The last word

You know you've left India for Europe when you see the following sign at airport security:

Faster Through Security: No Runny Cheese

But what about the 2 kilos of soft gulab jamun in my carry-on?  

I began this blog three months ago, a little unsure if I'd be able to keep it up or, like so many past efforts at journal-writing, lose interest after a few days/weeks/months and drop it.  But thanks to all the positive feedback that I got, my smart phone and the ready availability of internet cafes I did manage to keep the blog up, albeit irregularly.  However, yesterday I returned to Toronto safe and sound and so I guess it is time to wrap things up with a couple of thoughts:

• I had an absolutely wonderful summer in India and I have very mixed feelings about being home now.  Pretty much for the last 30 years I've been saying that I would go back to India but as the years and decades slipped by I started to doubt myself.  When the opportunity arose this year, I jumped at it but was aware that with so many expectations I might be setting myself up for disappointment.  Happily, things didn't turn out that way.  
• Also, when I decided to stop practising architecture and return to school I initially only looked into overseas universities (including Indian ones) because I wanted to travel.  Given that, it was ironic that I ended up at a school within walking distance of home but a nice coincidence that it gave me an internship opportunity in India.  
• My last five weeks of travel in Ladakh, Rajasthan and Diu were great but, in some ways, my time at DEF in Delhi was richer because it gave me the opportunity to be part of a team and to focus on an aspect of contemporary Indian society in more depth than you can simply being a tourist.  Thanks to everyone at DEF for being so welcoming, for patiently helping me understand how to dial Indian telephone numbers (again and again) and for giving me the opportunity to pursue my mobile phone research even when everyone else in the office had their hands full preparing for the mBillionth Awards.
• Traveling with a mobile phone was a bit of an education in itself.  It was so great to be able to receive emails, facebook, blog and play scrabble with people at home or elsewhere in India even if it was the middle of the night, I was on a bus in the middle of nowhere and not plugged into anything.  And this from the person who used to travel to England or Italy without calling or writing mom or dad even once the whole time.  It also made me realize how ridiculously expensive mobile phone service is in Canada. Does it really need to have to cost this much here?  
• I'm so lucky to have met so many great people in three short months: Anil in Delhi, everyone at DEF, the people I met in Pune, Stanzen in Leh, my fellow hikers in Ladakh and everyone else I met on my travels.  While not everyone at the ashram was always friendly, Anu, Stanzen (a different Stanzen) and some of the other people I met there were sweet.  Thanks to the DEF women, Anil, Linda and Inis for sending me off in style on Tuesday.  And thanks to Anil for taking me to the airport in Delhi and Wendy for picking me up in TO. 

Did I really spend 6 days at the beach

Did I really just spend 6 days at the beach? Where did the time go? When I arrived in Diu on the coast of Gujurat I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to keep myself occupied there for 6 days but, surprise, I did. Every day I walked up the coast to the quiet beach in the first picture. Some days I had it to myself, some days shared it with a few others. The water could be a bit rough (i.e fun) here so it was mostly the westerners who ventured in. Maybe not being as comfortable in the water, most of the locals kept to the main Nagoa beach where things were calmer and there was safety in numbers (and, unfortunately a lot of litter).

I rented a bicycle to toodle around. See the photo. My mistake, I think, was getting a lady's bike. First of all, the seat seemed to be only slightly higher than the pedals and incapable of being raised, possibly because women don't ride bikes and only girls do. Second, it really was in bad shape and I couldn't help but wonder if the men's bikes were kept slightly better. But for $1 a day, I'm not going to complain too much, even if my bum is bruised by the hard plastic seat. Most visitors rent scooters here but I have to admit I was too scared to do that at first even though the traffic is pretty mild. And before long I just got used to the having the pink rocket around whenever I wanted to hop on and go.

As it happened, the French Canadian and the five French French people that I met in Mnt. Abu all ended up at the same hotel as me (possibly because I name dropped about it) so I spent some time with them. Otherwise, poked around Diu Town and the fishing village at the other end of the island, went for walks and killed a John Grisham novel hiding from the afternoon sun. And what do you know? Six days are gone and it is time to leave.

