Good-bye to Rajasthan

November 18, 2019

Good-bye to Rajasthan

I was a little stunned when I first arrived in Rajasthan, popping out of the spiritual bubble I had entered while visiting the holy cities of Varanasi, Haridwar, Rishikesh, and Amritsar.

The religious chanting and come-one, come all spirituality I had grown accustomed to was replaced by noisy, touristic Jaipur, with its fancy maharaja palaces and pricey admission fees. I’d had high expectations for Jaipur, the largest city in Rajasthan, since everyone I’d talked to had liked it. But beautiful as they were, I found myself unimpressed by Jantar Mantar, City Palace, and Amber Fort.

I had fun visiting them with the new friends I’d made, but the visits left me a little empty. Instead of the proud Sikh guards reminding us politely to cover our heads, the guards at Jaipur’s city palace cajoled us into taking photos of them and then held out their hands for baksheesh.

I also had been looking forward to shopping in Rajasthan, but everything I saw seemed overly shiny and blingy— just too much.

Jaipur commenced what I think of as the “fort chapter” of my trip. After Jaipur, I headed to the desert city of Jaisalmer.

I spent five nights there, living in the fort. Jaisalmer is a “living fort,” one of the only forts in the world where everyday people still live. Originally, the entire town of Jaisalmer lived within the fort walls but now only one fourth, or about 3,000 people do. I was repeatedly told that everyone there was from two to three different families. I think it felt more like 300 people, not 3,000, but that’s what Wikipedia says.

Perhaps that is why Jaisalmer still maintains its colorful tradition of painting wedding invitations on the front wall of the house. The idea is you know everyone in your town, so everyone is invited! The invitation remains on the wall until it fades or gets painted over for another wedding in the family!

There are benefits and drawbacks to living or even visiting a small town. On the plus side, after I had been there a few days, I was reunited with my lost sun hat even before I had realized it was missing!

I was walking down the street one evening when an Indian man who i did not recognize called out to me, “Where’s your hat?” I was confused.

“Your pink hat,” he said. I was still confused. I assumed I’d left it in my room.

“It’s in the flower pot in front of the Zostel,” he continued. It turned out he was a shopkeeper and over the past few days, he had seen me walking through town wearing my pink hat.

Sure enough, it was sitting in the flower pot just as he’d said. A good seven hours earlier in the day, I had sat on the bench in front of the Zostel to say good-bye to Satchel, where I had apparently left my hat.

That was the nice part of the small town. But there were times it definitely started to feel too small! Like when a shopkeeper pumped Trisha for the identity of whom she’d bought her scarves from when we went into her scarf shop. “Who did you buy it from?” What did he look like?” Or when I switched from the Zostel to a small guesthouse, the guesthouse owner seemed quite resentful about the man who owned both the Zostel and the Moustache hostels, two of the biggest franchise hostels in India, since his had been one of the first guesthouses in Jaisalmer.

After Jaislamer, I headed to Jodhpur, the “Blue City” and the second largest city in Rajasthan. Traditionally, blue was the color that Brahmins used to paint their houses. Like Jaisalmer, restaurants with fort views were very plentiful to the point that I cozily holed up in a cafe with no view at all to work on a job application. The cafe was right next to a beautiful stepwell once used to store water.

The Jodhpur fort was one of my favorites. Even though I was resentful that the entry fee was so high and included a mandatory audio guide, I actually really enjoyed the explanations. I ended up spending at least four hours in the fort and walked along the wall to the temple at the end of the wall.

I also spent some time wandering the streets looking for the blue houses. In my mind I had imagined it would be like Chefchouen in Morocco, where every single house was blue. The owner of the hostel said that nowadays people don’t like to paint their houses blue. He said that he offered to paint the neighbor’s house and pay for it, but the neighbor refused. I talked to a traveler who had last visited Jodhpur thirteen years ago and she said the city was definitely less blue now.

I decided that five days in Jodhpur was going to be too much, so I squeezed in the little town of Bundi, which I ended up loving for no particular reason.

