THE JAIPUR COMMUTE
We have fallen into the routine of a daily commute. (Have a look at our Jaipur commute video here: Jaipur Commute ) As far as the frustration of commutes goes, it has its own peculiarities. We are staying in a part of Jaipur called Bani 
Park (pronounced “Bunny Park”, a name I enjoy saying to taxi drivers since it conjures a cutesy twitchy-nose frolicky meadow completely at odds with the environment we are invariably in). The merchant we deal with, Kishor, is on the other side of town at Zowahar Singh Gate, a journey that involves a diagonal traverse of the old walled city. It’s much too far to walk, a lot of it is along wide noisy, dusty arteries, where the sight of a foreigner on foot is so unusual that the auto and cycle rickshaws really can’t believe you don’t want their services, and follow beside you shouting or honking.
There are usually a couple of auto rickshaws outside our hotel. (For those of you unfamiliar with “autos”, they are the three-wheeled urban transportation workhorse, run- mainly- on natural gas and faith). The drivers always try to solicit us, but they expect far more then the going rate and 
it’s pointless to engage them. Instead we have to walk a couple blocks out to where the regular drivers work, flag an auto down and establish the price. We do this every day, but the drivers don’t know that, and they often start out fishing for two or three times the fare. I don’t argue, just walk away, and either flag someone else or, more commonly, the driver knows it’s a good deal and beckons us in with a waggle of the head. I then re-establish the price, in two languages, and we are off.
The problem with going to work in an auto is that they are so compact that my head is hunched against the vinyl ceiling. Where there aren’t potholes there are speed bumps, and it’s a jarring ride. It also prevents me from seeing much more then the pavement, and my landscape is a flurry of cyclists flailing feet, the knee caps of street cattle, and giant treadless bus tires. I know where we are by the shape of walls, and the patterns of merging traffic. There are a number of different routes depending on a driver’s preference, but they all end up at Chandra Pol, the “Gate of the Moon” , on the east side of the old city. It is, literally, a fortress gate, and traffic bottlenecks trying to get through its arches. Accidents aren’t avoided here by inches, but millimeters. And yet, with much horn honking, the congestion goes through the gate with the inevitably of water down a drain.
Jaipur was once – and may be again one day – one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It was laid out and built in the 18th C. in a grid around the royal palace, bisected by wide boulevards lined with colonnaded stone buildings all of the 
same characteristic pink sandstone. The last sixty years have not been kind to Jaipur. The expense accounts of the Maharajas have dried up; a modern population is served by a medieval sewage system; pollution and congestion choke the grand avenues. Even so, crossing the old city is a wondrous experience. The guild system that was introduced when the city was built is still fairly much in place, and we pass through the markets of the sandal makers and the coppersmiths, the cloth merchants and the jewelers. Often we go past the intricate façade of the Hawa Mahal the “Palace of the Wind”, so called because the ladies of the palace – who weren’t allowed to go out in public – watched the goings on of the street through the stone lattice, benefiting also from the channeling of the cooling breezes.
We are in Jaipur mainly for the cotton bedding we get made here. Those of you 
familiar with our store have already seen the Moghal hand block prints (they are the “high- art”: precisely done palm tree and floral pattern) and the Bagrus (the “village-tradition” resist-dyed, more robust designs). This year we are also buying for the first time screen prints. We had a bias against screen prints as mass-produced, and too mechanical. However, the price is right, and we decided to take a trip to the workshops where the prints are made, to check it out. On the outskirts of Jaipur is Sanganeer, where the block printing comes from, and on the outskirts of Sanganeer we are taken to see Amir. Amir runs a small screen printing operation. Like the block printing operation the workshop has long tables on which the cotton is laid out. A wax layer coats the tables, and a man “skates” along the top of the cotton to smooth out any wrinkles. The screen itself is operated by two men who expertly lay it in place, drag the applicator back and forth across it, and then lift it and place it further done the bolt. Like the blocks, each colour has a different screen, which is applied on top of the last one. For our “Tropical” quilts, an amazing ten screens are used. There is no power machinery used in the entire process.
