clpl-india News

We’ve kicked off our ten day tour of the State of Rajasthan after a month of volunteering in India.  So far we’ve seen a few sights, I’ve fought my second bout with food poisoning, and we almost attended an Indian wedding.  It’s amazingly hot, and the locals think we’re crazy for seeing the sights this time of year, but for us it just means cheaper prices and no crowds.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Jaipur to Pushkar

Woke up, had breakfast and rushed over to Vatsalya office to drop off the remaining money for volunteering before meeting Eva and Claudia at the bus station.  It turns out that the only bus to Pushkar was the non-A/C “deluxe” bus that didn’t leave until 1, so Eva and I left Claudia with the bags at the bus station and set out in search of Bollywood movies.

After a couple of laps around the neighborhood and a cycle rickshaw ride (cyle rickshaw – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw, as distinguished from the much more common auto rickshaw –  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw)  that got us within a 1/4 mile of where we were going, we finally found a little hole-in-the-wall slinging bootleg VCDs of Indian pop music, as well as Hindi language movies with no subtitles,3 for a $1.  We grabbed a couple, as well as a higher quality bootleg of “Om Shanti Om,” with subtitles, one of the more famous movies by movie star Shah Rukh Khan.

Lunch at the bus depot was better than what you would expect.  These places are the equivalent of the tacqueria back home –tasty Indian comfort food prepared fast and cheap.  Eva had the Vegetarian Briyani (they don’t serve meat, so “Vegetarian” seems a tad superfluous), I had a very excellent Kashmiri Dum Aloo (potato stuffed with salty cheese covered in a sweet brown sauce) with thick chapattis, and Claudia a cheese naan (the Indian quesadilla), followed by a round of ice creams for all to start off the trip on the right foot.

The 3 hour non-A/C bus ride wasn’t bad, especially since the heat put me to sleep within five pages of my book.  I think the fact that we don’t mind the non-A/C bus shows just how long we’ve been bumming around Asia; this probably wouldn’t be quite as acceptable back home.  The bus itself looked like it had been running this route for the past 50 years, with the same paint job, tires and felt like the same suspension.

We arrived at about 4:30, grabbed a rickshaw for $.075 for the three of us, dropped our bags at the hotel and were out exploring the town an hour later.

Pushkar

Pushkar is a tiny town (by Indian standards) of 20,000 near Ajmer (quite a bit bigger), roughly 200km south of Jaipur.  It’s a major Hindu pilgrimage town, which is evident immediately.  Tourism is THE ticket in Pushkar, but due to the heat the Hindu tourists on pilgrimage outnumber us 10 to one.  It’s so few that after a few hours you actually recognize most of the tourists milling around.

Hindus have been making their way to Pushkar for over a 1000 years, and some of the temples here predate that time.  The main draw is the lake which by Hindus is believed to have been created by Brahma, one of the three main gods, thus making a bath in its waters an essential act of religious piety.  All around the lake, temples have been constructed by the various maharajas (kings) of Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, etc. over the years, each with a corresponding ‘ghat,’ or broad terraced stairway into the lake.  Problem is, due to a few bad monsoons and growing population, the holy lake is bone dry, reduced to a few deep puddles here and there, some with fish close to two feet long almost exposed in the shallow water.

Predictably, there’s quite a bit of religious fervor here in Pushkar.  Everywhere you go, there are Sadhus (Hindu holy men) walking around dressed in orange with beards and long hair, some dreadlocked, mostly barefoot, with faces covered to varying degrees with white, red or orange dye.  Strange, but nowhere near as startling as the class of Jain monks that wander around northern India completely naked.  If I hadn’t seen one walking down the street in Jaipur the other day, or I would have been convinced it was a lie. 

For westerners, it’s billed as a place to unwind and get off the hustle and bustle of the India experience, though the heat has driven away most of the hippies and dharma bums.  I wouldn’t describe Pushkar as beautiful, though I think that when the lake is full and its shores lined with thousands of people, it could be.   

