Sunday, June 10, 2018

Prague and More

No mishaps on flights here, no racing in airport, no crying babies, and no sleep on plane even with the aid of a sleeping pill given to me by a friend, yeah yeah, maybe it had expired.

Day1: Apartment with a view
First adventure was locking myself out of the apartment. While Amy slept. To be continued.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Stripes and polka dots, cartoon backpack and handbag; ancient artistry


My last photo from the trip to Nepal. Jordan next stop after a three-year gap revisiting the countries where I grew up. Will I make it back to Nigeria; I hope so.

Monday, April 7, 2014

An A(adult)TCK Thing

Reflections April 7

I’m thinking about underwear. I skyped with my 23-year-old niece yesterday. She just landed in Amman for an internship with ACTED, a French NGO, and had the day to herself before starting work. She said she had to do laundry because she is running out of clean underwear. Now, I just returned from a 35-day trip to Nepal and India and I washed out my undies every night. I often do this at home too, thereby preserving the color, lengthening the life span, and possibly preventing shrink. Where did I learn to do thus, from whom? Probably from traveling as a kid with my family, from my mother.  It must be a TCK thing.
I suggested to Hillary that she wash them out herself, just use soap, don’t worry about having proper detergent, it still works, that bar of generic soap in a hotel room, and when she gets settled in one spot she can figure the laundry thing out.
Thinking to myself that I would still wash out my own underwear - to have to go to the laundry for the sake of little things, no.
I am curious about how many women do wash out their own under garments, at least while traveling. I just never know the norm, sometimes I think less so than others, but perhaps many feel like this, or else they just don’t think about it.  My husband recently told me he often did not know what was in my head. Well, it’s not that deep.
The underwear - it’s way better to wash a pair each night so they don’t pile up and then I have to hang them over the shower curtain and the back of chairs and on window latches and, if they aren’t dry in the morning, whoever comes to fix up the room will be faced with flags of panties and contemplate them in some way. How could they not? Even finger them to feel the material, think about her own underpants, and look at this one, a little dingy, even a small tear in a waistband.
A travel writer bragged that she went around the world on 1 pair of undies. This seems very risky to me. I understand that the article’s point was how little one can pack for a big trip, but still. Anything can happen, accidents of liquid from within or without. Spills and leaks. My brother making me laugh so hard on car trips and there hadn’t been a rest stop for 6 hours, that kind of thing.
More likely though it’s those squat toilets, or balancing behind a thin bush hoping the other bus passengers are not watching your shiny white ass.  Haste interferes with accuracy.  Sometimes the stream is just not straight. I never could figure out why. Volume same, direction askew. Or, it’s the last chance to urinate for miles and miles and you force out all the dribbles. Look up dribble in the dictionary. Take my word for it, you need a spare.
How much room or weight does one pair of medium-sized underpants take? This is not the point because I am not that travel writer on the cutting edge of packing light. I am a normal, mostly, female traveling in a foreign or not-so-foreign country always with a back-up pair of panties.
‘Course the other trick is the panty liner-a recent discovery of mine, why it took so long, I don’t know. The prospect of paperless toilet stalls prompted this. Yes, I have Charmin tissue in a neat little package in my pocketbook, but do you think I always remember to grab it? Having a weighty bag swinging over my shoulder is not helpful in most bathroom scenes, and wet floors from that curious spray nozzle and heaven knows what else are not conducive to setting my bag down. Hence, my bag sits in the car with my husband or goes over his shoulder while I find the Memsahibs. (Maybe I need to rethink a handbag aka backpack.) Anyway, the little neat strip of extra protection works great, and when you rip it off, voila, clean panties. So, I’m betting that travel writer had some of those along, just to cover her butt.


Friday, April 4, 2014

Re-entry

April 3 continued

Where are all the people? I have to check my watch to make sure it isn’t still 6 am, and I am lost in some time warp. No, it’s almost 10.  Few cars, few people. This airy generosity of space seems wrong.  


