Jodhpur

Our hotel was a happy place for us, although it had the typical Indian ‘not quite finished’ feel to it (random wires and fixtures with no apparent purpose), overall it was had character and charm and even good service. Most of all it had a very impressive pool were we could relax apparently miles away from the chaos outside. Jodhpur itself was similar to the other towns in Rajasthan, however it’s imposing fort is by far the most impressive not only as a structure, but as a well thought out tourist site. Of the the many places we visited, the fort was the only one where it would appear that somebody (the current Maharaja) has given actual though to people visiting. It contains thoughtful and well presented displays, and actual interiors, not just a shell with the trophies located elsewhere. It has information notices clearly posted, and the only audio guide we came across, which actually surpassed the better ones of Europe.

We had dinner in a rooftop restaurant, and the view was reminiscent of Edinburgh, on one side the castle perched upon the rock, and the other a turn of the century clock tower, like that of the Balmoral hotel, however the noise and the scenes playing out below swiftly shattered that illusion.

Jaisalmer

We stopped briefly en-route, in Pokaran to take in the dusty fort and the RamDev temple. We were not the only people going to the temple that day, as when we approached the town we passed a small group of people, notable for the fact that the man in the center of the assembly was log-rolling in specially designed rolling attire. Hari explained to us, that the man was showing his devotion by completing a journey of 75km to the temple by this unique means of transportation and the people around him were protecting him from the other road traffic.

As for Jaisalmer, it was on the whole a disappointing experience. The town is in the Thar desert and was once a major stop on the silk road trading route, however being close to the closed Pakistan border, this is no longer the case, and is now home to a large military presence. It now has little to offer but access to the desert and a famous fort. What makes this fort famous is twofold, it is inhabited as a small fortified city, with property passed down through generations, and due to neglect and modern pressures it is collapsing.

The inhabitants of the fort, after losing their livelihoods with the closing of the border (in 1947), turned to tourism, this led the fort to be turned into a collection of guesthouses, restaurants and tat-shops a conversion done with little sympathy for the forts ambiance. Worse still, with the tourists was the need for in ground water supplies and sanitation, this was done with the traditional indian work ethic, so now millions of gallons of water seeps into the sandstone base of the fort instead of evaporating from street level in the blazing desert sun. The fort, built using no cement and only sandstone, is crumbling catastrophically to the point where the guidebooks recommend not staying or eating there. In response the locals have erected signs along the lines of thanking Lonely Planet for making them unemployed, and missing the point that tourists may not like to stay in a guesthouse which is quite likely to collapse on them, if nothing is done immediately to fix the water issue. Enough said on Jaisalmer, lets move on to the camel trek

Khuri

The small desert village of Khuri is where we based ourself for camel trekking in the Thar desert. By small, I mean smaller than you can imagine, by desert I mean how can anybody possibly live there. It was a highlight in that we experienced an unspoiled culture, unlike anything else we have seen. Before dinner we saw an amazing dance show from a group of the villagers, which you may get to see too as it was being filmed by a Canadian travel show crew, if not you can see some of the photos in the gallery. Ah, but before that we encountered the camels. Picture, if you will, a landscape out of Lawrence of Arabia, isolated, with breathtaking dunes. Now imagine a farting, tick infested torture device which will be your method of transportation. The amazing thing about a camel ride is that you cover more area vertically, than horizontally, as you are constantly being thrown straight up, to land with a thud on the hard leather “saddle”. Sarah still cannot sit with any comfort, unfortunate for her as we were about to return to Delhi on a 19.5 hour train ride to Delhi.

The Train

The Train was better than expected in that nobody was sitting on the roof and it was not delayed for several days. Our sleeper berth resembled something from a WWII submarine movie, it was reasonably comfortable, but only curtains separated the 40 some beds making the screaming french children a nuisance to all. There was no food car, although at each station stop it was possible to get off the train and buy something at the station, in addition periodically someone would come through the train taking a food order (dinner or selling a breakfast omelet) or with hot drinks. Even when sleeping the ever present chai wallahs could be heard outside with their cry of “CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII”. The toilet situation however was somewhat grim. Our car had four toilets, three were holes in the train floor, the other was a hole in the train floor with some porcelain to sit on, there was always the danger of losing Sarah to the suction caused by the track whipping by below her.

