Tigers, Turbans, and Tirthankaras
Oct. 24: From Reallyreallybad to Reallyreallywet
I finally have a decent e-mail connection here in Ahmedabad (right next to Reallyreallybad, Garrison's Keillor's spoof on all the "bads" in this part of the world). We've already had many adventures, including the usual misadventures. For example, we just survived two train rides in 3rd class (only seats available): ten hours with AC overnight, and then 10 hours without AC today, with beggars and cows sticking hands
and tongues in the windows for a handout! Broke down and gave a guy without arms some rupees as well as a kid pulling himself through the train with his hands. I can now call myself a real Gandhian having traveled India in a third class railway carriage.
Highlight of our stay in Ahmedabad was a private tour through a Jain temple with two upper storeys and five underground storeys where idols of their Tirthankaras (saints) of precious stones are stored and brought out only on special occasions. Another highlight was a scrumptious Gujarati Thali, a vegetarian plate of individual dishes (with perfectly balanced protein) with delicious breads.
Oct. 27: I gave an endowed lecture at the University of Madras on Oct. 26. An unusually strong monsoon storm paralyzed the city and I barely made the last flight out before the airports, roads, and railways were closed. Eastern India gets two monsoons. It get rain from the Western monsoon that starts in the Southwest in June moves up the West coast until it hits the Himalayas and then turns east to dump 400 inches of rain in Northeastern India. The Northeast monsoon begins then begins in Oct.-Nov. and covers all off Southeast Asia.
Oct. 20 (Gail): After just one day in Mumbai (Bombay) we flew to Udaipur in Rajasthan
staying at a hotel on the highest hill in the city. It looked down on one of the artificial lakes. There had been a good monsoon so everything was relatively green. The old part of the city has narrow streets and great shopping. The highlight was dinner and dancing
entertainment at the Lake Palace Hotel (a former Maharaja’s palace). It is situated in the middle of the lake and this time we took a boat to it. There is often drought in Rajasthan so the last time I was here in 1988 I road a camel to the hotel.
In Udaipur, we rented a car for several days to drive us to Mt. Abu, Rajasthan's only hill station, and Ranakpur, locations of Jain temples built between 1031 to 1230 from delicately carved white marble. We stayed at one of a Heritage hotel that was a former Maharaja’s summer place. It had many family photographs from the time of the Raj and it was interesting to see little Indian children dressed and posed like proper British kids. Staying in 4-5 star hotels is one of the great pleasures of India. The service and food is always wonderful. Staying in lesser hotels is rather dreadful. Driving on Indian roads (with a hired driver) is a nightmare. Typically, our driver had to pass everyone--
autorickshaws, big trucks, cows, camel carts--the whole of humanity that is making its way down the streets not in ordered lanes but in a flow that is always changing. The driving mentality includes lots of honking and hand signals. Part of the trip was on what was considered a "great new freeway" with three lanes. But the drivers only used the outer two lanes as everyone has to pass all the time!
After coming back to Udaipur we flew to Jaipur where Nick was scheduled to give two talks one at Rajasthan University and another at a town nearby. We stayed in the minus five-star university guest house. Beds in lesser hotels are usually about 1-inch thick cotton batting. One does not want to discuss the plumbing. He had great crowds at these talks and they were all most hospitable. Giving a talk in India is rather like a graduation ceremony. There is a huge front table and a procession of people that enter. Each person talks and usually includes many compliments to a great number of people.
From Jaipur we took the all-night train to Jaisalmer founded in 1156 as a major city on the silk route. It is my favorite city so far. There is a fort with 99 bastions made of golden sandstone and narrow, winding streets inside. Also inside the fort are the Maharaja’s palace, and several white-marble Jain temples. In a Jain temple one has to remove shoes,
all leather, and have no water or food. Jains make up about 4 million people out of India's 1 billion population. They are quite prosperous and building a temple is an important act for a (rich) Jain. Outside the fort were Havelis, homes of rich merchants, built out of intricately carved golden sandstone. They were often five stories high with a beautiful inner courtyards.
