Category: India 2015

I’ve now been back in Canada for five days, four of those back in Osoyoos. I’ve still not adjusted to the radical change in time zones and the missed sleep, but I’ve slipped back right away into my regular work life.

It was definitely spring in Vancouver. The blossoms and magnolias were in full bloom. Here in Osoyoos it’s spring too, but the biting winds can feel chilly and it’s often dipping well below freezing at night.

In India, I saw the seasons change from spring to summer in the month I was there. By the time I left at the end of February, daytime temperatures were well into the 30s.

While in India, I often reflected on the major changes since I last visited in 1977. Some things were radically different, though much has stayed the same.

Technology is the biggest change. In the 1970s, there were of course no mobile phones and there were very few landlines. Today, everybody except for the poorest of poor beggars has a mobile.

Indians love their mobiles, and in any bus or on any train, there are dozens of conversations taking place simultaneously into mobile phones. Trains and train station waiting rooms have electrical outlets for people to charge their phones and they are constantly in use. Stores everywhere offer “recharges” or top-ups of pre-paid mobile plans.

At any tourist attraction, Indian tourists spend much of their time posing for photos on mobile phones. Some bring telescoping sticks to hold their phones at a distance in order to take group “selfies.”

Traffic is another big change. In the 1970s, the bulk of traffic was bicycles. Sure there was the odd Ambassador car, often a taxi, and auto rickshaws, now called tuk-tuks, were fairly widespread. But today most traffic is motorized and it has grown exponentially. Especially the infernal motorcycles have taken over the streets – and the alleys and lanes usually built with pedestrians in mind.

Gone are the quaint-looking monstrosities of trucks that looked like they were thrown together with wooden boxes and then garishly painted. Today’s trucks look like trucks, even if they are more decorated than ones in the West.

In the 1970s, most trains were pulled by steam engines. Today, the majority are diesels and some are electric. I never saw a steam engine the entire time I was in India this time.

Hotels have changed. While really cheap hotels still exist, there are a lot more mid-range hotels offering such amenities as relatively clean rooms and bedding, hot water, televisions, wi-fi that sometimes even works and western-style toilets.

Prices have gone up accordingly. In the 1970s, a basic cheap hotel room might cost about $2 and a mid-range hotel might cost about $4 – $5. Today, a mid-range room costs between $20 and $40 and more in the big cities.

There are smaller changes. When you travelled by train in the 1970s, the chai sellers always came down the platform or the train cars calling: “Chai, chai, chaeeeeeee.” They either gave you a little earthenware cup that you smashed on the ground when you were finished, or they gave you a china cup which they returned for when you had finished.

Today, they usually give you a paper cup, or worse, a plastic one.

Plastic bags are much more common. I brought plastic bags with me, remembering that they were hard to come by. Today, however, they were everywhere and merchants gave them freely.

Transportation on the whole is easier today. The metro (subway) in Delhi quickly takes you around the city below the traffic jams. No longer are you dependent on collective auto rickshaws or individual ones.

No longer do you need to spend half a day trying to buy train tickets. Today, you can easily do it online or you can buy through independent agents relatively easily for a small fee. Even when you have to buy tickets at the station, the process is easier.

Likewise, you no longer have to spend a couple hours at a bank trying to exchange travellers’ cheques. Today, there are many ATMs and many of them accept foreign credit and debit cards, dispensing the money in rupees.

In the 1970s, drinking water was often suspect. One of the cheapest things you could buy was a glass of cooled water from a street vendor for 5 paisa, or a 20th of a rupee. Today, safe bottled water is easily available at either 15 or 20 rupees a litre.

Which brings me to the purchasing power of the rupee. In the 1970s, the rupee was worth between 10 and 13 cents. Today it’s worth just 2 cents Canadian, and even less in American cents.

Of course the value of the dollar has also changed, so it’s best to compare what a rupee will buy.

In the 1970s, the standard price for chai was 25 paisa, a quarter of a rupee, or as they called it then, char anna, or four annas. Today a very small cup is 5 rupees while a standard one is 10 rupees.

You could get a standard thali meal in those days for 1.50 to 2.50 rupees. Today it’s more like 70 to 200 rupees.

It seemed to me that English was less used today than 38 years ago, perhaps because the British Raj has faded more into history. But it might just be where I was travelling. I spent more time in the north, where people tend to use Hindi as a lingua franca. Last time, I was more in the south where people often use English when communicating between people from different states with different languages.

I met a few people who spoke English very well, but most had none at all or spoke only a very basic English. My efforts to learn Hindi before my trip definitely paid off, perhaps not in profound conversations, but at least in good will.

When I visited India in 1977, the government was throwing Coca Cola out of the country and promoting Indian-made soft drinks. Many markets had locally made and bottled soft drink concoctions of uncertain quality.

Today, Coke and Pepsi definitely rule and both companies sell everything from cola to bottled water and even fruit drinks like Maaza, a sweet drink made with real mango pulp and bottled by Coca Cola, or Limca, a lemon drink from Coca Cola.

Of course some things about India have not changed or have changed only slightly and a lot of these include minor and major annoyances.

No change for larger bills: Nobody wants to give up change and people always claim to have none. Yet bank machines issue money in 500 rupee notes that few people accept except for larger purchases like hotel rooms. You are constantly trying to devise strategies to get change from larger notes in order to pay exact change to rickshaw drivers and others who insist they have no change.

Even at the ticket window of the main entrance to the Taj Mahal a few minutes after opening they claimed not to have 250 rupees change for two 500 notes to pay the 750 foreigner admission price.

India is still very much a cash economy, but few businesses have cash floats.

Garbage is everywhere: You do find some more garbage bins than I remembered in the 1970s, but they are still rare and many people don’t use them. Once I bought a drink and asked the seller what I should do with the bottle when finished. He pointed to the ground outside his stand indicating I should just throw the bottle there. With more plastic and packaging, the garbage has become worse than in the 1970s when things were often wrapped in biodegradable wrapping like banana leaves.

Animals on roads: You no longer see cows on the streets of Delhi, but you see them everywhere else. And dogs, monkeys, goats, sheep etc. In some places they pose a risk to drivers, but usually they are more a risk to themselves.

Dealing with rickshaw drivers: In the 1970s, a lot more of the rickshaws were cycle rickshaws. These still exist, more in some places than others, but increasingly they’ve been supplanted by auto rickshaws or tuk-tuks as they’re now called. Either way, many drivers will try to cheat foreigners (and even Indians) as a matter of course. When you exit a train, they pounce on you like a swarm of mosquitoes. The more aggressive ones are the worst for trying to charge inflated prices, so I often bypassed these touts and went straight to some guy quietly waiting with his tuk-tuk.

That’s not to say that all are cheats, and I had some who seemed to be very honest. In one case, I had a driver who asked a very fair price and went straight to my destination without trying to push me into shopping. I was so grateful that I offered him a tip, which he refused. This, however, only happened once.

Horking and spitting: The sound of loud throat clearing, horking and spitting is by no means unique to India, but it is very common and still sounds disgusting. Often now you see signs telling people not to spit, though I don’t know if these do any good. One thing I saw a lot less of was the spitting of bloody red paan juice from concoctions that many Indian men chew. Is paan perhaps less popular than it was?

