Easter in India

Landon with his basket. I think he was excited!

 Easter is not a huge holiday here in India. Although there are Christians, and a Catholic school and church in Jamnagar, there was no Easter candy or baskets or really anything that indicated that there was any major holiday going down in the Reliance mart. Most of the people here are Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, etc. Not celebrating Christ's resurrection at any rate. So, Easter was a little different for us this year. 

Silk top and leggings from Reliance mart

Another bandhi outfit- this one has the white dots at the bottom of the pants only, as well as the design on the shirt, which is made of linen vs. silk

Enjoying his new bus

coloring the egg

The final result

Easter morning, I did a special Easter nursery lesson with Landon prior to Austin getting home. We sang Easter songs and learned about how Jesus was resurrected. We waited for Austin to get home for awhile, went to breakfast, stole a hard-boiled egg from breakfast, and came back to our room. I gave Landon his Easter basket, which included 1000 stickers, a bus, and some candy and cookies. I found the basket for super cheap in the housewares section at the store. Austin got a goody bag with tons of candy and cookies for us to share. We had sacrament meeting and watched some of the Easter videos online, read our church leaders’ testimonies of Christ, and shared our own testimonies of Christ while Landon became obsessed with his new bus. After sacrament, Landon decorated his egg with crayons, and then in celebration of being completed broke it open and peeled it. He has never eaten a hard-boiled egg whole, so he was not ok with the texture, and promptly fed it to me and Austin instead of himself. Then Austin went to bed and Landon and I went on an Easter nature walk.

Some of our Easter candy selections- some familiar and some not!

Later that day, Landon and I were waiting for Austin to wake up and were asked to tag along to Jamnagar. We didn’t have anything else to do, so we went with Austin’s current boss Sonja and his new boss, Chelsea.

On the walkway out to the fort! Lake on either side

First, we went to the fort that was closed the first time we went into Jamnagar. It was open! Hooray! The architecture inside was very neat. After walking across the lake on the long, narrow bridge, we came to the bottom of the building. There were many stone steps to get up to the main level of the fort. All around were old stone carvings that used to adorn temples. The fort was circular at the top and had some great architecture. There were all these little rooms with small exhibitions in them. There were a few things of note including a famous guys’ turban and some old shells. There was also a stone tool that they said was thousands of years old.

In one of the exhibition rooms, Landon found a puddle!

Detailed column tops

Ivory replica of some palace somewhere- the impressive part is
that it is made out of ivory

Turban of a famous guy

Landon and I at the fort. I love the spiral staircases.

Old stone sculpture

Copper plates!

I loved all the carving details of this fort!

On top of the fort

Do you see the vat of yellow liquid?

Hindu temple fabric overhangs

Picture of people taking pictures of Landon and this cute little boy

After the fort, we walked across the whole lake to get to the temple where they have been chanting for 50 years. There was some big procession going on that had blocked the road so our driver couldn’t quite get here in the car. This time I gave some money to the beggar children, and of course that meant that more of them came and bugged me for money. Oh well. Outside of the temple there were all of these vendors that had set up due to the celebration. One of them was stirring a giant pot of chai or some sort of yellow drink. We were offered some, but it had ice in it and we are not supposed to drink stuff that isn’t bottled, so we politely refused. When we got to the actual temple, we were immediately mobbed as everyone wanted to get a picture with Landon and the stroller. First, a man came up with his child and stood his child by Landon and snapped a picture, then a few more people wanted a picture of that, then still others wanted a picture of all of us white people, then a teenage boy stood awkwardly by me. It was interesting. They kept inviting us to go in to the temple to make an offering, but we declined. It was Easter after all.

My little guy and my sunglasses

We ended the afternoon with our main objective- getting food that was not our restaurant food, special for Easter. Our driver took us to a place with Punjabi food. They made us some plates to go. There was dal fry, which is a lightly spicy lentil type mixture, some sort of spicy cauliflower, some chapatis- basically tortillas, buttermilk (which we did not drink), rice, another yummy bean spicy dish, and some weird stuff. One thing I did not enjoy was the pickled fruit. It was extremely salty and had a weird spice that I did not care for at all. The other thing was wrapped in a leaf. It looked like little pieces of shredded wheat and candied something. Anyway, when I tried it. It tasted exactly like an incense stick. Yum! Austin thinks it may have been candied black cloves or something. 

In conclusion, I think we had a great Easter. We took lots of pictures, and those will have to do for our "Easter" pictures as some people like to do each year. I don't have any church clothes for Landon with me, and I wore a skirt that day. Hooray for Easter! Hooray for Christ's resurrection! Hooray that because of Him, we can become perfect and live forever with our families! What a great day!