Live from Uniworld's India and the Sacred Ganges - Feb 6, 2017

Monday, February 13th, Cruising the Hooghly

We took our leave from Kalna just after 11:00. From here, you can see the rickety bamboo bridge that leads from the dock to the riverbank, and from the bridge it was a few steps further to the landing site. Some folks gathered to watch us sail away.

Here is our docking location. 23.224928, 88.370604 for those GPS nerds among us.

The view to the north looked calm and peaceful,

but the river was crowed with plenty of people, doing the usual.

One last view of Kalna.

Further north, there were some pastoral areas that didn't seem as crowded,

but we were never far away from people who were excited to see us.

Monday, February 13th, Cruising the Hooghly

The kids were the best. They loved seeing the boat. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and you had to wave back so you didn't let them down.

A few more. Every couple of minutes at most, we'd see another group.

Even the workers in the field cutting grain were excited to see us.

This was one of my favorites. Looks like a primitive oxcart with a lady riding in the wagon, at first glance...

Until you see that the driver has a cellphone and he's taking our picture too!

This is an even better juxtaposition, in my mind. The oxcart, and the guy ahead of him with his smartphone. And, I took this picture on my smartphone, and posted it to Facebook, because I had a 3G signal out here! The old technology, and the new.

It was a good time to grab some lunch. We pondered whether some of the people we'd seen have posted pictures of us on their Facebook pages too.

Oops, what happened to the photos ? We are all waiting with so much anticipation :p

Oops, what happened to the photos ? We are all waiting with so much anticipation :p

Look again and they will be there.

I have developed a workaround to the miserably difficult process of posting photos on CC. I have found that it is much easier to post the photos from the smartphone app. Using the app, you can post directly from your phone without the intermediary step of uploading to picasa, photobucket, etc... It is SO MUCH easier.

But it's much easier to write the text on my laptop. So, I write the text without pictures, submit the post, and then immediately edit the post on my phone to add the photos. It takes about 1-2 minutes to add 6 photos to the post. You happened to catch the last post after I'd submitted it, but before the photos were added. :D

Let me know if they are there now. They should be.

Thanks for the explanation. I had the same issue a couple of days ago. Now I know to check back later for the pictures.

Monday, February 13th, Cruising the Hooghly

Eventually we went in for lunch. They had an interesting dessert item that I had to try. It was pretty tasty! Not overly sweet.

It was a relaxing afternoon in store for us. Every once in a while we got up to do a few laps so that we didn't develop necrosis from sitting too long.

Here was a bridge in progress.

And another one that's complete. This is the Sri Gouranga Bridge, just south of Mayapur.

The people and the livestock were using the river together.

Lots more relaxing to do today. Time to sit back and sip some more wine, and wave to the people who were still lining the riverbanks. It's a nice way to travel!

So far, the cruise has been everything we've expected and then some. The only odd thing is that we've not heard anything about our AMEX Platinum cruise privileges, which should include some OBC. Usually, there's a notification in our cabin upon embarkation. I'll have to look into this further when I have the ambition to do so.

Monday, February 13th, Cruising the Hooghly

Trees along the river provided shade for these bathers. They must need strong roots to hold on when this river gets going.

Some dwellings close to the river banks. I wonder how these hold up during monsoon season.

We floated by the mouth of the Jalangi River, which joined the Hooghly. It looks nice from here.

At the confluence of the two rivers, people are farming a small plot of land that is probably only exposed during low water. I don't know what the two pretty buildings are, in the background, along the shore of the Jalangi River.

A few minutes later, and we were sailing past Mayapur. This is the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium, which is still under construction. We'll be back to visit this site later in the trip.

We saw a fire on the river bank. It looks like a funeral pyre.

Onward, into the late afternoon. India is a large country, and we are near its eastern border. But it has only one time zone, so that means that sunrise and sunset here are earlier than they are in the west.

Between the very early sunset at 5:30, and the haze in the air which dims the light, it starts to get darker around 4PM. It's a little strange, and it promotes an early to bed, early to rise schedule. You don't really feel like staying up late here.

At 2:30, we're having a lecture on some of the Indian spices that we've been tasting in our food for the past week. Should be interesting!

