Royal Rajasthan to Prayerful Punjab

All our photos from this stretch of our travels are here: https://www.icloud.com/journal/#8;CAEQARoQuWj_bg94JNNh9wuTyGGCSw;DA7ED555-5943-4450-B827-14FD62CBE483

 

We took a day-time, 12-hour train ride from Agra to Jodhpur. Trains in India move slowly, something like 50 miles an hour, but the views through the windows are a chance to continue to see India on the move. 

 

In Jodhpur we stayed at a dreamy 500 year old haveli (antient mansion.)

 

There was a magical view from the roof. It was especially sweet around sunset when the local children would fly their kites from roof tops all over town.

The old-town of Jodhpur is known as the blue city. Originally only Brahmins, the priestly caste, painted their homes blue but it eventually spread to anyone, especially when it was decided the color served as an insect repellent. 

The fort we could see from the guesthouse roof is called Mehrangarth. It was literally chiselled from the mountain itself, creating the sense that this royal palace emerges  from the Earth organically. 

 

 

 

I honestly did not feel excited to see a fort and was going for Alex. But as it turned out, the hours we spent at Mehrangarh were awesome. There was a really great audio tour that even had clips of the current Maharaja and his family talking about their relationship to the royal structures. It transformed over many generations of warfare and changing royalty from the 16th-century. I could go on and on about the sights inside, but there is a lot to cover. If you're interested, check out the captions Alex made on the photos in the iCloud journal with more Mehrangarh details. 

This is the temple in Osian, a rural temple village a couple of hours drive from Jodhhpur. This is the main place of worship for the surrounding rural people.

 

Gemar Singh is a native of rural Rajasthan who was educated in Jodhpur and returned to make his life on a farm. In the early 2000s he began a business hosting tourists in small numbers on his land as a cultural exchange. He also teams with other locals who have camels to provide Thar Desert safaris. His buisness is given all kinds of eco-friendly endorsements for its healthy impact on the people and Earth. Gemar Sing says he has seen tourism completely change the heart of places and he does not want to harm the country side that way. He is much more interested in sharing his way of life with foreigners and learning from them. It would have been great to stay over night with his family, but we already had a train to catch. If anyone plans to visit Rajasthan and is interested in way of life there, we highly recommend spending some days with this Singh family.

We had a tasty lunch cooked by his wife. She let us come in and give making rotis a try. She was OK with us taking her photograph, but she made sure to cover her head first. Hindu women in rural India cover part or all of their faces around any men who are not her relatives (often including her husband's family.) 

Then we went on a walk with Gemar Singh to see his crops (mostly millet with other veggies mixed in) and to the local watering hole where all the nearby people let their animals graze and drink. Before the Monsoons come local people get together and help dig out the earth and have ot clean to collect water for as long as possible. We visited in the heart of a very good Monsoon year. The desert was green and alive all around us. But when the rain stops, things will dry up fast. 

 

We came upon a goat shepherd on our walk. Gemar Singh keeps his goats with this man's large flock. They chatted for a while. The day before the shepherd had taken the big excursion to Osian for a haircut and new shoes. They also discussed his bottle. He wants Gemar Singh to replace it for him because he thinks some kids poked a hole near the top of it, causing a leak. 

 

In the late afternoon when the opressive heat began to go down, we took a ride to meet our camel drivers and their camels. I admit, something about being two white people going to the desert to be pulled along a top camels for a couple hours feels self-consciously, extravagently cliché. But on the other hand, it gives the local people an income and, for non-desert folk, camels are kinda exciting. I absolutely love the proud pose my guide would take every time his photo was taken. He also had a lovely smile.

Along our mini-safari we encountered lots of local children. We would exchange waves and smiles and they would come running. They kept saying "tata!" to us. We started to say it back to them, wondering if this was a regional greeting. Turns out they were saying what they thought to be "hello" in English, the British, "Ta, ta." 

We watched a big group of kids playing on top of a huge sand dune, sledding down the slopes on dried tree branches. 

 

On our last afternoon in Jodpur we visited the Jaswant Thada, a marble memorial to Maharaja Jaswant Singh II. This was a serene place with green grass to lounge in under trees. 

 

That night we took a rickshaw to the train station. Night time is when the city really comes to life. All day long the streets are full of honking and bulls lounging, but this is relative calm.  It is at night, when the hot, hot sun has dipped below the horizon, everyone comes out to shop. We even saw women in the streets then, a rarity. We were jockying through the madness of traffic in a jerky zigzag, but I tried to capture some of the life in photos. There are no street lights, but all is illuminated by headlights, brightly-lit store fronts and tiny temples sprinkled through it all, decorated with strings of multicolored lights. 

