BootsnAll Travel Network



Days 294-305: Eastern Rajasthan

Bharatpur, Sawai Madhopur, Pushkar, Jaipur

The western state of Rajasthan is a vast desert full of colorfully dressed people. The men wear enormous, cotton candy colored turbans and have huge handle bar mustaches. The women glide down the street in brilliant, multicolored saris. The holy sadhus roam the streets in saffron robes. Even the beggars are colorfully dressed. But we took pictures of other stuff. Doh!

We discovered that you don’t have to be in Delhi to get Delhi Belly when Kelly got pummelled in the wee hours in Fatehpur Sikri. So fully loaded with Immodium, we bussed it Bharatpur with it’s huge bird sanctuary. While Kelly recovered, Marcus rented a bike to cruise around the park on the look out for interesting birds. There were loads of egrets, cranes, herons, kingfishers, painted storks, cormorants, and the turquoise Indian roller.

The biggest bird in the park is the red-headed Saras crane.
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We also discovered that mosquitos are attracted to flourescent lights, which made hunting down the swarm that inhabitted our room much easier.

There’s only one reason to go to Sawai Madhopur: tigers. The town itself is remarkably uninteresting and the hotels are really overpriced. But it is supposed to be the best place to look for wild tigers in India. That was until a poacher spent the past six months killing most of the tigers in the park. We took two safaris to look for tigers, but only saw paw prints. Marcus thinks he caught a glimpse of a tiger under cover of brush, but he’s claimed to see animals before.

On the hunt.
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The park wasn’t a total loss. There were lots of peacocks, sambar deer, mongoose, white monkeys, and even a few crocodiles.
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We spent New Years in Sawai Madhopur and were impressed that a town so small could make that much noise. To be honest, it was just as noisy as any other night in India, but with more explosions. It was here that we finally figured out how the autorickshaw commission racket for hotels works. If a rickshaw driver takes you to a hotel – even if you ask them to take you there – then they get about 30% of the hotel room as a kickback. This happens everywhere in India and pretty much eliminates any chance of negotiating down the price of a room. Good thing we like to walk, but that doesn’t always work. We actually had a rickshaw driver stalk us in one town trying to claim he took us to every hotel we walked into.

The town of Pushkar is located around a Hindu holy lake surrounded by temples and bathing ghats. It only has 15,000 residents, if you don’t count the herds of very relaxed cows and pigs everywhere (no meat, eggs, or alcohol allowed in the town).

Locals taking it easy in Pushkar.
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Hakuna matata.
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It wasn’t just the animals that chilled in the town. Lots of hippies come here since it’s a nice place to relax and has good karma. Speaking of hippies, Marcus is trying out a new look.
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The sweets in India are killing us. There are sweet shops on almost every corner selling incredible varieties of sugary, fatty, doughy, milky treats (we’re drooling on the keyboard here). We’ve put back on all the weight we lost in Nepal (and then some!). In the picture above are sweet, syrup, fried dough balls called gulab jamun. Never cared for them much in the states, but Marcus is hooked. They also have some remarkable ice cream flavors here. We’ve no idea what half of them are, but they’re great. Rajbhog, gulabo, anjeer, and kesar pista. The last one is saffron with pistachios and is incredible.

Marcus spent about 14 bits on a shave and a haircut in an attempt to not go full-hippie.
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The local pasttime of pretty much every kid in Pushkar is kite flying. They manage to get these squares of plastic, wood, and string to incredible heights with virtually no breeze. The sky is always filled with specks of color. But the trees and power lines are littered with the broken carcasses of shattered dreams. Good thing kites are cheap.

The kite shops do brisk business.
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As we mentioned in an earlier post, the train system in India is way oversubscribed. The fares are very nicely priced, so everyone uses it, and things are booked out weeks in advance. We spent two full days trying to figure out a route for the rest of India with available trains and seats. We built up a itinerary of a dozen trains that we were sure would collapse like a house of cards. The nice thing about buying tickets, at least in tourist friendly stations, is when they provide a special window for people who don’t mind queueing (how many words in the English language have five consecutive vowels?). The window is usable by: senior citizens, journalists, foreign tourists, handicapped, and “freedom fighters”.

Marcus watches the sunset on the ghats with a local.
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India has got the newspaper business down pat. They are about 10 pages thick, have just the highlights, and cost 2 rupees (about $0.04). The only bad thing is that the only sport covered is cricket. We think we may have started to understand how cricket is played. There is a match on TV all the time and they go for days on end. The sport is a huge deal here, particularly the matches against neighboring Pakistan (going on right now).