Monday, February 13th, Cruising the Hooghly

We continued on past Mayapur. Lots of rural scenery here. So many little boats on the river.

And a big boat too - this is named the Rajmahal, like the restaurant at the Oberoi in Jaipur. It looked like a nice enough cruise ship, but we liked the décor of ours better.

The chef's spice demonstration didn't involve any cooking per se, but he did have about twenty different spices poured out into ramekins. He passed them around for us to sniff, while he talked about some of their uses in Indian cuisine.

Afterwards, we headed out on deck for the last rays of daylight. Here we saw a jackal, looking for dinner along the river bank in the evening light.

I suppose I have to spoil the image of the idyllic peaceful river, by saying that we have seen a few dead bodies floating by during our cruise today. Only goats and dogs so far, mind you. And no pictures.

Also today, we saw a few river dolphins. They surface for only the briefest of moments, and only once, rather than multiple times in succession. They are so fast that there is just no chance to get a photo.

This is the best I could do, and I love the picture for the way that the rippling water catches the glow of the sunlight. But there is no dolphin in the picture. You'll just have to trust me, and come see them for yourselves!

You can tell that the river is low from this exposed sandbar, where the birds are resting.

It's hard to believe that it's only 4:30 PM! The sun is so low and it looks much later.

Time to get up and wander around a bit more, to keep the blood flowing. Sip, wander, repeat. It's a nice cycle, and one that we could get used to for a day or two. We are usually more active on vacation, but so far the forced rest hasn't been too bad. I am keeping up with my journal, and with labeling pictures, so that's one positive development.

Monday, February 13th, Evening on the Hooghly

We caught the last rays of the setting sun while taking our laps around the boat.

The sun never seems to make it all the way to the horizon proper, but rather, it fades out as it approaches the horizon. I think that's because there is so much smoke and haze in the atmosphere. It chokes out the sunlight, so that makes the sun seem to set even earlier. We had seen this phenomenon last year in Madagascar as well.

Five o'clock, and the landscape is dark, and pictures become challenging. As long as there's no motion, you can still get decent landscape shots. But moving people or animals will just be a blur, as (not) shown in many of my pictures.

We went below decks soon after, to get ready for cocktail hour. If you stay up on deck around sunset, the mosquitos come out in full force. Bug spray works, but we didn't want to stink up our clothes or ourselves with that smell. So we changed and went up for cocktail hour instead, always a better choice!

Tomorrow morning, Hemesh announced, we'd have a super early tour in Matiari. We would be arriving there shortly, probably during dinner, and we'd dock overnight. Tomorrow, our tour leaves at 7:30 and we'll be done for the day by 9:00. Um...aren't we supposed to be on vacation?

Dinner followed cocktail hour. The lights were turned down very low tonight so picture quality isn't the best. The menu.

I started with the Bharwan Aloo, also known as a vegetable stuffed potato.

Chris had the Sesame Chicken Salad. We both had the Corn and Chicken Soup. Her main was the Herb Crusted Barramundi.

And I had the Duck Plum Curry. A bunch of us had asked for extra spice tonight. The spice was good, but the duck meat was only OK. It's impossible to keep the skin crispy when cooking the meat in the sauce.

Dessert was a banana split; neither of us ventured to try the carrot pudding.

Another early night, as we weren't interested in the second part of the movie that we'd skipped last night. We were asleep by 10, and I slept solidly until 4, and intermittently after that. We finally got up at 6 for our tour.

JP and Chris,

The river cruise is sooo relaxing especially after your land touring of India!

The pictures of India continue to to amaze....

Amyr are you still following? Did you recuperate from your trip OK?

Kathy

I'm back after taking the weekend off to go to NY City.

Kathy, you are correct. The river cruise was so relaxing, and such a change from the first half. But still very interesting, just in a different way. The two halves of the trip complemented each other very nicely.

Tuesday, February 14th, Matiari Village Tour

An early morning, as we were up at 6. We headed off to the lounge for cappuccinos before the 7:30 tour. Not many people were in the lounge with us, but we hoped that they'd be ready to go when the time came. We could have actually done the yoga offered this morning at 6:45, but cappuccino sounded better.

