Jodhpur

amazing Rajastani architecture at Mehrangarh Fort

The street... watch out for motorcycles, scooters, cows, pedestrians, vegetable carts, and poop.

Mehrangarh Fort at night

Blue houses below the ramparts of the fort

colors of Rajastan

The Blue City!

Jodhpur… the Blue City; an ancient city once ruled from a high fort by Rajput kings and queens; also the namesake of those silly puffy pants worn by posh horseback riders, which were originally made here. The massive Merangarh fort towers over the city from its site on a sandstone peak. From the fort you can really see why they call it the Blue City … every neighborhood is speckled with houses and buildings painted in the same shade of milky, periwinkle blue that really stands out against the beige color of the surrounding desert scrubland. The city is criss-crossed with narrow, winding streets that are filled with bazaars of every category. Besides the overwhelmingly impressive fort, I loved the energy, hustle, bustle, and shopping delights brimming over the streets of Jodhpur. Don’t go to Rajastan without visiting the Blue City… despite the traffic congestion and pollution, Jodhpur was one of my favorite places yet! (Just don’t look too closely at the black stuff in your Kleenex when you blow your nose at the end of the day.)

Pushkar & Monkey Poop

The holy lake of Pushkar, where Lord Brahma dropped a lotus flower and created the lake in its spot.

A lake-sized pot of milk being boiled for making delicious masala chai (spiced tea)

Tourist bazaar (bad hippy clothes)

Pushkar is a holy temple town with a mythical lake where Hindu pilgrims pray and bathe. It’s relatively small and very quiet compared to everywhere else we’ve been in Rajastan. Our hotel, the Paramount Palace, upgraded to us for free to a really nice room with a balcony and views of the town. However, we found we were disappointed after all the hype we heard about Pushkar – other than the Brahma temple and the small lake, there wasn’t much else to do in town except browse the tourist bazaars of handicrafts and Indo-western clothing. We spent most of our time relaxing in our room and at the rooftop restaurant in our hotel. The most exciting thing that happened in Pushkar was when I opened the door to the balcony in our room one evening and came face to face with a monkey that was sitting on a chair. Judging by the expression on the monkey’s face and my own racing heartbeat, we were both equally surprised and dismayed/scared shitless by each other’s sudden appearance. I quickly shut the balcony door and left the monkey alone…and in the morning discovered that he’d left plenty of poop on the chair outside as thanks for my trouble.

Bundi. Boom.

Entrance to the Queen's Bath - aka Temple of Awesomeness

The step well just keeps going down....

Faded grandeur inside the once mighty palace of Bundi

Bundi Palace, with fort walls behind

Bundi is another small town with a mighty history in southern Rajastan. It’s busy, colorful place in a paradoxical state of complete decay and steady commerce. In this sense, it’s a typical Indian town. The pipes from the houses empty directly into overflowing street sewage gutters, and cows, pigs, goats and dogs wander freely, living off of (and adding to) the piles of garbage and excrement in the streets. Meanwhile, merchants sell their wares, women dressed in dazzling colors and flowing skirts gracefully dodge speeding motorists, temple bells ring and the scent of incense floats in the air. We visited the ruined palace at Bundi, taking in views of the town below from the high ramparts and peering at the much-faded but still grandiose frescoes covering the walls of the palace rooms. The highlight of our visit, however, was seeing the 17th-century step wells commissioned and built by members of the royal family of Bundi. Step wells are square-shaped, immense underground recessions with carved stone walls and long flights of stairs leading downward nearly 50 meters to pools for bathing. The wells are open to rain and sunlight as well as underground reserves of water. Entering the Rani-ki-Baori (the Queen’s Bath) in Bundi was like walking into Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom, but in the best sense possible! It was like stepping into a vast, underground cathedral for water worshippers. An incredible amount of workmanship and vision went into creating these step wells – one of the most striking and truly awesome sights in India….in the world!!

Chittor - the greatest fort in Rajastan!!

