India - Wedding shopping and other preparations (Part 4)

Hello and welcome to the 4th part of our trip to India. This is where it all starts to get good because we are almost wedding ready! The only thing left to do is to go shopping and get our clothes and get some things altered at the tailors.

With only a few days left till some of the bigger celebrations occur, I have been able to somewhat determine the order of things.

It seems that we missed the ring exchange ceremony. But "that's not too important", is what I have been told... I mean it is only the engagement event!

So here is what I can tell from the bottom up.

Arranged Marriages
This wedding is an arranged one, as most weddings are in India, is my understanding. 
This is a bit of a weird concept for me, coming from a western country and in a time where women have so many freedoms that we fought so hard for to then go and throw the choice of our life partner into the hands of other people for the sake of tradition and family ties. 

In the case of my friend she is a nurse so I can imagine that she studied hard to get her degree and then she also has Canadian residency that I know she worked very hard to get. But then to marry someone that you do not know, organised by someone else - It is a weird concept for me.

For my friend, with the help of modern technologies I know that the prospective couple have been in contact and communicating for a while. But they had never met physically in person until a month or so before the wedding.

The wedding itself was arranged about 2 years ago, so not like I thought, which was that they were arranged almost from birth. 
It is also good that at least the marriage was arranged and set for later in my friend's life so at least she had the chance to live her life a little before she had responsibilities and family duties thrust upon her. 

I realise that I may be making this sound bad or negative, and I don't know what it is like going through an arranged marriage (much to my mother's dismay, as she was certainly trying to arrange one for me) but my friend seems to be happy enough about everything as far as I can tell. Plus she and her husband seem to be really getting to know each other which is lovely!

Ok - moving on with other things, I just thought that I would talk about the arrangement as this is something that I was definitely not familiar with myself.

So lets get down to how everything went, the wedding ceremonies themselves are:

The exchanging of rings: This is the official engagement party

The bangle ceremony: This is essentially the "hens do"
Turmeric Ceremony: As far as I can tell this is a "cleansing" ceremony

Roka 1: The bride’s friends and family go to meet the groom's friends and family.
Roka 2: Then vice versa the groom's family come to visit the bride's house/family
Turmeric Ceremony: Another turmeric Ceremony after his family came to visit.

The wedding: This is the day that they go to the temple and do the vows followed by lots of photos and food.

The reception: This is the day after the wedding and is a giant party at night

In any case I had to have to 5 dresses for this wedding!
As I missed the exchanging of the rings and I was not allowed to wear any of my dresses to the bangle ceremony the dresses were for the other remaining ceremonies.

So let go to the part that we were up to for today in the blog sequence of events – The dress shopping.

I needed to get all the 5 dresses that were required for the events I mentioned above.
So that was on the agenda as well as handing out some wedding invitations. We also did a nice detour to let my friend’s younger sister's nursing college know that she would be absent a few days for the wedding ceremonies.

The day started late as they allowed us to sleep in till 9 am which was good as we needed it! At 9 am we received our morning wake up call (my friend knocked on the door) and we emerged to get a look at where we were exactly.

As we arrived the day before late at night time we had not seen any of the countryside at all, the most we could tell is that we were in a farmland area.

Well let me tell you that we were not disappointed!!

The countryside was beautiful! Amazing! Better than you see in the tourist brochures!

We were completely surrounded by wheat fields - it was tranquil and the air was cleaner than in the cities.

At the end of the road there was a massive Sikh temple that broke up the sky line, and even that was impressive! 

We also got to meet Riva (below), I think she was the only working dog/pet dog I saw in India. The rest were un-loved street dogs.

We also got to meet the 2 cows and 1 buffalo (below) that they use for milking - That buffalo was weird though, it was always staring at you but would never let you pat it! 

Below: This one is my favorite - This is Jessica, she is the baby of one of the cows and is kept separately, I eventually adopted her as my own (I will elaborate further later).  

Above: This is one of the farm hands, his entire job is to look after the cows. He has to cut the grass for them, clean their poop when they do that, and every now and again he walks the cows over to drink some water.

Below: It was cool to see that they had an old fashioned hand pump to get water up from the well. They did also have a normal water pump for drinking water and showers etc. but it was cool to see the old water pump.

