My entry into India was inauspicious. Before I even deplaned, the flight attendant announced my name, along with one of the many Mr. Singhs and Mr. Patels. Perhaps even a Chaterjee, although Mumbai is not a Chaterjee stronghold. The smiling flight attendant supervising steerage referred me to the smiling flight attendant responsible for the boldly named Upper Class, who sent me on the the ground staff beyond the gate. She broke the bad news "Sorry, Madame. Your luggage did not make the flight" and I threw her into the depths of confusion which I replied "but I have two bags." I was instructed to meet her, and everyone else from the flight, at carousel 4.
At carousel 4, her team mate tried to steer me to the counter, to start the paperwork concerning my missing bag. I refused, saying that I needed to wait for the other bag. I stood there, in a mix of exhaustion and dispair, wondering how I would survive without clothes. Fortunately, my wedding clothes were chilling out in Bozeman, Montana, awaiting delivery to Bangalore by an old friend and fellow guest. But, still, even the fast drying engineered fabrics I am wearing can’t get me through days of travel.
The Virgins - what else could the staff of Virgin possibly be? - tell me "bag will come" and they will deliver it to me. I explain, patiently, that I will leave at 6AM the next morning for…Dungarpur, which is a 120km drive from Udaipur. They still have that perky airline look but it is now layered with confusion. Dungarpur?
It is clear that they have no idea where Dungarpur is. No one does.
So I join the scrimmage at the carousel waiting for lesser of my two bags. A small cardboard box, actually, containing a 2 ounce tube of hair gel, a 1 ounce tube of sun screen and similar tubes of shampoo and moisturizer. They are in this box because the Transportation Safety Administration at Newark invented a new rule: liquids being carried on need to be in their original containers.. They insist that this rule has been in place since 2006. Like legions of travelers before me, I am forced to walk a fine line between self-assertion and not doing something thing that will get me barred from my flight. I appeal to the guard, saying that I have flown dozens of times since the rule was created, with these very same bottles. He does not care. I speak to his supervisor, and tell her that bottles like this are being sold to travelers across America, that an entirely new industry has been created to keep the TSA happy. She says something derogatory about not caring about the things they sell in stores and I realize that I have lost.
Groggy, because I awakened at 4:30 AM, , and pissed off, I ask for my bottles back and walk back towards the check-in counter, in my socks. The agent won’t give me the bottles until I’m "outside" - but I have no idea where "outside" is. We walk until we reach that magical space and he hands them to me. I trudge back to the counter, still in my socks, hoping that I don’t slip and kill myself but too annoyed to stop and put my sneakers on.
The woman at the counter is lovely - she tells me that sometimes they object to medicine that isn’t in prescription bottles, which terrifies me, because all of mine are in little baggies. Why the TSA would care about pills at all, and especially pills leaving the country, is unclear, but I realize that I’m in some place where people are free to create rules - and entirely new missions for their agencies - at will. And I'm not in India yet.
The woman re-appears with a small cardboard box, which she says is a better option than trying to re-call my bag. I drop in the offending toiletries, she hands me a baggage tag, and I go back through security. It is this box I await, feeling absurd. I will be able to use my preferred shampoo, but not change my clothes.
Finally, everyone is gone from the carousel except for the six people who are still awaiting their bags. I am about to give up, thinking "screw the shampoo" when my suitcase appears. It is the toiletries that have gone astray! I have never been so delighted to see my underwear in my life.
While the ground staffwoman is happy for me, she tells me that I cannot leave until I fill out the requisite forms. I tell her that I really don’t care about the toiletries. She tells me that I MUST fill out the forms. There are four. At this point, I have been traveling for more than 24 hours. The flight from London was late. It was crowded. Full. And crowded, full Indian is very different from crowded, full anything else. Lots of babies and toddlers, wailing and talking loudly. People visiting in the aisles. People changing seats. People standing when the crew wants them to sit.
The gay British flight attendant invoking the authority of the seat belt sign is simply no match for the 6 foot tall Sikh who has decided he’s hot and wants to stow his jacket NOW.
So I start to fill out the forms. I ask how they expect to get the box to me. She tells me, brightly, that I can pick it up at the Udaipur airport. I tell her that I won’t be at the Udaipur airport for 10 days - I will be 120 km from the Udaipur airport. She says, in that classic Indian syntax, "hotel will send a car." I respond "hotel will charge me 3,000 Rs to send a car to pick up $5 worth of toiletries." We are at an impasse until I suggest that she send the box to my friends in Mumbai, with whom I will stay at the end of the trip. That way, I can get to their house, empty the bottles and bring them home for my next trip, which assuredly won‘t be via Newark. She is delighted. Her problem is solved. She tells me to be sure to alert my friends to the pending delivery of the box so they won‘t be disturbed.
Now, I can think of many things that might disturb my friends, but a box containing shampoo is not one of them. Mama Jinx and her family fled the Berlin of the Nazis. They ended up in Cuba, since America wasn‘t doing Jews. Then, with all the other German Jews, on to Washington Heights when America changed her mind. Then to college, where she met her husband, a native of Mumbai, where she has lived for 55 years. Their family owns a restaurant next to the Taj hotel, where staff and customers spent a tense night behind shutters during the attack on Mumbai. No, shampoo won’t disturb them.
Finally, Virgin is ready to release me - to Customs. But, since all the passengers have long-since left, there is but one inspector, who is ripping apart the bag of some hapless Indian. She asks him if he could clear me, since I am a foreigner and have nothing to declare. He barks at her that he will not be forced, and opens his victim‘s other bag. Clothing is strewn everywhere. Two other passengers whose bags were also…delayed… join me. Where I am simply hungry and exhausted, they are agitated, because they have connecting flights to catch. And the Custom‘s agent responds, again, that he will not be forced. He continues his investigation of the bags. A second agent appears and we’re allowed on our way.
