INDIA-
Rajasthan
Part II
India,
Nov 12, 2000 thru Nov 22, 2000. Written by Laura
From Udaipur we moved onto Ranakpur, home to the largest and most important Jain temple in India. It was built in 1439, all hand carved from marble and has 29 halls with 1,444 pillars, no two being alike. It's the only thing to see in Ranakpur, but we were really glad we made this trip there to visit it. It turned out to be the best Jain temple we saw in the country, and after you've seen this one…. well you know. As you can see by the photo, it was huge, but it was the only temple in India where I felt I was in a holy and religious place. We both really enjoyed it.
Of course at the end of the visit, I had an 'only in India' experience that left me quite upset. I was walking back to the car from the bathroom through a courtyard where many people were eating a huge meal. The people were inside a caged area in the courtyard of the temple, while all the many monkeys who live at the temple (and at every temple in India) were sitting & begging from outside the cage, looking at the people inside (kind of a twist huh!). As I walked by a monkey about 5 feet away from me, he turned suddenly, ran up to me, started yelling his chatter, jumped onto my leg, held onto it, looked up at me, bore his teeth, then made to bite me on the leg. Needless to say I screamed and did my best to shake the monkey off of my leg without getting bit. It all happened so fast, in a flash he was off my leg, but still growling at me threatening as if to do it all over again. He never bit through my pants and I was relieved I had gotten my rabies vaccine before we left, but I was really frightened from this unprovoked attack and it took a few hours till I felt normal again. I'm afraid this ruined some of my fascination with wild monkeys and no one else around me seemed at all concerned. Our driver assured us that temple monkeys are tame and don't bite people like wild monkeys do. Yeah right!
Then we were off to Jodhpur. There we visited, you guessed it, the Meherangarh fort & palace inside Jodhpur's city walls. It was great but not as grand as the ones we'd visited previously, we were getting spoiled! A nice note on the state of gender relations in India, on one of the gates leading to the entrance of the fort there's 15 hand prints dating from the widows of the Maharaja Man Singh who killed themselves by throwing themselves onto his burning funeral pyre in 1843. They are covered with red dust by devotees as this is still seen as a very honorable thing for women to do even today, in spite of the practice having been outlawed since Mahatma Gandhi was in power! By now we had gotten smart and went to 'inquire' about rooms in the palaces turned into hotels. We could see the luxury but not have to pay for it. We visited the Umaid Bhawan Palace, it was awesome.
Then the next day we arrived in Jaiselmer, our favorite city in Rajasthan. Jaiselmer sits right on the desert, on the old camel train routes between India and Central Asia. Due to the wealth brought by this trade, its inhabitants built beautiful home compounds called havelis inside the fort. And instead of the fort being deserted and only a museum, this fort is alive with hotels, shops, and restaurants. Jaiselmer is also very close to Pakistan, so there's an Indian military base which kept the city alive before the camel trains died and tourism kicked in. During our camel trek we heard jet fighter planes racing across the sky, a little surreal to witness powerful high technology when you're 'roughing it' in the desert with no technology.
The places we stayed in Jaiselmer were magnificent. One night we stayed in an old havali built in the 1700's. It was huge, had the traditional mud floor, and beautifully painted frescoes decorated the walls. The outer wall had arched windows with large wooden shutters, and we'd sit and watch the cows and people go by in the vary narrow cobblestone streets. After we had finished our camel safari, we treated ourselves by staying at the Jawar Niwas Palace, now converted into a hotel. For $60 per night, we stayed in the best room where previous guests include the queen of Netherlands and the first prime minister of India! Really wonderful. Magnificently decorated, the huge window seat in the spacious room looked up onto the hill with the Jaiselmer walled fort and city, just beautiful at sunset. We also had a second panoramic windowed area with a swing and the bathroom was full of dark green marble, heaven!
The primary reason we came to Jaiselmer was to go on a camel safari. There's nothing but small villages and lots of dessert between Jaiselmer and the Pakistan boarder. So our driver, Culdive, left us in here and returned to Delhi. Aaron wanted to do a long safari, 5 days & 4 nights, but people kept trying to dissuade us from going for so long. They said once you've ridden for half a day, you'll not want to get back on the camel for a long long time. So we decided to take the luxury route and include a camel cart with the camels and guides. This way if I got sick of riding the camel, we wouldn't have to call it quits early. The safari was a lot of fun, we had two guides who also cooked and set up everything in our camp. Having the camel cart also allowed us to bring a broader variety of food and drinks, so we had better meals and could drink our Fanta in the desert!
There were a total of 4 camels, one for each of us to ride, and one attached to the camel cart driven by one of the guides. It took about an hour to get into the open desert, no one looked twice at us riding on the streets out of town on camels! The dessert was really pretty, it looked a lot like Arizona to me. It was most beautiful in the early morning and late evening, the sun rising and setting set the sand and desert plants aglow with the most beautiful of light. Our camera didn't capture the beauty, but its something I'll never forget. Something at night surprised me though, the moon light! After the sun would set, and darkness fell, the sky was lit up with millions and millions of stars. I've never seen so many! Because we slept out in the open under the stars, it would be hard to go to sleep. It was much more fun to star gaze, I didn't want to close my eyes. But then around 2 or 3am the moon would rise in the sky and it was like sleeping with the lights on. The stars were hardly visible anymore and if I needed a bathroom break, I didn't need to bring my flashlight!