Coffee: India is a tea country and good coffee is hard to come by. Coffee is more available now in the north than it was, but almost always, except in some more expensive places catering to tourists, it’s Nescafe. Although I normally drink coffee black, I took to adding milk and sugar to hide the disgusting taste of the Nescafe.

Questions from strangers: As a rule of thumb, if an Indian comes up to you and starts a conversation, they want something from you. The more satisfying interactions usually came when I initiated the contact. Of course, many people do approach you innocently, but it’s hard to know because the questions asked by a tout and someone who is just curious about you are often the same: What is your country? What is your name? First time in India?

I tried to be patient and to give most people the benefit of the doubt unless they were obviously touts, but I did tend to be a bit guarded when strangers approached me to ask questions.

Traffic: I sometimes saw zebra crosswalks, but in India they have no meaning whatsoever. Cars never stop for pedestrians except very occasionally if it looks like a collision is otherwise unavoidable. You take your life in your hands when you cross the street. I often put myself in the middle of a group of Indians when crossing, and I always planned my crossing with a few escape routes, typically crossing at places where there is an island in the roadway.

You always have to look in both directions because vehicles, especially infernal motorcycles, often drive on the wrong side of the street and in the wrong direction. People ignore traffic lights, one-way streets and virtually any traffic signs and signals.

On highways and city streets, people are constantly passing and often crossing into the oncoming traffic to do so. There is a constant sound of horns honking. Horns have a different meaning in India. In North America, they usually mean something to the effect of: “Wake up, asshole.” In India, they just mean, “I’m here. Watch out for me.”

Postscript: When I was in Ujjain, I copied a memory card from my camera onto a USB memory stick at an internet café, but the computer I used had a virus, and I lost access to all the photos taken over two days.

Back home, I located software to recover the photos from the USB drive and have successfully salvaged them. I’ll post some of those photos to the Bhopal and Ujjain blog entries shortly when time permits.

 

One of the first things I noticed when I settled into my 11th floor Vancouver hotel room was the sound of silence. It was the first time I had experienced silence in more than a month, other than for a few brief moments at Sanchi in the Indian countryside.

There was no sound of honking horns and infernal motorcycles revving. No shouted conversations in the hall outside my door. No screaming babies. No fireworks. I was definitely no longer in India. I realized how much I missed silence.

I was, however, dazed and tired. I hadn’t slept properly since my last night in Agra. Although it was still Friday in Vancouver, it was now Saturday in India, and I hadn’t properly slept since the night of Wednesday-Thursday. I managed a few hours of semi-dozing on both planes, but I can never sleep properly in those uncomfortable, cramped economy class plane seats.

I spent Thursday morning packing and organizing and doing a bit of picture sorting, but didn’t do any sightseeing that last morning in Agra. When I took a tuk-tuk to Agra Cantonment railway station, the driver, who was the same one who took me around on Tuesday, insisted on taking me to one marble store – not to buy, but because he gets his tuk-tuk subsidized to the tune of 50 rupees ($1) at day by the shop for bringing tourists regularly. As I was early, I reluctantly agreed.

My train to Delhi was late by more than an hour, though I wasn’t panicking because I had a good cushion of time with my flight leaving around 1:45 a.m. Still, it was frustrating when the train got later and later as we sat on sidings waiting for other trains to pass. That’s a big problem with Indian Railways – there often aren’t enough tracks so when two trains need the track at the same time, one has to wait at a previous station or elsewhere on a siding. As a result, once a train is late, it gets later and later because it is now off schedule and has to move aside for trains that are running on time.

Fortunately, the train was relatively empty in two-tier air conditioned class and I could stretch out on an upper bunk and relax for the trip.

My ticket was not to one of the main Delhi stations, but to Hazrat Nizamudden on Delhi’s south side, but not too far from New Delhi. As usual, I was pounced on by tuk-tuk and taxi touts as I stepped out of the station, but I brushed them aside and headed to one of the tuk-tuks in line that had a more honest looking driver.

I told him I wanted to go to New Delhi metro station, the terminal for the airport metro line, but during the ride he convinced me it would be better for both me and him to go to the next station on the line and avoid the busy traffic around New Delhi station. He was communicating with me in Hindi, and although I didn’t understand everything, I got the gist. He seemed impressed that I was speaking to him in my broken Hindi.

The metro, or subway, was slick, modern and uncrowded – probably the most clean and modern facility I have seen in India, where most things are aging, dirty and breaking down. Very soon I was at the international terminal of Indira Gandhi International Airport.

I had plenty of time, but it took time to grab a meal, check in, go through security, clear immigration and do all the other airport stuff. At last I was on my All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight and taking off only a few minutes late.

It was with very mixed feelings that I was leaving India. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my trip, and despite all its challenges, I love India. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back. But those challenges do wear you down, and I was looking forward to being in a clean environment with no touts and no need to argue over prices on many purchases.

I had a young Japanese man beside me on the flight who was reading a book in English, but we only conversed a little as we flew by the magnificent snow-capped Mount Fuji in the final minutes before Tokyo. Most of the time I tried, with very limited success, to doze and get some much-needed sleep.

It felt good to have the Japanese flight staff, who bowed and were flawlessly polite, despite most having not so good English skills. Ideas about politeness are so different between Japan and India, where people push, butt in and generally just take care of themselves.

In Tokyo, several times people said “sorry” when we collided, even though it was largely my fault for carrying all my luggage. One policeman who gave me police emergency contact information at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, apologized most humbly for then asking to do a brief security check of my passport and travel details. I can’t recall ever before having a policeman apologize for such a thing.

Despite only having spent a day in Tokyo on my way to India, it felt like I was coming home. I took the Narita Express train from the airport to Tokyo Station in downtown Tokyo, about a one-hour trip through farmland and rather depressing looking suburban houses. I noted that vehicles even drove in their proper lanes. At one point, a network of monorail tracks crossed over the train tracks and a couple of times we passed other trains going in our direction on different tracks. No waiting on sidings for other trains to pass.

From Tokyo Station, I got the Yamanote train, which fortunately wasn’t yet crowded, to Hamamatsucho, the terminal for the monorail to Haneda Airport. This is also the station near hotel I stayed at when I arrived in January, so I decided to check my bag and go out to a restaurant I had eaten at before. This was the one where you enter your order on a computer screen when you walk into the restaurant and they bring it to you at one of the counters.

I was very hungry after the meagre airplane snacks so I ordered one of the larger dishes on the menu and got a heaping bowl of steamed vegetables, noodles and seafood with a number of sauces on the side ranging from soya to ginger. A very nice break from curries everyday.

I had originally planned to try to grab some sleep in a capsule hotel for a few hours, but by the time I got to Haneda Airport, I decided it wasn’t really worth it because I would need time to check in and do all the security and immigration stuff.

The flight to Vancouver was uneventful. We briefly passed into Saturday, February 28 before crossing the International Dateline and losing a day, going back to early morning of Friday, February 27, the same day I started out in Delhi.

