The Henna Party

Yesterday was a big day.  It started off with the traditional henna party held at aunt Pami's house. Henna is the traditional decoration of the bride but the guests get small decorations on their hands as well if they choose.  The house and yard were beautifully decorated with strings of flowers and leaves.  The entire back yard was under an organza canopy.

The bride and groom were then seated in front of a flower laden window.  A bowl of tumeric was placed in front of them and one by one the guests took turns rubbing a bit of tumeric on their arms and face.  Some of them took money and waved it over their heads and dropping it in their laps.  

Following that the henna artists started applying the henna to the hands and feet of the bride.  This took about an hour.  The guests were decorated after the bride was finished.

Then it was my turn.  The guests just get the hands done.  Such fun.  

As the henna dries it flakes off and leaves the orange underneath.  In the next 48 hours the color will deepen to a brown color. Because this is done a couple of days before the wedding by the wedding day it is at its best.  In a week or two the color will eventually fade away.

Get to Know the Guests Night

As it turned out there was another party that I was not aware of at Aunt Pami's house again.  At this party we got introduced to all of the neighbors and the rest of the family whom had recently arrived.  I was told it was just a casual gathering so I wore a simple dress that I had brought along.  Well yesh, all of theses ladies showed up in their beautiful saris and I felt like a moth.

The company was great and the ladies were very welcoming.  Honestly Pami is the best hostess.  The next day there was another get together at her house, this time sit down luncheon was served.  Tonight is the big banquet.  It is a bit more formal and I have a traditional dress for that.  It is not fancy but they assured me it would be great for this party but I am sure that I will feel underdressed again.

The Jewellery Party

Yesterday Jas's aunt had a jewellery party for the ladies.  She had a lady who sells jewellery come over to the house.  The stones are semi-precious.  She had garnets, sapphire, peridot, amethyst and ruby plus pearls.  I bought a 4 strand of rubies with matching earrings and a 4 strand string of amethyst for about $150 total.  Of course they are not really great quality stones but the price was sure good.

Half way through the demo the men showed up.

Aunt Pami negotating the price of jewels....friend Bhavan looking on.

Bhavan, Jas the second and aunt Nicky trying to decide which scarf to buy.

It was a very fun afternoon.

Chandigarth

We took a flight to Chandigarth with Tyler and Jas.  As it turned out a friend of Jas's and her mother were on the same flight so when we arrived there were 6 of us.  Jas's aunt had sent 3 cars to collect us so we had a bit of a motorcade to take us to our hotel.  We are staying at the Mountain View Hotel.  It is nice but the cleanleness factor is not up to Canadian standards.  No bed bugs in this one though.

We are here for 5 days so the ladies all took off to go shopping for clothes the first evening.  By day 3 I had bought an outfit for the Sangeet which is the party before the night before, an outfit for the wedding and a sari for the reception in Calgary.  It has been an amazing experience.  The clothing is beautiful and everything is so comfortable, kind of like wearing PJs.

In one of the shops you come in and sit on a sofa and the men start pulling fabrics down and laying them out for you to look at.  A lot of these fabrics are pre-printed with patterns on the front, maybe a matching strip for the bottom of the sleeves and pants and they are beautiful.  I only wished we had places in Canada that I could wear such garb.

Below is a picture of the fabric shop.

I was a bit like a deer in the headlights, not having a clue what was happening.

Then we went over to a lovely shop and I picked out an outfit to wear to the wedding.  This outfit is not too fancy but has to be comfortable as we have to sit cross legged on the floor for the duration of the ceremony.  This is what I ended up with.

Finally I decided that I should get a sari for the ceremony in Calgary. the reception is where people really get dressed up so I looked for a special one.  I had been avoiding saris because they are really 6 yards of fabric that is wrapped around you and that is an art.  Then I found out that they can be stitched so that you don't have to wrap them, you can pull them on like a pair of pants.  I think that they are very beautiful so I decided to get one.

For the saris you go upstairs and again sit on a couch while the men show you the fabrics.  When you find one you like they wrap it around themselves so that you can get an idea of what it will look like.  I picked out a very beautiful one but it will look better on me than on him, I hope!

Departure day

Well we left Calgary on September the 10th. Our trip to New Delhi was an arduous marathon of 27 hours.  First we went Calgary-Vancouver leaving at 11:00 Am, that was pretty decent.

We had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Van and boarded an Air China flight for Beijing which would be a gruelling 11 hour flight..  I had bitten the bullet and booked myself a business class ticket.  That turned out (in my opinion of course) to be a great decision. The accommodation was amazing and Air China treated me really well.

 There was a 5 hour layover in Beijing and then another 7 hour flight to New Delhi.  We arrived here about 1:00 AM but by the time we cleared immigration and found a taxi to the hotel we did not arrive until closer to 3:00.

When we got to our room we checked for bed bugs and by gum there was one in our bed.  We refused to stay there, in fact I didn't even want to stay in the same hotel but they moved us to a new room and at 4:30 AM we were in no position to argue more.  I stripped all the bedding, and after checking that room we went to sleep on just the matress covered in a sheet.  I had a light airline blanket that I gave Butch and I wore a pair of PJs.

In the morning we went for a walk along the strip. It is hot but not unbearably hot.

We just spent the day at the Hotel, there was no real place to walk as there were no sidewalks, you just had to walk along the side of the road with the cars honking to tell you that they were coming.  It turned out to be hotel after hotel so I checked out some of the others as we walked. I hit paydirt with the Star Hotel which was connected with the chain that we had originally booked with.  They took us to their new part and offered us a lovely room for the same price.  We then made sure that Tyler and Jas had the same level of accommodation.

They arrived at 4:15 so they will be tired today as they have to get up at about 9:00 to get ready for our flight to Chandigarh