The lead camel Aaron and I took turns riding, and we learned the commands for go, hurry up, stop, etc. Camels are quite the stubborn animals, very unlike horses, so anything I said or did didn't seem to matter. They did what they wanted for the most part. The guides kept telling us to kick their sides harder or hit their necks with the rope reins, but I couldn't bring myself to do this. Just a softie I guess. The first night we camped in a sandy dry river bed and had a wonderful BBQ dinner on the sand. It was amazing to think that during the rains, this desert is flooded with water. Since we were there in the dry season, we didn't see many plants in bloom and all the crops were bone dry, the dirt was hard and cracked. But during the rains, the farmers can grow one harvest of corn, millet, grass for camels, or wheat. Who knew you could farm in the desert!Along the way we saw some ruins of old cities, sometimes we stopped for camel grass or water for the camels in small local villages, but mostly we just rode through open land and sky. Something I've missed being in Asia. I never appreciated the beautiful wide open spaces that America has to offer.
So I know you're wondering, did Laura make it all 5 days riding the camel? Well, nearly! There's two uncomfortable things about riding a camel, one is that your behind gets very very sore, and two every step the camel takes causes odd two movements for the rider. One is a forward movement of your upper body in your seat, and then the movement up and down of your whole body like when you ride a horse. But putting the two together is just odd to adjust to, it takes a while for your head to adjust so you can see straight. And when you run the camel, which we did often, it gets even stranger. The forward pull is less, but your whole body bounces up and down, so your behind is literally bouncing up and down on the camel back with each stride. The guidebook recommends women wear a sports bra during the trek, I'm so glad I did. Every muscle felt like it was being pulled from my body with each bounce, but you didn't have to deal with the forward movement of your upper body, so in a way it was more comfortable.
On day one we rode for a total of 5 hours, same with day two and day three, and I did fine. I was getting blisters in the oddest of places, and it took me awhile to figure out how to sit quasi comfortably. I ended up almost sitting side saddle, with one leg crossed over in front of me resting on part of the camel's hump (these camels had one hump) and for some reason that worked. But I had to be careful, if the camel started running I had to quickly put my leg back on the other side or I'd lose my balance and start to fall off. Its a long way down to the ground! However, day four we rode 4 hours in the morning, almost solid running, so when I got off the camel at lunch every muscle in my body cried out to stop. I got back on the camel after lunch for the 3 hour afternoon ride back to town, but I couldn't do it. It was just too painful. Camel cart time! That was much better. Even Aaron joined me for the last hour, he said it looked too fun to be passed up.
Having the camel cart turned out to be a saving grace for a very different reason. Part of our trek included a night stay in the sand dunes, something right out of an adventure novel! We arrived to the dunes just before the sunset, and it was amazing. Again, our camera didn't capture the beauty, but I'll never forget it. I'll also never forget how easy it is to get lost in the dunes. I went out to sit atop one to watch the sunset, and when it was dark and I was trying to find my way back, all my landmarks were either gone, or I couldn't see them when I was down in a valley. Very disconcerting, but I could hear the Indian pop music of our guides from their portable boom box as they prepared dinner, so I found them eventually. As the desert grew darker these very large dung beetles appeared on the dunes, looking for camel dung to roll around. Unfortunately, they crawl on everything, including the blankets we sit on while we eat and sleep. At first I kept watch with a flashlight around the perimeter of our blanket while dinner was being prepared. I would use my shoe to fling them far away from our blanket, but his proved fruitless. Soon it was pitch black and my batteries were running low. We then moved close the fire and I sat on a pile of blankets nervously wondering how I would ever sleep if I couldn't even sit on the blanket for dinner.
Eventually I had to tell Aaron that I wouldn't be sleeping that night, there was no way. Any movement I would feel on my body or face, I would be sure its a dung beetle and I would be sitting up in a flash, brushing anything and everything away and waking him up in the process. There was no way I'd sleep with all those crawling bugs! So Aaron chatted with the guides and persuaded them to convert the camel cart into a bed. They propped up the part that's usually attached to the camel (there's only two wheels) so it would be flat, shoved sand under the wheels so we wouldn't slip in the night, and set up our beds in the cart. It turned out to be the best nights sleep we had on the trek!
Oh, I could go on and on about with many more details of our trek and of Rajasthan in general (and have posted many many more photos), but I'll save something for when I see you all in person back in the US! Or give you a reason to come visit! Suffice to say, instead of spending the planned two weeks, we spent three weeks touring Rajasthan and besides Amritsar, it was the highlight of India. I would definitely come back to Rajasthan, one can't see enough beautiful & palaces forts in one lifetime, but next time I'd stay only in palaces converted into hotels!
The amazing Jain temple in Rankapur. All carved from marble, something to be seen!
The deluxe desert accommodations. Camel cart on the sand dunes.
Little lunch break on the camel safari
I want to read more, onto Tamil Nadu!
Take me back to the India home page!