Delhi

Delhi was as we left it, a chaotic nightmare. In fact we may have encountered the remnants of the same traffic jam we left two weeks before. We were only in Delhi to catch our flight to Bangkok, and I’m sad to say the efficient arrivals procedure is not extended to departures. Battling our way into the airport we had to screen our own checked in luggage (don’t ask) and then pass though security who insisted I had a gas lighter on me (I didn’t and he gave up trying to find it after a half-harted effort). A full TG316 left more or less on time, for the new Bangkok cobra swamp airport and a new set of adventures.

I have just uploaded (probably) our last photos for India. We arrived today in Hau Hin, Thailand. Here we intend to relax and reflect on things past and catch up on the blog. Don’t be surprised if there are no more photos for a while, we don’t intend on doing much while we are here!

Pushkar is noted in the guidebook as being the tourist hotspot of Rajasthan. It is a holy city set on a lake, surrounded by hills, with India’s only temple dedicated to the god Brahma. Hundreds of temples make up the city, a place of pilgrimage for Hindus and hippies, though the temples themselves may be hard to spot with only a doorway and a shrine. We got there, and the place was empty! It was wonderful. I think people are waiting for the up-coming camel fair to make a visit, this also coincides with a holy-day where people wash away their sins in the lake.

Even if it is not the camel-fair, pilgrims (and tourists) can still take part in a blessing by the water. The lake is in the middle of the town, and all around it are sets of steps, or ghats, and the town circles these. Walking in from the market (which only caters for tourists as this is a place of worship and not one of shopping for locals), you take off your shoes at the top of the steps and immediately get set upon by holy men! Here is the deal… you get handed some flower heads and get taken to sit on a step. The holy man does some chanting and cleanses you with holy water – let me tell you there is not much cleansing about that water, a murky gray/green sludge. More chanting, this time with audience participation, and you deposit your flowers in the lake and your money in the hands of the holy-man. The money part is normal, an offering to the temple, but where a local would donate maybe 30 rupees, the holy-man will pressure a tourist for $100 or more – don’t worry we’re not that stupid! After that, you get a red thread from a temple tied around your wrist as a bracelet. This is called the “Pushkar Passport”, wearing this is a sign for other holy-men (with 500+ temples there are a lot of them) to leave you alone.

While we had a really pleasant time, mostly unmolested by pushy sales people and beggars, but somebody failed to mention that that city is dry (in the worst sense, no alcohol is permitted), not only that meat, fish and eggs are also forbidden. There are only so many things you can do with a lentil, and all of the eateries share a similar menu, bizarrely consisting of Indian, Italian, and Chinese food – let me tell you something else, Indian chefs are not known for their vegetarian Chinese or Italian food, especially since India has only one kind of cheese, tasty in a curry but tasteless when on a pizza.

The sunset in this town, surrounded by desert was spectacular, and our hotel was a former palace, tastefully converted. We had a wonderful time, and I had a haircut!

I’ve just uploaded two sets of photos Ranthembore & Jaipur and Pushkar & Jodhpur. We will write soon, but we are on the road a lot and pressed for time so we try and focus on getting the gallery updated.

Tomorrow we leave for our final destination in India, Jaiselmer where we will spent a night in the desert!!!

After rattling off the road from Ranthambore, we hit the main highway, and after a chai break we arrived at the Holiday Inn Jaipur. Yes, not exactly a converted Maharaja’s palace, but a sympathetic building just outside the gates of the old “pink” city, and one with an abundance of toilet paper and in room internet access.

