Val here.Israel has unearthed amazing ancient sights - well able to rival any of the sights we've seen on our travels in Cambodia, Jordan, India, Greece, and Egypt. It should be the place to go for anyone interested in ancient history and archaeology.
At Bet Sh'an we saw a huge city, complete with amphitheatre and temples. For me this city was the most amazing of all - with its huge Greek columns lining the cardo, bathouses, lavatories, ancient altars, and bridges. A multitude of stairs lead up to the Tel shown in the background of the first picture.
Caesaria: we marvelled at the huge stadium which allowed King Herod and the citizens to view chariot races.
At Bet Alpha we admired an ancient synagogue with a mosaic floor decorated in grapes, and animals and the astrological charts - making concession to Jewish sensibilities with a section of mosaic decorated with a Menorah and a shofar. (We have a representation of this part of the mosaic in ceramic tile given to us by George Sandrouni, our Armenian friend). We laughed as an entertaining film explained that the synagogue could not afford the master, so took his apprentice to do the mosaic floor. The apprentice copied representations from the houses of wealthy people and of churches to complete the floor, not always being in the least true to the acceptable Jewish symbols.
We visited Zippori in the western lower Galilee, a whole city unearthed with beautifully preserved mosaics that festooned wealthy homes in Roman times - a city with another amphitheatre which has been reconstructed to allow for concerts during the summer. Remains of this magnificent city include a system of streets, public buildings, dwellings, a central market, bathhouses, a synagogue and churches, mainly dating from the Roman and Byzantine periods, and a fortess and a church from the crusader period.
One of my favorite places is the town of Akko in the north of the country: we walked down the magical alleys of the city, and listened to the stones tell the stories of history, the battles, the love stories, the excommunications, and assassinations. We enjoyed the clever dramatization in the ancient bathouse which helped us imagine those times. We ate wonderful St. Peter's fish as we looked out at the harbor and the ancient wall that surrounds the city. We ate (arguably) the best hummous in all of Israel in its ancient market.
Housed in Ginosar, at the kibbutz where we stayed for five days, is an ancient Galilee Boat dating from BCE. It is part of the Yigal Allon Centre - which in addition to stories about the ancient boat, tells the modern story of the life of Yigal Allon.
And, of course, the excavations of Jerusalem. More about that in a later posting.
Val here.In a previous posting I stated how wonderful was the culture and intellectual respect that characterized Jerusalem. Well....then again....
There is a rift between ultra-orthodox (Haredi) and secular Israelis in Jerusalem and the day that made this so obvious was the day of the Gay Pride parade. Let me describe our adventure.
June 20/07
This evening Arieh and I headed from Mivasseret Zion (our dear friends Bobby and Offra are hosting us there) to Jerusalem to show our support for the Gay Pride demonstration and after to go to theatre. We felt it was important to go to the Gay Pride demonstration because it had been so difficult for it to be arranged in this seemingly modern city. The orthodox are loudly against such a blatant flaunting of G-d's law. Their disapproval must make it so very difficult and lonely for gays in this city who are conscripted into an army system but yet face such discrimination within their community. Happily, the Gay Pride parade near Kikar Rabin in Tel Aviv faces few such problems. (The picture below translates as "Enough of Homophobia!")
When Arieh and I arrived on the outskirts of Jerusalem the bus stopped. Everyone got out. The roads in most of downtown Jerusalem were blocked by police or army. There were two buses horizonally blocking one street, barriers on another, a policeman redirecting traffic at another. Of course, the fact that there were no buses and virtually no taxis or cars meant that we had a long walk ahead of us. How wonderful it was to walk the streets of Jerusalem with no cars on the roads! But is is not like Shabbat - the stores are open so I could purchase fresh squeezed orange juice and a Magnum dark choclate ice cream bar from my favorite vendors.
As we walked we passed a huge demonstration by the Haredi community a few hundred metres away. It is because of them that the roads need to be closed. They were blocking Yaffo Street - the main downtown street of Jerusalem. Their bullhorns were intoning prayers of mourning.
We passed several groups of military youths in khaki or blue or grey uniforms, guns slung over their shouldrs ready, if necessary, to help keep order. We passed police and border police barring roads and showing presence. We even passed 25 riot police sitting at a square three blocks from the action, with their acrylic shields at the ready, if called, to control violent behaviour. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court stated that there was no reason the demonstration could not go on, the police had stated that they would be ready to control the situation. Well, they certainly had the numbers of personnel to do it!
