Rajasthan India

We chose to leave Nepal at Nepalgunj and enter into India at the border town of Rupaidha, Utter Pradesh. Neither of these two border towns attract many, if any, tourists so the one very polite immigration officer manning this office was confused as why the two honkies were in his office.

But at least India had a sign. The empty Nepalgunj Nepal immigration office above had just a scribble written in Devanagari; so we poked around for a while and eventually they rustled up some administrative somebody to check us out. It appears more or less an open border for many non-gringos.

To state that India is different would be the understatement of the universe. Having just finished a wildlife safari at Bardia NP, I thought I would snap a few pics of a wildlife safari on the streets of urban Rajasthan (one of sixteen states) India. Although the dogs above look dead, they are not. For some reason they think it is a good idea to take an afternoon nap and sun bathe in the middle of a divided highway. Don't appear to get run over though.

A goat having a chipati and sharing the bounty with a few humans as well. Something there for everybody.

A holy cow sticking its head into a Hindu street shrine for a few marigold petals.

Lush and green pastures abound.

As the safari continues in Udaipur, street vendors sell these bundles of fresh chick peas for 15 cents. One can (not me as the work/joy ratio is a tad top-heavy) shell and eat them and they taste just like, well peas. One then tosses the bundle of the remaining stems, pods and leaves to their best livestock or elephant friend ever. 

Except above, when Lilly was walking along with an unpicked bunch and this holy calf walked by, reversed course and demanded it. Lilly took evasive action which eventually included jogging and the calf cantering. The funniest part was watching these local women with baskets of bricks on their heads watching a holy calf chasing a white woman in a pink puff coat carrying a bunch of fresh chick peas.

Beast of burden hauling construction debris. The muleskinner's stick adjusts this burro's attitude and keeps him happy about his employment.

Horses.

Pigs that have found an urban wallow. Cool and comfy;

after a day of dumpster diving. Wonder what that pork chop tastes like.

Camel hauling busted pieces of concrete.

Just an incarnation of Ganesha wandering through the traffic.

So all of this wildlife leads to a lot of dung being strewn all  over the streets and vacant lots. Knowingly or unknowingly environmentally friendly, some people collect the cow manure and make nice little pies for cooking fuel in a time honored tradition.

I am pretty sure that you have not read my ponderin' about my lifelong love of trains back in 2012 in The train I Ride
Thusly, know that I reminisce about some of the epic train rides that I have enjoyed over the last 50 years.

I vaguely recall riding a train in India, but it may have been Bangladesh, ~40 years ago. What I remember most clearly about the experience was the buying of the train ticket. One thing that India inherited from the British and went full on, all in, is bureaucracy.

We had to go to this old school British Raj type of train station and talk to a gentleman that appeared a distinguished judge from the India Supreme Appellate Court. We requested to purchase two train tickets going from A to B. He quietly studied this enormous book for a few moments and then stated that the next available train was four years from today.

Huh?

We eventually resolved the matter for a small amount of baksheesh, but still had to wait a couple of days.

I am happy to report that things aren't that bad in 2020. However, we have tried buying tickets online at newfangled websites with no success.

We have also tried old school, waiting in confusing and chaotic lines at the *RESERVATION CENTRE*, sometimes filling out what amounts to mortgage paperwork (mother's maiden name?).
Then taking that form to another building for payment. Then coming back a few days later, four hours before departure for car and bunk number.

Gentle reader you are now almost on the train.

But if for some reason your train is not on the station's display board, you are separated by 50 plus bunks from your travel mate, not sure where to get off the train as the smaller stations are in Hindi or not marked at all or a myriad of other problems you can go to another building called the *TICKET COLLECTOR OFFICE*, where you will be greeted by a half dozen railway employees huddled around large journals that are stuffed with reams of papers.

Rest assured that in an hour or so, you may or may not be on your merry way.

Now we bite the commission bullet and go to a travel agent. Even that is a huge process, maybe even a whole afternoon.