The hotel clerk is surprised to see me. Someone had just returned from the airport where they waited for me, paged me repeatedly - and then concluded that I was not coming. Except there are no pages in the baggage claim area. So up to my room, dump my bags and out to buy the toiletries I am more likely to find in Mumbai than Dungarpur, and, of course, a SIM card for my phone.
I am prepared. I have a visa photo and a neatly trimmed photocopy of my passport. Except that the photocopy can‘t be trimmed - there‘s no room for the signatures, and stamps, and other scribbling - and I need a letter from the hotel, on letterhead, signed by the manager, with my room number. Apparently, he also needs to stamp one of the forms. This means that I need to walk back, across the highway, to the hotel, get the paperwork, and come back. It is 90 degrees. I am hallucinating with fatigue. I implore the shopkeeper. He sends his clerk back with me, with copies of the requisite letters required and the form to be stamped. I explain what is needed to the receptionist, who consults with the hotel manager. He clearly is not pleased to have to do this. He reviews the sample. He looks at the form. He has a lengthy conversation with the peon, who is pointing at the various pieces of paper. Finally, he relents. He types the three sentences, prints, signs and stamps the letter. Then there is more discussion about the need to stamp the form, which he ultimately does. The Republic of India is safe. Another potential terrorist defeated.
Now that I have my phone, I place the calls that I have been told I must make - to momzillia of the bride and her much saner and more detached husband, whose only comment, which is the same one he made last month, is that he is signing checks. Except this time he adds that his wife is insane, which I‘ve known for years. He observes that Cookie is behaving as though she is directing an epic - and this from a man who knows what it means to direct. Mom had warned me that she would start babbling about elephants within 30 seconds so I divert her with my observations of how India has progressed in the 9 years since I last visited. My preliminary conclusion, reached before I ever set foot in the country, was that all they‘ve done is computerized the chaos.
The last time I was in Bangalore, Girish drove me to the airport, past dozens of under-construction residential towers, a sign of the new India. Since then, India has bloomed. It has sprouted a new middle class, employed in call centers, in bastions of outsourcing, on IT teams across America, in American universities and medical centers. India had moved from bicycles to motor scooters to Merutis. They use their cell phones to text and eat at trendy restaurants.
All of which is true. But…
I booked my flights via the Web sites of the new Indian domestic airlines, reputed to be models of capitalist efficiency as compared to the incompetence of the older, government owned airline. They emailed me confirmations, let me change plans on-line, sent me e-tickets. WOW. Until I needed to make one last change, to cancel one last flight, on a major airline that required me to call.
After asking for detailed information confirming that I was me, they cancelled the flight. Since they asked me for my eticket number, I was confused, because I hadn‘t received any etickets from them. So I asked them to check that all was well with the other flights I‘d booked with them - and had to have my identity verified all over again, only to be told. "Sorry Madam. Udaipur / Jaipur flight not going. Cancelled for operational reasons." When were they planning to tell me? "Sorry, Madam, (indecipherable) office in this call center not yet knowing that flight is cancelled." I am then asked if I would like to book another flight. No, I tell her, because that was their only flight at that time and, if need be, I’ll drive between the cities. "Oh no, Madam. We have another flight." But it will take only 5 hours to drive and I know they don’t have anything direct. "Yes, Madam, fly Udiapur Delhi Jaipur, 4 ½ hours." Which means they have me flying in a circle, with a plane change in between. No. So I ask if they could send me an eticket for my remaining flight. Of course! But what shows up in my inbox is the same thing I’d received before, which is not an eticket and does not have an eticket number. I point this out and am told "Yes, Madame. We don’t send etickets."
I immediately email a friend who is also going to the wedding - but who has never been to a country in the developing world and who has told me that he does not travel well. I have been giving him hard won bits of travel knowledge for the past few weeks and I now proceed to give him an old tip on India: feeling lonely? Ring the airline and re-confirm your flight. Can’t think of what to do? Drop into the airline office and reconfirm your flight. Want a break from sightseeing? Stop into the office and reconfirm your flight. Reconfirm your flight as often as is humanly possible - and you will lower the odds of showing up for a flight that has been cancelled.
I am now off to the medical store to replace my toiletries, which I do with surprising ease, even finding the brands I use. This is the new India, a place where international brands shout high status from store shelves.
There is, however, one product I do not bother looking for - self-tanning lotion, because the idea that anyone would want darker skin simply does not exist in a culture that prizes fairness. When both my friends said that they would get "spray tans" so they would look their best in the bright colored clothing we will wear to some nights of the wedding, I knew that I would be at a disadvantage, because I would be traveling for several weeks before the event, and thus would be pasty beneath my sunscreen. In other words, I would look like a Parsi, the way I always do. But now, all hope is lost - unless I get to a place with email and ask my friends to toss a tube into their luggage. Self-tanning lotion. India. Talk about an error message!
I had booked a 6AM flight for Udaipur the next morning, knowing that jet lag and travel exhaustion would work in my favor. I go to sleep at the unimaginable hour of 6PM, and awaken at 2:30 AM, with plenty of time to catch my flight.
For the first time in years, I need to check luggage. Virgin tells you that you can carry on only a bag weighing 6 kilos, which is what I remember from flying them en route to Iran. I emailed - and called - to make sure that this was really the rule and was assured that, yes, it is strictly enforced. Virgins lie.
Security in Mumbai does not care about liquids but metal manicure implements are risky so I toss mine into my suitcase. I had already stored the AA batteries needed by my mouse because the long-standing Indian phobia about batteries apparently still exists, but has grown more nuanced, another accommodation to the new India without giving up the old.
While leafing through my guidebook, I read that security in Udaipur is strict about batteries in carry-on. No, I thought, this cannot still be, as a memory comes flooding back, of a well dressed French woman grabbing her camera batteries from the functionary who is so busy writing out a receipt, a process that is taking so long that she will miss her flight - and flinging across the waiting room, then announcing "I have no batteries. Give me my ticket!"