We were docked in Matiari today. From the dock, we climbed up a rickety bamboo bridge, then a few steps further up the hill to a large level field. Some of the locals were lined up to look at us. Lots of curiosity both ways!

From the field, we walked into town and were promptly met by more of the villagers. Most were quiet, and just watched us, but some strange guy in bright colors ran up to the group like he was a goat, and butted one of us! An interesting welcome! I took his picture while he wasn't looking, as I didn't want him butting heads with me!

He seemed a little strange. I honestly think the local villager looks like he's not quite sure about Mr. Goatmam either!

The town itself appeared run down in places,

But there were beautiful buildings to be seen nearby. The contrast was striking at times.

Along the street, you could see all sorts of food-related activity. Here the bowls of milk were set out to make cheese, I think.

And these birds were at the market as well.

We wandered the village with Sujoy, as he pointed out the architecture and decorations that there were to see. This was not a village with a big temple, or some other star attraction. The sights were less grandiose.

Tuesday, February 14th, Matiari Village Tour

We saw some interesting decorations. The themes ran the gamut. These figures were perched on a second floor balcony, watching us.

The metalworking skill of the villagers is evident in this beautiful door.

And this decorative touch is a little more...functional? The cow patties are stuck here to dry, before they are burned for fuel. And yes, they are seemingly marked with a hanprint.

But there were villagers to meet too. So many people were looking from their doorways as we walked by - many staring at us while brushing their teeth! We felt like celebrities.

At the local water pump, the ladies and their children gathered the water that they needed.

And it was early, many of the kids were on their way to school. The kids were so friendly, and many were excited to see us, so they stopped to talk. This little guy was getting a ride to school from his Dad. They stopped to talk about school, and to pose for pictures. The boy loved seeing his image on the viewfinder.

These two cuties gave us a more serious pose.

Next up, we were going to see some metalworking. Matiari is known for its quality brasswork. We'll see how that gets made next.

Tuesday, February 14th, Matiari Village Tour

In the dark and dingy brass-working shop, we saw the workers heating a metal plate in the oven. It was comforting to see the sheets of flammable cloth hanging loosely by the mouth of the furnace.

That fire does look quite hot. It made me crave a nice pizza. I bet we could cook one really quickly in there!

When the brass is glowing red, it is scooped up on the pizza spatula, and brought to the front of the oven. Sorry...still craving pizza.

This fellow grabs the glowing hot slab of metal, while wearing OSHA-approved protective open-toed sandals and shorts. Also, short metal tongs, no gloves. Can you say third-degree burns?

He drags the metal a few feet over, and casually slings the hot slab onto a work table. Form here, it passes through metal rollers, to press it into a thinner sheet.

Into the rollers. Don't forget to note the right side of the metal press. Those exposed gears would do a number on any body parts that happen to get caught in them. And they are totally uncovered. Crazy.

It was neat to watch the workers. They were quite facile with the machinery, and they were in perfect synchrony. But wow. The lack of basic protective clothing while working with 1000+ degree metal, and the (lack of) safety of the motorized heavy equipment, is scary.

And the lighting was terrible. All of these pictures are taken without flash, but significantly lightened up on the computer to enhance the details. Half of these pictures are still frames, grabbed from a video I shot.

Tuesday, February 14th, Matiari Village Tour

A few more pictures of the brass workers for good measure. Here's an overview of how casually they dress while working with red-hot metal.

And you can see that this plate has been through the rollers a few times. It's cooling off, and has been pressed out to be a little longer and thinner.

Back out on the streets, unscathed. Here's a big pile of wood. It must take a lot to keep those fires stoked.

We visited two shops where we could purchase finished brass products. Trinkets were generally in the Rs 300-500 range. Small animal figures, small plates, bracelets were as low as Rs 100. Everyone buying items had rupees, so I don't know if they would have taken dollars, or other currency.

We looked but didn't buy. The items were not bad, and not expensive, but we didn't feel like lugging them around. We are terrible shoppers.

Back out on the streets, we looked at more houses. Most of the buildings in town were decorated nicely. This mask adorned the railing of a second-floor porch.

And this nice animal scene was situated above a door, forming a transom opening.

The houses seemed mostly plain when viewed from a distance, but on closer inspection there were nice decorative elements on just about all of them. More of that later.

