My stomach was still a bit troublesome the morning of the 24th, so I spent most of the morning at my hotel in Jaisalmer before leaving about noon on the five hour bus trip to Jodhpur. The bus was similar to the one that had brought me to Jaisalmer, with reclining seats and sleeper berths, and like the previous bus was jammed with people. However, I had a window seat and traveled comfortably enough across the desert. Hills began to appear as we approached Jodhpur. I got a hotel among the narrow lanes of the city just below its magnificent fort, and a very comfortable hotel at that, with a great hot shower. The budget hotels here in Rajasthan (I usually pay $8-10 per night) are much better than the often dirty ones in the Himalayas. I walked through the narrow lanes of the city after dark. No cars, but motorcycles and cows.
The next morning I had breakfast in the chilly air on the roof of my hotel, with great views of the towering Mehrangarh Fort on a rocky hill above the city. It is maybe 300 feet above the city and its highest walls are almost 120 feet high, a magnificent fort. My stomach was still being contentious, but I think I willed it to good behavior and I made the steep climb up to the fort about 10:30. I spent the rest of the day up there, touring the palace buildings and looking out over the city from the walls. Jodhpur was founded by a guy named Jodha in the 15th century, though most of the fort is from the 17th century. They say it never was captured in battle. There are cannon ball marks on some of the walls. Near one of the gates are 36 handprints of wives and concubines of a maharaja who died in 1843. They joined him on his funeral pyre by committing sati and this is their memorial. That was the last sati in Jodhpur, as the nefarious British, with their western cultural prejudices, forced the local rulers to abolish that treasured traditional practice.
Down below the fort, many of the houses in the old city are painted blue, and Jodhpur is known as the "Blue City." Apparently, the blue paint repels termites. I walked all around the fort. There were hordes of Indian tourists, outnumbering western tourists by at least 20 to 1, I would guess. It was a Saturday, and in fact Christmas Day, although I've seen absolutely no signs of Christmas anywhere. Near the end of the afternoon I walked down through a second series of gates to another part of the town, which was also filled with blue houses, passing a couple of cows (or rather a cow and a bull as I later found out) just outside the last gate. I turned around and the bull had mounted the cow. It didn't last long but I'm glad that didn't happen as I passed them as a bystander could have been killed by those thrashing bovines. I carefully passed them on the way back up to the fort and wound my way to the other side and my hotel. That night there was another of those traditional Indian wedding groups, with a turbaned groom on a white horse accompanied by light bearers, musicians and men and women, the women in beautiful saris. They were a friendly bunch.
I spent the next morning and early afternoon at the hotel, mostly talking with an Australian who was distraught ("worse day of my life," he said) over Australia's poor performance in the England-Australia cricket competition called the "Ashes," which Australia almost always wins, especially on its home turf. I asked him if he could take five or ten minutes to explain cricket to me, and he said in all seriousness that it would take one or two years to do so. He did explain a lot, and we also talked about Japan, where he has lived for the past eight years. Cricket is on television all the time in India, and is the country's most popular sport.
I had lunch on the roof with a couple of other tourists, then took an autorickshaw to the edge of town and the Umaid Bhawan Palace, built by the maharaja from 1929 to 1943 as a "famine relief project." Seems to me he could have built a hospital instead, or maybe just bought some food. It is somewhat similar to the government buildings in New Delhi and the palace has 347 rooms, about the same as the former Viceregal Palace (now the President's home) in New Delhi. You can only tour a very small part of it. The rest is a very fancy hotel and the living quarters of the current maharaja. I came back to the city center and walked up to the fort and beyond it to the royal cenotaphs, the principal one of white marble and dating from 1899. They are only about ten minutes from the fort. Afterward, I walked down to the bazaars around the British-era clock tower, bought some socks (I had switched from shoes to sandals when I took the train from Ramnagar at the foot of the Himalayas to Delhi, but the cold weather made me switch back to shoes when I left Pushkar), and had the strap on my day pack repaired. The guy at my hotel told me to find a shoe repair guy and have him sew it for me, and that it should cost 5 rupees (about 11 cents). The first guy I talked to wanted 100, the second 50. We settled for 10. The bazaars were quite interesting, with lots of buying and selling and lots of women in colorful clothes. The vendors here are much more pleasant than in Jaisalmer. In fact, I very much like Jodhpur, although it has almost a million people. The narrow lanes under the fort are interesting, with pleasant people. I haven't seen anyone wearing jodhpurs, although in the palace buildings in the fort there were some photos of the maharaja's polo team and I think they were in jodhpurs. At most of the maharaja palaces I've been to here in Rajasthan there have been photos and displays (uniforms and silver cups and mallets and the like) about polo. Every time I see them I think of Ed Norton and his "string of poloponies."
The next morning (today) I had breakfast on the hotel roof with a Welsh novelist (who actually writes his novels, or at least some of them, in Welsh) and his daughter. At 11 I took a bus north to Osiyan, forty miles away and a journey of an hour and a half, to visit some Jain temples there. There were beautiful carvings on the temples, but all in all I found them a little disappointing, especially compared to the Jain temples in Jaisalmer. There were some nice people there, though, including a big contingent of Jains (600 of them) traveling together in buses from Bombay. I got back to Jodhpur about 4:30, walked around the bazaars around the clock tower for a while and then made my way through the cow-clogged lanes to my hotel.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
December 19 -23, 2010: Jaisalmer
On the morning of the 19th I walked around a bit in the city near my hotel, just inside the western gate, before breakfast. I visited a nice old haveli turned into a hotel and a late 19th century royal palace also turned into a hotel. After breakfast I walked up to and into the fort, passing through several gates along a u-shaped entry way, and spent two or three hours just wandering around the narrow lanes inside. There are no cars, although there are motorcycles -- and cows. One cow almost knocked me down as it ambled silently down a narrow lane while I was looking up at the delicate carving on one of the buildings. The stone here is yellowish and said to be particularly soft and easy to carve and as a consequence the carving is quite fine. The dry air is said to preserve it. I also walked up onto the ramparts in several places, with good views out over the city and the desert beyond. Unfortunately, the area between the inner and outer walls is full of trash. About a thousand people live within the fort (and 60,000 in the city as a whole), though most of the lanes seem to be taken up with shops selling stuff to tourists. The vendors here are particularly annoying. They just won't leave you alone most of the time. Bad salesmanship, too. I did watch one guy painting a very beautiful Moghul miniature type of portrait, using, he told me, a brush made of squirrel hair.
I had lunch at a little cafe on the walls and then spent the rest of the afternoon touring the royal palace. I had an audio tour and it was quite interesting. Jaisalmer was founded by a guy named Jaisal in the mid 12th century and flourished on the caravan routes trade. In 1195 and 1215, both times after long sieges, with hope running out, the defenders performed what is called jauhar, in which, after religious ceremonies, the women and children jumped on funeral pyres while the men charged into the enemy facing certain death. The fort is mostly 16th century, I think, though there are some obvious recent restorations. Large cannonball size stones and some long cylindrical stones are poised on the walls to roll down on any attackers. There were some interesting rooms in the old palace and good views from windows and rooftops. I stayed in the fort until just about dark
The next morning I walked through the narrow streets of the city to a spectacular haveli built by five Jain brothers from about 1800 to 1860. It contains five residences in a row and you can go into two of them. One is barren, with little decoration, but the other is beautifully decorated, both on the walls and ceilings and with furniture. It was quite interesting. Apparently, in the latter half of the 19th century the value of the caravan routes diminished with the opening of the port of Bombay, and the Jain merchants moved to Bombay and other big cities to follow the trade. There are other havelis around, many also with very beautiful delicate carving of Jaisalmer's trademark yellow stone.
I had a long lunch on the roof of my hotel and then walked around some more in the afternoon, through the narrow lanes and the bazaars full of turbaned, sunburned men from the desert. The turbans can be very colorful, sometimes multi-colored, and the women wear very colorful, flowing clothes, with elaborate nose rings. There are also lots of cows perusing the garbage or waiting for handouts. I've seen them sticking their heads into shops and residences waiting for a handout. Not only here in Jaisalmer but in many other places I've been, I've also seen older men, and sometimes women, with their gray hair dyed an absurdly bright shade of red. There's quite a bit of spitting, too. Not as much as in China, and the Indians are not as pathetic spitters as the Chinese, but it is disgusting enough. Once, in Jaipur, I was walking along and paused to avoid some guy about to spit, and after he spit he looked at me and said "thank you," as if I had paused to be polite.
It takes less than half an hour to walk from the town's western gate, near my hotel, to the eastern gate. From the eastern gate it is a short walk to the Amar Sagar, a small lake that was the town's sole water supply for centuries. Now it is fed by a canal that comes all the way through the desert from the Sutlej River in the Punjab and it seems like Jaisalmer has plenty of water. There are open drains along the narrow lanes of the city and they always seem to be running with dirty water. There are a few derelict pavilions around the lake, which I explored before walking back.
The next morning I was ill again with stomach problems. I read in my room for a while and then up on the roof in the sun. I watched several Indian Air Force fighter jets coming in for landings after patrolling the Pakistani border. I felt okay. In fact, I felt hungry, and frustrated that I was sick for the third time in three weeks. I had some banana porridge for dinner and felt fine.
The next morning I toured another haveli below the fort and then went into the fort to see the Jain temples inside the walls. They were filled with people, almost all Indians. There are quite a few western tourists here, too, though. There are seven temples, originally from the 12th to 16th centuries, but restored, clustered together and they have beautiful carvings. I enjoyed wandering around slowly, avoiding the crowds as best as I could. At 3 pm I left with four others in a vehicle heading west to the sand dunes at Sam. It is only 25 miles away in the desert and we got there before 4. There were hundreds of camels there, ready for tourists, and soon there must have been a thousand Indian tourists on the sand dunes, many on camels. The sand dunes aren't extensive. You can easily see beyond them. They are scenic, despite all the trash on them. There were persistent touts, like flies, wherever you went on the dunes. We stayed till sunset and then drove back. The sun disappeared into the haze on the horizon before it set.
The next morning (today) I woke up with a bad stomach again. I spent the morning at the hotel, had some yogurt (or curd, as it is called here in India) and fruit at noon and then walked around in the afternoon, mostly up in the fort along its narrow lanes. I had an omelet at the cafe on the walls about 3 and then a chicken dinner about 6 and all seems well.
I had lunch at a little cafe on the walls and then spent the rest of the afternoon touring the royal palace. I had an audio tour and it was quite interesting. Jaisalmer was founded by a guy named Jaisal in the mid 12th century and flourished on the caravan routes trade. In 1195 and 1215, both times after long sieges, with hope running out, the defenders performed what is called jauhar, in which, after religious ceremonies, the women and children jumped on funeral pyres while the men charged into the enemy facing certain death. The fort is mostly 16th century, I think, though there are some obvious recent restorations. Large cannonball size stones and some long cylindrical stones are poised on the walls to roll down on any attackers. There were some interesting rooms in the old palace and good views from windows and rooftops. I stayed in the fort until just about dark
The next morning I walked through the narrow streets of the city to a spectacular haveli built by five Jain brothers from about 1800 to 1860. It contains five residences in a row and you can go into two of them. One is barren, with little decoration, but the other is beautifully decorated, both on the walls and ceilings and with furniture. It was quite interesting. Apparently, in the latter half of the 19th century the value of the caravan routes diminished with the opening of the port of Bombay, and the Jain merchants moved to Bombay and other big cities to follow the trade. There are other havelis around, many also with very beautiful delicate carving of Jaisalmer's trademark yellow stone.
I had a long lunch on the roof of my hotel and then walked around some more in the afternoon, through the narrow lanes and the bazaars full of turbaned, sunburned men from the desert. The turbans can be very colorful, sometimes multi-colored, and the women wear very colorful, flowing clothes, with elaborate nose rings. There are also lots of cows perusing the garbage or waiting for handouts. I've seen them sticking their heads into shops and residences waiting for a handout. Not only here in Jaisalmer but in many other places I've been, I've also seen older men, and sometimes women, with their gray hair dyed an absurdly bright shade of red. There's quite a bit of spitting, too. Not as much as in China, and the Indians are not as pathetic spitters as the Chinese, but it is disgusting enough. Once, in Jaipur, I was walking along and paused to avoid some guy about to spit, and after he spit he looked at me and said "thank you," as if I had paused to be polite.
It takes less than half an hour to walk from the town's western gate, near my hotel, to the eastern gate. From the eastern gate it is a short walk to the Amar Sagar, a small lake that was the town's sole water supply for centuries. Now it is fed by a canal that comes all the way through the desert from the Sutlej River in the Punjab and it seems like Jaisalmer has plenty of water. There are open drains along the narrow lanes of the city and they always seem to be running with dirty water. There are a few derelict pavilions around the lake, which I explored before walking back.
The next morning I was ill again with stomach problems. I read in my room for a while and then up on the roof in the sun. I watched several Indian Air Force fighter jets coming in for landings after patrolling the Pakistani border. I felt okay. In fact, I felt hungry, and frustrated that I was sick for the third time in three weeks. I had some banana porridge for dinner and felt fine.
The next morning I toured another haveli below the fort and then went into the fort to see the Jain temples inside the walls. They were filled with people, almost all Indians. There are quite a few western tourists here, too, though. There are seven temples, originally from the 12th to 16th centuries, but restored, clustered together and they have beautiful carvings. I enjoyed wandering around slowly, avoiding the crowds as best as I could. At 3 pm I left with four others in a vehicle heading west to the sand dunes at Sam. It is only 25 miles away in the desert and we got there before 4. There were hundreds of camels there, ready for tourists, and soon there must have been a thousand Indian tourists on the sand dunes, many on camels. The sand dunes aren't extensive. You can easily see beyond them. They are scenic, despite all the trash on them. There were persistent touts, like flies, wherever you went on the dunes. We stayed till sunset and then drove back. The sun disappeared into the haze on the horizon before it set.
The next morning (today) I woke up with a bad stomach again. I spent the morning at the hotel, had some yogurt (or curd, as it is called here in India) and fruit at noon and then walked around in the afternoon, mostly up in the fort along its narrow lanes. I had an omelet at the cafe on the walls about 3 and then a chicken dinner about 6 and all seems well.
Monday, December 20, 2010
December 12 - 18, 2010: Pushkar to Jaisalmer via Nagaur, Bikaner and Phalodi
On the 12th I spent my last morning in Pushkar on the roof of my hotel having a leisurely breakfast in the sun. It was a little difficult to leave as I enjoyed being in a small town and in a comfortable hotel with congenial management and fellow tourists. But I left on the 11 am bus heading north, for Nagaur. We passed through plowed but not yet sprouting fields, with trees here and there in the dry countryside and camel carts along the way. At Merta, about an hour and a half from Pushkar, I was told I had to board another bus for Nagaur that was just leaving. It was crammed full with passengers. The ticket guy told me to put my pack in the compartment in the back and climb onto the roof and that I could get a seat at the next town five or ten kilometers away. I climbed on top and joined three others who gave me a sort of dubious look. It wasn't uncomfortable, though it was cold in the wind despite the sunshine once we got going. Not many got off at the next town and about 20 men and boys joined us on the roof. I traveled that way for about an hour through the dry countryside. Just before another town the police made us all get down off of the roof and into the bus, and I got a seat once the passengers thinned out in the town.
I arrived in Nagaur about 3, quickly got a hotel and took an autorickshaw to the massive fort in the town. I spent a couple of hours there, the first hour or so on a tour (just me and the guide) that was very informative. He told me he gets only about 40 tourists a day, few of them foreigners. I saw no other foreigners while I was in Nagaur. He took me through the four palaces inside the fort, the earliest from the 16th century, I think. In any event, it is named after Akbar who spent 53 days there in 1570. There are three subsequently-built palaces, the latest from the 18th century. They are not big, but beautifully designed, with some colorful paintings on some of the walls, plus lots of niches for oil lamps. The fort also had quite an ingenious water system. It is a very large fort, 37 acres, with walls over a mile in total length and massive gates. I walked back to my hotel, stopping off at the bus station, where friendly people invited me to have tea with them and asked me to take their pictures. It was a relatively quiet town, of about 100,000 people. I had a not very good thali dinner at the hotel.
It felt cold the next morning. A lot of people on the streets had blankets wrapped around them. It was perhaps in the low 50's. I left on a bus at 9 bound for Bikaner to the north. I had a good seat but felt tired. We passed fewer plowed fields and even some sand dunes here and there. The trees were low and scrubby. Fence posts were of rock, slabs of a reddish rock maybe 4 to 6 feet high, 8 inches in width and 2 or 3 in breadth. It was odd to see so much stone used as fence posts.
Bikaner is a city of half a million people. I arrived about noon and got a good hotel, had a small, unappetizing lunch and took an autorickshaw to the Lalgarh Palace on the edge of town. It was completed in 1902 for the maharaja and is now partially a luxury hotel and partially still a residence for the royal family. I wandered around the hallways and gardens and then went into the museum across from the entrance. The maharaja who reigned from 1887 to 1943 apparently was quite a figure. He represented India at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War II and can be seen in the famous drawing of the signing of the treaty, standing behind Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau. He, and his predecessors and successors, had great turbans and mustaches. On display was his special spoon, with a ridge down the middle, to enable him to eat soup without soiling his mustache.
From the palace I took another autorickshaw towards the old, walled city and wandered through its narrow but often crowded lanes. The old city is full of 19th century havelis (mansions) with ornately carved facades, windows and balconies. I was told there are about a thousand of them in the old town and that most were built by rich Jain merchants. Now most are boarded up, the families having moved to bigger cities like Bombay and Calcutta to follow commerce when it shifted away from Bikaner as the trade routes across the desert closed. It is such a shame to see all those fantastic buildings slowly crumbling away. Bikaner must have been quite a prosperous town, rich from the caravan trade. As I wandered around I wasn't feeling well. I skipped dinner and returned to my hotel and was sick all night.
I was sick the next morning, too, and spent it in bed except for trips to the bathroom. At about noon I did go out and buy some bottled water and read a newspaper in the lobby. I spent the afternoon reading in bed for the most part and felt okay by night. I had no fever, though I think I may have the night before. About 10:30, just as I was falling asleep, incredibly loud amplified music began. It sounded like it was right next to me, and it was. Just outside the back of the hotel, and outside my window, an all night Hindu ceremony (as I was told the next day) was beginning to bless a new home. The music wasn't bad, though the singing wasn't all that good. But it was incredibly loud and lasted almost all night. I did get some sleep anyway, through sheer exhaustion after being sick, and the music stopped about 5 in the morning.
I slept until 8 or so and when I got up I had a banana and some cookies and then ordered the blandest thing I could find on the hotel's room service menu, a cheese and tomato sandwich on white bread. About 10:30 I took an autorickshaw to the city's 16th century fort, just outside the city walls. Bikaner was founded at the end of the 15th century by Bika, a son of the Maharaja of Jodhpur who struck out north from Jodhpur to found his own kingdom. The fort was built a century later by a successor maharaja who was one of Akbar's generals. The rulers of this areas were Hindus but they allied with the Muslim Mughals and retained their status and a good deal of their independence. Unlike most of Rajasthan's forts, which are located on hills, it is on flat land. It is about 3000 feet in circumference with massive walls. It is really the palaces inside that make it memorable. They are beautifully decorated. It seems like just about every maharaja built his own palace or redecorated a predecessors'. I spent about three hours wandering around, with a good audio tour. I was feeling pretty tired, though.
After the tour, I had lunch in the garden cafe inside the fort. I had a cheese and tomato omelet and I think it may have been the best omelet I've ever had, or so it seemed after being sick. That revived me a bit and I toured a museum inside the fort with some unbelievably elaborate clothes of the maharajas and their wives. (By the way, Bika, Bikaner's founder, was so virtuous that no less than eight of his maharanis committed sati by jumping onto his funeral pyre, or so a book on the maharajas of Bikaner informed me.) I walked half way around the walls of the fort, passing cows and a lot of garbage, to a haveli of a former prime minister just outside the walls. It is now a hotel and I wandered through it and viewed the fort from the roof. In the garden I had an early dinner - a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich (it was kind of a cheese and tomato day). Small birds were flocking to the trees in the garden for the night and the trees were alive with their chirping. I took an autorickshaw back to my hotel before sunset and slept well.