A paint vendor puts on a colorful display to entice the artisticly inclined. We didn’t buy.
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You can make it little buddy!
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The “pink city” of Jaipur is the capitol of Rajasthan and has the most pernicious rickshaw drivers we’ve done battle with. Good thing Marcus is equiped with a pair of intimidating deadly weapons to scare them off.
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The city palace is the home of the current maharaja of Jaipur and had some remarkablely decorated doorways.
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Flower garlands are made and sold all over the place. This guy offered Kelly flowers, but as she’s gotten so used to ignoring all males that she didn’t even notice.
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The Hawa Mahal (the wind palace) was an incredible facade meant to look like a crown where the women of the palace could watch the goings on down below without exposing themselves.
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“I wonder what all the little people are doing…”
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In addition to having the coolest name, Jantar Mantar was a really cool astronomy park built around 1728. There were a bunch of enormous metal and marble instruments for following the goings on of the heavens.

An artsy photo of one of the instruments at Jantar Mantar where the observer climbs around a submerged hemisphere with the paths of objects inscribed on it’s surface.
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An enormous instrument that we’re still trying to figure out what it did. That’s a doorway at the bottom for scale.
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The ladies are big on bangles. A bangle vendor in Jaipur displays his sparkling wares.
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We’ve discovered that we can navigate some cities by smell. Jaipur had a sanitation workers strike going on when we visited, so that didn’t help things much. There are very public urinals all over the place. We’re not sure what the women are supposed to do, but men just have to sniff the air to find a nearby spot.

Marcus makes use of the “facilities” on a main road in Jaipur.
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Speaking of facilities, we’ve been on the road now for ten months and you would think we’ve seen it all. It was quite a surprise then, that Kelly had so much trouble in one bathroom. After using the western toilet Kelly looked for the flush handle. Not seeing a flush handle but four knobs in the vicinity, she tried her best guess. First guess spewed water onto the floor. Second guess, which she had to reach down next the toilet to turn, turned on the bidet and sprayed her entire face. After a bit, she tried knob number three and got hit in the head with a shower. Luckily this caused her to lookup, where she found the flusher – almost out of her reach. Despite Kelly’s experience, Marcus is now a bidet fan and thinks we should install one when we get home (as long as Kelly know’s which knob controls it).

We’re sure we’ve mentioned that the food in India is phenomenal. Each region has it’s own specialties and we’ve tried them everywhere we’ve gone. The best way to do this, we’ve found, is to order the local “thali”. This is a huge metal tray filled with samples of a few dishes complete with rice, roti (flat bread), and occasionally dessert.

Kelly’s Rajasthani thali in Jaipur’s finest rotating rooftop restaurant.
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There are a few menu items we weren’t brave enough to try.
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Only once in India have we felt the need to visit “The Hut” for a taste of pizza from home. But we had to try the local version of a veggie pizza that came with chunks of paneer (unripened cheese). It was gooood! Pizza Hut had a separate section cordoned off that was the “No Beer” section; it was empty.

There’s a chain of coffee stores in India called Cafe Coffee Day that Marcus thinks is great. They sell decent lattes for about $0.40 – if only Starbucks could offer such a deal! The shops are always staffed by about 6 employees and we’ve rarely seen more than a few customers in the stores. We can’t for the life of us figure out how the shops can make any money.

Lattes served with a smile.
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4 Responses to “Days 294-305: Eastern Rajasthan”

  1. Mom Says:

    Oh heck, give that ALU MUTTER a try, must be very flavorfull 🙂

    Marc, that headgear is more of a gangster look than a hippie look these days…. But the green was a good nutural color as long as you stay out of South Central!

    What about those cool caves in Ellora???

    Hugs xoxox

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  3. Lata Says:

    i am sooo jealous…wish i could see india the way you are. the food there is way better than here…fresh spices daily make the difference. glad you figured out the thali thing. that is the way we eat when do traditional indian style at home. if you get a chance try cumarn (come-urn) its yellow lentils that have been crushed and baked. i have never had it better than in india!

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  5. JTR Says:

    I here you on the rickshaw racket. The cabs and strip clubs in Vegas have the same deal. If you get dropped off by cab, they hit you with a huge cover that goes mostly to the driver; however, if you get dropped off at a nearby casino, then WALK over the the club, there is no cover…I hope this helps.

    JR

  6. Kel's Bro-Michael Says:

    Marcus, go easy on showing those weapons of mass destruction, don’t want the locals to know about the stockpile.

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