Seeing Jaipur through a third eye

Our train journey to our next destination found us with a few hours back in Jaipur. Thrust back into the noise, we decided to cling to a few last threads of serenity by going for an ayurvedic massage. We rang up a place that was recommended in the Lonely Planet and made our appointments. An hour later we were dropped off at an unsuspecting looking apartment building. Ushered into a ground floor entrance in the side of the building we were given our options, the ultimate being a full massage finishing with 2 ½ litres of warm oil being slowly drizzled onto your forehead (into your third eye). I opted out of that one, knowing that all that oil would probably produce a blemish resembling a third eye on my forehead. We both elected for the one hour full body massage. I’m not quite sure what we were expecting for what amounted to $16, but apparently dignity wasn’t part of the package.

We were brought into a dimly lit room with new age sitar music playing… so far so good. A curtain dividing the room hung from a rod that had been jammed into the drywall… well, I haven’t seen a Home Depot or an Ikea here, so I could overlook the dismal décor and shoddy workmanship. The male masseur took Adam to one side of the curtain and I was left with my masseuse on the other side. “Everything off” she said as she stood there and watched me disrobe. Oh not to worry, she then helped me assemble a pair of disposable undies onto my body (yes, I later corroborated stories with Adam and the exact same thing was happening on his side). We’re not really sure exactly what the point of these was as we both ended up in the buff anyways. At this point I could’ve just thrown my modesty aside and enjoyed the massage if it wasn’t for the chill of the room. This was really making the Turkish bath experience seem blissful! All but a scant few square inches of my body was drenched in oil and rubbed down, I felt like I was about to be stuffed, trussed and stuck in a roaster like a Thanksgiving turkey. A rolling blackout punctuated the midway point of the massage... saved by the bell? I think not, everyone here has generators as the blackouts occur at least once a day. Finally the excess oil was mopped off of me and I was once again returned to the dignity and warmth of my clothes. We were certainly more than ready to embrace the chaos now! Obviously no pics of this one so we have added a random selection of India so far.

The first picture is a palace built so the Maharani's could gaze upon the city through the beautiful stone latticework, and not be seen themselves. The second is an example of the multitude of street-side barber shops that are everywhere. You rarely see anyone here with a 5 o'clock shadow.

Ranthambhore Retreat

Having heard there is not much to do in Sawai Madhopur aside from the twice daily tiger safaris we knew we would be spending more time that usual at our hotel. This in mind we decided to “splash out” a little on a nicer hotel. You know.. running hot water, heat, all the luxuries that we have been living without for the last week. It turns out that forking over about the same sum that you would spend on a room at the Super 8 in North America, finds you living in luxury in India. Great staff, clean room, hot water, heat, swimming pool, nightly bonfires, and provided meals(although unfortunately the spices were tamed down a little for the whitey tour bus guests that frequented the place). Despite all the extras, we were most appreciative of the comfortable beds and the peace! The silence was almost deafening at times. Even when the Indian wedding started up next door, the blaring bhangra was tranquil compared to the barking dogs, beeping cars, and general street noise that had been our lullaby for the past week.

We only had one day (two 4 hr safaris) to spot one of the park’s thirty-odd tigers. We figured our chances were pretty slim given the fact that the park is 1300 square km of bush, tall grass, and mountains. Setting out early, I was just looking forward to enjoying the scenery and perhaps seeing a few other native animals and maybe a glimpse of a distant tiger from our spot in the back of an open jeep.

The park is divided up into zones and to prevent the tigers from being overexposed to humans, each group is given a zone by lottery. Zone 5 here we come! We bounced along down a dirt road stopping every once in awhile to check for tracks. We saw deer, peacocks, kingfishers, tracks from a sloth bear and even some tiger paw prints. Finally we rounded a bed to see three other safari vehicles stopped in front of us. We jammed ourselves in between a couple of them, and there they were… two tigers lying right at the side of the road. It turned out that the two we saw were brother and sister cubs, although at two years old they looked almost fully grown. Just on the other side of the road was an adult male. There was definitely some aggression between the siblings and the other male, and a supersized cat fight almost broke out in right front of us. The tigers lay there for several minutes, completely nonplussed even though the vehicles were only about 15 feet away. Eventually, they became a little more active and I became a little more nervous. The female was especially curious, she came around and stood there staring at us over the leaves as we snapped some pictures of her. Of course, as with most tourist outings, somebody had to do something stupid. The passengers that pulled up behind us kept whining and complaining that they wanted to get closer to the tigers (apparently 20 feet just wouldn’t cut it). Finally, one older gentleman, who should’ve known better jumped out of the vehicle to walk closer for a photo. Fortunately for him his guide quickly snatched him back in before he got too far away. We watched the tigers for as long as we were allowed (more park rules on tiger/human exposure), then headed back to our hotel for brekkie and a nice poolside bask in the sun. First time wearing shorts in India- even if only for an hour!