I slept until almost 9 the next morning and spent a leisurely morning at the hotel. About noon I took a bus about 20 miles south to Deshnok, a town I had passed through on the way from Nagaur. There I visited the Karni Mata Temple, made of white marble with silver doors. It is filled with rats. They are supposed to be reincarnations of story tellers or (another version) saints. There are hundreds of them, probably thousands of them. These are not brown and white pet store rats but ugly brown rats. Fortunately, they are not very large, maybe 4 to 5 inches longs, not counting their tails. Just inside the entrance gate into the temple courtyard was a big bowl of milk with maybe twenty rats slurping away. Every so often one of them would get pushed into the milk and scamper out. The rats, as rats do, were crawling all over each other but there was relatively little fighting, probably because they live in a sort of rat paradise, with plenty of food. There were also trays of grain in the courtyard, filled with rats, and pilgrims were bringing sweets to feed the rats. The rats did occasionally run across your feet (no shoes allowed), but you could avoid them for the most part. I tried not to jump too high when they brushed against my feet. Most of the Indian pilgrims there seemed as fascinated with them as I was. One guy, however, was sleeping on a little terrace with rats all around. In the temple itself was another bowl of milk surrounded by rats and in the sanctum sanctorum a tray of sweets covered with rats, with a priest sitting beside it. After an hour or so I had had more than enough of rats and took the bus back back to Bikaner. I went to a colorful Jain temple in the old city and then walked again through the narrow lanes of the old city past derelict havelis and even a camel cart or two before heading back to my hotel.
I spent another leisurely morning at the hotel and left Bikaner on a bus bound for Phalodi at 11. It was quite crowded at times, and very slow moving as was traveled parallel to the Pakistan border and along the edges of the Thar Desert. There wasn't much cultivation. We reached Phalodi, a small town, about 3 and I checked into a hotel across from the bus station. The guy who ran it looked a lot like the character "Animal" from the movie Stalag 17 (I woke him up from a sleep under a ragged blanket), but was very friendly and helpful as I didn't have a lot of tourist information on this town. About 4 I took an autorickshaw to the Jain village of Khichan maybe 3 miles away and spent an hour at two little lakes at the edge of the village. The lakes (and the grain that the Jain villages spread out for them to eat) attract demoiselle cranes wintering from southern Europe, north Africa and Russia and there were thousands of them. Most of these gray cranes, with black and white heads, were on the ground, but as the afternoon wore on, hundreds and hundreds of them flew in and landed at the lakes or flew off into the distance. They were fascinating to watch. I was told they sleep a few kilometers away and return each morning.
Back in Phalodi I walked around the friendly town, including the train station, and had a great dinner at a little restaurant with wooden benches. The guy who owned it came out and talked to me, about whether metal pipes were used in the U.S. and where he could get Hindi translations of American authors. The dinner was fantastic, a paneer (cheese) korma with cashews in it, one of the best meals I've had in India. I can never tell for sure what I'm getting when I order a korma, what kind of sauce it will be. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they are not. This one was fantastic.
I got up at 7:30 the next morning, about sunrise. It was 61 degrees in my room. I had to wake the poor little kid sleeping under a blanket in the office and get him to open the hotel door. It was pretty quiet outside and it took me a half hour to find an autorickshaw to take me to Khichan again. I got there about 8:30 and went to the feeding center. A guy with a house next door invited me onto his roof and showed me books about the cranes and the awards he has received for his care for them. His notebook showed the cranes arrived in September, but less than 100 a day. There are now 8000 a day. They were gathered on the ground outside the village near the feeding center, but over the course of the morning thousands of them flew in, often in huge flocks and often just 30 feet or so over our heads. Sometimes a villager would disturb those on the ground and they would take off and circle in great flocks. They were fantastic to watch. Many emitted a sort of honk and a few seemed to me to make a sort of reconnaissance over the feeding ground. I kept waiting for the feeding, but it never happened. I had been told in Phalodi it might be about 8 or 9. Still, it was great to watch the cranes flying back and forth. For some unaccountable reason this was a far more appealing wildlife experience than my encounter with the wildlife in Deshnok.
I spent almost three hours on that rooftop and then walked to get a closer look at the cranes on the ground before I took an autorickshaw back to Phalodi about 11:30. I checked out of my hotel (the hotel guy said the feeding might have been postponed till noon because of the cold) and had another great meal at that little restaurant before catching a 1 pm bus to Pokaran, which is near where India tests its nuclear bombs. The bus was slow and crowded at times and we got there about 3. On arrival I immediately boarded a very fancy bus, with reclining seats and, above them, sleeping berths. It, too, was filled with people in the aisles and sitting cross-legged on the sleeping berths. However, they gave me a seat near the back and I had a comfortable ride to Jaisalmer across the arid countryside. I saw camels grazing on the leafs of trees here and there and saw a fairly big herd in one spot. On arrival just before 5, I had a good view of Jaisalmer's hilltop fort. I got a good hotel just inside the city walls and walked through the narrow lanes and then through the fort gates up to the heart of the fort. There are about four or five gates that you have to pass through as you make a sharp u-turn up the slope. The fort is about 250 feet higher than the town, on a somewhat triangular shaped hill. It has 99 bastions and a double wall, with a corridor between the two walls about 6-12 feet wide to allow soldiers to pass through, although that corridor is now mostly filled with garbage. I walked around the narrow lanes of the fort until dark. (As I've come quite a bit west from Delhi, it gets dark here about 6:20 this time of year, I think.)
I arrived in Nagaur about 3, quickly got a hotel and took an autorickshaw to the massive fort in the town. I spent a couple of hours there, the first hour or so on a tour (just me and the guide) that was very informative. He told me he gets only about 40 tourists a day, few of them foreigners. I saw no other foreigners while I was in Nagaur. He took me through the four palaces inside the fort, the earliest from the 16th century, I think. In any event, it is named after Akbar who spent 53 days there in 1570. There are three subsequently-built palaces, the latest from the 18th century. They are not big, but beautifully designed, with some colorful paintings on some of the walls, plus lots of niches for oil lamps. The fort also had quite an ingenious water system. It is a very large fort, 37 acres, with walls over a mile in total length and massive gates. I walked back to my hotel, stopping off at the bus station, where friendly people invited me to have tea with them and asked me to take their pictures. It was a relatively quiet town, of about 100,000 people. I had a not very good thali dinner at the hotel.
It felt cold the next morning. A lot of people on the streets had blankets wrapped around them. It was perhaps in the low 50's. I left on a bus at 9 bound for Bikaner to the north. I had a good seat but felt tired. We passed fewer plowed fields and even some sand dunes here and there. The trees were low and scrubby. Fence posts were of rock, slabs of a reddish rock maybe 4 to 6 feet high, 8 inches in width and 2 or 3 in breadth. It was odd to see so much stone used as fence posts.
Bikaner is a city of half a million people. I arrived about noon and got a good hotel, had a small, unappetizing lunch and took an autorickshaw to the Lalgarh Palace on the edge of town. It was completed in 1902 for the maharaja and is now partially a luxury hotel and partially still a residence for the royal family. I wandered around the hallways and gardens and then went into the museum across from the entrance. The maharaja who reigned from 1887 to 1943 apparently was quite a figure. He represented India at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War II and can be seen in the famous drawing of the signing of the treaty, standing behind Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau. He, and his predecessors and successors, had great turbans and mustaches. On display was his special spoon, with a ridge down the middle, to enable him to eat soup without soiling his mustache.
From the palace I took another autorickshaw towards the old, walled city and wandered through its narrow but often crowded lanes. The old city is full of 19th century havelis (mansions) with ornately carved facades, windows and balconies. I was told there are about a thousand of them in the old town and that most were built by rich Jain merchants. Now most are boarded up, the families having moved to bigger cities like Bombay and Calcutta to follow commerce when it shifted away from Bikaner as the trade routes across the desert closed. It is such a shame to see all those fantastic buildings slowly crumbling away. Bikaner must have been quite a prosperous town, rich from the caravan trade. As I wandered around I wasn't feeling well. I skipped dinner and returned to my hotel and was sick all night.
I was sick the next morning, too, and spent it in bed except for trips to the bathroom. At about noon I did go out and buy some bottled water and read a newspaper in the lobby. I spent the afternoon reading in bed for the most part and felt okay by night. I had no fever, though I think I may have the night before. About 10:30, just as I was falling asleep, incredibly loud amplified music began. It sounded like it was right next to me, and it was. Just outside the back of the hotel, and outside my window, an all night Hindu ceremony (as I was told the next day) was beginning to bless a new home. The music wasn't bad, though the singing wasn't all that good. But it was incredibly loud and lasted almost all night. I did get some sleep anyway, through sheer exhaustion after being sick, and the music stopped about 5 in the morning.
I slept until 8 or so and when I got up I had a banana and some cookies and then ordered the blandest thing I could find on the hotel's room service menu, a cheese and tomato sandwich on white bread. About 10:30 I took an autorickshaw to the city's 16th century fort, just outside the city walls. Bikaner was founded at the end of the 15th century by Bika, a son of the Maharaja of Jodhpur who struck out north from Jodhpur to found his own kingdom. The fort was built a century later by a successor maharaja who was one of Akbar's generals. The rulers of this areas were Hindus but they allied with the Muslim Mughals and retained their status and a good deal of their independence. Unlike most of Rajasthan's forts, which are located on hills, it is on flat land. It is about 3000 feet in circumference with massive walls. It is really the palaces inside that make it memorable. They are beautifully decorated. It seems like just about every maharaja built his own palace or redecorated a predecessors'. I spent about three hours wandering around, with a good audio tour. I was feeling pretty tired, though.
After the tour, I had lunch in the garden cafe inside the fort. I had a cheese and tomato omelet and I think it may have been the best omelet I've ever had, or so it seemed after being sick. That revived me a bit and I toured a museum inside the fort with some unbelievably elaborate clothes of the maharajas and their wives. (By the way, Bika, Bikaner's founder, was so virtuous that no less than eight of his maharanis committed sati by jumping onto his funeral pyre, or so a book on the maharajas of Bikaner informed me.) I walked half way around the walls of the fort, passing cows and a lot of garbage, to a haveli of a former prime minister just outside the walls. It is now a hotel and I wandered through it and viewed the fort from the roof. In the garden I had an early dinner - a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich (it was kind of a cheese and tomato day). Small birds were flocking to the trees in the garden for the night and the trees were alive with their chirping. I took an autorickshaw back to my hotel before sunset and slept well.
I slept until almost 9 the next morning and spent a leisurely morning at the hotel. About noon I took a bus about 20 miles south to Deshnok, a town I had passed through on the way from Nagaur. There I visited the Karni Mata Temple, made of white marble with silver doors. It is filled with rats. They are supposed to be reincarnations of story tellers or (another version) saints. There are hundreds of them, probably thousands of them. These are not brown and white pet store rats but ugly brown rats. Fortunately, they are not very large, maybe 4 to 5 inches longs, not counting their tails. Just inside the entrance gate into the temple courtyard was a big bowl of milk with maybe twenty rats slurping away. Every so often one of them would get pushed into the milk and scamper out. The rats, as rats do, were crawling all over each other but there was relatively little fighting, probably because they live in a sort of rat paradise, with plenty of food. There were also trays of grain in the courtyard, filled with rats, and pilgrims were bringing sweets to feed the rats. The rats did occasionally run across your feet (no shoes allowed), but you could avoid them for the most part. I tried not to jump too high when they brushed against my feet. Most of the Indian pilgrims there seemed as fascinated with them as I was. One guy, however, was sleeping on a little terrace with rats all around. In the temple itself was another bowl of milk surrounded by rats and in the sanctum sanctorum a tray of sweets covered with rats, with a priest sitting beside it. After an hour or so I had had more than enough of rats and took the bus back back to Bikaner. I went to a colorful Jain temple in the old city and then walked again through the narrow lanes of the old city past derelict havelis and even a camel cart or two before heading back to my hotel.
I spent another leisurely morning at the hotel and left Bikaner on a bus bound for Phalodi at 11. It was quite crowded at times, and very slow moving as was traveled parallel to the Pakistan border and along the edges of the Thar Desert. There wasn't much cultivation. We reached Phalodi, a small town, about 3 and I checked into a hotel across from the bus station. The guy who ran it looked a lot like the character "Animal" from the movie Stalag 17 (I woke him up from a sleep under a ragged blanket), but was very friendly and helpful as I didn't have a lot of tourist information on this town. About 4 I took an autorickshaw to the Jain village of Khichan maybe 3 miles away and spent an hour at two little lakes at the edge of the village. The lakes (and the grain that the Jain villages spread out for them to eat) attract demoiselle cranes wintering from southern Europe, north Africa and Russia and there were thousands of them. Most of these gray cranes, with black and white heads, were on the ground, but as the afternoon wore on, hundreds and hundreds of them flew in and landed at the lakes or flew off into the distance. They were fascinating to watch. I was told they sleep a few kilometers away and return each morning.
Back in Phalodi I walked around the friendly town, including the train station, and had a great dinner at a little restaurant with wooden benches. The guy who owned it came out and talked to me, about whether metal pipes were used in the U.S. and where he could get Hindi translations of American authors. The dinner was fantastic, a paneer (cheese) korma with cashews in it, one of the best meals I've had in India. I can never tell for sure what I'm getting when I order a korma, what kind of sauce it will be. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they are not. This one was fantastic.
I got up at 7:30 the next morning, about sunrise. It was 61 degrees in my room. I had to wake the poor little kid sleeping under a blanket in the office and get him to open the hotel door. It was pretty quiet outside and it took me a half hour to find an autorickshaw to take me to Khichan again. I got there about 8:30 and went to the feeding center. A guy with a house next door invited me onto his roof and showed me books about the cranes and the awards he has received for his care for them. His notebook showed the cranes arrived in September, but less than 100 a day. There are now 8000 a day. They were gathered on the ground outside the village near the feeding center, but over the course of the morning thousands of them flew in, often in huge flocks and often just 30 feet or so over our heads. Sometimes a villager would disturb those on the ground and they would take off and circle in great flocks. They were fantastic to watch. Many emitted a sort of honk and a few seemed to me to make a sort of reconnaissance over the feeding ground. I kept waiting for the feeding, but it never happened. I had been told in Phalodi it might be about 8 or 9. Still, it was great to watch the cranes flying back and forth. For some unaccountable reason this was a far more appealing wildlife experience than my encounter with the wildlife in Deshnok.
I spent almost three hours on that rooftop and then walked to get a closer look at the cranes on the ground before I took an autorickshaw back to Phalodi about 11:30. I checked out of my hotel (the hotel guy said the feeding might have been postponed till noon because of the cold) and had another great meal at that little restaurant before catching a 1 pm bus to Pokaran, which is near where India tests its nuclear bombs. The bus was slow and crowded at times and we got there about 3. On arrival I immediately boarded a very fancy bus, with reclining seats and, above them, sleeping berths. It, too, was filled with people in the aisles and sitting cross-legged on the sleeping berths. However, they gave me a seat near the back and I had a comfortable ride to Jaisalmer across the arid countryside. I saw camels grazing on the leafs of trees here and there and saw a fairly big herd in one spot. On arrival just before 5, I had a good view of Jaisalmer's hilltop fort. I got a good hotel just inside the city walls and walked through the narrow lanes and then through the fort gates up to the heart of the fort. There are about four or five gates that you have to pass through as you make a sharp u-turn up the slope. The fort is about 250 feet higher than the town, on a somewhat triangular shaped hill. It has 99 bastions and a double wall, with a corridor between the two walls about 6-12 feet wide to allow soldiers to pass through, although that corridor is now mostly filled with garbage. I walked around the narrow lanes of the fort until dark. (As I've come quite a bit west from Delhi, it gets dark here about 6:20 this time of year, I think.)
Saturday, December 11, 2010
December 7 -11, 2010: Pushkar and Ajmer
There were a couple of additional places I would have liked to have visited in Jaipur, but I was tired of its horrendous traffic and so left on the morning of the 7th on a bus bound for Ajmer, 2 1/2 hours to the west. It was a fairly smooth trip for the first two hours on a six lane divided toll road, with not much traffic, although at one point our bus had to slow down to avoid a cow meandering across the highway. There wasn't much to see on the way. The scenery is better from the train. The toll road ended at the city of Kishangarh, where we wove our way through the chaotic, honking traffic. From there it was a two lane road to Ajmer, a city of half a million people surrounded by rocky hills.
From Ajmer I took a bus to Pushkar, only about 7 miles away over one of those hills. I found a great little hotel and spent a good part of the afternoon sitting on its roof in the sun while having lunch and talking to the other tourists. Late in the afternoon and in the early evening I took a walk through the narrow lanes of the little town (only about 15,000 people). The town surrounds a small sacred lake (maybe 1000 feet across) that is believed to be the result of Brahma dropping a lotus leaf. Pilgrims come to bathe in the lake and there are ghats (stairs) almost all around it. The town is full of temples, though most are not all that old as the town's temples were destroyed by the intolerant Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who ruled in the late 17th/early 18th century. The main temple in town is dedicated to Brahma and is one of the few Brahma temples in India.
The most auspicious time to bathe in the lake is during the full moon in November, at which time there is also a famous camel fair here with thousands of camels being bought and sold. The fair just ended about three weeks ago, Regularly, well more than 100,000 people attend, with tents set up in the desert beyond the town to accommodate 100,000 of them. Perhaps the town and worshipers are exhausted by the just completed fair, because there don't seem to be many pilgrims here now. I did see a couple of colorful groups of pilgrims walking through the town's lanes. In one of them three women at the front carried urns upon their heads. I also saw a woman with a big platter of some sort of pastry feeding the pastry to 20 to 30 langur monkeys while her maybe one or two year old child sat among the much bigger monkeys, some of which were quite aggressive. A cow was trying to get some of the pastry, but was driven off by barking dogs and a kid with a stick. It was chilly at night, with a crescent moon, but the hotel had wonderful hot showers, by far the best I've had in India. In fact, I hadn't had a shower at all for weeks. I almost always have bucket baths, although with hot water.
The next morning I walked around the lake in the morning sunlight and then had a long breakfast in a good vegetarian restaurant while reading newspapers and magazines. Only vegetarian fare is available in Pushkar, no meat or even eggs. There are lots of cows wandering through town, and therefore, lots of cow (shall we say?) effluvia. I did step in one such pile while stepping back to avoid a honking motorcyclist. There are hardly any cars on Pushkar's narrow lanes, but there are a few motorcycles. All in all, it is a fairly relaxed place, especially compared to, say, Jaipur or Delhi. I enjoyed a fairly lazy afternoon, with a few walks around the town. Late in the afternoon there was a lot of kite flying from the rooftops. I watched the sun set over the lake from its eastern side and then spotted the crescent moon above the horizon. Later in the evening I saw a couple of wedding processions with the grooms on white horses and the usual retinue.
After breakfast the next morning I took the bus into Ajmer and spent most of the day there. First, I visited a 19th century Jain temple with a large two story room containing a golden replica of the Jain conception of the universe, including Mount Semeru at the center of the universe, various Jain temples and even gods flying around on elephant and bird boats (attached by wires to the ceiling). It is said to contain a thousand kilos (2200 pounds) of gold. From there I walked to a fort built by Akbar in 1570, but rather obviously much restored by the British in 1905, perhaps because it was the site of the first meeting of a Mughul emperor (Jahangir) and an emissary of an English king (Sir Thomas Roe on behalf of James I) in 1616. Then I followed the hordes of pilgrims heading to a Sufi shrine in the city. This shrine holds the grave of a Sufi saint who arrived from Persia about 1200. Supposedly, seven pilgrimages here are worth one to Mecca. Akbar came many times, it is said, on foot from his capital at Agra.
I made my way past the very slow moving crowds and around the shrine and to a ruined mosque beyond it on the edge of town. It originally was a Jain college, but was transformed into a mosque by Muslim invaders about 1200. Some of the pillars have defaced human figures on them. The mosque was full of people coming from the Sufi shrine, many of them very friendly and wanting their pictures taken (apparently just for the fun of it) or wanting pictures of me with them. There were also quite a few goats wandering around the mosque enclosure.
