Neemrana

I and Vishal went for a weekend to the Neemrana Fort Palace near Alwar last weekend. As I am not supposed to travel long distances, this sounded like the best option we could find near Delhi. Normally, staying at a five star resort is not my version of a holiday at all. I think you should spend less on accomodation and more on travel and eat what you can get. But considering the fact that I get breathless climbing a single flight of stairs, currently my travel options are limited. We left in the afternoon after I finished my scheduled surgeries on Friday and it took us three hours to reach there from Daryaganj. The Gurgaon toll road and the Jaipur highway were pleasantly free of traffic in the afternoon. Vishal is currently thrilled with the GPS navigator on his phone and I have to admit its kind of fun watching the blue dot (us) slowly eat up the road and move towards the red dot ( the hotel).

The hotel is located just a couple of kilometers off the highway but those two kilometers wind through a little village and are pretty rough and bumpy.I do think the Neemrana people could put in a little effort to maintain it better.  After parking the car, there was a pretty steep winding walk to get to the reception with me clinging to the metal railing and watching the luggage laden porters whizz bye. Oh the bygone era of taking steps two at a time! We stayed at the Gujarat Mahal on the first day and in the Gagan Mahal on the second day. The Gujarat Mahal was located in the central courtyard and was a pretty large room with a huge marble lined bathroom. What I liked most was a marble stool  in the bathroom where you could sit down and take a bath. Cool if you are ten kgs overweight in a lopsided fashion. Here comes the doozy ! No T.V.! I thought Vishal would cry and drive us back post haste. However, he manfully gritted his teeth and got through the weekend by downloading loads of apps and games on his i-phone.

Child rearing tip: Teach the kid how to read at an early age. Its the best survival skill ever. You can get through anything from hours in a Doctors waiting room to eating alone at a restaurant if you have a book to hide behind.

Dinner was a buffet served in a hall on a different wing of the hotel. Getting there involved me navigating dozens more flights of stairs. The food was decent but nothing to rave about. The breakfast spread was much better. They had the usual spread of cereals, fresh fruit,juice, varieties of bread and fruit preserves, two kinds of eggs,porridge and a vegetarian dish (poha on one day,idly the next).The swimming pool is open air and located on one of the courtyards. The pool is a little small but a nice place to splash around in especially with kids. In fact, the guests primarily consisted of young couples with kids. Oh and I spotted a couple of super nannies on holiday. I now have some burning questions I need answers to. Does the nanny get to eat at the 1000 Rs per head buffet as well and where does she sleep ? With the kids or are there special nanny rooms ?

Our room on the second night was right at the top of the fort, up another gruelling flight of stairs. Great views and a strong fresh breeze though. This room was tiny and probably used by the night sentry on look out duty in olden days. Reminded me of those hill station cottages with odd nooks and crannies. We took the audio guide tour of the fort and realised there were a lot of hidden stairs and courtyards and the fort was a lot bigger than we had thought initially. I have never taken an audio guide tour before and realized that I am that nerd who is not satisfied until I see every corner and window and portrait that is mentioned. The owners need to credited for the painstaking restoration of the fort. However, somehow I didn’t feel the majesty and romance and the vague melancholy of the past. Some of the atmosphere has definitely been lost in the process of building swimming pools and conference halls.

If you are an Indian headed to Neemrana, I would definitely recommend that you opt for one of the medium-high budget rooms and plan a stay of two days at the maximum. The Firangs might fancy a longer stay because of the novel experience of staying in an actual fort. A single nights stay is also a good option for travellers driving in from Delhi.

Adventure sports in the form of zipping on cables suspended between the valleys is a big attraction and looked like a lot of fun. It is organized by a company called Flying Fox and is something I would definitely try on a repeat visit.       

Books and Brothers

I just finished reading Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, the third part of his trilogy following Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. Teacher Man is nowhere as compelling as the first two books and one vaguely gets the feeling that Mr.McCourt just ran out of steam and churned out a third book to capitalize on all the buzz created by the first two. Also the book is really dry due to the complete absence of any mention of his family life and especially his colorful brother Malachy.
He really should take a leaf out of Gerald Durrels book who literally made a fortune lampooning his illustrious brother Laurence. I have been meaning to read Laurence Durrels Alexandria quartet for a while now just to get a less jaundiced view of the man. Never got around to it because the book jackets looked vaguely dull. Someday, Someday !

