The impetus to start this blog came from my need to share personal perspectives and information after our tour of the Middle East last March, a Eudaimonia “human flourishing” experience. My account of that tour started and briefly paused in Jordan where what we saw was creativity, generosity, and a positive anticipation of the future under a popular ruler. I haven’t covered yet the wonders of Damascus, the excitement of Beirut, the marvels of the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar’s inspiring focus on culture. I plan to resume my stories very soon though have to rethink our assessments in light of the events that began in Tunisia on January 14 and set off great turning points in the region and quite possibly in world history. Watching them unfold these past weeks, after having been sensitized by our exposure to the region, got me thinking about the filters we use when we travel. Though hard to avoid the political undertones when visiting foreign lands, my filter, and this blog’s focus is art, architecture, cultural travel, and the arts of living, demonstrated by the name I chose for this site: Art Experience. I don’t believe that aiming to share interesting, inspiring, positive encounters and information is frivolous, it is just a slice of life. However, I do remember with concern the many wonderful individuals we met, the friends we made during our tour, a tour that probably could not have taken place had we planned it for this year. All of us who participated wish them peace and stability.
My last bulletin was about our snowy, twinkly holiday stay in NYC, and my lengthy absence from posting is due to having been on the road again. An unexpected opportunity presented itself and I couldn’t resist: India. I had every intention to cover my adventures but barely had time to even sleep on the intense one month, hop-hop-hop trip, covering south to north: Chennai/Madras, Madurai, Bangalore, Mumbai/Bombay, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Agra, Varanasi and Delhi. Now, back home and nearly recovered from major jetlag, I will try to describe my experiences of India “recollected in tranquility.”
I traveled with Louise Nicholson, a British art historian and author currently living in New York. She is an authority on India where she spent her honeymoon in 1980 and has since returned more than 200 times accompanying travelers and doing research for books and articles. Most of her 27 books are about India, including the National Geographic Traveler, and she was also associate director for the acclaimed six-part TV series The Great Mughals. Over the next few weeks I will quote her often and try to share the many remarkable things she exposed me to in a country most often described as: “Chaotic, bamboozling, intoxicating, crazy, exasperating, squalid, daunting, overwhelming – India is all these things, and more.” (Intro in the Lonely Planet)
The high season for visiting India is from October to February. In April summer kicks in and it gets progressively hot and humid, and July to September is the monsoon. My month of February and a week of March had pleasant weather; even a bit cooler at times than I expected.
I flew from Los Angeles via Dubai. I chose Emirates, the airline we took last year to the Middle East. About seventeen hours from LA to Dubai and then after a comfortable and short layover, on to Chennai, gateway to India’s Southeast, another three and a half hour flight. Emirates is considered the world’s most successful airline and is now the largest. Well deserved success story. Which other airline offers passengers great food and service, French champagne in soothingly generous quantities, the choice of 600 radio and 150 television stations, tons of new release movies from around the world, seats that convert into flatbeds in business-class, and even limousine service to and from the airport? They have my loyalty wherever they fly even though my flight back was less pleasant, crowded with many crying children, and included a baffling fifteen minute bus-ride when transferring in Dubai to the LA flight at three in the morning…
To be continued: Art and culture tour of India – Chennai and Madurai