We ended up in the same zone for our afternoon safari which was less fruitful. Enroute our guide stopped at a roadside stand and treated us to some fresh guavas before picking up the others in our group. This time we had a few more people in the vehicle. One couple was a lot of fun, but the other younger couple were annoyingly high maintenance. Apparently they thought travelling with two other tourists in the first class carriage of an Indian train was a bit more culture shock than they had bargained for. They plan on spending the rest of their journey in a chauffeured car and five star hotels, safely insulated from the culture of the country they chose to visit. Coated in dust, we returned to our hotel and made the most of our hot water supply, doing a load of laundry in the tub. It was amazing how much dust we collected over the course of the day!

Our jaunt in Jaipur

We dragged ourselves out of bed into the misty chill of the early morning arriving 20 minutes early for our 6:15 train which didn’t end up arriving until 8:45. We found a bench on the platform right next to a tea stand. After watching the tea maestro methodically boil, steep, sweeten, spice, and mix several pots of chai, I decided that his sanitation was up to snuff. I was pleasantly surprised to be charged the locals’ price off the bat and handed over what would amount to about 10 cents for a little clay cup of chai. After some observation, I discovered that common practice is to wing your empty cup into the railway tracks and let it smash amongst all the other putrid rubbish that ends up there. The rough little terra cotta vessel is their equivalent of a styrofoam cup: completely disposable, yet biodegradable and insulated!

Finally our train arrived and we bashed our way through the narrow aisle to our assigned seats. The only seats that were left at the time of booking were in the second class sleeper cars- definitely a little … uh shall we say more rudimentary? … than our previous train trip. We found a family of nine had spread out over our seats and the six others in our section. They made some room and found us a novelty once again until the family was distracted by the stream of food and chai vendors continuously filing through the carriage.

Finally we arrived in Jaipur and checked into our hotel. We were pleased to find that our hotel had running hot water for 6 hours of the day- a small luxury after the hot water in a bucket option at our last hotel. The view we discovered, was significantly less impressive as we looked down at the pigs rooting through a makeshift dump on a vacant corner lot.

Our two days in Jaipur left us wishing for more time. The people here seemed much less pushy and there were a lot of things to see. Our autorickshaw driver whisked us off to the Amber fort, the city palace, and the observatory all in one day. Despite the extraordinary and ornate architecture of the fort, the enormity of the largest sundial ever made, and the grandeur of the palace, it was almost more exciting just watching ordinary life around us as we tore around from sight to sight. Painted elephants walking down the streets, shop owners carefully polishing their Ganesh sculptures and adorning them with flowers, and of course there were the three little goats in short waistcoats yodelay-he yodel-ay-he, yodel- ay-he- hoo (unless you are a “The Sound of Music” fan I probably lost you with that one). Since Rajasthan is having their coldest winter in ages, many people are bundling their little goats up in sweaters. It’s so funny to see them running around with their little sleeves rolled up- check out the pic!

Before we left the next afternoon we made a visit to the “palace of the winds”. This tall thin building was built with a honeycomb structure so the Maharanis (the many wives of the Maharaji) could look out at the world and observe different festivals without being seen. The Maharani’s must’ve been little wisps of things since both Adam and I both kept bonking our heads on the low doorways.

We decided to make a brave move and take our shopping blinders off. Up until now our fear of being harassed by the vendors has prevented us from casting much more than a sideways glance at the heaps of merchandise lining the streets. Our first attempt at browsing ended in the purchase of a pashmina as the price dropped dramatically as we were walking away. We packed up and headed for the train to our next stop Sawai Madhopur, home of Ranthambore Park…. where we shall see tigers- hopefully!

Agra Take Two!

The second day in Agra we binged on all the local tourist attractions, being zoomed around in the relative safety of an autorickshaw with a sober driver.

