Here are some photos of the Royal Palace grounds.

We spent three more days in Gurgaon with Kuldip's family. The weather had really turned cold by the time we returned, so we spent a lot of time bundled up under big, thick duvets. Here I am with Kuldip and Gogi. The shot is blurry because we were shivering too much to hold the camera still.

JANUARY 1, 2010 — We left Punjab Dec. 30 by train and spent the night of Dec. 30 and Dec. 31 in the Metropolitan Hotel in Connaught Place, in the commercial center of New Delhi. Despite the location, we had a very quiet New Year’s Eve.

We spent New Year’s Eve day shopping and eating our way around Connaught Place, but Gogi and Joyce were ready to call it an evening after dinner. Not ready to give up, Kuldip and I checked out what was happening in our hotel lobby. The hotel had gone a bit too far with the holiday decorations, but we weren’t sure we were feeling the New Year’s party vibe. I think it might have been the IMFL.

The hotel had a huge New Year’s party going and it included all the IMFL cocktails you could drink.

I thought IMFL must have been their signature drink for the evening, probably something with mango or papaya. But it turns out that IMFL stands for Indian Manufactured Foreign Liquor. So, it is, in reality, not foreign liquor. On our own facing the pospect of IMFL, Kuldip and I did what comes naturally to us. We bought cake.

So our New Year’s Eve 2010 was spent in our hotel room in New Delhi watching the fireworks over Connaught Place while eating cake. It was, in a word: Perfect.

DECEMBER 25, 2009 — Christmas day in India is interesting. While no one I am near is Christian, they all seem very excited to to say “Merry Christmas!” It is very sweet, really. I knew when we planned the trip that we wouldn’t really have a Christmas. My sister Joyce knew as well. But Kuldip’s family here is doing everything they can to make it feel like Christmas. Gogi is very excited to make a Christmas dinner for us, but from what we can find, just about the only thing available that resembles Christmas dinner is sweet potatoes. That said, I like sweet potatoes.

In a few days we will be heading back to New Delhi before we fly back to Malaysia. In the meantime, we have had some time to hang out, relax and get to know Jandiala Guru, the town outside Amritsar where Kuldip’s family lives.

New Delhi is super crowded and super polluted, and is a very Indian city, but compared to Jandiala Guru, it is almost too Western. By the time you travel far enough to reach Jandiala Guru, the pretense of Westernism is gone. Almost no one speaks English here. And those who say they speak English basically have no idea what I am saying most of the time. Everybody here with a little money does have satellite TV, but almost nobody watches the English channels that are available to them. Virtually no one has an internet connection in their home. Very few people here own a computer. Not many people understand that the Internet comes on things other than mobile phones. And the best part: There are a lot fewer cars here than in New Delhi. Bicycles, horse drawn carts, motorcycles and feet seem to be the most common forms of transportation.

While some people may scowl at the lack of Internet and transportation, it does keep the area very tied to its Punjabi roots. All of the women still wear Punjabi suits every day, all day. There are no rebellious teenage girls running around in mini skirts or jeans. None. The food here is very traditional as well. Women still make their own butter from the milk that comes from the cow (buffalo?) right outside the house. My point? In New Delhi, you can live like you do in the West and observe Indian culture. When you come to Jandiala Guru, you live it. You get to know and understand Punjabis a lot better than you would if you stay in a four-star hotel and ride a bus tour through a village and stare at the people with the colorful outfits.

So, while it hasn’t always been easy, it has always been interesting and usually fun.

The day here for us begins with roti paratha (a freshly made, whole wheat buttery and thicker version of regular roti) and tea.

After breakfast and a lot of chatting comes shower time, which does get complicated. The showers here are of the bucket variety, which means you fill a bucket with hot water and use a cup to pour it over you. But that isn’t so bad. At the right temperature, if feels pretty good to pour the water on you. The real shower challenge is electricity. The power tends to go off here every day around 9am and doesn’t come back on till at least 11am. So either everybody gets up really early or waits till after 11am to shower. The comfort level of the shower also depends on the temperature outside, since the bathrooms tend to lack climate control. That’s the complicated part. When it’s 40 degrees and I have to pour water over me in the cold, it’s challenging. But when I listen to Kulidp or my sister doing the same, it’s fun.

So while one person showers, the rest of us move up to the rooftop to warm up in the winter sun.