So at 5am this morning, one of the hotel staff rode me to the Diu bus stand on the back of his motorcycle (flip flops and no helmut, of course. Don't tell my motorcycle instructor or Terrell or Lindsay).  After a two and a half hour bus ride to Veraval I just got on the train to Ahmedabad and, if all goes well, will board the night train from there and be back in Delhi tomorrow early afternoon, can you believe it.

Got chatted up a bit at the Veraval train station. Usual line of queationing:
1. Where are you from?
2. What is your name?
3. What is your age?
Just like that. Im okay with my age but all the same I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked within the first minute of meeting someone. And it is not just men, women ask too. But with men the questioning usually continues:
4. Family? (Meaning, children). No, no children.
5. Travelling lonely? (Meaning, I assume, "alone"). Yes, travelling alone.
6. (a) Husband? or (b) your husband let's you travel alone? If I answer truthfully, and I don't always, I generally get a shocked look and a question like this morning's: "in India, we believe that sex (ergo marriage) is important. In Canada you don't need sex?" And there, they've managed to turn the conversation with the white lady to sex in no time flat. This morning, I didn't even mention the bit about being a student, which is also typically met with incredulity. Boy, I must be some kind of weirdo.

For the time being I am trying to live in blissful ignorance about the fact that school starts again in a couple of short weeks and to pretend that my Indian summer will go on and on. Unfortunately, OCAD emails and bureaucracy have managed to intrude and my mind is starting to drift to Delhi and Toronto.

My single sleeper to Diu

Just settled in to my sleeper on the overnight bus to Diu. Might not look like much but I'm happy. Have to admit that I'm kinda excited about going somewhere new. With any luck, I'll wake up tomorrow to a sunny beach in Diu, but more likely these days, will see overcast skies. Dinner on the bus: coconut, apples and mango drink.

Glad to report that on my last pee-break I made it back to the bus before it pulled back on the highway.

Changing buses in Ahmedabad, discovered my first supermarket in India. Have heard three people say "do the diu" in the one hour that it has taken to change buses, such is the power of western marketing.

Hope the photos are the right way around. Sorry for any neck strain caused by the last post.

Udaipur Part II

It is possible that not everyone got the memo: I am not returning to TO on Aug 10th, as originally planned, but Aug 22nd. I extended my stay because I am having such a lousy time (not).

Today seemed like a free day in Udaipur because I had originally planned to spend it in Mount Abu. The french canadian that rode to MA with me told me about a place in Udaipur that a taxi driver told him about called the Kings' Crematorium, where all the Udai kings since the city was founded were cremated (and all their multiple wives threw themselves on the pyre, as any good Mewari wife must. Apparently all 21 wives of one of king threw themselves on his funeral pyre). Actually he did'nt tell me all these details, he only showed me his photos, I thought the place looked really interesting and I found out the rest online. For whatever reason, the city doesnt advertise the place and it is completely off the tourist map. But if you ask locals they know it (except my rickshaw driver) and will tell you where it is.

So I waited out the morning's rain and finally found an auto rickshaw driver who would drive me there for Rs 50 rather than the Rs 150 that the others wanted. I don't know if it turned out to be a little further than he originally thought or just what but he had a long talk in hindi with lots of arms gestures indicating turns this way and that  with two other auto drivers before we set off. In any event, when we arrived he asked for more money claiming that I had told him it wasnt as far as it was. There was a grain of truth about that and a couple of months ago I'd have given him the money but I'm getting more hard-assed about this sort of thing these days and, as a result, he was out of luck. I mean it wasn't really even a Rs 50 fare in the first place.

The place is beautiful and fascinating but entirely without explanation or interpretation. There must be a couple of hundred shrines or cenotaphs (or temples?) all packed together cheek by jowl, some only 8 inches or a foot apart. I must have taken over 100 photos (alas only a couple on my phone so that is all you are going to be able to see now) before getting heck for that from the guard on the way out. Naturally, he asked for a camera fee but by then I was with a Gujarati family that I had befriended and who had also taken photos and the guard gave up trying to charge just the foreign lady. In the circumstances, the idea of admission charges was a little lame anyway. The place doesn't even have a sign and the only visitors were myself and the Gujaratis. I doubt that they could even issue me an entry ticket.

