Finale

Finally we are in our last destination (if you don't count our very last night near Delhi in Tikli Bottom but that should be a story of a separate blog:) - Udaipur.

We are parting with Mulchand, our driver of 8 days. We actually felt quite sentimental and J gave him a very good tip, which I think Mulchand was quite embarassed to accept (but of course he still did!;).

Behind them is a lake which is the main reason why people come to this town (and lots of shopping too of course!). You can see what looks like an early 20th century cruise ship on the lake in the background. In fact this is a famous Lake Palace hotel - it's a 5 start hotel, yes, a building, that seems to float on the lake. Really quite incredible at night with all the twinkling lights...we didn't stay in that hotel of course:) (300 quid a night anyone?), but at an old, beautifully restored, haveli right by the lade side. It's called Jagat Niwas, so you can have a look at the link on the right;)

I went for my first and last lesson of yoga the following morning (tough but I really like it). Here I'm just sitting and having my breakfast of cinnamon swirls and real coffee! it's a German bakery, believe it or now (well, and Indian version of it).

On our last evening in Udaipur we went to see traditional Rajastani dance.

One bowl on her head:

And ten!!!

Katya posing next to our hotel room:

KK and JC both posing (we look particularly happy 'cos we've just devoured a huuuge banana split!)

The Lake Palace at night:

And here we are. The end of our trip. How could I summarise it?

Well, I took this picture at the airport when we were flying from Udaipur to Delhi. It's Ganesh, leisurely lying on a pedestal, all pink, relaxed, reading a (spiritual? or quite naughty?) book, in the middle of an aiport..absurd! sweet, silly, incredible, incomprehensible, devout - India is all of that, and so much more.

So many people have such different theories about the ways this country will progress, or not. But all I can say now, writting this blog 2 weeks after our return, is that India did have a huge impact on me. I didn't expect to be this affected by poverty, mind-boggling number of temples and some sort of centeredness that seem to come with it (at least it did to me). I'm now back to the hassles of 9 to 5, but still, every morning I wake up with my nose remembering a mixture of Indian street smells and a sense of perspective, depth this world, my world has. I'm trying to keep it...

Trekking in the jungle

On the way from Jodhpur to Udaipur we stopped in a picturesque place called Ranakpur. It is an area of luscious greenness, lakes and impressive mountains. It is specifically visited for trekking in the surrounded hills and jungle. So the following morning we got up at 6am, had breakfast (or mouldy toasts and luke-warm coffee!) and set off on our way to these beautiful mountains..

In case you're wondering who you took this picture below. And no, it wasn't a local jungle spirit:), but our guide. A sweet little man who could only speak a handful of English words, but was very friendly and smiley all the way. We passed this man's house on the way to our destination 9which I should explain was a new Jain temple that was being built on the very top of the mountain and was about 7 kms away from us), so he asked to come in. This was quite a sight...this little building consisted of four, poor-put together, walls, with no windows, no running water, no electricity, no gas....I'd imagined a 16-century (poor!) dwelling to be something like this. Inside was the man’s young wife dressed in customary bright pinks and silver, holding a tiny baby in her arms, sitting on the floor of earth. Next to her were two other of their small children. There was also a cow and some chicken outside of the house. The man seemed quite proud of his house and his wife (Jonathan dutifully said: 'your wife is beautiful':) which made the experience though quite beautiful, if melancholic.

We are having a snack break (the guide offered us some home-made lentil bread. very tasty by the way!) Look at this view.... and if only you could also hear it...such quietness with only occassional bird's sounds and far-away monkies' cries.

In case you can't see it easily - the mum-monkey is breast-feeding her baby-monkey. When we got to the top of the mountain there were lots of monkeys!

And puppies...:) some blond, some pink:):)

And no, we didn't get to see the Jain temple. It was about a km away from us and we were too knacked by then. The jorney that matters, not the destination!:)

Ancient carvings, pink turbans and more formidable forts

Whilst staying at a relaxing hotel somewhere between Jodhpur and our final destination - Udaipur - we visited this amazing Jain temple.


