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Rajasthan

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In case I ever said anything about Mumbai being polluted and having bad air, I take everything back. Now that we’ve spent five days in Rajasthan, we can proudly announce Bikaner to be the most unbreathable place we’ve been to in India so far.

But let’s start at the start. Our flight to Jaipur was uneventful enough. Deepak insisted on driving us to the airport, and we survived the usual shenanigans of chaotic security checks, travelers cutting in line and middle aged men picking their noses with gusto in public. We arrived at our hotel (the Umaid Bhawan) quite early in the morning, and the place was very nice with a lovely rooftop.

We took off in a car to the City Palace, which wasn’t all that great, followed by the very nice Amber Fort, where we spent a long time wandering around. There was plenty of Western tourists and the appropriate number of touts and hawkers to match, but overall, it was a lot less hassle than we had anticipated. The weather was quite cool in the morning, but it got pretty warm later in the day. Jaipur really is quite nice, thanks to one of its founder, Jai Singh II (1688-1743), who according to our travel book was a bit of an urban planner and introduced some revolutionary ideas, namely hygiene, beauty and commerce. Of these, only the last one seems to have survived into the 21st century, but at least the wide roads of the old city are still pretty wide, the town is still mostly pink, making it almost possible to walk around relatively unscathed, at least in the morning.

Unfortunately, hygiene standards don’t seem to have been upgraded in the last 200 years, so there are plenty of open sewage canals, everybody is spitting and snotting everywhere (just like Mumbai, only more so), and an abundance of camel and cow shit takes care of the rest, not to mention the autorickshaws, which are (thankfully, slowly) replacing the bicycle rickshaws. Some of the sidestreets really are an incredible sight of disgusting filth. Nevertheless, Jaipur is a shopping heaven, at least in terms of quantity and curiosity; quality not so much, but we are almost used to that caveat by now. Even the hawkers and touts we could deal with, or maybe that’s because we had feared the worst and therefore immediately shut up anyone who got on our nerves too much too quickly.

We left for Bikaner by late afternoon the next day. We’ve know by now that train stations in India tend to be the cleaner parts of town, and at least when we are leaving a town, there’s less of a chance of getting hassled by some rickshaw driver about which country we are from, where we want to go, and that he will drive us anywhere we like. Of course, there’s still always someone who will try to lure us into his rickshaw back into town, even as he sees us walking fast and straight towards the station entrance. The train arrived 90mins late in Bikaner, but on the upside, we only had to stand in line for half an hour to fill out the application for seat reservations, which as usual required vital information such as our gender, age and address. Since the clerk was unusually slow even by local standards, the crowd got proportionally more pushy, as if rubbing belly against backpack could speed things up and as if ruthlessly cutting in line were a matter of spiritual pride and honor. When we told someone to back off, the helpfully happy and proud explanation was this is the system here.

Late as it was when we finally made it to Bikaner, the town came as a bit of a shock even to us jaded expats. The rickshaw ride from the train station to the hotel was like cruising through a garbage can in a desert, which incidentally describes Bikaner quite well. The town is dusty as dusty can be and the rickshaw fumes eat at your eyes like little ants. Someone said traveling India is like traveling for Graduates (Thailand I guess being for amateurs), but at this point we are wondering whether it maybe isn’t more for the demented. Then again, as we now look at our pictures, the explanation is clear: all pictures lie, because they are never able to show the dust, and the stink, or record the cancerous coughing and yacking all around you. All the Rajasthan travel books show gorgeous colors, graceful women, majestic forts and beautiful landscapes, but the predominant impressions, at least this evening and most of the next day in Bikaner, are incredible dirt and filth, unbreathable air, and enormous pollution. If I had to go here in the summer, when it gets as hot as a frying pan, I’d shoot myself, even though there were a lot of gorgeous empty houses in Bikaner’s old city.

On the other hand, our hotel in Bikaner (Bhairon Vilas) was the best we’ve stayed at so far in India. The owner is a descendant of the Maharajas and of the Prime Minister of Bikaner, a young guy who decided that he likes restoring old furniture and stuff, so his hotel has a lot of character and is quite lovely. Maybe we should have stayed in the hotel all day, because there was a film crew doing some shoots of a traditional Rajasthani music and dance troupe, but we went to the fort instead, which was rather shabby.

We also went to a camel farm, which was a bit sad looking (although the two minute camel ride was surprisingly comfortable), and to the Karni Mata Temple in Doshnoke, where hundreds of unhealthy looking rats live in and run around in filth, enjoying being worshipped as the reincarnated relatives of the local villagers. There were a few equally scrubby looking Western tourists around, who may have thought this temple was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but we kind of thought that it was … well, interesting, and sheer insanity.

