Days 306-315: More Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra
Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Jalgaon, Ajunta, Ellora, Aurangabad
After completing our Rajasthani tour, we began heading south towards warmer climates and even hotter food. Lots of neat forts in this area along with some amazing cave temples.
Jaisalmer is home to an enormous, voluptuous, golden sandstone fortress that makes you feel like you’ve stepped back into medieval times.
Part of the curvaceous Jaisalmer fort.
The fantastic entry way is filled with hawkers of tourist textiles and postcards, just like they probably sold chickens and spices back in the day. The sandstone blocks are brightly polished from centuries of wear. The fortifications of the entry way include a zig-zag path through three entry gates that would give pleanty of warning of an attack. We couldn’t stop humming the “Prince Ali” song from Disney’s Aladdin.
Richly carved balcony inside the Jaisalmer fort.
There’s a style of house called a haveli, which tend to be richly ornamented, multi-story houses surrounding a central courtyard. The carvings around the windows and doors can be incredibly detailed.
The “blue city” of Jodhpur also had a huge fort on a steep hill. The walls of Meherangarh fort rise as continuations of the hillside and look impenetrable. Despite all the cannon ball impact craters, the fort was never taken. Some serious thought went into the design of the entryway. The main gate is turned at a right-angle to the approaching entryway to prevent an elephant from gaining ramming speed. They also have huge metal spikes embedded in the doors to keep elephants from pushing them open.
The Jodhpur fort rises high above the town.
In the fort we saw buildings, screens, clothing, and palanquins – all designed to keep women from the “lustfull gaze of men” (this quote is from the audioguide to the fort, but we couldn’t have put it any better). Indeed, women who feel like they don’t get enough male attention in the States should come to India. Indian males aged 10 to 60 have a culture of staring. We’re not sure of the root of it, but the media doesn’t seem to be helping the cause. Kelly has received much attention despite her efforts to dress conservatively, refrain from any PDA, and avoid eye contact with men (which is supposedly considered a come on). It simply doesn’t matter what she does or doesn’t do. Just going for a walk, Marcus is pretty much ignored and watches a wall of eyes follow Kelly down the street. The fact that she’s always in the presence of her husband doesn’t seem to matter. At dinner in Jodhpur, Marcus left the table three times to take some night pictures. While he was gone from 30 seconds to a couple minutes, without fail an Indian male came over to Kelly and tried to strike up a conversation – even with two plates on the table and her husband in sight. Now, Indians can be quite friendly, but there’s a distinct difference here. How much is that burka?
While walking in Jodhpur we joked a poem into existance:
It does not matter what you wear
Nor the color of your hair
It’s as though your breasts were bare
Or you’re walking in your underwear
Because the men will always stare.
The Blue City of Jodhpur. Okay, it might not have been quite that blue in reality, but Marcus is having fun playing with the light settings on the camera. They say the blue color is supposed to repell insects, but we still got bit.
A marble hallway at the Jaswant Thada cenotaph in Jodhpur. (Bet you thought you’d get through the day without having to use a dictionary!)
India is home of the enigmatic head wobble. You’ll know it when you see it. This is a confusing gesture that looks like a combo of yes and no head shakes. To make things more confusing, it can mean: yes, maybe, or “I don’t know.” Not exactly helpful when asking directions.
Rajasthan has a power shortage and every town has daily scheduled blackouts. These tend to be in the morning and can last from a couple hours to most of the daylight. They also vary by city, and most of the water heaters are electric. So after a few cold showers we got in the habit of asking when the power was out when we checked in. This brings us to overzealous staff at hotels and restaurants. At times we’ve had to wrestle food from the hands of waiters. After one inquiry into when hot water was available, we received a 5 minute explaination of which handle controlled the hot water and which controlled the cold. After this lengthy demonstration, the guy still didn’t think we understood and we had to usher him from the room.
Marcus inspects his coif in the mirrored windows of the Vanity Van.
Udaipur City is one of those otherwise neat towns that have the bad forture to have been featured in a James Bond movie and turned into a tourist trap. Every hotel showed Octopussy every night. Of course we had to watch it and hadn’t actually seen it before. Not sure how old the movie was, but the insanity of Indian streets (especially the autorickshaw driving) hasn’t changed too much.
