50th birthday

I celebrated my 50th birthday in Rajasthan zip wiring!! This is ME!!!!!


My daughter Ell/My zip wiring above the fort we stayed at!!

My son Carl zip wiring!

There were five zipwires!
ZIP 1 - 350 m
ZIP 2 - 400 m
ZIP 3 - 90 m
ZIP 4 - 250 m
ZIP 5 - 175 m

I really enjoyed the zip wiring it felt like I was a child again! Every time I took off my stomach cramped but once it settled I could focus on the view, which was extraordinary. After doing two zips the third zip felt very short and easy. On the way down our instructor saw a cobra. I didn't see it but that didn't bother me. In fact I was rather happy I didn't. Our instructors were really professional and very nice. They took good care about us and our equipment.
In order to do the zip wiring you had to be above the age of 10 years and under 115 kg; thankfully our whole family made it!


We were living in a wonderful charming palace/fort called Neemrana 2,5 hours drive from New Delhi.(100 km) It had five wings built over elven levels.

Me and Ell/My sitting on the lion chairs!

It was a bit rundown but located beautifully at a hillside.
The fort was from the 14:th century. The rooms were something I had never experienced. All the rooms had names like:

Deva Mahal (Palace of Gods)
Aman Vilas (Abode of Peace)
Ramji Mahal ( Palace of Rama)
Surya Mahal (Palace of sun)


Our room had two floors. You felt like you where living in a fort from the ancient time.

On the walls they had pictures of the people that lived in the fort a long time ago.

We also went to a yoga lesson and took a bath in the pool several times.

Carl and his dad Arne resting after a spectacular aerial zip line journey!

In the evening we went to a dance and fire performance. Carl enjoyed it a lot and was invited to participate at the end of the show.


Thanks to my incredible children, Ell/My and Carl, for teaching me the meaning of unconditional love and genuine joy!!Thank you for letting me be your mum and making my birthday special! I love you more than word can say!


My husband and my best friend in life Arne!
It was a magic evening with lot's of stars and the moon !

Thanks to everyone who made my day special in so many ways, sending postcard, calling, sending email, sending Facebook notes, making paintings, buying flowers, sending text messages, taking me out for a nice dinner, bringing me to a yoga class, and giving me many thoughts and buying presents. Believe me or not I felt it all the way to India! One more wish though - please give me some comments about anything!

One of the greatest regrets a person can ever have is getting to the end of their lives and realizing they did not do their dreams.

I love travelling, taking pictures and being with my family. Looking at my pictures I belive this is a dream coming true for me. I am looking forward to the next trip!!

Back home in India!

Hej!

Feels still very strange to call India your home!

After a nice two months holiday in Sweden with ups and downs I am now back in India with my daughter ( she is going back to Sweden to study at Ib, Sigtuna SSHL , the end of this month), my son and my husband. It's nice to have the whole family together again.

Sunset at our summer house along High Coast, Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. It's amazing!

My dad (80 years old!!) and my sister racing and we WON!!! I couldn't have asked for a better ending of my holiday in Sweden! Thank you!

Back in Inda my Indian neighbour Shanti took us to experience KANWAR MELA . Thousands of Kanwarias (Shiva devotees) converge for a dip in the Ganges. We saw hundreds of them walking ( about 250-300 km) carrying gaily decorated kanwars(vessels hung on bamboo poles).It's the largest religious congregation after the Kumbh Mela. Hindu legend has it that during a war over the urn of immortal nectar between the gods and demons, Vishnu gave the urn to Garuda, his winged mount. During his flight , four drops of the nectar fell on four places (Haridwar was one the places). A Kumbh Mela is thus held at each spot in turn every three years, when certain planetary configurations, transform the waters of Ganges into nectar. Pilgrims all over India, converge at the Kumbh Mela to wash away their sins, making it the world's largest religious gathering!

As they carry the water from Ganges they are not allowed to put the poles down on the ground!! We visit some of the camps along the road.