Back in the hotel, the film shoot continued as we were having dinner. There was a British guy who had spent five days at the temple shooting a documentary and a female Spanish dope head who we speculated was doing the hotel owner. As they were finishing off a bottle of rum at the bar, three middle aged Germans talked loudly and waltzed right into the film set, twice. We briefly considered joining the bar, but then thought better of it, so we could get up in time the next day for our train to Jodhpur.

The train ride to our last stop was another 7 hour affair, but the 3AC class is comfortable enough and you get a pillow to sleep on. Our hotel wasn’t exactly nice or beautiful; in fact, it seemed to have on offer a large number of small imperfections. Some call that charming, we find it inexplicable, whether it’s the layer of oil swimming on top of the coffee, the curtain rods being installed in all manners crooked, the curtains being of wildly varying length, the hot shower being cold, the bed sheets missing, the paint being applied rather liberally at the wrong places (i.e. on the windows and lamps), etc. etc. In an effort to save electricity, the city shuts it down from 8am to 11am every morning, but at least it wasn’t as cold as Jaipur, and the roof top restaurant was actually quite nice (well, not the rooftop, nor the restaurant, but the view was). In terms of air quality, Jodhpur was only a marginal improvement over Bikaner, but the fort is high enough above the rest of the city that it was ok.

That fort was actually quite nice, even though one would have to be a real nut for armor and weaponry to appreciate a lot of the exhibition in these Rajasthani forts. It was the first such place that offered an audio tour (more expensive than a live guide; I guess they know how annoying those guides can be), and it was pretty well restored and preserved, with money from both the Getty Foundation and the UN. The tour was well done, although at the end they lost it a bit, when two female descendents of the Maharaja were asked to talk about their lives now. One was shamelessly promoting her publishing house, while the other was blubbering incoherently about how looking at the fort to her is like looking at a computer window and how she’s crying thinking about it and how it’s all for her family god.

Anyways, at that point my camera battery was empty and we were pretty exhausted after all this, so we just made a quick stop at the very decent Jaswant Thada memorial to Jaswant Singh II, and then took off to the airport. Arriving back in Mumbai, we had to yell at some tout as soon as we left the terminal, since he wouldn’t take our ignoring him at first and then saying no twice for an answer. Soon after that we took in some fresh Mumbai air, realizing that maybe this place isn’t so bad after all; there’s always worse, apparently.

We are still a bit puzzled about the great allure of Rajasthan to Western tourists. The British guy in Bikaner had told us about Peru, and slowly walking up the Andes or floating down the Amazon river sounds so much nicer right about now. We are also wondering whether we could possibly be the only Westerners prepared to tell the endless touts and hawkers and scammers to fuck off, because they obviously keep trying and sometimes seem genuinely surprised when we respond unkindly. Could we possibly be the only Westerners who are wondering what people must be smoking when they talk about spirituality here? We see a lot of in-your-face religiosity and a lot of praying and talk about god, yes. Everything seems religious here, but spiritual? Not so much. We can’t see much spirituality in driving like an ass, talking out of your ass, cutting in line like an ass, or feeding plastic garbage to your holy cow. Another one is warmth and hospitality. Getting asked literally fifty times a day which country we are from stops feeling warm and fuzzy real quick, as does getting stared at like a two-headed Martian in the zoo. The usual mix of having people bend over backwards to crawl up our ass on the one hand and getting scammed and taken for a ride on the other doesn’t help much either.

Anyways, enough of that. Not sure where we’ll go on our next trip, maybe Orissa, maybe Gujarat, and maybe we’ll have a little less to whine about then.

Bordi

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Last weekend, we drove up to Bordi, a small Parsi town with a lovely beach 150km or so north of Mumbai. Well, let’s be clear, the beach is lovely, in that it’s 17km long, when the tide is low, it’s 1km to the water, and there’s hardly anybody there. Other than that, the water is sewage brown, there’s plenty of plastic garbage, and plenty of people going for a shit onto the beach.

First we thought we should go to a place further inland that advertised itself as a Nature Retreat. We got there after passing a number of dusty and already pretty dried up villages – monsoon ended only two months ago, but around here, there’s not much green left. The place itself looked green enough, but we knew we were in for some trouble when we saw three large tourist air-conditioned busses on the parking lot. As soon as we opened the doors of our trusted Ambassador, we heard loud screams of fun and teenage laughter from what turned out to be the dining hall. Since that’s not exactly our idea of refuge from Mumbai, we made a quick round to take a look at the premises and left for Bordi.

Bordi also had its fair share of hysterical fun and laughter, but it came from the town’s cricket field, which was far enough from our little Parsi hotel that not even the over-amplified loudspeakers announcing this and that and the other could reach us. Our host seemed a very laid back chap and didn’t even get his pants in a knot when we told him that we’ll first take a look at the other hotels in town before we decide to stay at his. Of course, he did try to convince us that the other hotel in town was entirely booked, which didn’t seem likely, since his was entirely empty, and as expected turned out to be BS.