At last I spotted the shoreline of Vancouver Island and smaller nearby islands and then some snow-capped mountains. Soon we flew up over the Fraser River before doing a sharp 180-degree turn and flying back to approach YVR Airport from the east.

Even clearing immigration was a breeze. You just put your passport on a scanner, insert your customs declaration and take the receipt and printed scan of the declaration to a CBSA official, who just glanced at it and waved me through.

In no time, I was through the airport and stepping onto the Skytrain to head downtown.

My hotel was assigned to me by Hotwire.com, where you don’t know what you’re getting until after you pay. All you know is the rough area and hotel class. In exchange for shopping blind with no cancellations allowed, you get a great price. I ended up in a nice suite with a balcony at the Coast Plaza Hotel and Suites right in Vancouver’s downtown West End, in the heart of the gay village. It’s a nice area with all kinds of shops and a wide spectrum of restaurants and is a pleasant change from the more sleazy Granville area I’ve usually stayed in.

With my internal clock all out of wack, I only got a few hours of good sleep, but it was sleep nonetheless. Today, Saturday, I pick up my car in Surrey and head back to Osoyoos.

 

It was not actually a case of saving the best for the last that I ended my Indian adventure with the Taj Mahal.

Rather it was the result of simple geography that I wanted to end close to Delhi for my return flight and Agra is both near to Delhi and also to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan where I spent the second half of my trip.

That said, the Taj is arguably the most beautiful building in the world and it was a fitting way to end my trip.

Its beauty is exactly as I remembered it from my trips in the 1970s, but the experience of visiting it has changed, and not for the better. These days, the number of tourists has increased exponentially and security measures have interfered with the experience.

I visited the Taj on my second day in Agra, getting up early to be there when it opened around sunrise at 6:30 a.m. When I got to the west gate, there were already long lineups to buy tickets and then get inside. In all, it took more than an hour to buy my ticket, stand in line and go through security procedures that included X-ray and hand inspection of my camera bag as well as body search.

Once inside, many of the areas around the garden were closed off, making it impossible to photograph some of the views I took in the past. Granted, it is probably a good thing to keep the crowds away from some areas where they would obstruct the views of others.

The actual tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan are on a lower level below a pair of dummy tombs on the main level. In the 1970s, you could descend a steep flight of stairs to see the actual tombs. These days they are closed off and you can only see the dummy tombs.

At one point I stopped to admire some of the decorative semi-precious stones inlaid in the marble of the mausoleum, but a guard told me I had to keep moving.

Even the area across the Yamuna River at Mehtab Bagh, which commands a wonderful view of the Taj, now has severely restricted access. The views are through coils of rusted barbed wire well back from the river and you can no longer walk freely along the river bank.

Justifiably, the Indians are worried about a terrorist attack. This is underlined by the guard surrounded by sandbags and perched with a machine gun above the riverbank on the Taj side, although he appeared to be dozing when I saw him.

Despite these more recent impediments to visiting the Taj, it is a magical experience. The proportions and symmetry of its architecture are magnificent. The semi-translucent white marble is constantly changing colour according to the time of day and changes in sunlight.

The details of the inlaid semi-precious stones set into the marble are superb craftsmanship and they are not overdone.

The way the Taj is elevated above the gardens sets the sky as the background and gives the building a commanding presence.

Once I got inside, I spent about three hours strolling through the garden and circling the Taj on the different levels of marble. These days you no longer have to take off your shoes – they give you shoe covers as part of the $15 foreigner admission price.

It was, unfortunately, a cloudy day like my other days in Agra. Still, the sun broke softly through the haze to cast various shades of light on the building and for a short time the sky cleared a bit to allow a patch of blue sky to show through.

There are only so many angles to photograph the Taj Mahal from and all have been shot many thousands of times already. I shot the main views and then did my best to look for less common additional angles.

My visit to the Taj was on Wednesday, but I actually arrived in Agra by early train on Tuesday morning from Jaipur.

Of course I was immediately set upon by dozens of tuk-tuk drivers as I stepped out of the train station. One, Nadeem, ended up taking me to my hotel and offering me a tour of the city, which I agreed to for that afternoon after insisting that I don’t do shopping. (The rickshaw wallahs all try to push tourists into shops where they get a commission that is added to the purchase price).

After a much needed nap – I had very little sleep with getting up for the early train – I went out at 2 p.m. to meet Nadeem, but instead was met by his uncle, who spoke much less English, but ended up taking me around to some of Agra’s other sights besides the Taj. There wasn’t time on my first day to do the Taj justice and the morning is the best time to visit, so I opted to save it and see other sights that Tuesday.

First on the list was Agra’s Red Fort. This too is a magnificent architectural accomplishment, despite being overshadowed by the Taj. Once again, access has been severely restricted and you can no longer wander around its ramparts.

You can still visit the marble portion of the fort’s palace, built by Shah Jahan, and see where he was imprisoned by his usurping son, the evil Aurangzeb.

Next, we visited several monuments on the other side of the river.

Among these was the Itimad-ud-Daulah, the tomb of Mizra Ghiyas Beg, Emperor Jahangir’s chief minister and Shah Jahan’s father-in-law. This so-called Baby Taj was the first Mughal building in Agra to be built from marble and it also incorporates some of the inlaid stone techniques that were later used on the Taj.

Next, we visited the less popular Chini-ka-Rauza at the end of a more secluded laneway shaded by trees. This Persian-style building is the tomb of Afzal Khan, a poet and chief minister to Shah Jahan. It is crumbling and is less protected, but remnants of its blue tiles still cover some of the walls. Little boys played cricket under the ruins.

Lastly, we visited Mehtab Bagh, the gardens across the river from the Taj Mahal. The view across the Yamuna River is one of the nicer ones, and there was a handful of more laid back tourists admiring it. I watched as a couple of goatherds led their flock along the banks on an area where tourists are not allowed to go and which lies behind coils of rusty barbed wire.

To end the tour, my driver took me to a marble factory that employs the same techniques as the artisans who did the inlaid stonework on the Taj. He insisted I didn’t have to buy, but only look. Actually, although there was a little sales pressure, I did enjoy seeing work being done and admiring the tabletops and other marble creations with their inlaid semi-precious stones. The pieces I liked, however, were way beyond my price range.

Hotel Kamal, where I stayed, is only a short walk from the south gate of the Taj. From its rooftop restaurant you can see the dome of the Taj from a fairly close distance, although there are more scruffy rooftops of other Taj Ganj area buildings in the foreground.

After visiting the Taj on Wednesday, I decided to set out in the afternoon for Fatehpur Sikri. This is the Indian capital built by Mughal Emperor Akhbar about an hour from Agra, but which was subsequently abandoned due to lack of water.

I had visited Fatehpur Sikri in 1977.

The trip involved a tuk-tuk ride to a bus stand on the other side of Agra and then a wait of about three quarters of an hour because I had just missed a bus. I turned down a taxi driver who wanted to take me for a lot more money than the bus, though in hindsight it probably would have been worth it as I didn’t have enough time to do Fatehpur Sikri justice.