Before continuing with our adventures let me tell you a little about the city. In 1727, due to lack of space, Jai Singh II moved his empire’s capital from the nearby fortified city of Amber to a newly founded location, to be named after him, hence Jaipur. Now the capital of Rajasthan the city, like Dehli, sprawls, but with a walled portion of the old city housing most of the attractions. This old part is named the pink city, when it was decreed that all buildings within the walls should be painted a salmon pink color, for a visit by Prince Albert (pink being a color of welcome).

We settled in and relaxed a little, for the first time since arriving in India, then Hari collected us to take us to a restaurant featuring authentic local dance (hooray). To Sarah’s chagrin the restaurant, named Indiana, was not Indiana Jones themed, but instead was everything I hate about that type of thing – mediocre food, with a mediocre show, and worst of all audience participation. Things only improved when a parade passed by outside, signaling the end of the Dussehra fasting, and we got a brief taste of an authentic celebration.

Bright and early the next morning we met with a local guide and attacked the sights. First of all the aforementioned Amber palace complex. An impressive collection of buildings made even more impressive by it’s setting in the surrounding hills. We had an insightful tour, learning, for example about the emperors 12 wives, and the logistics of dealing with them. This place, more than possibly anywhere else (including the Taj Mahal) seemed to suffer the ravages of foreign tour groups, maybe because it is possible to take an elephant ride up the winding path to access the buildings (we did not as our car could make the trip and it has air conditioning).

Then, after stopping to see the lake palace from afar, we went to the Jantar Mantar (the observatory to you and me). It is quite the place, built in the 1730’s by Jai Singh II (who happened to be a bit of a genius), the many bizarre looking structures measure, with amazing accuracy, things astronomical and astrological using little more than plaster and marble. Then onto the neighboring City Palace, unusual to us in that it is the first time in India we have visited something inhabited (technically we didn’t as the current royalty’s layer is out of reach) and getting to see some furnishings and artwork relating to the place (including the pajamas of the 7ft/250kg ruler Madho Sing I).

Now a couple of points about guides, there are two kinds we have encountered, the first kind it an “official guide”, such as the the one mentioned above, and the one mentioned in Agra. The second is an “official guide” we encounter when Hari takes us to an out of the way place, off the beaten path, an example of which is coming up. The first kind is knowledgeable and gets in the car with us and takes us not only to the sites, but stores on the way selling not-inexpensive handicrafts relating to the main sights. It has been revealed that these guides are on the payroll of a collective of local stores. The second variety hang around at these lesser visited monuments and more or less start telling you facts the moment you walk in. They appear to be knowledgeable but don’t really speak English other than the facts they have learned by rote, so no point asking questions when done they want money, whatever amount appears not to be enough. This is just an other example of having to watch yourself at all times. Everybody in the tourist industry here is an “official” something or other, but there always is something underhand going on and no real way to distinguish official from unofficial, or indeed if official means anything at all, since there is no policing of the term. An other example is the “Official Delhi Tourist Office”, there are many all over the city, but the actual real one looks no more official than any other and it doesn’t seem to offer any advice or information. I digress…

We went to the Royal Gaitor, which is where the memorials for the royals are. We pay our 20 rupee camera permit (admission free) and get a tour (from the second sort of guide). It was actually very pleasant there, well maintained, and the tour contained lots of colorful stories about the kings, and there was hardly anybody else there (apart from some boys playing cricket)!

I have been nominated to tell about the India portion of our trip through today, so here goes.

In Delhi the only real tourist site that we made it to was the Red Fort. It was built in in the 1600’s by Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal) as a residence. It was impressive but there are no furnishings inside so it is difficult to really understand how splendid it would have been. The furnishings of all of the palaces in this area would have consisted mainly of pillows carpets and wall hangings which have been either pillaged, destroyed or otherwise removed over the years.