From Jaisalmar our trip took a rather downhill turn. Nick wanted to go to Ahmedabad to visit a Jain institute so we had 19-hours of train travel. Because of Diwali, or miscommunication or whatever, we ended up traveling third class. Second class air is tolerable but third class is not to be experienced. The night on a vinyl berth with five
other people (3 berths stacked on each side) was OK since we had the bottom berths and it was air-conditioned. However, the day portion which started in Jodhpur had no AC and consisted of a constant stream of beggars (often terribly maimed), shoe shiners,
people with all sorts of scams and things to sell. In Jodhpur the tracks of the station were full of rats. It was just filthy--an experience not to be repeated.
From Ahmedabad Nick flew to Chennai for another talk. I flew to Mumbai and a 5-star Fix at the Leela, a great hotel we stayed at when we first flew into India. At our first visit we even saw the Dalai Lama as he was also staying in our hotel and walked within three
feet of us as he went to the elevators. Mumbai is terribly polluted and even though I was in an air-conditioned room my eyes, nose, and throat burned from the pollution.
After a day in Chennai, where he almost got caught in a cyclone and there was massive flooding, Nick met me in Mumbai and we flew to Diu a small peaceful, unpolluted, resort area on an island south of Gujarat. Until 1961 it was a Portuguese colony and so has many large Catholic churches. The ocean is really warm here and the beaches
rather disappointing but the hotel has a great pool and we are enjoying a break and clean air. There are many Jain temples within a day’s trip. So far I have only seen one Indian women in the pool with a bathing suit, most wear slacks and a t-shirt if they go in at all.
On Tuesday, Nov. 1st we fly to Delhi to join a 3-week tour with some friends. It will be nice to have someone else do all the arrangements as so much time is taken trying to get everything set up.
Nov. 16 (Nick). We have definitely changed our minds about what to see in India. If we had not been on this guided tour, we would not have scheduled any time in the nature preserves. When I saw that the tiger sanctuary at Ranthambore was on our itinerary, I said to myself: "That will be just a hot dusty ride and we will not see any tigers."
Well, the first morning we went out we saw, within thirty minutes, a tiger mother and her two cubs (14 months old). It was not just a momentary sighting; rather, it was an extended viewing of the family for over an hour. It was almost as if she was putting on a show for us. We went out in the afternoon and we saw a glimpse of them again, but they were in their afternoon siesta and they did not move from their comfortable beds.
We were amazed at the wildlife that we saw: spotted deer, sambar (we would call them elk), a strange cow-like antelope, the Indian gazelle, mongooses, parakeets, serpent hawks, and many more. And what a wonderful break from noise and air pollution.
We are now in Agra and we saw the fort and the Taj Mahal this morning. Off to Khajuraho and Varanasi tomorrow.
Nov. 19 (Gail): This morning I am taking off from India. Nick spent the night vomiting but is on the mend and we have both been to Varanasi before. In fact, he just walked into the computer room freshly showered and looks fine. Our six-week trip through northern
India is almost over. It has been a wonderful, frustrating, exotic, and always interesting experience. The predatory touts pounce on visitors but using a brush-away movement of my hand (learned by watching Indians) often they dispatch. There are so many people trying to survive that one can not really blame the touts for doing their best.
All types of services are available, for example in Palitana, Gujarat, four porters will carry a person in a beat-up lawn chair tied to two bamboo poles up and down 3,700 steps, a journey of 1.5 hours, to see Jainism's holiest pilgrimage site on an incredible hill-top sea of 863 temples built over 900 years ago. Nick, whose calf muscles completely seized up after climbing 10,000 steps to a Jain temple earlier, and I did hire these porters. Going down they carried us backwards and literally ran in their flip flops--the stairs were wide and well built but still not something I want to do too often.
