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Rajasthani Colour - 29/03/05
I know it has been a long time but I have been pretty busy out here. In the interests of brevity this email will be short on intricacies, precise and coherent.
I left you back in Ahmedabad. From there we took the train up to Rajasthan, first stop Udaipur. Rajasthan is one of the big tourism highlights of India and rightly so. It has an incredible mix of mughal history, tribal desert life and bustling cities.
Udaipur is a beautiful little city full of winding streets, narrow stairways and hidden alleyways. The Bond movie Octopussy was filmed in Udaipur although unfortunately the lake is currently dry and so the grandiose Lake Palace Hotel was not quite so grandiose. The main tourism attraction in Udaipur (except the Lake) is the City Palace, a well-preserved building in which it is very easy to lose oneself in the maze of corridors and secret passages. Slightly more low-key is the Bagore-ki-Haveli, another intricately designed building that houses, amongst many historic artifacts, the worlds biggest turban! The final highlight of Udaipur for me was the Jagdish temple, evocative of the Dravidian styles of Southern India. Udaipur was also a nice place to relax and we spent many hours sitting around the courtyard in the guest-house, eating drinking and chatting. One new sight for me in Udaipur was seeing a cow walk out of a house. You all know the cows freely roam the streets but I had never seen one with its own place of residence before.
City Palace, Udaipur
From Udaipur we went over to Jaisalmer in the heart of the Thar desert. The fort in the middle of town looms over the landscape and appears like a giant sand castle on the approach to town. Inside the fort is a magnificent example of a desert city, all the buildings shine with a golden luminescence and it really has that post-apocalyptical feel that desert induces.
The big attraction in Jaisalmer is to take a camel safari out into the heart of the Thar. We undertook a two-day, one-night safari. The first day I was very confident with my camel and was sauntering around as if I was Lawrence of Arabia and the night sleeping under blankets in the sand dunes was exciting and during the day we ate dhal and chapati’s under the shade of the occasional tree. On the second day I was given a different camel who I didn’t get on quite so well with. At one point one of the other group members sarong fell off and got caught around my camels leg. He thought it was a snake and proceeded to buck and try to throw me and the saddle off of him. After about a minute he calmed down and I was left hanging from the side of the camel. I took a brief rest and got back on, only for him to try again twice more. I had had enough by this stage and decided to walk for the rest of the day. When I had to get back on later, sharing a camel with Ali, she had to talk to me constantly because I was really nervous and panicky! So now it seems I have a phobia of camels!
Camel Safari in Thar desert
Returning to civilisation we next visited the city of Jodhpur. Dubbed the blue city because many of the buildings are washed in indigo, this is because this colour represents Brahmin households and also it is supposed to be a mosquito repellent. There is an impressive fort in Jodhpur also and foreign tourists are required to take the audio-guide tour. The fort is very clean and well-managed and the highlights inside include the hand prints of the Maharaja’s wifes prior to committing sati (the act of self-immolation upon their husbands funeral pyre) and the giant spiked doors to prevent invasion. Jodhpur is a textile trade city and many famous faces have visited in order to make big purchases. The bazaar is a bustling hive of activity and it is quite easy to lose yourself within the streets and stalls. A final highlight of Jodhpur is the omelette man, a guy who claims to get through 1000 eggs per day. There are omelette-wallahs all over every Indian city but somehow this guy has created a fantastic marketing campaign centred around his egg consumption which then of course increases his egg consumption, a clever trick.
Omelette man, Jodhpur
Heading further north the next hot spot was the religious temple town of Pushkar. Being an ncredibly holy place meat, alcohol and even eggs are banned within the town. It is a very popular stop and the streets are full of shops, restaurants and stalls. Many people seem to stay here long-term and it is also a very popular stop on the Israeli trail heading north to the mountains. I didn’t really like Pushkar at all as the Indian history of the town has all but disappeared under the weight of tourism and it seemed to show many of the traits associated with these sort of "time-out, kicking back" places. Having said that, Ali really enjoyed it, I haven’t spoken to anyone that didn’t like it and I was ill for most of the time so maybe my perspective was slightly skewed.
Our final stop in Rajasthan was in Jaipur, the state capital. Again the big attraction is an impressive city palace which took us two visits to appreciate in full. Jaipur is fondly dubbed "the Pink city" although this I feel is a optimistic inaccuracy. The buildings are more of a dull rust colour and they are hidden beneath the commerce and traffic moving around within the old city. We experienced two interesting meal experiences in Jaipur. Firstly we found ourselves in an expensive restaurant (plain rice is R’s 20 at most anywhere, but here it was R’s 60, a glass bottle of Pepsi R’s 8 at a shop, 15 in a restaurant, was R’s 45 here. Not wanting to walk out of a restaurant for the second time that day we sat down and whacked it on the gold card, I enjoyed the Rajasthani special of Lal Maans (spicy mutton curry) which was very tasty. In a moment of curiousity we visited McDonalds the next day. You may laugh but it is so interesting as of course they have no beef items on the menu, and where as the Fries around the world are cooked in beef fat, here of course they cannot. I sampled the Chicken Maharaja Mac and a McAlooTikki burger and I have to say it was probably the tastiest McDonalds I ever ate.
Preparing for the Holi festival, the Hindu festival to celebrate the end of winter by throwing paint and water at each other, we had to cross Jaipur to get to the train station. By the time we arrived Ali and I were a mess of bright red, yellow, pink and green powder paints, which we found greatly amusing. Not quite so fun was the train ride to Agra, beings as there were no food vendors on the train due to Holi.
Taj Mahal
Agra is the home of the Taj Mahal, which of course is on everybody’s itinerary. Charging R 750 for foreigners (almost ten pounds!) I was however impressed to see that the money is well spent. The grounds are immaculately clean and the lush green gardens are well kept. The Taj itself is gleaming and without a spot of dirt. Of course the Taj Mahal was incredibly busy and it was hard to get the quintessential photo of the Taj reflected in the pools. Getting inside the Taj was an experience and once inside was something of a disappointment, just a small room with two (fake) tombs. Still, I was happy with the visit. In the afternoon we took a cycle rickshaw across the river to the Itmad-ud-Daulah, also known as the Baby Taj due to its similar style. The other attraction in Agra is the fort, but after the number of forts we have recently seen we had no motivation to see another.
Yesterday we took the train from Agra to Delhi and have settled ourselves in the Paharganj area of the city. My first impressions of Delhi are very positive. But that is another story.
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