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Side Trips

Travel treasures

By JANET K. KEELER
Published November 6, 2005

On a shelf in my living room sit an Indian maharajah and his maharani. He is smoking a hookah, and she is regal in diaphanous fuchsia. The marionettes' heads are whittled from mango wood and the billowing clothes fashioned by hand from cheap fabric scraps.

Each time I look at my beloved marionettes, I am reminded of my first big travel adventure: three weeks in India, December 1989.

It was just a few days before Christmas, but there wasn't much evidence of the holiday in the desert city of Jaipur. At 32, I was spending my first Christmas away from home. Could I have gone any farther?

I can't remember how we met young Krishna, whose family put on puppet shows in swanky hotels in India's "Pink City," about 160 miles southwest of New Delhi. He was dressed all in white with turquoise slip-on sneakers. Big, bright smile and sparkling chocolate eyes. I think he was all of 12 or 13.

Once we expressed interest in the puppets, he started spinning his pitch. Did we want to buy a puppet? Come to my house and pick one out, Krishna said.

I balked. We didn't know Krishna; we barely knew our way back to the hotel. Who would claim my sun-bleached bones from the Rajasthan desert next summer? My companion, something of a whittler himself, thought differently.

So there we were, sitting on a cotlike bed in Krishna's bedroom, surrounded by piles of puppets and the material to make them. Brothers peeked through the door; sisters giggled, then looked away. My companion sat long enough to let Krishna's father wrap a turban around his head with yards of cotton. We each took a drag on a real hookah, coughing and sputtering afterward.

My friend went to the roof and flew a kite with Krishna. I stayed grounded and watched a meal prepared over open flames in the courtyard kitchen. Someone thrust a baby without diapers into my arms. His forehead was smudged with holy ash and his eyes were ringed in kohl.

He was beautiful but cried the whole time I held him.

All these things, and the warm welcome of a family so completely unlike my own, come back to me when I look at my puppets. They are worth so much more than the pittance I paid for them.

Do you have a treasured travel keepsake? A trinket that reminds you of a favorite journey?

We'd like to hear about your souvenir and what it means to you. Send your story, in 150 words or less, to "Travel Treasures," Janet K. Keeler, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. E-mail your stories to krieta@sptimes.com and attach a photo of you with your treasure if you have one. Please put TREASURES in the subject line.

Include your name, age, city of residence and a daytime phone number. We will publish a selection of your stories in an upcoming Travel section.

[Last modified November 4, 2005, 10:41:03]