When I arrived, I wandered in the bazaar below the old city trying to figure the way up, which wasn’t well marked. A tout saw my confusion and ended up leading me up, insisting he was not a guide and didn’t want money, but only enjoys talking to foreigners. Of course I knew he had another angle and I was uncomfortable with him, but he led me up through the winding streets to the mosque area of Fatehpur Sikri, which is still being used.

Sure enough, my non-guide did try to get me to buy some stonework he claimed to have done himself, but which was probably mass produced somewhere else.

After he finally left, I had a quick look around the mosque and courtyard area as well as the huge gate in front at the top of a steep flight of steps.

There wasn’t time to see the palace, but I’ve had my fill of palaces this trip anyway.

I returned to the bazaar and found the bus stand, but none of the people I asked directions from told me the buses had stopped running for the day. Finally my tout “friend” came by and told me. I took a tuk-tuk out to the highway, where I was able to catch a bus back to Agra. It had upper sleeping bunks, so I was able to stretch out for the ride back.

The next afternoon I would be on my way to Delhi by train and starting a long journey home. No more good sleeps until I’m in Canada.

 

Jaipur is an intense, but fascinating city.

Bus loads of package tourists arrive at the base of the Amber Fort just outside the city to ride elephants up the winding road to the fort. I saw more foreign tourists here than in all other places I visited in India this trip combined. (I haven’t been to Agra yet, so that will change).

Although there are many independent travellers on tight budgets, there are also tourists with money to burn, or who have no idea what a rupee is worth. As a result, prices are jacked up for foreigners everywhere, there is constant hard sell. Buying many things, such as an auto rickshaw ride, requires hard bargaining.

But Jaipur also has many redeeming features. Unfortunately in my one day here, I didn’t have nearly enough time to do it justice.

The old city was planned and laid out in a grid under Maharaja Jai Singh II in 1727. Its buildings are pink, originally a colour of welcome, and have earned it the moniker of “The Pink City” — appropriate for Rajasthan in which Jodhpur is the Blue City, Udaipur is the White City and Jaisalmer is the Golden City.

Based on Jai Singh’s plans, the bazaars are organized according to trades, and even today sellers of similar products are grouped together.

There aren’t the winding alleys of other old cities to get lost in, but it makes for fascinating walks nonetheless.

I arrived just after 5:30 a.m. on the train from Bikaner, having only had a few hours of sleep, thanks to a restless young child and constantly fidgeting parents in the seats around me. I tried to let a little time pass at the station to wake up with a couple coffees and to face Jaipur in daylight. As usual in India, most coffee is Nescafe and real coffee is rare.

As I left the station, rickshaw wallahs descended on me quickly. Fortunately there is a pre-paid both at station, as there are in some of India’s other touristy transportation hubs, which sets a fair and fixed rate. My driver did keep pressuring me to go to another hotel where he no doubt gets a commission, but I just insisted that I had a pre-paid hotel reservation and I wasn’t changing.

The hotel, at the edge of the old city, was in an old haveli. Despite the early hour, the young man working the front desk answered my ring and told me I could have a room right away. Music to my ears as I had expected only to be able to leave bags until later in the day when I could check in.

Making this hotel special, they showered me with flower petals thrown from an upper balcony as I was led up the stairs to my room and then front desk man put a red dot on my forehead and a chain of flowers around my neck. Gimmicky, yes, but it was fun and was symbolic of the extra effort the hotel makes to serve guests.

After a snooze and breakfast, I caught a local bus to the Amber Fort for just 15 rupees, no doubt pissing off the rickshaw wallahs who charge hundreds after intense bargaining.

I climbed the hill to the fort, photographing its setting and the many painted elephants carrying tourists to the top, two at a time, while the elephant wallahs rode up on the neck.

The top was absolutely swarming with tourists. I was also feeling like I’d had my fill of forts and palaces and I had already visited Amber in 1977, so I decided to give the inside a pass – especially since I felt pressed for time.

Heading back, a rickshaw wallah told me it was not possible to take a bus. Two minutes later, a bus took me back to town for 10 rupees.

One man shifted his family over and squeezed them so that he could offer me a seat. This is typical of the hospitality of many Indians who are not in the business of fleecing tourists.

Next I began part of a walking tour of the old city that was suggested in my Lonely Planet guide, which included a map and descriptions of the points along the way.

Before visiting Jantar Mantar, an observatory built by Jai Singh, I gave Yogesh a call, which he had asked me to do when I was in Jaipur. He suggested we could get together after he finished work and that I could meet his family.

The Jantar Mantar was quite a work of science for its time. Its many instruments resembled sculptures or strange-shaped buildings. Most were for such things as calculating time, tracking celestial bodies and calculating the signs of the zodiac. They were amazingly accurate, with sun dials that could calculate the time to a two-minute accuracy.

I watched one guide showing a couple tourists how the edge of the sun’s shadow fell across a marker on a rounded marble sculpture. From this marker, the exact solar time of Jaipur could be determined. To this, an offset of 39 minutes was added to reflect the fact that Indian Standard Time is based on Allahabad and to account for seasonal change. The time, the guide announced, was 2:22 p.m. I checked my watch. He was right to the minute.

Another instrument had a concave pit with marble strips at the bottom indicating signs of the zodiac. A circular disk was suspended with wires over the pit and it cast a shadow right in the area indicating Pisces. A guide explained to a group that the shadow was only just past the line separating Pisces from Aquarius. This is because on February 23, we were only a couple days into Pisces.

This was by far the largest of five Jantar Mantars built by Jai Singh in northern India, and is much larger than the one I visited in Ujjain.

From there I strolled through markets, passing sellers devoted to kitchen gadgets, flowers, perfumes, dyes, wrist bangles and other products. Sometimes people were willing to be photographed when I asked. Other times, they asked to be photographed. A common thing in India is that someone will see my camera and ask me to photograph their friend. If the friend acts too shy or insists they don’t want to be photographed, I photograph the person making the request instead. I then show both the photo, which often gets the reluctant person so agree to be photographed after all. Other times, if there’s no resistance, I photograph both together or separately depending on the subjects and location.

While many of the photos I get this way are a little stiff or uninteresting, I have gotten some nice ones.

Often products were being manufactured right at the shops so, at the very least, I stopped to watch. At one shop they were making little containers from lac, a natural resin, which are used to hold the coloured dyes used in the Holi festival. The man there showed me an album of the many awards and recognitions his father received in the business, including meeting such figures as Indira Gandhi, Prince Charles and various other important people. It’s a family business, and his wife and mother were working away shaping and colouring the lac as he talked to me.

When I completed the walk, I had to bargain with auto rickshaw wallahs to get back to my hotel, which was fairly close, but farther than I wanted to walk just then.

One quoted me a price of 100 rupees, which I knew was the foreigner price. There is a code among rickshaw wallahs that they won’t interfere when a customer is bargaining with one, but if negotiations break off, it’s fair for others to jump in with their own prices. As a result, when I get quoted a price that’s too high, I don’t offer a counter price when there are other rickshaw wallahs there. I just say, “no thanks. I’ll walk” and I start walking away. Other wallahs then jump in with a lower price. I got an offer of 80 rupees, but I insisted on walking instead. Another then offered to take me for 70, which is probably higher than what an Indian would pay, but seemed reasonable, so I took it. Such is how it often works in India, especially Jaipur, where rarely is the first price offered the one you actually pay.