Below: This is something that I eluded to in our Taj Mahal Blog. The afternoon of when we had been to the Taj there was a storm that seemed to have ripped throughout northern/central India. 
So when we arrived to the Punjab region there was also evidence of the storm, ie. fields flooded and crops flattened and destroyed.

Below: Here is a potato field that got completely decimated by the hail as you can see it is also flooded. I imagine it was a lot more flooded but the farmers seemed to have gone and dug massive holes on the side of their fields in an attempt to drain the water from the land and try to salvage the crops. 

Above: This is one of the holes the locals were digging in their fields to try to collect all the excess water - worked pretty well I reckon! The hole acts like a low pressure zone and all the water from across the field and in the soggy mud gravitates towards the holes. Helps stop the crops from rotting due to constant water soaking, and keeps the water in one spot. Maybe they can pump it out later? We didn't see what happened to these holes after, but unfortunately for the farmers it was too little too late the crops did not look like they were bouncing back.

Below: This is one of those wheat storage huts that we mentioned in the previous blog you can see it has started to collapse

After examining the surroundings it was time for a shower… If you can call it that (remember the bucket from out last blog).

My poor friend was worried that having an outdoor toilet and a shower in a bucket was going to be too much of a shock for me, but I relished the challenge and set off to have my 'shower'.

After that it was breakfast and we were off on adventures. Here are some of the things that we saw along the way:

Below: Did I forget to mention that a tractor is also a form of transport in India!

Below: Just driving down the road, oh look a herd of goats!

Below: This is a side street that Kyran took a photo of. It kind of depicts the quite relaxed lives they lead. You do your work, and then you sit around in the street and watch the world go by.

Below: This is a random pond that we came across. This first thing I noticed was that it was very polluted. However as we drove back past this pond later on we saw a bunch of women with metal rake-like contraptions on strings that they were throwing into the pond and pulling all the rubbish in. So that was the most positive thing that I saw happening with rubbish my entire trip in India!

Alrighty enough with the photos where are the stories?

As mentioned earlier, because the wedding celebrations were over the course of almost a week we needed to go and ask permission/tell the head teacher at my friend's sister's school that she would be absent during the celebration period. 

My friend's sister, who I will hence forth refer to as my sister (because we were essentially adopted now lol) is studying nursing at a local college. That was one of the first stops we made.

This "asking for permission to be away from class" was a funny thing for us. If it was my university I would have probably just sent an email and "There you are!". But that is not how it works in India. We arrived at the gate with sweets in hand. We had to be let in by the guard on duty and my sister had to account for us all to the guard as visitors to the school. 
Below is a photo of the college once we went through the gate, you can see the entire college is surrounded by tall walls!

Once we got to the college main building I was expecting that we would just sit in the waiting room until my sister and mum were summonsed to put their case forward. But actually we ended up being treated like royalty and were given a tour of the college. It was funny (and I will keep mentioning it all the way through our India blogs) because we were these rare white people so everyone came out to say hello and see us. We were even shown into a room where a class was being taught and introduced to the class. I came to refer to this effect/treatment as 'we were as rare as white rhinos'. 

So here are some photos from inside the nursing college:

Above and Below: This room is the birthing room with diagrams and pictures all over the walls.

Once we had been introduced to everyone and seen a few of their rooms it was time to set off on another adventure!
Actually we stopped off at a few houses to hand out invitations for the wedding in two days (that's how they do it in India) and each time we stopped, us white rhinos got out and said hello and got asked to stay at everyone's house. They all wanted to feed us or give us tea!!
They are all lovely people it was just a strange dynamic for Kyran and I.

With all the invitations that we had handed out, we had worked our way further from home and closer to where the dress shops were. 

We had to drop off some material at a local dress makers first because there was one mandatory outfit that we already knew we needed - a yellow traditional suit for me! 

Below: Here I am getting measured up for my suit that we will come by and pick up in 1-2 days. 

So that is 1 out of 5 dresses sorted - now to the bigger shops to buy more of them. 

