After a lovely family Christmas with the Paynes in Concord, we left for India on December 26th. For those of you who don't know, the main reason we made the trip was to go to our friends' (Brian and Maya) wedding. Will met Brian in his book group in SF about five years ago (shout out to the Scriblerus crew), and we were so happy we were included in their special day, and could make the trip to India work out. It helped that we had plenty of frequent flyer miles left over from our time living in Spain.
We traveled for many hours (via Montreal and Qatar... go figure) to arrive in Bangalore at 4:30am on December 28th, at which time we immediately fell asleep in our hotel, and rolled out of bed about 4 hours later for one of Brian and Maya's wedding events - the Nalugu and Mehendi ceremonies!
Both of these ceremonies are about preparing the bride and groom for their wedding day, and the first one we went to was the Nalugu ceremony. According to Brian and Maya's wedding website, "the word 'Nalugu' refers to a paste of turmeric, sandalwood and rice powder that is applied to the faces of the bride and groom the day before the wedding." Traditionally, this ceremony is reserved for immediate family members only, so we were very grateful that they included all of us!
Here's Maya getting sprinkled with rice after having the nalugu paste applied to her face:
And WP putting some rice and flower petals on Brian's head:
The bride and groom's tents were elaborately decorated with woven flowers, and each of them had a couple of young (flower-girl age) girls sitting with them to receive guests. In additional to flowers all over the tents and tables, women were wearing strands of woven jasmine in their hair, which smelled amazing!
These two ceremonies were held at a very fancy hotel in Bangalore called the Taj West End. From what we saw, the grounds were huge and there were many outdoor and indoor areas for events. Here's the entrance to the Nalugu ceremony:
After a delicious buffet lunch of South Indian food (including delicious dosas!), the group moved to another space for Maya's Mehendi ceremony. For this event, there were mehendi (or henna) artists there for the ladies making some very intricate and beautiful designs. Here's one artist working on my hand:
We actually ended up documenting the stages of my henna pretty well, so you can see how it changes over time. Here's what it looked like right after the artist finished. It is still wet and in the process of staining my skin:
After a few hours at the party, it was starting to get dry and flakey. After it dries completely, you are supposed to peel it off and overnight the stain continues to darken. Oh, and did I mention they also had a woman there giving out glass bangles to all the ladies? You can see them here:
And here's the finished product!
Now that it has been a couple weeks, my henna is almost gone. Looking at this picture makes me want to get it again! Even though it is not very traditional, a bunch of the American men decided to get in on the henna action with some simple designs. Here's WP getting his henna:
Maya's mehendi was beautiful and went all the way up her forearms. She also had her feet and lower legs done as well - incredible! During this ceremony we also learned that the artist hides the groom's initials somewhere in the henna, and on the wedding night he's supposed to go searching for them. That's one way to break the ice! :)
The next day we took a drive to the outskirts of Bangalore (about 90 minutes) to the wedding ceremony location, a really pretty outdoor area built for weddings called The Tamarind Tree. We arrived at 10am, just in time to take some photos before the 10:30am ceremony.
The entrance to the event center was decorated with woven flowers and these cute little leaf birds:
WP even broke out his Bermuda jacket for the occasion! Lookin' sharp:
Some of the other Americans who came for the wedding brought traditional Indian outfits to wear to the wedding. On the left is a picture of Claire, Javier, and Kate and on the right we have Justin, Javier, and Aaron:
All of the girls in our group got henna, and everyone's was a little different. So pretty!
The ceremony was a couple of hours long, with lots of music and priests speaking in Sanskrit. Periodically throughout the ceremony, Brian and Maya would walk around the stage and look out at us guests, like in the photo below. Though we weren't exactly sure of the significance behind all the parts of the ceremony (apparently even most of the Indian guests aren't able to understand all the Sanskrit prayers), it was beautiful. Brian's family from Montana did an awesome job participating in the ceremony, and seemed to really embrace these new traditions. Brian and Maya looked so happy and excited the whole time, and we were thrilled that we got to be there to share in their joy!