The stepwells were no more than glorified trash bins and the Garh palace was so run down that there were more bats than tourists there. It was so dilapidated that other tourists spotted a cobra slithering through the palace. But there was something unpretentious about this little town with so many run-down sights that were clearly unappreciated and unmaintained. After the unabashed tourism of Jaipur, Jaisalmer, and Jodhpur, It felt refreshing to have only a few tourist shops amongst all of the normal shops catering to locals, including the best masala chai I had in India.

My favorite place in Bundi was the Chitrashala. The Chitrashala, also known as the Ummed Mahal, is a part of the Garh Palace. It was built in the 18th Century, and is a set of rooms whose walls and ceiling are completely covered with miniature paintings. The Bundi school of miniature painting is a Rajasthani style of Indian miniature painting that lasted from the 17th to the end of the 19th century. While other people breezed through, I lingered and couldn’t stop staring at the walls. The guard kindly opened two special rooms for me— one that had red-colored miniature paintings and another covered with mirrors that they used with candles in the evenings.

The most ridiculous part of my entire trip was my guided visit to Taragarh Fort. After reading rave reviews about a guide named Jay on Trip Advisor, I decided to find him and pay for a tour. I was surprised when he said he charged 600 rupees, as that’s pretty expensive for a guide and I’ve mostly skipped the guides after spending the entire time with my guide at Fatehpur Sikri trying to understand his English. At any rate, Jay and I hiked up to the fort, which was really overgrown and abandoned. Quite honestly, I would have been scared to go by myself.

We were wandering around when he saw an animal and freaked out. I had never seen this animal before but it was about the size of a large cow and did not look particularly menacing. The animal was googly eyed and its ears were kind of spinning around. But I also know that there are animals that don’t look very dangerous but are deadly like buffalo in Africa. I was willing to believe Jay who insisted that this was a dangerous animal who had attacked tourists he had led up there last month, butting and injuring them with its horns. I scrambled quickly up the narrow steps to the ramparts and he followed. The animal is wandering just below us (or stalking us according to Jay).

Jay turns to me, “How fast can you run? Should we try to run?”

I’m thinking “Are you kidding me?” I don’t know what kind of animal this is but I do know that every animal has an instinct to chase whatever is running from it and he has two more legs than I do.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to run from wild animals,” I say, “Why don’t we just be still and quiet and wait to see if it goes away.” It does wander away but Jay is still freaking out. I am apparently too calm for him.

“You don’t understand, this is a dangerous animal and he will not leave us alone,” he insisted. We crept off the ramparts, down and across, and up onto the wall. We stepped carefully as we made our way down the wall until we spotted the nilgai munching on a bush. Jay tried to call down to the office of the fort and hands me the phone to ask for help. They tell us to contact someone else.

“Can you go quietly?” Jay asked me. “Yes, of course,” I replied. So we creep off the wall along the other side of the shrubs where the nilgai is grazing when all of a sudden we hear a loud noise, which sounds the the crashing noise of bushes.

“Run!” Jay shouts. I freeze for an instant not sure of what direction. “Other way!” He shouts. And I take off after him. If the nilgai reaches us, I’m definitely the one to go because he’s 20 feet ahead of me. We run through the bushes, zig zag across the stepwell, through the guards quarters, out the fort gate.

“Keep running!” He shouts back to me. I realize how out of shape I’ve become. I don’t hear anything but I keep running. But the time we are in the clear, I am thoroughly annoyed at Jay. Not panicked, not relieved, just annoyed.

“Good thing I was with you,” he smiled. “I don’t know what you would have done without me.” I inwardly rolled my eyes.

After my Bundi adventure, it was on to what I think of as the lakes part of my trip— five nights in Pushkar for the camel fair and then an unexpectedly longer five nights in Udaipur.

Udaipur grew slowly on me. The shop owners called out to us but it was more friendly than insistent, curious, not pestering. The beautiful views from every part of the city, the majestic palace overlooking the water, and the endless array of classes to take sucked me in.

I was also there for the festival of Karnik Purnima, where people prayed at the water's edge and set off handmade boats filled with candles into the lake. It seems there is always a beautiful festival happening in India.

After four afternoons of art classes, I finally realized that I could stay there for many more days, taking classes and wandering and eating my way around the city without realizing the passage of time, and needed to get moving or else wouldn’t have time to make it Hampi!