Plot twist! Along the way the brothers decided that as Kyran is now a brother too that he also needs to dress up as one of the brothers of the bride in traditional clothes. 
So Now we had to buy some material for Kyran, plus he had to go buy some material for his turban (called a Pagri) that he also had to wear! And it had to be pink (to match the other boys)😂😂😂

Insert: I will tell the story of the dresses but full disclosure - the dresses and Kyran's suit happened over the course of three days -  we had to buy the clothes and then get them altered, and then try them on and get them altered again. There were tailors for the boys and tailors for me. In fact I had two tailors; one who was making my suit from scratch (the yellow one) and another that was assembling the suit that I will buy later on in this blog.

Ok so on with the stories. 
Below is a photo that Kyran took of an Indian Ladder

 Below: This is another brick-making set up that we came across on our travels

Below: An intersection in the middle of two market streets - look at that wiring set up!

Below: Oh look here is us in the middle of a market street. I believe that here we were going to the jewellers to inspect the 24 carat gold necklace that the bride receives from her family. It had some small imperfections so we were going to check that it was fixed.

Below: Dresses Finally! So this is how you go dress shopping in India!

You enter the shop (it is usually a long, narrow shop) and there is a long sofa/couch thing that you sit on. Then there is a long elevated table / platform thing that a shop attendant will present the options to you on. 

The exchange happens like so:
"Hi we are looking for a suit for a wedding. Not too heavy and maybe a dark colour" (all in Indian dialect of course)

Then the guy starts opening packages that his colleague is throwing at him which fits the description. There are no two suits the same so as they come out you start saying, "I like this colour" and "maybe more gold", "nah I don't like those pants". 

It was great to have mum to go shopping with because she was no-non-sense! The first few shops we went into and sat down in, they had thrown maybe 20 suits at us and none of them were to her liking, so she just got up and left! 😂😂😂



The second shop is where we acquired my first of the 4 dress that I still needed to buy (pictured above). After that mum wasn't impressed with any of the other shops so we went to the fancy one that my friend (the bride) had got her dress at in the main streets of Phagwara.

Then the whole thing started again, just fancier.
This shop had suits downstairs, dresses upstairs and it was decided that I only needed one dress and the rest could be suits of some description.
Here are some photos of trying on the dresses:

  Above and Below: This is the second of the four dresses that I ended up getting. 

Below Right: The third of the four dresses that I had to get. 
Below Left: It was all a bit of fun because, again we were the white rhinos and they all thought that everything looked good on me! You could look around the shop each time I walked out of the change room with another dress on and they would all be stopped and looking at you 😅😁😂

Sorry - It doesn't look as though I have a photo of of me trying the last dress that I bought so you will just have to wait for that blog to come out!

Well the day was certainly getting on, but we didn't have shoes yet so across the road we went!

Below: These are the traditional Punjabi Jutti. Kyran also got a pair but his feet were so hairy the photos disappeared whoops! (Joking, I just can't find them). 

Below: Literally as soon as we walked out of the shoe store we ran into the groom-to-be and his family doing their last minute shopping, so we quickly snapped a group photo before scattering off in our different directions

Well that is this blog starting to wind down again - here are a few after thought photos of things that we came across;

Below: These ladies have been out cutting what I have been told is fresh grass for the cows, and are now carrying it home.

 
Left: Here is a photo from inside the parking lot that we parked in to go shopping:
1. I was surprised that there was such a civilised parking lot
2. I was even more surprised at the amount of dust in the parking lot!

Well that is it from me for another blog. 

Kyran would you you like to add anything else before we get stuck into the wedding ceremonies in the next blog?

Well I personally thoroughly enjoyed going out on all the shopping adventures and seeing the nearby villages and towns while preparing for the wedding ceremonies. I think we saw and experienced lots of culture which we wouldn't have seen if we weren't in the wedding party. The dress shopping was funny to watch, because the salesmen are obviously keen to make a sale, so they desperately throw dresses at you and they have to unpack them from plastic wrap, and we ended up having a dozen or so dresses piled up with matching (or not lol) pants and shawls for each of them, then if we left the shop the salesmen (or their assistants?) would have to painstakingly pack them all up again. 

The shoe shopping was just as hilarious - the shoe salesman guys would be literally throwing shoes at you, then away into a pile if you didn't like them. The shop assistants would then have to go and clean up the pile and make the shoes all neat again and in their proper pairs. If a shoe didn't fit, they'd get these wooden inserts out with a screw jack to expand the shoe and try to widen it to see if that will help it fit you (and simulate loosening over time?). 