Shanti told us the story about Kanwar Mela and the story about the god Shiva. Fascinating! In some minutes we were surrounded by the Kanwarias. In the background you can see the god Shiva.

This is what I like about India. Fascinating stories and their beliefs in the religion. It will be more to experience in the future!

What I don't like is me becoming sick after 5 days. I stayed in my bed for one day but did recovered fine with good vegetable soup from the cook. My daughter is enjoying his skill as a cook. It's always a big smile on her face when we are eating!! Everything taste so much more here.

Now I have to go shopping with my daughter.Hope you all had a good summer! Thank you for reading my blog!

Sweden here I come!!

Hej!
Summer holiday and time to go to Sweden. Everybody leaving India as soon as possible because of the monsoon. We will live on an island called Malmön outside Örnsköldsvik ( 600 km north of Stockholm) . It's not modern at all but we love it. We'll have a sauna every second day and swim in the ocean. I am looking forward to meet relatives and friends, have some fresh air and drink water from the tap or the well. No Internet! I will also do some SAILING!!!!!!!!!! I love to sail!

Navigare necesse est , vivero non est necesse! To sail is necessary, to live is not necessary!

Happy girls talking to husband/dad left behind in England telling him that we won the sailing race!!

My wonderful parents and my son!

Our beautiful summer island Malmön 5 meter and you're in the ocean! Wonderful!

I always try to sail to this gorgeous island Grisslan with pittoresque little houses along the small harbour. My sister got married in the white chapel!

Thank you all of you that followed my blog and I wish you a nice summer!

I continue my blog in August.

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Luck for the new building!

Great and exciting! Our first religious Indian adventure!
The start of the building of a new factory at my husband's work.

A priest is singing,praying, giving red dots in the forehead, putting a band around the arm and giving flowers and fruits. Everything to bless the start of the new building.

Indian sweets!! Taste very strange and very sweet!!

Bread the coconut into halves and the luck is completed!

Scary experience and markets

Namaste!

I changed into a shirt being on the toilet and all of sudden I felt something on my back. I thought I had a paper or something in my shirt. But then IT started to crawl all over my back. I screamed out very loud and quickly removed my shirt and there on the floor...........................................................................
was a cockroach. It was huge!!! I kept on screaming for another minute and then running out from the toilet. My housekeeper took IT away and I am sure she was laughing behind my back. It's fun to make someone happy isn't it?

Then I went to Sarajini Nagar Market with my cook to buy an oven. ( Some weeks ago I bought cleaning stuff for my oven and when I came home I didn't find any oven!!).
This is a great market to stroll around, here one can find export surplus/reject clothing for the whole family at bargaining prices. One you have visited here a few times, you will get the hang of it. Whether you love or hate this place, it does have everything, and well worth the effort. I bought four under bed sheets eight pillow cases and two pillows for 74 pounds or 840 SEK. These sheets and pillows were the best quality and of course the most expensive. When I was paying with my card he asked for my PIN code. He just laughed when I told him to turn away! Indian people are very friendly and seldom thinks about crimes. It's amazing being in this big capital and finding it so innocent.

Sale t-shirt 7 pounds or 8 kronor each!

Garbage ubiquitous! It's awful! No environmental thinking at all! Plastic bags in every shop. England started to get people to bring their own bags to shopping mall by giving them extra points on their shopping card in Sainsbury. I wonder how they will deal with this in India. In Sweden we bring our own bag most of the time.

My favourite market Sarojini Nagar Market. It takes a lot of time to buy things as you don't find everything in one market.

I always smile seeing these men running along upon the desk to be able to reach things on the shelves.

Last week when I tried to buy shoes one men was on the attic throwing down shoes from a small hole and one man was putting the shoes on my foot.
In another shoe shop an Korean lady was helping me but the manager came and told us:

"No business now it's prayer time."

India is different and I love it!

My India

Namaste!

