Back to the beginning again

Well, we thought that it was about time to take a step back and share some more stories and photos from our travels in South India...so here we are right at the beginning again, where the adventure started, in Chennai, on the south-east coast of India.

Here we experienced our first taste of what were to become typical Indian experiences...the oft-difficult search for a suitable hotel (it took us three attempts on the night we landed to find somewhere decent), the delicious food (always easy to find), the warm and friendly people (just mention you're an Aussie and you have lifelong buddies) and of course, the colourful and crazy street life...

This is a photo from our first major venture into Chennai, always colourful, always chaotic.

After an hour or more in a taxi, we finally came across this hotel for our first couple of nights in Chennai. We later found a nicer place not far away. It is very rare for Indian hotels to have single or twin-share rooms, so Shanks & Christian became room buddies and Astrid & I did likewise! Lucky none of us snored!

India is the land of very funny signs...we were intrigued by the last point mentioned above!

Does this face look familiar?

Astrid doing her very own masterful impression of an Edvard Munch classic...

Apparently she used to practice as a child!!

Me No Smell!

Whilst dining in a Chennai restaurant, Christian suddenly declared that he never smells and showed us his armpits as proof...we rechristened him 'Odourless Man' from that night on (and I hate to say it, but he was right...in a moment of madness I sniffed one of his socks)!

Astrid pretending to have gastric pains...Shanks wondering why on earth he agreed to come on a trip with two raving lunatics...and it was only day two!

In Australia, if we see a sign saying 297km, we safely assume we'll arrive three hours later. In India, you double your estimation and then add some...in the end it took us eight hours to cover the distance!

Most evenings we would kill some time with a box of sweets...

and a pack of cards...

Shanks would usually pass out first without giving us a chance to see the card-shark skills inherited from his parents!

And so ended the Chennai & Trichy experience...as we headed off for another long road trip, this time to Kodaikanal.

And life goes on...

On Friday night, we managed to cram 12 friends into our house to share with them some of the photos from our recent travels. Most of them were Baha'is from our local area and as we are currently observing the fasting month in the Baha'i calendar, everyone brought with them loads of delicious food so that we could all break the fast together. We started with a few photos of the Lotus Temple in New Delhi and then some of the Baha'i Holy Places we visited in Istanbul and Edirne, before we worked our way through a very-edited chronological tour of our pilgrimage. It was great to share with our friends some of the stories and feelings that we had experienced not so long ago, not to mention the sharing of so much mouth-watering food!

Here is a last set of photos from Haifa, before we get started on posting some very belated photos and stories from India. Incidentally, our friend Astrid, with whom we shared some very memorable moments in India, is down to the last few days of her stay...she left Indore yesterday, where she has been volunteering at a Baha'i-inspired Institute that trains and educates hundreds of women from rural areas and empowers them with the skills and knowledge needed to support themselves and their families. She heads now for the Ajanta caves (containing Buddhist sculptures dating from around 200 BC to AD 650) in northern Maharashtra, then flys to New Delhi where she will also visit the Baha'i House of Worship, before departing for the UK where she will meet up with her sister and dad and have a well-earned rest as well as a nice, hot shower (something she has been deprived of for the last 3 months)!

The Shrine of the Bab, approached from one of the gardens to the east

A view of the magnificent Universal House of Justice building from the steps beneath

A beautiful skylight in the entrance hall of the International Teaching Centre

An ornamental peacock adorning the cactus gardens adjacent to the Shrine of the Bab

View of the Shrine from the terrace directly above

And another view...

Ornamental planter on the terraces

And the Terraces once more...

Since having arrived back at home almost two months ago, we haven't had a chance to travel anywhere outside the city-limits together and we are both craving a change of scenery. This change of scenery is likely to come in the form of some visitors from the east...We are keenly anticipating the arrival of Rachel, Adrian and our little nephew Max, from Melbourne around mid-April. It has been about a year since we last saw them all - far too long - so we are hoping to have plenty of time just to catch up, re-aquaint Max with his long-distance aunt & uncle and make a trip to Wongan Hills (where we have a 140 acres of land and hopefully a caravan soon as well)!

