Taj Mahal is getting a facial

by Sean McLachlan on


India’s most beautiful monument is going to look even more beautiful after a team of specialists give it a mud facial. The Taj Mahal in Agra is getting treated with multani-mitti , known in English as fuller’s earth, an absorbent mud that sucks up dirt and grime and is normally found in beauty parlors. The Archaeological Survey of India is conducting the cleaning.

The site’s mosque and some of the outlying buildings have already been treated, and the team hopes to start work on the main building in April. The process involves spreading mud over every surface, covering it with a polythene sheet, and waiting for the mud to dry and flake off. Once this happens, the surface is washed with distilled water.

The Taj Mahal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built by Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan in 1648 as a mausoleum to his wife.

[Photo courtesy jrodmanjr via Gadling’s flickr pool. For another of jrodmanjr’s great shots of the Taj Mahal, see one of our previous Photo of the Day entries.]

Q & A with travel and food writer Zora O’Neill

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Zora O’Neill is a travel and food writer, an editor, and the co-founder (with Tamara Reynolds) of an underground Astoria supper club so successful that it eventually spawned Forking Fantastic!, a cookbook and entertaining guide.

Zora has authored guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Moon, and Rough Guides. Her expertise runs from Egypt to Amsterdam to her home state of New Mexico and on to the Yucatán, though her range of interests under the umbrella of food and travel is infectiously broad, sincerely passionate, and very fun to read. (Want evidence? Check out Zora’s observations on Greek food and drink and her “walkabout” ode to various culinary delights of Queens.)

Q: Describe your profession.

A: I’ve been calling myself a “freelance writer” since I quit my full-time job in 2000, but it’s only in the past four or so years that I’ve really felt like I’ve grown into the job, in that the bulk of my income really comes from writing. I usually tell people I’m a guidebook author, although that’s only part of it. It’s just what I’ve been doing the longest, and whatever reputation I have as a writer has really come from that.

I’m also an editor. It’s work I really like doing, so I always have some on the side, even though at this point I could probably manage without it. It’s a break from staring at an empty page, and it helps me feel like I’m actually helping people, using my freelance word powers for good! And it helps me keep sharp on editing my own work.

Q: From the outside, it looks as if you’ve managed to craft the perfect career, equal parts travel and food. How do your endeavors actually settle on the travel/food divide? Or is your personal hybrid of the two so far developed at this point that you no longer attempt to differentiate?

A: For the most part, it has been an organic development and works out just fine–although my blog has always been a little schizophrenic, and so never really fit the “travel blog” or a “food blog” mold. I also had a little bit of an identity crisis last year when Forking Fantastic!, the cookbook I wrote with Tamara Reynolds, was published. For 20 years, cooking had been my sideline, my creative outlet. When I made it my full-time gig, over the year and a half it took to write the book and get it off to the printer, it was on the brink of becoming drudgery. I was really happy to get back to the travel side of things after that, just for the variety. But of course full-time travel writing gets to be a grind too.

I do get the biggest kick out of finding new foods on the road and talking with the people who cook them. The trick is finding a little bit more of an outlet for that, as my guidebooks would bloat horribly in the restaurant sections if I shared all I knew.

Q: You made a break from an academic career. Why did you shift gears? Any regrets?

A: Ah, yes, my secret grad-school past! Lots of people have one, I’ve discovered. I was on track for a PhD in Arabic literature–it had started out as modern Arabic novels, and then I found myself whisked back to pre-Islamic poetry. While I was toiling away on five lines of obscure (but beautiful) sixth-century poetry in the middle of Indiana, the first dot-com wave was ramping up, and I started feeling awfully out of the loop. And then my funding got cut and my department nearly dissolved due to a ridiculous academic feud.

So I took that all as a sign to pack the van and flee to New York City, and I’ve been glad every day since. I’ve used my Arabic skills a bit in the service of guidebook research, and just general travel and picking people’s brains for recipes. And recently, I’ve been thinking about studying it
again, now that the trauma of grad school has finally evaporated.Q: Which destinations do you love the most?

A: Syria! It’s the only place I’ve gone back to repeatedly for fun, and not just for work. Beautiful country, wonderful people and amazing things to eat–surprising spice-road Chinese influences, and food is so local that if you can’t actually see the water, there’s no fish on the menu. And spiffy trains! “Axis of Evil,” my ass.

And I have to give a shoutout to the Yucatán. I was assigned to update a guide there in 2003, a little bit randomly, and I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to get to know such a lovely place in such depth. My ideas about Mexico were limited before I went there. I grew up in New Mexico, so I only knew the border towns. On my first Yucatán trip, I felt pretty dumb: Why had I been racing off to random corners of the world, when this kind of diversity and culture was just over the border?