From there I walked back to the Sufi shrine, stopping to have a chicken lunch on the way. There was quite tight security to get into the shrine and I had to check my bag before I could enter. Strict orthodox Muslims consider Sufi practices to be contrary to Islam and in Pakistan the Taliban and their ilk have been blowing Sufi shrines up. The shrine was quite crowded, though much less so (judging from the crowds going in and out) than in the morning. The compound had two mosques and several other buildings in addition to the shrine itself containing the grave of the Sufi saint. Offerings of flowers and sweets were brought to the door of the silver, gold and marble shrine. Opposite, a young man with a decent voice sang, followed by an old man with a terrible one. There are other graves, including that of a daughter of Shah Jahan. I had forgotten to wear my hat (I left it in my checked bag), and a head covering is required, but only one person told me I should cover my head. A very few others had no head coverings. Indian Muslims seem, in general, much more relaxed than those to the west. I saw only two other western tourists in there. I got back to Pushkar about 4:30 and watched the late afternoon kite flying from my hotel rooftop.
I walked around Pushkar the next morning and had another leisurely breakfast. There are quite a few western tourists here. Apparently, the original attraction was the camel fair and over the years the town itself has become a draw. It certainly is a relatively relaxing place, for India. I did some reading and had lunch on my hotel rooftop and about 3 set off to climb a hill southwest of town and about 800 feet above it. It took a little less than an hour to get to the top, where there were great views of the town, lake, hills and dry countryside. The wide, dusty fairgrounds are west of town and I could see some tents still set up. There is a nondescript temple on top to Brahma's wife (though to call it "nondescript" overpraises it, as it is an ugly concrete box). I spent over an hour up there enjoying the views as the sun dropped in the sky and then walked back to town, arriving about 6. The sun sets here this time of year about 5:30 and rises, I think, about 7:30.
I took another walk around town the next morning (today). It has been quite chilly here in the mornings, maybe about 60 degrees or maybe even lower. I saw an article in the paper while here about a cold front coming down from the Himalayas, with a low of about 50 degrees reported in Jaipur and in the 40's elsewhere. Highs have been in the low 70's. I haven't seen a cloud in the sky since that four day period in November in Delhi, although it is always hazy. I happily spent another lazy day here, and late in the afternoon walked up to another hill, this one on the north side of the town, and closer and lower than the hill I had climbed the day before. It is only about 350 feet above the town and it took only about 20 minutes to climb up to it. It, too, had great views of the town and a temple on the top, this one to another consort of Brahma. I stayed up there until just after sunset.
From Ajmer I took a bus to Pushkar, only about 7 miles away over one of those hills. I found a great little hotel and spent a good part of the afternoon sitting on its roof in the sun while having lunch and talking to the other tourists. Late in the afternoon and in the early evening I took a walk through the narrow lanes of the little town (only about 15,000 people). The town surrounds a small sacred lake (maybe 1000 feet across) that is believed to be the result of Brahma dropping a lotus leaf. Pilgrims come to bathe in the lake and there are ghats (stairs) almost all around it. The town is full of temples, though most are not all that old as the town's temples were destroyed by the intolerant Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who ruled in the late 17th/early 18th century. The main temple in town is dedicated to Brahma and is one of the few Brahma temples in India.
The most auspicious time to bathe in the lake is during the full moon in November, at which time there is also a famous camel fair here with thousands of camels being bought and sold. The fair just ended about three weeks ago, Regularly, well more than 100,000 people attend, with tents set up in the desert beyond the town to accommodate 100,000 of them. Perhaps the town and worshipers are exhausted by the just completed fair, because there don't seem to be many pilgrims here now. I did see a couple of colorful groups of pilgrims walking through the town's lanes. In one of them three women at the front carried urns upon their heads. I also saw a woman with a big platter of some sort of pastry feeding the pastry to 20 to 30 langur monkeys while her maybe one or two year old child sat among the much bigger monkeys, some of which were quite aggressive. A cow was trying to get some of the pastry, but was driven off by barking dogs and a kid with a stick. It was chilly at night, with a crescent moon, but the hotel had wonderful hot showers, by far the best I've had in India. In fact, I hadn't had a shower at all for weeks. I almost always have bucket baths, although with hot water.
The next morning I walked around the lake in the morning sunlight and then had a long breakfast in a good vegetarian restaurant while reading newspapers and magazines. Only vegetarian fare is available in Pushkar, no meat or even eggs. There are lots of cows wandering through town, and therefore, lots of cow (shall we say?) effluvia. I did step in one such pile while stepping back to avoid a honking motorcyclist. There are hardly any cars on Pushkar's narrow lanes, but there are a few motorcycles. All in all, it is a fairly relaxed place, especially compared to, say, Jaipur or Delhi. I enjoyed a fairly lazy afternoon, with a few walks around the town. Late in the afternoon there was a lot of kite flying from the rooftops. I watched the sun set over the lake from its eastern side and then spotted the crescent moon above the horizon. Later in the evening I saw a couple of wedding processions with the grooms on white horses and the usual retinue.
After breakfast the next morning I took the bus into Ajmer and spent most of the day there. First, I visited a 19th century Jain temple with a large two story room containing a golden replica of the Jain conception of the universe, including Mount Semeru at the center of the universe, various Jain temples and even gods flying around on elephant and bird boats (attached by wires to the ceiling). It is said to contain a thousand kilos (2200 pounds) of gold. From there I walked to a fort built by Akbar in 1570, but rather obviously much restored by the British in 1905, perhaps because it was the site of the first meeting of a Mughul emperor (Jahangir) and an emissary of an English king (Sir Thomas Roe on behalf of James I) in 1616. Then I followed the hordes of pilgrims heading to a Sufi shrine in the city. This shrine holds the grave of a Sufi saint who arrived from Persia about 1200. Supposedly, seven pilgrimages here are worth one to Mecca. Akbar came many times, it is said, on foot from his capital at Agra.
I made my way past the very slow moving crowds and around the shrine and to a ruined mosque beyond it on the edge of town. It originally was a Jain college, but was transformed into a mosque by Muslim invaders about 1200. Some of the pillars have defaced human figures on them. The mosque was full of people coming from the Sufi shrine, many of them very friendly and wanting their pictures taken (apparently just for the fun of it) or wanting pictures of me with them. There were also quite a few goats wandering around the mosque enclosure.
From there I walked back to the Sufi shrine, stopping to have a chicken lunch on the way. There was quite tight security to get into the shrine and I had to check my bag before I could enter. Strict orthodox Muslims consider Sufi practices to be contrary to Islam and in Pakistan the Taliban and their ilk have been blowing Sufi shrines up. The shrine was quite crowded, though much less so (judging from the crowds going in and out) than in the morning. The compound had two mosques and several other buildings in addition to the shrine itself containing the grave of the Sufi saint. Offerings of flowers and sweets were brought to the door of the silver, gold and marble shrine. Opposite, a young man with a decent voice sang, followed by an old man with a terrible one. There are other graves, including that of a daughter of Shah Jahan. I had forgotten to wear my hat (I left it in my checked bag), and a head covering is required, but only one person told me I should cover my head. A very few others had no head coverings. Indian Muslims seem, in general, much more relaxed than those to the west. I saw only two other western tourists in there. I got back to Pushkar about 4:30 and watched the late afternoon kite flying from my hotel rooftop.
I walked around Pushkar the next morning and had another leisurely breakfast. There are quite a few western tourists here. Apparently, the original attraction was the camel fair and over the years the town itself has become a draw. It certainly is a relatively relaxing place, for India. I did some reading and had lunch on my hotel rooftop and about 3 set off to climb a hill southwest of town and about 800 feet above it. It took a little less than an hour to get to the top, where there were great views of the town, lake, hills and dry countryside. The wide, dusty fairgrounds are west of town and I could see some tents still set up. There is a nondescript temple on top to Brahma's wife (though to call it "nondescript" overpraises it, as it is an ugly concrete box). I spent over an hour up there enjoying the views as the sun dropped in the sky and then walked back to town, arriving about 6. The sun sets here this time of year about 5:30 and rises, I think, about 7:30.
I took another walk around town the next morning (today). It has been quite chilly here in the mornings, maybe about 60 degrees or maybe even lower. I saw an article in the paper while here about a cold front coming down from the Himalayas, with a low of about 50 degrees reported in Jaipur and in the 40's elsewhere. Highs have been in the low 70's. I haven't seen a cloud in the sky since that four day period in November in Delhi, although it is always hazy. I happily spent another lazy day here, and late in the afternoon walked up to another hill, this one on the north side of the town, and closer and lower than the hill I had climbed the day before. It is only about 350 feet above the town and it took only about 20 minutes to climb up to it. It, too, had great views of the town and a temple on the top, this one to another consort of Brahma. I stayed up there until just after sunset.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
November 30 - December 6, 2010: Alwar and Jaipur
I left Delhi for Alwar on the 30th, first taking a cycle-rickshaw through the chaos of the streets to the Old Delhi Railway Station (rather than fighting the metro crowds with my backpack). I arrived at the station, a red sandstone building built by the British in Moghul style about 1900, about 11, but my train was delayed and didn't leave until 1. The woman on the public address system kept telling me the inconvenience caused was deeply regretted, but I didn't mind it much. I did mind the guy trying to pickpocket me on the way to the train as it was arriving. I caught him in the act and grabbed his arm. I yelled at him, but refrained from hitting him. After I let him go, an older man asked me what had happened and then told me I shouldn't have let him go.
I found my seat on the train, in a 2AC sleeper car. I had tried to get second class but there were no seats available when I booked my ticket. This was an air conditioned car with bunks and I had one of the bottom ones. The windows aren't as good in 2AC as in second class. They are sealed, tinted and scuffed. Still, there was a view and after we were past the trackside slum housing on the outskirts of Delhi I watched the countryside go by, with lots of green agricultural fields but not too many people noticeable. A family of three across from me ate and then slept and I talked quite a bit with a 26-year-old marketing guy on his way to Ahmedabad. There were quite a few trees along the way and we passed rocky hills as we neared Alwar, a city of 250,000, arriving about 4. I took a cycle-rickshaw along relatively uncluttered streets and found a hotel and then walked around a bit before it got dark. I could see the ramparts of the huge fort on the rocky hills a thousand feet above the city and I found a billboard advertising cement with caricatures of Obama (in a purple suit) and Indian Prime Minister Singh. In the evening there was another wedding procession with a turbaned groom on a white horse accompanied by a band, light bearers and men and very colorfully dressed women. The hotel served a delicious vegetarian thali, several courses for about $2.25.
The next morning I walked to the City Palace in the sunshine and spent most of the day in and around it. The sign said it was built in 1793 and it is an impressively big building. There is a museum in three of the large halls, with Moghul miniature paintings, weapons and other things, including a stuffed tiger, panther and sloth bear. The first floor of the palace contains government offices and in the plaza in front were all sorts of tables with typewriters where you could hire someone to type out a document for you. Various small lawyers' offices were all around, too. I had a small lunch of vegetable soup and some sort of pastry for about 20 cents. Behind the palace was a very green lake in a tank (a reservoir), with steps on all sides and with little Moghul style pavilions around it. To the south was the cenotaph of a maharaja who died in 1815, the cenotaph named after a maharani who committed sati on his funeral pyre. It was a beautiful building, red sandstone on the first floor and white marble on the second, but with pigeon poop and feathers on large parts of it. Men were playing cards in the shade. I walked all around the tank and the cenotaph, and about 3:30 walked through the streets of the old city, past several old and high gates, and made my way back to my hotel. I got lots of curious stares. Not many foreign tourists come here, which is one of the reasons I came. It is nice to have people say hello who are genuinely saying hello and not just trying to attract your attention to sell you something. I saw no other foreigners in Alwar.
I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station the next morning and boarded a train bound for Jaipur about 11:30, only ten or fifteen minutes behind schedule. A train heading in the opposite direction, towards Delhi, had people riding on the roof. I was in a second class sleeper carriage and had a good view of the hazy agricultural countryside, with women in the very colorful Rajasthani dress of saris and shawls working in the fields. I also saw a camel-drawn cart or two. The train arrived in Jaipur after about two hours, right on time. Jaipur is a huge city, two and a half million people (so ten times that of Alwar) and I spent an unpleasant hour on its streets before I found a hotel. Then I walked to the old city along the streets full of chaotic traffic, another unpleasant experience. Jaipur was founded in 1727 and I entered the old city through one of the elaborate pink gates. The city was painted pink, a sign of welcome, in 1876 when the Prince of Wales visited and the tradition has continued. Not only are most of the buildings painted pink (at least in the old city), but I also saw pink overpasses on the way into town. The old city was laid out with wide (100 feet or so) main streets, but they are now crammed with noisy, chaotic traffic. I did make my way into some of the quieter narrower streets and came across marble carvers and other craftsmen and several wedding processions. I walked as far as the Hawa Mahal, the "Palace of Winds," built in 1799 with hundreds of latticed windows up its five story height to allow the women of the harem to observe the activity on the wide street below without being seen. I walked back to my hotel from there, with a not very good dinner stop on the way.
I woke up the next morning about 6 and was very sick for most of the morning. I spent the day in bed until about 7 that evening, except for trips to the bathroom. I did finally dig out my thermometer from my backpack about 2. My temperature reached almost 101 degrees, but was normal by 6 pm and I felt okay. I read for about two hours and went back to bed before 9.
I felt fine the next morning. After a breakfast of banana porridge and toast and honey I took a cycle-rickshaw (having finally resolved to walk along Jaipur's streets as little as possible) to the City Palace, started in 1727 but added to since. I spent most of the day there, visiting its beautiful halls and gates and interesting museums. Among its treasures are two silver urns that are the largest silver objects ever made, each over five feet high and about 770 pounds in weight. The maharaja used them to carry Ganges water when he went to England in 1902 for the coronation of Edward VII. Apparently, he used the water to cleanse himself after coming into contact with non-Hindus. There was also a spectacular textile collection, especially the clothes of the maharajas. One maharaja (the one with the silver urns) was six foot six and weighed 550 pounds and his robe was, not surprisingly, quite large. There was the usual impressive collection of curved swords, daggers, and other weaponry. Curiously, one display case had a bunch of knives and one backscratcher. You wouldn't want to confuse those. The palace also had a chart on the salutes (21 guns on down to 9) due to the leaders of the princely states during the British Empire and that was quite interesting. There were something like 550 princely states, though only about 100 merited salutes. It seems almost all of the maharajas and other princes were Hindus. I had lunch in a nice restaurant inside the palace and late in the afternoon made my way to the Hawa Mahal again, this time entering it to look around. The views down to the street through the little windows weren't very good. From there I walked a bit through the bazaars and then took a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel and had a good thali dinner at a nearby restaurant.
The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to the Jantar Mantar, an open air masonry observatory built by the Maharaja Jai Singh II, who apparently was quite an astronomer himself (and was the maharaja who founded Jaipur in 1727). I had visited another one of his observatories in Delhi (he built five altogether, four of which still exist), but the one in Jaipur is larger. It was very interesting, with pretty good explanations of the instruments. The largest sundial is about 90 feet high and is said to be accurate to 2 seconds. From there I took a cycle rickshaw outside the old city to the Albert Hall Museum, built in the 1880's. It is a beautiful Mughal style building, but covered with pigeons and their residue. The courtyards have nets, but they are littered with pigeon feathers. It was crowded on that Sunday afternoon, but had a fine collection in an interesting building. I had a lunch of cashews and raisins on the museum grounds while watching a man hand watering the lawns with a hose. Afterward I walked to another museum, the Museum of Indology, that a guidebook has recommended, but its contents were poorly presented, although the son of the founder showed me around and was very nice. In the late afternoon I walked back to the old city and through some of the bazaars before taking a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel.
The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to the Hawa Mahal and from there took an initially very crowded little bus north to Amber, about 7 miles from Jaipur. At Amber is the gigantic Amber Fort and Palace, with the Jaigarh Palace 500 feet above it on a rocky hill. I had waited until after the weekend to visit in the hope of avoiding huge crowds, and they weren't too bad. You can ride a painted elephant up to the main gate, but I walked, only about 10 minutes. The construction of the fort was begun in the 1590's by a maharaja who was one of Akbar's generals and was the residence of the maharajas until the move to Jaipur. It is a fantastic place, with some beautiful halls and many rooms and passages. There are great views, including of walls all along and up and down the neighboring rocky hills. There seem to be miles of fortress walls. The bookstore at the fort had, along with the usual tourist-oriented books, a copy of Mein Kampf. Apparently, Hitler has some admirers here in India among the Hindu right wing. (Maybe it's the swastikas.) A few months ago I read about a planned Bollywood movie about Hitler and Eva Braun (perhaps a romantic comedy?) that was being protested by India's Jewish community and others.
I spent three or four hours there wandering around and having lunch, and then made the climb to Jaigarh Fort along a stone paved road and spent the rest of the afternoon there. Jaigarh had even better views, along with its own palace buildings, a 17th century cannon foundry and a huge cannon claimed to be the world's largest wheeled cannon, with a 26 foot long barrel that shot cannon balls of 110 pounds. (From Amber Fort I had seen an underground passage that is said to lead up to Jaigarh. There were bats sleeping in underground passages nearby.) I wandered around the fort in the late afternoon sun and enjoyed the spectacular views. It's been cool in Rajasthan, with highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's. It is chilly in the mornings and I usually wear my fleece or windbreaker until noon or later. It gets cool about 4 pm, with sunset about 5:30. About 2 in the afternoon, as I was walking up to Jaigarh Fort in the sun, my thermometer registered only 73 degrees. On the other hand, in the summer temperatures are said to reach 118 or 120 degrees. About 5 I walked down to Amber Fort and caught the bus back to Jaipur, with one last cycle rickshaw through the madness of the streets of Jaipur to my hotel. You do have to admire the skill of the rickshaw drivers in finding their way through the jumble of traffic. You have to pay constant attention while dealing with the incessant horn honking and the exhaust fumes. It would drive me crazy. For a passenger it makes an interesting but not particularly pleasant experience, though it is far better than walking.
I found my seat on the train, in a 2AC sleeper car. I had tried to get second class but there were no seats available when I booked my ticket. This was an air conditioned car with bunks and I had one of the bottom ones. The windows aren't as good in 2AC as in second class. They are sealed, tinted and scuffed. Still, there was a view and after we were past the trackside slum housing on the outskirts of Delhi I watched the countryside go by, with lots of green agricultural fields but not too many people noticeable. A family of three across from me ate and then slept and I talked quite a bit with a 26-year-old marketing guy on his way to Ahmedabad. There were quite a few trees along the way and we passed rocky hills as we neared Alwar, a city of 250,000, arriving about 4. I took a cycle-rickshaw along relatively uncluttered streets and found a hotel and then walked around a bit before it got dark. I could see the ramparts of the huge fort on the rocky hills a thousand feet above the city and I found a billboard advertising cement with caricatures of Obama (in a purple suit) and Indian Prime Minister Singh. In the evening there was another wedding procession with a turbaned groom on a white horse accompanied by a band, light bearers and men and very colorfully dressed women. The hotel served a delicious vegetarian thali, several courses for about $2.25.
The next morning I walked to the City Palace in the sunshine and spent most of the day in and around it. The sign said it was built in 1793 and it is an impressively big building. There is a museum in three of the large halls, with Moghul miniature paintings, weapons and other things, including a stuffed tiger, panther and sloth bear. The first floor of the palace contains government offices and in the plaza in front were all sorts of tables with typewriters where you could hire someone to type out a document for you. Various small lawyers' offices were all around, too. I had a small lunch of vegetable soup and some sort of pastry for about 20 cents. Behind the palace was a very green lake in a tank (a reservoir), with steps on all sides and with little Moghul style pavilions around it. To the south was the cenotaph of a maharaja who died in 1815, the cenotaph named after a maharani who committed sati on his funeral pyre. It was a beautiful building, red sandstone on the first floor and white marble on the second, but with pigeon poop and feathers on large parts of it. Men were playing cards in the shade. I walked all around the tank and the cenotaph, and about 3:30 walked through the streets of the old city, past several old and high gates, and made my way back to my hotel. I got lots of curious stares. Not many foreign tourists come here, which is one of the reasons I came. It is nice to have people say hello who are genuinely saying hello and not just trying to attract your attention to sell you something. I saw no other foreigners in Alwar.