What else is happening? Well, Lorraine is busy at school with her all-boy class and a pair of identical twins that give her plenty of cause for amusement by the end of the day (especially when they show definite signs of confused identity!). Andrew has just been back to Wongan Hills for another clearing sale and has started cleaning out the caravan in anticipation of towing it up on his next trip to Wongan. There are an additional eight chicks new to the backyard, a multi-coloured lot with a bantam mother. Another five chicks arrived yesterday - crosses between a Rhode Island Red & Isa Brown. If they turn out to be particularly good egg-layers, Shanks is planning on naming them Wongan Browns and starting his own breed of chook! Beside that, life is going on as normal...we are looking forward to the end of daylight-saving next weekend and following the action from the cricket World Cup (where we can enjoy barracking for the minnows against the heavyweights of world cricket...go Ireland and Bangladesh!).

Well, until we have more news, that's it for now!

Behind the scenes

A couple of weeks ago, we were treated to a behind the scenes view of the restoration and maintenance of the Baha'i Holy places in Israel. The talk, held at the Baha'i Centre of Learning in Perth, was given by Kamran Yazdani who is the Manager of the Restoration and Maintenance of Historic Buildings Department at the Baha'i World Centre, where he has been serving for 16 years. The audio-visual presentation he shared was one that he initially prepared for the 700 or so staff serving at the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa.



While we were on pilgrimage, we were told a bit about the restoration process at some of the Holy places, but we didn't fully appreciate the enormity of the work undertaken to restore and maintain these buildings. There are teams of dedicated staff serving at the Baha'i World Centre, each in their specialised fields. The gates shown above are an example of the many things fabricated in the various workshops, some items taking many months to complete. Being next to the coast, corrosion is a major problem and all steel work and fittings are being replaced with stainless steel wherever possible. Having done some blacksmithing, I appreciated the workmanship in pieces such as these gates - little did I know that they were forged from stainess steel which is much harder to work with than wrought iron and takes at least twice as long.

The prison cell of Baha'u'llah in Akka before restoration

The prison cell during restoration

The prison cell after completion of renovations

The building known as the Western Pilgrim House on Haparsim Street in Haifa

The Western Pilgrim House after completion of renovations

In the years between the two photos above, the old Western Pilgrim House had deteriorated to the point where restoration involved replacing the entire roof and floors and all the fittings.

All of the renovations undertaken of the Holy Places involve quite extensive research in order to be able to restore the buildings as closely as possible to the way they were during the time of Baha'u'llah. Often this involves painstakingly removing layers of paint, or newer layers of plaster or render in an attempt to find the original surface. Sometimes only fragments remained, which were then analysed to exactly reproduce the type of plaster or render that was originally used. On occasion, unknown features were revealed such as an original patterned stone floor or some ornate plaster work. Early photos are a precious resource as they often give clues as to how buildings and gardens originally looked. The garden in the courtyard of the House of 'Abdu'llah Pasha (a significant house occupied by Baha'u'llah's son and appointed successor, 'Abdu'l-Baha, for thirteen years), below, was rebuilt using one such photo.

An early photo of the House of 'Abdu'llah Pasha in Akka

The House of 'Abdu'llah Pasha after restoration and with newly replicated garden

Many hundreds of people are diligently serving at the Baha'i World Centre working on these projects. Some, such as a dedicated team of painters, serve for a few months each year, while others are there from between eighteen months to many years. So a very big thank you to all those who give their time restoring and maintaining these Holy Places.

The earth from above

Well, it's been a while, but we're back again. This time, some photos with a difference...all taken from altitude. Who won the battle for the window seats? In the end, we settled the matter fairly reasonably and mostly just took turns (though I still think Andrew got more turns than me)! Enjoy the view!

Leaving Perth on the 7th December headed for Singapore. You can see the city skyline in the distance and the South Perth foreshore in the foreground

Flying from New Delhi to Istanbul on the 2nd January. Andrew estimates that this photo was taken while we were flying over Pakistan.

You can't really make out very much in this photo, but the colours of dusk were nice! Taken as we flew above Iran on our way to Istanbul.

Leaving Istanbul for Tel Aviv on 7th January, we had a chance to view the very busy port area on the eastern side of Istanbul, the Sea of Marmara.

Crossing over Turkey we passed some mountainous terrain with a dusting of snow...

...but it got colder than that! A large part of southern Turkey was covered in snow...we were glad that we had only visited the north!

A lake amidst the snowy scenery

And then we had left the shores of Turkey and flew over the Mediterranean...

All the time just waiting for our first glimpse of Israel and hoping to see Haifa from the plane. Alas, it was too cloudy for that. As we flew over Tel Aviv preparing to land, the ground glistened with pools of water and black clouds rolled away in the distance. That was the first and last we ever saw of ominous weather, much to our relief!