Tag Archives: Rajasthan

The Sandcastle City

A glistening gold, due to the sulfurous sandstone cut from a quarry a mere 14 kilometers away, the old fort city of Jaisalmer sits atop a hill breaking up the otherwise flat horizon.  Our driver dropped us off at the gate of the fort and loaded us into a tuk tuk or auto rickshaw.  We became increasingly excited as we perilously advanced upon the center of the fort, winding through narrow, high walled streets, barely missing collisions with motorcycles, pedestrians, and cows.  We made it to our hotel, the Garh Jaisalmer, a heritage hotel, which means its architecture is an original part of the fort and has been converted into a hotel.  This hotel is fashioned in the likeness of 1001 Arabian Knights.  Picture oil lamps with genies within, fantastically embroidered tapestries and magic carpets.  An atrium courtyard that opens to the sky, surrounded by balcony like seating with romantic cushions and silky drapes adorned with embroidery and mirrors ever present in the Jaisalmer textiles.  Seth almost immediately began absentmindedly singing tunes from Disney’s Aladdin.  And it was quite apt because while wandering the halls one could expect Jafar to be scheming quietly in a dark corner.

jaislmer

fortView

After getting way too excited about our romantically clean room, we set out to find Bobby.  Our Lonely Planet guidebook mentioned that Bobby’s Henna was the best henna in Jaisalmer.  Though, we set off to find Bobby, we found ourselves in a local’s home with hopes of finding this friendly man’s wife to henna me up.  It turned out that when he said wife, what he meant to say was ten year old daughter, who was vigorously trying to sell her abilities to me.  She kept boasting about her many awards for henna, and showed me her certificate as proof.  And, though her drawings were good, they were good for a ten year old, and I wasn’t about to have doodled flowers on my arm for the next three weeks. 

Eventually we needed some dinner, and went to the restaurant next door as recommended by our hotel.  But, when we got there, the young guy who took our order was coughing all over the place in a hellish way, and we decided not to risk it.  We retreated back to our room to feast on chips and oreo cookies.  Sometimes in India that’s your best, most convenient option.

Day two in Jaisalmer we hired a guide for a walking tour.  The highlight for me has been the Jain Temples.  Jain is, I believe, a sect of Hinduism.  But, they carve amazingly elaborate temples from sandstone.

jaislmerFortView

seth Seth

Jian Temple

Jian Carving

indiaPiggy

That night we found an amazing restaurant, The Trio.  We didn’t find out until after the meal, but this restaurant was voted the best in Jaisalmer by Fodors and had many other accolades as well.  And they were well deserved.  We ordered what is called a thali (the th is not our sound. It’s more like you say the T then a soft h).  It is kind of like a sampler platter in the US, or what Europe calls the menu of the day.  We received three vegetable dishes, a yogurt, rice, naan, and a dessert.  Starting from the rice at the bottom going counter clockwise the first, red bowl contains Paneer Makhani.  This was my favorite.  It’s rich tomato flavor only becomes more sensational when you get a bite of the creamy paneer cheese.  Above that is a dish of what they have aptly called, mixed vegetables.  They were filled with spices and bits of dried fruit and nuts.  Oh so good.  Then there was the traditional bowl of lentils named Dhora Dal.  Though it was tasty, it didn’t pack a punch like the other dishes.  The bowl of white is their Veg Raita, which was simply yogurt, to cleanse and cool the palate.  The last little bowl was dessert.  Suji Ka Halwa is a sort of egg custard sprinkled with nuts and drowned in a maple syrup or honey like sauce.  Seth compared it to flan, but I don’t enjoy flan, and I truly enjoyed this!  This was the best meal by far.  Even if the food wasn’t so good, it would have been a good meal, simply because the restaurant was clean and the service was excellent.  You have to use different rating systems on every different aspect of a place while in India.  We’ve had some great meals in some places where it was so dirty, and then we’ve had some not so good meals in places that were cleaner.  This place was clean, had good service, and great food.