I immediately emailed my friends in Mumbai - and was told that this is not an issue in modern Mumbai - but one never knows what the situation is in other places. I post a question on the TripAdvisor Rajastan forum, and am assured that this is old information. But I hear the Virgin flight crew announce that laptop and camera and cell phone batteries can be carried on domestic flights - but not AAs. India’s peculiar logic once again.
Having dealt with airline security three times in three different countries in the last 24 hours, I am intrigued by how differently each interprets the same threats. America worries about liquids, shoes and laptops. Britain is concerned with boots and liquids but not laptops while India cares about sharps and AAs.
I go the Security and am then delighted to avoid the large line because I must go through women’s security, where no one waits.
There is a common waiting area and, in front of the doors to the tarmac, a series of gates, like the ones on the field at a racetrack. As each flight is called - and there are many at this early hour - a plaque with the flight number and destination is mounted above a gate, the passengers rush through it, and then it is updated. This is quick and efficient and leads you to an outdoor area filled with buses, each taking you to your plane. Here, again, is a dispatcher and there are signs along sections of the area, indicating the destination. It is breathtakingly efficient and almost choreographed in its motion.
I land in Udaipur 70 minutes later in the brisk desert air - it is 11 degrees Celsius. I immediately find my driver and we cover the 120 km to Dungarpur in about two hours. It is on this ride that I see timeless, rural India, the India whose image is strong in my mind but difficult to find when traveling. Sometimes you pass it on a bus or train but increasingly you fly from one modern city to another so, seeing the people who have migrated to the city, seeing the ways of the city, but never seeing village India.
On this morning, I see women walking with a practiced slow and stately gait down the road with one or two large metal jars of water balanced on their head. And then you see the wells, modern with metal pump handles, arrayed periodically along the road. The road is a good one, with two lanes of traffic in each direction, separated by a barrier, which eliminates the breathless excitement of watching your car speed headfirst towards an on-coming vehicle while passing a slow moving vehicle. In the post-Mumbai era, everyone is concerned with terrorism but travel authorities point out how vastly more dangerous the roads are, so I am glad to see this major safety improvement.
The vehicles are overwhelmingly trucks, moving goods south. There is the occasional motorcycle, some buses and the very rare car. Along the road, people walk, which is one of the lingering images of India - people walking along roads, at all hours, in all places. They are wrapped in wool shawls against the morning chill, heads covered, rail thin.
The land is dry but with crops being cultivated. There are shops clustered along the road now and then to serve the truck drivers, whose vehicles are small and, sometimes, frighteningly overloaded. When we turn off the main road, we see the three wheeled taxis formerly known as auto rickshaws and now called TukTuks, as they are in Thailand. They are cheap, generally transporting an unbelievable number of people and dangerous, because with three wheels, they are unstable in a collision, and their thin metal is no match for a car or truck. As soon as I see them, my body wants to leave the plush car I’m riding in and jump into a TukTuk, to breath the country air, to leave my bubble, to partake of India.
I have booked three nights at a Heritage Hotel - these are old palaces or forts or merchants’ mansions that have been converted to luxury hotels. It is the only place to stay in Dungarpur and Dungarpur is the only place within striking distance of the Bhil festival. It is a lovely 19th century palace, with the royals still in residence, on the side of a lake, in a bird sanctuary. Today I watched a bird soaring on air currents across the blue sky, so high that it vanished sometimes into the vapor, almost impossible to see.
Dungarpur is in the Bhil heartland. They are known as archers, who helped various Rajas secure their kingdoms for hundreds of years, and as stone masons, who build Hindu temples as far away as London. This palace has wonderful carvings, not only on the walls but on a structure built inside one of the courtyards. The wall of the open-air dining courtyard has patterns made from black and white stones, with a temple-like tower in the center. It also has an enormous and magnificent central table, filled with water on which lotuses float and in-laid with semi-precious stone designs, in true Mughal style.
My room has a small balcony overlooking the lake and a wonderful structure on a small man-made island a few meters off shore. The grounds are well tended and the owners keep a number of large, friendly dogs who want only to be petted and scratched. I spent a lazy day, sleeping off my jet lag called and sitting on my balcony reading and blogging. It reminds me of the Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur, where I spent two days years ago, doing much the same - except then I could not leave, because Udaipur was under 24 hour curfew and I picked the Lake Palace because it seemed the ideal place to wait for my flight out. Because it is an old stone mansion, built for the heat, it is incredibly cold inside, many degrees colder than outside. I pull out my down sweater, worn to the airport, and sit with it thrown over my shoulders.
I awaken on my first real day of holiday with a head cold, the legacy of my flight. The man seated behind me coughed and sneezed for hours, and I knew I was doomed. While there are many things to hate about air travel - the cramped seats, the bad food, the long flights - those are temporary inconveniences compared to starting every vacation with a bad cold. I packed meds for it, I prepared for it, but still I am disheartened and immediately start popping Sudafed in an effort to contain it.
I walk into town, which is much larger than it looks, and very busy, with rows of food sellers, Hindu and Muslim temples and the usual manner of shops. The town is surprisingly dusty and even polluted - I see a few people walking with bandanas over their nose and mouth. With memories of the pollution blocking the sun in Delhi, I have brought a real mask to wear there, to protect my lungs. I suspect I will not be the only person wearing one. New India puts in an appearance here, in the almost incomprehensible signs touting finishing schools which, I can only assume, would qualify someone to work in a call center, and in the signs offering training in computers - offered by Ethical Hacker.
I take a TukTuk up to the site for which Dungarpur is famous, the Juna Mahal, a 13th century palace high on a hill overlooking the town. It is the ancestral home of the family that now lives in the Udai Balas, where I stay, which was built after a schism. At some point, one branch of the family moved south, established a new kingdom.
The Juna Mahal is 7 storeys tall, short, full of narrow staircases with very high steps and low doorways. You not only need to watch your head but also your shoulders, for those lovely scalloped arches bulge out at just the right height.