In the city area with the car park, there were beggars and street sellers everywhere - I even picked up a pair of fake Ray Ban sunglasses. 
Funny story, the sunglasses sales guy on the street first offered to sell some glasses to me and claimed they were polarized, and had this weird holographic test thingy to try to prove they were polarized. I'm a bit smarter than that, so I checked with my phone by viewing it and turning it sideways to see if the screen goes black which it should if the glasses were polarized. Turns out they were NOT! 
So he went digging and found some glasses which actually WERE polarized, then he tried to high-ball us at around 2,500 Rupees. That translates to about 50 Australian Dollars. We all shook our heads, saying "no way, that's way too much" - which of course it was way too much, for fake Ray Ban aviators. Then as we walked away, the sales guy desperately said to me "how much will you pay then?". I said "1000 rupees", but wasn't really interested anymore. The guy was like "argh, okay" then Mercedes jumped in and said "no way, 800 rupees or we are going!".  The guy finally accepted 800 (~$16 AUD) rupees, which was close to 75% off his original price! Cheeky bugger. Still, $16 for polarized glasses isn't too bad, fake or not!  

As we tried to get across the road from the sunglasses sales man to the car park to go home, we were accosted by some cute little street beggar kids. I couldn't help it, and gave a single 10 rupee coin (about 25c worth) to one of the kids. Well that was it, the horde of beggar kids must have a hive-mind or something, because the swarm descended upon us like it was an apocalypse. We made it to the car park and kids were popping up everywhere like mushrooms and begging for more coins. The oldest Indian brother fetched the car, while the car park security and admin guys on the lower floor at the entrance held back the tide of beggars for us. What a day!

Well thanks for reading and stay tuned for out next blog where the wedding ceremonies actually start.

India - Delhi to Amritsar (Punjab State) (Part 3)

Hello and welcome to the third part of our trip in India.

In our last blog we went to see the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Agra and then we were back on the plane to head for the famous Punjab city of Amritsar. 

For those of you who are not aware the whole reason we went to India was because I have a friend that I met when I was working in Banking in Canada who was getting married and was lovely enough to invite Kyran and I. 

This was an opportunity that I was not going to miss (we had heard of the fantastic and prestigious Indian weddings before) so we gladly accepted the invitation.

From the moment that we landed in Amritsar, we were becoming aware of the wedding celebrations and traditions - as my friend had already participated in the first ceremony of ring exchange and was not allowed to travel far from home once the ceremonies had started. As a result we were greeted at the airport by my friends brother and sister and uncle. 

INSERT: It seems that in the Punjabi province the youth all refer to the older men as uncle and the older women and auntie. Close friends of the family in particular. We think this 'uncle' was just a good friend of the bride's father. 

So we were greeted at the airport by the younger brother and sister with a bunch of flowers which was lovely😍!!  

Then from what we had previously googled it was to be a long drive back to their house (about 3 hours from our calculation). 

It is funny when you meet someone for the first time and you are not sure what they are like, what they find funny etc. especially when there are cultural barriers as well. 
For example I was not sure whether to hug or shake hands. 

But it was perfect because the car that they came to pick us up in was too small to fit both our suitcases in the back so we quickly had to laugh as the boys were trying to squish stuff in and taking clothes out of the bags to see if they would fit. 

It was funny and I think that we quickly all learned that it was funny. In the end the poor brother had to put one of our massive suitcases on his knee for the entire 3 hour long journey back home.😂😂😂 

The only reprieve was when we stopped over to stretch our legs and have some dinner after about 1.5 hours of driving. 

Haveli - Punjabi Traditional Restaurants
This was a really cool traditional Punjabi theme park/cultural preservation park. Aside from the massive cool-looking dining area there were statues and props that refer to traditional activities or festivities. Here are some of the things we encountered:

Below: Here I am with the guy that opens to the door to the very fancy place that we ate. He is a good example of the traditional Punjabi clothes (you will see more on this in future blogs). Note his shoes, they have curly toes, these shoes are known as Punjabi Jutti and are unique to the Punjab province and are typically made out of leather (remembering that you can't kill cows in India) so the shoes, so I've been told, are made from camel, goat or other non protected animals.