From the front of the Red Fort stretches a street called Chadni Chowk. It has always been a bazaar. In historical times it was apparently beautiful, lined with trees and a canal running down the center. Now days it is crowded, dirty and a little more like running the gauntlet than shopping! If you stop you will be accosted by at least three shopkeepers and probably at least two or three other dodgy people as well. To get back to the area of our hotel (Connaught Place) we took the metro; it was unreal, far removed from the chaos above, it was clean, efficient and very cheap (about 12 cents), it is however very new and not much of the line has been completed, so it doesn’t cover much of the city.

We took an auto rickshaw (a three wheeled motorized vehicle also known as a tuck-tuck) from the prepaid stand in the center of town to a market (Dilli Haat) I had read about in the guide book that charges about 25 cents to get in. This was great because the entry fee keeps out all of the beggars and touts. It was exactly how I want a market experience to be. It wasn’t very authentic, but who cares! When we left we had to bargain with a tuck-tuck driver to get home. Our trip there was 45 rupees. To come back he charged us 80 rupees and when we wouldn’t agree to stop at any craft shops with him he tried to increase the price even more (drivers get commission from certain shops).

We went to dinner one night at a revolving restaurant which was fun, and surprizingly not too tacky. The food was good and inexpensive and the doorman had a huge mustache which pleased Andy to no end. It was dark outside and we could see Delhi sprawl endlessly in all directions. We also went out to dinner with Ashish’s brother Amreesh. We had drinks at the Imperial hotel. It is the fanciest hotel in Delhi and has a definite feel of old British India. Then we went to dinner at a place called The Great Kebab Factory. Imagine Andy’s excitement!

In Agra we saw a few different sights, with the obvious one being the Taj Mahal! It is very beautiful in person and we had a guide who explained all of the symbolism to us. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem that all “big ticket” sites (Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, etc) suffer from. Four million other people are there at the same time as you are. It is however huge, much taller than either of us had realized, no matter the number of people it still dwarfs them. Our guide seemed to enjoy Andy’s camera. He offered to take a picture of us in front of the Taj Mahal and then he ran around taking other random pictures with it for a full ten minutes! Our hotel was very nice(thankfully) and located right next door to a Costa Coffee and a Pizza Hut. Although, since this is India the pizzas have no pepperoni and no sausage, but you can get chicken or vegetable toppings. Andy had the chicken tikka pizza so he could pretend he was eating like a local.

Our next stop was Ranthambore National Park. This is one of the few places where you can spot tigers in the wild. The tigers here are famous for being friendly and are not afraid of humans. Unfortunately, due to poaching the number of tigers in the park has been reduced to only about 30. In 2005 the other famous tiger reserve in Rajastahan, Sariska Tiger Reserve, was proven to have no remaining tigers at all! Anyway, the road to get to Ranthambore is horrible. It is under heavy construction most of the way. In many places it is not paved and when it is the pavement is full of potholes. In addition it passes through many small towns and villages, each one unleashing a cacophony of traffic chaos (mainly in the form of animals, and pedestrians). It is 109 miles from Jaipur and it took us four hours! To go into the park you enter in either a six passenger jeep or a twenty passenger safari vehicle called a cantor. We were on a cantor. Each vehicle is allowed in for three hours at a time. We bounced and rattled over dirt tracks that whole time and only saw deer! I am not kidding when I say that my eyes actually were excreting dirt for the rest of the day. My face and hair were covered in it as well. I had to take a shower before we could start our super-fun return trip to Jaipur. Several other groups who went out at the same time did see tigers, so we were just unlucky. If I had known we were only going to see deer I would have preferred to just stand with a cup of tea in my parents living room and wait for some to come to the apple tree in the front yard!

After all the fun and games that was Delhi, we decided we couldn’t take it anymore and got ourselves a car and driver. The driver’s name is Hari and he has already made our lives so much more enjoyable. We left Delhi and went to Agra to the Taj Mahal. From Agra to Ranthambore to see the tigers.