The rooms at the Juma have every surface painted, or inlaid, or mirrored or, or, or. It is considered to be the finest palace in Rajasthan. Because of its location, it is rarely visited so I have it to myself.
Some rooms have a mix of religious painting and hunting or court scenes. If you look carefully at the secular scenes, you notice that the faces are portraits, painted with great care and a different technique. These are portraits of the people who lived there, which you realize when touring these places and seeing the same faces over and over until you realize "Oh, that’s the Maharaja!" In the West, in a museum, they are simply faces, but here they are the photo gallery, the story of the royal family’s lives.
I spent time gazing out of the windows of the Maharini’s quarters, where she lived in purdah so, despite all the luxury and ornamentation, these views were all she saw of the world. She would hear gossip from her servants and from trades people but these few vistas, of the stables, of the town in the valley, was all she was allowed and it was very far away.
I prefer to linger, taking photos not only of the sights but also of the shadows. But the caretaker guides me through so I don’t get to set the speed.
The rooms have different functions: audience hall, bedroom sitting room - and Kama Sutra closet, filled with 50 tiny erotic paintings. Anyone who rails against decadence and pornography should study world art - and then take up a new crusade.
I would like to explore the residential part of the town beneath the Mahal, but it is far from my hotel and my cold is winning. Perhaps I will return tomorrow, after the festival, because this is a lovely area of humble buildings painted glowing colors, of goats sitting on steps, of people living their lives. I could easily spend a few hours trying to capture it with my camera (I wanted to write "on film" - but there is no film anymore. "On my memory card" lacks poetry. Hmm…)
I go back to my room and return in the evening to my perch. Tonight Hindi film music is being played in the off-shore structure, which is fine, because I’ve been fond of it - within reason - for years. There is also religious music in the dusk and calls to prayer. Plus the ever-present horns, the soundtrack of Indian roads.
As I spend time here, I wonder what the royal family won, all those years ago. Yes, they have a palace, and probably ancestral lands and money. But they are stuck in Dungarpur, without so much as an Internet connection. But this is what I always wonder about people who live out their lives in the small places, the backwaters of the world. What does it feel like? Do they think of escape? Do they feel trapped by the routine of small towns? Or is this the projection of the granddaughter of immigrants and thus genetically pre-disposed to need the stimulation and novelty?
This morning I set out for the Baneshwar Fair, the annual religious festival of the Bhil people and the reason I am in Dungarpur.
The Bhils are 40 percent of the population of southern Rajasthan and north Gujurat and are described as one of the most primitive tribes in India. I don’t know what primitive means in this context - or, for that matter, in any other. After all, the West dubbed much of the world primitive because literacy was not widespread and because people worshiped different gods. Within other societies, such as Indonesia, certain groups are labeled primitive - the headhunting Dayak of Borneo, and, if memory serves, the Torjans of Sulawesi and the Batak of Sumatra. So what does it mean here?
As we drive deeper into southern Rajasthan, further from major roads and, soon, anything resembling a town, I see mile after mile of dun colored arid landscape where only scrub and cactus grow. There is no water for agriculture, or for much else, because women and children walk along the roads hauling water on their heads. There are the usual mangy, emaciated bullocks, some goats and, rarely, sheep. The land is unrelentingly harsh and the people are uniformly thin, although that word doesn’t begin to capture bodies with a complete lack of softness, burnt dark by the sun. This is eternal, ancient India, where the signs of modernization are bright polyester dresses on the women and pants replacing dhotis on the men. While there were few signs in English in Dungarpur, here there are few signs at all and the question is literacy and any education.
In addition to the people walking on the roads, working in the fields and carrying all manner of things on their heads, we pass groups of people sitting by the road, apparently waiting. There are local buses, the size of small school buses, jammed with people inside and, always, many men sitting on top and hanging from the sides. Because the two way road is one rough-edged lane wide, there is a well established protocol of passing and yielding rules. But to accommodate a bus or a truck, the vehicle going the other way must drive on the shoulder of the road - assuming that there is one - and I wonder how often these heavily laden buses tip over because they are already unbalanced and then encounter just too much of a slant on the side of the road. Here, again, cars are scarce but tractors, used for transport as well as work, are more common and are the vehicles most likely to be overtaken.
The women’s costume here is the lenga, a full, long skirt plus a tight, short sleeved blouse that bares the waist and a shawl that winds across it all, the way the end of a sari does, and over the head. The colors are brilliant pinks and oranges and reds and blues, sometimes with sequins. Perhaps 5 percent of the women have their shawls pulled down over their faces. I I have never seen this before and learn later that newly married women pull the tops of their shawls down to their chin. After five years, they raise it to mid-face. Years later, it can be raised more.
While the sari is the costume everyone knows,, it is only one of three, traditionally worn in different parts of the country. North Indian wear salwaar kameez and duputa: baggy pants, a knee length loose shirt and a long scarf worn across the neck and flowing down the back. Because it is easier to wear than the sari, especially for working women, it has lost its regional association and is displacing the sari among younger, educated women. There are regional variations in how the sari is worn, involving mostly (I think) the part that is worn over the hair by traditional women. And then, in Rajasthan and Gujarat, there is the lenga. There are more local variations too - in the Kulu valley in the Himalayas, women wear a woven wool blanket like garment wrapped around their bodies and secured at the shoulder. ,
Baneswhar is 64KM from Durgarpur. It takes us about 2 hours to drive there, even though there is little traffic.
Tomorrow is the full moon and thus the climatic day of the fair. I had heard that it was "crowded" on that date, and on this, but could not get any more information about what "crowded" meant. Well, it means really crowded, according to the manager of my hotel - 200,000 Bhils will participate in the procession from the temples to the junction of the three rivers. That is way more people than I want to be around so I decided to come on this day.