JP and Chris,

The river cruise is sooo relaxing especially after your land touring of India!

The pictures of India continue to to amaze....

Amyr are you still following? Did you recuperate from your trip OK?

Kathy

Hi Kathy (and JP!) I actually just read this whole thread. I wasn't really following it while I was traveling, I was only tapped into the other one. It's fun to see pictures of (most) of the same places we went. That big woodpile had baby goats playing on it when we passed through :)

I was an amazing, amazing trip. The river portion couldn't quite compare (IMHO though my husband says that's because we did that one first) to the Mekong River trip, there just aren't as many interesting things along the way and the wonderful city of Phnom Penh isn't sitting there halfway down, but after the two weeks of touring before the cruise portion, the relaxation of it was fantastic. The ship was more comfortable than the one we did on the Mekong (AMALotus), and the food was great. I was surprised at how delicious it all was. We did struggle with the lack of storage in the cabin, which has been a common complaint of everyone that's been on Ganges Voyager and Ganges Voyager II. I don't know what the cabin designers were thinking.

I caught some sort of horrible, horrible stomach thing the second to last day on the ship. 102.5 fever, horrible stabbing stomach pains and vomiting. I immediately started some Cipro and felt better. Seven days after the Cipro course was done, it was back. Off to my home doctor, more antibiotics and an anti-parasitic. Felt great. Seven days after the courses were over (yesterday), it's back. I'm kind of freaking out.

For anyone who's interested, here are my photos. There are a lot of them, I haven't finished culling them yet. It's an amazing trip for photographers, that's for sure.

India Photos

amyr! Glad to hear from you. So sorry about the stomach bug, and its persistence. I got whacked with it early on, and a much milder version late in the trip, but it hasn't come home with me. I hope that you get things cleared up soon.

Interesting that storage was an issue on GVI and II. We felt that there was enough room for our clothes (certainly not MORE than enough room), but maybe we pack lighter than most. We had two rollaboards between the two of us, and our carry-on bags. So the closet in our suite was big enough to unpack and store everything. And since we didn't have full-sized suitcases, we could stick our empty cases in a corner without much trouble, where they weren't in the way.

The only place where we felt that storage was lacking was in the bathroom. There wasn't enough room around the sink to put anything, so our toiletries had to stay in our bags and were stored under the sink. Not the best design but overall, it worked out OK.

Glad the food onboard was better than you'd been led to expect. And thanks for the story about the goats in the woodpile. That would have been a cute picture. Looking forward to the weekend; hopefully work won't be too busy and I'll have time to look at your pictures.

Get well soon!

Tuesday, February 14th, Matiari Village Tour

Not much to write on this post.

I was intrigued by the decorations on the houses that we passed in the village. Most houses had a picture with a Hindu deity somewhere on their outside wall. So I took a lot of pictures.

I knew who was who, at one time. Not now. The baby deity was cute though.

Our tour was almost done, and we headed back towards the ship.

Tuesday, February 14th, Matiari Village Tour

One more door decoration, for good measure.

And another local villager, happy to see us.

Most of the kids were in school by 8:30, and the side streets looked empty. The hustle and bustle was no longer present.

As we approached the boat dock, we saw some fuel drying in the sun. This batch had a different shape.

And a local fuel producer, resting up for a hard day's work.

Back to the boat, and it was time to head upriver. Here's a map of our docking location as we sailed away from town. 23.6254520, 88.1833650 if you're tracking us.

So it's 9:00, and we're done with organized activity for the day. Nothing to do but lounge on the boat and relax. Breakfast first!

Tuesday, February 14th, Cruising the Hooghly

We were back on board for breakfast just before 9. After our meal, relaxing on the upper deck was all that we planned to do today.

We brought the laptop up to the top deck, and Chris labeled a few days' worth of pictures, while I worked on my notes. The scenery slowly moved by. Here is one of many rice fields that we saw today.

Amazing that there is still 3G service here on our cell phones! Those using the ship's Wi-Fi are bemoaning the slow speed and less certain reliability, but we are able to keep track of things on our phones almost as well as if we had been home.

Later in the morning, we got up for a few laps around the boat, and ordered some pre-lunch champagne. This is the life!