Because we were not be able to get to the beginning of the parade on time, we walked to the end of the route to meet our dear friend Racheli Amir-Himel. She stood amongst the crowd, sporting a pink heart balloon, beaming, happy to be showing her solidarity for the marchers. It was a large, happy and friendly demonstration. There was little in-your-face clothing as there would be in Toronto, just a pink lace umbrella and a man with pink hair. The sky was festooned with two garlands of balloons and several demonstrators carried signs. The permitted area was defined by barriers with pleasant army officers letting people in and out when necessary. Two young women protested the march by searing our ears with piercing whistles. The journalists were delighted. At least there would be some minor confrontation to report. One of the marchers faced the woman and her whistle and declared, "we are the same people, I love you, we have been through so much together as Israelis, you are our people, why are you doing this?"
The angry whistles soon stopped - I'm not sure why, perhaps because of his words, perhaps because the police stopped it. We joined the demonstators for a while to show support. The majority of Orthodox protesters, it seemed, blocked traffic and deplored the demonstration from that end of the city. One American Orthodox we passed as we walked expressed her thoughts to her daughter, "Well, they have to have their pride, but it shouldn't happen here. Jerusalem isn't just any other capital city!"
We then went to our play - about the McCarthy era and the naming of names, The Value of Names. Two former friends meet after 30 years; Leo Gershen had betrayed Benny Silverman at the 1950 House UnAmerican Activities committee. The men discussed disloyalty, politics, friendship, and when to forgive.
Was its theme in any way connected to the earlier effort of gays to state who they are in their own country among their own people? I'm not sure. Something to think on.....
Well worth reading the following article describing the parade: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873728.html Have a look at the responses as well!
Val here.The day after our visit to Yad Vashem we went to the Armoured Corps Museum at Latrun.
We faced another wall of names of the deceased. This wall lists 1,100 sons and daughters right up to the end of 2006 who have died since 1947 in their tank batallions fighting battles with Israel's unfriendly neighbours.
Another day takes us to the Palmach museum of Tel Aviv. It is a remarkable interactive museum which takes you through the lives and deaths of the young Israeli fighters of the Palmach in (1948 and after) who were desperate to keep their new country's civilians safe. If you remember your history, the day after the UN voted for partition, Arab irregulars started shooting in earnest. There was a siege of Jerusalem for months - anyone who took the road up to Jerusalem was in danger of being killed. The Palmach took the responsibility of finding an alternate route later named the Burma Road, so that food and supplies could be transported to the besieged citizens of Jerusalem.
Interestingly enough, this leads back to the Armoured Corps Museum. This museum and memorial inhabits the fort that the British built and used to monitor the road to Jerusalem and surrounding roads. When the British left in 1948, the Arabs occupied it. The location and the safety of the Latrun fort enabled theArabs to shoot at vehicles trying to reach Jerusalem. The fort was not liberated by the Israelis until the '67 War (in spite of 4 tries and much loss of life in 1948) and the Burma Road (and its replacement) had to be used until 1967 to get to Jerusalem. Now the fort has been made into a memorial and museum housing many of the older tanks used in past wars. It is surrounded by quiet, safe roads and villages.
Despite the continuing loss of life in Israel this country has music and singing and Yiddish theatre and Jazz and film festivals. Immigrants are embraced and refugees are permitted to enter. Israelis know their songs and honour their singers; they sing along at every opportunity knowing the lyrics to many of the songs written from 1948 to the present. And though there is a vivid and sometimes realistic fear of a bomber or a ketousha, life carries on - just as in the ghettos of Kovno and Lodz and in Theirenstadt Jewish theatre lives and shabbat candles are lit. Bookstores are filled with hundreds of books published in a language that was modernized less than 100 years ago.
Everyone now living in Israel must know or know of a young person killed, and yet they go on with determination and conviction, courage and necessity. Israel will prevail because it has for thousands of years and it has to. And because of its beauty and modernity it is almost impossible to believe it has been constructed on the destruction of so many.
Val here.Israel has redesigned the Yad Vashem Memorial which honours and gives name to the six million individuals that were murdered by the Nazis for their crime of being Jewish. The building is remarkable; the long cement structure looks like a huge boat. Inside one walks a long gruelling passage through this horrific period of European History to end up on a large patio overlooking the beautiful hills of Jerusalem.
