Thoughts late at night

So here I sit in bed at 12.40am typing away, excited about Nepal, with some mixed feelings on India.

Personally, it's been an interesting journey.  I'm still in my 'time out' phase obviously, but whilst I feel rested from the combination of physical exercise and sleep, I don't feel at peace. The hectic nature of India and a constant battle of wits against everyone seeming to want something from me is draining.  I've got fed up of the spitting, hawking, and disgusting personal habits of people around me.  OK, in SE Asia it's common to see people hawking through their nose and spit in public, but I've never seen people just going to the toilet on the side of the street like this before: not even in Africa.   The smell of urine hits you at every corner.  The litter is a real issue.  Garbage is left to rot in some places, eaten by pigs and cows who get distended stomachs from the plastic in their guts.


Yet there is such beauty here.  Whilst modern architecture is left to crumble into disrepair, incredible monuments have stood the test of time.  The countryside is varied and full of natural wonders, from lands with thousands of palmtrees and undulating green hills, to golden deserts.  People have surprised me, I've made Indian friends who I'll have for life.  I hate being on my guard all the time though, wondering when I'm going to get a scam attempt next.  The poverty leaves you dumbstruck, the animals break my heart.  Systems are outdated, if there are systems in place at all.  Commonsense does not prevail.  Yet people bear it, as if the fact that everything is delayed, or tied up in paperwork, or just doesn't make sense is part of what life is all about:  they can't change it, they don't try.  It's all tied into a mish-mash that is India. Once ruled by great rulers, you have to ask:  what the hell happened??  Can India be the superpower it deserves to be?  I hope so, for everything is here.  It's just hidden beneath piles of garbage and dirt.  A crazy race between the traditions that have existed for hundreds of years and the modern technological world that overshadows it.  The incongruity is tangible.


But I want to come back.  For a number of different reasons... it's left an imprint.  I didn't fall in love with the place, but I feel like I haven't skimmed the surface, that I didn't get it, or just didn't understand.  That there are secrets that I heard whispered but couldn't quite make out; a voice speaking the whole time that I couldn't tune into.  Hard to explain, and I'm tired now and should shut down the computer really, but this place has left me a bit confused and I want to get it down whilst this is in my head.


And one of the main reasons to come back?  I didn't see a tiger in the wild.  That's reason enough in itself.  As India takes hold of the reins of the 21st century, so tigers will cease to be.  Poaching from Tibet and China will be their death knell and there's just not enough measures in place to stop it.  I want my own personal memory of the King of the Jungle.  Let alone all the places, I missed: Varanasi, Darjeeling, Calcutta, the Andamman Islands.  It seems my confusing relationship with India has just begun.


Next update will be from Nepal.  Goodnight.

Jaipur is known as the pink city, painted to welcome the visiting Prince of Wales in the 1800’s.  ‘Pink’ is misleading, as the city is more of a terracotta or salmon pink colour, and the buildings are only painted in the old city which is crumbling to bits, with many upper levels being abandoned due to lack of maintenance and adequate sanitation.  The capital of Rajasthan has over 3.5 million residents and industry is booming:  tourism, finance, communications, in addition to an impressive and well-maintained university complex.

We had a chill out day here, desperately needed as I’d been on the move for weeks with nary a day off and was exhausted, and Caro wanted to do some shopping.  The following day we headed to Amber fort, in the Jaipur hills, with its very own Great Wall.  The fort looks more impressive from the outside: what we saw of the structure itself is really only a catacomb of corridors and rooms stretching off in every direction all of which are whitewashed and nondescript, however the scenery from the parapets is magnificent.  The fort wall snakes up the hills, for all intents mirroring the Great Wall in China on a much smaller scale, and watchtowers dot the horizon.  We missed several parts of the fort, we just didn’t have the time to do it properly, but it’s worth visiting for the views alone.

