Weekend at the fort

This weekend some AES faculty went to the Neemrana Fort Hotel, an annual tradition. The hotel is about two hours away from Delhi, a place that advertises itself on its website as


a perfect weekend holiday spot for the city weary people who let their hair down and refresh themselves in the local colors of the land








And certainly there were some refreshing themselves in the local colors, though I don't know about the letting hair down part.

Colorful enough for you? Yes, as usual, I was the life of the party.

Here's another shot that explains why everyone wants to be my friend.

Yes, it looks kind of like my 8th grade birthday party when I thought it would be a good idea to take my friends to see the political thriller "Z" - of course, no one understood it. Everyone wanted to go home. My father took me aside afterwards and tried to explain what 8th graders were supposed to be like. I still can't relate well to others.


Despite my lackluster contribution to the social whirl of the weekend, it was a pretty cool place - at least as far as 14th-century forts go.

The place was as you might imagine a medieval fort to be: full of "secret" passageways and turrets and balconies. Hide-and-seek delight for young kids and house of horrors for their parents. But the pool seemed to keep most of the kids out of danger.

There were lots of peacocks living around the hotel, as befits a place where royalty lived at one time, and I learned something new: peacocks can fly. I always thought they just walked around zoos dragging their feathers along the ground and eating birdfood. But here they were . . . swoosh! divebombing us with loud battlecries that sounded like a mournful screech, "Get OUT! Get OUT!" Think I'm a bit paranoid, you say? Well, take a look at this:



At first glance, it just looks like your typical 14th-century fort castle hotel, you think?




But look more closely . . .

AHA! See it? the cannon? This was the view from our little balcony. NOW do you think I'm paranoid? Well, who cares what you think.

A few folks took lots of pictures. In fact, Eric, who has actually been a real photographer in a past life, took people out on photo-taking sessions. I told him that I was interested . . . well, maybe later today. Well, maybe tomorrow morning. It's too cloudy . . .it might rain. So, I remained untaught but, unfettered by that lack of training, I continued to take pictures.

This is a parakeet, even though it looks pretty big - but not only did we have a photographer, we had our official birder there, who persuaded me that this was NOT a parrot. I then tried to impress him with the fact that I had gone to the "Birding in India" website to help identify a bird. But when he asked me what bird I had been trying to identify, I did not want to admit that it had been a common crow, so I said that um, I couldn't remember what it had looked like. Yup, I'm sure I really impressed him.

No, really, the crows look different in India. They have . . . well, longer beaks!

The other activity that, ironically, kept most people busy at this historic site, filled with mystery and beauty was . . .
ZIPLINING! The company that works out of the hotel is called "Flying Fox" - and SOME people, well maybe most people in our group, tried it out. They zipped back and forth down the mountainside.

It's pretty exciting, I suppose, at least for the cowardly. Only the truly brave, though, were willing to try the REAL challenge . . .

That's right - the camel cart ride. As you can see, only those at peak fitness levels were willing to climb aboard.

While the rest of the faculty were diapered into their zipline harnesses and pushed along like some laundry hanging on the line, we few . . . we happy few (sound familiar, Shakespeareans?) endured the bumps and bruises and near falls that were a part of this hair-raising experience.

And dangers abounded. First, we ran into some wild animals, but I managed to fend them off by blinding them with my camera flash.
Next, we barely escaped with our lives when we passed an Al Quaeda training camp that was disguised as a secondary school. Notice how they dressed everyone in white so that they would be impossible to tell apart.

Fortunately, we were able to get by disguised as construction debris on a camel cart. We used the children as camouflage.

Finally, the excitement behind us, we reached our destination: a 14th-century (yes, sorry, it's the same historic period I mentioned earlier) "step well." People had told me that this was the big sightseeing event at the hotel, and I had NOT been impressed. A well? So what - you stand around and look down into some dark hole with a rope hanging into it?

But it wasn't like that at all.

Wow, people must have had a lot of time on their hands to build a well like this. Apparently, those 14th-century folks built it with lots of alcoves so they could live down there in the hot summers, though I would think it would be a bit scary when you rolled over in your little alcove and fell 50 feet into the water.

One sad fact today is that the water table has fallen, well, I'm not good at estimating distances, but a REALLY LONG way in the last 20 years. It used to come up to the level that you see my friend Debbie standing here (at least part of her)
and now it's just a mudhole far below.
No railings here . . . of course the kids wanted to peek over the edge.
I tried to set a good example by staying a few yards back, a totally selfless gesture.