After I cleaned up and rested, Yogesh called me to invite me to dinner at his apartment with his family. I met him at the GPO post office where he was working, after my rickshaw driver got lost a couple times – I’m not sure why a rickshaw driver wouldn’t know where the city’s main post office was.

Yogesh drove me to his gated apartment, deftly dodging Jaipur rush hour traffic.

I met his wife, two young daughters, brother-in-law and his son as well as a few other neighbourhood children who dropped by to see the “foreigner.”

His wife, who works as a pre-school teacher, had prepared a wonderful dinner at short notice with two kinds of appetizer I was unfamiliar with, and two delicious vegetarian dishes, one from kidney beans, along with rice and chapattis.

In the end, they gave me a gift of some candles. I felt bad that I hadn’t brought them a gift. We promised to stay in touch through Facebook.

Yogesh and I both enjoyed each other’s company during our adventures in Jaisalmer and Bikaner. He said it was unusual for him to get to know a foreigner this way. For me, I enjoyed his sense of humour and insights on India. It’s rare for me to get to know someone in India who can communicate so well in English.

I got back to my hotel and into bed by midnight with only five hours to sleep before I had to get up for a train to Agra. This will be my last destination in India – crowned with the Taj Mahal – before I return to Delhi and fly home.

 

Rats scurried across the temple floor and ducked in and out of little crannies, hollows and holes.

The Karni Mata Temple in Deshnok, south of Bikaner, Rajasthan, looked fairly ordinary from the outside, but as soon as you walked through the entrance, you passed a little cranny swarming with rats.

In the main courtyard, a musician beat on a drum. To the right, rats climbed up an iron grille while pigeons fluttered around. At a large bowl, about the size of a big wok, filled with milk, rats perched side-by-side slurping up the milk. Some even hung upside down to find a space to drink from, their snouts submerged.

A dead rat covered in milk lay to the side, ignored by the other rats. Perhaps it fell in and drowned.

Some devotees visiting the temple gave food to the rats that scurried away in fear at first, but when they realized it was food they went after it, grabbing the food from each other.

These rats are venerated by the worshippers. According to local belief, the rats are the reincarnated ancestors of local residents. People there don’t go through the normal process of death and reincarnation. Rather, people become rats and rats when they die become people.

Worshippers lined up to go into the inner sanctum for blessing, though I did not see any rats or rat figures in there. There was, however, another bowl just outside, with more rats sipping milk and with rat feces all around.

Like any other Hindu temple, people must remove their shoes before they come inside, so devotees were walking barefoot through rat feces and bits of chewed and congealed rat food.

It’s apparently auspicious to eat the food the rats have nibbled on, but I didn’t try it.

I was prepared to go barefoot for this once-in-a-lifetime experience, but was grateful I didn’t have to. Instead of just leaving my shoes lying outside the temple as many Indians do, I played it safe and took them to a shoe check stand. There they gave me some open-topped cloth slippers that at least covered the bottoms of my feet. I normally don’t try to accept special treatment, but in this case I was happy to make an exception.

My first full day in Bikaner was an animal themed day – rats in the morning and camels in the afternoon. Before talking about the afternoon visit to the National Research Centre on Camels, I should mention the previous day’s drive from Jaisalmer.

As planned, Ajay, who was driving a Bengali family to Delhi, stopped near our hotel shortly after the agreed time, and there were two seats for Yogesh and me.

In the beginning, the road was good, being well maintained for the military. As we went along however, the traffic became heavier. We were constantly passing very slow farm vehicles and trucks, with lots of oncoming traffic that was also doing the same. And because the road was relatively good, our speed was higher than normal for India – around 80-90 km/h. Often people were passing right when there were other vehicles coming and the vehicles just squeezed over making three lanes on the two-lane road.

Yogesh said he wasn’t scared. This is normal for Indian driving. But at times I was terrified. I had to just have faith that Ajay was an experienced driver and knew what he was doing. The rules of the road are certainly different in India!

Back to the camel research centre. I got an auto rickshaw that was on the verge of breaking down and we drove the 10 km south of town mostly in the same gear. The rickshaw did give up the ghost just as we arrived, but the driver had it working again in about 20 minutes. I was early for the 2 p.m. opening, so chatted with a couple of Indian psychology professors, one of whom especially spoke good English.

He filled me in on some of the recent Indian political developments that I was aware of, but didn’t fully understand.

I knew that Narendra Modi of the BJP had become India’s Prime Minister last year and so far he seems to have maintained considerable support, especially among Hindus.

I also knew that elections took place in Delhi just after I arrived. Apparently an upstart party, the AAP, beat the BJP, and this was seen as a rebuke, at least by people in Delhi to some of the BJP’s more extreme Hindu nationalist policies, such as discussions of bringing Muslims “home again” by reconverting them to Hinduism.

This professor said he was a Hindu, but not very religious. He had to keep up religious appearances, however, because of social pressure.

Governments, he said, should govern rather than worry themselves with religious agendas. I told him that in general terms, I certainly agreed, though I didn’t get into discussing the religious agenda of Canadian Conservatives.

The government-run camel research centre conducts research on camel breeding and tries to maintain and improve camel genetics. People can bring female camels there to be bred for free. They also research other aspects of camels such as disease prevention and development of camel dairy products, and products made from the hair, as well as skin and bones of camels that have died of natural causes. They don’t slaughter camels or develop markets for their meat.

I shared a guide with an Irish couple. He showed us the camel studs, the nursing mothers, the museum and other aspects of the operation.

The tour ended just as the camels were due for their 3 p.m. feeding, which I wanted to see. It was quite a sight as hundreds of camels were brought in from the fields and they lined up at water troughs to drink. I was warned to stay back a respectable distance as it’s camel rutting season and the males can get aggressive. They made roaring sounds somewhat like a lion, which also showed they deserved respect.

They were also brought to another area for food more filling than the scrub that they forage in the desert.

Apparently camels are capable of drinking a couple hundred litres of water in a few minutes. They can also go a couple weeks without drinking.

Just as I was winding up my watching of the feeding and was getting set to leave, my phone rang and it was Yogesh. He was just arriving at the camel research centre with a few officials from the post office who were being given a tour by a senior official from the research centre. They invited me to join them, so I got the tour again, and also got VIP access to a few areas that are off limits to the general public. In particular we were brought into the coral with the nursing mothers to watch the camels being milked. They wanted me to take a few photos they can use in their publication, which I agreed to.

Today I met a local young man who speaks good English and works when he can as a guide, though says it’s hard to get this work because Bikaner is not a major tourist destination like some of the other cities of Rajasthan.

As my train to Jaipur doesn’t leave until 11 p.m. this evening, I agreed to let him show me the old town and the fort. The bazaars in the old town were quiet as it was the last Sunday of the month, the one day they close, but there was still a lot of activity. And there were some beautiful havelis built by Bikaner’s merchants over the centuries, with the typical balconies and stone lattices.