Even though the temple is not situated next to anything spectacular, loads of tourists come just to see it. Unlike many other temples we've visited, this one is built in such a tranquil place, amongst trees and mountains, that it does make it that bit easier to really enjoy it and not to worry about hussles around you. Just look at these beyond-this-world carvings!

It's very eerie, isn't it? Almost looks like a long-forgotten ship wrecks crushed deep under water..

Now look at the picture below. What do you think this is?

It's a gigantic ball of wasps! It's hanging off one of the temple's windows. J said that only in such a place we could find something this scary this close to where people live (remember? it's a Jain temple, ie no killing of any living thing). I think though that this is just another beautiful and scary thing in India. The other example of the holy/unholy conundrum in that country.


We then drove through this tiny village that was still celebrating Holi. Quite a different kettle of fish to what we experienced in Jodhpur: lots of dancing, singing and even gambling. The great thing was that we really were the only westerners in that village. So, imagine, hunderds of villagers, all in a very festive mood (some in a very-very festive mood, if you know what I mean;), and us in the middle of it all (with Jonathan being about 3 heads taller that most of the people)

Slowly people gathered around us and we became something of celebrities! People wanted to look at us, touch us, talk to us and even dance with us! Or, to be more precise, with me. We got approached by a small group of women playing on traditional instruments who started lifting my hands and showing me how to wiggle my hips! A pity we didn't take any pictures of that - Katya, a future bolywood dancer!:) *rolled eyes*

It was fun at first, until we realised that we were seriously circled by loads of people, and that we were asked to give money for this improvised dance lesson. Taking the wallet out when being surrouned by hundreds of hungry eyes was scary...We got away eventually, but we had to retreat pretty swiftly...fun though:)

And then to another fort (I'm afraid the Lonely Planet is back at the library, so not all names are recalled;). It was very hot. Just enjoy the views:

I definitely have a thing for small spaces: balconies, towers etc hehe

The Mighty Meherengarh

In the morning, pinkly luminous - us that is, not the morning - we went up to do a tour of the fort. We had great difficulty finding anyone to take our entrance fee, as we came in by the wrong gate, and also had several conversations similar to the following:
"Where is the main gate?"
"Yes, main gate."
"Yes, where?"
"The main gate?"
"Yes."
"It is by the main gate"
"Yes, but where is that?" "How do I get there?" "Which way?" "Direction please" etc
"Yes, go to the main gate."

But it was a marvellous place, and well worth volunteering to pay the entrance fee, because there was an excellent audiotour waiting for us at the main gate, when we found the main gate. (Incidentally, it was exactly where the man had said it would be, by the main gate.)
The audiotour was presented by a man with a very lush Indian accent, clearly profoundly in love with his oratorical style. The pictures below of and from the fort tell the story themselves - I think it is the side-effect of having such a good audiotour, that I can't remember for the life of me any of the details.

For some reason, I had to keep saying "Welcome to the MIGHTY MEHERENGARH FORT!" in a silly booming voice everywhere we went, until about 2 and a half hours later when I could see the look in Katya's eye finally that meant shut the fuck up. Bless her for her patience....

By the way, for those of you with a celeb interest, in the background one can just make out the palace where Liz Hurley is getting married to her Indian fella, today (Saturday) I think.

I also spied a beautiful woman, who I recruited to be the first part of my harem:

Many more of the various courtyards and views of blue roofs of Jodhpur available on request.

Jodhpur and Holi: Jonny and Katya in the pink

Jodhpur was frantic, exciting, fresh somehow despite the heat. Our car was unable to fit the narrow lanes of the old city, and so we left our driver at the gate, giving him the rest of Saturday and Sunday off and agreeing to meet him on Monday morning. Inside, motorbikes and autorickshaws squeezed past each other, honking and balancing. Small shops lay on either side of the tiny shadowed streets, selling bangles, spices, coloured powders, sugary sweets, snacks, metal trays and tiffin tins, saris and plastic toys. Going at less than a walking pace, our autorickshaw twisted and turned, avoiding other traffic, shaving past people ambling along without looking behind, barely getting past the obligatory cow nestling by a doorway. Seeing his millimetre-exact movement around all the different obstacles was like a work of art, accompanied by the same elegant choreography of all the other vehicles ahead and behind, the honking of horns, the momentary flaring of anger, the shouts and gesticulations. It was fun for me, it was India as I had expected it, the full crush and intensity. Finally we cleared the main blockage, and climbed into a quieter part of town, where we stopped before the gates of our haveli. It was in a marvellous location, and we had the highest room, with views on three sides. This is the view up to the fort of Jodhpur from our little terrace:

That evening, we walked into town. We knew that the next day would be the centrepiece of Holi, one of the most important festivals of the year in North India - the festival of colour, which celebrates the defeat of a female demon, the end of winter, and the beginning of spring. We prepared, along with most of the city, by buying water pistols, and bags of brightly coloured yellow, orange and red powder to throw at others. We then went to the centre of town to try out the omelettes of "the omelette man" Just a stall which had been run for thirty years by the same man, right next to the traffic on the inner arch of one of the gates - but the lonely planet had described the omelettes (for 15 pence) and boiled eggs with seasoning (6 pence) as delicious, and warned, don't try the pale imitations clustered around him. There was little chance of that - above the correct one was a huge sign blazoning "Recommended by Lonely Planet ..." and every guidebook under the sun. We were ushered to plastic stools and offered our laminated menu, as scooters and cars roared around us. We were handed English comments books from a pile of books containing comments all positive in about 12 different languages from Dutch to Korean. Various travellers had sent back their photos of their time at the omelette shop from home, and these were proudly displayed by the omelette man, grinning. A smattering of other Westerners were around us, including a lanky and lank haired character who spoke good Hindi. He oscillated between being mysterious about where he was from (England) and how long he had been in India, informing us of the even cheaper omelettes that could be had elsewhere, and preaching for ten minutes straight on the impending doom of the world through global warming before concluding, with a satisfied smile, 'I'm flying off to the Andaman Islands, it's such a cool place.' The omelette and the eggs were crap, greasy, over-salted, tasteless. It was the ultimate postmodern dining experience, one that exists solely by virtue of the reports and the hype surrounding it, the people turning up to find out. Forget 'Baudrillard n'est pas mort', this was a case of "l'omelette n'a jamais existe". I find it hard to imagine how the 'pale imitations' on either side could have been worse, though admittedly one was an Amulet shop and the other an Omlit shop.

On the way home in the autorickshaw in the late evening, finding that the water pistols were still full of the water the toy shop owner had given us to check they worked, I thought it would be hilarious to use the speed of the rickshaw in the relatively empty street to shoot water over passers by. Katya and I shrieked with laughter as we whizzed past groups of unsuspecting boys gathering for Holi, hearing their cries of frustration as we passed out of striking distance. And then - Katya sprayed water accidentally over some older boys on a motorbike, and they wheeled around to chase us. At first this was fun, as we squirted out our last water at them, but soon they outpaced us and suddenly whole bags of coloured powder were being thrown at us from the sides. We got away briefly, and then they were back. By which time I'd taken out one of our bags of powder and as they came past launched it at them. As I did so, they threw back, taking me unawares, and lodging a great heap of powder on my eyes which had flicked open to throw. I was temporarily blinded, dry powder under my eyelids. I spluttered and worried for my ocular health, at a busy crossing, we were collared by a policeman alongside our enemies and I feared we'd end up in jail. But the policeman let us free quicker, and the autorickshaw driver crawled up to the hotel, with us looking frightened behind us.

As for the next day, the bacchanalian orgy of colour and fighting on the streets and in our hotel, where we'd been assured of a quiet 'Holi playing' with all the family, I shall let the pictures do the talking:

The three photos above are the results of our first battle in the streets, only a skirmish compared to what was to follow.

Others on the surrounding roofs get ready to bombard the streets below.

Five stories below, passing boys quail as Jonny develops his 'water cannon' on the roof.

And next door's family, thinking they are safe in their compound, only fighting amongst each other, receive a good drenching from above.