Arieh and I have returned to Yad Vashem on 4 separate days. The rooms follow themes: the loss of human rights in Germany, Kristallnacht, deportations, the enforced ghettos (Lodz, Kovno, Warsaw), the transports, requests for allied response (inadequate - virtually every safehaven country in the world turned their backs on the Jewish citizens begging for safety), the gas chambers (including a huge truck that moved around and gassed prisoners with carbon monoxide poisoning), partisans, righteous gentiles, forced labour camps, forced long marches, liberation. In the penultimate room entitled "Room of Names", a huge well of tears is surrounded by all the names of the perished the museum has documented; They have listed more than three million names despite the massacres of entire families and entire villages.
There are also other memorial rooms: to the one and one half million children murdered by the Nazis and their ilk, a memorial room and candle which lists in bold type the names of the concentration camps, and a gallery of the artists of the Shoa, many whose art was teminated when they were killed at Auschwitz or on forced marches. After a Red Cross visit to one camp the artists were tortured and killed for giving art to the visitors which might show the truth about the camp.
Throughout Yad Vashem, individuals on videotape tell their stories. Partisans, hidden children, forced labour camp survivors, survivors of the Lodz ghetto where they had to deport all children under 10 and all the old people, survivors of selection - they tell their stories - so matter-of-fact until they come to the loss of a family member or a friend where their eyes well with tears.
The last room is a room of meditation - quotations are projected on the wall. One sits in this sombre room and tries to figure out why.
And yes - Jews who are sad need to eat - Yad Vashem has one of the best lunch cafeterias in Jerusalem. Moreover, there is a wonderful book store on the premises.
There is so little one can say about those millions of lives wasted, lost to the world. What makes a perpetrator, what makes a continent of indifference, a world of indifference, what makes a righteous person? Why are there so few?
June 7/07
Val here.
Picture this. Arieh, Susan Zimmerman, (who joined us for a couple of weeks), our guide Ilan, and I are standing high in the Golan which overlooks the intersection of the borders of Jordan, Syria, and Israel. It is stunning up here. As the sun begins to set, we see the golden hills that reflect in the Yaroun? River below as well as the organized orchards of the kibbutzim south of the Sea of Galilee. We leave the viewpoint to drive down a narrow road to yet another viewpoint. Our guide assures us that we need not heed the sign "Military zone: Keep out."
Arieh bravely manoevres down the narrow road. We stop to view the spectacular view of the meeting of the three borders I already mentioned. A white SUV drives up the hill - a long discussion in Hebrew ensues about 'locked gates'. Next, a khaki military hummer presses up the hill. Three soldiers in military fatigues, guns at the ready, make no attempt to tell us of danger as they drive on. A few minutes later, a white Mazda 3 speeds up - the window opens - a man shouts at us:
"Isn't this the most awesome country you've ever seen?", closes his window, and drives on.
It gets me thinking. Yes, this is the most awesome country I've ever seen! Why? Let me count the ways. Today in the Golan, we saw borders from 1948, 1967, 1973, and 1992. The people of Israel adjust and make bloom whatever is their space. Their determination, intelligence, sense of history and of the aesthetic has made this strip of desert into an oasis. If it sounds cliched - well - there is no better way to describe it.
But always are remembered the dead who fought or were martyred in this land. The Golan inhabitants, for instance, have made sure that the importance of the Golan to Israel will not be forgotten. Sights overlooking scenes of the 6- Day War and the Yom Kippur War assure we are aware of the young men who lost their lives protecting the Golan and hence the rest of Israel from Syrian invaders.* There is a memorial to 12 young soldiers who lost their lives in 2006 in the Second War in Lebanon - killed when a missile hit their gathering point. Photographs of vibrant young men are posted whose memorial signs read: died 10-08-06. I can only think of the grieving families who will return here this year on the day of their Yahrzeits.
The Golan dwellers haven't enough voters to hold a seat in parliament, our guide tells us, so they make sure to inform visitors of the importance of the Golan to Israel. They make excellent arguments for retaining the Golan.
* Suggested reading about the Yom Kippur War: Adjusting Sights by Haim Sabato. Read that and you won't think war is so organized. You also will wonder why the mistakes of 1973 were repeated in 2006.
Val here.