For much of the ceremony, the bride and groom were seated on the stage with close family lined up behind them. All around the stage there were woven leaves and this amazing hanging flower chandelier:
Both of them looked great in their wedding gear, but Maya's wedding hair was truly amazing. You can see it below in the photo on the right, she has jewels and jasmine flowers woven throughout her braid. Stunning!
After the ceremony there was a traditional wedding lunch served for all the guests. The plate for the meal was a banana leaf, and the servers would come by with buckets of different food and put a little dollop on your leaf. I took this photo pretty early on, but a lot more food ended up on my plate!
The meal was pretty delicious and all vegetarian! India is an awesome travel destination for vegetarians; it is so nice not to have to ask questions about the food, and just enjoy it! Meat is still available most places if you seek it out, but after all the times in Spain I would order a seemingly veggie dish and have it arrive covered in ham, India was very refreshing. One slightly challenging element of this meal was that we ate without utensils. Eating with your (right) hand is totally normal in India in general, but if you didn't grow up doing it, it can be a little hard. The little girl I was sitting next to kept chuckling to herself as my rice and curries kept dripping out of my fingers onto my leaf. After a little while we started getting the hang of it though!
After lunch, we had a few hours to hang out before the Western-style reception with music and dancing started. When some of the wedding commotion died down, monkeys started coming out! This was the first of many monkey encounters, but I'll save those stories for another post.
During this break time, there was also a puppet show. This adorable little boy was 4 years old and one of the few little kids at the wedding. I'm happy this puppet show came along when it did; he seemed to enjoy it, and it got him away from feeding bananas to the monkeys!
Later that night there was a mostly American crew on the dance floor. We had a great time and got home around 10pm. Twelve hours of wedding fun!
The High Court of Karnataka building across the street had a fairly common neoclassical architectural style (could have been in Berlin, or Boston), except fot the bright red paint covering the whole exterior, giving it a uniquely Indian flavor.
This construction area has some great signage, especially for anyone worried about the possibility of the Bangalore Metro being built by intoxicated children (they've got it under control):
After wandering through a park for a while, we stumbled on this "Government Aquarium." Since we had some time, we obviously decided to check it out. Adult entry was 5 rupees each, or 9 cents U.S. and children tickets were 2 rupees!
The aquarium was basically a big room with a bunch of tanks of normal fish, about a quarter of which were goldfish, but still! We had a good time:
Walking the streets of Bangalore is quite the experience. Most sidewalks are missing chunks of cement, and as foreigners, we were constantly being hounded by people trying to sell us stuff. Usually autorickshaw drivers who saw us walking would immediately go in for the hard sell, offering to drive us around for 2 hours for say, 50 rupees (about $1). Later in the trip we started internalizing this, and started taking rickshaws instead of walking. Being in a moving vehicle is also a good way to avoid people walking up/following you to ask for money or sell trinkets. However, on foot you see some cool stuff like this brightly colored mini-temple nestled on this normal city block:
My college friend Vivek's family is from Bangalore, so we got some good suggestions from him about places to check out. One such suggestion was to eat at Mavali Tiffin Rooms, or MTR. This place is a local institution, and is famous for their MTR brand spice products that are sold in grocery stores. When we arrived, there were probably about 50-60 people in the waiting room, and we were two of four non-Indian people. After a 45-minute wait, we got seated and had an awesome meal. For 160 rupees each (about $3), we had a full lunch, "all you can eat" style. The servers came around and continued to give us more food until we asked them to stop, so needless to say... I ate a lot of dosas, rice, and delicious vegetable curries. Here's WP in front of the restaurant, even though you can't really see the sign, I swear we were there!
The next blog post will be about our trip to Hampi, a World Heritage site filled with ruined temples in the jungles of rural Karnataka, an 8-hour train ride from Bangalore. We visited temples, monuments, saw more monkeys and even met an elephant!