The hand block prints, of course are something else. We make the trip out to the Sanganeer workshop several times, since we are trying to design a pattern that works on a coloured background. The blue that we tried isn’t successful, but are thrilled with our classic “Palm tree” on a tea-stained cotton. It’s a lot of fun and a learning experience going through the process with “Master-ji”, and his assistants. It’s an art that works very well on video, and you can see the craft being done here: Hand block printing in Sanganeer.
We apologize for falling a little behind on the blog updates. There have been some technical problems, and the usual lack of good high-speed connections. If you want to get an advance look at some of the things we are seeing (and will soon be writing about, go to our home page https://www.kebeandfast.com and click flickr. For more videos go to youtube, and type kebeandfast into the search. It’s like being there in the auto with us!
The big story in India this January is the ‘Cold Wave’. Everybody knows the daily low temperature, how much it is below average, and the grim statistical death-count it has caused (643 and counting) . The cold moist air that comes down from the Himalayas creates a huge fog bank across the northern plains every evening as the temperature drops. Depending on conditions and where you are,
morning at least – is that we get dropped at the end of the bridge over the Ganges River, and hire a boat to row us the final 2 km to our guest house.
a timeless vista: on our left the bank is completely deserted; on the right stone steps continue the rise from the river into an idiosyncratic geometry of palaces, temples and houses. A beautiful scene unfolds as we near our landing, Scindia Ghat: washer women are holding up long lengths of bright sarees to dry, forming a multi-coloured mandala.
constantly coming in with more bundles. In between this philanthropy piles of silk scarves are unfurled at our feet, and bed spreads, and cushion covers, and tea is served, and food, and more tea.
alms. Professional beggars, snake handlers, the handicapped and the poor line most of the approaches to the river, and receive, typically, a sprinkling of special rice, “khichori”, from the pilgrims. After their dunk in the river, many worshipers also leave their clothes behind to be picked through later. Ajit tells us that some of the wealthy even leave gold bangles and Rolexes behind. It is also a day to give clothing to the poor of an untouchable caste, and they walk through the streets of the old city, making their request with a half-sung half-shouted rhyming verse. By the time the moon has moved away from the sun – about 2:30 – there are tens of thousands of people along the banks of the Ganges River. More are ferried in over-packed launches to the other side, a wide sand bank, where it is much easier to get into the water. We have left the 
impossibly –congested ghats for the space afforded by a boat. From this perspective the crowd changes from a collection of individuals – some singing, some dressing, some just waiting – into a single flowing creature, a river in itself. This is India, and the river and the city and the country always has something more to throw at you. As we are rowed along in front of the worshipers, the body of a young boy floats past – the boatman has to raise his oar to avoid it. He is face 
down, and there will be no answers to who he was or where he came from. It is a startling sight, but I have to think of it as the boatman does: meaningless, now that the life is gone; more matter, returning to the water, the earth, or the fire. So life goes on. And so much life goes on that there is no time to pause; the crowd chants, and surges, and submerged in the water purification is given.
negotiating for a leather bag, and the dealer’s first line was “sugar is twice as expensive!”. In Varanasi it is the same: cotton is forty percent more than last year; and silk yarn has gone from 1600/rupees a kilo to 2400. Everyone is pointing fingers, but in general it comes down to two things. One is good: a general increase in wealth in the country. And one is bad: hoarding by speculators, and the newly-created futures market for agricultural commodities. The merchants that we deal with in India operate on small margins, but have always been (like us) very reluctant to raise their prices. This year they have no choice, and we willingly pay them more. In the case of one of the products most dear to us, the price has increased almost 40%. These are the silk scarves and shawls from Varanasi that we call in our display “Simply the finest hand 
weaving we can find”. They are extremely beautiful, intricate hand-woven silk made by a Muslim community outside the city. When we started buying them eight years ago, there were over 70 weaves making them. Because of our special relationship, the price remained unchanged until this year, even though the art is dying out. This year there are only 12 weavers left, and with the price of silk at record levels, the increase was unavoidable. We have decided to keep our price the same, on these masterpieces for one more year. But this is your last chance! After this, they may not be available, at any cost.