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Woke up at 7am and went on a walking tour of Pushkar with Mr. Sharma, a guide recommended by the hotel.  Without the lake, there’s just not that much to see in Pushkar, but for $4/each for a 3hr tour, it’s not a bad price.

Our guide was on India time, which means 30 minutes late, not that it really matters, but we set out at 7:30 and hit up 3 or 4 of the thousand year old temples, which are interesting, but nothing really to go on about.  The Hindu god-structure is so elaborate that I can’t keep track of it all, in fact I don’t even remember who the temples were for.

The first two temples were private temples located in the courtyards of local homes, which were down a few dirt paths, past some monkeys and random cows, on through the front yards of locals.  Rather than the temples themselves, this was probably the best part of the tour – coming to the temples gave us an excuse to walk through the neighborhoods.  The third and main temple was devoted to Brahma and was fairly packed full of people, but the real highlight of this was just talking to the locals as we waited outside.

The temples here pale in comparison to the Hindu shrines in Bali, so in that respect Pushkar has fallen short of expectations, especially since the main draw – the lake – is a dry construction sight.

While Pushkar is far from excited, the people make up for it.  The locals are so easy to deal with, nothing like Delhi, and most of the Indian tourists come from places off the travel circuit so they’re excited to talk to you and show off their English.  We’ve had lots of people come up to us just to say hello, which everywhere else in India is generally nothing but the opening stanza to a sales-pitch.

In fact, the one really nice thing about Pushkar is the laid back vendors.  We have yet to be hit with the hard-sale, which is almost unimaginable in India.  On top of that, everything is so cheap.  For $6, I bought two shirts, one of them tailored, as well as three bound leather journals for $3.  I’m not sure how we are going to get all of this stuff out of India.

We laid low this afternoon, and finished up our tour of the souvenir shopping this evening.  I did manage to pick up a couple of nice thin cotton shirts that are perfect for the heat, one of them tailored, for $3/each. 

Friday, May 21, 2010

My old nemesis, food poisoning, has struck once again.  I think we have it narrowed down to a bite of hummus from this ragged-looking hippy restaurant where we had dinner the night before.  I could feel it the instant that I woke up, and hoping it was just a fleeting discomfort I stayed back at the hotel while Eva and Claudia went out to do some last ditch shopping before our 3pm train. 

Both times now that I’ve had food poisoning have been on travel days, which is basically the worst time to consistently need a restroom or place to lie down.  This time around it started out mild, but by noon, when it came time to leave for the train station, I was in pretty bad shape.  We’ve become accustomed to the heat, but I felt every degree this day; it sapped my strength to the point where walking for more than 5 minutes, especially with bags, was a chore, and all that I could think about on the taxi ride was that awful, crowded, hot Delhi train station.

The Ajmer station wasn’t nearly as bad as the vision I had managed to conjure up during the taxi ride, but still not the ideal location to be laid up with a stomach illness.  I made it about 20 feet into the door before finding the first open spot on the floor to lie down, and though it happened to be clean, I don’t think I would have cared if it would have been a pile of garbage.  Our trip has been great, and India in particular, but between laying on that floor with stomach ache and making trips to the most disgusting Indian railway bathroom on the subcontinent, should we say I wasn’t particularly embracing life.  (WARNING – Graphic description ahead, you may want to skip down to next paragraph.) Actually, this probably wasn’t the most disgusting railway bathroom on the subcontinent, since I did see a guy cleaning it – who it just so happened was wearing a Univ. of Texas hat, which I suppose is an endorsement for their alumni network, POW POW.  But when ran out of options and had to resort to the squat toilet, I closed the door only to observe that someone had dropped a deuce right in floor in the corner, and not a normal one.  So when I say I was in a bad way, I mean it – food poisoning, 100+ degrees,sick at my stomach, crowded Indian railway station, someone’s deuce in the corner.

By the time the train showed up, I was feeling better, and the ride itself was pretty nice, probably one of the best transportation situations we’ve had in India.  Our seats where in the A.C compartment, which has big faux leather chairs and cold A.C., and was even civilized enough that we could use the laptop and iPhone.