The fort was also impressive in its interior, although it is the one fort that was built on low ground with a moat rather than on a cliff, so its setting wasn’t as dramatic.

My guide said he had been a history student at the local university. Whether or not that is true, he had a good grasp of the city’s history and the displays at the fort.

My guide also took me to an art collective that does miniature paintings as well as to a collective selling bedspreads and quilts made in the villages. I am not really interested in doing shopping, though some of the miniature paintings were very impressive. I liked the ones that were copies of traditional Mughal miniatures, but some of the ones I liked were priced around 25,000 rupees or about $500, so it was easy to say “no.”

One of the artists showed me the technique of painting the tiny details using a very fine brush. If you look with a magnifying glass, you can see individual hairs on the small figures and other details. He even demonstrated doing a small painting on my thumbnail, writing my name in tiny microscopic letters.

My train is due to leave in about an hour. I have a three-tier bunk sleeper, so hopefully I can get a bit of sleep during the five plus hours trip to Jaipur. I want to be rested enough to enjoy that interesting, but touristy city.

Jaisalmer is a gateway to the Thar Desert, which extends throughout much of Rajasthan and into a few neighbouring Indian states.

The desert also reaches into nearby Pakistan, extending to the more fertile Indus Valley.

This location has given the old fort city of Jaisalmer two key industries: tourism and the military.

Tourists can imagine themselves in the Arabian Nights, even if the geography is a bit off and the ever-present motorcycles destroy the illusion. For many, it’s their first time to ride a camel. (I had only ever had a short ride on one).

With only a narrow strip of desert separating India and Pakistan, the military is very present in this region, even if tensions have quieted between the two adversaries and most of the conflict has been in Kashmir.

After arriving late the previous night, I set out early in the morning to explore the fort as the red sun rose through hazy skies. Though not nearly as high as Jodhpur’s fort, Jaisalmer’s fort is still perched atop sandstone cliffs and is a bit of a climb.

Also different is that Jaisalmer’s fort is still lived in. There’s a maze of streets among which are houses, tourist-oriented craft sellers, hotels and Hindu and Jain temples. Despite the commercialism, there was no serious hard sell or aggression and the streets had a lot of colour and atmosphere.

Nonetheless, there are worries that demands for water by local residents and tourists are putting a strain on the structure of the fort and its inadequate sewage network. Some are calling for people to be moved out, while some tourist guidebooks advise people not to stay in hotels in the fort. (Mine was outside and below the fort, but within easy walking distance).

There are numerous elaborate havelis, older palatial residences, especially to the north of the fort. I visited a major one, Patwa-ki-Havel.

There I met an Indo-Canadian couple, from Edmonton, who like to vacation in Osoyoos and were impressed that I live there. The husband didn’t bother to climb to the upper floors of the haveli, saying they are all the same, with the same floor plan around a courtyard.

At the hotel I had booked a camel outing leaving at 3 p.m. and returning that night. The trip included visits to a couple local villages and a ghost town, a camel ride in the sand dunes to watch the sunset and then entertainment of music, traditional dances and dinner at a nearby camp.

I got a reduced rate on the trip by agreeing to go with another tourist, who was doing the same trip except staying the night at the camp in a luxury tent equipped with large bed, separate bathroom with toilet and plumbing and hot water. If I had longer, I might have been tempted to do the overnight, or better yet take a trip that camped in the desert. But my schedule was tight and time limited.

The other tourist turned out to be Yogesh, an information technology manager originally from Delhi, but now working in Jaipur. He is responsible for getting all the post offices in Rajasthan onto a computer system that will facilitate a change that will see the post offices also act as banks. It’s a challenge, especially for many of the smaller post offices that tend to be more paper-driven and wary of computer technology.

Yogesh speaks excellent English and is friendly with a good sense of humour, so it was great to have him along – especially when he could translate and explain things to me. This was lucky as our guide and driver spoke very little English.

The village visits were a little contrived. One woman showed us her home and served us tea. She is obviously used regularly for these visits. I asked her if I could photograph her, but she declined – as Yogesh said, it is not their custom. This is a pity because the clothing the Rajasthani women wear is very colourful and they are very photogenic. I did get her two children to pose rigidly until I did something to make them laugh and they became more natural.

The ghost town was built with stone and the guide said it was hundreds of years old. I didn’t really get the story, so I will try to look it up when I can figure out exactly which one it was.

Our camel man, Piru Khan, was only in his early 20s, but I guessed he was a decade or two older because his face was weathered from the sun.

He only rents the camels and makes very little money, about $40 a month, he said, though I expect he makes more in tips. His dream is to buy his own camel and go into business for himself. He asked us for seed money, but the best we could do, Yogesh told him, would be to post his information on social media if anyone wants to give to him.

He spoke better English than our guide, and he fitted us up with two camels – Rocket and Lucky.

I got Rocket and Yogesh drew the short straw and got Lucky. Rocket was the leader. Lucky was painted with ridiculous black spots that either made him look like a leopard or like he had measles.

Riding a camel is different from riding a horse. For one thing, you are a lot higher up, sitting well above the camel’s head. On the other hand, the camel squats down on the ground when you mount and dismount so it’s actually easier to get on, though you do have to hold on and keep your balance when the camel stands up and when it squats.

We never had the camels going at much of a speed beyond a slow walk except for one short moment at the end when we trotted a few paces. But the ride seemed gentler than a horse – you sway on the camel rather than bumping up and down or posting on a horse.

We soon climbed from scrubby flat desert into the dunes and I tried to imagine myself as Lawrence of Arabia. The illusion was shattered when children came running out from behind a dune to offer bottles of pop for sale or to sing and perform for rupees. Two little girls did a version of Frere Jacques, completely mangling the words and then going off onto a more Rajasthani rhythm while a boy provided percussion.

“The remix version,” Yogesh joked.

As we continued through the dunes, the sun got lower and lower, though the actual sunset remained about an hour away. Now we began seeing other groups on camels and then jeeps, which raced up and down the dunes, full of Indian tourists, sometimes getting stuck. They often drove very near to the camels. Although the jeeps were labeled as jeep safari companies, the man at the hotel claimed they aren’t actually allowed on the dunes. Obviously this isn’t enforced.

I have heard that some areas around Sam have a carnival atmosphere with all the tourist activity at sunset. This wasn’t as bad as that, but it wasn’t a real wilderness camel trek, which requires a longer trip to a more remote location.

I did get some good photos of camels in the sand, hoping the fine sand wouldn’t damage my camera equipment. Fortunately it wasn’t blowing.

Yogesh suggested after a while that we didn’t need to stay to see the actual sunset, but I said I would like to stay until the sun was lower and more orange. So we waited another half hour or so while Yogesh, Piru and some other men chatted, the camels rested, and I looked around for photos.

The camels were on the top of one dune and I found another high dune nearby from where I could see the setting sun behind the camels. When the sun was optimal, I asked Piru to lead our two camels along the ridge.