I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station the next morning and boarded a train bound for Jaipur about 11:30, only ten or fifteen minutes behind schedule. A train heading in the opposite direction, towards Delhi, had people riding on the roof. I was in a second class sleeper carriage and had a good view of the hazy agricultural countryside, with women in the very colorful Rajasthani dress of saris and shawls working in the fields. I also saw a camel-drawn cart or two. The train arrived in Jaipur after about two hours, right on time. Jaipur is a huge city, two and a half million people (so ten times that of Alwar) and I spent an unpleasant hour on its streets before I found a hotel. Then I walked to the old city along the streets full of chaotic traffic, another unpleasant experience. Jaipur was founded in 1727 and I entered the old city through one of the elaborate pink gates. The city was painted pink, a sign of welcome, in 1876 when the Prince of Wales visited and the tradition has continued. Not only are most of the buildings painted pink (at least in the old city), but I also saw pink overpasses on the way into town. The old city was laid out with wide (100 feet or so) main streets, but they are now crammed with noisy, chaotic traffic. I did make my way into some of the quieter narrower streets and came across marble carvers and other craftsmen and several wedding processions. I walked as far as the Hawa Mahal, the "Palace of Winds," built in 1799 with hundreds of latticed windows up its five story height to allow the women of the harem to observe the activity on the wide street below without being seen. I walked back to my hotel from there, with a not very good dinner stop on the way.
I woke up the next morning about 6 and was very sick for most of the morning. I spent the day in bed until about 7 that evening, except for trips to the bathroom. I did finally dig out my thermometer from my backpack about 2. My temperature reached almost 101 degrees, but was normal by 6 pm and I felt okay. I read for about two hours and went back to bed before 9.
I felt fine the next morning. After a breakfast of banana porridge and toast and honey I took a cycle-rickshaw (having finally resolved to walk along Jaipur's streets as little as possible) to the City Palace, started in 1727 but added to since. I spent most of the day there, visiting its beautiful halls and gates and interesting museums. Among its treasures are two silver urns that are the largest silver objects ever made, each over five feet high and about 770 pounds in weight. The maharaja used them to carry Ganges water when he went to England in 1902 for the coronation of Edward VII. Apparently, he used the water to cleanse himself after coming into contact with non-Hindus. There was also a spectacular textile collection, especially the clothes of the maharajas. One maharaja (the one with the silver urns) was six foot six and weighed 550 pounds and his robe was, not surprisingly, quite large. There was the usual impressive collection of curved swords, daggers, and other weaponry. Curiously, one display case had a bunch of knives and one backscratcher. You wouldn't want to confuse those. The palace also had a chart on the salutes (21 guns on down to 9) due to the leaders of the princely states during the British Empire and that was quite interesting. There were something like 550 princely states, though only about 100 merited salutes. It seems almost all of the maharajas and other princes were Hindus. I had lunch in a nice restaurant inside the palace and late in the afternoon made my way to the Hawa Mahal again, this time entering it to look around. The views down to the street through the little windows weren't very good. From there I walked a bit through the bazaars and then took a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel and had a good thali dinner at a nearby restaurant.
The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to the Jantar Mantar, an open air masonry observatory built by the Maharaja Jai Singh II, who apparently was quite an astronomer himself (and was the maharaja who founded Jaipur in 1727). I had visited another one of his observatories in Delhi (he built five altogether, four of which still exist), but the one in Jaipur is larger. It was very interesting, with pretty good explanations of the instruments. The largest sundial is about 90 feet high and is said to be accurate to 2 seconds. From there I took a cycle rickshaw outside the old city to the Albert Hall Museum, built in the 1880's. It is a beautiful Mughal style building, but covered with pigeons and their residue. The courtyards have nets, but they are littered with pigeon feathers. It was crowded on that Sunday afternoon, but had a fine collection in an interesting building. I had a lunch of cashews and raisins on the museum grounds while watching a man hand watering the lawns with a hose. Afterward I walked to another museum, the Museum of Indology, that a guidebook has recommended, but its contents were poorly presented, although the son of the founder showed me around and was very nice. In the late afternoon I walked back to the old city and through some of the bazaars before taking a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel.
The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to the Hawa Mahal and from there took an initially very crowded little bus north to Amber, about 7 miles from Jaipur. At Amber is the gigantic Amber Fort and Palace, with the Jaigarh Palace 500 feet above it on a rocky hill. I had waited until after the weekend to visit in the hope of avoiding huge crowds, and they weren't too bad. You can ride a painted elephant up to the main gate, but I walked, only about 10 minutes. The construction of the fort was begun in the 1590's by a maharaja who was one of Akbar's generals and was the residence of the maharajas until the move to Jaipur. It is a fantastic place, with some beautiful halls and many rooms and passages. There are great views, including of walls all along and up and down the neighboring rocky hills. There seem to be miles of fortress walls. The bookstore at the fort had, along with the usual tourist-oriented books, a copy of Mein Kampf. Apparently, Hitler has some admirers here in India among the Hindu right wing. (Maybe it's the swastikas.) A few months ago I read about a planned Bollywood movie about Hitler and Eva Braun (perhaps a romantic comedy?) that was being protested by India's Jewish community and others.
I spent three or four hours there wandering around and having lunch, and then made the climb to Jaigarh Fort along a stone paved road and spent the rest of the afternoon there. Jaigarh had even better views, along with its own palace buildings, a 17th century cannon foundry and a huge cannon claimed to be the world's largest wheeled cannon, with a 26 foot long barrel that shot cannon balls of 110 pounds. (From Amber Fort I had seen an underground passage that is said to lead up to Jaigarh. There were bats sleeping in underground passages nearby.) I wandered around the fort in the late afternoon sun and enjoyed the spectacular views. It's been cool in Rajasthan, with highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's. It is chilly in the mornings and I usually wear my fleece or windbreaker until noon or later. It gets cool about 4 pm, with sunset about 5:30. About 2 in the afternoon, as I was walking up to Jaigarh Fort in the sun, my thermometer registered only 73 degrees. On the other hand, in the summer temperatures are said to reach 118 or 120 degrees. About 5 I walked down to Amber Fort and caught the bus back to Jaipur, with one last cycle rickshaw through the madness of the streets of Jaipur to my hotel. You do have to admire the skill of the rickshaw drivers in finding their way through the jumble of traffic. You have to pay constant attention while dealing with the incessant horn honking and the exhaust fumes. It would drive me crazy. For a passenger it makes an interesting but not particularly pleasant experience, though it is far better than walking.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
November 18 -29, 2010: Delhi
On the 18th I left Ramnagar shortly before 10 on a train bound for Delhi. I took a last glance at the foothills of the Himalayas as we left the station and from then on it was flat all the way to Delhi, 150 miles away. Actually, we were descending from about 1500 feet elevation at Ramnagar to about 700 in Delhi (according to the elevation signs in the New Delhi Railway Station). Almost every acre on the way was planted or ready for planting. Besides unidentified vegetables, I noticed sugar cane and wheat stubble. There were also ponds with birds. And I saw plowing with cattle and by hand. The six hour train ride cost me only 70 rupees (about $1.50) in second class, and it was fairly comfortable with padded seats and sufficient leg room. It was great to be on a train after three and a half months of buses: none of that incessant horn blowing; only the soothing rumble of the train. The train initially was only maybe a third full, but filled up at the first stop, Kashipur, and by the time we left Moradabad the aisles were jammed with people. It took us about two hours to reach Moradabad, where we spent an hour at the station. The 110 kilometers between Moradabad and Hapur took only about an hour and a half, so we were really racing, at over 40 miles an hour! We crossed the wide Ganges on the way. We slowed down on the way into Delhi, passing packed slum housing of sheet metal and plastic tarps right next to the tracks. We crossed the wide, dirty, sluggish Yamuna River and went right by the 60 foot walls of the 17th century Red Fort and reached the British-built red sandstone Old Delhi Railway Station about 4. I had hoped we would arrive at the New Delhi Station because the Paharganj backpacker hotel area is nearby. I walked to the metro, but the lines were enormous, so I took a cyclo-rickshaw through the narrow, crowded and interesting streets of old Delhi to Paharganj and got a good hotel for only 400 rupees (about $9) a night about 5:30. (The train trip had cost me 70 rupees but I paid more for the cyclo-rickshaw from the station (50 rupees) plus an autorickshaw to the station in Ramnagar (30 rupees)!) I was glad to discover that the main street of Paharganj, all torn up when I was there three and a half months earlier, was now repaved, though filled with the day's debris.
The next day was a beautiful sunny and warm day. I walked through the post-war New Delhi Railway Station, always a hive of activity (a sign in front says 400,000 people and 250 trains use it each day), and on a crowded walkway over the 16 platforms, with much activity to be seen below, to the metro station. On a loudspeaker in the railway station a women would announce the delay of a train and then say, "Any inconvenience is deeply regreted." I took a metro train two stops north and got off near Chandni Chowk, the main street of old Delhi leading to the Red Fort. I had planned to walk along it to the Red Fort, but there was a huge Sikh parade celebrating the birthday of Guru Nanak, the first guru, heading in the opposite direction. There were high school groups, men with swords, and hordes of people. It was all very colorful and interesting and I ended up spending maybe three hours watching it and walking along with it. There were martial arts demonstrations, lots of food being dispensed both from trucks in the parade and from stands along the route, and many colorful costumes. Many men and boys had swords or spears. There were all sorts of different types and colors of turbans. Bearded, fairly fierce looking men might have bright pink or yellow or lavender turbans, besides the more common red, blue, black and white ones. I took a photo of one big guy with a lime green turban and he came up to me and asked me where I was from. He was from Milwaukee.
I walked with the parade as far as the Fatehpur Mosque, at the opposite end of Chandni Chowk from the Red Fort. I went into the spice bazaar near there and then into the mosque, which was built in the mid-17th century and has a wide courtyard. Streams of white clothed, white skull-capped men had left it earlier after Friday midday prayers. I looked around for a while inside and then sat down under the arcade for a while. It was quiet after all the commotion outside. Men were sleeping here and there and a boy was flying a kite in the courtyard. A 12th grader sat next to me to practice his English and told me he was a "Mohammedan." I've also noticed that Moslems here are sometimes called "Musalmans."
Just before dusk I walked down Chandni Chowk to the Red Fort, reaching it just before dark. I didn't go in, but walked south in the dark past the giant Jama Masjid, the mosque built just after the Red Fort, and ate at a somewhat famous restaurant called Karim's nearby, sitting with a Syrian and an Eqyptian, both engineers working in the UAE. After dinner I walked back to the Chandni Chowk metro station only to find it was closed because of "technical difficulties," so I took a cyclo-rickshaw back to Paharganj.
It was sunny but cooler the next day. It was a Saturday and I figured the Red Fort would be especially crowded, so I headed south to Connaught Place. It, too, was no longer a torn up mess, as in August, and was even fairly quiet on that Saturday morning. There is a great grassy circular park in the middle, where I remember reading mail in 1979 after not having had any mail since Istanbul two months earlier. It certainly is different now with the internet. I walked to the Jantar Mantar, a monumental astronomy complex built by the Maharajah of Jaipur in the early 18th century. He built his instruments to observe the sun and stars out of brick and it is all quite interesting with huge sundials. From there I took the metro south and then walked to the Nehru Museum in the house where he lived when Prime Minister from independence in 1947 to his death in 1964. It is a huge mansion, with great lawns, apparently built for the commander-in-chief of the army during the British era. It was filled with interesting photos, newspapers and other displays, plus his two offices, sitting rooms, his bedroom and that of this daughter Indira. I ended up spending 3-4 hours there. It was fairly crowded, with a lot of friendly but noisy school children. I walked from there to a statue of "Indian Martyrs," including Gandhi and others, and then across the Rajpath, New Delhi's central thoroughfare, in the dark to a metro station.
It was sunny and cool the next day, and in the morning I took the metro to near the Rajpath and then walked to it past the well-guarded circular Parliament building, which was attacked by Islamic terrorists a few years ago. There was even a soldier with a rifle behind sandbags in the nearby metro station. New Delhi, south of old Delhi, was built by the British from 1911 to 1931 to serve as India's capital and they built on a monumental scale. The two Secretariat buildings are enormous and are a fusion of European (lots of Grreco-Roman columns) and Indian elements. They, too, were well-guarded. I walked past them to the huge residence of the President, formerly that of the Viceroy. I think it has something like 340 rooms. You can only see it through the enormous gates, so I turned around and walked back past the Secretariats again and then south along the wide, orderly, tree-lined streets of New Delhi to the Indira Gandhi Museum, passing the well-guarded residences of the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force in British-built white columned mansions behind red brick walls now topped with green metal extensions and barbed wire above that. The museum was closed for Guru Nanak's birthday, so I walked further south to Safdarjung's tomb, a late (mid-18th century) Moghul tomb for a man who must have been a particularly favored and wealthy minister. It is a large, domed building in a large garden, and it was quite nice in there. There were not many visitors. From there I walked east to the Lodi Gardens, named after the dynasty overthrown by the Moghuls in 1526. It contains some large tombs of the Lodi Sultans and on that Sunday afternoon also contained lots of picnicking and cricket-playing Indians.
From the Lodi Gardens I walked further east to a series of narrow lanes leading to a winding bazaar that finally led to the Hazrat Nizam-ud-din, a Sufi shrine filled with worshippers. It contained several graves besides the Sufi saint, including that of Shah Jahan's daughter. I went into one of the shrines containing a grave and it was filled with sweet-smelling flowers. The main shrine had a sign saying, "No ladies allowed inside." The people were very friendly, with some asking to have their photos taken, including an old man and his wife who posed most solemnly. I spent about two hours there, until past 6, watching all the activity. There were singers in front of the main tomb, accompanied by a dhol (two sided drum) and a harmonium. I took a long autorickshaw ride back to my hotel from there and the driver surprisingly agreed to use his meter, so the 4-5 mile trip cost me only about $1.25, about half of what they usually charge. It was chilly that night and I put on my fleece to go to dinner.
It was cloudy and cool the next morning and I would have spent the day in a museum, but on Mondays the museums are closed, so I took a 45 minute metro ride south to near the Qutb Minar. The metro trains were packed at the New Delhi Railway Station stop and I had to wait for several trains to pass before I could wedge myself into one. The subway opened in 2002, so it's quite modern, but the people push and shove to get in and out at the busy stations like rats leaving a sinking ship. I wonder if people ever stumble and get trampled. One guy lost his watch in the tumult.
From the Qutb Minar metro station I took an autorickshaw to the Qutb Minar itself. It is a 240 foot high minaret next to the ruins of India's oldest mosque, built by the first Muslim sultans of Delhi around 1200. The minaret is about 50 feet wide at the base, tapering to maybe 8 feet at the top and is quite impressive, with some beautiful intricate carving on it. The nearby mosque also has some fine carving and is particularly interesting because some of the columns have representations of figures, including dancing women. An inscription over the mosque's main entrance reportedly says that the stone from 27 "idolotrous temples" was used to build the mosque. The faces of the figures are defaced. The Qutb Minar area was quite crowded with people, including hundreds of what appeared to be young Indian police or military cadets. The mosque also includes a famous iron pillar, 25 feet high, that has never rusted, from the 5th century AD or so.
I spent a couple of hours there and then took an autorickshaw and while traveling on it discovered I had mistakenly told the driver to take me to a place miles away from where I really wanted to go, so I changed plans and had him take me to the Purana Qila, a giant fortress near the Yamuna built by Sher Shah, who defeated the second Mughal ruler, Humayun, and ruled Delhi for a few years in the mid 16th century. He was quite a builder and there is a big mosque and a tower inside the walls. When Humayun regained power in 1555 after Sher Shah's death, he used the tower as a library and was killed the next year after a fall coming down its steps.
I walked from the Purana Qila to the India Gate, the 140 foot high stone memorial arch commemorating the 90,000 Indians who died in World War I and in the Northwest and Afghanistan campaigns of 1919. Under it is the grave of an unknown soldier from the 1971 India-Pakistan War guarded by soldiers and an eternal flame. There were big crowds around the arch, even on this cool and cloudy late afternoon. From the India Gate the wide Rajpath leads to the President's House more than a mile and a half away. From the India Gate I walked back to Paharganj, which took me more than an hour, longer than I expected.
The next morning there was another mele at the metro station trying to get into the train. I took it again to the Central Secretariat stop near the Rajpath and then walked to the National Museum. This was another cool, gray day and I spent it at the museum, from about 10 to 4:30. It contains great Hindu and Buddhist statuary and Moghul miniature paintings among its many treasures. There was also a section on arms and armor and on the Indian Navy. The only problem was the seemingly endless lines of noisy school children who are marched through the museum without stopping to see anything, as if they could imbibe some of their history and culture by proximity. About 1 pm I was hungry and found the canteen in the basement were I got a great lunch of five fluffy, crunchy, little (maybe 4-5 inch diameter) puri and some vegetable dish for only 10 rupees (less than 25 cents), plus tea for 5 rupees. (Later I found the cafeteria on the top floor and it was considerably more expensive.) From the museum I walked back to Paharganj in the late afternoon/early evening (it gets dark soon after 5:30), stopping at the very fine Imperial Hotel on the way. It is filled with Raj-era paintings, photos and engravings, hundreds of them, and they were very interesting. There were paintings of British king emperors and viceroys, and of maharajas, too. It is beautiful big hotel, with the smell of jasmine in the air. It is somewhat nicer than the hotel where I am staying.
Back in Paharganj there was a wedding party along the main street that night, with the groom in a turban and riding a white horse. Boys and young men held elaborate lanterns powered by a portable generator and men danced in front of the groom to the very loud music of a sound truck and a live uniformed band, mostly, or maybe entirely, of horns and drums. He was on his way to claim his bride. I had seen a similar procession in Ramnagar the night before I left for Delhi, though there the groom, in a plumed turban, rode a high wooden chariot drawn by two whitish horses and pulling the generator that powered the lights. He was accompanied by light bearers that held white fluorescent lights about 4-5 feet long. There were about 10-20 of them and at first I thought they were light sabers held in procession by jedi knights.
It was cloudy and cool again the next day and I made my way to the Indira Gandhi Museum. This time I walked to the Rajiv Chowk metro station in Connaught Place rather than do battle in the New Delhi Railway Station metro station. This museum is in the house where she lived from her father's death in 1964 to her own assassination in 1984. It is quite interesting with many of the rooms, including her bedroom, office, dining room and living room, left as they were at her death, with interesting furnishings. There are also rooms full of photos and other displays, including the blood-stained sari she was wearing when assassinated. There are also rooms dedicated to her son Rajiv, prime minister after her death until 1989, which include photos of his Italian-born wife Sonia, now head of the ruling Congress Party, and the tattered remains of the clothes and the high top sneakers he was wearing when he was blown up by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991. The museum was jam-packed with Indians, many of them in groups pushing and shoving, and no westerners other than me. On the grounds of the white, colonnaded British-built building is a memorial on the spot where her Sikh bodyguards shot her.
From there I walked to the nearby Gandhi Memorial in the Birla House, where he spent his last 144 days from September 1947 to his assassination in January 1948. It is another British-built huge mansion, though the two rooms that Gandhi stayed in are very simply furnished and left as they were when he died. The mansion is filled with interesting photos, dioramas and other displays, and from his rooms concrete footsteps lead across the lawn to the spot where he was assassinated on his way to evening prayers. It began to rain while I was there, at about 2:30 and lasted for more than an hour. My thermometer registered 68 degrees during the rain. (During my stay here in Delhi highs have generally been in the 70's and lows in the 50's.) Late in the afternoon as I walked to the metro it was quite foggy and drippy. Back in Paharganj there was another Sikh parade that evening, with more food being dispensed. The main street was even more crowded and dirty than usual. I got pickpocketed in the crowd, losing only 50 rupees but also a little notebook.