There was a turban-tying, and sari-wearing, demonstration going on in the lounge which some enjoyed, but we were busy labeling and organizing. Soon it was time for lunch. They had some nice decorations today on the buffet. But why are they all hearts?

The afternoon consisted of more relaxing, and more river scenery. Not much different than yesterday, though everyone is still very happy to see us.

Every now and then we'd stop labeling pictures, get up, and take a few laps around the boat. They had balloons up for Valentine's Day. I'd so lost track of time that it took me a few hours to figure that detail out...

Other passengers were out and about too, but not many. It was pretty quiet on board today.

A few more hours to our docking location.

Tuesday, February 14th, Cruising the Hooghly

Northward. So many children waving.

And every small town had a laundry / bathing / swimming area.

This guy was watching us intently but didn't want to wave. He and his cattle were out in the middle of a field of some kind of squash. His outfit reminds me of what the Masai men would wear.

More cows and rice fields.

There was a tea tasting, complete with snacks, at 3:00. So of course we went in for that, as we were very hungry. We tasted four different teas and learned a little bit about how they grow, dry, cure, and brew tea leaves.

One of the snacks was a cake with our itinerary outlined in frosting. I must say that our chef was a hard-working fellow who always tried to please.

At the end of the talk, they asked us to vote on our favorite of the four teas. It was nearly an even split among the four!

We had time for a quick look at the sunset, at 4:30. That is still hard to reconcile - a summer climate, but a very early sunset.

Cocktail hour was early tonight, as was the port talk. So no time to dawdle. We headed down to change for the evening festivities.

AmyR, Good to hear from you!

I caught some sort of horrible, horrible stomach thing the second to last day on the ship. 102.5 fever, horrible stabbing stomach pains and vomiting. I immediately started some Cipro and felt better. Seven days after the Cipro course was done, it was back. Off to my home doctor, more antibiotics and an anti-parasitic. Felt great. Seven days after the courses were over (yesterday), it's back. I'm kind of freaking out.

 

For anyone who's interested, here are my photos. There are a lot of them, I haven't finished culling them yet. It's an amazing trip for photographers, that's for sure.

How horrible! You need to find a good infectious disease/ travel med specialist ASAP.

Besides all that your pictures are amazing,

what a country of contrasts.

Kathy

Tuesday, February 14th, Cruising the Hooghly

A few more pictures before we went downstairs. I will say that I'm glad that I don't have to share my bathing facilities with a bovine.

We looked off the back of the ship and saw that our sampan had cut loose, and was heading for a dock (Gopal Ghat) on the side of the river. There were people there, seemingly awaiting its arrival.

Sure enough, it stopped to pick them up. They are the dancers for tonight's pre-dinner show, I think.

The Kali Mandir Temple was a few minutes north of here.

I don't know what this building is, and neither does Google. But I thought that it looked impressive. And the local ferry boat in the foreground is quite loaded down as well.

Another Hindu Temple, on the southern edge of Murshidabad. This is called Sahanagar Kali Temple.

We can almost see our docking location from here. I know that we're almost in Murshidabad, because I've been tracking our journey with the Google Maps app on my phone. The data connection has been strong enough to give me the names of the towns we're passing, and details of most of the landmarks. Lots of fun for a map geek like me!

Tuesday, February 14th, Overnight in Murshidabad

By 5:30, we were docked in Murshidabad. We got the spot right next to the Safaid Mosque complex. Will there be an early wake-up call?

All this time we'd been enjoying cocktail hour, and readying ourselves for the pre-dinner dance show. We went into the lounge for the port talk at the end of cocktail hour, and then came back out to the open-air deck to see the dance show. We hid in the back, hoping they wouldn't find us when it came time for audience participation.

But it made for lousy pictures. Oh well.

And it didn't work, because Chris got grabbed to go dance at the end of the show. Not too bad; it was a big group of passengers who were dancing, instead of them just picking a few poor victims. Still, I escaped and was able to catch it on video. That's available for a price.

Dinner time after the show. Here's tonight's menu offerings:

I started with the Traditional Indian Pastries.

Chris went with her version of traditional, and had the Shrimp Cocktail.

More food to come!