We made it to the platform just at the time our train was supposed to arrive. We waited there for over an hour. This is normal. Our driver the day before put it this way, "Two hours in India is like five minutes in your country." We bided our time entertaining all sorts of men who would circle around, gaping at the whities. When one who spoke a little English was bold enough to approach us, many, many others would crowd in for a closer view. Dads with small children would come up holding their babies to say hello. When I don't feel the need to claim vehement attachment to my HUSBAND because I'm creeped out by some guy, this experience is actually quite endearing. No one is trying to hustle us on the platform (even the guy who could say only "my guest house, you are welcome" clearly saw we were leaving Jodhpur. He just wanted something to say.) We are treated like celebrities and we have sweet conversations. Two of the men are teachers in Punjab for blind boys and girls. They are waiting to get married after they have worked a few years and feel established. When a voice announced in Hindi that our train would be arriving on the opposite platform, one of these men came back to make sure we knew (we did not) and when I expressed my gratitude he said, "you are our guests! We take care of you." This is the humbling touch of Asian generosity I love to feel here. 

 

When we got on the train we had a magical travel experience. Our berths were adjacent to two women and two small children. The kids were playing a heated game of "snake, water, gun." After we'd endured the first several awkward minutes of getting situated in our places, I asked them about their game. "Is it like 'rock, paper, scissors'?" I asked, showing the hand motions of my game in case they did not speak any English. The little boy quickly got up and ran away. His sister nodded and smiled to me. In a minute the little one came back with a second, bigger boy and they started playing the game to show me how it's done. I learned all the hand motions (if you're curious, snake beats water beats gun beats snake.) Then they started talking to us about other things. The little one would ramble in rapid Hindi paragraphs and I did my best to say "naheem, Hindi" hoping he would figure out I had no clue what he was saying to me (as much as I wished I did.) This is when we discovered the little girl spoke perfect English (and Hindi, and Punjabi and Gujarati!) She became our translator. She was probably eight years old, but with such a mature self composure and comfort being the only one who knew all of what was being said, I was continuously surprised when she actually acted her age. We pulled out my iPad to charge it and the kids wanted to know what it was. I turned it on and we ended up spending the next hour sharing our photos from the last year. We showed them koalas from Australia, the house where we lived in NZ, and giant Sequoias in California. Hashita, the girl, would get excited about this or that photo and turn and show the iPad to her mom and aunty. At one point the four of them were on one berth huddled over the screen flipping through our pics together. When pictures were exhausted, both kids started to use the camera. I have an hilarious series of blurry portraits the little guy took. We capped off the night with a few rounds of "snake, water gun" and tucked ourselves into our cubbies.

 

I dearly wish I got a clear pic of all the family, but these are the best we have. In the morning Hashita woke me up by peeking inside my curtains to see if I was still sleeping. I drowsily sat up and opened up my curtains only to watch them depart at their stop. They all quicky smiled at me as they rushed off. The older aunty pinched my cheeks and they were gone. Alex missed their departure entirely. We both grieved this loss for a while. 

Several hours later we arrived in Jalandhar City. We had to ask several people to tell us when our stop would come. With trains that do not run on time, very few signs and no speakers announcing where we are, I marvel that anyone ever has an idea of where they are on the trains. This is me being foreign; everyone else seems to know exactly what is happening and when they learn we don't, they help us out. We waited another couple hours for a late train in Jalandhar and then boarded a chair car for Amritsar. The ticket taker on this train was having a Bollywood-caliber argument with a passenger, complete with yelling and arm flailing, but when he saw us he gave us warm smiles and ushered us into the car. The argument went on most of the ride to our stop, but whenever this man interacted with us he said "welcome!" A true tourist ambassador for Incredible India.

Amritsar is the home of Punjab's most famous attraction, the Golden Temple. This is Sikhism's holiest gurdwara (Sikh temple) and a place of pilgrimige those of the Sikh faith. 

For context, I'll explain a few, uncomprehensive, points on Sikhism: The religion was founded in Punjab by Guru Nanak in the 15th-century as a reaction against the caste system and Brahmin domination of the Hindu religion. Sikhs consider themselvves warriors of righeteousness and believe in the equality of all beings. This is why anyone of any walk of life is invited to their gurdwaras and shared, free meals. 

The dome of the Golden Temple is supposedly constructed with 750KG of gold. It is in the shape of an inverted lotus flower, the symbol of the Sikh aim to live purely. The water around the temple is called Amrit Sarovar, or pool of nectar, which is why the town is named Amritsar. Many pilgrims bathe in the water as an aspect of their darshan, worshipful visit. There are priests inside the temple that continusouly chant from the enormous holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, and this music is broadcast publically on speakers throughout the complex. 

 

We had lunch in the Gurdwara's kitchen. There are kitchens like this at all Gurdwaras, but this one sees 60,000 to 80,000 pilgrims on any given day (even more in holy fests.) To smoothly accomodate so many, the organizers there have worked out a well-oiled system. We were given a metal tray for food and a metal bowl for water. We were ushered upstairs to a huge room with long rows of mats on the ground. We sat in a line and put our plates on the ground. A man with a big pot and a ladle came by and scooped out daal. Another one came and scooped out sweet rice. No one worried about the drops that fell on the floor. No time for that. Boys came by with a barrel of water on wheels to fill our bowls. A man with a basket of chpatis came to drop them in our hands (not to hand them to us!) It was such a neat experience that we took some photos. I can see how this might be considered insensitive. We meant no disrespect to the tradition of generosity, we merely want to remember it. It is a beautiful thing.

