|
|
 Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India – Arrived in Agra at 8.15 a.m. and got a rickshaw over to the Shanti Lodge. This is a great hotel, not a two-minute walk from the Taj’s east gate, perfect. We arrived there and instead of running straight to the roof, they have got the most amazing, unobstructed view of the main gate and the Taj from the sun deck.
I waited in the lobby. I had wanted to see the Taj ever since I was about 10 years old and now that I was really there, I did not want to see it until I was standing right in front of it. Rich went straight to the roof while I ordered breakfast for two of us. He returned and after looking at the menu, Rich noticed they served “special bhang lassies.” We had been in India long enough to know that special means bhang, so we each ordered one to go along with breakfast plus it would not hurt our first viewing of the Taj Mahal. 8.45 a.m. done with breakfast and our bhang lassies, so we headed over to the Taj.
I did not look up at the building and actually closed my eyes part of the way, until Rich had me standing directly in front of this most amazing building. I had seen hundreds of photos of this building but absolutely none of them, even the national geographic photographers do this place justice, so beautiful, and so perfect plus the morning we were there, there were not a lot of people, so it was people. Both Rich and I just sat down and stared in ooh! at the Taj. Amazed by the fact that such a beautiful building was built solely as a memorial for the Taj’s wife. We must have gazed at it for an hour then we walked up to it to take a look inside.
The closer you got to the building, the more imposing and more beautiful it became. Every aspect of the building is perfect – the inlay work, the stones, and the minarets, everything. We took off our shoes and ascended the steps up onto the marble dais, the Taj sits on. It was so relaxing, walking around sans shoes so peaceful. We entered the building and were met by a self-appointed guide – his self-appointment, not ours – who showed us around the inside.
The inside dome is similar to our US capitol building dome in sheer size and the acoustical effects are astounding. The Taj was constructed with perfect echo resonance a trade our guide was not shy to demonstrate to us. He took us to the center and showed us the marble tombs, one for the wife and one for the Taj and with his flashlight, he showed us how translucent the marble and inlay work was. The inlay work consists of precious and semi-precious stones brought in from all over the world, Malachite from Africa, Onyx this solid blue stone, diamonds, since been removed, red and orange stones. The guide placed his flashlight directly onto the inlay work as he moved it across the design, this one of flower. Each pedal of the flower lit up as light moved across, so amazing.
Our guide had a stand behind the wife’s tomb and look out the main door – the structure was constructed so everything was perfectly symmetrical in every aspect. So from where I was standing, I could look over the tomb out the door over the fountains in front of the Taj and actually see through the doors of the main gaits, a 100 yards away, one again flawless. We walked around the building a few times, awed by its beauty. Then we moved back down to the fountains and sat admiring it for a few hours.
We were definitely banged from our bhang lassie, so after a few hours, we decided to leave and go back to the hotel. Too bad, neither one of us had bothered to take note as to where the hotel was, so we missed the turn and ended up walking down the back streets of Agra. The roads were cobblestoned and as we walked pass residential houses, the children came running out saying hello to us. Past the houses and down the road to see the locals using man-sized scales to weigh out huge bags of rice. Pigs, goats, cows, children running passed us, everyone casting us, questioning and glances as to how we ended up this far into the back streets of Agra. Every preconceived notion I had about the third world was proven true during this enlightening walk. Of course, we were banged, so were getting more and more lost, so we found a rickshaw and paid Rs. 3 to get back to our hotel. The first agreed price was Rs. 5, but he drove us no less than 100 meters so I renegotiated him down to Rs. 3 upon arrival.
Up to the hotel roof to admire the view of the Taj and sit in the sun. At about 2 p.m. the full effects of lassie overtook me and I had to go to sleep, slept until 9 p.m., up for dinner then back to sleep. The Holi festival was the next day, so I needed my rest for the celebration.