Just as I was lining up my shot, an infernal jeep roared up and promptly got stuck right next to the camels and in front of my shot. As the sun got lower, I got more and more impatient. Fortunately they got unstuck soon, Piru continued with the camels and I got a few shots of the silhouetted camels with the sun behind them. Yes, it’s a cliché, but I wanted that shot and got it.

Very near there we were met by our guide, who took us nearby to the camp for the music, dance and food.

Although there were a couple of Chinese tourists at the start, I was the only foreigner as the night wore on. At the very end, the dancers invited everyone up to dance together. Many Indians asked me to dance with their group. Often in India, as a foreigner I am a novelty. Yogesh found it funny.

Yogesh and I met a driver of a tourist mini-bus, Ajay, when we were at the ghost town. Ajay was going to Bikaner the next day and said he had two available seats. I had an overnight train booked for the following night, but only a seat, so had considered otherwise taking a bus.

The ride with Ajay sounded like a good alternative, so we agreed to meet the next morning.

If “Pushy Kar” was a disappointment, Jodhpur exceeded expectations.

It is a fascinating city full of life, history and colour. Although it is certainly on the tourist circuit, Jodhpur’s size is big enough that the tourism is diluted and unlike Pushy Kar, those preying on tourists aren’t constantly in your face.

I had high hopes for Jodhpur all along. It’s known as the Blue City because so many buildings in the older part are covered in a blue wash. Originally the blue was reserved for Brahmins, but later it was adopted for among other reasons the belief that the indigo used to make the blue deterred insects.

Jodhpur is also dominated by a very impressive fortress, Mehrangarh, that is perched atop a rocky cliff overlooking the city, its high ramparts blending into the sandstone they sit on.

My hotel, one of the more expensive ones of this trip, is in an old haveli, or royal mansion. Although my room was fairly basic, other than a beautifully painted closet and the necessities, the halls and crannies were ornately decorated and the floor plan, with various marble stairs and courtyards, was one I easily got lost in at first.

I was up early my first full day, yesterday, to take an auto rickshaw up the hill to Jaswant Thada, some monuments said to provide a great view in the morning as the sunlight hits the fortress. Unfortunately a man there wouldn’t let me onto the grounds until the monuments opened at 9 a.m., well past the best light. My driver was helpful in finding a plan B once I explained to him what I wanted. He drove a short way down the road and consulted with a man there, then led me on a path up some rocks to the edge of a cliff that provided a great view of the fortress, lit up in morning light, as well as the Blue City below.

He offered to take me on an extended tour of the city, and although I had doubts about doing the full tour, I agreed to it as we went along and as I was able to grab breakfast.

First he took me to an area in the Blue City where the streets were too narrow for the auto rickshaw. We got out and walked through the winding alleys, climbing a hill. Many of the houses, though poor, had ornate tops, lattice work and balconies. I made a note to come back to this area when I could explore it at my own pace.

After breakfast at my hotel, I met the driver again and we went to two other sites.

The first was Umaaid Bhawan Palace, which was built in 1929 for Maharaja Umaid Singh and was designed by British architect Henry Lanchester in a style influenced by traditional Indian styles. Part of the palace is home to the current Maharaja while part is a luxury hotel. Neither of these parts is open to the casual public, but a mildly interesting museum and a small part of the grounds are. The museum told about the making of the building, about the royal family and it showed some fancy clocks designed like steam locomotives and other forms.

Outside, but housed behind glass, was a collection of early 20th century luxury cars owned by the Maharaja,including several very old classic Rolls Royces.

Some of the palace workers wore colourful orange turbans. One man had a handlebar moustache. I admired it and asked if he would pose for a photo, which he willingly did. He told me it took him six months to grow his moustache.

Lastly, we visited the Mandore Gardens, also on the edge of Jodhpur, which were in a peaceful setting and contained a number of old Hindu temples.

After a nap during the hottest part of the day – it was up in the 30s – I took a long walk through the bazaars in the older part of the city, making my way to the part of the Blue City that I’d visited earlier in the day with the auto rickshaw driver.

It was good to be able to walk at my own pace, engage local people with my feeble Hindi, and get a few to pose for photos. One young girl told me she’d never before heard a foreigner speaking any Hindi.

Finally, around 4:30 p.m., I reached the base of Mehrangarh. The guards warned me it was closing at 5 p.m., but I made the climb anyway because the light was nice.

You climb a steep roadway through a series of fortified gates, built to deter attacks by enemy elephants. Gates are built at right angles to the roadway so the elephants can’t get a good run, and there are long sharp spikes on the doors to discourage elephants from battering them. Apparently these defences worked.

One sad sight is the hand prints at the top of widows of the Maharajas who left their prints when they went off to die on the Maharaja’s funeral pyre under the old Hindu custom of “sati,” which required widows to be burned alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres. The last time this was done for a Jodhpur Maharaja was in 1843.

This morning I left my bags at the hotel after checking out in the morning and returned to Mehrangarh for a more detailed look. They have a very good audio tour which is included in the admission price, which like most attractions in India, is charged at a much higher price for foreigners. The audio told about the history of the fortress, the Jodhpur royal family, the restoration of the fortress, and the museum pieces, which included Marwari paintings (a blend of Rajput and Moghul miniature styles) and weaponry, including lethal swords and daggers.

Particularly impressive were the carved details such as the grilles of the windows that appeared to be wood, but were actually sandstone lattice work.

The day was getting very hot and I had little energy left, so I got a ride to a wonderful lassi stall near the old clock tower to enjoy a banana lassi, before picking up my bags from the hotel and getting an auto rickshaw to the railway station.

I’m now waiting for my afternoon and evening train that should get me into Jaisalmer late tonight.

 

Pushkar is best known for its annual Pushkar Camel Fair, but I am not visiting at the right time of year for that as it’s in October or November depending on the lunar calendar.

All I saw was a couple of rather sick looking camels available for rent to tourists wishing to take a “safari.”

Otherwise, Pushkar is another Hindu religious town where people come to bathe in Pushkar Lake or to pray at one of the few temples in India to the god Brahma.

Pushkar has also long been a stop on the hippie trail, though now it caters to a mix of younger travellers, aging hippies and regular tourists, offering pizza, falafel, yoga and astrology.

Among the mix of international travellers, a substantial portion in Pushkar, as in some other locations in India, are Israelis – I guess because India is one of the few countries in this part of the world that Israelis can travel to. Many of the shops and restaurants catering to foreign travellers even display signage in Hebrew.

Pushkar’s population is only around 15,000 people so the tourists tend to stand out a lot more than in larger places, such as Varanasi, that get a lot of tourists, but where they are diluted in a larger population.

As a result, many of the people who prey on tourists in Pushkar are particularly aggressive. I was constantly asked for money and often very persistently, even when I firmly said “no.” It seemed to me a more apt name for the town might be “Pushy Kar.”

At the lake, where photography is strictly prohibited (as is smooching, saying profanities and eating non-vegetarian foods), priests both real and fake, use all kinds of techniques to get you to part with your rupees. Several times I had a flower thrust into my hand with the suggestion that I should put it into the lake. Knowing this would lead to a request for rupees, I politely gave it back and declined to take it, though this encountered much resistance.