The rest of the trip is as follows

Jaipur

Pushkar

Jodhpur

Jaiselmer – for camel trip through the desert

Delhi and Agra photos posted now

It has come to my attention that there is not a complete and accurate guide for foreigners driving in India. Here in full is my “Highway code for India”

1) Roads, especially in and out of cities, are of good quality and clearly marked with lines, and medians separating main flows of traffic.

a) The lines are intended for guidance only, in order to assist the driver to maintain a straight line, they are not used to indicate separation of vehicles

e.g. 3 “lanes”, depending on the vehicles involved can indicate room for between 1 and 19 vehicles side by side

b) The junction you desire may not be accessible from your direction of travel due to the median. If this is the case you should exit the flow of traffic early and form a contra-flow on the opposite side of the median until you reach your exit. To maximize choice for traffic in the opposite direction, you should drive in the middle to allow oncoming traffic to choose to pass on either the left or right of you.

2) Use of the horn

a) The vehicle’s horn is to be used only in the following cases

i) To indicate your intention to make a left turn ahead

ii) To indicate your intention to make a right turn ahead

iii) To indicate that you are on the road

iv) For any other reason

b) The correct use of the horn is as follows

i) Place hand firmly down on horn

ii) Keep it there until maneuver in point a above is complete

3) Use of indicators

a) Your vehicle must be fitted with between 0 and 2 functioning indicator lights

b) The use of the indicator is limited to providing entertainment for passengers of your vehicle, perhaps in the form of maintaining the beat for a sing-along

c) Intention to turn left or right may be indicated by use of the horn (see above) or as follows

i) driver or passenger (front or rear) may lazily place hand out of window as if to cool hand in the air

ii) turn

4) Junctions

Junctions have either of the following properties

a) “Give Way” – all vehicles on the road must give way to you and allow you free passage

b) “Stop” – on no account should you!

5) Vehicle capacity

The following vehicle maximum capacities should be adhered to

a) 3 passenger auto-rickshaw (aka tuk-tuk): 15 persons (including driver) in Delhi boundaries, unlimited out-with

b) all others: no limit, but guidance is that the older and more open the vehicle, the more passengers should be carried

6) Use of mirrors

a) internal “rear view” mirror if fitted must be positioned to enable eye contact with rear passengers

b) left and right “wing” mirrors should be folded in or removed, this enables improved aerodynamics, and allows maximum number of vehicles to fit in the road.

7) Passing slower vehicles

a) Indicate intention by use of horn (above)

b) look for appropriate space to move into (note, due to special situation in India, the space may be up to 1ft narrower and/or 3ft shorter than your vehicle

c) move into this space by any means required

8) Signals and Police instructions

Signals and Police instructions should be adhered to by all other road users, they do not apply to you.

9) Vehicle breakdowns

a) If possible move your vehicle to the middle of the road to allow free flow of traffic around you

b) If it is not possible to restart the vehicle yourself, attract the attention of others to stop and watch

10) Passenger set-downs, pickup and parking

Your vehicle may stop for any reason and for any length of time at a location best suited to the driver

11) Accidents

If involved in an accident, follow the following steps

a) stop suddenly

b) bleed

c) for emergency assistance dial the ten digit emergency service number appropriate for the service required and your geographic location

d) If a cow is involved, call a holy man

Well we had a nice flight to Delhi but it’s a hardship being upgraded to first class, we got over it now!
The first disaster of our trip struck. The man (everyone in India has a man for something) who was supposed to meet us at the airport was not there. I called the hotel and to cut a long story short, we took a taxi throught the streets of Delhi at 2am.
This taxi ride was quite the experience, the vehicle itself defies description, I have never seen anything like it outside India. It had seatbelts, but nowhere to fasten them too. I want to say we hurtled through the mostly empty streets, but I think the top speed, with engine roaring was only about 30mph. It was still fast enough to achieve flight at every speed bump. At one point I complained to Sarah that the windows were so dirty that I couldn’t see anything, unfortunately my window was open, there is a bit of a smog problem!
Upon nearing our hotel we encountered a cow problem, 10-12 of them settled down for the night. Cows have mainly been removed from Delhi, except in the area we chose to stay, they are unfazed by anything, so the taxi had to go out of his way to get around.
We got to the hotel, not only was it filthy, it had no bed linen, towels or toilet paper. The shower could only be used if you were actually on the toilet and didn’t mind passing the stream of water through the exposed wires of the water heater. We slept, and checked out. We are now in a much nicer hotel in another part of town.
Not really done much yet as everywhere is so crowded, and nothing is made easy. We are however, having a good time.