Of course, the first stop was the breath taking Taj Mahal. We got a sneak peek from our hotel’s rooftop balcony (probably the hotel’s only redeeming quality). We passed the rigorous security scan and were stripped of all dangerous goods including our guidebook! Of course they held it in safekeeping until we returned. Emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj as a memorial for his wife after she died while birthing her 14^th child. Apparently the Emperor was devastated after death and turned grey overnight (hmmm could it have something to do with the fact that he would be raising 14 kids on his own?). The structure is a massive display of intricate marble work inlaid with jade and other precious stones.

After sufficient gawking we swung by the train station to book our ticket for the next day’s journey. We queued up at one of the windows and turned a blind eye as one person cut in front of us. When it happened a second time, Adam confronted the offender. It is astonishing how two people can have such a heated argument yet not comprehend a word the other is saying! Towards the end, the humour of the situation got to Adam and he just chuckled a little which completely confounded this fellow. He whipped open a folder and pulled out some papers with a picture of himself in uniform stapled to them, Adam shrugged, whipped out his wallet and pulled out the first card he came across- his library card! The man studied the card intensely; initially he seemed pretty convinced that it was some important piece of I.D, but obviously not impressed enough to back down. Nevertheless, the crowd behind us seemed distracted enough by the antics to not push in front of us. So far Indians seem very curious and appear to love a little drama served up with their Brahma.

Train tickets in hand we set off for more sights. We also checked out the massive Agra Fort, another tomb known as the baby Taj because of it’s many similar design elements, and soaked in one last view of the Taj’s backside from across the river.

There were some military personnel preventing us from getting too close to the river’s edge because of a dignitary visiting the Taj Mahal…. who other then our very own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper!

We returned to our hotel rooftop for dinner, enjoying our temporary reprieve from the dusty, noisy chaos in the streets below. It was fascinating watching the action without actually being tangled up in it. I have decided that the reason that Indians have perfected the art of finding inner peace through meditation is simply because there is no outer peace to be had here (at least none that we have found yet).

Dinner entertainment was the ever-present monkey side show as the cheeky little primates jumped from trees to rooftops stirring up whatever trouble they dared. We even saw one pinch a pair of trousers from a washing line and haul it three rooftops away before rifling through the pockets and casting them aside.

Each day seems to be getting a little better… sometimes I think the best way of dealing with the difficulties here is to find the humour in them and most of the time that isn’t too hard to do.

Agro in Agra

Warning this is a long one!
Agra is home to one of the wonders of the world… the Taj Mahal! As such it is probably one of the hottest tourist destinations in India. Where there’s tourists, there’s touts. Stepping off the train was a little overwhelming as there are a few hundred people vying for your attention and your money. The authorities were swinging long sticks around to keep the peddlers from mobbing the bewildered tourists. One rather frou-frou looking woman stood paralyzed with terror, clutching her frilly white pillow in the midst of the dusty chaos; wishing I’m sure, that she had chosen the French Riviera package deal instead.
We negotiated an autorickshaw ride to our hotel. The autorickshaw is a partially enclosed three wheel scooter, a very popular mode of transport here. Although designed to seat two passengers, we have seen some crammed with up to 10 passengers (including people clinging to the sides!).

Here is our very first autorickshaw ride.... it finishes at our hotel- Hotel Kamal.