Then it was a mad rush into Jaipur old city to go to the astrological gardens, called Jantar Mantar, next to the city palace.  We debated doing the city palace and decided we didn’t have time, and we’d seen enough palaces already!  Jantar Mantar is a must-see however.  It reminded me of a Giorgio de Chirico painting.  It’s an observatory containing a collection of 14 architectural astronomical instruments, built in the 1700’s by Maharaja Jai Singh II, and the precise science behind them – using sun and shadow – is incredible.  The Samrat Yantra is the tallest structure at 27m high, its face is angled at 27 degrees (the latitude of Jaipur), its shadow carefully plotted to tell the time of day..  The devices measure time, predict eclipses and monsoons, and track the location of stars as the earth orbits around the sun, amongst other things.  There are 12 sculptures depicting the star signs.  I loved this place.  It’s modeled on an observatory in Delhi – Jai Singh II built 5 in all with Delhi being the first - and I’m going to try to visit this one tomorrow.

After a quick stop lunch, it was off through some pretty countryside to the home of the Tiger (attempt no 2): Ranthambore National Park.  And it’s here our luck began to run out.

Ranthambore is a dirty and noisy town right on the borders of a lovely national park, and one of the few places in India where you have a 25% chance of seeing tigers.  In fact several people in our hotel saw them.  We did not.  We did 4 safaris – mind you 3 of them were on trails where we would never have spotted a thing according to local guides – and it’s 10% tracking and 90% luck.

Despite this immense disappointment, Ranthambore is home to Samba deer (tiger’s favourite dinner), spotted deer, blue antelope, peacocks, mongoose, langurs, leopards (not a chance in hell of seeing one of those), crocodiles, several species of bird and bears (we didn’t see those either).  We got a bit blasé about the deer and peacocks, although the mongoose are rare and we saw 2 very briefly.  We also saw several tiger paw prints, all fresh and indicating that they were around, they just always seemed to be hanging out on other trails!  The park is divided into 6 sectors.  Tigers are spotted in sectors 2-4 normally.  We got 1, 5 and 6 twice.

We also had to get up at sparrowfart (ie bloody early – 5am) to go and get assigned to a canter (open aired vehicle with 15 seats) and trail.  This means competing with local touts who work for agencies and hotels in the area, all clustered around a single window at the park’s office yelling at the poor guy within who divvies out the paperwork.  It’s good old Indian efficiency at its best:  sod forming an orderly queue and waiting your turn, all yell and shout and butt in, and if you can cough and spit up phlegm whilst you do it all the better.  People did help us get served though – the best way to do it is muscle your way up to the window and then shove both arms though the opening so that no-one else can get a look in.  

Anyway it was all futile in the end as we didn’t even get a whiff of black and orange striped kitty cats except on someone else’s camera display.

So we said goodbye to Rajasthan, and went off to Agra in our rented car to see the Taj Mahal.  It's also where we said goodbye to Four Wheel Drive India. 

The Taj is stunning.  There is no other word for it.  Standing in front of it, on a beautiful sunny day, is indescribable.  There’s some tough security to get in and out, the guards confiscating food so that the grounds aren’t covered in litter (an effective method - it's the cleanest place I've seen here!)  The white marble glitters in the sun amidst beautiful green gardens.  Built to house the body of his third wife, Mumtaz, by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (she died whilst popping out kid no. 14… hmmmmmm….), it was completed in 1653, and combines Persian, Indian and Islamic architectural styles.

Jahan wrote the following about the Taj:

Should guilty seek asylum here,

Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.

Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,

All his past sins are to be washed away.

The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;

And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.

In this world this edifice has been made;

To display thereby the creator's glory.

The outside is huge: Inside the tiny tomb of Mumtaz Mahal lies next to the larger tomb of Shah Jahan.  Shah Jahan was usurped by his son Aurangzeb just after the Taj’s completion, and exiled to Agra Fort where he remained under house arrest until he died in 1666.  Apparently, and this is in the Lonely Planet so I have no idea if it’s really true, the son was worried about all the spending Daddy was doing on expensive monuments for dead wives – Jahan had other monuments in mind – so locked him up.  In reality it’s because the old emperor grew sick, and wanted to hand the throne over to his son Dara.  After a lengthy struggle for power Dara was usurped by Aurangzeb.  

The Taj Mahal complex also contains the mausoleums of Shah Jahan's other wives, a larger tomb for Mumtaz's favorite servant, and a mosque.

