Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Our next stop was the Selim Hill tea estate where we delighted in the beauty of our accommodation and surrounds. The estate was home to my great-grandmother and her family for many years and being there made me feel so glad for them - that they were blessed to have lived in such a lovely place (although I'm sure there were many challenges... one of the letters from my great-grandmother refers to India as 'that cursed place'!).

We luxuriated in the spacious wooden rooms, white tipped tea and being waited on hand and foot. The meal schedule was tough but fair: bed tea and biscuits, then breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, evening ‘snacks’ and then once we were able to button the top button of our pants again we would finish with a 3 course dinner. We are not going to be the sort of people who lose weight while in India. 

  
Introducing beautiful Selim Hill - the family estate sits atop the hill above left.

  
  
Dad blended in seamlessly with the local pickers while Kate preferred more of a supervisory approach...

  
 
We did occasionally take breaks from eating to wander through the tea plantations and factory buildings, visit hyper-active Kurseong, numerous other places of historical interest to our family and to check out an excellent ‘forestry’ museum where we stroked the fur of long dead tigers.

Above left is Kurseong which must have the best reception in India and on the right is the gravestone of my great-grandmother's brother who died as an infant. The region was uninhabited prior to the arrival of the British who brought the Nepali people down to work on their plantations. The town has a strong Buddhist feel but is open to more modern philosophies too, such as the Jennifer Aniston quote at the local internet cafe: 'There are no regrets in life, only lessons'. 

  One of the perks of visiting all of the plantations where our ancestors had lived was the free samples!

Time for a shameless plug: the Selim Hill estate has only recently opened as an eco-tourism resort and is in need of customers. If anyone out there is looking to stay at a tea estate in India this one is really fantastic (http://www.selimhill.com/the_hideaway.html).

One day in Delhi

*We interrupt this blog to cover Sophie’s family holiday in India for the benefit of the Dominy descendants. Sadly Dan was not able to come. I know that you will all miss his rugged good looks and photographic abilities as much as I do!*


I was joyously reunited with my family inside a gorgeous Delhi haveli. It was such a delight to be with them again and, as with most close relationships, it felt as though we’d never been apart at all. Soon after we were off on a whirlwind tour of Delhi.   We stirred a vat of curry at a Sikh temple sprinkled liberally with gold and then wove through the traffic to Old Delhi to marvel at the intricate carvings in an elaborate mosque, looking like Moonies while black birds circled dramatically overhead. 

 

Popeye's strength is required for effective stirring! and sister Alex looking glamourous at the Bangla Sahib Gurudwara temple.

  

Meet the team - at the back from left to right: Michael, sister Kate, my uncles Malcolm and Warwick and myself.  In the front: my mother Sharyn, sister Alexis and father Peter.  Above right and below is an imposing mosque.

  


  

We regretfully abandoned our glamourous robes in order to check out the narrow, bustling and chaotic Choux district where the women of Delhi are fitted for their wedding sari’s and jewellery. Entrancing culinary smells mingled with incense as we checked out tweenaged brides-to-be, some truly odd vegetables, tangled masses of power lines and intricate crafts.

 

  

Next we took a bicycle rickshaw to the Red Fort, a remnant of the Mughal empire.  We learnt about the turbulent English reign at the British museum (sometimes being partially of British descent is really embarrassing).

 
Those of us who were templed out stayed at the fort (below left) to check out the Indian museum and those of us who were not left to check out the magnificent Akshardham temple (below right).    
  

The temple is a spectacular spectacle- a mixture of the ancient and the modern where the traditionally detailed and delicate carvings are tastefully highlighted with LED and which features, amongst other wonders, an underground log flume ride in swan-shaped boats.  Like all of the most beautiful Indian places, it was no cameras allowed... sorry folks. 

  

We finished up with an enormous Indian feast (palak paneer how I’ve missed you!) and then fell comatose into our beds, a little like the gentleman below.  It is great to be back! 

                                 

Viennese Dream

Vienna was the final stop of Part I of our Grand Tour and reminded us that there is still plenty to see – like catacombs filled with plague victims! And art, art, art, art and more art. We saw everything from Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ to Magritte’s ‘This is not a pipe’...it still amazes me to think of how many strange, beautiful, bizarre, interesting works of art are located in one city.

We stayed at a fantastic hostel that featured extensive happy hours, the most delicious granola I have ever tasted and an array of musical instruments that were skilfully played by our fellow backpackers every evening. It was there that I was privileged to participate in my favourite traveller conversation to date:

Australian Girl – “well if we go to that karaoke bar we can sing a duet”

Canadian Boy – “a Jew what?”

Girl – “a duet”

Boy – “oh, a Doo-et”

Heh heh heh.


The Christmas fair was on so we helped ourselves to a mug of steaming mulled wine and wandered the stalls.


And wandered the streets...


Being the birthplace of my favourite Austrian-New Zealand convert Friedensreich Hundertwasser (surely you kiwi's have all been to the famous public toilets in Kawakawa?), we decided to hit the trail and find a few of his designs. The building above is a fully functional power plant, and below is the Hundertwasserhaus which contains a museum with a huge collection of his art and 52 unique apartments with very little respect for the straight line. One of my favourite ideas of his is that of 'window rights', which is best explained in his own words. As any smart person does, Hundertwasser eventually moved to New Zealand to live out his final years.

The art in Vienna was varied and cool, unfortunately my clunky camera was not stealthy enough to get shots of the art inside galleries so you will have to make do with outdoor art...

Pretty in Prague

I have always dreamt of going to Prague, visiting the haunts of literary giants and seeing some of the world’s greatest art and architecture. Prague did not let me down, although the Lonely Planet summarised it pretty well when they said “so you’ve just arrived in Prague and you’re wondering why you bothered...” On first impression it looked like an amalgamation of every other central-eastern-European city that we’ve visited, only with higher prices. We were saying things like “sure the main square is lovely but it’s no Krakow...”

But after a couple of days Prague had weaselled its way into our hearts. It is just so gorgeous, and very well preserved due to the Czech’s apparent habit of surrendering to every army who passed by. We were entertained by the Czech’s bluntness and wry sense of humour, impressed by humankind’s ability to think of every detail at the museum of torture (sawing someone in half? Why not hang them upside down so that the blood rushes to their head and they are conscious for longer?), and bemused by an unusual Dali exhibition. I really, really wish that we could have smelt the Dali perfume. I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering what a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order smells like, argh! 

My favourite pastime of all was visiting Prague’s grand old cafe’s which are deeply entwined in the city’s literary history. They have been regularly frequented by people such as Franz Kafka and Allan Ginsberg and are spaces in which masterpieces have been written and new philosophies thrashed out. It is entirely possible that I have sat in the chair that Albert Einstein was occupying when he had a ‘Eureka!’ moment!



On our walking tour we discovered cute buildings, avant-garde fashion and a cool monument to the famous writer Kafka... inspired by a dream of his where a man wandered the streets of Prague on the shoulders of a headless man.

The astronomical clock in the centre of the old town, every hour the clock treats viewers to a magical display... but I'll leave that for you to discover.

A handsome guy, overlooking a pretty canal, next to some horrific torture... ouch.

The John Lennon wall, we were a bit surprised actually... we imagined a different Lenin for some reason.

We heard about a little chapel filled with thousands of human bones and couldn't resist a visit. Even from the outside Sedlec Ossuary was ominous...

Mmm coffee... and cake... we spent a lot of our time here...