March 09, 2004
Rajasthan Tour
So far so good! We have been all over Delhi, Mandawa, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Ranakpur, Udaipur, Pushkar and now Jaipur. Our 14 day tour is about to come to an end, but not before we see the Taj Mahal in Agra!
Alright, where shall I start? After leaving Raaj and his family we headed down to the Praharganj area and found a guesthouse, Anoop Hotel. As Jill mentioned we booked our driver with the travel company downstairs in the hotel and then also booked a tour around Delhi for the next day. This was a good idea for two reasons, one, we would see most of the highlights of Delhi and two, we would get a day with our driver before heading off on 14 day tour of Rajasthan together.
The day around Delhi turned out very well on both accounts. We saw many temples, both Hindu and Sikh, Qujt Minar tower, India Gate, the Lotus Temple (Bahai) and then visited with Shweta, a friend of Tati's who Jill met in Canada last year. We met her at her office, which is where Tati worked for three months last year. Shweta was glowing in her last month of pregnancy. We tried to get the name out of her but she told us that they don’t actually choose a name before the birth date. She will receive a letter based on the date of the Hindu calendar and will have to choose a name starting with that letter. We had a lot of fun meeting up with Shweta – she’s great to talk with and has an extremely contagious laugh.
We were excited to get started on our Rajasthan tour so we told Balwant, our driver, to pick us up at nine! Mandawa was our first stop. It was this little village off the beaten track that is known for its 'havelis'. These are huge, old mansions with colourful painted murals on the walls both inside and outside wall. Very rich families lived in havelis. Balwant took us to see a few of them around town. He wanted to guide us around because he said the kids were very clever, meaning they would ask us for pens, gum, shampoo or rupees. The minute children would approach us and ask us the intro question “where are you from?”, he would quickly jump in and say “Alfganistan”. They would giggle and usually leave us alone.
Our next stop was Bikaner, which was the beginning of our 'Fort Tour'. This fort, Junagarh, was quite impressive with its 986m-long wall. We were lucky we had a great guide and Balwant also joined us for his first time touring the fort. Considering that he has been driving all over Rajasthan for over five years, he seemed to be doing a lot of firsts on our trip. We were very happy with Balwant. He would take us out of the way to see interesting things, bought us fruit or local goodies along the way and answered all of our many, many questions during our drives. Our guesthouse was quite nice in Bikaner. While there we ran into an Israeli couple that we met in Delhi just before we left for Rajasthan. They are doing a 31-day tour but had mirrored our tour for most of our time. We kept running into them because our driver and their driver work for the same company so they always use the same guesthouses.
Jaisalmer, also known as the 'Golden City' because it borders the desert, was a beautiful little city. We stayed at another 'out of the way, family' guesthouse, which was quiet but had an excellent view of the fort. This fort was remarkable to look at. Honestly, it looked like a huge sand castle that overlooked the city of Jaisalmer, quite stunning! Five thousand people still live inside the fort and there are many little streets with many shops selling textiles and silver with everything in between. It was very fascinating to walk around amongst the locals, as well as with many other tourists. We tried our best at bargaining with some merchants but they seemed to be much more difficult to barter with than those we have already experienced along our travels. Balwant told us that Jaipur is the place to buy most things because most of these other cities that we are visiting, their prices are really blown up for the tourist trade.
This was the first place we stayed for two nights and most tourists that come to Jaisalmer go on camel safaris. We didn't go for the simple reason that we had already done one in the Sahara in Morocco, plus we wanted a day to relax around the city. We spent the day seeing another haveli and then most of the day enjoying the narrow streets in the fort.
Our next major stop was Jodhpur. On the way there we stopped at a little place called Pokran, and saw another fort where the steep entry fee included a free cup of Indian chai tea. Jilly and I took advantage of this considering the garden where we drank our tea was the best part of the fort. Jodhpur is known as the blue city since most of the buildings in the old city are painted bright blue, which made for a great sight from the fort.
We arrived in the late afternoon so we had time to enjoy the last bit of the sunset as we walked around the Royal Palace Hotel – once the royal palace, now a hotel. From there we went down to the clock tower and night market! Craziness! What an eye opening experience this was. This made Delhi seem slow and quiet. It was so fantastic that we had to return the next evening for some more sensory overload. The streets were jammed packed with people, cows, pigs, market stands, tuk tuks, rickshaws, cars, you name it basically. Many people would approach us with the standard questions “where are you from?”, “what is your name?”, “are you married?”, “how old are you?”, and even sometimes “are you muslims or Christians?”. Most people were just curious and genuinely wanted to know and then there were a few that wanted to sell you something. The second night down there we must have had over 30 people approach us altogether.
The highlight of Jodhpur was the fort. It was set up on a rock ledge in the middle of the city overlooking the bright buildings. It was very well set up for tourists with an audio tour to guide you through and tell you the many stories of the fort and palace. There were many buskers in the fort to play us music and show us traditional Rajasthani dances.
One of the funniest thing that happened there and continued to happen was that young Indian boys would approach us and want their picture taken with Jilly. At one point, I was in the middle of taking her picture when two guys asked to take their picture with her. They each had their turn. The first guy got close to her and just as his friend took the picture, he leaned over to kiss her cheek. Very funny!