5th March 1993, Pushkar, India – As there is not a lot to do in Pushkar, but go shopping, that is exactly what I did all the day. When you go into the shops, the merchant requested to take off your shoes before entering. As I had my hiking boots on the day previous, I did not get a chance to go into any shops, so today was the day. Rich and I made our way through the bazaar with me entering every single shop to look at these really, nicely, embroidered bags to give away as gifts. After three hours of our shopping, I returned to the hotel with two embroidered back pack sized bags, Rs. 40 each, 3 embroidered passport-size purses, one at Rs. 10 and two at Rs. 15. We sat around the hotel during the heat and ventured out that evening for another buffet dinner and to shop for used books.
6thMarch 1993 Pushkar – For lack of something better to today, we went shopping again, and I bought a waistcoat for Rs. 55. Now I could not wear it without a white button down shirt. So I bought material to have a shirt made as well. Now as the holy festival was in the two days’ time, the celebration where they throw paint everywhere and whatever clothes I wore that day, were going to be ruined. I decided to buy yet more white material and have a shirt made to wear on Holi.
On route to the tailor, I saw this local walk up to a white cow, that happened to be urinating, cup his hands under the stream and then drank it. White cows are pure, clean and revered. I had never seen anything like that before and I had a hard time keeping the glass of tea, I just consumed at the chai stall down in my stomach.
Later that evening, Rich and I packed our bags and where saying good bye to the family and their hotel when the son Sisha came up onto the sun deck we were standing on and handed his father some strings of flowers. The father then draped the flowers around the Rich and my neck thanking us and wishing us a good journey. They were the nicest people and deserved to have their hotel publicized to have some extra income.
We left and went to the bus stop to wait for the overnight bus to Agra. Why we keep taking this hell overnight buses? I will never know, but we really do want to get out of India.
 Pushkar, Rajasthan, India – Our bus pulled into Ajmer station, Pushkar’s sister city at 3:15 a.m., so we piled out and hung around the station until 4:30 a.m., the departure time for the first bus to Pushkar. They announced which bus was going to Pushkar and literally everyone on the station headed for it. Nothing like an early morning workout battling the Indians for a seat on the bus.
Arrived in Pushkar at 5:15 a.m. and after walking through the dark streets, we got a room at the Sunrise Hotel just down the road from the chai shop in post office. We rested while the sun came up and I chatted to the guy who owns the hotel. The dude is 20 and he and his father and mother lived in the room below, a real family establishment and the nicest people.
Pushkar is a Brahman village, which sits on this small lake. It is water, which is considered holy. Because it is Brahman, no brews, drugs, which are legal in parts of India or eggs are allowed in the city. Brews and drugs I can understand, but eggs. It makes the cakes the y serve all over town, a touch dry. They use banana instead. Pushkar is also known for its shopping. Nikki showed us some amazing stuff she brought when she was there.
Once the sun was up and we were not as delirious as we were when we arrived, we went for a walk through the main bazaar. There were cows and people on bicycles everywhere in addition to tons of embroidered bed spread bags etc to purchase. As we were walking, this man gave us some flowers to throw into the holy waters of the lake to help our Karma. Of course a Rs.10 donation was asked for which Rs. 1 was received. We wondered through the bazaar to the Brahmin temple, the only one in India, but were less than impressed with it as it was really run down in addition to the fact, I was still having Ranakpur flashbacks.
We had walked through the city for a few hours and during our return walk to the hotel to escape the heat of the day, we bumped into Neil, the British man from our hell bus ride from Himatnagar to Udaipur. Funny, how you meet these people here and there as you are travelling. Made it back to the hotel, where I chatted with Jassa, the hotel owner’s 20-year-old son for a while. This family was so nice and they really went out of their way to make your stay as pleasant as possible. We rested in the afternoon and ventured out in the early evening for the first and only, all you can eat dinner we had found in India. The restaurant owners really know how to make some money. Met Neil at dinner and once we were all finished, went to a lakeside café to drink tea and watch the sunset over Pushkar.