Agra is a dump, and apart from seeing the Fort and the Taj Mahal, there’s little to do here. Most tourists bus in from Delhi for the day.  Our plan was to stay one night and go to Varanasi by overnight train on Sat 12 March.  Sadly, our run of bad luck continued.  We’d been waitlisted for tickets for sleeper berths – only 5 & 6 in the list though so we thought we had a good chance of getting on.  The weekend trains are notoriously busy however and it was not to be.  We had to revise our plans and stayed overnight again in Agra and headed to Delhi two days ago, treating ourselves to a little luxury by staying in a nice hotel in Connaught Place.  Luckily trains/flights have been almost fully refunded so we aren’t out of pocket, but it would have been nice to have taken a sunset boat trip down the Ganges, and seen a burning body or two (although we’ve heard the govt pay to get the bodies burned, but people now pocket the money and just chuck the bodies in the river).  But one has to move on from disappointment I guess.

The train trip here was interesting, and thank god it was my last in India.  We got general class tickets.  Last time we bought general class we sat in a ladies carriage, on a proper seat.  When we saw general class on this particular train – crammed into a luggage carriage with tons of other people – we nearly balked.  The conductor offered to upgrade us for a ridiculous amount of money, some of which would no doubt have gone in his pocket, so we braved it out – more on principle than the cost.  Perched on our packs, we sat amongst some lovely people who did their best to make us comfortable despite cramped conditions.  Once again we had to just hope that we’d get out at the right station as nobody spoke very good English in our carriage and we couldn’t really see the station signs from where we were sitting.  It was a long, tiring and grubby journey, if not a little humbling. 

Jodphur, the blue city, and Pushkar, the temple town

Jodhpur is nicknamed the Blue City as many of the houses are painted a beautiful indigo blue which acts as an insect repellent and keeps the house cool at the same time. The jumble of buildings and havelli’s is breathtaking, nestled under the red Mehrangarh fort which dominates the skyline 122m above the city.

We stayed in the old city, a maze of streets that are really too narrow for the cows, tuk-tuks and motorbikes which go head to head, leaving no space to walk.  Tuk-tuk drivers inch past each other yelling in Hindi, trying to avoid knocking over parked motorbikes and escaping by a hairs-breadth.  These people should be paid danger money!  Sitting in an open air tuk-tuk, or rickshaw as they are sometimes called (or Delhi helicopter as we’ve heard in Delhi!), is similar to a white-knuckle ride in an amusement park. 

I have to say that I didn’t get the best feeling in Jodphur.  The old city is charming and the fort is an impressive monument, albeit dirtier and more dilapidated than those we’ve encountered previously, mainly due to the millions of pigeons that call it home.  The audio tour is fantastic.  Legend has it that Rao Jodha, a ruler in the 1400’s, decided to move from his fort at Mandore in Jaipur as it did not provide adequate security, and selected the summit of Bhaurcheeria as the location for his new fort, also known as the Mountain of Birds.  In order to lay the foundations, he had to displace a Saint that had made his home on the hill.  Upset at being forced to move the Saint cursed Rao Jodha with "Jodha! May your citadel ever suffer a scarcity of water!".   Subsequently the area was plagued by drought, prompting Rao Jodha to beg the Saint to lift the curse.  The Saint told him it was possible only by the sacrifice of a human soul.  Jodha appealed to villages in the area, and 2 Meghwal men came forward, volunteering themselves to be buried alive in the walls on promise that their families would be well rewarded. To this day their descendants still live in an estate bequeathed them by Jodha.

The fort boasts a large and interesting collection of litters, or palanquins as they are known in India, chairs with 4 poles that are carried on the shoulders of 4 human bearers; and a collection of howdahs: carriages borne on the back of elephants.  Some of these are absolutely beautiful and most of them have an enchanting story to go with them.  

On the wall entering the fort there is a small collection of handprints, set in vermillon, made by the queens who had committed the honourable and virtuous act of “sati”.  In solemn procession, these noble women quietly immolated themselves on the pyres of their husbands who had been killed in battle.  The tradition of sati was abolished in 1829 but continued in secret until time of Gandhi.