Q: Name some places you’ve not yet visited and are dying to see.

A: Asia. It’s a gaping hole in my experience. I finally went for the first time last year–to Thailand, Malaysia and Bali, after I happened across some crazy-cheap business-class tickets. Thailand blew my mind. I’d heard Thais were into food, but I truly had no idea to what degree. My husband and I just walked down the street giggling at the bounty. It was also refreshing to go somewhere where I didn’t speak the language at all or have a travel partner who did. Now I need to get to Japan, Vietnam, India, the rest of Indonesia…

I have two fears: doing the long flight in economy, and being forever ruined for eating any kind of Asian food in the U.S. As it is, I always get so depressed when I come back home and try to eat things from places I’ve been, because everything here tastes like such a pale imitation. Our produce has gotten so feeble and tasteless, the spices aren’t fresh, someone decided to leave the lard out for “health” reasons, and so on. Right now, I still at least take a little comfort in Japanese food, and sometimes Indian.

Q: If you could make one meal anywhere in the world with any ingredients, where and what would you choose? Who would you cook & dine with?

A: How to choose? I once had an ambition to taste everything in the world–but checklists make me tired. I’m torn between getting a lesson in Japanese cooking from a random perfectionist old Japanese lady, or making Indian food with Madhur Jaffrey. I taught myself to cook by working my way through one of Jaffrey’s cookbooks, way back in early grad school. (Grad school was great for learning to cook. Department of Education, your grants were not wasted!) I feel like I should pay her back somehow. But either way, I’d like to use some foraged greens. I love learning what’s lying around by the side of the road.

Q: Give us a travel secret.

A: Make your itinerary, then take one thing out of it. Kind of like Coco Chanel’s advice on dressing, where you should take one accessory off before you leave the house. The tendency, especially when you’re going to a new place, is to overplan and try to gobble up everything you can, but you’ll get more out of a place if you slow it down. Related to that, don’t feel like you “should” do anything. I went to Thailand, and went in exactly one temple, for about 10 minutes, and it wasn’t even a famous one. That’s not terrible, is it? (Screams echo from across the Internet…)

Q: What’s next for Zora O’Neill?

A: Next May, I’m off to Morocco with Tamara and a tour operator called Brown & Hudson for a food tour inspired by Forking Fantastic! We’re basically taking our improvisational dinner parties on the road–it should be a great combination of finding cool new ingredients and crashing locals’ houses for dinner!

The tour angle is new for me, and a big jump, since I’ve been writing for independent travelers for so long. But last year I went on a food tour to Syria, and I finally realized the point of guided tours: it’s not to keep you safe or coddled or whatever–it’s to open doors to places you wouldn’t ordinarily get to go. So I’m very excited to be able to set that up for other people, and use all the knowledge I’ve collected over years of traveling. I’m definitely scheming on a trip to the Yucatán too–there’s so much there that can’t fit in the guidebook.

[Image: Peter Moskos]

Inside Marriott’s 500th hotel in Pune, India

by Grant Martin on

Deep in negotiation with a rickshaw driver one sunny Friday morning in Pune, India, my train of thought is suddenly interrupted by a seismic unsettling. Halfway down the street, rounding the corner and coming straight at us careens a cart pulled by a pair of two-ton oxen with long, red, vicious horns jutting from their noble heads. I take a moment to absorb my surroundings: on the other side of the thoroughfare, a bright and shiny new building towers out of the lush, west Indian landscape, surrounded by tall, grey stone walls, twenty some floors of steel, glass and wood. To my left, a faithful rickshaw driver who just drove me through the winding streets of Pune, patiently waiting in his black and yellow steed for me to produce the right number of rupees to make his trip worthwhile. Coming from the right and closing are the same massive bovines that broke my concentration earlier–though now, a little closer.

This is India, a constant stream of distraction and activities swirling around every person, the steady drumbeat of prosperity marching right alongside the poverty and cultural overload. I’ve come here to Pune, just a few hours’ drive outside of Mumbai, to witness the opening and inauguration of Marriott’s 500th hotel and convention center.

It’s a symbolic opening for both the hotel brand and the country at large, as both look to expand western brands inside of the rapidly growing Indian economy. But mechanically, this hotel is exactly as a Marriott should be: clean, well-appointed rooms, comprehensive food and entertainment offerings and razor sharp, attentive staff. And right behind these openings, another dozen Marriott properties are slated to begin operation in the Indian subcontinent in the next year.