the handwork of Malik in Kathmandu – as well as additions from Bangkok – is always popular. There is much more besides, and we have taken the liberty of choosing on of the best pieces for our own home.
stitched together into patchworks by our ethnographer friend, Kishor, in Barmer, Rajasthan. Every year we buy as many small Zari patchworks as we can, and a few large ones. A few days ago we got around to mounting one of the large ones (70”X90”) on a stretch frame, and hanging it on our wall. We haven’t got the proper lighting for it yet, but it is a stunning piece of art. I always assumed that a huge space was needed to display one this size, and the people who have bought them have generally had much larger rooms than we have. However, in our small flat, it is intimate and approachable and intricate and unbelievably beautiful. And there are more – if you come down to see them at our sales!
don’t count the one next to it which the owner says is haunted, and they never rent out. 
Another good thing is that there is only power from 6:30 pm until early morning. This gives K a maximum of about 4 hours of battery time on the laptop, and then we have to do something else, like go snorkeling. Koh Tao is an international diving hot-spot, and in fact issues more PADI certifications than anywhere else in the world. We, as snorkelers, are the scooter riders of the underwater biker community, but the scenery off of our rocks doesn’t make us feel second class. We spend much of the day swimming around our 3-dimensional screen-saver of a reef. Next time I’ll come with a water-proof camera, and show you just how beautiful it is. 
and windows open. The night after, however, there were such swarms around the bulbs that in the restaurant Soe, the owner, was scooping them away with a mixing bowl. There was a definite spike of activity that night, but it hasn’t been the same since. Now we have to close our door before we turn on the light, which still didn’t stop a beetle the size of a hamburger patty from trying to smash it down. 
throws, and taking the country down with it. People were rioting for food, atrocities were being committed against the Chinese and Christians (often the same thing; and often the scapegoats when things went bad), the Australian army was air-lifting their nationals out of the country, and the currency was close to being worthless. It was a traumatic time. A similar but bloodier scenario brought Suharto into power in 1965. I was only 4 at the time, but my family, who were living in Java, also had to flee the terrible circumstances. I went back in early 1982. At the time Kuta Beach was a quiet back-packer haunt, Legian was a separate village, and Ubud didn’t have any Italian restaurants. K had warned me it would 
be a shock to go back, so we have, over the years, left it off of our itinerary.
that kind of power is.
everything is made on Java. This is certainly true with the textiles, although we find many pieces from Sumba and Flores as well. We spend half a day in the cloth market in Denpasar, and are fortunate enough to meet Supriadi and his daughter Farhana. They are from Malang, in east Java, where I spent my childhood, and this connection is maybe why they give us the straight goods and the “harga bihasa’, the ‘real price’. We end up buying as many sarongs from them as we can carry on our bikes. Batik, of course, is an Indonesian word for the famous resist-dye process of applying wax to cloth. Although not a dead art, hand made batik is now mostly a high-end artisan-produced specialty. Most merchants will try to con you with either the very cheap “batik prints”- easily detectable because only one side has vibrant colour – or “machine batik”. These are actually true batik, except that the wax pattern application is done mechanically, and are impossible to distinguish from the hand made article- for me, anyway- except that each pattern is identical in every detail. In the end, the sourcing experience in Bali has made me appreciate even more the quality and the diversity of the hand-made culture in India.
pared-down pack – which sits between my knees – on a short tour of the island. In fact everything is so beautiful we don’t end up going very far. The first stop is Ubud – a short jaunt inland – which has been a magnet for ex-pat artists since the ’30’s. Many foreigners have continued to settle here, and it is easy to see why. Ubud is built around a number of steep ravines and river valleys. Some of the most stylish 
boutique hotels in Asia are built into the lush green slopes and we voyeuristically wander into some just to look around. The staff see through our grubby gear right away, but are always smiling and gracious. The great thing about Ubud is we can get a chi-chi room for economy rates. Peter shows us to a real gem: lovely gardens, a swimming pool, lotus pond, with our room individually set into the jungle above one of the rushing water courses – for $14! Again we curse ourselves for not budgeting more time here. It’s almost a blessing that for much of the next two days it rains torrentially in Ubud; we have to cosy up in our lovely room as the rain thunders and the thunder rolls.