Finally I decided to let one of the real priests do puja with me on the understanding that this gets you a “Pushkar passport,” a small band of coloured string around the wrist, which supposedly signals to other priests that you’ve already been fleeced and to leave you alone. At least that’s the theory.

One guide book I have warns of the trick that priests use where they ask how much you are prepared to donate. They then say prayers for each of your family members and in the end ask you for the amount you committed to multiplied by the number of family members they prayed for.

In my case, the priest tried a different twist. After I told him I would give 100 rupees (about $2, which according to my book is a reasonable donation for a foreigner), he multiplied it by three and demanded 300 rupees – one for each of the gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. I stood my ground and gave only what I committed to.

Away from the lake, others were constantly at me with hands out. Two women asked me for money first offering to pose for a photo, but I declined. They persisted. Then one took my hand and before I knew it, she was drawing on it with a tube of wet henna paste. I verbally told her to stop, but in hindsight I realize I should have more forcefully pulled my hand away. I was nervous though that the henna would smear and stain my clothing and I had nothing to wipe it off with. The woman insisted it would dry and she would remove it.

When she did scrape it off, there was a pattern stained over my hand. I hadn’t realized, until I looked it up online, but it doesn’t just wash off. You have to wait several weeks for your skin to defoliate before it comes off. So I have a stupid ugly pattern stained in henna across the palm of my right hand for the next few weeks. For this “service,” which I had resisted, though not firmly enough, the woman demanded rupees.

Against my better judgment, I gave her a few rupees to be rid of her.

I did have some friendly encounters with other local people and some of the merchants would greet me without being overly pushy.

And there were enjoyable moments like seeing a Rajasthani wedding party pass along the street by my hotel with dancing and people in elaborate local clothing.

But a few cases of very aggressive demands for rupees did ruin Pushkar for me.

I expect some other parts of Rajasthan – notably Jodhpur and Jaipur – to also feature aggressive demands for my rupees, but hopefully they’ll also have more redeeming qualities.

Being sick with a cold and some tummy ailments probably didn’t help, but on the whole, Pushkar was a big disappointment.

Jodhpur is next. I’ve been looking forward to this blue city.

 

My first real view of Udaipur was from the rooftop of my hotel, Dream Heaven Guest House. Lights of the City Palace and various havelis — palatial homes on the waterfront — were reflected in the waters of Lake Pichola.

The rooftop restaurant was perched high above the water, up a small hill and then up several stories. Lights of the city were in all directions, glimmering in the lake.

They say that Udaipur is the most romantic of Indian cities. Probably appropriate with Valentine’s Day tomorrow, except that my sweetie is far away and out of reach.

Udaipur is probably the most touristy place I’ve been in India so far, more so even than Varanasi. Deservedly so, given its beauty.

My hotel is across a footbridge from the main part of the old town. The bridge has gates at both ends that only allow pedestrians through. It’s the one place in Udaipur that’s free of the infernal motorcycles that ruin the experience elsewhere.

Traffic was congested getting to my hotel and the auto rickshaw driver was unable to get me through to the footbridge as police blocked the access. Instead, he had to take me on a round-about route, but dropped me at my hotel.

The reception was up at the rooftop restaurant, so it was a difficult climb with my bags before I was sent down again to my room. No elevator — just narrow winding hallways and narrow stairs with low ceilings.

Today, Friday, I explored the winding streets and bazaars of Udaipur on foot, deciding to give a pass to the numerous museums that would have been interesting if I had more time.

I also did laundry by hand in my bathroom, then took my washing down to the water to dry on the banks in the sun as some of the locals were doing.

As I write this, I’m on the rooftop restaurant of my hotel, sipping a large Kingfisher lager beer and watching the night descend on the city and the lake.

I was also able to research the problem that has prevented me from copying photos from my memory card using my netbook, and believe I have now solved it so that I won’t be dependent anymore on unreliable internet cafes. It was a case of my aging netbook, which uses Windows XP, not being able to read SD cards with a greater capacity than 16 GB. By downloading a patch from Microsoft, I should now be able to access my photo files without having to search out an internet cafe with Windows 7. Hurrah!

What I liked about Ujjain is that it’s off the main beaten tourist track and so there was relatively little harassment of foreigners by touts. Yet, at the same time, Ujjain is an important holy city, one of the four hosting enormous Hindu religious festival, the Kumbh Mela, every 12 years. Next year, in 2016. it’s Ujjain’s turn to host it again.

I don’t know how many people it actually draws. Some of the local people told me it will draw the same as Allahabad, which drew almost 35 million people on a single day. I find that hard to believe though as the river in Ujjain, the Shipra, is much smaller than the Ganges and I didn’t see the kind of large areas to accommodate pilgrims as I saw in Allahabad or Haridwar.

I was up before dawn on my one full day in Ujjain (I stayed two nights) to get an auto rickshaw from the nearby clock tower to Ram Ghat, where people bathe in the river and perform their rituals. The golden light on the temples and reflected in the water as the sun came up created some beautiful scenes.

I visited several of the temples nearby to photograph their interiors and some of the rituals going on, as well as their peaceful settings. Harsiddhi Mandir and Gopal Mandir were the two main ones. The first had two blackened stone towers at the front that are apparently lit with lamps during festivals. The latter had some silver plated doors that were at one time pillaged and taken to Afghanistan, then later to Lahore, Pakistan, before finally being taken back.

The Vedh Shala is an observatory built in 1730 and used to calculate time and celestial events. I took an auto rickshaw to the south of the city to visit it. It is apparently still in use, although I’m not sure to what extent. The technology was very sophisticated at the time it was built, but I suspect it’s not up to today’s standards.

I decided to give the main temple, Mahakaleshwar Mandir, a pass because it was very crowded, there was heavy security and I would have had to check my camera at the cloak room.

Instead, I enjoyed wandering through the bazaars, where I found people friendly without any of the hard sell found in more touristy places. A number of young men and merchants even asked me to take their photos, so I had some interesting and willing subjects.

I took a nap in my hotel room in the afternoon, but there was loud banging construction in the next room, so I had to wear earplugs. Suddenly I heard the bathroom wall partially collapsing and masonry tumbling across my bathroom floor. They were apparently fixing the water pipes. I shrugged it off as typical India, but later they offered me a new room.

After the nap I hunted around for a cyber cafe to copy my photo files, but as mentioned in my last post, I lost access to them due to a virus. As the files still appear to be on the memory stick, I’m hopeful I can recover them when I return home and can use some sophisticated recovery software. I lost my photos of Sanchi, Bhopal and  everything I’d taken early that day in Ujjain.

That evening, I returned for sunset at Ram Ghat, to watch and photograph the evening Hindu rituals. It was certainly not on the scale of Varanasi, but it also seemed a little more intimate and less like something put on as a performance for visitors.

The next morning, Thursday, Feb. 12, I left on an early train to Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan. It was an all-day trip, but fortunately I had a 2 AC sleeper, the lower of two bunks, so was able to spread out and nap or read during the long journey. It wasn’t crowded, and the trip passed quickly, and I arrived in Udaipur after dark.