But we stayed at his hotel, the Gool Khush Resort, because it seemed nicer than the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) hotel nearby, whose manager had a bit of a smell of a bureaucrat, whereas the Gool Khush seemed very hospitable. Of course, hospitality necessarily means that the host gets to ask all kinds of nosy questions, orders us around (“Sit! Lock the car! You should not smoke! You don’t eat enough! Go for a swim! Come back in half an hour!”), and generally becomes a bit of a pain in the ass pretty quickly.

But we are good guests, so we locked the car, we even shut down the car engine before that, just as he told us, then we went for a half hour walk to the beach and came back to meet him, so we could drive him to a nearby village, where he would introduce us to a guide, who would sheppard us up some mountain to a debilitated Parsi cave the next day. It seemed a matter of life and death that we get a guide, and a good one at that, someone who speaks English to explain everything to us. In addition, we were also told not to trust anyone, so we should bring some chalk with us to mark our way up the mountain, so that we wouldn’t get lost on the way back. Fair enough, an English speaking guide might be good, and we’ll see about that chalk.

Anyways, after being told to drive slowly, shut down the engine, and lock the car, we met our guide. Needless to say, he was drunk and didn’t speak a word of English, and the second one seemed sober and didn’t speak a word of English. But the village was interesting, with lots of women coming down from the mountains, balancing tons of wood on their heads as they walked very quickly and barefoot. As usual, hardly any men could be seen working. It still seems one of the mysteries of rural India that the guys don’t seem to be doing much other than getting drunk, while the women seem to be working 24/7. Of course, it would also be entirely inappropriate for a man to offer a seat to a woman in the bus, so they are usually the ones standing, no matter how old.

The next morning, we were told to eat glucose against the terrible exhaustion and the paining that we will feel after walking up the mountain, but to stay away from water. A little bit of mango juice we were allowed though. Our host strongly advised not to go to work the next day, because we’d be paining just too much, and in any event we’d be much too tired to drive home to Mumbai after that walk. Oh, and we should lock our car before we start walking.

What he didn’t mention was that at 6am, the railway crossing to the village would be permanently closed and that we’d have to honk the horn to wake up the attendant. Luckily, he of course called us on our mobile a few minutes after we left to let us know that we have to call him when we find the guide. Not that Ksenia hadn’t already figured out by then that honking the horn should get us across the railroads, but it was a gentle reminder that we aren’t alone in the wilderness.

The walk up the mountain to the Parsi caves was nice and as expected not exactly like climbing up the Mount Everest. Our guide was for some reason racing like it’s a competition, so we made it up there in less than two hours, and one would have to be fairly short mental capacity to get lost, because there was a trail and not many other choices to go, other than up the mountain, following the trail. The caves themselves were pretty sad and appropriately littered with plastic garbage, but the views were not bad and the air was sort of clean. Despite originally being the location were the first Parsis fleeing from Persia were in hiding and kept their holy fire for twelve years, there was also a little Hindu shrine nearby and two orange Hindu flags. Our pre-selected guide didn’t speak a word, but went for a prayer, then disappeared somehow, and then came back.

Back in the hotel, we witnessed a modern day grown up woman and what might have been a brother splashing around in the swimming pool, she in bikini, paddling around with her glasses on, he in Speedos silently ruddering the short distance of the pool back and forth. It was a bit strange, but maybe not as strange as the extended family lunch that followed, in complete silence.

Back on the so-called highway to Mumbai, some other modern day guy in a baseball cap and expensive car tried to cut us off by an inch or two, like driving is a videogame, and when I showed him the finger, he proceeded to play some child’s game with us whereby he’d pull up next to me, forcing me to step on the brakes as I was approaching the next truck or rickshaw crawling about at pedestrian speed on the highway.

Meanwhile, I still haven’t gotten rid of a pretty constant cough and running nose that I’ve been basically having since November, a month after the monsoon ended. Sometimes a nice headache and a slight fever gets added, so I have decided that maybe Mumbai really is a health hazard. Turns out, by Indian standards, RSPM (Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter) concentration of 100 µg/m3 is considered acceptable, but it’s more like 350 µg/m3 on average during the winter, which is well above what’s called the hazardous danger mark of 300 µg/m3.

Ah well, tomorrow until Sunday we are going to Rajasthan. Maybe desert dust is better than Mumbai. Ksenia will be looking for fabrics, while I am tempted to look for a gas mask.