From Israel, it is easy to travel to Petra, in Jordan, the beautiful ancient sight made more famous by the filming of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as well as Lawrence of Arabia.
Let me start from the beginning. Racheli, our Israeli friend and host and tour director, found an article in a Hebrew Journal lauding a wonderful desert camp in Wadi Rum, Jordan - famous for its beauty and nearness to Petra. Stunning quiet, tracts of sand, and rock formations surround a bedouin-style camp providing reed or canvas tents for adventurous guests. Arieh contacted the author of the article who happily accepted a deposit for the desert camp. Everything is included - the pick up from the Jordanian border at Aqaba, transfers to Petra and to Wadi Rum, all meals, walks in the desert, and warm Bedouin hospitality. And yes! It was all true!
Our son Avidan, his friend Yonni Friedlander (he is ON the camel in the picture below), Arieh and I took the bus down to Eilat. The next morning we crossed the Jordan border to be greeted by our driver. We were escorted by taxi - only after a welcome coffee on our way - to Wadi Rum and the Palms Desert Camp (a.desertworld@gmail.com). It was hot, dry, and exquisite in its simple beauty. We sat in the long open Bedouin style living room drinking mint tea and coffee and playing cards (FYI anyone?) Lunch was a sumptuous meal of salads, hummous and meat. How we enjoyed the quiet day, lolling on the comfortable long couch, desert sands surrounding us, enjoying the peaceful time together playing cards, talking and laughing. At 4 o'clock the guys went for a walk with a guide - I avoided the heat and read my book. At 6:00, the boss, Houda, came and suggested he drive me up the hill to join the boys and see the sunset. From a windswept desert hill we looked down upon the soon to be opened museum about the life and filming of Lawrence of Arabia. Each night we slept in a tent made of reeds woven together, the wind (and sand) sifting in as we slept on a mattress on the floor in great comfort and peace. Avidan and Yonni each had a canvas tent and a real bed - warm, but cosy. What a remarkable stay! 
The next day - off to Petra. Petra is "an archaelogical, anthropological, and geological phenomenon" (from http://www.desertecotours.com/) For me, it is an aesthetic revelation. The huge buildings dug into rose desert rock which date from the 6th Century B. C. are gorgeous.
From Wikepedia: Petra was the impressive capital of the Nabataean kingdom from around the 6th century BC. The kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire in AD 106 and the Romans continued to expand the city. An important center for trade and commerce, Petra continued to flourish until a catastrophic earthquake destroyed buildings and crippled vital water management systems around AD 663. After Saladin's conquest of the Middle East in 1189, Petra was abandoned and the memory of it was lost to the West.
Petra was rediscovered in the early 19th Century by an explorer and was named a World Heritage Site in 1985.
All you need to know about Petra - and wonderful photographs are available on the internet. Google Petra and you will get virtual tours and more studied and accurate information than I will ever be able to give you. What can I add? That Petra is dramatic and stunning, not only for the man-made carved buildings, but for the striated colours on the rock. You walk through sharp rock canyons that expose the break in the earth caused by an earthquake. That the horse carriages, camels, and saddled horses, though we didn't use them, add to the atmosphere: you feel like a visitor from ancient times. That it is another wonderful place along with Angkor Wat, that you should be sure to visit if time, money, and inclination lure you to visit the most dramatic ancient ruins of the world. And that Avidan and Yonni were wonderful to be with - their enjoyment and wonder enhancing ours; their recollections of the movies and television photographed here were more vivid than ours.
Val here.
Yes - there is fire power in Jerusalem - but it is celebratory. The openings of new creative spaces or the celebration in honour of Jerusalem Day (can you believe it is 40 years since the Six-Day War!) are celebrated with colourful fireworks. The venue of the Jerusalem cultural festival or the jazz festival pop with fireworks in the evenings.In addition, it is now fashionable to include fireworks to celebrate bar mitzvahs and weddings. Fortunately the only gun powder the Jerusalemites are seeing recently is fireworks.
The Jerusalem buses and cafes are teeming with people! The ever-present security personnel, relaxed but ever watchful, remain at each entrance as the only reminder to the waves of bombings of the last few years. Let me describe this interesting city.