%Gallery-109388%The grand opening celebrations were grandiose and lavish, with local and foreign media privy to the finest of pool deck parties, live entertainment and fireworks to top off the affair. With the festivities behind them, however, the Pune Marriot now has its work cut out for it: there are very high western standards to hold, hundreds of rooms and dozens of conferences to book and, most importantly, the trust and business of an entire culture to earn.

It’s the sort of situation encountered every day in India, navigating through passenger, bicycle and rickshaw traffic in a rented Mercedes, crowding the only Mexican restaurant in town with 300 other patrons, sitting inside of a Hindu temple while the security guard pecks away at his smart phone. Like the scene in front of me on the streets of Pune, India is all about thriving in the midst of chaos, and once the dust settles from this opening, the real test will begin.

Quickly I dig my SLR camera out of my bag and snap a shot of the hotel with the ox and cart passing by. Somewhere inside there’s a press conference waiting for me, a few quotes to collect, a few words still unwritten. For leisure I hope to one day return.

Fast Facts
Marriott Pune Hotel and Convention Center: SenapatiBapat Road • Pune, 411053 India
• Rooms: 416 with 44 suites
• Meeting rooms: 12 with 19,000 sq feet of space
• Marriott Rewards Category: 3
• Specialty restaurants; Indian, Asian and Italian
• Room rate at time of publication: $143/night

Editor’s note: Marriot invited Gadling to this event and provided some transportation and lodging. We were free to roam and write at will.

Celebrating Marriott’s 500th hotel opening

by Grant Martin on

A major milestone was passed in the Marriott empire last month with the opening of their 500th flagship hotel and an adjoining convention center. The location: three hours outside of Mumbai through the Sahyadri mountain range and into Pune, an education and information technology epicenter in western India.

As a growing city of 3.5M people, Pune is quickly becoming a destination for both business and leisure travelers. Akin to a miniature Mumbai, it has many of the same characteristics: crowded, noisy streets, a slew of Hindu temples and sites, rich culture and most importantly an exploding business community. It was natural for Marriott to develop here.

The opening of this 500th hotel is also symbolic of the evolving economic and travel landscape in India. As this once third-world country catapults into the future, quality of life standards and are on the rise and international brands are more in demand. Realizing this, Marriot is growing aggressively here; after this opening, nearly a dozen more properites will begin operation around the country in rapid succession. So the gala at this 500th hotel opening was more than a party — it was the breaking of a dam, with thousands of worker’s lives, traveler’s journies and an entire portion of the Indian economy flowing brazenly in pursuit.

As members of the international media, Gadling had the opportunity to join with a group of a dozen bloggers, producers, journalists and editors from around the planet to witness the opening festivities. The night of the opening ceremony, things got kicked off with a press conference announcing the hotel and convention center with Marriott executives Arne Sorenson and Simon Cooper alongside a peppering of regional dignitaries.

Festivities then moved over to the outdoor patio and the pool terrace and bar, where guests were treated to live entertainment, drinks and a grand fireworks show to top off the event.

%Gallery-108723%

It’s awkward in a way — as members of the media at a grand hotel opening, every corner of the hotel has been prepared to perfection. Guards stand at every floor paying sharp attention to each passer by and waving hello and farewell. It’s difficult to get into any elevator or visit one of the myriad, beautiful restaurants without finding a worker polishing a fixture or wishing you good day.

But beneath the layer of 409 and the starched linen shirts, after the fireworks have faded and the hotel enters normal operation, it’s easy to see how successful this hotel and convention center will soon be. It’s in a great part of the city just off of the main highway. The rooms are gorgeous and the showers are palatial. People genuinely seem to like their jobs here. And best of all, it’s a sweet slice of familiarity in this white-knuckle, rickshaw-riding, pollution-spewing, antique-market-hopping, sari-swirling, gorgeous, boundless country known as India. Like the exploding national economy, the growing education system and every single IT professional stacked into the Pune infrastructure, so too will this Marriott prosper.

Editor’s note: Marriot invited Gadling to this event and provided some transportation and lodging. We were free to roam and write at will.

Photo of the Day (11.30.10)

by Stephen Greenwood on

India is the seventh largest country by geographical area and with a population of 1.18 billion people, it’s the second most populous nation in the world. With such an immense concentration of people, unique languages, and religious practice, India has a well known reputation for being a little chaotic at times.

I love this photo for the symbolic dichotomy of chaos; masses of people on the streets and a frightening tangle of wire strung up in between crowded buildings. It’s almost as if the wires are delicately holding the buildings together as the crowd bustles, unaware. The photo was captured by Flickr user Trent Strohm in the crowded lanes of Old Delhi.

Have you gotten lost among the crowd in a foreign place? Send us your pictures! Submit to our Flickr group and it may be selected as our next Photo of the Day.