It is hot at the fair, much hotter than in Dungarpur. It grows more crowded by the hour. I do not stay longer because, for all its exoticism, it is not especially interested. There are long rows of stalls selling the cheap, brightly colored toys that are a staple of every fair from India through Burma to Vietnam. There are a surprising number of stalls selling ironware, mostly the metal ends of hoes. And a few stalls selling furniture legs, probably for charpoys, the string woven beds of India. There are a few holy men and all wear clothing, unlike their brethren in other locales.
Not only am I the only foreigner, I am virtually the only non-Bhil.
The Bhils look different from most of the Indians you see in cities of any size. They are much darker and much more tribal looking. I’m not sure what that means other than to say that the Central Asian / Persian / Mughual blood that gives many Indians their "wheaten" or fair complexions, to use the language of matrimonial ads, is completely missing from their faces. In these people you see a kinship to the south Indian Tamils, black, tiny, beautiful people, the original inhabitants, I believe, of the sub-continent. When you see men bathing in the river, you realize that they are tanned but they still look distinctly different.
When we enter Dungarpur, I feel as though I am in a large, busy city because it is, by far, the largest and most sophisticated place for miles, complete with banks, 24 hour ATMs and real shops selling mobile phones and other sophisticated goods.
I am realizing, with dismay, the my cold is starting to visit my chest, where it will inevitably make me thoroughly miserable, so I am changing my plans for the next few days. Driving 5 ½ hours north to Ranakapur and then spending the afternoon visiting a Jain temple, followed by an early morning drive to a fort two hours distant and then back to Udaipur the next day was always an ambitious itinerary. Now it would be just foolish, so I will go to Udaipur and let this bloody bug determine what I do next.
By this point, devoted readers are thinking "What - she’s sick again? Didn’t she whine about a cold in Vietnam? And now in India? Some world traveler. Harrumph.
Well, dear reader, gentle friend, with full knowledge that it is the poorest of taste to delight in the misfortune of others, I will none-the-less repeat tonight’s dinner conversation.
An American couple sitting at the same humongous, magnificent inlaid marble dining table overhear the hotel manager ask if I’m still sick. As I respond that I will no doubt be sick for the duration of the trip, the American woman chimes in "me too! I’ve just figured out that I’ve got bronchitis." She and her husband spent the day in Delhi before flying down this morning and WHAM, her lungs are shutting down and she’s losing her voice. She doesn’t have the right drugs or know what to do.
I diagnose her, instantly, as a victim of Delhi’s notorious air pollution, which she said is especially bad due to a lot of construction. I then tell her about the wonders of pharmacies in the developing world - you can wander in and get whatever drugs you need without a prescription. Now, there is the odd concern about counterfit drugs, which is why I wouldn’t buy anti-malarials anywhere, and why I wouldn’t buy anything in China, and out of date drugs, which is a problem at Duane Reade too - but, overall, it can be a wonderful supermarket often staffed by knowledgeable pharmacists accustomed to prescribing and completely unafraid of being sued since the local concept of liability can be best revealed by a stroll down any sidewalk in town. Now, there are occasional surprises - apparently, in Ecuador no one has insomnia or, if they do, does anything about it, because requests for Restoril were met with a blank stare. But, overall, the medicine store is the traveler’s friend.
After listening to her tale of woe, I suggest that she consider codeine cough syrup or, if she doesn’t want to bother with the syrup part, codeine tablets. Life is wonderful without the DEA and the Rockefeller drug laws. I name an excellent non-narcotic cough medicine and ask solicitously about other symptoms. She is relieved, delighted beyond words. She, too, was sick in Vietnam and in all the usual cities and countries where the air is so polluted that it is visible as it goes straight for your respiratory system.
The downside of this, of course, is that I will need to wear my mask for most of the rest of the trip. And mine is no little manicurist’s mask, like the Japanese wear. Mine has a carbon filter, which is the least a girl can pack.
So, dear reader, while I have now placed myself in the mainstream of travelers with delicate respiratory systems, as opposed to those with sensitive digestive systems, this should serve as a lesson on the price of development in much of the world, air so bad that it cannot be tolerated. We heard all the discussion about clearing the air for the Beijing Olympics - but that was just a few days, and the citizens suffer the rest of the time, as they do in Bangkok and Hanoi and Saigon and Delhi and Mumbai and, and, and… It gives children asthma and other respiratory diseases in countries that lack the medical infrastructure to manage them. It shaves years off of their parents’ lives.
I drove to Udaipur this morning. The landscape that struck me as deep country a few days ago now seems relatively developed
The streets of the old part of Udaipur are narrow and hilly, with no sidewalks, buzzing with motorcycles, auto rickshaws, cars, cows, school buses, pedestrians and a very,very large elephant with Shiva’s trident painted on his forehead. It is hot. Rckshaw drivers approach and you need to bargain hard to get a remotely reasonable price "very far, Madame. Up on the mountain. (mountain? What mountain?). I am staying at a modest hotel, which, like most mid-range hotels here, is built tall, with the restaurant on the roof overlooking the lake. My room is all marble, with windows looking out on a wall. It is freezing inside, so cold that I ask for a heater, which I pray won’t catch fire because it is old and turned on and off by unplugging it- or so the boy who sets it up says. I turn it around and see a giant switch. Oddly, there are no pillows or blankets on the bed and the only other place to sit is a cot sized green marble seat, which is hard and cold and looks like a Muslim tomb.
As soon as I walk out of the hotel, a horribly crippled beggar scoots across the road towards me at top speed, but I dodge his outstretched arm effortlessly. You see a type of cripple in India that you see no where else. While some of it may be due to pre-natal malnutrition or polio, there are also people who cripple children, turning them into professional beggars. Those scenes in Slumdog Millionaire are, unfortunately, true. Poverty can cause astonishing cruelty.
The streets are lined with shops selling the cheapest goods: handbags, clothing, pillow covers and bedspreads. I am sure that some of the young tourists buy this stuff but it gives India an undeserved reputation for shoddy craftsmanship. .