I have become an addict of Indian vegetarian food, but it will of course be best when eaten here. I like eating dal and rice. Dal is a preparation of pulses (dried lentils, peas or beans) which have been stripped of their outer hulls and split.It is regularly eaten with rice and vegetables in Southern India, and with both rice and roti (wheat-based flat bread) throughout Northern India & Pakistan. Dal is a ready source of proteins for a balanced diet containing little or no meat.

Our cook is very hard to understand as he is speaking with a strong south Indian accent. Now when I got used to him speaking I more often know what we are having for dinner.

First time I heard the noice of the steam cooker I thought something was going wrong in the kitchen. A steam cooker is a kitchen appliance used to prepare various foods in a sealed vessel that limits the escape of air or liquids below a preset pressure.
Due to their health aspect (cooking without any oil), food steamers are used extensively in health-diets as Cuisine minceur, the rawfood diet, Okinawa diet, macrobiotic-diet and the CRON-diet.
Food steamers release less heat to the kitchen environment, therefore helping keep the kitchen cool during hot summers. It's 43C degrees!!!



Religion and spirituality plays an important life in the live of Indians. It's nice to see how they are so secure in their beliefs. Pictures and small sculptures of their gods in the cars and all over. One day in a shop the manager told me to get a Ganesha for my house.Ganesha is a god of luck and of "opening the way." I didn't even buy anything at the shop and still he cared for me - a total stranger for him.

Indians are extremely friendly and helpful. The namaste is the most wonderful gesture. Namaste (Sanskrit: नमस्ते,) is a common spoken greeting or salutation used in India and Nepal. It has multi-religious or else common usage where it may simply mean "I bow to you." Hands are held together at the palms in front of the heart or brow chakra. Head is bowed slightly downward. Eyes are sometimes closed. Namaste should be used only for people your equal or above. By other words I don't greet my servants this way.

Always you see smiling faces! There is a gesture that me and my husband caught ourselves using very often - waving our heads sideways (the universal "no") while agreeing on something. It looks quite sweet especially when my husband doing it!

Not everything is good with India.
I dislike how garbage is handle here.
I would like to see more homes and free medication for aged and poor.
And the most important thing: Try to get begging children away from the streets and into school. Education is such an important way to deal with poverty.

My son likes Indian food and most of all the wonderful and tasty fruits!!!

Hospital appointment and trees!

Namaste!

The temperature dropped. It's only 39C today and very windy! Still it is very dry some of the trees looking gorgeous and it is mango season!Great time!

Mango tree! We love mango. It's lots of different mangoes here. Our cock often gives us a bowl of mangoes for dessert!

I tried to ask my driver what kind of tree it was but he had no clue at all!

These flowers smell fabulous! They look very similar to the purple ones I had in my back garden om Middle Bourne Lane.

Many people from the Swedish group are moving from New Delhi and guess what they are doing now. They go to the doctor because they know how difficult it is to see a doctor in Sweden.

As Carl is having problem with abdominal pain since food poisoning in England and yet had to have another endoscopy I called a doctor at Max Health Care. He (the doctor)answered immediately and I got an appointment three days later. We did the capsule endoscopy on Friday. On Saturday evening 19.30 I called the doctor on his mobile to get the results!!!
Sometimes the service is very good in India!!!!!!



As you see in the picture the room was filled with people. It was the first time they had a capsule endoscopy in this way at the hospital. Carl was going to swallow a capsule with a camera detached on it. He had a monitor for eight hours following the small intestine. When we came back to the hospital one doctor wanted to take a picture of Carl and himself!! It felt like Carl was kind of a movie star.

In England you could easily get an appointment with you GP doctor and they referred you to a specialist if necessarily. All medicine were free for children under 15 years old.
It didn't cost you anything to go to your GP!!

Great to know many are reading my blog!! Please feel free to give some comments on anything! What would you like me to write about? Is anything missing? I am taking an English course in August so I will improve even more.
Love to all my English friends!
Kramar till mina svenska vänner!
"Moj" till båda mina finlands svenska vänner!

I just had to tell you I went to a Swedish lady that I had never seen before. She opened the door and hugged me! It felt a little bit odd and I was thinking:
"I had been in England for a long time!"