Wedding Season

Winter has certainly arrived here in Anden.  We won’t get any snow, but since we don’t heat the house I’m pretty happy about that.  Winters here are usually clear and sunny with very little precipitation.  The sunny days help keep everything a little bit warmer.  However, last weekend the clouds came in and the rain started to fall and the temperature along with it.  It was around 50 F inside the house during the day (our house does stay a bit warmer than the outside).  We simply have to put on more clothes and try to stay as warm as possible.  I pretty much always have a hat on and several layers of clothes.  It’s really not too bad, but since we have no hot running water, washing our dishes and clothes in the freezing water is a bit of a pain.

Along with winter comes the beginning of marriage season here in India, and we also felt that in full force last weekend.  We were invited to a wedding each day Friday – Sunday.  The Friday wedding was a local wedding here in Anden.  I went with my sister in-laws and some other relatives (Passang decided to skip this one).

We walked for about 30 mins uphill, climbing about 800ft, to reach this wedding.

Just starting out

Still Climbing

My sister-in-law and our niece

The three of us

Some fields we passed along the way.  They most likely just planted potatoes in these fields with rows of peas every so often.  The peas are already starting to come up.

We also passed this intersection.  This is a Buddhist intersection (I don't know what it's actually called).  It's like an island in the middle of the path, but if you walk the correct way around it, it is good luck.  It is bad luck if you walk the wrong way.  I always forget which way you're supposed to walk, though.

Almost there!

We took a wrong turn at the very end of our journey and had to make our way down this hill.

As soon as we got to the wedding, the photographer picked me out of our group and started shooting pictures of just me.  By myself.  I'm still quite an oddity around here.  I have started ignoring the constant stares that I get, but it was pretty hard to ignore that photographer.

I’m getting pretty used to the wedding routine around here.  There are usually three main parts.  First, you have tea and some small snacks.  Then you go for lunch.  At some point you also must go congratulate the couple by giving them khadas (or silk scarves).

Heading into the tea hall

Inside the tea hall

The happy couple, after I had given them scarves.  I had actually never even met them before, but EVERYONE gets invited to the weddings around here.  There are typically over 1,000 guests at these weddings.

This was a Buddhist wedding, so they had an alter set up with offerings to ancestors and various deities.

The next day we traveled to the nearby town of Namchi for the wedding of one of our relatives.  It took us about 2.5 hrs by car to reach this wedding.  Passang and I went with a few other people from our village.  Again, pretty much the same routine was carried out at this wedding.

Congratulating the couple and giving them a wedding gift.

The couple

We got live music at this wedding!  They played traditional wedding songs on traditional instruments - various sorts of drums, trumpets and cymbals.

On the way home we stopped by the house of Passang’s sister’s step-daughter who had just had a baby to congratulate her and see her 5-day-old daughter.

Passang holding the new baby

Passang went to the Sunday wedding without me.  This wedding was for our step-father’s niece so Passang went with his mom, step-father, and several other people from our village.  The wedding was in the state below Sikkim, West Bengal, and they had to reach it by a taxi ride followed by a fairly long walk.

One of the bridges they had to cross along the way

Wedding food.  This was a vegetarian Hindu wedding, so it was all veggie dishes - fried kerala, eggplant, potato, and rice with dhal.

Dancers!

Passang's mother and step-father were offered these gifts since they are the bride's aunt and uncle.
The gifts are two bottles of milk, two bottles of soda, and two boxes of sweets.

Although it was cold and really busy, we had a great start to the wedding season.  Now we're looking forward to all of the Christmas festivities in the upcoming weeks!