our guest house. Palm trees pose dramatically above a ridge of wild grass, patches of jungle foliage explode like green bombs frozen in time, and thick creepers try to blanket everything. The real eye-catcher though, is the elaborate rice terracing. The terraces transcribe every surface with an anarchic geometry, each patch a perfect shade of spring green. As if this wasn’t enough, people and nature have thrown extravagant colour into the mix. Frangipani and hibiscus and bougainvillea tumble from the garden in front of us; the butterflies are almost too much of a hyperbole to mention. A hummingbird with a long curved bill hovers for a second and nearly breaks my heart. Once you get over that there are the towers of clouds sailing 
through the skies. They can be real drama queens, flouncing up their skirts, pouting black, giving mischievous glimpses of a huge volcano, and glamming it up for the carnival of sunset.
long sarongs, and hopping through the thin, often muddy terraces, isn’t easy. As we get closer we see that, of course, there is an easier way, and on it are many men in traditional costumes and women carrying baskets of fruit and offerings on their heads. The Balinese love ceremonies, as one young man explained to us, not because they are necessarily deeply religious, but as much for the art and tradition. You could, in my opinion, make an arguement that there is very little difference.
manicured landscape. The going is relatively easy, if a little indirect, and the worst thing is the over-protective dogs who always have to bark, and tell the next dog along the line that we are coming through. Eventually we reach the hill. For the first time that day, within sight of the temple, the paths vanish. The air is stagnant and the humidity is oppressive. For a couple hundred meters we are the suspicious focus of every dog in the valley, as we pull ourselves up the steep slope through thick elephant grass. The reward is a spectacular view – and of course, an obvious and easy way down. K. is enjoying dredging up some of her language skills unused for a decade, and jokes with locals that we pass.
from here too soon.
Another arrival in Bangkok, and another new Prime Minister in Thailand. 
Yaorawat is a blaze of neon 
competing for the attention of a small forest of photographic equipment. The announcer for the elephants is trying to generate excitement: ”This is the first time three elephants have ever appeared together on Khao San Rd.!” he shouts, and the elephants, giving the people what they 
want, stand on their hind legs. Even so, they are getting stiff resistance from the dancers, who have drums, fireworks, lions, and a spectacular 10-man dragon who solicits donations in its jaws from the shop keepers. I position myself for the real event:
us, and agrees (too readily) on a good price and hustles us out to his
excruciatingly slow. Still, the locals are friendly, and school kids are riding on the roof, and eventually it get us close enough that we can walk the rest of the way to Laos. As it turns out the “Friendship Bus” and its load of much smarter travelers then us arrive just as we check through immigration, and I am able to slip the driver a few baht to take us the last 40 km into Pakse. 
the 10th C. 
make it there is on a 
The next morning we take the bikes along the flat river valley towards the ruined temple and the sacred mountain.
Buddhism centuries ago, and the current trio of bland-faced Buddhas inside are out of place next to the spectacular 10th C. carvings on the lintels and on the front of the structure. More unusual, and more beautiful, is a rock-cut trio of Brahma, Vishnu, and Maha Shiva on a boulder nearby. This four-faced icon represents Shiva as the ultimate, eternal creative and destructive 
demi-urge, but I cant help seeing a likeness of John Lennon in the face on the right. Close by is another mysterious figure:
metaphysical geography the Ganges river is channelled here this would be a more probable explanation.
principle islands Don Det and Don Kon, and a couple of locomotives now rusting on Don Kon.
hundreds of tourists, from the didgeridoo crowd to the Tilleys hats with rolling luggage to the very drunk Thais disgorged from their garish air-brushed mega-buses.
is a room that is less than a disaster, and I take it.
take bicycles to one set of the famous Mekhong cataracts, and further onto a quiet beach where we could literally swim to Cambodia.
stay, in a beautiful spot where we could put up our feet and relax.
interesting town in Laos, at least Pakse offers a bit more culinary variety than we have enjoyed in our southern swing.