Below, we start a water fight with another neighbour:

By this time, the real action kicks off in our hotel

And the end result: after a long shower and scrub, this is me that evening:

In any case, we remained horrendously pink for the next 48 hours , with half our clothes irreversibly contaminated, leaving traces on the pillows and towels and floors of the places we passed through. We still have pink nails and elbows and I still have pinkish ears (interesting where it sticks), and Katya has a new hair colour. Plenty more to say about our last 5 days of holiday, but we don't think we'll be at an Internet place until we are back in London, so will finish from there, probably...

On the way to Jodhpur, or a little temple and chillies

And then we set off to our next destination – to the incredible all blue town of Johdpur. By then I fully recovered from my dehli-belliness and we generally felt rested and ready to discover India (which admittedly was so much easier to do once we had our own car with a driver;))

Whilst sleepily driving on an empty and deserted road, I spotted what looked like a small temple at the top of a high mountain. This was in the middle of nowhere and so looked doubly enticing. We had to stop.

You know, to be really honest with you, by that time we’d already felt pretty ‘templed out’, but this little temple changed the way I felt about temples in India, and more generally about spirituality/religion in this county (I can’t say just ‘religion’ since it seems to transcend our standard notion of it. I see it more as mystical spirituality with lots of Gods and idols. I’ll talk about it more separately, but I’ve found it fascinating the way Hinduism, Islam, Jainism and even Christianity all mingled together in India).

We walked up a very steep staircase whilst I was constantly looking around the stones, fearing scorpions and snakes. When we finally reached the top I was surprised to see a really tiny construction with brightly coloured locked doors. We were the only people in that temple! This was the first time we’d ever been in a temple completely on our own. That, and being on a windy top of a mountain made it very special for me.






We took our shoes off and walked into the temple bowing our heads (or more likely crawled in, as the size of the temple was about 1.5 meter to 1.5) and sat on our knees. We then hit the drums next to Kali to call her - later we found out that the drums were there for her to call people to her, not the other way round. We lit a stick of incense and ate the sweets we had with us (it is very common to make offerings and consume sweets in temples), touched our lips and then the figures of Shiva and Kali (as this was their temple) We then sat a bit in silence before making our way back to the car…I felt a bit closer to the ‘real’ India somehow.

We continued along that road, and an hour later Jonny spotted another beautiful scene: large circles of red in the middle of an empty field with colourful figures all around it.

They were packing red chillies - tons of them (well, maybe many-many kgs:)). And the smell…it’s difficult to describe just how fantastic drying in the sun chillies smell!

We approached the people packing the chilles (mostly women, as it is normally the case. I’ve noticed that a lot of physical labour is done by women in India) and chatted to them. Or to be more accurate we exchanged a few gestures of friendliness:) (not entirely free of charge friendliness though;). I still have a couple of those bright red chillies in my bag. Am going to make my first real curry with them when I’m back!

And we moved on again…very close to our destination we went through an area that was basically like a natural animal reserve. The fields all around us were filled with wild animals! Cows, black buffalos, peacocks, goats and even antelopes. We were especially lucky on that day – Mulchand (our driver) cried out, showing us to the right of the car. There was a very rare black antelope. It’s a very graceful animal, which I thought looked a bit like an antelope/panda:) It had circles around its eyes and had white underbelly. The most amazing feature was its horns though. Just have a look…

Holy Towns part 2 - Pushkar

That sense of the most serene sacredness alongside chaotic irreverence was even more pronounced in Pushkar - a Hindu holy town this time. A thousand temples around a beautiful lake, with 52 ghats (bathing steps). The buildings white and the palest of blues. One of the most important Brahma temples in India - Brahma temples are very rare, by comparison with the popular cults of Shiva and Vishnu. The lake is said to have come into existence because Brahma dropped a lotus flower, and the impact created the lake. Brahma, waiting for his wife Saraswati for a ritual, got impatient and married Gayatri. Saraswati got her own back, decreeing that Brahma should only be worshipped in Pushkar. And there are two temples on high rocks on either side of the Brahma temple, one dedicated to Saraswati and one to Gayatri, that do indeed seem to glower at each other across the valley. Here's one, I forget which:

I got an immediate sense of going back in time as our car nosed into this place on the first evening, grizzly old men in turbans and flowing robes holding their sticks and standing outside dharamsalas (pilgrimage hostels) as they might have done 1,000 years ago. On the first morning, going in by myself whilst K wrestled with her stomach, I was hoping for that same feeling, but instead got a steady stream of 'sir what are your country? camel safari best in Pushkar' etc, followed by a boy who put a flower in my hand.