trioThali

We woke up and were ready for our camel adventure.  The plan was to ride into the desert on camelback to a campground where we’d spend the night under the stars surrounded by the vast scrubland desert that stretches between the India and Pakistan border.  We made our way to these camels in a round about way, stopping at beautiful Jain temples, and ghost towns.  We stopped for lunch at a lake and went for a little meander while our driver/guide/cook ate his lunch.  When we were halfway around the lake we saw that he was cleaning the dishes and utensils in the lake.  Big no no.  Aside from the fact that you don’t mess with lake water in India, he had already mentioned that this lake was used for drinking and bathing.  And I’m sure it’s commonly used as a toilet as well.  The warning bells sounded. People (us included) believe that if you get sick in India you just get a bad case of the runs and you get over it.  But, after talking to a few people (the food tour couple and some of the embassy people) you don’t necessarily just end up in the bathroom frequently, you are likely to end up in the hospital.  But, we leisurely continued our walk around the lake followed by a little ‘shadow’.  If you’ve never traveled far from the european culture, you might not know this but, we’re stars over here.  And you can be too!  So, basically, everywhere we’ve been where light skin, and especially light hair and eyes, are uncommon, you are essentially a movie star.  People wave at you, say hello to you, and follow you while you are doing absolutely nothing.  I understand that it’s because we look so different from them.  In the US we are all different, so seeing people in Africa, or India, is not something so new to us.  But for them, seeing someone with our coloring is quite unusual.  Anyhow, we had a little boy, about nine years old, I’d say, follow us as we walked around the lake.  Though we tried to talk with him a bit, he didn’t speak any english, and we don’t speak a lick of hindi, so it was pretty silent.  But Seth ‘taught’ him how to skip rocks.  They got to share that together, and that was pretty neat.

We, finally made our way to the camels. Yay! We each got to ride our own camel.  My camel was ten years old and I’m told she’s pretty fast.  Her name was rocket, and she, apparently, had explosive diarrhea.  Seth rode a camel, a young 4 year old, named Rabbit.  She must have been bouncy, because Seth eventually became uncomfortable and decided to walk.  We played around on some sand dunes, taking pictures of us jumping off of them, and made our way to the campsite.  This is where we decided it was in our best interest to sleep at a hotel for the evening.  For a few reasons.  Furst of all, it was hot.  So hot.  And missing a night of sleep during a trip like this is devastating.  You don’t just have one tired day that you deal with, you miss out on that day’s travels, and you are usually miserable for a few days thereafter.  And there’s no guarantee that the next bed, or accommodation, will be comfortable enough for a good night of catch up sleep.  Secondly, our dishes were washed in the toilet, ahem, I mean lake.  Thirdly, it was definitely going to rain within hours.  It had been raining on and off for the past few days, and during that day, and there were major storm clouds in the near distance.  Oh, and we saw the sheets we’d be sleeping on.

india Camel

rain motorcycle

So, we made our way back to the hotel that manages the camel safari.  He had told us profusely before we’d left, that if for any reason we didn’t want to sleep at the campsite we could return to his hotel at any minute.  Because it was a hotel, built to be a hotel, it was quite modern.  Well, modern in facilities, not in style.  Which is good.  Bed was comfy, showers were US style, AC worked, etc.  

We still had dinner to contend with, so we headed back to Trio, of course! Why would we go anywhere else?  We feasted on Benghan Baji (an eggplant dish), and two others that were delicious and we failed to write down their names.  One was a rich tomato sauce with onions and chicken.  The chicken was so tender you could cut it with a fork.  And a yellow curry with chicken that was also really tasty.  We decided to stray from our vegetarian lifestyle (for safety reasons in India) and have some chicken, because this place seemed reputable enough.  And it was delicious.  We finished off our meal with some gulub jamun, little doughnut hole like balls of deliciousness soaked in a sugary syrup.

And today we’re off to Jodhpur!

Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You

I may (or may not) get flak for this post, but I’m not interested in opposing views on this one.  I know I mentioned it in an earlier post, but I can not stand for the animal cruelty I’m seeing here in India involving dogs.  I sat through a tour today and I listened to a man give me a long speech about how to be hindu is to be caring to all creatures.  Bullshit.  I’ve watched children run up and hit sleeping dogs, then run after them with the stick, grown men throw rocks at their ‘sacred’ cows, and today I saw a man swerve intentionally to run over a puppy, as the girl on the back of the bike laughed.  Fuck that, I don’t have to accept that.  And I don’t buy into this happy ‘hindus respecting life’ crap, when this is what I see.  I understand that this is not everyone, I have seen one man call over a dog and pet him, and I noticed that our driver stays away from dogs, but I’ve seen way more incidents of abuse that I’m sickened by. And the condition of the stray dogs in India is appalling. Just because a dog is a stray doesn’t mean it has to be skin and bones starving.  For example, Greece or Turkey.  In Greece the people take it upon themselves to take care of stray animals, and in Turkey there are rescues where the dogs are tagged and cared for.