We are lagging in our postings, so I am going to attempt to distill our time in Spain to one post, without the aid of a safety net.

We arrived in Barcelona in good spirits, and hopped in a taxi to take us to our hotel. Here we experienced a phenomenon common to road traffic in the rest of Spain, not so much stop and go, as screech and hurtle. All Spanish cars are fitted with special devices which enable them to go only at 300mph, and come to a dead stop at the touch of a button. There is today, a taxi in Barcelona with an imprint of my face in the back of the drivers seat. As a pedestrian, you notice this at crossings, when crossing at the green man cars race from nowhere to stop an inch from your knees. When that man turns red, the cars will GO, crossing empty or not. Don’t attempt to cross on a flashing green!

Back to Barcelona. The hotel was well located and adequate, if a little odd (lots of doors to nowhere), and as we have learned with most of our other stays, not remotely like the website. We headed straight out to find some maps at the busiest tourist information center in the planet hours of queuing later, we decided to hop on the open top tour bus. There are two circuits in Barcelona, but both basically offer the same. Sit stationary in traffic and then head off to the outskirts to see not a lot, accompanied by a nondescript europop soundtrack and commentary such as “the building to the right is an office!”.

I make the city sound bad; there are fun things to see and pretty buildings, but unlike most of Europe, they are not concentrated in a small city center, instead you spend a lot of time in non-descript areas built for the Olympics.

We went to the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s oldest building site, a church under construction for over 100 years and not near completion. It was an impressive sight, but perhaps not so as Gaudi’s finished works (which we also went to see).

We also visited the Poble Espanyol, a typical spanish village, with typical spanish buildings, with typical spanish tat shops. It was built in Barcelona for the 1929 International Exhibition and is not as naff as it sounds. A little like Epcot without the rides. There were no people there so it was worth it just for that.

Now on to Madrid. It is overall a much more picturesque city than Barcelona with ornate buildings and wide boulevards. But we suffered here from the tradition in spain of Siesta. This is the ritual of opening and closing your establishment whenever you please to irritate me. A few things are certain, you will close for at least four hours in the afternoon, and you will not serve food before 8:30pm. I do a disservice in describing the complexity of siesta; it requires organization of the level of air traffic control to coordinate museums, galleries, stores, and restaurants in such a way that it is impossible for a visitor to do more than two things in a day and spend at least six hours a day figuring out what is open and when.

We ate cured ham (a pastime in Spain), possibly the only food available in the country, and decided to see three shows.

Flamenco at Casa Patas, Flamenco at a theatre and “Jesucristo Superstar”

The first was incredible, down a dank alley, to a restaurant you would not go to on just passing by; dinner at 10pm, and at 11:45 a little door in the back opens revealing a stage the size of a postage stamp and some little tables. The show was an onslaught of synchronized machine gun fire and splinters of wood. Two guitars strummed violently, two singers performed a sort of islamic call to prayer, and two men and a woman dazzled us with lightning fast precision moves, a lot of sweat and a fare amount of testosterone. This is where the locals go!

The second show was in a theatre and was like riverdance light, and a little more Dame Edna, than Ernest Hemingway. You can see my enjoyment in a photo in the Madrid section. The show is called Espana, and while entertaining, paled against the previous experience.

Jesus Christ Superstar was excellent and sung in Spanish. He dies in the end which came as a total shock to me!

We had two day trips, Toledo and Palma de Mallorca.

The first involved a 30 minute train ride to see a fortified hilltop town. The second involved an hour flight to see another church!

Both were fun, but I am hungry now so you will have to wait for more….