According to this website: http://www.eternalmewar.in/collaboration/temples/shri-mahasatyaji/index.aspx
19 kings were cremated here but there are obviously way more cenotaphs so I'm not sure what's going on - unless all the wives qnd some nobility also got memorials.

After that, I walked most of the way back, through one street with a lot of musical instrument makers (dolaks, tablas, harmoniums, sitars and bells) and then through Bapu Bazaar, both of which are places for locals rather than tourists.

The attached photos of me eating ware taken by a street food vendor. I have Rohit at DEF to thank for introducing me to gol golpaa: bite sized hollow poori shells that the vendor pokes a hole into with his thumb and then fills with some chick pea stuff, spices, syrup and spicy water with round balls of something  floating in it. You have to pop each one whole into your mouth and usually I end up with liquid running down my wrist. They serve them to you one at a time and you get 5 for Rs 10, or sometimes Rs 20. I know I wasn't the vendor's first foreign customer (he showed me photos of at least one more) but he wanted to photograph me on his phone all the same. He also photographed me stirring his pot of daal like I worked at the stand.

All in all, a nice day even if a little rainy. I'm glad I got to spend some extra time in Udaipur. In a perfect world I might have opted for the extra day or two in Ladakh, but what can you do. And now with this post I think I am caught up on my blog. Don't expect it to last.

I hope all the photos aren't rotated sideways in this blog post. I know that the blogger ap can only handle photos one way and I think it is portrait, but I'm not 100% sure. Someone, let me know.

Monsoon finally arrives in Udaipur

Have been relaxing in Udaipur for a few days and using it as a base to explore places in the area on day- or overnight-trips.  The city is a little more picturesque, clean and laid back than some others in Rajasthan, so that's something to enjoy.  The oldest (therefore most touristy) part is on either side of Lake Pichola, which is lined with dhobi ghats: steps down to the water where people pound their clothes clean, bath or just swim for pleasure.  To be honest, the water's not that clean and I wouldn't go near it, but obviously my constitution is weaker than the average Indian's.  It's actually very pretty, especially at dusk when the sunlight bounces off the buildings, the temple bells ring and the bats (huge bats) start flying up the lake.  I've never seen so many bats.

Trash in Lake Pichola

What more could you want?

Day trip to Kumbhalgarh Fort and as you can see below, the weather has changed.  Like a reluctant school child, monsoon has finally arrived in this part of India a month and a half late.  It didin't rain till later but in the morning, the weather was very Scottish: misty, romantic, cool. KF is huge with a number of temples and ruins inside of it.  I didn't have enough time to explore.

Kumbhalgarh Fort: reminded me of MacBeth for some reason

Then on to the Jain temple at Ranakpur - all marble.

Ranakpur temple: everything carved out of marble

Monkeys at the Surya Temple

 As you can see, the terrain is much hillier and greener here in southern Rajasthan than it was in the desert areas of the north and west.  Mount Abu is a popular hill station near the Gujarat border so I headed there for a bit more trekking.  Sadly, the place turned out to be more like a cross between Niagara Falls and Wasaga Beach at the beginning of a long weekend: cars packed with people streaming in for the weekend, over-exuberant Gujaratis, horror-houses, swan paddle boats, balloon rides, pony rides etc.  To make matters worse (or better?) the next day was Krishna's birthday, so it was a holiday.  Snagging what felt like the last available guest-house room in town - a moldy room much overpriced at Rs 1000 and only available for one night - I made the best of things, got in one nice hike, ate some good food and got out of dodge a day ahead of schedule and thousands more holiday makers streamed uphill into town. 

Arrived back in Udaipur Friday evening to discover the Dahi Handi competition in full swing in front of the Jagdish temple near my hotel.  Part of Krishna's birthday celebrations, in the DH competition, teams of men build human pyramids to see who will be the first to reach and smash a pot of curd (dahi) or what looked more like ghee (liquified butter) in this case.  I don't have any pictures, but here's a link to the Udaipur paper.

And here's a video from 2010 in Udaipur.  This year's wasn't quite this dramatic, but you get the idea.  Also, sadly, I didn't have such a good viewpoint.   This is obviously just the climax of a longer competition that sees a few elimination rounds to weed out the weaker teams by pouring oil (or ghee) on them to makes things as slippery as possible.