'No thanks,' I said.

'Here is for you, holy place Pushkar, you take plower, my blessing.'

'OK,' I said, taking it 'but no money'.

'No sir, take plower, is pree.' He closed my fingers over the orange flower. 'Is for pestival'.

I walked on another half a mile. Every hundred yards or so the same boy seemed to be hanging around. Bizarre considering he didn't have a motorbike, though he must have hopped on someone else's each time without my looking and sped past me. Then I took a turning down to the lake off the main road, and suddenly he was shouting at me, along with several others, 'No sir, this way, this way for pestival'. I declined, and they began to follow me, 'No sir, this way, back here, no lake that way.' I knew this was rubbish. They took their flower, miffed, and went back to the crossroads. Barely thirty seconds later down my road, another boy detached himself from a shop and pressed another 'pree plower for pestival' into my hand. He hassled me to such an extent that I got angry and he and his grubby 'priest' friend with anorak and scarf, standing by the lake, got worried. But after I had stood in the quiet I had asked for for about a minute, they started up at me again and again, until I consented to be led down to the lake, wash my hands in it, break and sprinkle my flower in it, then repeat after the 'priest' the names of forty or so Gods, finishing with 'my family, happy pestival, happy donation'. After which I gave him a piffling 10 rupees, resisted his demands for dollars, and retreated to a pleasant, relaxing cafe where I watched amused over a lassi as he and his friend shouted at each other in frustration.

There were wonderful glimpses of beauty, though, to offset this: watching women worshipping at a banyan tree, building piles of stones with holy red marks on them; being able to sit quietly at the main Brahma Ghat watching bathers; seeing an old sadhu (holy man) cross legged, trimming some coriander leaves in preparation for a meal; feeding a monkey some roses at the Brahma temple, which he took with alacrity, juggling flower from hand to hand to mouth as I gave him three then four roses; walking back through the town and out to our hotel among the bright hills, the warm sun on my back. And later, though sadly I didn't take the camera, I headed off with the driver down a very rocky track to a hidden temple five miles from Pushkar, where peacocks and monkeys walked in the temple grounds, a step-well lay nestled in the rocks, and a huge banyan trailed roots and extra trunks into the ground in fourteen different places. Admittedly, my sense of myself as an intrepid explorer, raised by the complete absence of tourists, and the charming quiet surroundings, dropped when I saw, in the tiny main shrine, behind the old Shiva linga and the majestic cobra placed on it, a plaque which I was surprised to see was in the Roman alphabet. Peering closer, I read that the entire Bhatti family and friends dedicated this plaque on behalf of their temple in Walsall, West Midlands, UK. They had helpfully included their telephone and mobile numbers on the plaque.

Holy Towns, part 1 - Ajmer

Ironic that holy towns seem to contain the most unholiness. In India there is an obvious mechanism: they attract visitors (Indian and western), who in turn draw into the town charlatans, gigolos, sellers, scamsters, insistent beggars, and bad cooks. But I prefer to dream that the holiness of a town is the result of a striving, an almost evolutionary competition against the town's special wickedness. The holy exists side by side with the unholy, it even feeds the unholy like a favourite pet - it needs that element of something to castigate, or to do its dirty work. (Actually, this sounds a bit like the caste system of India, the need to have someone to trample on - is that where the verb 'castigate' comes from?). Anyway in Ajmer, having braved shawl and cap and flower sellers pressing around us, we were picked up at the entrance to the Muslim shrine Katya talks about below, and rushed through a series of courtyards by a tall young man with a skull cap, who seemed both helpful and imperious as he ushered us on. I felt it was because he didn't want us to get confused. But he brought us straight up to a man sitting cross-legged outside the main shrine, who opened a register, asked us to write our names, and immediately afterwards for a donation. This done, we were given a quick whisk with his flywhisk over our heads - literally brushed off without further interest.