While taking a break in a small tea shop, I am joined by an Australian couple about my age, who have been in India for months and are dying to know where I got the chocolate protein bar I‘m nibbling on, which I brought from New York. They long for a change from the constant ghee (clarified butter) and sauces on food.
The wife is, of course, recovering from punemonia,
In addition to the pollution from motor vehicles and fires, the streets are littered with cow dung, cow urine, doggy doo, elephant excrement and Dumbo pee - and ordinary dust, dirt and whatever is in the runoff channels on the side of the road. Now imagine all of that drying and being picked up by pedestrian feet or the wine and being inhaled and you will start to get a picture of the problem. I see a number of people with handkerchiefs over their nose and mouth and women with scarves bound tightly around their heads and across their face, revealing only their eyes. They may look like terrorists but this is pollution, not religion. I am attractively decked out in my mask.
Udaipur is definitely an "old India" town. I have the following conversation with the hotel’s staff. "Where can I find WiFi?" "We have free WiFi." But later, I am given the rest of the message "WiFi not working; connection bad." It is the pattern of the conversation that makes it Old India - it starts out so well, so confidently, so promisingly. And there is always, always, something left unsaid that sends you crashing down to Indian reality.
I decide to check out the medical store and am surprised that it is much more poorly stocked than those in Dungarpur. The shopkeeper tells me they take what is available and that is not much.
I have dinner at the restaurant on top of my hotel, which has a wonderful view of the lake and the Lake Palace hotel. The lake is not in great shape - it is increasingly choked with vegetation - but the view is wonderful. I watch a group of lemurs - five adults and 4 babies - play on the rooftops, groom each other and then settle into a nearby tree for dinner. While enchanting to watch, once you’ve been around a monkey, you don’t want to be anywhere near them. They steal things, snatch necklaces and, in the process, can scratch you badly. But, from this distance, it is amazing to see the young chase each other and jump across various things on the rooftop.
CNBC‘s reporter is trying to get the CFO of InfoSys, the huge Indian outsourcing company, to say that the American prohibition on companies receiving bailout funds from hiring H1Bs will impact InfoSys. The CFO keeps making calming comments but the reporter keeps pushing for a crisis. It reminds me why I don‘t watch TV.
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The City Palace is Udaipur’s pre-eminent attraction, and spent a very enjoyable 90 minutes inside. It is huge and magnificent, with public and private quarters, quarters for men and for women. Since most of the other tourists were on tours, I spent a while in a peaceful hidden garden several within the palace watching groups led by Indian guides speaking the appropriate language come up one staircase, walk their charges around the perimeter and then take them down through another door, with everyone taking photos of the exact same things. I will never understand this type of tourism, where people look at only the things they are instructed to see and have no time to wander.
In the courtyard of the palace there is an expensive, and very good, outdoor restaurant, which is a welcome change both from the buffets in Dungarpur and the backpacker restaurants surrounding my hotel. It is impossible to pick a restaurant when it is located four or five storeys above ground. The guidebook’s recommendations are best described as "sparse."
After the palace, I visit the Bagore ki Haveli, which is next to my hotel. The guidebook raves about it but I somehow can’t figure out what there is to see. There are signs pointing you to the museum which ultimately lead you to the roof. The only evidence I can find of a supposedly extensive collection of ethnographic articles is a map of the tribes of Rajasthan. I should have suspected something when I had to wake the ticket seller who, after taking my money, went on a frantic search for a ticket. As anyone who has traveled in India knows, if there is a ticket, 5 steps away there is a ticket taker, whose sole job is to punch or tear the ticket.
Some shops on the road to the City Palace have some tribal embroideries displayed so I venture in to one. The man immediately tells me "shop in back" and I am led down a labyrinthine passage to a haveli whose three floors are stuffed with Rajasthani and Guajarati tribal textiles and stacks of new bedspreads and table cloths. In the end, I am taken to three buildings like this. I am absolutely unable to perceive anything - there is just WAY too much stuff, all folded up and stacked on shelves. I realize that there must be more warehouses like this, which explains why this tribal material is so scarce in the countryside - and why there is so much pieced-together junk and fakes for sale. The proprietor is by turns boastful and nasty, and given to quoting absurd prices, which makes it impossible to talk about what I’d like to see or buy anything.
I return to my room to discover that the electricity is off "Coming one half hour, Madame" says the ever optimistic staff. Since they’d gotten the Internet working briefly in the morning, I was hoping to connect via WiFi because I’m getting emails from anxious friends worrying about why I haven’t uploaded anything. How do I explain that I have been, effectively, cut off from the on-line world even though, to most Americans, India now symbolizes that world?
Need I add that when I come back later, both the electricity and WiFi are working - but my netbook won’t connect? The problem is with the network, not with my netbook. The kid behind the desk wants to change my IP settings. No thank you. And, because I have somehow ended up with both a camera battery and a netbook in need of charging, I must decide which one to charge tonight. The room key, which is of an increasingly common type, disables ALL electricity in the room - it doesn’t even leave an outlet active. So the only time I can charge anything is when I’m in the room. I have only one surge protector so I need to decide which item will have unprotected sex with questionable power.
I ask about hot water, and am told that it is available 24 hours a day, which is completely at variance with my experience. I have been taking sponge baths in freezing water. Another of the nice young men at the desk replies " Solar power and today was windy so water not warm" - which makes sense for the second it takes for your mind to shout "What?"
Thinking that a walk will clear my head, I wander out into what I quickly realize is rush hour traffic. OMG! Two cars facing off on the narrow street, with one backing up to a rapidly approaching motor scooter - and a cow. There isn’t even room to stand on the side of the road and watching for motor vehicles coming in two directions, some at surprising high speed, and ensuring that I don’t step in cow dung is not what I had in mind. I retreat to my room and watch the news. Looking at the fair skinned news anchors, you would never guess that this is a country populated by brown skinned people. However, correspondents are dark skinned and ,not necessarily attractive, which argues for good content.