Tomorrow, the bus to Diu, which is an island off the coast of Gujarat.  If mother nature cooperates and there isn't too much rain, then I'm hoping to enjoy the beaches and some seafood before heading back to Delhi.

Jaisalmer, then the ups and downs of the sleeper bus to Udaipur

Jaipur train station was an experience of Indian train culture: who lives on the platform, who sells, who begs, who rides on top of the trains, who gets beaten by the police if they jump (or fall) down off the roof to the platform etc.

Everything carved in stone

But the train from Jaipur to Jaisalmer was a comfortable sleeper.  My neighbour snored, but if that's my biggest complaint, no problem.

Four days in Jaisalmer, a town that seems to be completely carved out of yellow stone.  Centered around a fort, it importantly controlled trade along the silk road or grand trunk (not sure which) until Partition after Independence cut off east-west trade.  Then, it went into rapid decline but has since learned to thrive off the tourist dollar.

One of at least 5 Jain temples inside the fort.
Jaisalmer offered to protect the Jains, who
helped pay for the fortifications in return.
Nice symbiotic relationship that seemed to
suit both well.

Camel safari: spent a night in the dunes.

Lunch, for us and the camels:

Through a couple Rajasthani villages.

Then the sleeper bus from Jaisalmer to Udaipur.  In my opinion, a sleeper bus is a great thing.  It has single and double sleeping berths overhead of the usual floor level seats with huge sliding windows for maximum ventilation.  In fact, the windows are so big you feel like you could easily be sucked out.  For a few rupees extra, you can stretch out and sleep to your destination.  I think the difference in fare was Rs. 70 ($1.25) on a 14 hour bus ride, but it meant that the sleepers were mostly used by tourists and families.  I.e: a family of four occupying a single sleeper or four adults and 3 children cramming into a double sleeper.  I hope they held on tight to those little ones.  Don't want them being sucked out the windows.  Honestly, it was a bit like a clown bus, seeing how many people could be crammed onto one local bus: 3 sharing 2 seats, packed like sardines standing in the aisle etc.  Made me glad I had a sleeper, to be honest.  No one rode on the roof of our bus, but that is common too.

Dinner stop at 12:30am at a roadside 'dhaba'.  Typically, these things take 30 minutes, if not longer.  This time, however, I bought chai, a cold drink and went to the washroom only to find that the bus had already left without me.  As I quickly did an inventory of what I had in my shoulder bag and what I'd left on the bus heading up the highway, a couple of guys came to my rescue to see if they could phone ahead to the driver.  Lots of chatter in hindi and then a couple of guys indicated that I should come with them and we headed up the highway on foot.  For whatever reason, I thought they had a car and were going to try to catch the bus or go to the next stop (because this was one of those local buses that stopped absolutely everywhere).  Anyway, as I headed into the darkness with two or three strange men at something to 1am, I thought that this was either going to end really well or really badly.  Fortunately, the former.  Turns out, the bus had also left them behind but my Aussie neighbours had alerted the driver that I, at least, was missing.  So about 500m up the highway we climbed back onto the bus to a scowl from the driver who probably blamed us for the delay.

Anyway, made it to Udaipur, where I've been relaxing for a few days.

Udaipur ghats on the shore of Lake Pichola

Tomorrow, I head to Mount Abu, a hill station.  I hope the rain holds off a bit so that I can do some hiking there.

More Chandigarh photos - for the architects out there

Wish I could have take more interior shots, mais pas possible.  Security threat.  As I said, it became evident that the public getting in to State Assembly buildings like these is the exception rather than the rule in India. So I asked about the tradition of public galleries in parliament so that the common people could watch their elected representatives in action, for the sake of transparency, and I was told that that is what television is for. Intetesting.

I dont know what order the Blogger ap is going to post these photos. Heres the captions. You can figure out which goes where:

- Approaching the Assembly. 
- Car body scrap yard on the roof of the High Court. (Pardon me madam. Who said you could go on the roof?)
- Where Corb's vision of open green spaces and the city beautiful (or whatever it was) meets reality. The High Court looking toward the Assembly and no-man's land in between.
- This is cool and so not-Corb: tall poured concrete walls made with bulging canvas formwork. Results looks like a slumping mattress.