It was cloudy and cool the next morning and I took the metro across the Yamuna to the new Akshardam Temple, built in 2000-2005 by thousands of volunteers. It is the world's largest Hindu temple, with a display proudly displaying this fact with a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records. It is a fantastic place, called by some a Hindu Disneyland, and I quite liked it, but then I am very fond of Disneyland. The temple itself and the other buildings are beautifully decorated, with thousands of carved figures of Hindu gods and heroes, plus many animals. The best are a series of more than a hundred elephants carved on the main temple's base, each from stones of 20 tons. The stories about the elephant carvings, with inscriptions in Hindi and English, are lovely, focusing on non-violence, cooperation and vegetarianism.
The temple was built by the followers of Swaminarayan, who lived from 1781 to 1830 and has been succeeded by five swamis, the current one almost 90. As an eleven year old he left his family and traveled as a mendicant all over India (and to Mount Kailash in Tibet, allegedly in nothing but a loincloth) before stopping in Gujarat at an ashram. There is a large gold statue of him in the center of the temple, with smaller gold statues of his successor swamis. Near the temple are three huge halls, the first with animatronic exhibits about Swaminarayan's life, the second with a beautifully done IMAX movie about his life, and the third with a boat ride through Indian history, revealing that in the Vedic Age (before Christ) Indians invented the airplane and discovered atomic theory, among other things. It was all quite enjoyable and well done. There is also a sculpture garden of great Indian men and women, including a guy who, the plaque claims, invented wireless communication in 1899 (that is, before Marconi) but is better known, it says, for his remarkable finding that "plants have feelings." The temple was very crowded by the time I left about 3:30. I took the metro to the Hauz Kaus area and tried to find it and the tomb of Firoz Shah, but it was getting late and dark at 5, so I gave up and took the metro back towards Paharganj.
After a misty morning, the sun finally appeared the next morning a little before 10. I took the metro and then walked to the Red Fort. I had been waiting for a sunny day. The fort is a huge enclosure, built by Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, when he moved his capital from Agra to Delhi in the 1640's. I spent the day there, exploring the remaining palace buildings and the extensive grounds. There were lots of people there. The palaces were pillaged by the Persian Nadir Shah in 1739, with the rich palace decorations, including jewels encrusted in the walls and the Peacock Throne, taken to Persia. Nonetheless, the magnificent buildings, though denuded and in bad repair, are still interesting, and it was pleasant to walk around and sit here and there. There is a marble artificial stream bed flowing through the palaces. I had a lunch of raisins and cashews that I had brought with me and shared part of it with some friendly squirrels. There were lots of birds in the air and trees, and I saw several woodpeckers around a step well on the grass and in a tree. Also, there are three museums inside, including one on the struggle for independence in one of the large British-built buildings inside the fort built when the British occupied the fort from the time of the Indian Revolt in 1857 to independence 90 years later. The Indian Army occupied the fort from independence to 2002 and it is now much nicer than I remembered it from 1979. I had dinner at Karim's near the Jama Masjid and then returned to the Red Fort for the hour long sound and light show at 7:30, which cost only 60 rupees (and was worth about that). It was chilly there at night.
The next morning was sunny again and I took a cyclo rickshaw from the east side of the train station through old Delhi to the Jama Masjid and spent maybe two hours there. It is India's largest mosque, built by Shah Jahan. The two minarets rise to 130 feet, and I climbed the southern one. The views of the mosque itself from above and of the nearby walls of the Red Fort were great, though hazy, but most of the rest of the city was hidden by the dense haze. The white domed, red sandstone mosque is simply decorated, but quite beautiful. There were lots of tourists, almost as many as the number of faithful there that Saturday morning. It was pleasant to wander around the wide, sunny courtyard and through the shady arcades and prayer halls.
I had lunch at Karim's and then walked through the crowded bazaar in front of the mosque, and then south to the National Gandhi Museum, opened in 1981. It has very interesting photos and displays, including the walking stick Gandhi used in his Salt March in 1931 to Dandi, his sandals, his dentures, two teeth (his last two, I think) extracted in the 1930's, the blood stained dhoti and shawl he was wearing when assassinated, and one of the bullets that hit him. Nearby in a beautiful park, for the most part surprisingly clean of litter, is the Raj Ghat, where he was cremated. The area is quite different now than it was in 1948, judging from the photos of his cremation. Nearby are the cremation spots, now memorials, to Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. There is a smaller one for Sanjay Gandhi, the son of Indira who died in a plane crash in 1980. They are all different but all quite simple. Only Rajiv's has a representation of him.
From there I walked to the walled city built by Feroz Shah, one of the pre-Moghul Delhi sultans. I was there at dusk, from about 5 to 5:45. The few remaining structures inside are in ruins, as the material was used by Shah Jahan to build his city, but there are the remains of a mosque and a structure with a sandstone pillar originally erected by the 3rd century BC Emperor Ashoka and transported to this spot by Feroz Shah. From there I took a cyclo rickshaw to the railway station and walked through it to Paharganj.
The next morning I finally booked my train tickets out of Delhi, first to Alwar and then to Jaipur, both in Rajasthan. Booking them was very easy at a special office in the train station for foreigners. As usual, I've stayed here in Delhi longer than expected. I took the metro to near the Crafts Museum and spent a couple of hours there. The stuff inside is almost all 19th and 20th century and there are some very interesting wooden sculpture, beautiful textiles, and architectual pieces. I took an auto rickshaw from there south to Humayun's tomb, the first example of Moghul architecture, built by his widow who was the mother of his son and successor Akbar. This building, reached through two gates, is a beautiful domed building of red sandstone and white marble surrounded by a Persian style park. (His widow was Persian.) It was very crowded on that Sunday afternoon, but the grounds are so extensive that it was easy to get away from them. His marble tomb in the center of the huge building is very simple. In other rooms and on the terrace and in the gardens are other graves, about a hundred of them. And there are several other large tomb buildings (though dwarfed by Humayun's), including one said to be that of his barber, though that seems unlikely to me. I stayed until after the sun's rays left the building. The sky and the trees were filled with birds, including parrots, magpies, some sort of crow and quite a few hawks. At nightfall I took an autorickshaw back to Paharganj.
The next day (today) I spent the morning and early afternoon in Paharganj, having a long breakfast, talking with an Italian journalist, updating this blog and then having lunch. I took the metro in the afternoon from the train station to Chandni Chowk and walked to the 17th century Jain Temple across from the Red Fort, but it was closed. I walked back on the crowded Chandni Chowk, which originally, in Moghul times, had a canal down the middle to reflect the moonlight, and took what is probably my last metro ride, at least for a while (no more minding the gap), to Rajiv Chowk and spent some time in a Connaught Circus bookstore before walking back to Paharganj, arriving before dark for a change.
I've enjoyed Delhi but am looking forward to leaving. There are a lot of hassles in this city. My backpack will be lighter. I left my long underwear and wool cap behind before I reached Delhi and a few days ago I mailed my down jacket home, for about $22. I purchased it in Manali when I first arrived in August for about $60 and used it for exactly three days, but I was glad I had it those three days.
The next day was a beautiful sunny and warm day. I walked through the post-war New Delhi Railway Station, always a hive of activity (a sign in front says 400,000 people and 250 trains use it each day), and on a crowded walkway over the 16 platforms, with much activity to be seen below, to the metro station. On a loudspeaker in the railway station a women would announce the delay of a train and then say, "Any inconvenience is deeply regreted." I took a metro train two stops north and got off near Chandni Chowk, the main street of old Delhi leading to the Red Fort. I had planned to walk along it to the Red Fort, but there was a huge Sikh parade celebrating the birthday of Guru Nanak, the first guru, heading in the opposite direction. There were high school groups, men with swords, and hordes of people. It was all very colorful and interesting and I ended up spending maybe three hours watching it and walking along with it. There were martial arts demonstrations, lots of food being dispensed both from trucks in the parade and from stands along the route, and many colorful costumes. Many men and boys had swords or spears. There were all sorts of different types and colors of turbans. Bearded, fairly fierce looking men might have bright pink or yellow or lavender turbans, besides the more common red, blue, black and white ones. I took a photo of one big guy with a lime green turban and he came up to me and asked me where I was from. He was from Milwaukee.
I walked with the parade as far as the Fatehpur Mosque, at the opposite end of Chandni Chowk from the Red Fort. I went into the spice bazaar near there and then into the mosque, which was built in the mid-17th century and has a wide courtyard. Streams of white clothed, white skull-capped men had left it earlier after Friday midday prayers. I looked around for a while inside and then sat down under the arcade for a while. It was quiet after all the commotion outside. Men were sleeping here and there and a boy was flying a kite in the courtyard. A 12th grader sat next to me to practice his English and told me he was a "Mohammedan." I've also noticed that Moslems here are sometimes called "Musalmans."
Just before dusk I walked down Chandni Chowk to the Red Fort, reaching it just before dark. I didn't go in, but walked south in the dark past the giant Jama Masjid, the mosque built just after the Red Fort, and ate at a somewhat famous restaurant called Karim's nearby, sitting with a Syrian and an Eqyptian, both engineers working in the UAE. After dinner I walked back to the Chandni Chowk metro station only to find it was closed because of "technical difficulties," so I took a cyclo-rickshaw back to Paharganj.
It was sunny but cooler the next day. It was a Saturday and I figured the Red Fort would be especially crowded, so I headed south to Connaught Place. It, too, was no longer a torn up mess, as in August, and was even fairly quiet on that Saturday morning. There is a great grassy circular park in the middle, where I remember reading mail in 1979 after not having had any mail since Istanbul two months earlier. It certainly is different now with the internet. I walked to the Jantar Mantar, a monumental astronomy complex built by the Maharajah of Jaipur in the early 18th century. He built his instruments to observe the sun and stars out of brick and it is all quite interesting with huge sundials. From there I took the metro south and then walked to the Nehru Museum in the house where he lived when Prime Minister from independence in 1947 to his death in 1964. It is a huge mansion, with great lawns, apparently built for the commander-in-chief of the army during the British era. It was filled with interesting photos, newspapers and other displays, plus his two offices, sitting rooms, his bedroom and that of this daughter Indira. I ended up spending 3-4 hours there. It was fairly crowded, with a lot of friendly but noisy school children. I walked from there to a statue of "Indian Martyrs," including Gandhi and others, and then across the Rajpath, New Delhi's central thoroughfare, in the dark to a metro station.
It was sunny and cool the next day, and in the morning I took the metro to near the Rajpath and then walked to it past the well-guarded circular Parliament building, which was attacked by Islamic terrorists a few years ago. There was even a soldier with a rifle behind sandbags in the nearby metro station. New Delhi, south of old Delhi, was built by the British from 1911 to 1931 to serve as India's capital and they built on a monumental scale. The two Secretariat buildings are enormous and are a fusion of European (lots of Grreco-Roman columns) and Indian elements. They, too, were well-guarded. I walked past them to the huge residence of the President, formerly that of the Viceroy. I think it has something like 340 rooms. You can only see it through the enormous gates, so I turned around and walked back past the Secretariats again and then south along the wide, orderly, tree-lined streets of New Delhi to the Indira Gandhi Museum, passing the well-guarded residences of the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force in British-built white columned mansions behind red brick walls now topped with green metal extensions and barbed wire above that. The museum was closed for Guru Nanak's birthday, so I walked further south to Safdarjung's tomb, a late (mid-18th century) Moghul tomb for a man who must have been a particularly favored and wealthy minister. It is a large, domed building in a large garden, and it was quite nice in there. There were not many visitors. From there I walked east to the Lodi Gardens, named after the dynasty overthrown by the Moghuls in 1526. It contains some large tombs of the Lodi Sultans and on that Sunday afternoon also contained lots of picnicking and cricket-playing Indians.
From the Lodi Gardens I walked further east to a series of narrow lanes leading to a winding bazaar that finally led to the Hazrat Nizam-ud-din, a Sufi shrine filled with worshippers. It contained several graves besides the Sufi saint, including that of Shah Jahan's daughter. I went into one of the shrines containing a grave and it was filled with sweet-smelling flowers. The main shrine had a sign saying, "No ladies allowed inside." The people were very friendly, with some asking to have their photos taken, including an old man and his wife who posed most solemnly. I spent about two hours there, until past 6, watching all the activity. There were singers in front of the main tomb, accompanied by a dhol (two sided drum) and a harmonium. I took a long autorickshaw ride back to my hotel from there and the driver surprisingly agreed to use his meter, so the 4-5 mile trip cost me only about $1.25, about half of what they usually charge. It was chilly that night and I put on my fleece to go to dinner.
It was cloudy and cool the next morning and I would have spent the day in a museum, but on Mondays the museums are closed, so I took a 45 minute metro ride south to near the Qutb Minar. The metro trains were packed at the New Delhi Railway Station stop and I had to wait for several trains to pass before I could wedge myself into one. The subway opened in 2002, so it's quite modern, but the people push and shove to get in and out at the busy stations like rats leaving a sinking ship. I wonder if people ever stumble and get trampled. One guy lost his watch in the tumult.
From the Qutb Minar metro station I took an autorickshaw to the Qutb Minar itself. It is a 240 foot high minaret next to the ruins of India's oldest mosque, built by the first Muslim sultans of Delhi around 1200. The minaret is about 50 feet wide at the base, tapering to maybe 8 feet at the top and is quite impressive, with some beautiful intricate carving on it. The nearby mosque also has some fine carving and is particularly interesting because some of the columns have representations of figures, including dancing women. An inscription over the mosque's main entrance reportedly says that the stone from 27 "idolotrous temples" was used to build the mosque. The faces of the figures are defaced. The Qutb Minar area was quite crowded with people, including hundreds of what appeared to be young Indian police or military cadets. The mosque also includes a famous iron pillar, 25 feet high, that has never rusted, from the 5th century AD or so.
I spent a couple of hours there and then took an autorickshaw and while traveling on it discovered I had mistakenly told the driver to take me to a place miles away from where I really wanted to go, so I changed plans and had him take me to the Purana Qila, a giant fortress near the Yamuna built by Sher Shah, who defeated the second Mughal ruler, Humayun, and ruled Delhi for a few years in the mid 16th century. He was quite a builder and there is a big mosque and a tower inside the walls. When Humayun regained power in 1555 after Sher Shah's death, he used the tower as a library and was killed the next year after a fall coming down its steps.
I walked from the Purana Qila to the India Gate, the 140 foot high stone memorial arch commemorating the 90,000 Indians who died in World War I and in the Northwest and Afghanistan campaigns of 1919. Under it is the grave of an unknown soldier from the 1971 India-Pakistan War guarded by soldiers and an eternal flame. There were big crowds around the arch, even on this cool and cloudy late afternoon. From the India Gate the wide Rajpath leads to the President's House more than a mile and a half away. From the India Gate I walked back to Paharganj, which took me more than an hour, longer than I expected.
The next morning there was another mele at the metro station trying to get into the train. I took it again to the Central Secretariat stop near the Rajpath and then walked to the National Museum. This was another cool, gray day and I spent it at the museum, from about 10 to 4:30. It contains great Hindu and Buddhist statuary and Moghul miniature paintings among its many treasures. There was also a section on arms and armor and on the Indian Navy. The only problem was the seemingly endless lines of noisy school children who are marched through the museum without stopping to see anything, as if they could imbibe some of their history and culture by proximity. About 1 pm I was hungry and found the canteen in the basement were I got a great lunch of five fluffy, crunchy, little (maybe 4-5 inch diameter) puri and some vegetable dish for only 10 rupees (less than 25 cents), plus tea for 5 rupees. (Later I found the cafeteria on the top floor and it was considerably more expensive.) From the museum I walked back to Paharganj in the late afternoon/early evening (it gets dark soon after 5:30), stopping at the very fine Imperial Hotel on the way. It is filled with Raj-era paintings, photos and engravings, hundreds of them, and they were very interesting. There were paintings of British king emperors and viceroys, and of maharajas, too. It is beautiful big hotel, with the smell of jasmine in the air. It is somewhat nicer than the hotel where I am staying.
Back in Paharganj there was a wedding party along the main street that night, with the groom in a turban and riding a white horse. Boys and young men held elaborate lanterns powered by a portable generator and men danced in front of the groom to the very loud music of a sound truck and a live uniformed band, mostly, or maybe entirely, of horns and drums. He was on his way to claim his bride. I had seen a similar procession in Ramnagar the night before I left for Delhi, though there the groom, in a plumed turban, rode a high wooden chariot drawn by two whitish horses and pulling the generator that powered the lights. He was accompanied by light bearers that held white fluorescent lights about 4-5 feet long. There were about 10-20 of them and at first I thought they were light sabers held in procession by jedi knights.
It was cloudy and cool again the next day and I made my way to the Indira Gandhi Museum. This time I walked to the Rajiv Chowk metro station in Connaught Place rather than do battle in the New Delhi Railway Station metro station. This museum is in the house where she lived from her father's death in 1964 to her own assassination in 1984. It is quite interesting with many of the rooms, including her bedroom, office, dining room and living room, left as they were at her death, with interesting furnishings. There are also rooms full of photos and other displays, including the blood-stained sari she was wearing when assassinated. There are also rooms dedicated to her son Rajiv, prime minister after her death until 1989, which include photos of his Italian-born wife Sonia, now head of the ruling Congress Party, and the tattered remains of the clothes and the high top sneakers he was wearing when he was blown up by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991. The museum was jam-packed with Indians, many of them in groups pushing and shoving, and no westerners other than me. On the grounds of the white, colonnaded British-built building is a memorial on the spot where her Sikh bodyguards shot her.
From there I walked to the nearby Gandhi Memorial in the Birla House, where he spent his last 144 days from September 1947 to his assassination in January 1948. It is another British-built huge mansion, though the two rooms that Gandhi stayed in are very simply furnished and left as they were when he died. The mansion is filled with interesting photos, dioramas and other displays, and from his rooms concrete footsteps lead across the lawn to the spot where he was assassinated on his way to evening prayers. It began to rain while I was there, at about 2:30 and lasted for more than an hour. My thermometer registered 68 degrees during the rain. (During my stay here in Delhi highs have generally been in the 70's and lows in the 50's.) Late in the afternoon as I walked to the metro it was quite foggy and drippy. Back in Paharganj there was another Sikh parade that evening, with more food being dispensed. The main street was even more crowded and dirty than usual. I got pickpocketed in the crowd, losing only 50 rupees but also a little notebook.
It was cloudy and cool the next morning and I took the metro across the Yamuna to the new Akshardam Temple, built in 2000-2005 by thousands of volunteers. It is the world's largest Hindu temple, with a display proudly displaying this fact with a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records. It is a fantastic place, called by some a Hindu Disneyland, and I quite liked it, but then I am very fond of Disneyland. The temple itself and the other buildings are beautifully decorated, with thousands of carved figures of Hindu gods and heroes, plus many animals. The best are a series of more than a hundred elephants carved on the main temple's base, each from stones of 20 tons. The stories about the elephant carvings, with inscriptions in Hindi and English, are lovely, focusing on non-violence, cooperation and vegetarianism.
The temple was built by the followers of Swaminarayan, who lived from 1781 to 1830 and has been succeeded by five swamis, the current one almost 90. As an eleven year old he left his family and traveled as a mendicant all over India (and to Mount Kailash in Tibet, allegedly in nothing but a loincloth) before stopping in Gujarat at an ashram. There is a large gold statue of him in the center of the temple, with smaller gold statues of his successor swamis. Near the temple are three huge halls, the first with animatronic exhibits about Swaminarayan's life, the second with a beautifully done IMAX movie about his life, and the third with a boat ride through Indian history, revealing that in the Vedic Age (before Christ) Indians invented the airplane and discovered atomic theory, among other things. It was all quite enjoyable and well done. There is also a sculpture garden of great Indian men and women, including a guy who, the plaque claims, invented wireless communication in 1899 (that is, before Marconi) but is better known, it says, for his remarkable finding that "plants have feelings." The temple was very crowded by the time I left about 3:30. I took the metro to the Hauz Kaus area and tried to find it and the tomb of Firoz Shah, but it was getting late and dark at 5, so I gave up and took the metro back towards Paharganj.
