Rajasthan romp
From Rob and Wen's Excellent Adventure in India on Feb 09 '08
I won’t talk about each place in Rajasthan that we went to, because we went to about 8 cities. I’ll instead focus on some of the highlights. We went to several forts/palaces in which maharajas in each area used to live. They were all very impressive, with lovely architecture, as were their wives (going on the paintings). The forts were generally high up on hills, for obvious strategic reasons. A common feature was an area for the respective maharajas to keep cool in, which was quite a sensible idea. One had a pulley system which enabled a servant to activate a fan to keep the maharaja and his concubine cool in the bedroom. Not a bad move really. The region’s arid, with pretty warm temperatures during the day, even during winter (which it was when we were there). It gets stinking hot during the summer (45 degrees), which I don’t think I could
handle.In one fort I was wearing my exceedingly stylish Everton shirt, which I think was the reason that a whole class of schoolkids crowded around me and wanted to ask me questions, have their picture taken and shake my hand. In other places (Collingwood for example) I’m used to people throwing apples and watermelons at me as I walk down the street, but on this occasion I was a novelty, despite not exactly being the only tourist around. One particularly interesting place we went to was a rat temple near a place called Bikaner . For a reason which escapes me the rats are holy, so they’re well-fed and breed like Tasmanian teenagers. There are apparently 20,000 or so of them in the temple and they run around everywhere. Wenny panicked about 30 seconds after going in and almost started crying, so quickly retreated to the safety of the outside world. I thought it was all good fun (false bravado ahoy!), venturing further. The rats were provided with big trays of milk and food, which they all crowded around. One reason I wasn’t particularly bothered by it all (I usually hate rats and would
One tried to nibble on one of my toes, so I promptly turned it into kebab meat.
almost cry myself) was that because they’re fed, they don’t need to look for food in dirty places like usual rats do. One tried to nibble on one of my toes, so I promptly turned it into kebab meat. Great success!
Vicky needed to buy new wiper blades at one stage, so stopped at a garage to change them. When I got out to stretch my legs two snake charmers appeared out of nowhere. They played their pipes and the snakes danced around, hissing all the while. The surprising thing was that we weren’t even close to a tourist spot. Because they didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Hindi, my brain decided that it might work if I tried speaking to them * in Indonesian *. It only took a couple of sentences for me to realise that it was just a ludicrous thing to do and that I was a buffoon.
There was an abundance of animals in Rajasthan, even in town streets. As with Delhi , there were loads of cows. Some would decide that they couldn’t be bothered standing up any more, so would sit down in the middle of a very busy street. There was also no shortage of hogs roaming through town streets either, plus the odd monkey and plenty of camels. Camels are used as a form of transport.
Speaking of camels, we went on an overnight “camel safari” from a place called Jaisalmer, way out in the west, near the Pakistan border. We got a lift out into the desert, then hopped on camels and rode for a couple of hours to a spot with a few huts, in which we camped for the night. We watched the sunset out on the sand dunes, trying to recover from camel-induced cramps. While we were sitting
there four young girls (perhaps 8yo) appeared and started dancing for us. They wore some sort of local costume, and it was quite a sight. Even better than that was the guy who wandered through the dunes selling beer. I thought he was an apparition at first. What a champ. When I took a photo of my camel I, for some reason, counted to three out loud, thinking the camel was somehow going to understand and smile for the camera. Idiot. As if Indian camels are going to speak English. They struggle with Hindi.
The driving in other parts of Asia seems pretty crazy when you first come across it (it becomes normal after a while), but in India I think it genuinely is crazy. There’s endless mad overtaking, constant beeping of horns and stupid moves galore. One guy we saw pulled off a very dangerous move, just avoiding an oncoming truck, then 100 yards down the road pulled into a petrol station. Weird. Trucks are generally seriously overloaded too, which provides frequent amusement and occasional terror.
On our last full day we went to the Taj Mahal. We couldn’t really not go there, isn’t it? The place was very busy, as it probably always is, but pretty spectacular too. If you’ve seen it on TV or in magazines, then that’s pretty much how it is. When you’ve seen something that many times before you see it first hand, there can’t be too many surprises.
One thing I appreciated in India was the lack of McDonald’s and shopping malls, which we didn’t see any of until our last night. I’m sure there are quite a few in the richer areas of big cities, but it was refreshing to be able to escape them.
At the airport on the way out a few middle-aged Afghani guys on their way to a concentration camp in southern Cuba came up to Wenny and I when they saw us filling out our immigration cards. They spoke no English nor any of the Indian languages, so Wenny and I ended up filling them in for them, using their passports as guides. Half of the content in the passports was in Arabic, which was a bit of a challenge. One of them had a fingerprint in his passport in place of a signature, and did the same to sign the immigration form. I assumed he couldn’t read or write, which made him a great candidate for president of the US and A.
Get your free travel blog
Do you have your own experience to share? Signup for your free travel blog »
Would you like to comment or ask a question?