Pushkar is a total hippie city. Rich and I said numerous things to each other that we both felt like we were back in Berkeley. Only a degree or two stronger, the hippie parents with their children, Jasmine and Moonbeam were definitely all over the city and we even saw Karen, the drug addict, we had met in Udaipur walking down the street. When I spotted her, I went running to Rich telling him to try not to draw attention to himself as she passed.
 Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India – Nikki and I went shopping today and we headed back towards the larger havelis to have another look. On this visit, we went up into the roof and noticed we could climb onto the next haveli over the rooftop. We decided it added a sense of adventure, so we went through three other havelis entering each via the roof. There was only one rooftop, which was semi-difficult to maneuver but clinging to the balcony solved that problem.
These havelis were beautiful buildings but in such states of disrepair that the birds and bats had all taken up residence in the mansions. Nikki and I did a bit more shopping and I brought a camel leather hat for 155 rupees before returning to our room to pack my stuff for a bus ride to Pushkar that evening. I did stop at the chai shop and say goodbye to Hari and take a photo to send to him.
Rich, Nikki, and I vegged in our room for a final smoke. Rich and I were giving it up for a while and did ourselves right for our final final. We set up a few rules during our fast from smoking. One, we cannot go and buy it ourselves. Two, we cannot approach anyone who looks like they definitely have some, hence dreadlocks and hippy clothing. Three, cannot approach anyone with a nose ring. Four, can have if it is offered by other people but not by men only by women. Five, we must fast until May 1st, no smoking. After this final visit of the jayfay, Nikki escorted to our luxury coach where we bid her farewell. At 4:30m, our coach departed, both of us off our heads as we drove all night towards Pushkar.
 Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India – We met Nikki and headed into the city to get some breakfast. Our restaurant of choice was on the roof of this building overlooking once of the streets with a blank head balanced on two poles serving as our roof. So pleasant in the morning sun, so we sat up there and ate and read the papers for a while.
Nikki and Rich went to the bank, so I sat in the chai shop talking to the men who makes tea who I had befriended a few days before. Rich found me and we went walking through the city and eventually found one of the larger havelis which was opened to the public, so we had to wander through this large mansion. When we exited the haveli, I looked across the street where I spotted this Indian man wearing yellow turban, a traditional coat, yellow in color to match and dark sunglasses. One close-up look at the man in the yellow turban confirmed my thoughts. So I turned to Rich and said, “There he is; who, the man with a longest moustache in the world.” The school teacher reconfirmed what I had just told Rich and explained to us that this man’s father was the world record holder but he had his throat slit by Pakistani terrorists, so this man now hold the record for the world’s longest moustache.
He was a funny-looking Indian with his four feet long moustache all curled up in a huge circle, one on each side of his nose. We asked him if we could have a photo with his moustache unrolled and he said it would cost 25 rupees. We gave him 20 rupees and he grabbed each end of his moustache and stretched it out. Rich stood next to him and I snapped a photo but the second I had taken the photo, he let go off each end of moustache and sprung back into its rolled up position. He had put wire in his moustache for easier maintenance.
We walked around some more and eventually met Nikki for some dinner. Little did we know that this would be a real third world restaurant. The restaurant was almost full when we arrived, but no one appeared to be eating. We ordered and began the standard one and half hours wait for dinner to come. After 90 minutes of waiting, no one in the restaurant had been served yet so when one couple who had been there for over two hours inquired about their order, the workers who did not speak more than 25 words of English could not even confirm this couple had ordered any food.
Ten minutes later, they brought out this egg dish and tried to serve it to a different table, but Nikki screamed that it was her food so the waiter jumped and brought the plate to her. The whole serving turned out to be a fiasco. They had cooked the wrong orders and most people did not get any food. Chapatis were being passed from table to table, so Nikki intercepted one of them because her rice did not arrive.
After it was all over, Nikki was the only person out of about 10 people to get any food, so everyone else got up and walked out as I grabbed the restaurant receipt book and wrote out our bill to ensure we were not charged for anything that we had not received. Your basic DIY (do it yourself) restaurant.