Below: We did mention the 'mad max' trucks in the last blog, in fact we even used the same picture. But I just wanted to mention them again here as this is the location that we took this photo and to note that this is not just some truck but as you can read a public carrier - woo hoo load 'em up!  An Indian alternative to a bus. Note the make of the truck is "Tata", that's an Indian brand of vehicles.

Below: Pictures my self and my new beautiful sister, in the foreground of a set up depicting Punjabi women dancing in traditional clothes. 

Below: This is a traditional style of cart that would have been pulled by oxen

Below: All the troop that came to pick us up for the Airport posing in front of the traditional cart Above.

This is where it get interesting - Food! And Poop!

Above: This is a vessel that you put the cow pat around and you set them on fire. Then you add another vessel (A bowl from what I can tell) to the fiery cow poo and you boil it from morning to night.  In the Evening you should have what the locals call curd (or Dahi) but what I guess us westerners would understand as maybe more like a Yogurt - I have been told that they add a bit of butter to the recently boiled-all-day milk (I would imagine that this is how they introduce the bacteria to make it a yogurt).

Once you have got your curd and you want to process it further the Below device which I have been told is a Mthani which you use to agitate the Curd to make either Butter or butter milk (This is what I have been told).  

While we are addressing the production of food, us westerners just go to the shops and buy without thinking about how it would have all been made before machines. Below is very heavy stone that sits on top of another very heavy stone that is then rotated while the grain that you wish to pulverise is slowly added to the middle. By the time that said gain has worked its way out between the two very heavy stones it will be thoroughly pulverised or as we know it - Flour! This is a mill stone. 

Keeping on the topic of food these below are what is known as Jalebi - They are akin to a doughnut mixture but are made by frying in a liquid hot butter (as the oil) and dipping into corn syrup. So as you can imagine, buttery, fatty, sweet run-down-your-arm sticky goodness. If you would like to see how they are made I did share a video to our Facebook page: Findlater Travels but also I will insert the video below (hopefully it works)

Alrighty I feel as though I should do an insert here for those of you who don't know our dietary habits that we are normally Vegan, but we do try to be practical about it and not starve ourselves to death either. 

So full disclaimer for our time in India we had to revert back to "Vegetarian" as it seemed like literally everything had milk in it. That said we were really surprised to find that Vegetarian seemed to be the norm. So there was so much food to eat! 

The other main aspect is we still didn't eat eggs, and the milk in India comes from SACRED animals, so they are treated with respect at all times, and they actually CAN'T (legally) kill the little boy cows, so almost all of the main issues we have with the mainstream western dairy industry don't really count in India. 

Below: This is Indian tea. The tea is extremely weak in terms of the 'tea' flavour, and is 99% hot milk with added sugar and/or spices to sweeten it. Could be up to 1 tablespoon of sugar per 'cup' worth of tea, so very sweet indeed. Typically made by brewing tea leaves in hot/boiling milk in a saucepan or pot over a flame. India is the world's largest tea drinking country! 

 Above: Bullock cart racing seems to be an Indian cultural activity for special festivals 

Below: This is hard to fully describe without doing all the rest of the wedding blogs first. But this is essentially the going away ride for the bride. The just married bride will ride in this box thing (I'd call it a "litter") carried by either the brides brothers or family servants (i.e "litter bearers") from the bride's family. She will be carried along behind the groom who will be riding a horse in front (usually a white horse). 

Note: As far as I can tell they don't do this anymore. From the wedding we went to they just got in a car lol. 

The Huts/ grain storage:
If you read our last blog this is something that we promised to get back to. 
In the last blog you would have seen these two images below where I introduced them as local village housing in Delhi. 

Well now I would like to introduce you to the grain storage method that we encountered in the Punjabi state. 
From what I have been told and understand is that when you do the wheat harvest and you have all your grain you need to store it in a place where is will be dry and accessible all year round for when you need to feed your livestock. 
So it is not an uncommon site to see the Below grass hut looking structure in the middle of the field. 
What they do is the make a ring of grass/ hay and they fill it with wheat. Then they add another ring of grass/ hay and do the same thing until they reach a peak and they tie it all off. 