We looked into the kitchen and saw men and women stirring the food in gigantic pots. We tried to avoid the zoo-like behavior of taking photos of such marvles, but we saw no harm in recording the empty ones.

We decided not to stay a second night in Amritsar but to hop on the 4 PM bus to Manali. This turned into 15 hours of non-AC, bumpy, dusty fun through Punjab up into the Himalayas of Himamchel Pradesh. This part of our adventure will have to wait until next time. 

We are happy, healthy and safe, and sending lots of love, kisses and hugs home. Thanks for keeping up with us!

Here oui go, India!

My title is a pun that I wanted to make the title of the blog (the 'here we go' part,) but Alex and his French No vetoed it.  Who's right? Cute/funny or cheesy/confusing?

Our photos this far can be found in total, ici: http://https://www.icloud.com/journal/#8;CAEQARoQuWj_bg94JNNh9wuTyGGCSw;242F7606-5684-46DD-920F-F13428E98761

We left Malaysia and I was SICK. I probably trusted one ice cube too many in the heat of things and paid by spending much of the eve of our departure comforted by the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. If it were not for Alex, I never, ever, in a million years, could have flown to India that day. I was crippled with a fever and literally took several naps between the check-in counter and boarding the plane. I envied the wheel chairs of the elderly, but I did make it on my own two feet. Again, with enormous thanks to Alex. He would have let us stay behind, but I was determined. And I lived to tell the tale, obviously!

 

We were picked up at the airport by a taxi driver holding a placard with my name on it. This was smart foresight because we did not have it in us to negotiate a ride. We stayed at a guest house in Connaught Place, a major shopping hub in Delhi. It is also notorious for "touting", which I will get to shortly. 

 

We settled in and got some food down the block at a lovely and popular South Indian place. Our first meal was a paneer dosa and a thali. Yum. 

 

I needed to stock up on clothes that satisfy basic conservative standards, so we found the local Fabindia shop. Alex still hasn't found Indian-style clothes that fit him yet, but he doesn't have to cover as much skin as I do for safety.

 

In Delhi, especially in CP there are countless young men who are keeping an eye out for light-skinned foreigners in order to convince them to spend their money. There is one official government travel information center in the area, but a million and one for-profit places ready and eager to convince naïve tourists to spend money needlessly. Men pretending to be just friendly and helpful constantly pounced on us saying that the info center is just across the street here, "free Delhi map!" And of course if they bring us to one of these places they earn a comission worth playing this game every day. This is touting. The same is true for shopping centers. Plenty of people will say the place we want to go is closed but they know a better place, "five floors!" This type of thing, unfortunately, is a constant annoyance here. We cannot trust anyone we speak to out on the streets because 99% of them will lie to try to make money off of us. 

 

We took a trip to see the India Gate and the National Museum. 

   

We asked a rickshaw driver to take us to Humayun's Tomb, but either to get a bigger fare or because he didn't know any better, he dropped us off at Lodi Gardens.  As it turned out, this was a secret gem we would not have thought to visit. It redeemed Delhi for me. Or at least convinced me there is at least one nice, peaceful place in that crappy city. It was serene and georgeous to climb around exploring the old tombs amidst the clean, green wonderland.

  

We did a small walking tour near the train station led by two "former street children." They are members of an organization that houses, educates or returns street children to their original homes when possible. Many children run way from their homes for various reasons and bord trains to Delhi. They often live in/near the train station. They are able to find ways to make money, but they must spend it every day so as not to be robbed in their sleep. This life often involves really damaging drug use such as glue sniffing. Or, in the case of women, child prostitution. Salaam Baalak, as they define it means, "salute the children." The tours are led by the children themselves as a way to improve their communication skills and give them a small job while they are in school. We had a really nice experience with Noor, our guide, and the other boys.

 

We began our train adventures softly with the Delhi Foreign Tourist Office. This is a big air-conditioned room specially created for people like us. It is unique because in the rest of India we have to elbow our way to the front of the ticket window like everybody else. On the way there, of course, there are dozens of men telling us that this office does not exist or that it burned down, but that we can go to their travel agent. So helpful! Groan.

At 5am on our 5th full day in India we boarded our first train, headed for Agra and the Taj Mahal. 

 

 

It truly is an incredible building. 

To many Indian people it is like a bonus to be at the most beautiful building in the world AND see a white person there. We refused many photo requests, but for this one Alex was too hot and tired to refuse. These two men don't even know each other, they just both jumped on the opportunity to be "clicked" with Alex. (I agree, he's a good looking guy!) The couple on the right looking bashful and amused are Agra natives. We had a lovely chat with them after giggling over the photo ordeal. The man works in Bangalore and is home visiting his girlfriend. We wish them all the best.

The tourist ghetto of Agra.

 

  

The Agra Fort.

Again we left in the darkness to board another early-morning train. This time headed for Jodhpur in the state of Rajasthan. Lots more photos and updates to come. 

Beaucoup d'amour et gros bisous pour tous!