As I write this, News X is running a piece on "slum tourism" in Mumbai, which was increasing before Slumdog Millionaire and now is skyrocketing. The residents of the slums resent being treated like animals in the zoo. When people ask why I don’t take more photos of people when I travel, this is part of the reason why.
Ranakapur and Kumbhalgah - On the road in India
I am feeling well enough to flee Udaipur - or, more positively, to see the Jain temples at Ranakapur and the massive fort at Kumbhalgah. It is possible to see both in a long day of driving so I throw a protein bar, water and a few tranquillizers into my bag and set off. As I‘ve come to expect, the back seat has the shoulder part of the seat belt but nothing to anchor it to. I’ve stopped looking for, or asking about, the bottom piece. It just is.
It takes us a while to get out of Udaipur, whose "new" city I see for the first time. The streets are wider and the shops are better, there are restaurants at street level - and, in some areas, there are obviously expensive homes. But there are no hotels because there is nothing for tourists to see. Other cities with old quarters, such as Fes, provide hotels in both "cities." Istanbul pretty much confines tourists to the old city, which keeps them from experiencing the vibrancy of the new city on the Asian shore. Marrakesh provides beautiful hotels in an old city that is overwhelmingly clean. Unless you’re in a luxury hotel, you’ll end up in Udaipur’s old city.
When we finally clear traffic, we’re on a road in the countryside, which is barren but not as much so as the areas to the south. As part of my eternal debate on the roads of Asia - eyes open or shut? - I decide to keep mine closed and, at some point think that we’re going over an unusual number of speed bumps. Indian towns - or the rudimentary rural strip malls that pass for towns - moderate the homicidal traffic in one of two ways. Sometimes they install a speed bump at both ends of the strip, forcing vehicles to grind to a near halt. Other times, they put a series of metal gates across differing halves of the road, requiring vehicles to do a gentle slalom between them. Neither solution makes the traffic within the protected area saner, it just makes it slower. Horns still blare, scooters and cars and trucks and buses still jockey for position. Just more slowly.
Q. A road is barely two lanes wide, with traffic moving in opposite directions. A camel pulling a load is in one lane. How many lanes does that leave for traffic?
A. Two, if there is an unpaved shoulder, one and half if there isn’t.
When I reluctantly open my eyes, I realize that we are now on, essentially, a one lane winding mountain road on which traffic is, of course, going in two directions. And my driver is passing slower moving vehicles on blind mountain curves - at high speed. Every so often, there is another car coming at us at high speed and my driver pulls over to the side with barely a second to spare. He then becomes a devotee of the "horn please" school of driving for a while but relapses back into not using his horn soon thereafter.
It has been five days since I last blogged - it isn’t as though there is this wild nightlife - more that long car rides leave you exhausted and the day to day of travel just takes over. And then there is the inescapable reality that we’re slaves to our technology, as opposed to the other way round.
I’m traveling with my first Windows netbook - which appears to mean that whenever the battery gets low, I’m dead in the water. If I plug it in, it still drains the battery. So the decision I made to go with a 3 cell battery, which should provide 2.5 hours of life, is a problem because, if I plug it in when it is drained, it isn’t happy.
And then there’s the new discovery - Word isn’t compatible with blogs. I wrote 10 pages during the first part of the trip - and, when I finally got to a place that I could upload, it uploaded the whole thing as one enormous paragraph. I’ve been up and back with tech support, who suggested another Microsoft product, which I dutifully downloaded last night - only to discover this morning that I need to be on-line to use the thing. That’s no help. If I’m on-line, I’d just type into my blog directly. I need software so I can write posts that will format properly when I’m in places where there is no Net. I have a feeling that, as soon as I can get connected again, I’ll be downloading Open Office, which worked fine on my Linux netbook.
All of which means that, when I get home, because I won’t hassle with it here, I’ll be deleting all sorts of things that I tried - HP Upline, which lets you back up to an insanely high-security cloud - but which makes your boot time take forever. Since this is now my third cloud back-up service, I’m starting to think that this is a good idea that is not ready for prime time.
In any case…
I arrived in Kumbhalgah about two hours after leaving Udaipur. There are lengthy ramps up to the fort at the top of the hill. Something I read said that the walls are visible from space, but that’s true of the Great Wall of China so I wonder whether they just adopted the claim. The guidebook also says that it is visited by very few tourists, which is absolutely not true - there is a continual stream of tourists - mostly Indian and, while I’m there, no groups.
The walk to the top takes 30 minutes and people in all sorts of physical condition are doing it. The retired Indian military man who is making his first outing after double bypass surgery. The woman whose bones are pinned together and healing after a serious car crash, moving slowly with a cane. Indians, in general, and especially in situations like this, are a friendly, very verbal, people who will talk about all sorts of things that Westerners would never think of revealing to absolute strangers - like the state of their coronary arteries.
The morning air is cool and there are places to rest on the way to the top, so the climb is quite doable. The interior of the fort is simple but the view from the top is spectacular - there are temple complexes and these great, wide walls encompassing a very large area.
I’ve learned from painful experience that walking down long slopes strains leg muscles unused in those of us who walk on flat surfaces - you’re essentially "breaking" the whole time. After trekking down the inside of a dormant volcano years ago in Sumatra, I could not so much as get up on a curb for days afterwards. So I pay great attention to which leg muscles I’m using and get away pain free.
We then drive to Ranakapur, which takes about 90 minutes and takes me through fertile valleys (at least on Rajastani terms), some of which have sprinklers going. There are many small villages and road-side towns, working camels, goats and sheep and cows so it is an very interesting trip. At one point we pass an extremely deep water tank which uses a bucket system on a very long chain to bring the water up. This is not a single bucket on a rope but rather a huge rope with perhaps a hundred buckets on it, each of which will bring up water. I’m sure that it is powered by a team of bullocks when in use because there is now way that a human could pull up that much water - there is no lever system, as there is at local wells.