After a misty morning, the sun finally appeared the next morning a little before 10. I took the metro and then walked to the Red Fort. I had been waiting for a sunny day. The fort is a huge enclosure, built by Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, when he moved his capital from Agra to Delhi in the 1640's. I spent the day there, exploring the remaining palace buildings and the extensive grounds. There were lots of people there. The palaces were pillaged by the Persian Nadir Shah in 1739, with the rich palace decorations, including jewels encrusted in the walls and the Peacock Throne, taken to Persia. Nonetheless, the magnificent buildings, though denuded and in bad repair, are still interesting, and it was pleasant to walk around and sit here and there. There is a marble artificial stream bed flowing through the palaces. I had a lunch of raisins and cashews that I had brought with me and shared part of it with some friendly squirrels. There were lots of birds in the air and trees, and I saw several woodpeckers around a step well on the grass and in a tree. Also, there are three museums inside, including one on the struggle for independence in one of the large British-built buildings inside the fort built when the British occupied the fort from the time of the Indian Revolt in 1857 to independence 90 years later. The Indian Army occupied the fort from independence to 2002 and it is now much nicer than I remembered it from 1979. I had dinner at Karim's near the Jama Masjid and then returned to the Red Fort for the hour long sound and light show at 7:30, which cost only 60 rupees (and was worth about that). It was chilly there at night.
The next morning was sunny again and I took a cyclo rickshaw from the east side of the train station through old Delhi to the Jama Masjid and spent maybe two hours there. It is India's largest mosque, built by Shah Jahan. The two minarets rise to 130 feet, and I climbed the southern one. The views of the mosque itself from above and of the nearby walls of the Red Fort were great, though hazy, but most of the rest of the city was hidden by the dense haze. The white domed, red sandstone mosque is simply decorated, but quite beautiful. There were lots of tourists, almost as many as the number of faithful there that Saturday morning. It was pleasant to wander around the wide, sunny courtyard and through the shady arcades and prayer halls.
I had lunch at Karim's and then walked through the crowded bazaar in front of the mosque, and then south to the National Gandhi Museum, opened in 1981. It has very interesting photos and displays, including the walking stick Gandhi used in his Salt March in 1931 to Dandi, his sandals, his dentures, two teeth (his last two, I think) extracted in the 1930's, the blood stained dhoti and shawl he was wearing when assassinated, and one of the bullets that hit him. Nearby in a beautiful park, for the most part surprisingly clean of litter, is the Raj Ghat, where he was cremated. The area is quite different now than it was in 1948, judging from the photos of his cremation. Nearby are the cremation spots, now memorials, to Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. There is a smaller one for Sanjay Gandhi, the son of Indira who died in a plane crash in 1980. They are all different but all quite simple. Only Rajiv's has a representation of him.
From there I walked to the walled city built by Feroz Shah, one of the pre-Moghul Delhi sultans. I was there at dusk, from about 5 to 5:45. The few remaining structures inside are in ruins, as the material was used by Shah Jahan to build his city, but there are the remains of a mosque and a structure with a sandstone pillar originally erected by the 3rd century BC Emperor Ashoka and transported to this spot by Feroz Shah. From there I took a cyclo rickshaw to the railway station and walked through it to Paharganj.
The next morning I finally booked my train tickets out of Delhi, first to Alwar and then to Jaipur, both in Rajasthan. Booking them was very easy at a special office in the train station for foreigners. As usual, I've stayed here in Delhi longer than expected. I took the metro to near the Crafts Museum and spent a couple of hours there. The stuff inside is almost all 19th and 20th century and there are some very interesting wooden sculpture, beautiful textiles, and architectual pieces. I took an auto rickshaw from there south to Humayun's tomb, the first example of Moghul architecture, built by his widow who was the mother of his son and successor Akbar. This building, reached through two gates, is a beautiful domed building of red sandstone and white marble surrounded by a Persian style park. (His widow was Persian.) It was very crowded on that Sunday afternoon, but the grounds are so extensive that it was easy to get away from them. His marble tomb in the center of the huge building is very simple. In other rooms and on the terrace and in the gardens are other graves, about a hundred of them. And there are several other large tomb buildings (though dwarfed by Humayun's), including one said to be that of his barber, though that seems unlikely to me. I stayed until after the sun's rays left the building. The sky and the trees were filled with birds, including parrots, magpies, some sort of crow and quite a few hawks. At nightfall I took an autorickshaw back to Paharganj.
The next day (today) I spent the morning and early afternoon in Paharganj, having a long breakfast, talking with an Italian journalist, updating this blog and then having lunch. I took the metro in the afternoon from the train station to Chandni Chowk and walked to the 17th century Jain Temple across from the Red Fort, but it was closed. I walked back on the crowded Chandni Chowk, which originally, in Moghul times, had a canal down the middle to reflect the moonlight, and took what is probably my last metro ride, at least for a while (no more minding the gap), to Rajiv Chowk and spent some time in a Connaught Circus bookstore before walking back to Paharganj, arriving before dark for a change.
I've enjoyed Delhi but am looking forward to leaving. There are a lot of hassles in this city. My backpack will be lighter. I left my long underwear and wool cap behind before I reached Delhi and a few days ago I mailed my down jacket home, for about $22. I purchased it in Manali when I first arrived in August for about $60 and used it for exactly three days, but I was glad I had it those three days.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
November 11 -17, 2010: Ranikhet, Nainital and Corbett National Park
After a quick early morning walk through Almora's mostly empty bazaar (with lots of trash being swept up), I left Almora about 9 on the 11th in a share jeep bound for Ranikhet. We arrived a little less than two hours later after traveling through pine-covered mountains. Ranikhet is a "cantonment," a military base and home of the Kumaon and Naga Regiments, or so the signs said. It is also a resort and hill station. At about 6000 feet elevation, it is about 500 feet higher than Almora and so a little cooler. It is on a ridge with great views of the Himalayas to the north, the same snow-covered mountains I had seen from Kausani and from Kasar Devi just north of Almora, although they area little farther away from Ranikhet. Despite the greater distance, the view of 7800 meter (25,600 foot) Nanga Devi is better because you can see more of it above the snow-covered ridge in front of it. In the early afternoon I walked on a path through the forest for about two hours and that was about it. The military museum was closed and there didn't seem to be much else to do but enjoy the mountain air and gaze at the mountains. (There are some interesting old colonial military buildings.) Nanda Devi is a little less than 60 miles from Ranikhet and Trishul (7100 meters, 23,000+ feet) is a little less than 50. (From Kausani Nanda Devi was a bit more than 40 miles away, and mostly hidden by the intervening ridge. Trishul was a little more than 30 miles away.) Just before sunset some of the haze and clouds had dissipated and the views were better than at midday when I arrived.
The next morning the views were splendid, with the air very clear and cloudless. I watched the mountains light up in the early morning and after breakfast spent more than an hour watching them from the restaurant terrace. At about 11:30 I left on a bus for Nainital, another trip, this one of about three hours, through the pine-covered mountains, descending to about 3500 feet before rising to Nainital at about 6500 feet. Nainital is a town on a lake, also called Nainital. "Naini" means "eye" and "tal" means "lake" and this is where Sati's eye is believed to have landed when her body parts fell all over creation, or at least all over India. The crescent shaped lake is wedged between steep forest-covered mountains and we approached it from its outlet end, with the haze-covered hills and plains further to the south. A big resort town and hill station has grown up along the lake and the town was full of Indian tourists on that Saturday. I walked along the lake and got a room for 700 rupees ($16), the most I've paid in India. After a late lunch I walked around a bit, past the "Flats" at the north end of the lake, site of a landslide in 1880 that killed 150. The area was subsequently leveled. A mosque, a Sikh gurudwara and a Hindu temple are in this area. The Hindu temple is supposed to be on the exact spot where Sati's eye landed. One side of the lake is lined with the town's buildings while the other has just a path and a few temples against the steep mountainside. I walked along the latter side (about a mile), reaching the southern end about dark, and then took a cyclo rickshaw along the town side of the lake.
The next morning I walked up north of the lake to find a bus stand for the next day's bus, and then visited the nearby Church of St. John's in the Wilderness, built in the 1840's. The overgrown and garbage-strewn graveyard had at least one gravestone from the 1840's and some from the 1860's. Most were hidden by scraggly vegetation. About 9:30 I took a gondola that traveled up to Snowview, a spot on the ridge on the town side of the lake, facing north. It is about 1000 feet above the lake with good views not only of the lake below but of the peaks to the north. Again I could see Trishul, Nanda Devi, Nanda Kot and other snow-covered peaks. The air was clear and cloudless. Nainital is south of Ranikhet so the view is even further away from the peaks, more than 70 miles from Nanda Devi and more than 60 from Trishul. I spent about an hour an a half up there. There were a lot of noisy Indian tourists crowded onto the best spot for viewing. I came down, had lunch and then rested for a while before taking a walk around the lake in the later afternoon and then visiting the Hindu temple, one altar of which was invaded by a monkey that stole some of the offerings. No one shooed him away or seemed to care.
The next morning I trudged up to the bus stand for Ramnagar to catch the 11 am bus, but there was no bus. I waited around until 12:30 and then gave up. I walked down to the lake, having a quick lunch on the way, and then took a cyclo rickshaw along the lake and caught a bus at its southern end bound for Haldwani on the plains below. We left about 1:30 heading down the twisting road that wrapped around the mountains below Nainital, with views back towards the cleft in the mountains, where Nainital is located, from 2000 feet below. We left the hills and pines and reached the flatlands where Haldwani is located, at about 1800 feet, about 3 o'clock. I caught a 4 pm bus that headed west to Ramnagar with the front range of the Himalayas to the north. It got hilly again as we approached Ramnagar, arriving about 5:30, just before dark. Ramnagar is at about 1600 feet and it felt good to be able to walk around in the dark without a jacket. The air was cool, though.
The next morning I arranged for a trip to Corbett National Park, India's first national park, established in 1936. It is named after a famous tiger hunter turned conservationist, who lived from 1875 to 1955 and is the author of several books about his exploits killing man-eating tigers and jaguars. The entry fees are about four and half times as expensive for foreigners as for Indians and cost me about $60, plus about the same for the jeep and driver hire for two days. I would have like to have gone for three days, but they could only accommodate me for one night in the dormitory. The main part of the park, the Dhikala area, had just opened the day before. It is open from November 15 to June 15 each year.
We left Ramnagar about 10 and reached the park entrance, about 10 miles north, about 10:30. From there it was a rough 20 mile road west to Dhikala through beautiful sal (a type of jungle tree) forest, with much of the way along the Ramganga River. It took us about three hours, with many stops. We saw deer and monkeys along the way. Once there, we had lunch and then drove to a rickety watch tower maybe 40 feet high. We didn't see much wildlife but the views were nice, including the blue reservoir of the dammed Ramganga. About 3 we drove to the area beyond Dhikala looking for tigers and other wildlife. There are reputed to be something like 160 tigers in the park and one had been spotted that morning nearby. We didn't see a tiger, but we did see wild elephants, cheetal (spotted) deer, the larger sambar deer, langur monkeys and beautiful forest. The jeep, called a "gypsy," had an open back, so I could stand up in the back and then sit down when I wanted. It was ideal for viewing. There were quite a few of these vehicles with other tourists, so it was not a solitary wildlife experience. But it was quite enjoyable.
We got back to Dhikala about 5:30, just before dark. There must have been 20 or more gypsies and other vehicles and well over a hundred, maybe 200, tourists, more than 90% of them Indian. The area is surrounded with an electrified fence to keep out the tigers and other dangerous wildlife. I had a very good dinner there and went to bed in the somewhat comfortable dormitory of 12 beds. The problem was there was one incredibly loud, and relentless, snorer, so it was not a good night's sleep. I got up at 2 am and fog had descended. Macaques were sleeping in the trees next to the dormitory and a big quill-filled porcupine walked by in the moonlight. Dhikala is at about 1600 feet, so it wasn't too cold despite the fog.
I got up the next morning at 6 (the macaques were dropping out of their trees and several invaded our dormitory when someone left the door open) for a 6:30 safari, but the driver was late and we didn't leave until 7. We spent a little more than two hours driving around, first in the morning fog and later in the sunshine. We had good views of elephants and deer, not only cheetal and sambar, but also barking deer, small, brown and solitary. No tigers, though. Someone saw a leopard. We did see some wild peacocks and a wild boar. The driver was very good at spotting wildlife and interpreting the jungle sounds. At first, it was a little chilly in the fog, but it soon warmed up. Back at Dhikala I had an excellent breakfast and tried to see if I could stay another night. I couldn't, so about noon we headed back to Ramnagar, arriving about 3 after a lovely trip through the hilly jungle. Again we saw lots of deer and monkeys, and two very large and fluffy fish owls asleep, or trying to sleep, high up in a tree. Back in Ramagar, I went to the train station to buy a ticket for Delhi, my time in the Himalalyas over for the time being.
The next morning the views were splendid, with the air very clear and cloudless. I watched the mountains light up in the early morning and after breakfast spent more than an hour watching them from the restaurant terrace. At about 11:30 I left on a bus for Nainital, another trip, this one of about three hours, through the pine-covered mountains, descending to about 3500 feet before rising to Nainital at about 6500 feet. Nainital is a town on a lake, also called Nainital. "Naini" means "eye" and "tal" means "lake" and this is where Sati's eye is believed to have landed when her body parts fell all over creation, or at least all over India. The crescent shaped lake is wedged between steep forest-covered mountains and we approached it from its outlet end, with the haze-covered hills and plains further to the south. A big resort town and hill station has grown up along the lake and the town was full of Indian tourists on that Saturday. I walked along the lake and got a room for 700 rupees ($16), the most I've paid in India. After a late lunch I walked around a bit, past the "Flats" at the north end of the lake, site of a landslide in 1880 that killed 150. The area was subsequently leveled. A mosque, a Sikh gurudwara and a Hindu temple are in this area. The Hindu temple is supposed to be on the exact spot where Sati's eye landed. One side of the lake is lined with the town's buildings while the other has just a path and a few temples against the steep mountainside. I walked along the latter side (about a mile), reaching the southern end about dark, and then took a cyclo rickshaw along the town side of the lake.
The next morning I walked up north of the lake to find a bus stand for the next day's bus, and then visited the nearby Church of St. John's in the Wilderness, built in the 1840's. The overgrown and garbage-strewn graveyard had at least one gravestone from the 1840's and some from the 1860's. Most were hidden by scraggly vegetation. About 9:30 I took a gondola that traveled up to Snowview, a spot on the ridge on the town side of the lake, facing north. It is about 1000 feet above the lake with good views not only of the lake below but of the peaks to the north. Again I could see Trishul, Nanda Devi, Nanda Kot and other snow-covered peaks. The air was clear and cloudless. Nainital is south of Ranikhet so the view is even further away from the peaks, more than 70 miles from Nanda Devi and more than 60 from Trishul. I spent about an hour an a half up there. There were a lot of noisy Indian tourists crowded onto the best spot for viewing. I came down, had lunch and then rested for a while before taking a walk around the lake in the later afternoon and then visiting the Hindu temple, one altar of which was invaded by a monkey that stole some of the offerings. No one shooed him away or seemed to care.
The next morning I trudged up to the bus stand for Ramnagar to catch the 11 am bus, but there was no bus. I waited around until 12:30 and then gave up. I walked down to the lake, having a quick lunch on the way, and then took a cyclo rickshaw along the lake and caught a bus at its southern end bound for Haldwani on the plains below. We left about 1:30 heading down the twisting road that wrapped around the mountains below Nainital, with views back towards the cleft in the mountains, where Nainital is located, from 2000 feet below. We left the hills and pines and reached the flatlands where Haldwani is located, at about 1800 feet, about 3 o'clock. I caught a 4 pm bus that headed west to Ramnagar with the front range of the Himalayas to the north. It got hilly again as we approached Ramnagar, arriving about 5:30, just before dark. Ramnagar is at about 1600 feet and it felt good to be able to walk around in the dark without a jacket. The air was cool, though.
The next morning I arranged for a trip to Corbett National Park, India's first national park, established in 1936. It is named after a famous tiger hunter turned conservationist, who lived from 1875 to 1955 and is the author of several books about his exploits killing man-eating tigers and jaguars. The entry fees are about four and half times as expensive for foreigners as for Indians and cost me about $60, plus about the same for the jeep and driver hire for two days. I would have like to have gone for three days, but they could only accommodate me for one night in the dormitory. The main part of the park, the Dhikala area, had just opened the day before. It is open from November 15 to June 15 each year.
We left Ramnagar about 10 and reached the park entrance, about 10 miles north, about 10:30. From there it was a rough 20 mile road west to Dhikala through beautiful sal (a type of jungle tree) forest, with much of the way along the Ramganga River. It took us about three hours, with many stops. We saw deer and monkeys along the way. Once there, we had lunch and then drove to a rickety watch tower maybe 40 feet high. We didn't see much wildlife but the views were nice, including the blue reservoir of the dammed Ramganga. About 3 we drove to the area beyond Dhikala looking for tigers and other wildlife. There are reputed to be something like 160 tigers in the park and one had been spotted that morning nearby. We didn't see a tiger, but we did see wild elephants, cheetal (spotted) deer, the larger sambar deer, langur monkeys and beautiful forest. The jeep, called a "gypsy," had an open back, so I could stand up in the back and then sit down when I wanted. It was ideal for viewing. There were quite a few of these vehicles with other tourists, so it was not a solitary wildlife experience. But it was quite enjoyable.
We got back to Dhikala about 5:30, just before dark. There must have been 20 or more gypsies and other vehicles and well over a hundred, maybe 200, tourists, more than 90% of them Indian. The area is surrounded with an electrified fence to keep out the tigers and other dangerous wildlife. I had a very good dinner there and went to bed in the somewhat comfortable dormitory of 12 beds. The problem was there was one incredibly loud, and relentless, snorer, so it was not a good night's sleep. I got up at 2 am and fog had descended. Macaques were sleeping in the trees next to the dormitory and a big quill-filled porcupine walked by in the moonlight. Dhikala is at about 1600 feet, so it wasn't too cold despite the fog.
I got up the next morning at 6 (the macaques were dropping out of their trees and several invaded our dormitory when someone left the door open) for a 6:30 safari, but the driver was late and we didn't leave until 7. We spent a little more than two hours driving around, first in the morning fog and later in the sunshine. We had good views of elephants and deer, not only cheetal and sambar, but also barking deer, small, brown and solitary. No tigers, though. Someone saw a leopard. We did see some wild peacocks and a wild boar. The driver was very good at spotting wildlife and interpreting the jungle sounds. At first, it was a little chilly in the fog, but it soon warmed up. Back at Dhikala I had an excellent breakfast and tried to see if I could stay another night. I couldn't, so about noon we headed back to Ramnagar, arriving about 3 after a lovely trip through the hilly jungle. Again we saw lots of deer and monkeys, and two very large and fluffy fish owls asleep, or trying to sleep, high up in a tree. Back in Ramagar, I went to the train station to buy a ticket for Delhi, my time in the Himalalyas over for the time being.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
October 29 - November 11, 2010: Uttarakhand Himalayas
The 29th was my last day in Rishikesh and I spent most of it in and around the hotel. There were some quite interesting people there. About 3 I walked down to the Ganges and along it to the Swarg Ashram area and again watched the ganga aarti ceremony on the riverside at sunset. The maharishi was absent and the ceremony considerably shorter. It clouded up a bit that afternoon -- the first clouds I had seen in Rishikesh.
The next morning at 7 I left with a hired car and driver for the Char Dham Yatra. "Char" means 'Four," "Dham," I've read, means something like "Holy Abode," and "Yatra" means "Pilgramage." The four holy abodes (Yamunotri, Gangroti, Kedernath and Badrinath) are near the sources of the holy Yamuna and Ganges Rivers. You can get to them by public transportation, but it is a bit difficult and the pilgramage season was about to end with the coming of winter, so I opted for a faster and more comfortable means of transport. It was quite expensive: 15,500 rupees (about $340) for 9 days. I had hoped to find someone else wanting to do the trip to reduce the cost, but decided to go ahead on my own when I couldn't. My travel expenses in India have been quite low -- averaging about $25/day -- and that is in part due to jeep rentals in Ladakh. Quite often I spend only $15 or $20 a day. The biggest expense is usually hotels, though they are usually less than $10 a night, and often only $6 or so. Food is very cheap, with good, filling meals for $2-3, or even less. Bus fares are also cheap, averaging about 1 rupee a kilometer, which works out to a dollar for every 25-30 miles (and many days, especially in the Himalayas, it is hard to go more than 100 miles in a day).