The Jagdish temple in Udaipur is considered the most important Shiva shrine in north India an had a lot of detailed stonework.
Ladies taking a breather on the Jagdish temple steps.
Marcus took a cooking class with a couple from Cairns and learned to make a few of our favorite Indian dishes: palak paneer, dal, chappati, and masala chai (sweet, spicy milk tea). The actual cooking was remarkably simple, but the seasoning seems to be the key. Can’t wait to try these at home. The Aussie gal was a fellow light sleeper and had been brutallized by the noise in India and lack of earplugs available. She lucked out as we had an unused pair and were very sympathetic.
Marcus cooking up some north Indian delicacies.
Stamps in India have no adhesive and no amount of saliva will make them stick (despite our best efforts). They have jars of weak glue at the post offices that you use to affix the stamps to the postcards, but the glue warps the cards and you have to wait for 10 minutes for the glue to dry before dropping them in the box. Our apologies to anyone who gets a warped card covered in saliva and glue.
We had our first taste of “First Class” on a night train to Ahmedabad, but it did not taste good. The ticket did seem awfully cheap at the time. Turns out first class is minor upgrade from Sardine Class (aka 2nd Class Sleeper) that most of India uses for overnight travel. Dirty cabin, no bedding, very cold, no food available, and beds that are 6″ too short. What we were thinking we were getting is called Executive Class and is supposedly very posh, but we can’t afford it. We normally ride in what is called “3-tier AC Sleeper”, which means that there are three tiers of bunks on two sides of an open cabin and an extra pair of bunks on the other side of the aisle. There is no smoking, they keep the beggars out of the cars, and there’s usually someone wandering the aisle with food or drinks for sale. Very nice and quite cheap.
First Class wasn’t all it sounded like it should be.
Ahmedabad is home to the friendliest folks we’ve met in India. Just incredibly nice people, especially for a big city. Unfortunately, the pigeons aren’t as nice and took a serious dump on Marcus. We seem to be getting a lot of crap on us in India.
A neat old mosque in Ahmedabad built by Ahmed Shah.
Marcus is a huge fan of chai (tea) and, in particular, the spicy masala chai. It’s dirt cheap and tastes great and you can buy it damn near anywhere – except in Ahmedabad’s restaurants. Luckily, there are guys on the street brewing up big vats of the stuff and will sell it to you in a plastic bag for take-away convenience.
An hour south of the town of Jalgaon are the ancient cave temples of Ajunta. These temples were neat enough, but were made more amazing when you realized that they had to leave everything you saw (pilars, statues, doorways) in place as they carved them out of solid rock. The Dali Lama was in the neighborhood, so a few thousand Tibetan monks and pilgrims joined us and added to the atmosphere.
Inside of one of the caves at Ajunta. The guy in white’s job was to get rid of offerings of scarves and money as soon as the people who made the offerings were gone.
We, the thousands of monks and pilgrims from Ajunta, and a few thousand school kids headed to nearby caves at Ellora the next day. It was as if the caves in Ajunta had been a warm-up for the incredible caves at Ellora. In particular, the Kalish temple (which technically wasn’t a cave) was one huge sculpture that required removing an estimated three million cubic feet of rock. Just astounding!
Part of the enormous Kalish temple from above. Note the people for scale.
School girls checking us out while we checked out an awesome relief in the Kalish temple.
Monks in one of the cave temples at Ellora.
A few of the cave entrances at Ellora.
Man wasn’t the only creature making caves in Ellora.
Tags: India
Kelly & Marcus
January 29th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Great pic – my Ancient Civilization classes are going to love these once we get to India – I have to make a copy of the school girls checking you out – my kids will be amazed!
12 days and counting til you’re in CA 🙂
Love you xoxoxo
January 29th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Wally:
The beard looks good on you!
The “vanity van” pic was awesome. Good work. Good thing you guys didn’t happen upon the “child molestor van” is all I can say…
Looking forward to seeing you guys in a couple weeks.
JR
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:52 pm
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog for the last couple of months. India sounds so amazing. I love reading your entries and seeing the pictures, and also your experiences of the trains too! I’ve recently come back from three weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, which was great. I enjoyed their night trains, although my partner was too tall for them and got bitten all the time! Anyway your posts are really interesting and inspiring.