Camel Safari, Outside Jaisalmer, India – March, How did that happen! Have we really been traveling that long! A bit dawn and breakfast in bed again before getting ready for the morning ride to the next village. As we were getting up on our camels, Nikki has got a little upset and started making all of this noise and promptly turned its head around and threw up on her back pack which was strapped to the saddle. We wiped down the pack but needless to say, Nikki was less than pleased about the whole thing.
During a ride to the next village, I was chatting to my camel jockey because he only knew about 10 words of English. We did not get very far with our discussion. He pointed ahead of us and said to village, rest, chapati, vegetables. He pointed to a house in a distance, house. Yes, that is a house. Is that your house I asked. Village, chapati, vegetables. I then asked him how many people lived in the village. Yes, village, rest, chapati, vegetables he responded with my timing in saying vegetable at the appropriate time. We reached a well to water the camels and my driver asked me what the well was called in English. Camel petrol station was my answer. May as well have him learn some complicated words. We rested and guess what, we had chapattis, vegetables, and tea for lunch before embarking on the last day of our safari. We were headed back to Jaisalmer. I guess we were running late or something, but we galloped most of the way back. Now it you not used to galloping on a camel and you do not know how to sit properly, you end up coming down on your gonads with each step of the camel. Let say, I quickly learned how to sit properly on the camel saddle during our return journey.
Upon our return to the golden city, we got a cheap 30-rupee room at the Green Hotel and cleaned ourselves up. We were tired and smelled of camel. After getting cleaned up, I went to the fort with Nikki to see if a 500-rupee room was available. Unfortunately, it was not. My plans were spurlging on spending $18 shattered. We ended up just sitting in the main sitting square drinking ginger chai and chatting to Hari, the music man.
All of us literally exhausted from our safari. Rich and I decided there was no reason for us to go to Delhi, so I ranged my parents that night for the latest California update. Evidently, the eight-year drought is over with a 30 foot snow pack up in the mountains, cool.
 Camel Safari, Jaisalmer Desert, India – We woke up as the sun rose not like we were not already up but it was too cold to come out from under the blanket, so we just sat there talking to each other while the driver started the fire to make chai. A half-hour later chai was served to us in our bed followed by a breakfast of toast and eggs. We were on another one of those colonial sahib tours of the dessert where we did not have to lift a finger.
We finally got up, got on our camels and started a morning ride. Now camels do smell and yes they make your inner thighs hurt if you are not used to them. After two hours of riding, we came upon this deserted city that the camel jockeys or drivers told us to go and have a look at while they prepared lunch. We walked around this city, more village in the hot sun and after about 10 minutes, it was too hot to tolerate, so Nikki and I went back to our camp. In the process of walking around the city, we managed to lose Rich but we just figured, he will make his way back to the camp. 20 minutes or so passed when one of the jockeys asked where he was and I jokingly responded that we had lost him in the city.
After another 10 minutes, the driver was a bit concerned, so he told me to go back to the city and try to find him. I grabbed the bottle of water in case he was parched and started walking back towards the city. Upon my arrival at the city, I just started singing every University of California song at the top of my voice thinking he would hear me and find me. After 10 minutes of walking around singing, I spotted him coming towards me from the other side of the city. It turns out no one had told him we would move camp after they dropped us off and we headed to the city.
We walked back to camp and after a short nap in the shade during the heat of the day, we set off on our camels again to our next camp site. A few hours later, we set up a camp between two sand dunes to avoid the wind and after out chapati and vegetable dinner, we laid out under the stars again watching them pass above us slowly. Tonight was nowhere near as cold as the evening previous but we were still sleeping with our jeans and boots on.
 Camel Safari, Jaisalmer Desert, India – I packed my bag pack and after buying the essentials for a desert camel safari: water, oranges, pot cookies and chocolate. I met the jeep driver and was off. I was in a jeep heading out through the desert to intercept and link up with the safari. Rich and Nikki were already on. The driver was this old man with turbaned head and my courier was much younger, about 35. As we were zipping along the courier slid his foot over and took control of the gas paddle followed by his sliding behind to the steering wheel, pushing the original driver who turned out to be his father almost out of the jeep. The father was balancing himself on the jeep’s platform on the outside of the vehicle while his son was zipping along the desert highway.