We had a small sedan made by Tata and from Rishikesh drove through Dehra Dun again and up to Mussoorie again, and then down to the Yamuna River, reaching it at about 2400 feet elevation. We followed the canyon of the Yamuna, with lots of tourist buses along the narrow road, which was often rough because of landslides during the just-ended rainy season. We reached Barkot at about 4200 feet at 2 pm and the road was terrible for a few miles after that, but got much better further up. Deodar (cedar) trees began to appear all over the rocky canyon and the scenery was magnificent. We reached the little town of Rana Chatti at 3:30 and I got a hotel room and looked around. I walked out of town a bit and then back and up to the town temple. The kids there were very friendly. Women were threshing wheat with thin poles. Just before nightfall the clouds cleared from Banderpunch (sometimes also spelled Banderpoonch -- sounds like it was named by Lewis Carroll), the 6300 meter (so almost 21,000 feet) peak up the canyon. It turned orange, then red, then purple as the sun set. Rana Chatti was cold at night, at about 6500 feet.
I had potato paranthas the next morning for breakfast (the night before I had seen sacks of potatoes being off loaded from donkeys and onto trucks, and a whole room full of loose potatoes) and about 8 my driver drove me up to Hanuman Chatti, 5 miles up the road. From there you have to take taxis or walk, and I decided to walk the 8 kilometers (5 miles) to Janki Chatti, the end of the road, in part because of the exorbitant taxi fares and in part to prepare for a longer hike I wanted to do at the second Char Dham site. The walk along the road, rising about 1500 feet, took about 2 hours and was quite pleasant in the early morning cool. I walked through the village of Janki Chatti and about 10:30 began the steep hike up to Yamunotri, 5 kilometers (3 miles) up a rocky gorge, with the Yamuna below. It is a beautiful area, but the way up is along a cement path with many stairs and with a red and white rail all the way. There were lots of pilgrims, several hundred I would say, but no other foreigners. Many were on ponies and a few were being carried by four men in sedan chairs! The ponies, and especially the pony boys constantly importuning me to hire a pony, were a nuisance. It's about a 2000 foot climb, and I arrived a little before 1 pm. The temple is fairly simple and not very old. The river's source is much further up the mountain, at a glacier, but it takes mountaineering experience to reach it. A hot water spring is near the temple, and men were bathing in pools of the hot water. Also nearby, pilgrims were cooking little packets of rice, later used as offerrings, in the bubbling hot springs. Some pilgrims were down at the rocky stream bed pouring the very cold water over themselves. There were at least a couple of hundred people there, many from Gujurat, and some orange-clad priests. A small band of langur monkeys watched from just up the stream. Yamuna is the twin sister of Yama, the god of death, and in recompense for a favor she did him, he granted that anyone who bathes in her river will not suffer a painful or untimely death, or so I've read. I did put my hands in the water, so at least they will be spared.
While I was there it began to snow (Yamunotri is at about 10,300 feet), little soft balls of almost floating snow. And since the canyon heads down to the southwest and the sun was setting, the sun's rays were still streaming in from the southwest. It was quite a sight, though I didn't see a snowbow, if there is such a thing. I had a quick lunch of dhal and chapattis and headed down sometime after 2. It continued to snow lightly, but it wasn't a bother. Further down it turned to rain and then mostly stopped. I got down to Janki Chatti in about an hour an a half and from there some Gujuratis gave me a ride down to Hanuman Chatti, where my driver was waiting. We left about 4 and drove down to Barkot through the beautiful deodar forest through off and on rain, sometimes very heavy, and even a little snow, arriving after dark, a little past 6.
There were good views of Banderpunch the next morning from Barkot. We left about 8, rising 3000 feet to about 7500 feet through the deodar-clad hills between the Yamuna and Ganges basins. The morning light streaming rhrough the trees was particularly beautiful. After a good breakfast stop, we reached the Ganges at about 10:30 and headed up the narrow valley. This road, too, had some bad patches because of landfalls caused by the heavy monsoon this year. I've read that this state (Uttarakhand) had over 200 monsoon fatalities in September. We reached the town of Uttarkashi about noon and then proceeded up the narrowing canyon of the Ganges. Actually, this stretch of the Ganges is called the Bhagarithi. When the Bhagarithi meets the Alaknandi downstream it becomes the Ganges. (Actually, it's called the Ganga, and the Indus is called the Sindh.) The narrow canyon up from Uttarkashi was another spectacular deodar-covered stretch of scenery. We reached Gangotri, at about 10,000 feet, a little after 4 and I got a hotel right next to the roaring river. It surprised me how wide and strong it still was so close to its source. The Gangotri temple is just up from the river. I watched a 5:30 ganga aarti ceremony on the riverbank, with only a priest and about 5 attendees. At 6, just after dark, there was a ceremony at the temple itself with a priest, plates of fire and bells ringing, cymbals clashing and drums beating. Quite a lot of noise, but ony about 20 spectators, which surprised me, compared to the hundreds at Yamunotri. It was quite cold in the courtyard of the temple (and in my hotel room where it was 45 degrees when I went to bed at 9). Before it got dark I could see up the canyon pyramidal, snow-covered Shivling, at 6500 meters (so about 21,500 feet), changing colors before the sun's rays left it.
It was 41 degrees in my room the next morning at 6. I didn't get up and out until 7:30 and it was still very cold. I looked around a bit but not much was going on. It warmed up considerably once the sun's rays hit, about 8:30 or 9, I think. There are steep mountains all around Gangotri. I had breakfast and got my permit to hike to Gaumukh, the glacier that is the source of the Ganges, and set off a little before 10 up the narrow canyon of the Ganges. It was a beautiful and relatively easy hike to Bhojbasa, 14 kilometers (a little less than 9 miles) away and about 2500 feet higher than Gangotri. There were rugged mountains all around and groves of deodars and other evergreens. The snow covered mountains of Shivling and Bhagarithi (6300 meters or about 22,500 feet) loomed ahead. The path was quite narrow in places, cut into the cliffside. It was absolutely cloudless and warm in the sun, though the sun was just above the rugged peaks on the south side of the gorge all day. About 3:15 the sun disappeared behind the mountains for good and it became conderably colder. Fortunately, I arrived at Bhojbasa, behind a rocky morrain and thus protected from the wind, 15 minutes later. There were only about 10 other people, almost all foreigners, staying there, most in a derelict little hostel. I walked down to the river and looked around a bit. It was cold and a little windy. We all had a communal dinner of dhal, rice, chapattis and vegetables on the cement floor of an open-sided structure at about 6:30 and then went to bed about 7. I slept in a cold ittle room on the floor, but on a thick coverlet with two other thick coverlets on top of me, so I was comfortable and warm enough.
I got up the next morning a little after 6. It was 30-something in my room. After a meager breakfast of weak tea and miniscule portion of porridge (maybe five teaspoons), we set off for the glacier. I left soon after 7 and it took me about an hour an a half to cover the 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) to the glacier in the cold and in the face of the biting wind. The thermometer hanging from my neck registered 30 degrees. The sun hit about 8, which warmed things up, but it was right in my eyes. The glacier was fantastic, with big chunks of ice that had broken off laying along the river. The edges of the river, too were thickly frozen. We walked right up to the face of the glacier, or rather right up to the stream rushing out of and running just before it. I was surprised at how much water was coming out of it. Quite a bit must flow below the glacier. The glacier itself is quite long and thick and we could see only a small part of it. "Gamukh" means "cow's mouth" and the water here is considered to be particularly holy. Brij, a 74 year old man in our group who was born in India but has lived in the UK for the past 52 years, collected a bottle of it for his family and friends.
I spent an hour or so at the glacier and then began the 18 kilometer (11 mile) hike down. I took it easy and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, but I was hungry, after that miserable breakfast. I did have 6 or so candy bars to sustain me. I came across a herd (or flock?) of about 50 mountain goats of some sort, perhaps ibex. They were a bit wary, but not too concerned about me. Later, I came across another group of three of them. I didn't get back to Gangotri until about 4:30 as I met Brij on the way down and walked with him the last few miles. Once back in Gangotri, though, I did have two spaghetti dinners, about an hour apart, plus several candy bars. I again watched the 6 pm temple ceremony in the cold and spent another cold night in that hotel next to the rushing river.
I got up the next morning about 6:30 and was ready to leave at 7, but the driver delayed until almost 9, which was frustrating. I had invited Brij along as he wanted to make it to the next stop before it closed for the winter. (Yamunotri, Gangotri and Kedernath were scheduled to close in sequence the 5th, 6th and 7th of November, while Badrinath was scheduled to close the 17th.) We traveled down the Ganges canyon to Uttarkashi, and there left the Ganges and took backroads through beautiful mountainous country, reaching the town of Ghansyali about 6. This was the night before Diwali, described to me as a sort of Hindu Christmas, with lights, sweets and gift giving. It commemorates the return of Rama to be crowned King of Ayodhya at the end of the Ramayama. Electric lights were strung up all over town, sweets were on sale everywhere and firecrackers and even some fireworks were being set off. Ghansyali was relatively low and warm, about 3000-4000 feet I think, so I was able to take a bucket bath and wash away the dust and sweat of the Gamukh hike.
I'd been having troubles with the driver and the next morning he refused to take Brij unless Brij paid him. I said I had hired the car and could take whom I wanted. He and Brij argued and he actually hit Brij, who hit him back. The hotel manager and I stepped in and separated them and I decided to dismiss the driver. I had paid him 9000 rupees (a little under $200) and refused to pay him more. I was glad to get rid of him. Brij and I took an uncomfortable share jeep over the mountains to Tiwali, a trip of 3 1/2 hours. There we waited three hours for a bus to Gaurikund, the trail head for Kedernath. The problem was that it was Diwali and lots of people were traveling to spend it with family. Finally, one came along and it was packed. We decided not to take it but to go down the river (the Mandakini, another Ganges tributary) about 5 miles toRudraprayag, where the Mandakini joins the Alaknandi coming down from Badrinath, for the night and catch a bus from there to Gaurikund the next morning. Rudraprayang was full of lights and sweets and firecrackers for Diwali and it was fun to be there. There were also candles lit in the shops, the old-fashioned way of celebrating Diwali, before electric lights. People were very friendly and there were some pretty good fireworks at night. The trouble was there were firecrackers going off until midnight, so no chance of a good sleep until then.
I decided to skip Kedernath, as it entailed a four hour bus trip and then a 14 kilometer hike, rising 1600 meters (over 5000 feet) on the same day, necessary because it was closing the next day. Brij wanted to do it and took an 8 am bus. I left about 9:30, heading for Badrinath, which I reached a little before 5. I took a bus up the Alaknanda River, another Ganges tributary, to Karanprayag, another to Chamoli, and then share jeeps to Joshimath and then Badrinath. Unfortunately, I had poor seats on the share jeeps, so I missed a lot of the spectacular scenery. At Badrinath I got a dirty hotel overlooking the river and the temple and then looked around. It is a spectacular setting, with steep, jagged mountains all around, including Neelkanth, another pyrimidal, snow-covered one at 6500 meters (21,500 feet). Badrinath is at about 10,300 feet and was cold. I took my shoes off and went into the courtyard of the temple. There were lots of pilgrims. Some recognized me from Yamunotri and I remembered them, from Surat in Gujurat. A ceremony began at 6 inside the temple and I watched part of it. There were bells ringing, cymbals clanging and drums and chanting. Plates of fire were brought out among the worshippers. I was cold in my stockinged feet on the stone floors and I was happy to leave and put on my shoes. There were also quite a few beggars and sadhus lined up on the bridge across the river leading to the temple and on the approach to the bridge. They are quite strange-looking, to say the least. One of the sadhus had told me that President Obama had arrived in India with three airplanes and 1500 soldiers. I slept warmly under heavy covers. It was slightly warmer in Badrinath than in Gangotri, despite it being a little higher.
There was lots of noise from the temple at 5 am -- bell ringing and then the playing of recorded music for maybe half an hour. I got up and out about 7 and walked around in the cold. I finally used the down jacket I bought in Manali for Ladakh (but never used there) in Gangotri, Gamukh and Badrinath, and was glad I had it. I walked along the river on each side. Men (and women, but in a closed area) were bathing in the hot springs below the temple. I had breakfast just before the sun hit at 8:30, which considerably warmed things up. I walked around town some more. A few people were on the ghats along the fast-moving river, scooping up the cold water and pouring it over themselves, then running to jump in the cement pools below the temple filled with water from the hot springs.
About 11 I started walking up the river toward the village of Mana, 3 kilometers away. I passed stone houses with slate roofs and reached the riverbank opposite Mana after a leisurely walk. There is a road on the other side of the river. I had expected there to be a bridge across the river, but there was only a metal basket on a cable to get across. As I was approaching I saw three men get into it and pull themselves over the fast-moving river. They saw me and motioned to me how to haul the basket back over to my side of the river and secure the rope with some stones so I could climb into the basket without it slipping away from me. I had to use enough stones to secure the basket as I climbed into it but not so many that I couldn't release the rope once I wanted to cross. I got in safely and they were kind enough to pull me across so I didn't have to do it myself. It was quite an exciting ride above the raging river.
I looked around Mana a bit. The slate roofs there are now mostly repaired with tin or galvanized steel. The people there are a little Tibetan-looking, and indeed Tibet is only a few miles away. The road beyond Mana is closed and there is a military base on the road between Badrinath and Mana. Above Mana is a cave where Ved Vyas is supposed to have composed the Mahabharata, one of the two epic poems of Hinduism (along with the Ramayama). The wall in front of the little cave where he is supposed to have done this has written on it that the temple has been there for 5111 years (and in smaller letters "in 2003"). I believe he is supposed to have dictated it to Ganesh, the elephant-headed son of Shiva, who has his own cave. I continued walking up the spectacular canyon of the Alaknanda a few kilometers beyond Mana, but turned back once the sun was blocked by the steep mountains. On the way back to Badrinath I was able to walk in sunlight most of the way, arriving about 4. I could see that Badrinath was in shadow from about 3:30.
That night I watched the ceremony in the inner sanctum of the temple that started about 6 until a little past 7. I found a seat in the corner on a donation box and nobody seemed to mind that I sat there and watched. The chief priest, a Brahman who always comes from a certain village in Kerala, in southern India, came in preceded by a guy with a golden scepter. The priest wore a blue smock and a blue cap, more or less the style of the old leather football helmets but made of cloth. He was in his thirties, I would guess. I couldn't see what he was doing from my vantage point as he was inside the silver and gold enclosure inside the inner sanctum where the black stone idol of Vishnu is kept, but I did see and hear lots of bell ringing, cymbal clashing and drum beating as he performed his rites. Later, plates of fire were brought out and the worshippers would bless themselves over the fire. The inner sanctum is small and groups were brought in and then directed out. There was almost as much shoving and pushing as there is on Indian buses. The priest left right at 7, but the temple remained open until about 7:30. Lots of worshippers brought in metal plates, about a foot in diameter, with sweets, nuts and flowers on them, which were on sale in shops outside the temple. One of the temple personnel would scoop some of the offerrings off the plates and then return the plate to the worshipper. Around the inner sanctum is the courtyard with a gallery beyond that, where some people were sitting and chanting. A log fire in a fire pit was in one corner. My feet got very cold during the hour or more I was there and I was happy to leave for dinner. During dinner I watched a television at the restaurant with clips of President Obama descending from his plane, delivering a speech, and dancing with his wife and a bunch of children. The commentary was all in Hindi.
I was awakened by the temple noise at 5 again. I got up and about before 7 and again walked around in the cold. I had breakfast about 8:30 and afterward met Brij again. He had made it to Kedernath and had just arrived in Badrinath but was preparing to leave. I left with him and several others in a share jeep about 10. I had a much better seat than on the way up, so could enjoy the spectacular scenery. We got another share jeep in Joshimath and again I had a good seat for the great scenery. In Chamoli we boarded a bus heading downriver. I got off in Karanprayag about 4, but Brij was heading to Haridwar and then Delhi and Goa where he has family. Karanprayag is at the confluence of the Alaknanda and Pindar Rivers, both very fast-moving, with rapids, at their confluence. It is a scenic spot but for the garbage, which is a major blight here in India. I walked down to the rocky and sandy shore of the Alaknanda and saw a ganga aarti at he ghats at the confluence, led by one yellow-clad fellow with a flame on a plate and attended by only 4 men. There was no electricity in town that night except for a hotel with a generator and in the lobby I saw, but did not hear, part of Obama's speech to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's legislature.
At 8 the next morning I left on a bus bound for Kausani, less than 70 miles away but a seven hour trip on a slow and often very crowded bus. It was, however, a very beautiful trip. Karanprayag ia at about 3000 feet and we came up the narrow Pindar River valley and then above it, with views of the snow-covered mountains to the north. About noon we had a half hour lunch stop at Gwaldum at about 6500 feet, then desended and then rose again to Kausani at about 6000 feet. Kausani is on a ridge facing the snow-covered Himalayas to the north and I got a hotel with a spectacular view of them. There is a whole line of snow covered peaks over 6000 meters (20,000 feet) and the view in the clear air was magniificent, especially of Trishul, a three stepped peak rising over 7100 meters (over 23,000 feet). Higher but less impressive as it it further away and partially hidden by intervening peaks is Nanda Devi at over 7800 meters (25,600 feet or so). From the town I walked up to the Anasakti Ashram, where Gandhi spent 12 days in 1929 writing his treatise on the Bhagavid Gita, the most important part of the Mahabharata. There is a museum with some great photos of him, plus excerpts from his autobiography. The view from there is spectacular, too, and at sunset I watched the colors change on the peaks to the north. After dinner I found a couple of newspapers (The Times of India and the Hindustan Times) with coverage of Obama in India, most of it highly favorable.
I got up the next morning soon after 6 to watch the sun light up the peaks to the north. There were several of us at the hotel doing so, all Indians but me. It was chilly, in the low 50's, but a beautiful way to begin the day. The sun first hit the peaks at about 6:30, but didn't reach us until an hour later. I was given a Gujurati breakfast of a delicious dried fruit and ghee mixture and some sort of crispy pieces of bread, all very good, and then took about an hour walk along the ridge line with great views of the peaks to the north through the trees. A troop of maybe 100 macaques (with red faces and red butts) came along the road, several with babies tucked under them. I left Kausani about 11:30 on a share jeep, and after a change arrived in Almora about two hours later. Almora is on a horseshoe shaped ridge at about 5500 feet. At the top of the ridge is a pedestrian bazaar that really is for pedestrians only, no motorcycles or bicycles. It runs for quite a ways and was full of people, shops and activity. Some of the store fronts and buildings have elaborately carved wooden facades. At one of the ridge's high points is a stone temple said to be from the 7th century with some good carvings on it, including some erotic ones. I spent the afternoon walking up and down the bazaar and enjoyed it
The next day (today) I got up about 6 after the local mosque went off at 5:30. Quite an unpleasant surprise as this area is heavily Hindu. In fact this state, Uttarakhand, has been a state only since 2000. It was formerly part of Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest state with well over 100 million people. In 2000 the mountainous portion of Uttar Pradesh, with less than 10 million people, became the state of Uttaranchal, which name was changed to Uttarakhand in 2007. After breakfast I took a share jeep to Kasar Devi on a ridge about 5 miles to the north with great views of the snow-covered peaks to the north. There is a much better view of Nanda Devi from Kasar Devi than from Kausani, but the sky was hazier and cloudier than at Kausani. D. H. Lawrence, Timothy Leary and Cat Stevens are said to have spent time here, on a ridge called Cranks' Ridge, and there are hotels and restaurants along the ridge. I had lunch and then came back to Almora.