Still, it was enjoyable hubbub outside the shrine, musicians, drums beating, people some clearly Hindu, pretty much everyone queuing up with offerings, plates of roses and sweets. We got some flowers, but it turned out that you weren't meant to smell them before you went in, because the smell was meant for God, or perhaps the saint? I'd always seen a more austere Islam before, so I wondered if the Hindu practices had bled into Islam here.

Into the dargah itself, this small shrine with doors of silver. A tremendous crush of people moving in all different directions, pushing and shoving. Two men stood behind a rail and took our flowers to pile with the rest on the tomb, other officials hitting people on the back to propel them through the crush if they didn't move on fast enough, a few men prostrating themselves to kiss the shrine, many of the women with frightened uncertain eyes as they were caught up in the melee, forty people milling in a space less than our front room - and then out again the other side, barely a minute for the whole experience.

My Delhi-belly and many holi

And then it happened – Katya got sick. It had to happen, didn’t it? I was almost waiting for it to happen.

As J already mentioned, we hired a car with a driver on that day and went to Ajmer - a little town that is nevertheless the second most important pilgrimage place for Muslims in the world (after Mecca of course). In spite of the car being so cool and calming inside, the moment we got out I knew this wouldn’t be an ‘easy’ town (as if there are ‘easy’ towns in India!). We walked up the main street: an incredible mix of well-off Indians, people with unbelievable disabilities and holy men; and stopped by the bright blue gate to the Dargah (Sufi Muslim shrine), or to be more precise it was a big complex with the shrine inside. Of course we had to take off the shoes and cover our heads (J kept nervously looking around, as he only had his sun hat on – no one seemed to mind though).

Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any photos inside, and trying to describe what we saw and experienced is a thankless job I think (in a blog anyway). This is one picture I took in Ajmer, but not in the shrine. These are ruins of an ancient Sanskrit college that was given a facade by a Muslim ruler to turn it into a mosque, which was allegedly built in 2 and a half days. Don't know about that, but it had the most amazing carvings in Arabic on the walls.

All I can say now is that we bought a bowl of roses that we then gave as an offering inside the shrine. We didn’t get inside straight away though. People were only let in at regular intervals (a LOT of people, believe me…). We sat next to a few prettily dressed girls, who started chatting to us straight away. They turned out to speak really good English: one of them was actually finishing a degree in Psychology (!) and the other was coming to London to do her MBA soon. They were in Ajmer with their families, for the first time in their lives I think. It seemed like it was a really big deal for them. They told us a little about what to expect inside (‘do not give any money to anyone! They claim they’ll give it to the poor, but it is not true!’) and we went in…


…a couple of hours later we were going down the same street, shakingly. The image of a cool car was the only thing that kept me going at that stage. We got in and I was already feeling not quite myself. Both me and J had been having short spells of the Delhi-belly, but at that point it wasn’t too bad.

We arrived at our next destination – the holy town Pushkar – when it was getting dark. I was tired, but quite pleased with the hotel we had managed to book (all the ‘ mid-range’ places had been booked, so we had to go for a cheaper option). The hotel was a dusty, soulless affair, but had incredible views and a beauuuutiful rose garden.

We decided to take a stroll into the town center, but the moment we got out of the hotel we saw lightning! Can you imagine – lightning and thunderstorm in India in the middle of the dry season?!! And, for those who’ve never experienced this sort of thing in this part of the world (like I had never done), this was the most breathtaking lightning I had ever seen: the wind started to take up the speed, the trees began to shake violently and large, peanut size, drops of rain started to fall…

The rain continued all night, but nothing like a real monsoon, so we did manage to have our dinner in the town center (on this you may see a separate report from J later. It’s a story of its own…), but on the way back I was like a tree in the wind myself. Later on that night I woke up shaking so badly and feeling so cold that I knew immediately – fever, at least 3 days in bed…

It has now been 3 days and I’m glad to say that, firstly, my illness only lasted for a day, and, secondly, I’m now absolutely fine (well, at least I hope so *she said, superstitiously looking around*). More than that, since that bad night in Pushkar we have stayed in an incredible Rohet Garh:

(there is also a link on the right) and are now preparing for the Holi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi …bring on the Indian New Year’s eve (well, I like calling it like that for a better effect!;)