Random Stuff

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My internet connection at home was down for three days, because apparently there had been some thunder and lightening last weekend, putting my ISP (and others) out of service. I have no idea how that is actually possible, but I guess it is. On the plus side, I had missed the thunder and lightening, because I spend the weekend recruiting in a very small college town, a village really, in Rajastan. We flew into Delhi and then went on a 4 hour drive over solidly potholed roads across the border to Rajastan. Well, Rajastan is of course still India, but for some reason or other our driver had to stop at the border to Rajastan to pay some taxes in a little hut of a control post.

This college village is really more like a little gated community with a bit of an army barracks flair. The whole village seems to live off the students, but if you picture lots of college gear shops, book stores, movie theaters, let alone regular theaters, then you would be utterly wrong. In fact, we went out to the central student meeting area, which has a large number of good and cheap eateries, and there were hundreds of students late in the evening hanging around having dinner outside under the stars. Kind of nice, but two things were notably missing: beer and women.

There was not a single bottle of beer to be found and our attempts to buy some were met with apologies. I didn’t quite get whether alcohol is actually illegal, or whether there is simply no demand. Among the hundreds of students there were maybe 20 women. Not that there aren’t any female students in the college, but the girls’ housing complexes (of course, no coed here) are actually closed at 11pm. Boys can roam around all night, but the girls get locked up behind the Berlin walls that surround their dormitories.

The campus does look a bit like a nice and pleasant peaceful army compound, and so basically students spend four years of their lives here, in complete isolation, with no distractions whatsoever, under blistering heat in the summer (it was a good 40 Celsius), and chilly cold in the winter (when it gets below freezing). What a life! The college campus temple was very beautiful though, and there’s a bunch of peacocks running around (and away from my camera), so I guess you win some you lose some as a college student in Rajastan.

Before our trip to Rajastan, I had gotten a call from my car dealer who asked me whether she can give my number to the Hindustan Times, because they were writing an article about the HM Ambassador. I said, sure, why not, so the newspaper called me. They actually wanted to do a photo shoot the next morning, so I told them to come early, since I had to go bring my car for service and then go to the airport. When they didn’t show up at the agreed upon time, I called them, and they told me, ah, well, sorry, we don’t have time for a shoot. So they interviewed me on the phone, I e-mailed them a picture of my silver machine and apparently there was a half page article in the Mumbai section of the Hindustan Times last Saturday.

I still haven’t seen the article, because I was out of town, but apparently it praises the HM Ambassador and then used my quotes (plus the Italian embassy employees who bought two Avigos) as solid proof that Made in India stands for style and quality in the world. Of course, I had expressed my utmost satisfaction with the most beautiful car gracing the Indian roads, so everybody was happy. So happy, in fact, that both my car dealer and some guy from the Hindustan Motors company called me to express their thanks for my valuable input. I guess it was at that point that I realized I should have tried to make deal with them – maybe become their official HM Ambassador ambassador in news, print, and media, in exchange for a minor donation, of course. Anyways, it was all very amusing and now I am famous for being that crazy Westerner driving around in an Amby – by himself, no less.

The trip to the HM service center was also quite an experience. So this car needs the first service stop after 1000km – not 10000 miles, or even 5000 miles, but 1000km, which took me all but three weeks to rack up. That’s the first joke. Then it took me forever to find the place, because the address was useless as usual, and when I called them, they basically refused to give me precise directions, but just told me to ask around, as it would be so much easier.

So I asked a cop, who actually spoke English (a premiere), and he swore on his mother’s grave that he knows exactly where the FortPoint service center is, except, he couldn’t for the life of him explain it to me (it turned out to be a few hundred meters down the road on the right). Eventually, I found the place, in a tiny lane under a bridge next to the Mumbai race tracks, and was greeted by a very disgruntled guy who took my service book, filled it out, and asked my to sign it, right were it says something like Customer Signature. I hereby certify that all work has been completed in a timely manner to my fullest satisfaction. – Of course, at that point, nobody had even driven the car into the completely overcrowded workshop, let alone told me how long it would take or how much it would cost.

Of course, being the narrow-minded Westerner that I am, I refused to sign squat and just asked him how he can possibly expect me to sign this when they haven’t even touched the car yet. The guy wasn’t in much of a mood for minor details like that and just shot back: Sir, we cannot start the work without your signature. So that really cracked me up, but then his boss came around and just told him to start the work and make the customer happy. Yup, that’s right!

They said it would take 90 minutes to do whatever it says in the service book, and after a number of reminders that I have to be at the airport pretty soon, they were done two hours and fourteen hundred Rupees later. I am sure they didn’t do everything they were supposed to do, but then again, what do I know? I really regretted not having brought my camera, because the workshop crew was quite a troupe. I guess they couldn’t believe that I had actually bought an Amby and even drove it there myself, so there was a lot of laughter and hellos, and good spirits all around. Not that many of them were actually working, and they took a half-hour tea break while I was sweating about making it to the airport in time, but I will definitely bring my camera to the next service stop, which is due at 5000km or probably in less than three months.