Chittor, in southern Rajastan, is an enormous medieval fort on a long stretch of cliffs above the town of Chittorgarh. It is famous for being the final stronghold of Rajputana warriors and royalty who never surrended to the invading Moghuls. Rather than surrender, the fort occupants chose death by their own hands. The women submitted to self-immolation (burning themselves alive) while the men voluntarily rode out to certain death in hand-to-hand combat with the much larger invading army. Fast-forward 300 or 400 years – we arrived at Chittor around 10am and feasted our eyes on a stunning vista of ruins stretching on for several miles: fortified walls and ramparts, a huge palace complex, ancient temples, towers, bathing pools and mansions. Chittor is truly worthy of its reputation as the greatest fort in Rajastan.

Udaipur

Tripoli gates at the City Palace, looking towards the heart of Udaipur

Beautiful Lake Pichola, built by a Maharaja of Udaipur

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During our last month in India (I can't believe we've been here 2 months already!) we're hitting up the Big 5 old cities of Rajastan: Udaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur... and all the whistlestops in between.

Udaipur definitely lived up to its reputation as one of the Big 5, and of the most romantic cities in India. 4 thumbs up! (from both of us.)

Jet Airways: It Still Sucks

We made the indescribably regrettable decision to fly Jet Airways again, this time from south India to north India. If you've been reading this blog you will know that I should've known better than to fly Jet Airways again.

Our flight from Mangalore to Udaipur via Mumbai was supposed to take about 3.5 hours. With Jet Airways we arrived in Udaipur 9 hours later after enduring a horror-genre version of the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It was more just like Planes, A Stupid Carrier Called Jet Airways, and Automobiles. I'll spare you the details and just let you know that Jet Airways really seems to get a big kick out of making my life as difficult as possible whenever it gets the chance.

Gokarna Vacation

We left Hampi on an overnight sleeper bus to the coastal town of Gokarna, Karnataka. At around 2am the bus stopped and everyone who wasn't continuing through Karnataka to Goa was told to get off. We were then told another bus was going to pick us all up and drive us to Gokarna. We waited for about an hour in the dark next to a lamppost on the highway until the next bus showed up and then dumped us at the Gokarna turn-off to the beach, which was still about 4 kilometers away. So we found ourselves dragging our bags down a steep cliff trail to the beach at 4:30am with a cell phone flashlight. When we got down to the beach all the guesthouses were of course, shut up for the night, so we snuck inside the gated patio restaurant of the nearest guesthouse and laid down like miserable hobos with our stuff on the floor until around 8am when we were finally able to check into a room.

We had planned to stay for 3 nights at the beach in Gokarna but ended up staying for 6 because we needed to do...nothing. It was the best vacation from a vacation I've ever had.

Hampi

It took us about 9 hours and two buses to get to Hampi, and long before we reached it we were both grumbling that this darn place better be worth this mind-numbingly, insanely uncomfortable journey. Riding on these buses feels like you’re sitting in a hot tin can, bouncing over miles and miles of broken tarmac. After a while I started to think I was going to have serious brain damage from it slamming against the inside of my skull. On top of the physical discomforts of the bus, I had caught a cold a couple days before, and I spent most of the journey constantly blowing my nose with rough toilet paper and then rubbing Carmex on my nostrils because they were so sore and chapped. I must have looked like a crazy person to the other passengers. But we finally got here, and with no amount of begrudging-ness I can say that the journey was definitely worth it. Hampi is a village/town right next to the ancient ruins of a city of temples from the 1500s, called Vijayanagar. The entire region is littered with huge volcanic boulders from which the ancient temple city was sculpted. There are about 13 kilometers of ruins to explore, so we decided to spend 4 days here to take it all in.

On the other side of the river from Hampi is another smaller village with guesthouses, so we decided to stay there to get away from the noisy bazaar area. The only problem with this is that you have to take a “ferry” (aka, a motorized rowboat) jam-packed with people, bicycles, and motorbikes to go back and forth from the village to Hampi. The boat supposedly stops making trips at 6pm. Our first we headed down to the “dock” around 5:30 thinking we had plenty of time before 6, but this was a grave underestimate of Hampi's boat-riding population. There was a huge, jostling crowd on the steps waiting to get into the boats. There was no queue or any type of organization, except for a very skinny man with a plastic broomstick which he used to splash large amounts of water on people to keep order. The whole thing got way too frightening, so we decided to take our chances on hiring our own boat after all the 6pm hoopla was over. When we returned an hour later the crowd was mostly gone, so we got sped over to the other side in semi-darkness but in comfort. All in all, though, the Indians were much more friendly and accomodating than some of the surly-looking tourists waiting to go over in the boat. We think some of these dippy-hippy types who come over to India with their dreadlocks and lame tribal tattoos give us normal tourists a bad name. As far as we’re concerned, these losers can go back to Granola Mountain and leave India to us!