When it is time to access the wheat all they do is punch a hole in the bottom of the hut thing and the grain will start to run out. As you remove more and more grain the grain from the top will move down and the peak will start to collapsed/lower until the hut thing is completely empty and collapsed on itself. 

Fantastic engineering don't you think!

   
Dinner - Lets not forget what we came here for. 
This was our first sit down, not street food meal in India and this is how it is done.
They give you one big plate and lots of small plates you then divide up the curries into the smaller plates/bowls and you put your flat bread (roti/nan) on the rest of your plate and away you go. Pretty fancy! 
Bonus Level: The food was not spicy at all (this was my biggest fear about India - A burning ring of fire)

Above: A nice dinner set arrangement, these collections of metal dishes are called Thali. The large one is the main plate thing, and the smaller bowls are for the various curries.

Below: The inside of the restaurant! Fancy! Tapestry/drapes from the ceiling, amazing brick archways, fancy staircases and aesthetic use of ropes. Was a joy to behold!

After food and introduction to the culture and history it was on the road again. Well that is what we thought... 

This was our first introduction to the way Indians always put air in their tyres any chance they get! 

Insert: Before you think that we are talking about something boring, this is something that we later learned that Indian drivers seem to take very seriously - and in the days to come there were very few times that we would leave the house in a vehicle and they would not stop to check the tyres. I would assume that this is as a result of the poor condition of the roads and that they actually like to look after their vehicles. They pay close attention to their vehicle's maintenance needs, always checking the oil and liquid levels and air levels almost daily.

After that we finished checking our tyres it was just the last leg of our journey "home" to my friend's parent's house where we stayed for the rest of our time in India. 

We were greeted with more Indian tea and finger food like the below food that was also presented in the mornings with tea, the selection varied but I will go into that detail later. 

After tea and saying hello to all the family it was bed time as (if memory serves) it was midnight by the time we got in. 

This is also where I was planning to end this blog but as I can now see the next one is going to be pretty big so lets start the next day here as well. 

The next day was one of three days that we had before the wedding to get all the clothes bought and in order (tailored etc). But in the time that we were not out'n'about there were a few things around the house that I would like to mention here:

Below: These are super awesome bed chair things and they were made by one of the aunties. 
Let me explain why they are super awesome:
1. They were great for laying around in the sun to warm up
2. They were super light weight and were leaned against the wall out the way when they were not in use
3.They are a work of art, look at that detail.
4. The double as chairs when there are heaps of people over and you can easily fit 8 people sitting around on one of these. 
5. The blue one below is extra awesome because you can lay on it with your muddy boots on and the mud falls through the gaps and does not work its way to your butt. 

Below:  The Mango leaf for Luck 
This is something that we noticed pretty quickly. They had one singular leaf tied to the door to the kitchen area. 
When I asked my friend about it she said that it is a mango leaf and that it is tied to the door for luck. 

She said that it is typically tied to the front door of the house (they had them strung up there too) and that some people will only tie one leaf to one door or other people will tie lots of leaves to lots of doors. 

My friend said that this is done for luck for any major celebration ie. weddings, engagements, births etc. 









Below: Tractor - a symbol of status
I suppose in every culture the young fellas always have to have something to peacock with, in Australia it the Ute, in Canada it's the big truck, and in India it is the Tractor. 

As with all status symbols they can not be factory standard, they always have to have some sort of after market modification to enhance the status of the young adolescent that is to be seen with it, and this one was decked out with a pretty serious custom sound system. 

But the ol' tractor with a sound system serves its purpose don't be fooled:
1. It's scares away all the animals within a 10 km radius while you are farming
2. You can't hear any of your female family members yelling at you, in fact you would be hard pressed to hear anything ever again after a full day farming on one of these bad boys.
3. Party? did you say party? I got the party!

Below: here the boys have set up the tractor to shine the headlines on a wall in the courtyard, they have the sound system blaring Bhangra style music and Punjabi pop music and the indicator lights (hazard lights) are blinking, LED strips blazing.. A great party!

4.Chicks dig tractors!😂😂😂

  
I mock them, but they are all great guys!😚😚😚

Moving on to the food again!
Just looking at this picture make me hungry!

