Welcome to The Wedding Travelers!

Hey everyone!

Right now we're in Jalandhar, smack dab in the middle of our Indian wedding. It's been crazy so far, and we're enjoying every minute of it. There will be some photos coming up really soon, we just need to find free time, which is ever so scarce during a wedding :)

For now we'll show you some random photos and videos from the past few days!

Here are a couple videos from Amritsar that we didn't get to post, due to incredibly slow internet connections.

First, a little video from the Golden Temple. We’ve shot a couple of Sikh weddings in Edmonton, and I’ve always deeply enjoyed the ceremonies because of the use of fantastic music. At the temple it was no different, as 4 men sing and chant continuously, reading from the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib. Here’s a video to give you a sense of the music and the setting.

Amazing isn't it?

And then for something that can only really be described via video: the border closing. We showed you photos, but honestly it's not enough. It was the most hilarious sight, really. The guards would stamp their feet, kick their legs insanely high, and then speed walk like-you-wouldn’t-believe towards the border. I’m so glad Rob got a great video of it going on, because it’s something that photos alone just can’t properly describe.

Now for the photos let's start off with Holi. Holi is a huge festival in India. It is known as the Festival of Colours, and basically consists of people running around, throwing paint and coloured powder on each other. It is celebrating to signify the coming of spring. Generally people can get pretty wild, so we kept a low profile, but did manage to get a few shots of the crazy young men covered in colour.

Then we made the drive from Amritsar to Jalandhar. Here are a few neat photos from the drive.

I find this absolutely hilarious, and I think many of my friends will as well. But if you don't get it, don't worry. :)

It's crazy how the men will ride on top of buses speeding down the highways.

And they share the roads with cows, bicycles, motorbikes, and even huge tractors!

Then we made it to Jalandhar, and met up with the family hosting the wedding. We've met them before in Canada, so it was absolutely fantastic to see so many familiar faces! And one of the funniest things is that they have a copy of the very first album we ever made (which is still the album we show to all our clients, believe it or not!). It was a pretty weird situation to see all these people here in India looking through the album that we have looked through hundreds of time back home.

Then while we were waiting we were taken for a tour of the nearby Kidney Hospital, where the father of the bride works as a kidney specialist. It was kind of weird, to be taken to all the Restricted Access areas of a hospital (including the ICU, NICU, Blood Storage Room, and the Kidney Stone Crushing Machine Room....no, that's not the technical term). But it was very interesting to see what an Indian hospital is like (albeit a private Indian hospital). We just took a couple of quick snaps but here ya go anyway.

Then while we were waiting to head off to a function, I took a quick shot of Rob wearing some snazzy new clothes he got for the wedding. Doesn't he look great? And for only $31 Canadian for the shirt, pants, belt and shoes. Rock on.

And finally we hopped in a car, and were driven to a wedding, hosted by friends of the family we are staying with. Honestly, I can barely even describe it, it was mind-blowing. More than we had ever seen or expected. First off we saw what we had dreamed of seeing - an elephant at a wedding!

Then we walked inside and just couldn't believe it. It was enormous, with probably around 1000 people there.

The groom is the one with the tall feather on his turban. 

Just crazy.

So there's a few photos to tide you over until we get some up from this wedding. Hope you are all doing well. We'll be back home in less than two weeks now, and honestly can't wait. We really miss our cat, Scooter!!! Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen??

Who wouldn't miss that cutie?? (Photo credit to Steph, my sister, who sent us this while we were traveling. It's currently our desktop background, and we say hello and give him pets all the time.....yeah we really miss him!) 

Category: Adventures

Tags: amritsar, border closing, elephant, festival, golden temple, holi, india, photography, sikhism, travel, weddings

After the intensity of Varanasi and Calcutta, I’ll tell you that both Rob and I were feeling very drained and overwhelmed by India. I’m not ashamed to admit that I allowed at least some of my expectations of this country to be shaped by the Bollywood movies that I so love to watch. And so far no one had been spontaneously breaking out into song and dance in the streets. I was worried that perhaps India wasn’t going to live up to all these expectations I had.

And then we arrived in Bombay.

(And before I go further with that, you’ll notice that sometimes we call it Bombay, and sometimes Mumbai. Sometimes Calcutta and sometimes Kolkata. And these slight name changes go even as far as Pondicherry now becoming Puducherry. Essentially the government is trying to eradicate the lingering traces of English occupation, by changing the names that the British gave these cities. But most of the locals use the old names, the train stations and airports still have the old designations, and it’s all just one big muddled-up confusing mess. So I think we’ll just refuse to take sides, and use whatever name feels right at the time. Forgive me if you get confused :)

Our first moments in the city were rather anti-climactic. We knew we would be arriving in Victoria Terminus, the busiest train station in Asia (over 2.5 million travelers pass through every day!). But when the train stopped, there were no people around, no big signs sayind “Bombay!” and just an empty train, and us completely befuddled. We were told that it was indeed Bombay, and that we needed to get off since it was the last stop. So off we get, and we wander around a seemingly deserted platform until we find the exit. And then we are quickly introduced to the impressive sights of Bombay! But I’ll save those pictures for my next post. This one will simply talk about what happened our first night in the city.

We were walking back to our hotel after picking up some water and other essential snacks when we came across a group of guys working around what looked like a giant Coke can. It was attached to a couple of ropes that led up to the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Naturally we were intrigued so we sat and watched as they hoisted the can up. But then things stopped, the can remained suspended above the street, and nothing else was going on. So we went to our room and were just working when we suddenly heard fireworks and drums and music. We have missed opportunities too frequently by wondering if we should get our cameras, so now we simply grab everything and boot it out the door. We thought it was going to be a barat, which is the procession of the groom to the wedding, and generally involves a huge crowd of dancing and drumming. But this was not a barat. We weren’t totally sure what was going on, but we followed this little parade of people and watched as they set off huge fireworks, and sang and whatnot. Things seems to be a bit of a let down, but we were having a ton of fun as the kids started to ask for us to take their photos. This one little boy would get so incredibly excited whenever we’d show him the photo of himself. Here’s a great catch Rob got of him clapping after seeing his picture.



And a neat shot of our hotel’s sign with the fireworks going on in the background.



And then the real madness began. This was a festival, and it involved the people smearing themselves in haldi (turmeric) powder, and walking down the streets as others stationed on the surrounding rooftops threw incredible amounts of flower petals down on them. It was absolutely insane.


The whole parade centered around this thing they were carrying, that they covered with an umbrella. Everything was so crazy it was hard to really see what was going on!


And there were tons of people who noticed us (the only two white people on the street, and with enormous cameras) and asked for their photos to be taken. This girl was so cute.



And here are some women showing off the plates of haldi



We took a bunch of videos, and this one I’ll share with you. It really shows how crazy all the flower petals were, I simply can’t believe how many there were! And at the end of the video you can see the big Coke can. They opened up the bottom to let a bunch of flower petals fall, but they got stuck after all that work!



So of course some intrepid guy got out a huge stick to poke the can, and success, the petals came out!!



All in all it was an Indian dream come true, and we were so glad we happened to stay just in the right hotel to see it all. We even got a bit of haldi on our foreheads as well!


Really, where else in the world could you see something like this just by stepping out your door? It was amazing, and really made up for all the difficulties we had been having up to this point! Like I said last time, India really is a rollercoaster of ups and downs, and this was a fantastic up!

P.S. I've tried to figure out what the name of this festival is, but to no avail. One young boy said something like "Aufderbhad" but I couldn't make out precisely what he said! If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Category: Adventures

Tags: bombay, festival, flowers, haldi, india, photography, travel