Ah - how to describe Jerusalem - the holy city. Is not like the holy city of Benares where pilgrims dunk themselves in the holy waters of the Ganges and give alms to honour the near nude ash-covered sadhus that line the ghats. No - Jerusalem is definitely not at all like that. Religious pilgrims come here in dignity and walk in wonder as they admire the stone buildings and the ancient parts of the city unearthed by recent archaeological digs. In Jerusalem the docent will be teary-eyed as she reads the scriptures of the Dead Sea scrolls. She will infuse indignation and wonder at the horrors as she leads her groups through Yad Vashem (the museum of the Shoah or Holocaust - see my later posting for more detail).
We (Biker Susan Zimmerman, I and Arieh) 
went without shoulder covering to the Kotel
(the western wall of the 2500-year old Temple of Solomon - a most holy Jewish sight) and a beautiful Ethiopian Israeli guard comes up to offer a shawl intoning in perfect English with an air of practicality "We're happy to do this. That's what we're here for". We donned our shawls to walk to the wall and touch the ancient stone wall stuffed with tiny pieces of papers with wishes and prayers for Hashem.
Jerusalem - at once practical, dignified, modern, and yet holy. The deep respect for other religions and for the intellect is evident at the Holy Sepulchre - a Greek Orthodox Church from where Jesus is said to have been resurrected. Jewish and Christians alike come to admire the church and wonder at the power of history. Several groups of Israeli soldiers visit the sight with their guide. The guides describe the Christian tradition with respect and accuracy. We see groups of Israeli soldiers and school children touring many important sights - Jewish and Christian - learning about the history and country they represent and fight for. Every day we see two or three buses with the "Taglit" sign. These are young adults from North America on birthright enjoying the country, each other, the guides, and the Israeli soldiers that join them on their 10-day tour of Israel.
George, our friend the Armenian ceramicist (you've seen our wonderful ceramic tables built by Arieh) took us on a tour of the Armenian quarter including the Armenian Church, Monastery, and School. This is another quarter of the old city of Jerusalem where people live, run their businesses and thrive. Old Jerusalem is open for touring and for business. Only the Mosques are not available for visit by non-Moslems - in my view unfortunately. Our welcome into a Mosque in Dubai recently, and to a Mosque in Tunis years ago was both interesting and a strong connector to that religious community. Although tours go into the temple mount, non-Moslem tourists are not permitted to enter the Mosques. It seems to me that a more open attitude to visitors might improve the public relations of the Moslem community in this part of the world. Oh well.
Jerusalem and Israel have so much more than holy sights, excavations, and museums. It is a vibrant cultural centre. Most nights we've been to concerts - from gorgeous free classical music at the Brigham Young Centre which overlooks the city - to Yehudit Ravitz (a popular Israeli chanteuse) on Kibbutz Na'an, to a students' dance and theatre performance at a college in Tel Aviv. We also heard our friend's son, Nadav Amir-Himel (remember that name!) 
play a Mozart Piano Concerto brilliantly at the Music Department of Tel Aviv University. We attended an English language play, The Value of Names, at the English language theatre here. They put on 4 or 5 plays a season. Last week was the Jerusalem Festival, this week a theatre and a jazz festival.
Our favorite locale for concerts is the Institute for Middle East Studies at the gorgeous Brigham Young building at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. Behind the performers, the city of Jerusalem is part of the event. The vibrant young pianist Yaron Kohlberg - remember his name- performed with a cellist and a bass in front of the backdrop of the city. A concert of Israeli folk groups - our Holy Blossom Singers would have loved it - also performed here. What a joy to listen to magnificent music as the sun sets over Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is at once modern and ancient. A new modern Israeli city has been built on the city outside the walls of the old city. Much has changed in this city since I was here in 1991. It is well serviced with roads, bridges, highways, and public transport, has many hotels and restaurants, juice spots and hummous and falafel joints, and, of course, coffee houses with at least as many choices as North America. The shops are modern and yet there is the colourful Mekhane Yehuda - a market with the best fruit, vegetables, spices, and pastries in all of Israel.
The people have been polite (excluding the tourist bureau and the post office) and urbane. They don't greet you, but when you ask a question they happily give you information in Hebrew or broken English as required. Oh! And so clean! We don't seem to have to do a footwash several times a day as we've been doing in other countries. Here in Jerusalem our feet are clean no matter how much walking we do in our battered travel-worn Mephisto sandals. And the sense of humour! How easy to get a wisecrack, a wry answer, a laugh, from these people, my people.