Our enterprising porter also struck a deal with us to take us to Fatehpur Sikri, an abandoned fortified city about 40km away. Since everyone here seems to be connected by an invisible thread of commissions, we were actually passed onto another man who was to drive us in a huge old 50’s style car… without seatbelts of course. The first ¾ of the drive were a white knuckled dance with death. We found ourselves barrelling down streets dodging cows, pigs, dogs, rickshaws, camels, pedestrians, buses, scooters carrying small families, and anything else that came in our path. Most times this meant swerving directly into the path of some other large oncoming vehicle which would hopefully shift over to accommodate us. There was incessant blowing of horns and a few shouts of what I extrapolated to be Hindi insults out the window. We came within millimetres of sideswiping most things and within a foot of a head on crash on multiple occasions.
We arrived shaken but alive and declined our “highly recommended” tour guide (another invisible thread of commission) hoping for a peaceful walk around the site.
Not quite… there were more people following us around offering to sell us postcards and giving us “free information” that we also declined, only to get angry when we didn’t purchase a souvenir from their buddy at the end of it all.
Nevertheless, the site was full of beautiful architecture and very ornate stonework. There were many people maintaining the site, doing everything by hand including chiselling raw sandstone into large smooth flat pieces.
We were accompanied back down the hill (where we were to meet our driver) by several children. The hardest part about India so far has been the children. They are constantly asking for simple things like pens for school, soap samples, or toothbrushes. The children have clearly learned to associate tourists with handouts and we have come to discover that most locals discourage giving directly to the children as it teaches them that begging is rewarding and they focus more on this than playing or going to school. We will definitely be contributing to a charity as an alternative but in the meantime it is hard to play the bad guy and not succumb to such basic requests. We have given food on occasion and before we learned that direct giving is frowned upon I basically emptied my purse for one little guy who gladly took my toothbrush, sample toothpaste, sewing kit and a couple of pens that I had.
We had a snack of stuffed naan while we waited for our driver. He finally pulled up, his teeth stained red from chewing paan (the local form of spiced chewing tobacco). I was already fretting about the drive back and desperately hoping we would make it before dark (headlights are highly underutilised here) so my gut feeling that he was acting a bit odd was tossed aside and we jumped in the car and settled in for the joyride. We were drifting around on the road quite a bit, but given the driving style here of dodging obstacles and really not staying on any particular side of the road, I wasn’t quite sure if it was abnormal. We also noticed he wasn’t using his horn – definitely abnormal. I started watching his eyes in the rear-view mirror and noticed that they were drifting closed. Adam told him to wake up and he mumbled something. Finally after a couple very close encounters (could be considered normal) his eyes closed completely. We screamed at him to stop and he basically passed out right there on the road- he had stopped accelerating but didn’t actually brake until we screamed at him again. Then he lolled his head around and gave us this dopey, eyes half closed kind of smile?!
Fortunately we were at a tiny little roadside village. We jumped out of the car and spotted an official looking guy in a green beret. We asked for a taxi and he pointed at our big white car that was now slowly reversing all over the highway back towards us. We explained the situation as the driver got out of the car and within the next sixty seconds we had 200 villagers (no exaggeration) mobbed around us to see what the commotion was about. At first we were a little nervous but as the driver tried to explain his side of the story it was clear that the crowd also realized that he was drunk or stoned and were siding with us. One of the villagers appeared to be ripping a strip off of him in Hindi, wagging his finger and yelling. We just wanted the mob to disperse so we could work on a way of getting home; Adam defused the situation by paying the driver his fare just as the bus to Agra pulled up. Some villagers flagged the bus as it started to pull away and hurried us onto it. We were directed to an elevated bench seat facing the driver right next to the flashing LED shrine to Ganesh on the dashboard. Darn, no cricket match overhead to distract the onlookers this time. Despite the penetrating stares of the twenty-odd passengers, it was the happiest bus ride I have ever had.

