For my construction friends

So in our drives around the city I keep snapping (or trying to as we whiz by) pictures of interesting construction techniques.  Some (most) of these would not fly at home. L continues to laugh at me as I take these pictures and say, I have to show these to people at work I say.

Bamboo is used for scaffolding a lot in Hyderabad.  I didn't see any actual wood planks here (did in Sri Lanka but not Hyderabad).  There were these "stores" along the roadside selling the bamboo.  Some of the larger buildings were using steel scaffolding, some not.

 This is the view of a construction project from the playground at the mall that was near us.  That's T's head watching the work.  The second picture below is a close up a man using a jack hammer to remove concrete from a column.  I'm not sure he's wearing shoes and there is definitely no eye protection. The platform he was standing on looked a little suspect too.

 Miscellaneous things:

I never did get a picture, but several times I saw men digging trenches usually next to the road, I'm guessing for some type of utility connection based on where they were.  But it was usually one guy in the hole, dug to a depth where you could only see his head sticking out, and was probably as wide as his shoulders.  Others stood around and watched him, but I'm sure there wasn't any supports in there.

Here are some other random things:

No covering on the sand when transported, and filled to the top!

This one was in Agra, leaving the Taj Mahal.  The men were chipping the facade off the brick. Note the lack of eye protection and working on flip flops. 

Delhi in 5 hours!

So on our (Kids and mine) last day in India, we met up with my parents in Delhi. They offered to keep the kids for the day at the hotel and hired a driver and guide for L and I to tour around Delhi.  The kids loved this, as K put it, they swam from breakfast to lunch and then from lunch to dinner.

So L and I put what we would see in the guides hands and pretty much left it with we need to be back at the hotel around 3, you can pic what we see.

First we arrived at the largest Mosque in India  Since L was in shorts they provided a wrap to put around his legs and I had a frock to put on. Shoes needed to be removed and left outside. During special prayer days there can be 20,000 to 30,000 people in the mosque.

After the Mosque the driver arranged for us to take a Rickshaw (bicycle not auto) through the Old Delhi market. WOW. At one point in an alley the width of say 10 feet, there was a car, two motorcycles and our rickshaw trying to get through. The car was going one way, and the other three of us was going in the other direction.  The market was interesting for several reasons.  Each section of the market seemed to be dedicated to a different type of store, there was a paper section, a book section, a wedding section (sari's, fabrics, lace, etc).  There were tight quarters, there was a mess of electrical wires, there were monkeys.  And the noise!!! Wow!! We've mentioned before that there's a lot of honking, but usually we were buffered being in a car, not in the rickshaw, wow was it noisy.

A view of the market from the Mosque. 

Snack time for the monkey among the crazy amount of wires. 

Next we headed to the cremation place of Mahatma Gandhi.  There is an entire park around that area now, and various other Hindi Politicians have been cremated in that park.  Cremations are no longer performed there.

After that we headed to Humayun's Tomb. The former mogul Emperor is buried here along with his family, his general and his wife, his barber (he has his own tomb - he was the only one allowed near the Emperor with a sharp instrument so he was a very trusted person) and about 150 graves of other people that no one knows who they were.  The Emperors wife built the tomb, and left lots of room for smaller tombs at the base of the overall tomb.  All the arches at the base of the tomb hold 2 to 6 graves in each.   First Persian influence, there are gardens made up of 4 quadrants all around the Tomb.

The upper level housed the mogul emperor, his family and general
The lower level houses the graves of the unknowns.

Built in the red sandstone and marble that is prominent in many structures. 

One of the rooms in the upper level of the tomb. 

As Delhi is the capital of India, the foreign embassies are there.  There's one street that has all the embassies on it, along with a couple of roundabouts.  Apparently whenever a foreign dignity is in town they decorate that road and the roundabouts with the flags from the visiting country and India.   The Governor General of Canada was visiting India so the road, the roundabouts and the area near the government offices were all decorated with the Canadian and Indian flags.

Random things from this week

We've ordered pizza from Dominos for the kids this week, check out this tracker after you order online....

What are they carrying on that motorcycle, oh its a mirror, of course it is...

Oh and then on the way to somewhere in the car there were 5 random black cows running down the road.

My day of cooking lessons and learning recipes

I had a very full day of getting cooking lessons/recipes from two great families in our apartment complex. We have lots of snacks/treats and they each sent us home with samples of their family meals for the day to try (egg curry, drumstick (a vegetable) curry, dal, rice).

First we started off at a friend house making chikki. This is a jaggery syrup mixed with groundnuts (peanuts).  the key is getting the syrup to the right consistency before adding the freshly roasted peanuts.  Other chikki I have seen in stores have till (sesame seeds) in them too.

The larger pot is the jaggery syrup, the front one is for a veg curry. 

This is the end product, then you break it up. 

This is what the kitchen looked like. She had milk that she was making yogurt/curd and butter from, and check out all those tomatos. 

This is us with her maid who wanted a picture with the kids to send to her kids. 

This is the egg and potato curry they send us home with to try. YUM.

Then after some time at the pool we headed over to one of T's friends houses to learn to make laddos (from Chotto Bheem the Hindi cartoon the kids are obsessed with) and murkulu.

Here's me and T's friends Grandma making laddos.   This is the last step where we roll the laddos. You put Ghee (clarified butter) on your hands so the dough won't stick and you roll.

These are the end product, about 70 or so I think we made. 

 Here's some of the murkulu, they end up as savory crunchy treats. You make this dough, then it is pushed through a press into oil and fried.

okay I can't get this picture to turn correctly.
This shows the press , the dough and the oil pot. 

 

The finished product. 

These are the finished products for the day.....

Fun quotes of the day while we were at T's friends place.  I asked his mom (who provided me with lots of recipes to try) what the difference between a pickle and a chutney is (both are sauces). 

Her response: A pickle is like a husband and a chutney is like a boyfriend.  Pickles you can keep for a long time, but chutneys are only good for a day or two.  (Pickles are essentially sauces that are shelf stable for months)

High Tea at Falaknuma Palace

Today the kids and I along with a friend we met in Hyderabad (from Seattle) and her son ventured to Falaknuma Palace (currently operated by Taj Resorts/Hotels) for High Tea.  We had the choice of English or Indian, veg or non veg.   We choose English and non veg in hopes the kids would eat some of the goodies but my friend and I did enjoy some masala tea (chai tea).

We were treated to High Tea on the balcony of the Jade Room. The Nizam or the Prime Minister (I can't remember) loved Jade so there is a room painted a light green, with green furnishings and carpets. Very nice greens.  The balcony is the second floor in the picture below.

The kids looking out from the second floor balcony over Hyderabad. The Palace is situated up on a hilltop. 

Here are some pictures of our High Tea.

Our goodies. The green and chocolate cake at the bottom was EXCELLENT!

Enjoying our tea time!

Then we went and played with the canons at the front of the Palace.

This was K's reaction when she saw the horse drawn carriage pull up.  We didn't ride in it, but classic reaction.

 Oh did I forget to mention, we all went in our Indian clothes.