I should be looking at the shoulder-to shoulder occupants of a mini van right next to me; or watching a mother nurse her baby while she rides sidesaddle behind her husband on a motorbike; or waiting for cows to move over; or trying to pass a tasseled and bedecked tractor pulling a cart full of bricks.




I’m almost the only traffic. It's all relative.



Thursday, April 3, 2014

Home

April 1 to the 2nd and now it’s the 3rd

15-hours non-stop Delhi to Newark, 45-minute flight to Manchester NH - 28 hours door to door. Left at 11 at night and arrived home at 11:30 in the morning, tried to stay up ‘til evening but after unpacking and then wandering aimlessly, Gracie and Teddy the cat hot on my heels, I crashed around 3 and slept for 16 hours.

The BEST thing is that I am writing on my laptop and I have apostrophes back in the right place.


May attempt food shopping. Can’t wait to drive my car.

Our last day in Delhi, we wandered Khan Market and ate lunch in a restaurant owned by a friend of Krista's husband - great wall paper.


The market boasts cheap prices-shoes and clothes, soap to electronics, popular destination for locals and tourists. If you are thinking about opening a shop here you will pay more per square foot than on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. 

I will let everyone know if I survive shopping at the Brattleboro Coop today - I have to remember to stay in my lane and not to honk.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Bollywood

March 30 Sunday night


Bollywood party for AhJay's 21st birthday, nephew of Bonnie and Tony. She again dressed me and added Dennis into the equation - he looks pretty damn good in a kurta.

AJ invited 45 of his friends from England where he attended Eaton and now is about to graduate from college, Durham, I think. In any case, each guy friend invited a girl guest and as we pulled up to the gate of the party villa, 2 buses were discharging scads of young men and women in Indian party wear - unlike the bird world, the girls outshone the guys, all peacock colors, no pea hens in sight. And, were they excited at the scene that greeted them? Photo shoots and exclamations of awe.  Lights swinging from palm and banyan trees, tents like little harem sites, sofas, food circulating, a stage with dancing girls whose legs and mid drifts got barer as the music ramped up and almost but the very old and the infirm danced. Before you could even walk to the bar, a waiter bedecked in a white turban would refill your drink. Buffet dinner at 11pm. 
We left a little after midnight - almost early! 
Question - is this Dennis dancing, or waving goodbye to India?
 

Monday, March 31, 2014

Party

Saturday continued....

Party Extravaganza

The wow factor hit us full in the face. The party was "just because." Bonnie's niece threw this extravaganza at her home and two hundred or more of us enjoyed the magnificent celebration centered around her favorite singer Sonan Kalra and the Sufi Gospel Project. The music, a convergence of drums, sitar, flute, guitar, piano-like keyboard, their voices, and the light show that flitted over the players and the palm trees, created some magic-the sound spun a web and we were rapt. 
We sank into seats on the long sofas that were three-deep in front of the stage. Other guests layered out behind us to the outskirts of the manicured lawn and flower gardens. I have never seen dahlias so huge.

Sonan happens to be a Sikh like Tony. No turban but females also are not supposed to cut their hair. Her religious belief suffuses her music. The truth is all. Love is all. All is one. All religions valid. Everyone get along, okay? 

Waiters circulated with trays of appetizing tidbits from chunks of tandoori chicken to crunchy prawns and savory eggplant and vegetable concoctions with dipping sauces.  Bars were set up at either end of the expansive lawn which was sprinkled with table-clothed tables sprouting bouquets of flowers. 

The buffet dinner served at 11pm overwhelmed me with choices. I managed. Tony handed me a popsicle-looking thing that tasted like banana and was filled with nuts. I did not dribble on my dress.
After Sonan's two encores, the music continued with local voices and talent. 

We got home at 2 am. India time runs differently than American time when I seldom last until midnight on New Year's Eve.