Namaste India

Our first 24 hours in India were spent with only the clothes on our back. Our flight was delayed in Melbourne due to a thunderstorm and we had to sprint to make our connection in Singapore. We were warned in advance that our luggage wouldn’t make the connection and much to our surprise we were given 4,000 Rupees each (about $100 Cdn) for the inconvenience. We were actually quite happy with Jet Airways (India’s budget airline). Believe it or not even the meal was good, a nice spicy curried fish.
We arrived at an obscenely early hour of the morning and were greeted by the hotel “boy” who whisked us off to our hotel. The first thing we noticed was the Indian drivers’ liberal use of the horn. Even when approaching a vacant intersection it gets hammered a couple of times. Winding through the side streets to our hotel we were a little nervous about our chosen neighbourhood. Open fires in the streets, stray dogs, and everything just looking like it needed a good scrubbing. Fortunately our hotel room turned out to exceed our expectations (I think our expectations were low having read a whole lot of shoddy hotel reviews prior to arriving). The complimentary dental hygiene kit was especially appreciated considering we wouldn’t see our luggage for another 24 hours.
Try as we may, we were unable to sleep past the crack of dawn (which was only a couple hours away anyway) because of the symphony of barking dogs, beeping cars, and muffler-less vehicles that clattered up from the streets below. We set out to explore Delhi on foot, despite the autorickshaw driver that stalked us for the first kilometre of our walk. I’ve heard that India can be a bit of a “sensory overload” at times and I would have to say that is a gross understatement. At times the only thing that prevented me from stopping a staring with my mouth agape was the fact that there were people everywhere hassling us to buy stuff. If we kept on moving we kept the hassling to a minimum. We even had a guy offer to clean our ears for us!?? He had a rather tired looking Q-tip poking out of his hat band; needless to say we declined. Everywhere we went, people stared at us; a behaviour we can expect for the entire trip I think. Our walk brought us to the “hub” of Delhi, Connaught Place. We were both expecting to encounter some semblance of a CBD- a few skyscrapers, some more polished looking streets perhaps, but quickly discovered that our neighbourhood was a good reflection of what most of the city looked like. We managed to find a clean enough restaurant for lunch where we were seated just below the cricket match playing on TV. We figured this was a strategic move so that the patrons didn’t have to crane their necks to stare at us during the commercial breaks. After lunch we booked some train tickets and managed to visit a couple of the bazaars.
We took the metro back home at dusk. I was a little apprehensive of doing the walk through our neighbourhood after dark but we were met with a pleasant surprise when we discovered that the streets turned into a lively night market.
The unpleasant surprise was that our luggage had not been delivered, and the airport staff were refusing to answer the phone. There was some urgency in the matter due to the fact that we were leaving on a very early train the next morning and we didn’t want our luggage chasing us around India on the back of some camel. We finally got through to the lost luggage counter at 2am and managed to get a taxi out to the airport, pick up our bags, and squeeze in a little nap before leaving for the train at 5:30.

Santa Down Under

After months of carting the kids around, we were looking forward to stopping for awhile and surrounding ourselves with friends and family. Tim had graciously offered his spare room, his car and access to his restaurant any time of day. In fact we may have squeezed our way into poor Tim’s life a little too much considering that he personally escorted us to the airport making sure we were really off to India. But lets go back to the beginning, for there are many stories to tell from this leg of our journey.

We arrived mid December in the thick of the holiday spirit……. Australian style. The lengthy daylight saving inspired days of +30c with Santa walking through the shopping malls dressed in full furry redness, while Christmas carols rejoice about dashing through the snow that would last less than a millisecond outside. That’s pretty much all we saw of our first week in Berwick as we scrambled to replace clothing that the Spanish postal service had misplaced. Not to mention the shifts we both put into the restaurant bartending to help Tim through the Christmas rush.

My sister Carolyn, (those of you at the wedding would remember her for the heartfelt speech she gave of cross -dressing me when I was a baby) has hosted the last few Christmas dinners so it was decided to have it at my Mother's house with Jen & I doing the cooking. We took over Tim's restaurant and Jen had a ball preparing the traditional Canadian style Christmas feast in a full industrial kitchen. The cooking was finished off at Mum's and all 14 of us stuffed ourselves with turkey and trimmings.
New years was a laid back affair with us taking desperate measures to escape the 43c heat at the Gold Class Cinema, where we could relax in the wonderfully cool darkness and watch a movie. Actually, for the non Aussie readers, Goldclass is something we NEED in Canada. A cinema with full reclining chairs, where staff come in and serve you food and wine at your seat during the movie. NICE. The rest of the New Year was rung in Aussie style (on the beach with an Eskie full of beverages).

Early January had us headed into the country for my cousin Leonard`s wedding. Country hospitality and the chance to catch up with family I have not seen in 20 years was certainly something I was not going to miss.

Of course a trip to Aus is not complete without a little wine tasting so an overnight expedition to the Yarra Valley was a great trip into the countryside courtesy of Neil who booked us a fantastic room with a view of the entire valley as our wedding gift.
We enjoyed it so much that we had to head back out for a day trip when Jen's friends Jessica and Steve met up with us!
With India looming quickly, Tim hosted a well attended BBQ, it was grea to catch up with old friends!

And we cannot forget our annual pilgrimage to Albury for a visit with Matt & Vanessa who took us out for a day of music in the vineyards at the annual “Day On The Green” where we partied with some classic Aussie bands. A little too much, considering the slow start to Sunday. Abigail was showing off her newfound skill of walking and babbling, and she's as cute as ever.

We are excited to be headed off to India and all that a new country has to offer. We've been told that we will either love it or hate it. Which will it be?