Val here:
Arieh and I paid the Kumar brothers tourist agents of Delhi to use their car and pay a driver to take us on a 15-day tour of Rajasthan in western India. For those planning a visit - we paid about $30 (US) a day for car and driver. Sharjee, as he told us to call him, became our keeper and protector as well as our driver. Along with driving came warnings, "Do not take the flower from anyone near the ghats of Pushkar!" "Don't talk to anyone on your way - they're out to cheat you!"
Another service Sharjee provided was hotel searchings "I'm knowing where older people like you wish to stay - you don't want to be staying with young people - all they do is smoke marajuana and make noise." He assured us that the hotels he recommended were excellent, " be looking at the decoration - everyone likes that - there is no place like this hotel anywhere in the city. You'll be very comfortable here". And he was usually right.
But Sharjee had his own agenda. "Please madam (that's me!) just give me 20 minutes of your time. I know this shop is far too expensive Madam but you only have to stay for 20 minutes." I obliged him once - on entry no less than 6 salesmen descended the elegant winding staircase to regale me with the superiority of their inlaid marble table tops, $100 table cloths, carpets, wooden carved furniture, etc. I barely got out of there except that it was 8:00 pm and the salesmen, just a little more than making a sale, wanted to go home. During this whole episode, Arieh peacefully perched on a chair and suggested they "show Madame" while he read his book.
Sharjee did manage to get us lower rates at certain hotels and introduced us the the "truck shop" version of stops in India where the masala chai is the best in the world; though the food is not always as appetizing. The meals, often rice and dahl or palak paneer, are accompanied by as many fresh chapattis as you can eat. One needn't eat until the next day: the offerings are filling and plentiful. And there were always interesting people who wanted to "talk" with you or have their picture taken.
The best hotel that Sharjee introduced us to was the one near Pushkar. The gorgeous setting entranced us even more than the mystic ghats of the totally vegan, spiritual town of Pushkar. Our hotel room overlooked rosebushes - rows and rows of them. Each evening, two women in colourful sarees collected the rose petals to sell to people going to temple. The ladies never stopped talking as they plucked, except to offer me a rose and stem in welcome. In the back of our hotel room was a balcony overlooking a row of mango and mangrove trees - a great host for local birds - and then a fence on the other side of which was a chrysanthemum farm. Could one want a better setting! He also selected the hotel in Ranakpur for us - which was lovely with its pool and garden setting despite a rather difficult and inconsistent manager.
Sharjee's worst selection was Newton Manor in Jodpur. The Manor is owned by a proudly Christian host who insists there is no other place like it in all of India! He is certainly right about that! Memorabilia at its best consists of antique lamps, grungy antique carpets and a 1947 Vauxhaul parked in the carport. At its worst - a stuffed tiger, several stuffed antelope and buffalo heads - and a poor little stuffed head of a cat-like civet which with raised ears watched us eat dinner and breakfast. Fortunately dinner and breakfast were excellent and better yet, we met two young women travelling together: Australian Celeste and British Natalie. When Celeste lived in England she met Natalie and now that she's returned to live in Australia the two women reunite each year at some remarkable place to explore the area and enjoy each other's cojmpany - this year it is Rajasthan, India. We had great talks during our meals together and hope that some way, someday we'll get to visit again with one or both of these interesting women.
Unable to face another night at the Manor, we moved to a Haveli Hotel (much to Sharjee's chagrin) and kvelled in a huge gorgeous room in a haveli stye hotel with walkways all round - the style the Maharajahs favoured. It is rather like the colonial style house in the south of the United States with the huge veranda, except that rather than facing outside, the varanda is inside, facing a large airy courtyard.
Sharjee was most pleasant unless he got into his "medicine" (whiskey) in the evening and groused about our choices in hotels which he felt were inferior to his choices. To be fair, the management of our hotels were often rude to the drivers (so he told us) or gave them terrible accomodation. It can't be easy to see your "master and madam" move into huge air-conditioned rooms with use of a pool while you stay in a stuffy windowless room with restricted access to the hotel.
It is a quandary - at least for me. Sharjee is determined to do his "duty" to drive and protect us. We are doing are best to be good masters - to pay and direct him. As I see it, it is an awkward relationship - but a common one in India.
Two books that describe the dilemma of the master/servant relationship in India rather well:
Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald and Three Stories by Amit Chaudhuri The picture below is the menu at one of the MacDonalds in New Delhi. There is chicken but no beef on this menu.