DVD that is popped in is Thai karaoke, and pretty young actors and the boy band of the moment play out tales of heartbreak while the little bean jumps across the words on the bottom of the screen.
skips, and the conductor isn’t going to try to make it work.
falls and along the river, next to a pretty little village where cows account for most of the traffic, and almost all the houses are traditional teak-on-stilts architecture with photogenic stacks of wood for cooking beneath them.
leaves.
Back in Jaipur we are relieved that the cold wave which is killing people across North India hasn’t settled in here too harshly. The days are clear and sunny, around 20C, and at night it goes down to a bearable 8 or 9. Contrasting this to your reports from Canada – minus 50 with the wind in Winnipeg; too much snow 
to drive on the upper levels in Vancouver – I guess we shouldn’t complain.
days and get the shipment on its way – but this doesn’t inspire confidence. 
produced. Now we are able to make a trip to the village of Bagru, where another style of printing, which our merchant calls “Bhooti” comes from. 
Growth has been so fast in Gurgoan that no one knows how many people are here, whether it’s 2 million or 10 million, only that the population has so far out-paced infrastructure and resources that even the model high-rises that are everywhere get only two hours of water per day, and 60% of electricity is pirated from the wires. In Noida farmers have made big money from selling to property developers, but the urban/rural divide is still stark. This last week a girl was sitting with her boyfriend parked at the side of the highway, when she was attacked and gang-raped by thirteen locals. The first reporters to the village encountered some extraordinary attitudes, including the head man saying: what’s the big deal; it was only a rape; and the grandmother of one of the accused: they shouldn’t have had a chance to rape her; she was acting indecently and should have been stoned, first.
The trip to Varanasi is uneventful, and there we have two tasks. The first is checking up on another of our orders, which is (deja vu) supposed to be ready to go. We always like to visit Ajit, but this time he has neglected to finish some of the seams inside his duvet covers. This will take another ten days. 
here. We find a nice cast-bronze figure in the market, and Katheryn decides it will add significance if it is blessed at one of the shrines . There are three that I know of on the way down to the Manikarnika Ghat, the famous open-air cremation site on the banks of the Ganges. The first one is managed by a guy we have known for years. He is also a fairly heavy user of a certain sacramental herb favoured by Shiva, and is apparently unavailable somewhere in the back. 
and have a row on the Ganges.
with the guy on the end of the line telling him the train which left ½ hr. ago isn’t there yet. But this doesn’t help us, not even with getting a refund. The rules state that if you miss your train, you can get a 50% refund within the first three hours. It seems self-evident to everyone we talk to that a) the train has been missed and b) the refund will be 50%. 
exhausted brain has a good idea: we can change our Bangkok flights! With some of the pressure off, I go in for my interview with the Big Boss. He is sympathetic, but about a full refund he spreads his hands. “Even I” he says, “can do nothing.” He also assures me he will pull some strings, and get us berths on an otherwise-full train this afternoon. 
Palitana makes a convenient stop-over on the way back to Ahmedabad, but it also a well known Jain pilgrimage site.
basically a simple palaquin carried by two porters up the hill. The dhoolie guys are especially persistent, and keep soliciting as we climb. The staircase is broad and even and packed with people even though it isn’t a special festival or holiday. There are many families, obviously city raised, with digital video cameras and designer sunglasses, but there are also barefoot pilgrims clad in white cotton. There are no other foreigners. For the most part we keep our heads down and trudge, like everybody else. The descending dhoolies shout at you to make way, and a surprising number of young men and women are running down the stairs. 
might not be the original stair – this hill had temples two thousand years ago – but when we leave the commotion of the main trail to follow it we enter a different time.
idol is meaningless for me, and K. and I climb up the temple as far as we can get to get a view.