The son told me he was learning to drive and my rendezvous was doubling as an opportunity for one of his driving license. I asked how long he been driving and when he responded 10 days, I calmly reached forward for the handgrip and took to a mighty hold. A passenger with an Indian student driver, God help me. He was not that bad. The road had about as many turns in it as the straight Interstate 5 in California and he only managed to run one rickshaw completely off the road into the sand before we came upon the road works necessitating the father to take over because it would have been too difficult avoiding the members of the chain gang paving the road.
Indian chain gangs road workers are funny things. They are usually all women. The men get the hard jobs like driving rickshaws and the women get heavy-duty construction and road repair. These women were dressed to the nines in their brightly colored silk sarees, the ideal attire for repaving a road and each of them had a large bowl balanced on their heads, each shuttling these huge granite rocks from one side of the road to the other. I know I could not lift up one of those bowls and how they lift them up and down of their heads without messing up their silk sarees, I will never know.
We played the live version of the old video game Frogger when we hit open road again, so the student driver got a second chance to practice. They stopped the jeep a short while later where I spotted alone camel with its dark-skinned turbaned camel driver leading it towards the road. They told me that that was my camel and that I would ride the rest of the way to meet Nikki and Rich. We were in the middle of the dessert wasteland and I must have asked my courier half a dozen times he was sure. Nikki and Rich were going to be out there to meet me. He agreed with me each time I asked and at that he jumped in the jeep and drove off towards Jaisalmer grinding the gears as he went.
I went and met my camel driver who got me up on the camel and we rode one hour to the set of isolated sand dunes. I was the only person standing on them and I could see nothing in any direction, say if another camel safari. I sat on the dune and after 15 minut, my camel jockey pointed off into the distance and I spotted there camels making their wave to our dune. When they got close enough, Rich called to me, “Brad what are you doing here?” How they coordinated this one is beyond me was my response.
Everyone arrived and as the sun was setting, the drivers began to prepare our dinner of the immortal words of my camel jockey, chapati, vegetable, chai. Little did I know the potato, cauliflower and chapatis would be all we would be eating for every meal. Rich, Nikki, and I grabbed some blankets. Once the sun had gone down, I got ready for bed. The one thing about the dessert is it is so cold like mountainous winter cold at night. Sleeping that evening was not easy as the blanket was too thin and you absolutely had to pull it over your head because it was too cold to have your head out from under the blanket. The three of us just slept sporadically, talking to each other every hour or so, because it was simply too cold.
Indian Express 26. February.93 — Headline: Lathis, gas, and water cannon foiled BJP rally.
Article text: Scores were injured in pitched battles on the streets with security men firing rubber bullets, raining lathis, and repeatingly tear gasing people in different parts of the capital.”
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India – Rich got up at 6 o’clock this morning to call America and when he returned, I was told that the Delhi riots were front page news in the states. I got up and Rich packed for his imminent departure on the camel safari while I went and checked into another hotel for that evening. Rich left for his safari leaving me to wander the streets of Jaisalmer on my own for the day. I made it back to the fort to have a look at a 500-rupee room and tell them when we would be returning. Then I meandered over to one of the bastions and sat atop looking out over the city and writing. The view was fantastic. You got to look out across a sea of boxy sandstone buildings – the entire view giving you the feeling that no part of the city was planned. It was just built haphazardly. The view finally got the better of me and I exited the fort and went walking through the honeycombed mapped streets of Jaisalmer admiring each ornately carved balconies I passed. I wandered for about an hour until I hit the outskirts of town. The buildings were set farther apart and people were even parking their camels on the sidewalks outside their homes. I headed towards the tallest nearby hill assuming it to be the fort but when I climbed the steps to the summit, I was rewarded with the most amazing site. I could see the box-shaped sandstone buildings of city surrounding the base of a huge plateau. Above them, rising majestically out of the sea of disarray, set the fort atop its plateau. This was the first time, I stepped back and looked to the fort and it was amazing and incredibly imposing all at the same time. The fort towers over the city and is the one the most impressive sites I have seen in India. Amazing. I walked to the kilometer or so back to the base of the fort and sat in the chai shop resting from my sojurn.
