India – Tidy Teddy's Travels

January 4, 2013

Hi Boys and Girls in Ms. England’s Class:

I had the most wonderful holiday vacation, traveling with Madeleine and Douglas Armstrong and their parents and grandmother to India. Do you know where that country is? Look it up on your globe, and you’ll see that it’s halfway around the world from Tennessee. It is a beautiful country, but much different in many ways from ours. For one thing, there are elephants and camels walking in the streets! Cars and carts and bicycles and people have to go around them. I rode on a camel with Douglas out in the country. It was a bumpy ride but lots of fun, even though the desert sands blew in my face.

We rode in a motorboat, too, to see a beautiful palace built on rocks right in the middle of a big lake. Isn’t that funny? Why would anyone do that? It was built by a Maharaja (Indian ruler) for protection from enemies. There are also huge walled cities called forts, built high on hills for the same reason. To get to one of them, we rode on an elephant!

Until the airplane was invented, the only way to get to India from America was by boat. On the waterfront of the port city of Mumbai there is a huge arch called the Gateway of India which welcomes visitors. There are always crowds of people passing through and lots of men, women and children trying to sell you food, clothing, balloons and toys or trying to take your picture. We took our own to send to you.

To see India before cars were invented, you had to travel by train. We did, too, in long railroad cars pulled by a big engine. We had a small compartment with two beds to sleep in at night. The motion of the train lulls you to sleep or sometimes jolts you awake, and once in a while other big trains whistle and roar by you, shaking you in bed. Jai and Mandu cooked breakfast for us in the morning.

One of the most beautiful buildings in the world is in India. It’s called the Taj Mahal and is over four hundred years old – older than any building in the United States. Built entirely of white marble, it gleams in the noonday sun but turns pink in the early morning and late in the afternoon when the sun goes down.. Everybody likes to have their picture taken there.

The state bird of India is the peacock which has bright blue and green feathers. The spots in them are called the eye of the peacock and are thought to bring good luck. Look at the picture of me lying on a peacock fan. I’m wishing all of you good luck.

I hope you like my pictures. Maybe someday when you are older you’ll go on a travel adventure and send me pictures. But you know what? It’s nice to come home, too.

Love,

Tidy Teddy