crowds are far thinner. From here, after scampering up to the top of more temples, we get even better views. Going down we fall into step with a young man, Mukesh, accompanying his friend. Mukesh is fascinated that two people from a distant country would be on the Palitana hill. He is genuinely happy for us, that we would get the blessings for making the pilgrimage to the top. His friend, however, is on a much more serious quest. According to their beliefs, if the hill is climbed seven times in two days, without taking food or drinking water,
7:30pm and our round trip took three hours. That is why people are running down. That is why there are numerous white robed devotees, barely able to walk, supported on the shoulders of friends and family. For Mukesh’s friend, this is the last descent, and although he is obviously exhausted, he is doing well. It wouldn’t be hard to die of heat stroke undertaking such a grueling challenge and we have seen a number of people lying on the ground in obvious distress. After just one climb, our legs are screaming for days. It seems impossible to me that someone could do this seven times – that is 49,000 steps! But then the important thing, for more than physical conditioning, is to have faith.
hunting retreat converted into a hotel. We tried, but there was no room at the palace, so we had to settle for the seriously down-market option of a $10 place in town. Being New Year’s Eve,
crumbing battlements. Chittor is impressive for its size – it is built on a flat top hill and the area enclosed by its walls is 28 sq. km. Inside there are the obligatory atmospheric and photogenic ruined temples and palaces. What it is most famous for, however, is the unaccountable fact that it was taken in battle so frequently, and the resulting “jauhar”. In the Rajasthan of the middle ages, losing a battle didn’t merely mean raising a white flag and surrendering. When all hope seemed lost,
nearly everyone lived inside the city walls, and he talks about growing up here with understandable nostalgia. In general I hate being saddled with any sort of guide, but Kailash does a good job of staying out of the way as we clamber about ruined and rebuilt temples, palaces and battlements. The most famous monument 
in Chittor is the Jayastambha a
the great road up, once contested by the troops of the Mogul Emperor and suicidal Rajput warriors is now a rough track used by village women.
quirky, like the Andamans, but not as distant.
Diu one day at a time, by bus.
recommended by our friend Peter who was just there – and it is quite lovely.
station, Roger Moore’s rocket-propelled auto-rickshaw ride through town doesn’t seem too far from the truth.
main drag is the totally-inappropriately named Relief Rd, and our hotel is just off it. The last time we were here our room actually rattled due to the traffic. Now we have gone a little more upscale, and it is worth it. Since we are in the textile business, and since our hotel is alright, we decide to see if there is anything in this town we might be interested in. Ahm’bad, after all, is the capital of the state where much of our tribal embroidery comes from. We visit a night market and find a lot of cheap-quality knock-offs, but also some old and/or good pieces. The prices start out astronomically high, but competition is so keen that they quickly come down to absurdly cheap. I’m not interested in doing business this way, and no one, of course, has any of the commercial 
licenses necessary for exporting, so K buys a couple of blouses and we leave.
highway in rooms that were once (on one wing) for the palace guard, and (on the other) their horses. As we wander through the streets we stumble on a square of grand four-story buildings – the tallest in town – that look like they belong in Whitehall, but which are now encroached upon by tailors and mechanics – and even for them the upper stories are too run down to use. People aren’t used to foreign faces here, and everywhere we are greeted by smiles and kids calling out their text-book English phrases. K makes the observation that a group of sari-clad young women who giggle and say “Hi!” are black, with frizzy hair. Soon we are seeing local “blacks” everywhere. When we are back in our room I do a Google search (in case that went by so quickly that you missed it – for the first time in all our travels we have wifi in our room. In Junagadh! Our swish hotel is actually a christmas present from Marianne – Thanks again! ) and discover that many blacks came to this part of India from Ethiopia and East Africa to work in some capacity for the Maharajahs. They are called Sidis, and now dress and talk like the locals, although even after 200 years inter-community marriage is uncommon.
collectively know as Roma, or Gypsies.
be looking at you.
the foreign tourist scene has had a minimal impact on this out-of-the-way spot. Part of the reason is that the beaches leave something to be desired, although we haven’t done the full tour yet. This is the holiday in India part of the trip, and we are treating it that way. We start the day with a coffee on our balcony, looking out over neem and palm trees to St. Paul’s church. Then we find food, wander around the picturesque old city, and finish with cold beers on a roof top with 
our friend Peter. It may not be sleigh-rides and sitting on Santa’s knee, but I am quite happy to spend Christmas this way. And on that note: Seasons Greetings to you all, may your Christmas be joyful and may good things come in the New Year!