It was a sight well worth seeing, though sobering. According to Keir, one of my fellow camel-carters, it's one of the "best" step wells "of its kind" (?) in India.

OK, pause for a moment of cuteness.
Here are the three young children that are my new friends: Zoe, Kayla, and Brendan:

Some of you may not believe that I can make new friends, but if they're young enough not to discriminate . . . .Zoe is on the left - she lives next door to me (you may remember her from the monkey story, when she protected me), and Kayla and Brendan are Debbie's children.

I had forgotten how much fun playing could be until I was playing with Zoe's dollhouse (yes, she was playing too) last week and suddenly realized that I had told Anna I would call her back "in a minute" about 30 minutes earlier. As Anna said, I'm neglecting my own children as I befriend new ones.

Ah, but the scenery was beautiful. I managed to get a couple of pictures just as the sun was setting.


Pretty nice, huh. The hotel lights all go on at night so it's lovely no matter what direction you are looking in.




So what were all of these teachers doing as the sun set far in the west and peace settled upon the land?



Some were sitting on various balconies overlooking the village below, in a scene reminiscent of one of my favorite books, Dr. Seuss's Happy Birthday to You - you know, the one with the strings of hot dogs and the fountains?


And then there was my energetic friend Sarah, setting the tone of the evening on another balcony.
She wasn't the only one, though. Behind her were many others; relaxing and having a glass of wine. . . or two.



That's our director of business operations handling the business and operations task of opening a bottle of wine. And next to him is fellow Minneapolitan Denise, who will always remain my first New Delhi friend, since I met her before I even got here.

But back to Sarah. We went to watch a dance performance on a terrace near the hotel reception area. Most of the hotel is outdoors - only some of the dining areas and the bedrooms have roofs - I guess in medieval times they didn't worry about the inefficiency of single air conditioners vs. central air.

Sarah is amazing. We all feigned disinterest when the dancers started inviting people to join them on the dance floor. I didn't have to FEIGN anything; I knew that it would not be a good idea if I tried to do some of those belly dancing moves. But Sarah went out there and matched the dancer move for move for quite awhile - I couldn't get out there fast enough with the camera to catch all of her moves, but here she is, gettin' down with her partner.

Unfortunately, she somehow sprained her ankle in the midst of her fervor. She didn't notice it, though, until she was going to bed and saw that her ankle was completely swollen. She just kept right on going, and going. You can also see my friend Spring in the background (the other white person). Her last name is Trail, and her mother's name is Sandy, her sister's is Robyn (she's here too), and her other sister's is Brook. There are probably a lot more names up that alley (or down that trail, ha, ha).

Myself, I went for a more candid shot.
None of those dorky touristy shots for me, thank you. And, no, I did not wear the same outfit the entire weekend, just yesterday afternoon and evening.

To leave the fort hotel, we had to walk about 1/2 mile through the village. Little children were following us, yelling, "Hello. One pen?"
Huh? Apparently, Keir explained (he reads a lot of travel guides) that the Lonely Planet guide for India told people about 20 years ago to give kids pens, not money, to help them get an education. But they did that without actually consulting with the village elders, who did not want the children begging for anything, pens or no pens. But the kids have not been retrained, so they still ask for pens. Lonely Planet readers know to refuse them firmly, while the rest of us have no idea what they're saying.

I decided to shake the outstretched hands, which turned into my shaking a whole lot of hands of kids under the age of 10. They all asked me my name, so I asked them what theirs were too. They were surrounding me by the time I got to the bus - it was actually great fun. I thought to myself, "Now I know what the Beatles felt like on their first tour of the US!" Well, sort of.

Sigh - yes, the weekend was relaxing. There were the views both up and down the mountain. There was the spa, where I had a head, neck and shoulder massage, followed by a mud pack for my hair (Zoe found it uproarious that they put mud on my hair) and a shampoo and yet another short head massage before drying my hair with a towel. If there's a nursing home somewhere where they treat you like this, sign me up.

And, of course, for those unsatisfied by views or massages . . .
there was nighttime ziplining.

Now here's a totally gratuitous photo of me - there's no excuse for posting this except that I'm figuring that the mysterious blog followers whose names I don't recognize are actually either Matt Damon or Denzel Washington, and I know they would like a photograph of me for their dressing rooms. If you guys ever want me to autograph the picture for you, just call me in New Delhi. I'll see if I can fit you into my schedule.