By the time everybody has showered and dressed, Gogi and her helpers are already working on lunch, usually some spicy mixed veggies (fresh, of course) and freshly made whole wheat roti. This is about the time that Swinder, a friend of the family, drops by each day. Swinder joins us for lunch, and, being one of the lucky few who has a car, then takes us for a drive to a nearby village, the bazaar, a temple, or the Internet cafe (if there is electricity).

After our afternoon outings, we all head back to the house and eat dinner, chat for a few hours and head to bed.

That, in a nutshell, is life in Jandiala Guru.

It has been quite an experience in itself. The small town outside Amritsar is bustling to say the least. It occasionally makes me long for the quiet of San Francisco. Needless to say, Joyce is off her rocker with the noise. She is trying to be polite about it, but I can tell the noise is getting to her. And there is a lot. Everybody honks for everything here. All the time. All day and all night. Then there are the celebrations. Bollywood movies where everybody breaks out into song make a lot more sense now. They actually do that here. Someone down he street had a baby? Bring on the band! Everybody sing! Somebody passed his exam? Bring on the band! I am not exaggerating. Yesterday alone we heard three separate parades (with bands) going down the little street the family lives on. And then there are the loudspeakers from the temples. Each temple broadcasts prayers starting at 4am, sometimes earlier, and they seem to compete a bit. So, add all the layers of noise on top of each other and it can be noisy. Joyce is missing the vineyards, I can tell.

That said, we were able to get a visit to the Golden Temple. Based in Amritsar, the Golden Temple is the headquarters of the Sikh religion. The whole complex is a peaceful respite deep in the middle of the old city, and in the middle of the complex sits the temple, which has been gilded with real gold that has been contributed by Sikh pilgrims from all around.

The journey to Haridwar was long. The driver told us it was 400 kilometers from our starting point in Punjab. Piece of cake, we thought, with visions of I-280 or I-5  in our head. Well, we forgot that the roads here don’t always include even two lanes, often don’t include pavement, but always include way too many trucks and buses to feels safe, plus plenty of cyclists, cows and pedestrians, too. So, 13 hours later, we arrived in Haridwar, a distance that might have taken five hours in the U.S. Tired and cranky.

We were very excited about the hotel we chose, a former palace deep inside the Bara Bazaar in Haridwar. We had a little trouble finding it, though. So when our driver called the hotel for help, he was directed to a particular spot and told to park. From there, the hotel’s rickshaws came to pick us up to take us the rest of the way. Still tired, but intrigued.

The location was cool…down very narrow alleys lined with stalls selling scarves, shawls and sweets, and accessible only by foot or rickshaw. And the palace was situated right on the Ganga (we are going native with the spelling here), with a huge terrace overlooking the river and steps that took you right down into it. I’m sure the palace was once beautiful, with marble everywhere and big rooms, but yikes it needed a serious cleaning. And I mean deep. The rooms were moldy and had no windows and I am not really sure if they changed the sheets. Still, we made the best of it and set off to explore.

Our first stop was the terrace over the Ganga, where I first noticed a sign that killed me: “Please avoid hanging laundry on terrace to avoid monkey menace.” Really?  One of the first things I noticed in India was the laundry hanging everywhere, but even in hotels, people do their own laundry and hang them out on the shared terrace? That alone was amusing, but the monkey menace threw me. For a very short time. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of monkeys in Haridwar and they are not afraid of people. In fact, they are a little amused by taunting people. One jumped on my sister Joyce’s back and pulled her hair. I tried to convince her it was a blessing from the gods, but she still seems a little less charmed by the monkeys.

The next day, we headed off to Rishikesh, which bills itself as the yoga capital of the world. It is well-known in the west, so I expected lots of pretentious “I am so spiritual” Westerners staying in 5 star yoga resorts, but it was very authentic. There were plenty of westerners there, but they seemed to be staying in real ashrams. Rishikesh was filled with monkeys too, some of them a bit too aggressive for comfort.

After spending the day in Rishikesh, we headed back to Haridwar to catch the ganga aarti, a ceremony held each night at the Har-ki-Pairi (footstep of the god), where Vishnu is said to have left a footprint behind. For the ganga aarti, hundreds gather to send firey blesings down the river while ringing bells and singing.

I hope everybody’s holiday season is a happy one