Udaipur

Saturday, May 22, 2010

We arrived in Udaipur at around 9pm and checked in to the Jaiwana Haveli hotel (http://jaiwanahaveli.com/), one of the many heritage hotels here in Rajasthan that are a steal for western travelers.  For around $20/night, we get a room with outstanding views over the lake palaces, A.C., satellite tv, comfortable beds, all located a short walk from the center of town.  It is a nice change from Pushkar, where the hotel was nice but I don’t think either of us slept for more than 30 minutes at a stretch.

Our first day in Udaipur was pretty relaxed – we had a late breakfast on the rooftop restaurant, where in the light of day we could see that the lake has dried up to 1/4 of its normal size.  The views are still scenic, and I could see how in the right time of year Udaipur, with its mix of current royal palaces and palaces turned hotels, some of which are designed to appear as if they are floating in the lake, could be one of the most serene cities in India.

Our first stop Saturday was the Jagdish Temple, a 400 year old Hindu temple devoted to Shiva.  Unlike Pushkar (with the exception of the Brahma Temple), when you visit the major temples in the rest of Rajasthan you’re pretty much stepping into the middle of an ongoing ceremony.  By the time we made it up the steps here, we were greeted by a group of 20 or so sitting on the floor singing to the rhythm of a full percussion section, all seated around a woman performing ceremonial dances for the god.  It’s interesting to watch, but I’m never quite sure if I should be there, so after 30 seconds or so we backed off and made a lap around the upper structure to observe the intricate carvings that cover every square inch of this temple.

By 11am it was starting to get a bit warm, but we went ahead and took a tour of the City Palace, which from the 1550s to present has been the seat of power for the Mewar royal family, the only Rajput kingdom to remain independent of both the Mughals and British.  According to legend, Udaipur came into being when one of the Mewar kings met a Sadhu meditating by a lake, who then advised the king to relocate his capital to that location.  I guess the guy looked trustworthy.

The city palace complex was built on that exact location, and has been added to by each successive king for over half a millennium, all attempting to out-do their predecessors and contemporaries as patrons of the arts and architecture.   The winds of change are always blowing, however, and when the king felt the first breezes in the 1950s (the period when the independent Rajasthan kingdoms joined the new nation of India), he converted a sizeable portion of the main palace into a museum, other portions into extremely exclusive hotels (along with most of the royal quarters in Udaipur), and kept the best bits for the private residence.  

I’m sure the royal family has accumulated enough scratch over the last half millenium to sustain themselves in the lean times, but it looks like they are making a killing just from the hotel properties here in Udaipur.  It is these former palaces which put Udaipur on the tourist map, and for $300+/night, in every sense of the word you can live like Rajput royalty in a palace with servants at your every beckon.  After months of backpacking, don’t think the temptation to blow our budget in a week on the presidential suite  and head home isn’t there.

After sightseeing, we hibernated in the A.C until 5ish, then ventured out to see the bazaars of Udaipur.  I was expecting a touristy scene like in Pushkar, but within minutes we were in the narrow streets of the local shops, where judging by the looks on peoples’ faces, tourists don’t venture often; I don’t think I saw a single tourist the whole time we were down there.  It’s the people rather than the goods that make these markets interesting, otherwise it’s like any shopping area in Asia – small local mom/pop stores selling everything from cloth and fabric to hardware to produce.

Eva wore one of her Saris all day, which made her the star of the show.  I’ve gotten accustomed to guys in India thinking that I’m a foreigner cricket player (apparetly I’m a doppelganger for Shane Watson, an Aussie cricketer), so it was fun to watch someone else get all the attention.  At first, we couldn’t figure out if people were laughing at her or pleasantly surprised to see a tourist sporting local attire, but after watching the reactions as she walked by, I’m pretty sure they were excited to see a beautiful foreigner making an effort to do as the Romans.  If you’re going to dress like the locals, or otherwise draw attention to yourself, you have to be ready to play the part, and she did so very well all day.  Every tenth person that stopped to notice would want to say that she looked nice or ask how much she paid, and she took it all in stride.  On top of the fun factor, all these interactions made me feel a lot better when we found out from Indian women that she “got Indian price.”

