{"id":805,"date":"2012-09-07T13:57:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T13:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2012-09-07T14:01:08","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T14:01:08","slug":"off-to-rajasthan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/?p=805","title":{"rendered":"Off to Rajasthan"},"content":{"rendered":"

We booked a tour with Shanti Travels. \u00a0I’m not sure how much of a tour it will actually be. \u00a0It seems like we’re booking a driver and hotels. \u00a0But, here we go.<\/p>\n

So, our drive from Delhi to our first stop, Mandawa was supposed to take between five to six hours. \u00a0Due 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. \u00a0So, it ended up taking us twelve hours to reach our destination. \u00a0So, we spent our first day of our tour in the car. \u00a0And we thought we would be seeing countryside once we left Delhi. \u00a0We were wrong. \u00a0We didn’t reach anything country until the last 45 minutes. \u00a0There are an impressive amount of people in India.<\/p>\n

\"Out<\/p>\n

\"crazy<\/p>\n

Mandawa was a small town. \u00a0It is known for it’s Havelis. \u00a0A haveli is basically a mansion built for the maharajas and wealthy people about 200-250 years ago. \u00a0They are decorated with intricate paintings, designs, and carvings. \u00a0They are quite crumbly and unkept, but you could imagine they were quite magical in their time.<\/p>\n

We were staying at a haveli. \u00a0It was an interesting chambered room. \u00a0We had a sleeping room which fit the bed (I use the word bed lightly), a sitting room, a terrace, and a bathroom. \u00a0Definitely charming, but definitely not to our level of cleanliness or comfort. \u00a0The ‘bed’ was a wicker frame with a super thin mattress. \u00a0It was a painful night of ‘sleep’.<\/p>\n

\"Mandawa<\/p>\n

We left the next morning for Bikaner. \u00a0On 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.<\/p>\n

\"Bikaner<\/p>\n

We then made our way to a temple of Seth’s choosing. \u00a0I was quite surprised to hear Seth’s request to visit this temple, because it is a temple that is dedicated to its holy rats. \u00a0So, 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. \u00a0The smell was abhorrent. \u00a0I think Dr. Rock (our travel doctor) would be horrified and was waving her finger back and forth tutting inside my head. \u00a0I definitely didn’t touch anything. \u00a0But, yes, there were rats everywhere. \u00a0They had buckets of food for the rats placed everywhere, and even pans of milk for them to enjoy. \u00a0Some of them must have indulged too much, because there were many dead rats decaying as well. \u00a0It’s interesting that even an animal who carries deadly diseases can be considered holy, while the dogs are blatantly abused.<\/p>\n

\"rat<\/p>\n

\"rat<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Well, it’s not a stereotype. \u00a0They are everywhere, and they rule. \u00a0If 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. \u00a0These are what we call Brahma Bulls. \u00a0Probably because the Brahamans worship them? \u00a0Though they are a bit prettier, they are no more intelligent.<\/p>\n

\"Cow<\/p>\n

There are, also, a surprising amount of camels. \u00a0I didn’t expect to see camels in India, but they’re everywhere. \u00a0They are used like donkeys, but for heavier loads, I guess. \u00a0So there are cows, camels, donkeys, and then there are the street dogs. \u00a0I feel so bad for these dogs. \u00a0Many 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 \u00a0decided to follow us. \u00a0We weren’t doing anything special other than not being mean to it. \u00a0It 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. \u00a0It hurt my heart. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0Cruelty of canines is one of them.<\/p>\n

We arrived in Bikaner and visited the Junagarh Fort. \u00a0It was pretty, but stark. \u00a0It was really big, though. \u00a0Most of the fort was stripped of it’s contents, leaving most to the imagination. \u00a0Once again, it must have been magical in its time.<\/p>\n

\"Bikaner<\/p>\n

For dinner we found a place in our Lonely Planet guidebook, named Gallops. \u00a0Their logo was horses running through a horseshoe, and they served really cold beer. \u00a0Perfect. \u00a0Dinner was very good. \u00a0We started off with paneer pakora, which is basically spiced battered and fried cheese. \u00a0We dipped them in ketchup and a chili sauce. \u00a0That was quite good. \u00a0For 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. \u00a0To round it out an order of plain naan was our choice. \u00a0It was a very good meal.<\/p>\n

\"Gallop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We booked a tour with Shanti Travels. \u00a0I’m not sure how much of a tour it will actually be. \u00a0It seems like we’re booking a driver and hotels. \u00a0But, here we go. So, our drive from Delhi to our first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,172],"tags":[181,420,180,182],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-india","tag-bikaner","tag-india","tag-mandawa","tag-rajasthan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sethandberkley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}