We also visited Mandore, temples and rock gardens set in a lovely park, and home to hundreds of langurs.  People feed the langurs as they believe they are the reincarnated spirits of people who have been bad, and by feeding the apes they are committing a good act so the same thing won't happen to their own souls.  The monkeys enjoyed several courses including chappatis, potatoes, fresh pea sprouts, samosas, nuts, carrots... whilst hungry, thin street dogs salivated nearby, springing in eagerly during windows of opportunity often only to be driven away by the spoilt and petulant apes who didn't want to share.  Any leftovers that weren't devoured by dogs were hoovered up by cows and chipmunks.

Monkeys sitting on top of ancient temples always make for good photo opportunities, and their antics amused us for a good hour.  It’s quite charming to see the interaction between man and monkey, with the line between our species being so fine.  These amazing creatures have such human traits, in the way they sit and interact with their surroundings.  It’s a great place to visit and we wished we’d had longer to explore.

We also did some of the outlying villages as we were told these were a must-see.  Can’t say I was impressed.  The roads are bloody atrocious and the temples are nothing to write home about. If you’ve done the Jaisalmer to Jodphur road there will be nothing new here as you’ll already have seen camel-drivers aplenty. 

Jodphur is the town where Delhi Belly finally caught up to me.  After spending half an hour in a squat loo at one of the temples in a nearby village retching my guts up, I thought I'd recovered so Caro and I decided to go to the clock tower markets, a busy area full of stalls and an absolute melee of life, colour, people and cows.  We figured that it would be about a 10-15 minute walk back to our hotel, which was actually a lovely haveli very close to the fort in the old city.

Whilst I was walking, it hit again, this time wanting a different exit.  Cue an absolute sprint through the densely packed streets of the old city, like playing a first person view Playstation game except I didn’t have a gun to blast pedestrian, animal and motor traffic out of my way.  Unfortunately the walk was a LOT longer than we anticipated and by the time we got to our hotel I was desperately trying to extract the key from my wallet, open my belt and get my zip undone before my arse erupted.

Some decent antibiotics seemed to put paid to it and I was feeling better the next day.  Good job too as we had a long drive ahead to Jaipur, going via Pushkar on some very bouncy roads.  Pushkar is one of the oldest cities in India, chock full of temples and seen as a great spiritual centre.  Built round a sacred lake, which according to Hindu religion is where the god Brahma spent 60,000 years trying to see Vishnu (the essence of all things/Supreme God). The lake is enveloped by 52 ghats, and supposed to have healing qualities, prompting thousands of pilgrims to come and bathe themselves in its waters every year.  Gandhi’s ashes were scattered here.  There is also one of the few Brahma temples in the world.  The god Brahma needed to perform a fire ritual in Pushkar, an essential part of which required his wife Savitri to be present.  Savitria was unavailable so Brahma wed a pure milkmaid instead in order to finalise the ritual.  Savitri turned up, and not best pleased that her godly hubby was shacking up with another bird, cursed him that he would never be worshipped anywhere but Pushkar.  Royally peed off, Savitri also cursed many of the other gods who she believed to be co-conspirators in her usurpment, and there’s plenty on wiki if you want to read more about this hard-core she-god (she’s rather fun).

Due to the procession of pilgrims drawn to the temples and sacred waters, the town has attracted its fair share of crackpots from all over the world. Spirituality for many foreign travellers means being off your head, so as the hippies flowed in the drug industry flourished.  Pushkar now has a booming tourist trade co-existing with a thriving population of drug dealers, scammers, fake priests and touts.  As usual in these places, merely walking the street is like running the gauntlet as you dodge/ignore the fake priests trying to push flowers into your hand and bless you (for a small sum of course), as well as the tuk-tuk drivers and stall hawkers who pester consistently and don’t comprehend the meaning of the word ‘no’.  We proceeded as quickly as we could to a lovely restaurant overlooking the lake, and watched people bathing on the ghats.  It’s such a shame that the people of India have had one of their most spiritual meccas tainted by blatant commercialism because the lake, temples and surrounding hills are quite breath-taking.  After lunch and a 20 minute photo session down on the ghats our time in Pushkar was over and we headed to Jaipur, one of our last stops in Rajasthan.