Winding Down & a Kashmiri Rug

My mom, Jenny and me at the Taj Mahal.

After visiting the Taj, we ate breakfast at the Oberoi Amarvilas - which recently ranked #6 on the Conde Nast list of best resorts in the world.

Mom had Dhosa, an Indian breakfast dish...

Jenny had French Toast, a luxury item that we haven't had for several months.

Mom (who has 11 grandchildren) petting a King Cobra at the City Palace in Jaipur.

Yesterday I talked with Sonal about how we’re going to set up the finances for the microcredit project. We decided that the best thing to do would be to set up a book within the Maitri account at their local bank, and then transfer the money in as women require loans. Every two or three months, the accumulated total would be transferred back into our SmithBarney or Zionsbank account. If women are making their payments, the loan disbursement will continue. Women must make on-time repayments before the other women in their group receive loans.

Winnie and the General took off last Thursday for the U.S. where they will be stopping at the U.N. and the Harvard School of Public Health. They will also swing by San Francisco and Washington D.C., and will be in Salt Lake for a few days. They have both done so much for all four of us, and we’re very appreciative. Before they left, Winnie gave us each a handmade blanket/shawl from Northeastern India – very exciting.

Over the weekend, my mom came into town. She, Jenny and I went on another spin around the Golden Triangle, where, along with the sites we had previously seen, we stopped at the City Palace in Jaipur, and at a number of emporiums.

Jenny and I decided to postpone any of our near-future vacation plans when we purchased a large Kashmiri rug. The rug set us back, but we figured it was substantially less than we would have paid anywhere in the U.S. My mom got two upgrades at The Claridges hotel in Delhi, so she has a pretty amazing suite for the price of a normal room. The Claridges is one of the nicer hotels in India, and Jenny and I have enjoyed the facilities so far. I’m going to hit up the plush spa tonight as Jenny and my mom go to a cooking class to learn Chicken Tikka Masala.

We’ve got one more week until we’re home. We’ve had such a blast out here, and we’re excited about the projects we’ve done and the impact they could have. It will be nice, however, to get a little piece of Salt Lake’s summer before we take off to Thailand.