 So, I don’t know if it’s possible, but for all you people who are thinking about adopting a dog from outside the country, see if you can find one from India, because they are the lowest on the totem pole here.  Even though these abusers are not good hindus, I hope their karma gets them in the end.

India Dog

Off to Rajasthan

We booked a tour with Shanti Travels.  I’m not sure how much of a tour it will actually be.  It seems like we’re booking a driver and hotels.  But, here we go.

So, our drive from Delhi to our first stop, Mandawa was supposed to take between five to six hours.  Due to an insane amount of traffic due to incessant swerving and large puddles in the road, a portion that usually takes about 2 hours ended up being a good full 5 hours.  So, it ended up taking us twelve hours to reach our destination.  So, we spent our first day of our tour in the car.  And we thought we would be seeing countryside once we left Delhi.  We were wrong.  We didn’t reach anything country until the last 45 minutes.  There are an impressive amount of people in India.

Out Of Delhi Traffic

crazy roads

Mandawa was a small town.  It is known for it’s Havelis.  A haveli is basically a mansion built for the maharajas and wealthy people about 200-250 years ago.  They are decorated with intricate paintings, designs, and carvings.  They are quite crumbly and unkept, but you could imagine they were quite magical in their time.

We were staying at a haveli.  It was an interesting chambered room.  We had a sleeping room which fit the bed (I use the word bed lightly), a sitting room, a terrace, and a bathroom.  Definitely charming, but definitely not to our level of cleanliness or comfort.  The ‘bed’ was a wicker frame with a super thin mattress.  It was a painful night of ‘sleep’.

Mandawa Haveli

We left the next morning for Bikaner.  On the way we stopped at a really magnificent and well restored haveli (restored by the french artist who now owns it). It was really beautiful.

Bikaner Haveli

We then made our way to a temple of Seth’s choosing.  I was quite surprised to hear Seth’s request to visit this temple, because it is a temple that is dedicated to its holy rats.  So, Seth, the man who loathes rodents, requested to enter a place where you have to take off your shoes to walk around a temple infested with rats. Curious.  The smell was abhorrent.  I think Dr. Rock (our travel doctor) would be horrified and was waving her finger back and forth tutting inside my head.  I definitely didn’t touch anything.  But, yes, there were rats everywhere.  They had buckets of food for the rats placed everywhere, and even pans of milk for them to enjoy.  Some of them must have indulged too much, because there were many dead rats decaying as well.  It’s interesting that even an animal who carries deadly diseases can be considered holy, while the dogs are blatantly abused.

rat milk

rat hotel

Which brings me to something I realize I haven’t mentioned. We’ve all heard the stereotype that there are cows on the streets in India.  Well, it’s not a stereotype.  They are everywhere, and they rule.  If there’s a cow in the street the cars will stop or go around it. They will walk into homes, food stalls, etc. And the cows are not your garden variety dairy type cow you find all over the US.  These are what we call Brahma Bulls.  Probably because the Brahamans worship them?  Though they are a bit prettier, they are no more intelligent.

Cow Road

There are, also, a surprising amount of camels.  I didn’t expect to see camels in India, but they’re everywhere.  They are used like donkeys, but for heavier loads, I guess.  So there are cows, camels, donkeys, and then there are the street dogs.  I feel so bad for these dogs.  Many of them run on three legs, because one of them is too hurt to run on. Our first night we were walking and one of the street dogs  decided to follow us.  We weren’t doing anything special other than not being mean to it.  It wandered around a parked car near a security guard and apparently the guy kicked the dog hard because he ran away limping and squealing/crying.  It hurt my heart.  The books, and many people, will tell you that you have to be accepting of other cultures and that it’s just different, but there are some things I refuse to accept.  Cruelty of canines is one of them.

We arrived in Bikaner and visited the Junagarh Fort.  It was pretty, but stark.  It was really big, though.  Most of the fort was stripped of it’s contents, leaving most to the imagination.  Once again, it must have been magical in its time.

Bikaner Fort

For dinner we found a place in our Lonely Planet guidebook, named Gallops.  Their logo was horses running through a horseshoe, and they served really cold beer.  Perfect.  Dinner was very good.  We started off with paneer pakora, which is basically spiced battered and fried cheese.  We dipped them in ketchup and a chili sauce.  That was quite good.  For dinner we ordered paneer butter masala, which is similar to tikka masala in the US, but with spicier black roasted chills. We, also, ordered shubnam curry which had mushrooms, fresh green peas and a cream gravy.  To round it out an order of plain naan was our choice.  It was a very good meal.

Gallop Dinner