As I was sitting there this man came and sat near me playing the “ratta-ta”. This instrument sounds exactly like that you’d expect to here in the book A Tale of Arabian Nights – no joke. It’s small, like a violin, a coconut shell at one end with a full set of metal strings going up a stick in the middle – each perfectly tuned. The bow looks like an archer’s bow and attached to the top of the arc are a bunch of bells which are jangled in time with the song being played. The music is soothing, not high pitched and piercing like most traditional Indian music.
The music man sat near me playing away and after a while I started chatting to him and buying him tea. After about 3 hours of our tea drinking, talking, and his playing, he asked me if, I would like to go to his house that evening to have dinner, meet his wife, and rehearsing what he played. As Rich was in the desert and I had nothing else to do, I agreed. I met Hari the music man’s name, at 6 p.m. and we walked through town to the outskirts to where he lived. We walked out the Fort gate to pass the markets through this wasteland to a rather deserted section of town where a mini city consisting of rudimentary made tents sat. Hari let me to one of the tents, pulled out a thin mattress for us to sit on and began to make a fire. This was his house, a quilt balanced on two poles opened at each end. He had three children, two daughters aged to 5 and 3 and one three-month-old son.
Upon our arrival the two little girls came running out of the tent to greet their father; amazing, this was the way they lived. When we arrived at his house, he was surprised his wife was not there. But he explained that they were filming a movie out in the desert and his wife had been chosen to be an extra in the film. Hence, she wasn’t done with the days shooting yet. We had tea and Hari’s brother and another friend came over and joined us. Hari is the teacher who teaches the others how to play and actually construct these instruments. Both his brother and friend said Hari was the best player and after hearing all three of them play I agreed. Hari pulled out his file of photographs and letters that people had sent him many who had visited his home. As soon as the sun had set, I sat there listening to Hari and his brother play for quite some time chatting to them whole time. After spending a couple of hours with Hari and his family, I thanked them for the evening bid them farewell, heading back to my room to sleep. I was leaving on my camel safari the next morning. I did talk to Hari about his possibility playing in our 500 rupee room, provided we could get it when we return from our safari.
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India – Our train arrived this morning where we grabbed a free jeep-cab for a ride to the gates of the fort; we were headed for a hotel actually inside the fort at the centre of town. We entered the fort and all of a sudden this feeling of being taken back through time came over me as I passed through the first set of gates and viewed the palace atop the fortified wall. Our path curved and passed through the next set of gates and we entered the main square, headed across it and down one of the smaller side streets. These “streets” weren’t more than two people wide in some places, and each house had a balcony of some sort looking out over the street. I actually felt like I had stepped into a true to life fortress city right out of Tales of the Arabian Nights. We found a room in a hotel inside the fort, dumped our stuff, then exited the fort and walked through the outlying city looking for food. The city around the fort is just as quaint as the streets inside, but they’re all a bit wider and a bit more modern. Those houses with balconies also had the most intricately carved designs in them, just like most of the buildings inside the fort. After our breakfast we headed back into the fort to explore a bit. We found out that the buildings with the ornately carved sandstone balconies we’d been seeing everywhere are called havelis. The havelis are small ornately carved mansion houses built by the wealthy merchants of Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer used to be the centre of the trade route from India to Western Asia and Pakistan from China, but with the partitioning and the Pakistani border being closed the city has begun to turn towards tourism to boost its wealth. That said, Jaisalmer is definitely one of the more relaxed cities in India with none of the merchants acting as touts screaming at you to come in their shops. Everyone is very mellow. Rich and I made it into the fort, and as we made the second turn through the gates the sounds of a turbaned beggar playing a traditional stringed instrument wafted into my ears. the music made the moment and I felt once again like I’d been teleported back through time. Our current hotel was a bit too expensive so we were looking at various other hotels as we walked through the streets.
