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.
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