Sweet reader, the bureaucracy of buying a $7.00 for three month India SIM card makes buying a train ticket seem like a study in efficiency.

Alas I digress. The reason we chose the uninteresting (and tourist free for that reason) Lucknow as our first stop in India was that it was the nearest railroad hub that had routes to the state of Rajasthan. Travelling by train is a quintessential India experience and not for the faint of heart.

India's rail network is one of the largest and busiest in the world. 23 million people ride India's rails everyday, the equivalent of moving almost the entire population of Australia.

There are about 8 train classes on India Railways. The lowest is the jam packed unreserved second class that has no seats, no conductor, no order and one might have to stand up in the boxcar for hours. But if you can put up with all that, one can travel hundreds of miles throughout India for pennies. I have never been on one of these.

The one above is called sleeper class. The open cabin has six bunks plus two across the aisle for a total of eight passengers in your orbit. It is non AC and those are open windows. It cost under ten dollars for both of us to go from Lucknow to Jaipur, an overnight trip. Usually every single bed is booked and the squat bathroom is appalling. People wander around, watch Bollywood movies and play Hindu music on their devices. At the stations, street vendors walk through the cars peddling chai, Indian food and maybe some key chains. On the off chance that you are in the market for a key chain.

First Class AC has only four bunks with close-able curtains, better mattresses, sheets, blankets, pillows, meals and less riffraff. Even so a bunk for an overnight trip is only ~$30. Last summer I paid Amtrak $172 for a seat to go from Baltimore to up the Hudson Valley, what 200 miles?

And I didn't even get to lie down.

We are now travelling in the winter so don't need the AC. However parts of India can reach 120 F in the summer and AC cars would appear to be a must. Lilly, who has visited India five times and lived in Kerala for a year, likes the sleeper class because of the open windows. She says the sealed AC compartments can really reek if you get a stinky cabin mate.

People go to Rajasthan, Jaipur in particular, for palaces, forts and royalty.

The swastika is a geometrical figure and religious icon in the cultures of Eurasia. The oldest known swastika dates to 10,000 BC and was found at a paleolithic site in Ukraine, possibly representing the flight of a stork. In India, early archaeological evidence dates swastikas to 3000 BC. Swastikas have been found at sites all over the world in many cultures. It meant good luck to the American Navajo and was used on highway signs in Arizona at one time

The word swastika is derived from Sanskrit and has been used in Indian writing since 500 BC. In Hinduism it connotes health, wealth, luck and general good fortune. It is quite common today in India and is seen painted in many places.

Historian David Ludden writes "the first and most important thing to learn about India is that there is not and never was an India".

The word maharajah means great ruler or king and many ruled over the hundreds of kingdoms, princely states, city-states, fiefdoms and tribal realms since time immemorial until unification, when the British left in 1947. The title today includes many maharajahs that are mostly mediocre and petty in real power.

But there was a time when the maharajahs really had it going on.

Our host at our guesthouse in Jodpur. The owner made us his famous goat (what they call mutton) curry.

I returned the favor the next night by making mutton and chicken paella.

Jodpur has many nice spice shops. Back in the day, these spices attracted the attention of the rulers of the Roman Empire and later Columbus. In one shop, I bought some fine saffron to make the paella. Like everything in India, a simple spice purchase had many (unnecessary?) steps, involving tests to determine the legitimacy of the saffron and ending with saffron tea. A civilized way to spend an hour, no?

I had to go to a Halal butcher in the Muslim part of town to score the goat for the paella. As usual in these parts, a foreigner coming to neighborhood like this, way away from the tourist sites led to selfies with his family and a few neighbors.

A tourist can get bombarded by requests for selfies. Many are teenage boys that want a picture with Lilly so they can tell their friends that they have a new girlfriend. They always ask to shoot us both, but always try to angle me out.... like I'm not going to angle the rascal so that I am front center of his memory. We have also starting charging 20 Rupees for a pic (28 cents) and that scares a lot of them off.