A tourist in India needs to understand that virtually everyone involved with the tourism industry has a way to make money from you in addition to their formal role in your trip. Thus, you’re really not free to eat where you want in Ranakapur - you’re directed, as apparently are all the other independent tourists with cars, to the same restaurant, so you know that either your driver or the owner of the cars is getting a commission.
The Jain temples at Ranakapur are second to those at Mt. Abu, but that’s a pretty high standard so they are wonderful. The main temple has about 1,400 carved column, each of which is different. There are far fewer "idols" than at Mt. Abu. And they let you take photos of the architecture, but not the "idols," which is a real change from Mt. Abu in 1990, where I had to settle for buying slides.
As with most temples in India, and pretty much everywhere else in Asia, you need to remove your shoes, leaving you, at the end of the tour, with the dirtiest socks imaginable - a trivial price for this experience. Again, as is common, you need to dress modestly, whether male or female. No short pants, no short sleeved shirts - shawls are available for those who need to cover. And, as is the case with the Hindu/Animist temples in Bali, menstruating women are barred from visiting. I’d be interested to research it, but, as I write this, I think that every religion has a focus on ritual purity - celibacy, food taboos, menstruation taboos. And, despite this, religion is the most divisive force in the world.
I don’t know much about Jainism, which is a separate religion from Hinduism. I know that they eat food without spices, are such strict vegetarians that not only don’t they eat meat, they also don’t kill bugs and Jain priests and nuns wear masks to avoid accidentally inhaling a tiny insect. The members of the religion have, as their last name, Jain, and the religion seems to be centered in southern Rajasthan.
We re-trace the route we took so I am treated to another hour of winding mountain roads where tractors are the predominant vehicle. I realize how far I’ve come from my early days of traveling in Asia - I’ve adopted the prevalent fatalism and watch the theatre of the roads with a fair degree of detachment. Except, of course, for those really, really close near head on crashes. I understand the odd mix of cooperation and aggression that characterizes driving here. Unlike in America, where aggression is naked, here the drivers pull over to let a speeding car pass and will let them pull back into lane when an attempt to pass is de-railed by a rapidly approaching car. Even though the only vacant seat with a seat belt is the one next to the driver, there is no way that I’m sitting in what is commonly referred to as "the death seat." Yes, the seat belt will prevent me from going through the windshield, but these cars are built from very thin steel so you see them badly crushed after an accident.
I return to Udaipur exhausted by the hours of driving and search in vain for some place to eat near the hotel. Overall, Udaipur itself is worth at most a day, with another day for this trip.
I catch an early morning flight to Jaipur, which is scheduled to continue on to Delhi. Note the word "scheduled" because, at the airport, those passengers are informed that Delhi is fogged in and they will be bussed from Jaipur. There are a lot of very unhappy people. It is a five hour drive and many passengers have connecting flights in Delhi. The airline staff lie effortlessly to the frantic passengers, assuring them that they will be in Delhi in plenty of time to make their 1 PM departure. I am skeptical.
At the airport I am re-united with the American couple from Dungarpur. She’s still sick. Apparently, they were booked into the cheapest room at the Shriv Nivas, one of the most expensive hotels in Udaipur. The hotel was so empty that they received a double upgrade to a suite with a semi-private swimming pool. They were sufficiently sick that they spent their three days in their room with room service and massages - and the lights out.
The emptiness of that hotel is telling - probably as much the result of 26/11, as the attacks on Mumbai are known, as the dramatic shift in the global economy. I know that one reason I had trouble finding restaurants is my decision to avoid high end hotels - and hence their restaurants because they are likely to be targets of further attacks. In view of how important tourism is for cities like Udaipur, this is not a good omen. If the only tourists who come are backpackers, the substantial economic multiplier effect of high end tourism will be missing, causing many people to lose jobs and income. I don’t know how you sustain a hotel like the Shriv Nivas with two tourists in residence.
The car that is supposed to meet me at the airport is not there so I take a pre-paid taxi. What is supposed to be a two hour drive turns out to be four hours along a fairly busy road.
The roads in Rajasthan are excellent - which doesn’t always mean American excellent, because local roads are too narrow, but surprisingly good everywhere. It is these roads that made trips like the one to Ranakapur possible as a day trip from Udaipur - a few short years ago, that would have taken days. Apparently, a Chief Minister decided five years ago that Rajasthan needed better roads and what I am experiencing is the result of his directive. This is impressive anywhere, but all the more so in India, where corruption and inefficiency is rife.
With only a few stops for direction, the driver manages to find the town I’m going to, Nawalgarh, After reaching the town, things become…difficult.
Nawalgarh is an old town with gateways and narrow winding streets through the bazaar. The roads start off paved, shift to unpaved and then deteriorate to huge puddles. The driver keeps stopping and asking for my hotel, is given directions, drives on a bit through the twisting streets, and asks for more directions. It feels as though we are driving in a circle. I am sure that he thinks I am insane. Finally, we see a sign for the hotel, follow it and, when we round the corner, there are perhaps 20 German tourists clustered in front of the hotel. This probably confuses the driver further - what on Earth are these foreigners doing in a God-forsaken place like this? - but he is happy to be at the end of the trip and see that there is an actual place that I’m going.
The Grand Haveli is a one year old restored merchant’s mansion in the traditional style of this town. Like the palace I stayed at in Dungarpur, it is a Heritage Hotel. Every surface, inside and out, is covered with frescos of Hindu religious scenes and floral decorations. There is a small outer courtyard, for the men to receive guests, and a large inner courtyard, which is the domain of the women, who were in purdah so they never left their homes. The haveli has three storeys, with guest rooms on the lower two floors, and terraces on the upper floors. I am given a suite on the ground floor and the first thing I notice is how cold it is inside. I immediately call for a heater. The room is large, with very high ceilings, so it doesn’t do much good, but it is something. Once again, I am happy to have my down sweater, which I need inside the room, not in the courtyard.