Belur & Halebid

About 4 hours north of Mysore are two ancient Hoysala-era temple sites in the towns of Belur and Halebid. These temples were begun to be built sometime in the 11th century. One of them is still in use today, and both are extremely impressive. We actually took over 200 photos of the detailed stone carvings covering the outside and inside of the temples… it’s hard to stop! The temples were truly epic, very much from the chapter on India in an art history book. We were lucky enough to see it up close. One of the highlights of our trip thus far.

Mysore

schoolgirls in Mysore

typical street scene


at the Maharaja's Palace

getting catty in the Maharaja's garden

man hand-rolling beedis

lady rolling incense sticks (the black stuff is honey-based)

Being in Mysore got me to start thinking, “Whatever you say about India, at least it’s never boring!” Mysore was the home of a dynasty of maharajas, and the architecture of the city gives it an air of faded grandeur. As we’re starting to discover about almost everywhere in India, Mysore is a small town with a big city feel. I guess that’s just how it goes in a country with a population of over a billion people. Whether it’s a big tourist destination or someplace seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the towns here are all chaotic places that never stop moving, and seem to constantly be on the verge of bursting at the seams with people, traffic, animals, sounds and colors. But just when you’re on the verge of overload and need to get out of the crowded streets, you notice something really intriguing (or something that just smells delicious) and you have to move in closer to the thick of it to have a better look.

At Home in Bangalore

We left Kerala on Wednesday on a 9 hour bus to Bangalore. My very good friend Kristen, who I hadn't seen since I left California for Peace Corps/Azerbaijan in September 2008, was coming to Bangalore for a business trip and invited us to stay with her at her 5 star hotel! We arrived, in awe, at the Leela Palace in Bangalore. The lobby literally looks like a marble palace and the room has Persian carpets (and a telephone next to the toilet in the stunning bathroom.) We spent the evening reveling in the comforts of Kristen's luxurious room while she went out for a business dinner.

In the morning, Kristen's Indian work counterpart, Deepak, took us all out on a tour of some of Bangalore's sights: the shopping district, the Bull Temple, and the cave temple. Deepak also took us to his parents' house so we could catch a glimpse of home life in Bangalore. We arrived unannounced, but the house was uncluttered and spotlessly clean. They showed us their puja room, with shrines and offerings to the Hindu gods and we got to put puja dots on our foreheads with the red kumkum powder. His mother wanted to feed us and insisted we try some treats she had made, because hotel food is "bad." The hospitality and the familiar exchanges of conversation reminded me so much of my friends in Azerbaijan that I felt tears come to my eyes. This was a place that felt like home, not the 5-star hotel built for rich tourists.

Next destination, Mysore...

Happy Near Year from the Malabar Coast!

We are now back on the coast, this time in the north of Kerala near Kannur. Everyone tells us that this is India how it used to be way back when, and might not ever be again 10 years from now. We are spending about a week here, whiling away our days swimming and playing Scrabble on the stretches of unspoiled white sand beaches that go on for miles. Despite that this is the tourist high season, and vacation time for Indians, we basically have these beaches to ourselves. It’s sensory overload time every time we look around here!

The Tale of the Monkey and the Sambar

One day a nice family gave some bananas to a gentle sambar.

But Mr Monkey was watching and wanted a banana too!

Mr. Extra-Casual Monkey casually walked by the sambar.

Monkey: "La la la, don't mind me... oh look I found a banana
that doesn't belong to anyone."



Sambar: "Um... you know I can see you, right?"

Monkey: "La la la... don't mind me, I'm not doing anything..."
Sambar: "I hate you."