Panna Meens Ka Kund Stepwell in Jaipur. Stepwells are examples of the many water storage and irrigation tanks that were developed in India. The stairs lead down to below groundwater level. This allows allows access to the water source, the level of water on the steps depends on how active the wells and/or monsoon rains are that fill the tank.
Although mainly utilitarian, some stepwells are carved quite profusely and are quite elaborate. They had the extra advantage of being air-conditioning during  the heat of the day and thus served as
as space for social and religious gatherings.

From my wanderings in India so far it seems India has one foot in the high tech 21st century and one foot in the Stone Age. Winston Churchill feared that India, after the departure of the British in 1947, would slip back into, maybe not the Stone Age, but Medieval Times for sure.

Some Bollywood types shooting upcoming wedding pics at temple in Jodpur. Judging from their entourage, I'm guessing an arranged marriage between two mutually suitable families.

This Airbnb in Jaipur was sort of a trip (but hell, India is a full on trip). It was a havelli, (Hindu for an old school nice house) in a wealthy section of town. The host couple were elderly, well educated, well traveled and spoke several languages. They have a son that is a doctor in South Carolina.

The house was like a museum with a private temple, but the couple preferred it dark and cold. As we came and went we were sometimes not sure if they were even home or just napping in the back.
They fixed us breakfast every morning with very precise dining hours and we would discuss India/ world events.

As we were up on the deserted third floor, we sometimes thought that they had forgotten that we were even up there.
It may have been be the first signs of dementia for these gentle people, as they locked us out two days in a row. When you are locked out of your home in a wealthy gated community in India, you dread your options.

Jodpur is the blue city because the buildings are painted....

Water palaces in Udaipur.

India is less than 15% Muslim. For a minority they sure make one hell of a racket with their amplified call to prayer five times a day. The first one is mandated at just before dawn and the last at between sunset and midnight. (as you can imagine, these times are relative depending on what each imam's time keeping device is). One of the speakers on a mosque was near our hotel and dawn was about 6:00 AM. A creepy, haunting and moaning call to prayer it was. We are not talking the few bells that the Hindu and Christians ring.

Although the Hindu temples have a lot of incense smoke, clanging of bells and chanting. Just seems happier though.

Best Middle School Buddies Forever.

Love the Indian take on English. It is often a take on highly polite British upper class English

Stumbled upon the New Lucky Restaurant in Ahmadabad by chance. It was built 60 years ago on top of a graveyard. No one is sure who is buried there but the prevailing theory is they belonged to 16th century Muslims who followed a Sufi Saint. The graves are cleaned every morning and decorated with fresh flowers. The green stone coffins are scattered about the restaurant in a seemingly random pattern, so customers must navigate around the dead to get to their tables. The New Lucky has cheap and fast Indian classics, an Indian diner if you will and is always busy. We ate there about four times in our three days in Ahmadabad.

Osho Meditative Garden, Koregaon Park, Pune Maharashtra

Has any one seen Wild Wild Country on Netlix? It is a documentary on one Rajneesh, who had other aliases, but finally became known as Osho He was also known as the sex guru. 

When I was about 12, the Beatles went to Rishikesh to take part in a Transcendental Meditation training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The period was the most creative song writing period for the Beatles, where they wrote songs for The White Album and Abbey Road.

However the meditative training course did not go nearly as well. Ringo Starr left after 10 days and Paul McCartney soon thereafter. John Lennon then denounced Maharishi as a fraud and for taking advantage of the Beatles' fame for financial gain. Lennon was also pissed that the guru was displaying *inappropriate* behavior towards the hippy chicks in the Beatle entourage and with Mia Farrow as well.

If John Lennon called the dude out as a fraud, well then folks, that was good enough for 12 year old Ted.

But if Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a sexual and financial fraud, you will dig Osho's misadventures in Antelope Oregon and basically around the rest of the planet. 

Osho is dead now but his Osho International Meditation Resort is still killing it in Pune. The almost all  wealthy Western crowd can't get enough of this expensive balderdash. Check the movie out.

Thanks for stopping by