Anand to Vadodara (Baroda)

We wrapped up our much needed R and R on Wednesday morning. Whitney and I were able to spend a few hours at the pool for some color, so hopefully we won't look so pasty in our photos. I hear it's pretty chilly in the States right now. Must be tough! The pyramid in the photo was a little strange. Apparently a room for meditation, it had a single plastic lawn chair centered under the peak of the pyramid. Groovy... After our midtrip rest break at the hotel we stayed with our hosts in Anand for only one day and night. It was very unfortunate scheduling that had our rest time taken out of our Anand visit, but we made the most of it.

We visited two sites before the main event Wednesday. The first was a hospital that, through matching grants with other Rotary clubs, is able to perform eye surgery to remove cataracts, and to also insert artificial lenses. It's a prestigious enough hospital that they receive paying customers, which also helps finance additional surgeries on the poor. The doctors routinely visit area villages for eye exams, which is how they identify their surgery candidates. Truly great work. Also, I'm having enough trouble with uploading photos, so I'm not going to delete this one, despite something happening to my hair, and Amy looking away...

Our next stop was the Vallabhbhai Patel and Veer Vithalbhai Patel Memorial. I had never heard of the brothers, and I thought I knew a good bit about Indian Independence. Vallabhbhai Patel was later known as Sardar Patel (Sardar means leader) for his roll as the Iron Man of India. He was instrumental in Indian unification after Indian Independence, as the princely states still existed and had to be coerced into joining the India instead of splintering. Sardar was the third man behind Gandhi and Nehru, and would have been chosen as India's first Prime Minister, but Gandhi decided it should be Nehru. The memorial was a huge building with an auditorium, and had banners with quotes from him and about him, above news articles and his and his brother's personal history. Around Anand and Baroda is where all of the Patels come from, so nearly everyone we run into is a Patel. It's amazing how regional last names are here.

Rotary club of Anand Round Town has for the past 16 years put on a song, dance, and arts competition for the areas schools, which host 50,000 students. It's a big deal, and is televised regionally to over 100,000 homes. It's a labor of love that gives these students an avenue to express their talents, at great expense to the Round Town club. We were invited onto the stage to address the students and to say a little bit about ourselves, so hopefully we can get a copy of that video! The photo is of their Michael Jackson tribute.

My host's son, Harsh, was the emcee for the event, and was a natural, despite professing to be nervous. You can see my host Himent and his sone Harsh posing with me in this photo. We are trying to convince him to do grad school at Georgia Tech, as he is finishing up his undergrad in Mechanical Engineering. Himent and I stayed up late philosiphizing, and discussing the differences and similarities of our two cultures. I'm dragging a bit today, but I'm glad I got to make the most of the one day.

We drove to Vadodara this morning, a city the British had anglicized to Baroda. Like Bombay becoming Mumbai, Baroda is becoming Vadodara again. The city is bustling, but it's one of the cleanest we've seen in India thus far. It was once the seat of the state of Vadodara, and had/has a Maharaja. We were fortunate enough to visit our first palace in India here.

The name of the palace is Lukshmi Vilas Palace, if you want to google or Wikipedia it. The photo doesn't do the scale justice. I had to walk about 400 yards away to get the whole thing in one frame, and the tiny little people in the grass below the center are about 100 yards from the palace. The tower is 300 feet tall. Truly massive.

The current Maharaja and the family live on the second floor, and tours only cover the ground floor. It's a beautiful structure in need of a serious renovation, but since it's still private, the family hasn't been keeping it up. There were cracked windows, and grass was growing out of the joints in the stonework. We couldn't take pictures inside, so this is all I can show you. You'll have to visit yourself to see more. The audio tour had clips from the Maharaja talking about the difficulties in growing up in such a large home, such as it taking thirty minutes to get his tea served because the servants have to walk so far. Man, it's a rough life.

We aren't sure on the history, but I think that when Sardar Patel forced the unification of the princely states into India shortly after independence from Britain, The Maharajas got to keep their estates and titles, but no longer ruled. I need to get a book on laying out the formation of India. It's very complicated.

There is a nicely manicured golf course around the grounds of the palace. I believe Bill gets to play it tomorrow morning, and personally I hope he shanks every ball, lucky jerk. :-) I'm going to try to upload a video of the palace, as one photo isn't enough, and it should appear at the bottom. This will be our first video, if it works, as we've been bandwidth constrained to say the least. Oh well, it failed... Here is another photo from closer up.

We are here Vadodara until Sunday morning, when we will take our first and only train ride to Surat, the diamond capital of India. I can see the emails from Karen now, and it just got expensive! Near Vadodara is Champaner/Pavagadh, a UNESCO World Heritage site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavagadh. It wasn't on the schedule, as the Vadodara club has a lot of projects for us to see, but they are very graciously trying to fit a visit in and work with us. Hopefully it will work out, as we certainly don't want to miss out on any Rotary projects.

Well, it's getting late, and I need the rest. This darn post took over two hours because of the photos. Hope you enjoy the update!