[Mention how the proprietor got milk-tie cow’s back legs together to get milk]
One thing we admired was that the inhabitants of the fort had devised a very ingenious and efficient sewage/drainage system which looked like a rain gutter on your house, only their was set into the ground next to the stone sidewalk. We came upon the Hotel Sujrat, just down the path from the Paradise Hotel and through the tunnel at the Jain temple, where we enquired about a room. The hotel is one of the old havelis and the proprietor told us he had only four rooms to rent, then he led us up to the first floor. He said the room overlooking the street (with one of those rad carved balconies) would be free the next day, but he had this other room until then. He pushed open the double wooden doors and we entered a long hallway that led to the main sitting room of this suite. Windows looked out onto the havelis small courtyard and since there was no electricity we’d be placing candles on specially constructed candle holders in the walls around the room. The sitting room had chairs and a table and your standard twelve foot cathedral ceilings. he led us to a door off the sitting room and showed us this enormous bedroom. Down yet another hallway was the bathroom and as I was running around the room looking at everything the proprietor was opening all the shutters, letting the light in so we could appreciate the enormity of the room. This room would cost us Rs400 a night, but the one across the hall was the gem of the place. The proprietor said it wouldn’t be free until the next day and it was Rs500 (US$18) a night. These rooms were borderline opulent, but we decided not to stay in any nice room until we’d returned from our desert camel trek. The front room in this hotel had a balcony to sit on, along with two other windows that jutted out over the street like a sitting box. The room was immense, but set up more like a studio with a mosquito net covered bed on one side of the room and a small row of columns running through the centre of the room. (The room was big enough to have decorative columns!) There was a hammock strung between two columns, and there were intricately painted designs over the arches and down each of the columns – it was so nice. But since this Rs500 room wasn’t available we told the proprietor we’d return in a few days to find out availability.
 We exited and resumed our explorations through the fort. As we were walking I heard this “Oi! Oi!” being screamed behind us and when we turned around who should be running down the footpath but Nicky (our British friend from Bhuj), he blonde hair waving wildly in her wind. After hugs and hellos we found out she’d been in Jaisalmer a couple of days and was booked on a four day camel safari leaving the next morning. We talked about it for a while and Rich decided he’d go on the four day safari the next morning with my joining them out in the desert later, making mine a two and a half day camel trek.
Little did we know, but Jaisalmer is the equivalent of India’s version of Amsterdam, with government licensed bhang (ganga) stores selling everything from bhang lassies to bhang cookies. We each ate a cookie then sat at the outdoor chai shop in the main square just outside the fort gates watching the world go by. The thing about Jaisalmer is that the tourists don’t seem to have affected the local culture; the men still run around in their jodhpur pants and brightly coloured turbans. Did you know that it takes up to ten metres of material to make a decent turban? Neither did I. We ate at a local restaurant (which happened to have BBC Asia and MTV Asia beamed in by satellite) where I saw on the news that there were a couple of problems in Delhi with the BJP rally. There were just a few small riots with the police using water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowds, while placing the leader of the BJP party under arrest as well. Nothing to worry about – move along. (Right!)
<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>
Times Magazine, 8th March 1993
TITLE: Defending Delhi
The BJP distributed 500,000 leaflets urging demonstrators not to resist arrest or fight the government troops. The discipline of the BJP stood in sharp contrast to the chaos last December when fanatical Hindu kar sewaks holy workers defied to the Government Supreme Court injunctions and their own leaders in tearing apart the 16th century Babri mosque in the North Indian town of Ayodhaya. That action on a site that Hindus believed to be the birthplace of their warrior God Rama unleashed a wave of religious rioting across the Indian subcontinent that left more than 2000 dead. It was on the basis of that violence that Indian home minister S. B. Chavan was able to declare the planned February 25th protest inherently dangerous and ban it.
|
|
