had a roof top dinner overlooking Jaipur and a full moon.

That’s it in a nutshell. The trip was interesting with lots of farm land. Five or six hours of driving, plus stops. Lots of millet being grown in the fields. Lots of cows wandering in the streets and highways (they’re sacred here; Burger King serves only chicken). Four elephants on the road coming into Jaipur.

There’s a ton more and I’ll try to redo it before I forget it.