Booked !

I have been scrutinizing various city hospitals with a beady eye from a labour and delivery point of view. To state the obvious, South Delhi is dotted with various corporate hospitals of the shiny lights and polished floors variety. After careful consideration, I decided to give the stand alone birthing centres a miss. Call me paranoid but if I rupture a vessel and start haemmorhaging away, I’d rather have an intensivist in attendance than an aromatherapist.


So, I went and booked at one of the city's older multi speciality hospitals which is posh but not too pink. I have been a little worried about how much of a dent this whole exercise is going to make on my pocket, but I was pleasantly surprised. Even a labour suite where you can deliver in the comfort of your own private room costs about as much as a flat screen tv. And the difference in cost between a normal delivery and a caesarean section is that between a 42” and a 46” inch screen. While relieved that bringing my offspring into the world isn’t going to condemn me to the poorhouse, I still think that Indian medical professionals are among the worst paid in the world. Come on, how logical is it that the guy who routes your money to the Cayman Islands is paid in crores while the one who operates on your eye gets a few thousands ? Toss me a fat cheque when you next see me for the force of my arguments. Also, I could really do with the cash for the above mentioned reasons.

Of Flatulent dogs and omnipresent nannies

Bruno with macho collar - with effect ruined by tinkling pink bell


So, our labrador, Bruno, has been having an upset stomach for the last couple of days. He is lethargic, a little off colour and has been having episodes of diarrhoea. But the most interesting development is his loud, unselfconcious and incessant farting. Now, I’ve never put much thought into the topic of dog farts but it does lend a new aromatic dimension to watching reruns of ‘ How I met your mother’. I set out to investigate the cause of the above mentioned upset stomach and was informed by the cook that we’ve run out of his regular dog food and he’s been wolfing down human chow for the last couple of days. Now that order has been restored in the world and he is back on Pedigree( Vegetarian, of course) hopefully the mushroom clouds arising from his nether regions will be a thing of the past.


Which brings me to the second part of my post. How dependent are we on our domestic servants ? I am of course, an extreme example. As a child of that glorious institution, the Indian Railways , I find it perfectly normal to live in a house ( or envy inciting colonial Bunglow ) with more domestic staff than family members. Having shrewdly plotted to prolong above shiftless existence, I now live with my in-laws and assorted domestic staff responsible for everything from bringing me my morning Bournvita to giving Bruno his weekly bath. The thing to be noted here is of course that most of these people are paid to do the work which I should be doing in order to justify my existence in the world. One apparently indispensable member of the Delhi household seems to be a young girl of indeterminate age who is fashionably referred to as the Nanny or more realistically as the Ayah. She is pretty easily spotted in most public places but especially in malls, parks and restaurants. Select Citywalk especially seems to attract disproportionate numbers on weekends. Note that as the Delhi nannies are a far cry from the Degree in Child Psychology weilding Park Avenue nannies, they are rarely left alone with their charges. The entourage usually consists of mummy and daddy in front trailed by Nanny with Chikki/ Sweety / Pinki in tow. In cars, mummy and daddy enjoy uninterrupted conversation in front while Nanny wrestles with an unhappy Chikki/ Sweety / Pinki in the back.( Yes, I rudely peer into peoples cars ) In restaurants, mummy and daddy fork sushi while Nanny monitors Chikki/ Sweety / Pinki throwing a tantrum on the floor. Truly ubiquitous. I ,of course would have been oblivious to the existence of the Nanny species had not the question of my acquiring one of my own arisen. Being seven months pregnant and utterly incapable in most domestic duties, even I shudder at the fate of my offspring. For now, I am taking the moral high ground and have decided that I can dispense with the sevices of the omnipresent nanny. Under the implicit agreement that diaper duty will be shared by my husband and two sets of weirdly enthusiastic grandparents to be. Let us toast to the future and hope I am capable of tolerating my own flesh and blood through the course of a Happy Meal without the support of super nanny.