The food every day was amazing! and it was what ever was in season/cheap at the markets. 

Usually you only have a spoon to eat with. What you do is you rip a bit of the roti bread off and you fold it to make a sort of soon/cup/food holding area, then you spoon your food onto the bread and then you eat the bread. 

Oof I'm so hungry right now... ✈✈✈ I could go back to India tomorrow just for the food! 

But also now that I am writing this blog I am missing the family there too. 





Below: The Indian Kitchen
I think that there are varying degrees of the Indian Kitchen depending on wealth and quantity of people to feed. This was our home kitchen and the 'auntie' that we seemed to have around cooking and cleaning a lot of the time. Here you can see the roti being cooked! 

I think this is probably a good place to introduce you to the Indian (Punjabi) style of house building. Mainly because I found it to be very different and as with any house building it is definitely built to the local climate. 

I have created the image below as a rough depiction of the house that we stayed in. 
1. The house had no outward facing windows
2. The house had high ceilings
3. The kitchen/cooking area was separate to the rest of the house
4. The toilet/shower was separate to the rest of the house
5. There as a random extra small room on the roof

6. There seemed to be a double court yard

The house was very big on the inside, with one large main entrance room surrounded on 3 sides by 4-5 large square-ish rooms. At least 3 rooms were bedrooms, one was an inside kitchen/ food storage area (undergoing renovations at the time), and a side room which has another door access to the outside.  

The ceilings were very tall, and the floors were polished/sealed concrete - the walls were probably a brick core with mortared exterior finish. 

The thing that you have to remember is that in India the summers are extremely hot which makes sense that the sleeping area and cooking areas are separate and that everything is made out of brick and concrete to keep the cool in and regulate the temperature. 

The flip side to this is come winter time (the time that we were there) the house still has the same features so we found that it was very cold at night but that it warmed up in the middle of the day. So people's habits seemed to revolve around the temperate. We all cuddled up for warmth until the sun came up and then we all went out into the court yard to lounge around in the sun and warm up like lizards. 

There were two things that struck me as odd about this method of existing:

1. In Australia or at least on my family farm we would have had a barrel with a fire in it and we would all have warmed up around that. I'm guessing that this is more of a luxury in India due to the scarcity of things to burn. There aren't that many spare trees around!

2. The time that it took people to get moving in the morning. I don't mean any offence by this but it is just in my time on a farm we were up and out the door as the sun rose and we didn't come back till the sun went down - what I mean to say is we had a full days work. In India it seemed that as a result of their reliance on heat they didn't get moving for the day until 10-11 am and as soon as it started getting cold we all started to rug up and go inside again.
I mean I know that they were in celebration mode and all so I'm not judging as much as I am observing. The nature of farming long growth-cycle crops like wheat and rice also means that there is a lot of idle time between the harvest and planting cycles, which weren't due for another 1.5-2 months. 

The next exciting thing we encountered while living there for 10 days was the shower wasn't quite operating, so us and the rest of the family showered each day by way of water in a big tub and a smaller bucket/ container to pour the water over yourself with. 

The water was hot at least, which was nice - I don't think we would have survived if it was cold water only! In that case would definitely have only showered in the hottest time of the day, maybe early afternoon. 

Ya know, it's hard to have "shower thoughts" when you are squatting over a tub and desperately throwing water at yourself. I think every day was a 'leg' day from the amount of squatting to wash hair too! 

Each morning we were greeted with a nice fresh hot brew of Indian tea, served with sweets, around 7-8am. By around 10-10:30, the kitchen-hand (local lady helping out during the wedding period, not sure if she was paid or was a regular worker throughout the year) was hard at work making breakfast. Sometimes masi (aunty in punjab) and our new surrogate Indian mum helped out in the kitchen. We all got curry (dal, watery curry usually with some potato (see the earlier pictures - that was a typical 'breakfast'.) and lots of roti for breakfast and it was quite tasty! 

Above: The farm house at night with all the wedding celebration lights up and running :)
Below: The farm house at day, we are about to go out shopping for all our wedding gear!


Well that brings us to the end of this blog and leaves us even closer  to the inevitable preparations for the wedding ceremonies. So thanks for reading and stay tuned for our next adventures!!