From Jodhpur, we continued onto Ranakpur. This was the most scenic drive. There were many rolling hills and little mountains along the horizon, lots of stonewalls like in Ireland and many fields of wheat with amazing ways of irrigating their crops. They would have two oxen hooked up to this pulley contraption that allowed this string of pails to pick up water from the well. The oxes would walk in a circle while these pails would scoop up water in the well and then raised up and poured into a trough where the water would run all along the irrigation that was set up. Other than four guesthouses (no stores or other restaurants), the main attraction to Rankpur was the incredible Jain temple. It was nice to stay at a place completely out of the hustle and bustle of a city or town. We also met a young couple from England that we talked, ate and played cards with for about six hours. It was lots of fun!
The Jain temple was phenomenal! It contained something like 1200 pillars and each with its own unique carving patterns. Even a few Karma Sutra carvings mixed in with everything. These sexual carvings were often incorporated somehow into temples to educate people about sex.
While at the temple, we met a cinematographer from England who had just finished filming the final scene with Reese Witherspoon’s in the upcoming movie, Vanity Fair, at the Jodhpur fort. We missed it by a couple of days, too bad.
Our next stop was Udaipur, which is also known as the 'Lake City'. It has a lot of water throughout the city so it is also called 'Venice of the East'. There is actually a very expensive hotel right in the middle of Lake Pichola where the James Bond movie, Octopussy was filmed. We did a boat tour around this lake and then ate a wonderful dinner overlooking the hotel while watching the sunset. Very romantic I must say! We also toured the city palace museum. It was quite an amazing building but Jodhpur's fort is still the place that stands out. We didn't spend much time in Udaipur because we realized that 'Holi' was fast approaching and we wanted to be in Jaipur for that celebration. Holi is the annual festival in which all of India celebrates the end of winter. March 6th was Holi, but on March 7th they also have the colour festival, where everyone gets powdered colours to throw and rub on one another. Most of the locals like to get drunk and dance in the streets and it can get quite dangerous for tourists, so we were told that we wouldn’t be driving anywhere on the 7th. Therefore, we left Udaipur after one night, and made our way to Jaipur, but first we spent one night in Pushkar, to break up the driving.
On the way to Pushkar we ran into some minor technical difficulties... our car got very sick and was affecting the steering. Not good! Our driver kept trying to reassure us that there was nothing wrong, yet we drove at 50 - 60 km for the next two hours. We finally came across a little mechanic along the side of the highway in this little village and he figured out what was wrong. Jilly and I were relieved to say the least, considering that this road we were on was the most stressful all trip. Many trucks and buses were flying with no care in the world about what was in front of them. Driving in India is definitely not something someone with a weak heart should experience! Not to mention the obstacle course of many animals and broken down vehicles that you come across. It's wild!
While the car was being fixed Jilly and I amused ourselves with taking photos of the local children. We are still not sure if they have ever had 'tourists' stop in their little village before because it was the only place where the kids didn't ask us for anything. We had a fantastic hour watching them pose for us and giggle when we showed them their pictures on the digital camera.
Pushkar was a very quaint little town, which had a lake in the middle where everyone went to watch the sunset along the many ghats that are on the side of the lake. Ghats are steps leading into the water where the locals go to wash themselves and their clothing. We arrived just in time to see the sunset, have dinner and then tour the streets to see what the local merchants were selling. We ended up buying some more books to read along the way before retiring for the evening.
Jaipur is the capital city of Rajasthan and also known as the 'Pink City'. Balwant told us as we were arriving that there would be an elephant festival on the evening we got there and that was all that we could think about. We were so excited! Before the festival began we saw some other 'tourist sites' and also bought tickets for following night’s Bollywood movie at the famous 'Raj Mandir' cinema, which looked more like an old style opera house.
That night we went to the elephant festival. When we walked into the stadium at the festival we quickly decided to walk down with the other tourists onto the grounds where the elephants were waiting to come out. It didn't take us too long to realize that this was our best decision we could have made. There we were amongst all of these beautifully painted and well dressed elephants, camels, and horses. The locals were in their full festival costumes dancing and playing instruments - it was unbelievable! We were snapping photos like madmen. Another surreal experience!
The festival involved an entrance parade of over 50 elephants along with the other animals, marching bands, and dancers. The rest of the festival included a 150 metre race, a elephant polo match and then had a tug of war with an elephant versus the tourists. We were so lucky to be able to be in Jaipur on this day, we couldn't have planned it any better!
The next morning Jill and I woke up to Balwant banging on our door. He wanted us to come out and celebrate Holi with he and his fellow drivers, other tourists and our guesthouse staff. As soon as we put on our clothes it took two seconds before Balwant had put green dye on our faces. Once we stepped out of the guesthouse entrance we then had the colours of the rainbow thrown at us and rubbed on our faces. Everyone was dancing, drinking and hugging each other. What a sight to see! Even the pictures don't do it real justice but at least they will show you a little of what we experienced! During this day, no shops, restaurants, stores were opened until after 5 pm because nobody wanted to have colours all over their store or goods. We didn’t get much to eat that day with everything being closed, so when we got to the movies it didn't take us too long to inhale three boxes of popcorn, two bags of chips and three chocolate bars! Yep, we totally pigged out and enjoyed every minute of it!
Our last day in Jaipur we visited the two forts that overlooked the city. At the Amber Fort we actually had an elephant ride us up to the entrance, much better than walking! Many tourists decide to take this mode of transport up and down, so needless to say there must have been a minimum of 30 elephants that were doing this and they just happened to be a lot of the ones that were decorated up at the elephant festival. The next fort was named the Tiger Fort.
We will finish our tour with the Taj Mahal in Agra before saying goodbye to Balwant and we will then head onto Varanassi by train.
Until next time,
Bow.
I will try to upload our pictures of Rajasthan soon!
Happy Birthday Rhonda!