The next morning at 7 I left with a hired car and driver for the Char Dham Yatra. "Char" means 'Four," "Dham," I've read, means something like "Holy Abode," and "Yatra" means "Pilgramage." The four holy abodes (Yamunotri, Gangroti, Kedernath and Badrinath) are near the sources of the holy Yamuna and Ganges Rivers. You can get to them by public transportation, but it is a bit difficult and the pilgramage season was about to end with the coming of winter, so I opted for a faster and more comfortable means of transport. It was quite expensive: 15,500 rupees (about $340) for 9 days. I had hoped to find someone else wanting to do the trip to reduce the cost, but decided to go ahead on my own when I couldn't. My travel expenses in India have been quite low -- averaging about $25/day -- and that is in part due to jeep rentals in Ladakh. Quite often I spend only $15 or $20 a day. The biggest expense is usually hotels, though they are usually less than $10 a night, and often only $6 or so. Food is very cheap, with good, filling meals for $2-3, or even less. Bus fares are also cheap, averaging about 1 rupee a kilometer, which works out to a dollar for every 25-30 miles (and many days, especially in the Himalayas, it is hard to go more than 100 miles in a day).
We had a small sedan made by Tata and from Rishikesh drove through Dehra Dun again and up to Mussoorie again, and then down to the Yamuna River, reaching it at about 2400 feet elevation. We followed the canyon of the Yamuna, with lots of tourist buses along the narrow road, which was often rough because of landslides during the just-ended rainy season. We reached Barkot at about 4200 feet at 2 pm and the road was terrible for a few miles after that, but got much better further up. Deodar (cedar) trees began to appear all over the rocky canyon and the scenery was magnificent. We reached the little town of Rana Chatti at 3:30 and I got a hotel room and looked around. I walked out of town a bit and then back and up to the town temple. The kids there were very friendly. Women were threshing wheat with thin poles. Just before nightfall the clouds cleared from Banderpunch (sometimes also spelled Banderpoonch -- sounds like it was named by Lewis Carroll), the 6300 meter (so almost 21,000 feet) peak up the canyon. It turned orange, then red, then purple as the sun set. Rana Chatti was cold at night, at about 6500 feet.
I had potato paranthas the next morning for breakfast (the night before I had seen sacks of potatoes being off loaded from donkeys and onto trucks, and a whole room full of loose potatoes) and about 8 my driver drove me up to Hanuman Chatti, 5 miles up the road. From there you have to take taxis or walk, and I decided to walk the 8 kilometers (5 miles) to Janki Chatti, the end of the road, in part because of the exorbitant taxi fares and in part to prepare for a longer hike I wanted to do at the second Char Dham site. The walk along the road, rising about 1500 feet, took about 2 hours and was quite pleasant in the early morning cool. I walked through the village of Janki Chatti and about 10:30 began the steep hike up to Yamunotri, 5 kilometers (3 miles) up a rocky gorge, with the Yamuna below. It is a beautiful area, but the way up is along a cement path with many stairs and with a red and white rail all the way. There were lots of pilgrims, several hundred I would say, but no other foreigners. Many were on ponies and a few were being carried by four men in sedan chairs! The ponies, and especially the pony boys constantly importuning me to hire a pony, were a nuisance. It's about a 2000 foot climb, and I arrived a little before 1 pm. The temple is fairly simple and not very old. The river's source is much further up the mountain, at a glacier, but it takes mountaineering experience to reach it. A hot water spring is near the temple, and men were bathing in pools of the hot water. Also nearby, pilgrims were cooking little packets of rice, later used as offerrings, in the bubbling hot springs. Some pilgrims were down at the rocky stream bed pouring the very cold water over themselves. There were at least a couple of hundred people there, many from Gujurat, and some orange-clad priests. A small band of langur monkeys watched from just up the stream. Yamuna is the twin sister of Yama, the god of death, and in recompense for a favor she did him, he granted that anyone who bathes in her river will not suffer a painful or untimely death, or so I've read. I did put my hands in the water, so at least they will be spared.
While I was there it began to snow (Yamunotri is at about 10,300 feet), little soft balls of almost floating snow. And since the canyon heads down to the southwest and the sun was setting, the sun's rays were still streaming in from the southwest. It was quite a sight, though I didn't see a snowbow, if there is such a thing. I had a quick lunch of dhal and chapattis and headed down sometime after 2. It continued to snow lightly, but it wasn't a bother. Further down it turned to rain and then mostly stopped. I got down to Janki Chatti in about an hour an a half and from there some Gujuratis gave me a ride down to Hanuman Chatti, where my driver was waiting. We left about 4 and drove down to Barkot through the beautiful deodar forest through off and on rain, sometimes very heavy, and even a little snow, arriving after dark, a little past 6.
There were good views of Banderpunch the next morning from Barkot. We left about 8, rising 3000 feet to about 7500 feet through the deodar-clad hills between the Yamuna and Ganges basins. The morning light streaming rhrough the trees was particularly beautiful. After a good breakfast stop, we reached the Ganges at about 10:30 and headed up the narrow valley. This road, too, had some bad patches because of landfalls caused by the heavy monsoon this year. I've read that this state (Uttarakhand) had over 200 monsoon fatalities in September. We reached the town of Uttarkashi about noon and then proceeded up the narrowing canyon of the Ganges. Actually, this stretch of the Ganges is called the Bhagarithi. When the Bhagarithi meets the Alaknandi downstream it becomes the Ganges. (Actually, it's called the Ganga, and the Indus is called the Sindh.) The narrow canyon up from Uttarkashi was another spectacular deodar-covered stretch of scenery. We reached Gangotri, at about 10,000 feet, a little after 4 and I got a hotel right next to the roaring river. It surprised me how wide and strong it still was so close to its source. The Gangotri temple is just up from the river. I watched a 5:30 ganga aarti ceremony on the riverbank, with only a priest and about 5 attendees. At 6, just after dark, there was a ceremony at the temple itself with a priest, plates of fire and bells ringing, cymbals clashing and drums beating. Quite a lot of noise, but ony about 20 spectators, which surprised me, compared to the hundreds at Yamunotri. It was quite cold in the courtyard of the temple (and in my hotel room where it was 45 degrees when I went to bed at 9). Before it got dark I could see up the canyon pyramidal, snow-covered Shivling, at 6500 meters (so about 21,500 feet), changing colors before the sun's rays left it.
It was 41 degrees in my room the next morning at 6. I didn't get up and out until 7:30 and it was still very cold. I looked around a bit but not much was going on. It warmed up considerably once the sun's rays hit, about 8:30 or 9, I think. There are steep mountains all around Gangotri. I had breakfast and got my permit to hike to Gaumukh, the glacier that is the source of the Ganges, and set off a little before 10 up the narrow canyon of the Ganges. It was a beautiful and relatively easy hike to Bhojbasa, 14 kilometers (a little less than 9 miles) away and about 2500 feet higher than Gangotri. There were rugged mountains all around and groves of deodars and other evergreens. The snow covered mountains of Shivling and Bhagarithi (6300 meters or about 22,500 feet) loomed ahead. The path was quite narrow in places, cut into the cliffside. It was absolutely cloudless and warm in the sun, though the sun was just above the rugged peaks on the south side of the gorge all day. About 3:15 the sun disappeared behind the mountains for good and it became conderably colder. Fortunately, I arrived at Bhojbasa, behind a rocky morrain and thus protected from the wind, 15 minutes later. There were only about 10 other people, almost all foreigners, staying there, most in a derelict little hostel. I walked down to the river and looked around a bit. It was cold and a little windy. We all had a communal dinner of dhal, rice, chapattis and vegetables on the cement floor of an open-sided structure at about 6:30 and then went to bed about 7. I slept in a cold ittle room on the floor, but on a thick coverlet with two other thick coverlets on top of me, so I was comfortable and warm enough.
I got up the next morning a little after 6. It was 30-something in my room. After a meager breakfast of weak tea and miniscule portion of porridge (maybe five teaspoons), we set off for the glacier. I left soon after 7 and it took me about an hour an a half to cover the 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) to the glacier in the cold and in the face of the biting wind. The thermometer hanging from my neck registered 30 degrees. The sun hit about 8, which warmed things up, but it was right in my eyes. The glacier was fantastic, with big chunks of ice that had broken off laying along the river. The edges of the river, too were thickly frozen. We walked right up to the face of the glacier, or rather right up to the stream rushing out of and running just before it. I was surprised at how much water was coming out of it. Quite a bit must flow below the glacier. The glacier itself is quite long and thick and we could see only a small part of it. "Gamukh" means "cow's mouth" and the water here is considered to be particularly holy. Brij, a 74 year old man in our group who was born in India but has lived in the UK for the past 52 years, collected a bottle of it for his family and friends.
I spent an hour or so at the glacier and then began the 18 kilometer (11 mile) hike down. I took it easy and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, but I was hungry, after that miserable breakfast. I did have 6 or so candy bars to sustain me. I came across a herd (or flock?) of about 50 mountain goats of some sort, perhaps ibex. They were a bit wary, but not too concerned about me. Later, I came across another group of three of them. I didn't get back to Gangotri until about 4:30 as I met Brij on the way down and walked with him the last few miles. Once back in Gangotri, though, I did have two spaghetti dinners, about an hour apart, plus several candy bars. I again watched the 6 pm temple ceremony in the cold and spent another cold night in that hotel next to the rushing river.
I got up the next morning about 6:30 and was ready to leave at 7, but the driver delayed until almost 9, which was frustrating. I had invited Brij along as he wanted to make it to the next stop before it closed for the winter. (Yamunotri, Gangotri and Kedernath were scheduled to close in sequence the 5th, 6th and 7th of November, while Badrinath was scheduled to close the 17th.) We traveled down the Ganges canyon to Uttarkashi, and there left the Ganges and took backroads through beautiful mountainous country, reaching the town of Ghansyali about 6. This was the night before Diwali, described to me as a sort of Hindu Christmas, with lights, sweets and gift giving. It commemorates the return of Rama to be crowned King of Ayodhya at the end of the Ramayama. Electric lights were strung up all over town, sweets were on sale everywhere and firecrackers and even some fireworks were being set off. Ghansyali was relatively low and warm, about 3000-4000 feet I think, so I was able to take a bucket bath and wash away the dust and sweat of the Gamukh hike.
I'd been having troubles with the driver and the next morning he refused to take Brij unless Brij paid him. I said I had hired the car and could take whom I wanted. He and Brij argued and he actually hit Brij, who hit him back. The hotel manager and I stepped in and separated them and I decided to dismiss the driver. I had paid him 9000 rupees (a little under $200) and refused to pay him more. I was glad to get rid of him. Brij and I took an uncomfortable share jeep over the mountains to Tiwali, a trip of 3 1/2 hours. There we waited three hours for a bus to Gaurikund, the trail head for Kedernath. The problem was that it was Diwali and lots of people were traveling to spend it with family. Finally, one came along and it was packed. We decided not to take it but to go down the river (the Mandakini, another Ganges tributary) about 5 miles toRudraprayag, where the Mandakini joins the Alaknandi coming down from Badrinath, for the night and catch a bus from there to Gaurikund the next morning. Rudraprayang was full of lights and sweets and firecrackers for Diwali and it was fun to be there. There were also candles lit in the shops, the old-fashioned way of celebrating Diwali, before electric lights. People were very friendly and there were some pretty good fireworks at night. The trouble was there were firecrackers going off until midnight, so no chance of a good sleep until then.
I decided to skip Kedernath, as it entailed a four hour bus trip and then a 14 kilometer hike, rising 1600 meters (over 5000 feet) on the same day, necessary because it was closing the next day. Brij wanted to do it and took an 8 am bus. I left about 9:30, heading for Badrinath, which I reached a little before 5. I took a bus up the Alaknanda River, another Ganges tributary, to Karanprayag, another to Chamoli, and then share jeeps to Joshimath and then Badrinath. Unfortunately, I had poor seats on the share jeeps, so I missed a lot of the spectacular scenery. At Badrinath I got a dirty hotel overlooking the river and the temple and then looked around. It is a spectacular setting, with steep, jagged mountains all around, including Neelkanth, another pyrimidal, snow-covered one at 6500 meters (21,500 feet). Badrinath is at about 10,300 feet and was cold. I took my shoes off and went into the courtyard of the temple. There were lots of pilgrims. Some recognized me from Yamunotri and I remembered them, from Surat in Gujurat. A ceremony began at 6 inside the temple and I watched part of it. There were bells ringing, cymbals clanging and drums and chanting. Plates of fire were brought out among the worshippers. I was cold in my stockinged feet on the stone floors and I was happy to leave and put on my shoes. There were also quite a few beggars and sadhus lined up on the bridge across the river leading to the temple and on the approach to the bridge. They are quite strange-looking, to say the least. One of the sadhus had told me that President Obama had arrived in India with three airplanes and 1500 soldiers. I slept warmly under heavy covers. It was slightly warmer in Badrinath than in Gangotri, despite it being a little higher.
There was lots of noise from the temple at 5 am -- bell ringing and then the playing of recorded music for maybe half an hour. I got up and out about 7 and walked around in the cold. I finally used the down jacket I bought in Manali for Ladakh (but never used there) in Gangotri, Gamukh and Badrinath, and was glad I had it. I walked along the river on each side. Men (and women, but in a closed area) were bathing in the hot springs below the temple. I had breakfast just before the sun hit at 8:30, which considerably warmed things up. I walked around town some more. A few people were on the ghats along the fast-moving river, scooping up the cold water and pouring it over themselves, then running to jump in the cement pools below the temple filled with water from the hot springs.
About 11 I started walking up the river toward the village of Mana, 3 kilometers away. I passed stone houses with slate roofs and reached the riverbank opposite Mana after a leisurely walk. There is a road on the other side of the river. I had expected there to be a bridge across the river, but there was only a metal basket on a cable to get across. As I was approaching I saw three men get into it and pull themselves over the fast-moving river. They saw me and motioned to me how to haul the basket back over to my side of the river and secure the rope with some stones so I could climb into the basket without it slipping away from me. I had to use enough stones to secure the basket as I climbed into it but not so many that I couldn't release the rope once I wanted to cross. I got in safely and they were kind enough to pull me across so I didn't have to do it myself. It was quite an exciting ride above the raging river.
I looked around Mana a bit. The slate roofs there are now mostly repaired with tin or galvanized steel. The people there are a little Tibetan-looking, and indeed Tibet is only a few miles away. The road beyond Mana is closed and there is a military base on the road between Badrinath and Mana. Above Mana is a cave where Ved Vyas is supposed to have composed the Mahabharata, one of the two epic poems of Hinduism (along with the Ramayama). The wall in front of the little cave where he is supposed to have done this has written on it that the temple has been there for 5111 years (and in smaller letters "in 2003"). I believe he is supposed to have dictated it to Ganesh, the elephant-headed son of Shiva, who has his own cave. I continued walking up the spectacular canyon of the Alaknanda a few kilometers beyond Mana, but turned back once the sun was blocked by the steep mountains. On the way back to Badrinath I was able to walk in sunlight most of the way, arriving about 4. I could see that Badrinath was in shadow from about 3:30.
That night I watched the ceremony in the inner sanctum of the temple that started about 6 until a little past 7. I found a seat in the corner on a donation box and nobody seemed to mind that I sat there and watched. The chief priest, a Brahman who always comes from a certain village in Kerala, in southern India, came in preceded by a guy with a golden scepter. The priest wore a blue smock and a blue cap, more or less the style of the old leather football helmets but made of cloth. He was in his thirties, I would guess. I couldn't see what he was doing from my vantage point as he was inside the silver and gold enclosure inside the inner sanctum where the black stone idol of Vishnu is kept, but I did see and hear lots of bell ringing, cymbal clashing and drum beating as he performed his rites. Later, plates of fire were brought out and the worshippers would bless themselves over the fire. The inner sanctum is small and groups were brought in and then directed out. There was almost as much shoving and pushing as there is on Indian buses. The priest left right at 7, but the temple remained open until about 7:30. Lots of worshippers brought in metal plates, about a foot in diameter, with sweets, nuts and flowers on them, which were on sale in shops outside the temple. One of the temple personnel would scoop some of the offerrings off the plates and then return the plate to the worshipper. Around the inner sanctum is the courtyard with a gallery beyond that, where some people were sitting and chanting. A log fire in a fire pit was in one corner. My feet got very cold during the hour or more I was there and I was happy to leave for dinner. During dinner I watched a television at the restaurant with clips of President Obama descending from his plane, delivering a speech, and dancing with his wife and a bunch of children. The commentary was all in Hindi.
I was awakened by the temple noise at 5 again. I got up and about before 7 and again walked around in the cold. I had breakfast about 8:30 and afterward met Brij again. He had made it to Kedernath and had just arrived in Badrinath but was preparing to leave. I left with him and several others in a share jeep about 10. I had a much better seat than on the way up, so could enjoy the spectacular scenery. We got another share jeep in Joshimath and again I had a good seat for the great scenery. In Chamoli we boarded a bus heading downriver. I got off in Karanprayag about 4, but Brij was heading to Haridwar and then Delhi and Goa where he has family. Karanprayag is at the confluence of the Alaknanda and Pindar Rivers, both very fast-moving, with rapids, at their confluence. It is a scenic spot but for the garbage, which is a major blight here in India. I walked down to the rocky and sandy shore of the Alaknanda and saw a ganga aarti at he ghats at the confluence, led by one yellow-clad fellow with a flame on a plate and attended by only 4 men. There was no electricity in town that night except for a hotel with a generator and in the lobby I saw, but did not hear, part of Obama's speech to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's legislature.
At 8 the next morning I left on a bus bound for Kausani, less than 70 miles away but a seven hour trip on a slow and often very crowded bus. It was, however, a very beautiful trip. Karanprayag ia at about 3000 feet and we came up the narrow Pindar River valley and then above it, with views of the snow-covered mountains to the north. About noon we had a half hour lunch stop at Gwaldum at about 6500 feet, then desended and then rose again to Kausani at about 6000 feet. Kausani is on a ridge facing the snow-covered Himalayas to the north and I got a hotel with a spectacular view of them. There is a whole line of snow covered peaks over 6000 meters (20,000 feet) and the view in the clear air was magniificent, especially of Trishul, a three stepped peak rising over 7100 meters (over 23,000 feet). Higher but less impressive as it it further away and partially hidden by intervening peaks is Nanda Devi at over 7800 meters (25,600 feet or so). From the town I walked up to the Anasakti Ashram, where Gandhi spent 12 days in 1929 writing his treatise on the Bhagavid Gita, the most important part of the Mahabharata. There is a museum with some great photos of him, plus excerpts from his autobiography. The view from there is spectacular, too, and at sunset I watched the colors change on the peaks to the north. After dinner I found a couple of newspapers (The Times of India and the Hindustan Times) with coverage of Obama in India, most of it highly favorable.
I got up the next morning soon after 6 to watch the sun light up the peaks to the north. There were several of us at the hotel doing so, all Indians but me. It was chilly, in the low 50's, but a beautiful way to begin the day. The sun first hit the peaks at about 6:30, but didn't reach us until an hour later. I was given a Gujurati breakfast of a delicious dried fruit and ghee mixture and some sort of crispy pieces of bread, all very good, and then took about an hour walk along the ridge line with great views of the peaks to the north through the trees. A troop of maybe 100 macaques (with red faces and red butts) came along the road, several with babies tucked under them. I left Kausani about 11:30 on a share jeep, and after a change arrived in Almora about two hours later. Almora is on a horseshoe shaped ridge at about 5500 feet. At the top of the ridge is a pedestrian bazaar that really is for pedestrians only, no motorcycles or bicycles. It runs for quite a ways and was full of people, shops and activity. Some of the store fronts and buildings have elaborately carved wooden facades. At one of the ridge's high points is a stone temple said to be from the 7th century with some good carvings on it, including some erotic ones. I spent the afternoon walking up and down the bazaar and enjoyed it
The next day (today) I got up about 6 after the local mosque went off at 5:30. Quite an unpleasant surprise as this area is heavily Hindu. In fact this state, Uttarakhand, has been a state only since 2000. It was formerly part of Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest state with well over 100 million people. In 2000 the mountainous portion of Uttar Pradesh, with less than 10 million people, became the state of Uttaranchal, which name was changed to Uttarakhand in 2007. After breakfast I took a share jeep to Kasar Devi on a ridge about 5 miles to the north with great views of the snow-covered peaks to the north. There is a much better view of Nanda Devi from Kasar Devi than from Kausani, but the sky was hazier and cloudier than at Kausani. D. H. Lawrence, Timothy Leary and Cat Stevens are said to have spent time here, on a ridge called Cranks' Ridge, and there are hotels and restaurants along the ridge. I had lunch and then came back to Almora.
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