We wandered through the markets for about an hour, stopping to talk spices with some of the vendors and bought a few pairs of $2 shoes, but the real highlight was the wedding procession.

Marriages here in Rajasthan are a big deal and the celebrations last for days.  At least here in Udaipur, one of the traditions is for the groom to dress up in traditional Rajput attire, which means a sparkly jeweled turban and coat, complete with sword, and ride around town on an equally decorated horse.  As if this weren’t enough, he follows a uniformed marching band and truck with loudspeakers, along with a huge crowd of dancing relatives who clear the way and light firecrackers every 100 feet or so.  At the end of the procession, the groom will get down off his horse and take his bride, but in order to do so he must first slice a huge sheet that separates them with his sword.  This whole time, throngs of women in the bride’s family try to stop him, so in order to appease the family and carry out his task, apparently he must cash payments to the women as puja, which in the Hindu faith is an act of reverence, that among other things, is used to gain a person’s blessing.  This I gathered from some random guy on the street.

Our paths intertwined with the wedding party a couple of times before we gathered up the nerve to take pictures, and unbeknownst to me a few of the women invited Eva and Claudia to take part in the ceremony.  I couldn’t believe they declined the offer, so we when we saw them again I was going to be denied.  The party had stopped for some reason in a large opening in the market, amongst the normal extreme crowd of people, scooters, rickshaws and animals all over the place.  On top of this was the procession with its deafening music, throngs of dancers and an ever-intensifying firework display. 

I could tell from the layout that the party was about to move into one of the nearby courtyards, so I staked out a good spot near the entrance, and just as I hoped his family members begged me to come in as they passed.  Claudia was pretty squarely against it, while Eva was on the fence, so in a split-second I evaluated the risks of alienating my wife and our traveling partner vs. the likelihood that I’d ever again be swept up in an indigenous Indian wedding.  I couldn’t pass this up, so I shot a ‘sorry’ look to Eva and the next thing I know I’m in the crowd heading for the party.

These people were excited that a foreigner was at their wedding, and within seconds I’m being jostled through the crowd, shaking hands and posing for pictures with family members.  I’m not sure how, but at one point I wound up on the dance floor doing a horrible version of some local wedding dance that looked like a mix between Russian folk dance and Bollywood, basically a lot of shoulder shaking, hand-raising and leg kicking.  This whole time, some guy wearing a makeshift turban and white t-shirt – I think the same guy that said he was the brother of the groom (it was all in Hindi and a blur)-  is throwing money in the air like a rap video.  

This had all the makings of an absolutely legendary night, and I so badly wanted to stay (all of this was without an adult beverage in sight, no telling what was in store later), but Eva and Claudia had the better sense to pull me out of there after ten minutes or so.  Apparently, the focus had shifted off the groom and onto us, and having just gone through a wedding myself, I still feel a little bad; I hope I didn’t take away from the couple’s big day.  At the same time, I just know if I would have been there an hour more, I would have been slapping high fives, hugging necks and eating dinner like I was one of the family.  At least we gave the crowd a little thrill and they have the pictures to prove it.

The only other thing worth mentioning was dinner last night at Ambrais, a restaurant across the narrow neck of the lake by our hotel that would have been on the water, were it not so dry.  For less than $20 total, the three of us had a white table cloth gourmet Indian meal with more food than we could eat, all at with an unimpeded view of the Udaipur’s old city and palaces lit up at night.  Plus it was non-veg, so Eva and I devoured a tandoori chicken, only our third non-vegetarian meal in India.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Despite ambitious plans, we stayed in the hotel room and took care of booking flights, paying bills back home, and pretty much just lazed around.

Udaipur has been pretty much about hanging out in the hotel room/restaurant, relaxing from the last five intense weeks in India.  It’s on to Jodhpur tonight on the overnight non-A.C bus (termed a ‘deluxe’ bus in a very Orwellian sense), so we’ll see how that goes.