After Diu on the coast of Gujarat and three weeks into our trip we joining an OAT tour for our last three weeks. Having a tour guide run interference and traveling in a large air conditioned bus which is the king of the road, rather insulates one from the real experiences of day-to-day India but it is a welcome change. We signed up for a tour in order not hassle all the arrangements while showing two friends who live in Moscow, India. But the tour has been good as we have gone to places that we might not have visited on our own (with Nick we mainly see temples) such as the Pushkar camel fair. Fourteen thousand camels and 2,000 horses plus assorted water buffalo, goats, etc. greeted us a the Pushkar Camel Fair. Each year in the eight lunar month of the Hindu Calendar Pushkar's population increases by 200,000 people and their animals. It is an extraordinary swirl of color, sound, movements, mystics, sadhus, beggars, traders, and pilgrims. It is a grand epic that ends with Hindu pilgrims bathing in the sacred (and very polluted) waters by the Brahma temple.
Rajasthan, half Thar desert, is the land of kings and the location of much of our travel. The brilliant fabrics of red and orange tye-dyed turbans and the bright mirror encrusted outfits of the women contrast with the ever present brown dust of the desert. India excels in beautiful textiles in an extraordinary variety. The magnificent palaces and forts are products of the Rajputs--warrior kings and feudal lords. We visited one such fort, the Amber Fort in Jaipur, by trudging up the hill on an elephant. We have seen lots of forts and palaces with mirror tiled walls.
In eastern Rajasthan we left the crowded, polluted cities to stay in the country at a newly built Mughal Palace hotel with huge rooms and inner courtyards. Our goal was to see the royal Bengal tigers at the Ranthambore National Park. Driving through the forests lifted our souls and made us realize how important nature is to one's sense of well being. All Indian cities rather look alike. The streets are lined by tiny shops that close up at night by 10-foot wide garage-type metal doors. The shops are crammed with goods that spill out into the 10-20 foot strip of dirt that meets the sometimes paved street. The life of the city is lived in the streets and it is crammed with people.
The tiger park seemed like another planet. On an early morning safari a tigress and two 14-month old cubs sauntered out of the tall grass and walked down toward a lake. We viewed them for almost one-hour (our guide said it was his best sighting in 18 years). They came very close to our large 16-passenger jeeps. It was almost as if they were saying--see me, I bring tourists who bring money, so please preserve my habitat. I hope it works! The park was also full of large sambar deer, assorted antelopes, spotted deer, and many birds plus the ever present langur monkey. It is my favorite part of the trip. The animal life in India must have been spectacular in the past.
Next we drove to the fortified ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri built of red sandstone between 1571 and 1585 but abandoned because of lack of water. Then onto Agra and the famous Taj Mahal. The perfect symmetry of the Taj Mahal makes it an architectural masterpiece. The government is now doing much to protect it from terrorists. Finished in 1653 it was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a monument to love at the death of his second wife who died giving birth to his fourteenth child.
A five-hour train ride to Jhansi and six hours of driving on a bumpy one-lane road brought us to the Khajuraho temples. Known for their erotic temple art, they were built in a century-long burst of creative genius between AD 950-1050 by the Chandela Kings. They are now surrounded by green lawns manicured by machete swinging men and flowering shrubs. One of our guides said the lawns are a British influence--they did not like dirt! The temples remote location preserved them from desecration by the Muslim invaders.
Finally a flight brought us now to the ancient city of Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in India. Hindu pilgrims come here to wash away their sins in the Ganges. The ghats (long steps leading to the river) are filled with people bathing, washing clothes, being cremated, and performing puja at sunrise and sunset. The Ganges is so polluted at Varanasi that the water has no dissolved oxygen. People are working to improve the situation. As one guide said the problem in India is the three P's--population, pollution, and politicians.
Sunday we fly to Mumbai (Bombay) and then early on Tuesday morning we start our journey home. I am glad to have visited this fascinating country with such friendly people but look forward to clean air, the wilderness of Idaho, and fresh salads.